Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.

The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.

The following are notes from EP. 193 Selling In The New Age Of Data

In this episode of Sales With ASLAN, Tom and Tab talk with Professor Frank Cespedes, a sales expert from Harvard Business School. Frank joins us to discuss his groundbreaking new book, "Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing," which dives deep into how the selling landscape has been transformed by the modern customer and their access to data. Whether you’re a seasoned sales veteran or just starting out, this episode is packed with insights to help you excel in this new era of selling. Listen to the conversation here:

Or read below- 

00:13
Tom Stanfill
Welcome back to another episode of sales with Aslan. Thanks for joining us. And I'm here looking at my, I think, my favorite podcast host. How you doing, my friend?

00:24
Tab Norris
I'm fantastic. Really looking forward to our guests. Yeah, reading his book. Got almost halfway through it.

00:32
Tom Stanfill
And so, yeah, I met this guy, Frank Cepetis. Cespitus. I just said his name. Cespitus. Frank Cespitus. That's a tough one. It's a tough one. But I met Frank through some work that we're doing with selling power and a research project. And I interviewed him about what's happening with changes in buyer behavior and AI. And the guy is really brilliant. I mean, I know that we throw those words around, but he's brilliant. I mean, he's been on many boards of companies. He ran a, a leadership consulting firm for, as a managing partner for, I think, twelve plus years. He teaches at Harvard Business School and he's written six books. And we're going to talk about his latest book. So any teasers tab? I mean, what did you get out of the episode that you were most intrigued by?

01:21
Tab Norris
I really loved his whole thing about the idea of sales has always been linear, you know, and he talks about this process of parallel streams and, you know, and that it's omni channel buying world that we're in and I am, I don't know about you. I feel that. I just feel it. I feel like it's all changing and it's different than you. And I've been in this world for a long time and that was great. And I love everything we talked about, it kept coming back to data. And I don't know about you, I love that because I have thoughts and I have ideas. And when I can, when he says things like, we have research, Tom, that backs that. He said that multiple times. And so that really jumped out at me.

02:05
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I love that. I think that was probably my favorite part, too. And the idea of how do we change, how we influence in all of the different channels, because I do think it's so easy for organizations to be, or just even as individuals to be linear, because linear is easy. 123-4545 I know when I look at the content that we teach, it's always like, well, let's just be linear because it's easier. But the problem is I can't get the customer to follow the survey. I can't get them to follow my process. They're not linear. So we need to be flexible, almost like an athlete who can utilize these capabilities in different areas. So he's really challenged us to step up our game. And so I thought it was a great episode. So I hope you'll enjoy this episode with Frank Zepetis.

02:49
Tom Stanfill
Frank, thanks for joining us and welcome to the show. After meeting you through Gerhard and selling power and talking to you about a little research project we had, and also meeting with Scott Eninger, who we had on the podcast for growth leader, who I know you guys are close. She wrote the Ford. I was like, I'm such a fan and so excited that you joined us.

03:13
Frank Cespedes
Well, Tom, I that first, I thank you very much for hosting me. And after that gracious introduction, I can hardly wait to hear what I have to say.

03:23
Tab Norris
We're going to have fun.

03:24
Tom Stanfill
I can already tell. Me too.

03:26
Frank Cespedes
Me too.

03:27
Tom Stanfill
Oh, well, we love your book. You know, you've written a bunch of books, but the latest one, Tab and I were both talking pre show about your latest book and how excited we are to dive in. So talk about it. So it's sales management that works. How to sell in the world that never stops changing, which I want to first tab, I think we should argue with that title. I think things pretty much are stayed static.

03:56
Tab Norris
Oh, yeah. For 28 years, we hadn't really seen any change or involvement.

03:59
Frank Cespedes
Really. Change has always been there. In business. That's not the point. Is it accelerating? Yeah, there's some circumstantial evidence for that. But if you want to go into business, you better get comfortable with change. You know, when CEO's complain, I always quote that line from the gangster movies. Hey, remember, you chose this life. So, you know, I think change is constant. Think of it that way. All right.

04:27
Tom Stanfill
Well, you sound like you all you have to. Maybe some other experience. Frank, I don't know. We can talk about that. Well, before we dive into the book and kind of what is changing and how the role of the seller is changing, leaders changing. Tell us a little bit, because this is something I don't know about you kind of your path to becoming a thought leader and writing so many books. I know you led your managing partner of a leadership development firm for I guess, what, 13 plus years. You obviously, you teach at Harvard. So talk, you know, how did you become an expert?

05:02
Frank Cespedes
Well, I mean, look, my background is not exotic, Tom. I got my doctorate, started teaching at Harvard's business school, worked my way up the hierarchy for about ten years. And then I left with some others. We started a firm. I ran that firm for about another ten years. And then we got lucky. When need be. I can spin this a different way, but the truth is, it was dumb luck. We sold at exactly the right time. Harvard called me back up, said, how'd you like to be a professor again? And trust me, being a professor at a decent school after you've made some significant money is a good life. I have no complaints.

05:51
Tom Stanfill
I don't think we're going to argue with you. Let me get this straight.

05:55
Frank Cespedes
Yeah.

05:55
Tom Stanfill
You're a professor at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and you sold your business and did really well, and so you're not complaining.

06:02
Frank Cespedes
That's exactly right. And then, you know, from the get go, you know, I was a marketing professor and my area was distribution. You know, distribution channels. And once you start there, you inevitably get interested in sales, which has always been an undertaught topic in universities. But then when you run a business, as I'm sure you guys have discovered, when you've got to meet payroll every month, you develop a profound respect for sales revenue. That's really the origins.

06:37
Tab Norris
Yeah.

06:38
Tom Stanfill
Got it. Yeah. You had to figure out how to make it work.

06:40
Frank Cespedes
That's right.

06:41
Tab Norris
That's awesome.

06:42
Tom Stanfill
Interesting. Okay, well, so the book you obviously written six, as we talked about in our intro, but the latest one. So what's the genesis of this book right now? Why write another book? Given the story you just told about your life?

06:59
Frank Cespedes
Where did it come from? Two motivations in writing this book. The first is essentially a professional intellectual motivation. Sales is by far the most context dependent activity in business. Right. Selling software is different than selling durables, is different than selling professional services, etcetera. Selling in North America is different than selling in Latin America or Europe or the Middle east. And so glad to hear you say that.

07:34
Tab Norris
Yeah, because we always feel that all the time, but I've never heard anybody say that. It's very validated.

07:40
Frank Cespedes
Let me say it again, because for some reason, while it's context specific, you know, it's that area of business where people feel most comfortable making these huge generalizations, usually unsupported by any data whatsoever beyond what in academia we would call n equals one. When I sold for PayPal or Google, which, by the way, was 15 years ago, this is what worked for me. I'm sure it will work for you. So after 30 years of doing what I think is more than decent research in this area, I wanted to write a book that says this is what research does and does not tell you about this core activity in business. And the other motivation is, I think it is a good time for a book like that, there is no doubt whatsoever, that digital online technologies have changed and are changing buying and selling.

08:41
Frank Cespedes
But again, what I read people say about that is not supported by the data. And I think given my experience with lots and lots of companies, once upon a time, I look like Jimi Hendrix. Look at me now. But it's also, I think it ignores the managerial implications. So that's. Those were the motivations behind writing this book.

09:04
Tom Stanfill
Excellent. I love the idea of what research tells you and what it doesn't tell you. Let's focus on what it tells you.

09:12
Tab Norris
Yeah.

09:13
Tom Stanfill
What is some undeniable truths that research reveals about that is the number one driver of purchases is the interaction with the seller and the buyer. I think I'm saying that correctly.

09:25
Frank Cespedes
The most important thing about selling is and always has been the buyer, not the seller, who buys why and how. And that is where technology over the last 20 years has had its most profound impact. Now, I'm going to get academic with you guys for a second, but I think you'll see it makes the point. The way buying has been conceptualized for over 60 years, and therefore the way people think about what sales and salespeople have to do, is in terms of what academics call a hierarchy of effects model. And what they mean by that jargon, is that the job is to move the prospect from awareness to interest, to desire to action. A I d Aida, as in the opera. And that is the way sales is thought about. Think about the metaphors we use in sales pipelines, funnels.

10:28
Frank Cespedes
This serial process, this hierarchy of effects, by the way, is built into virtually every CRM system that's out there. But I think it's pretty clear that by the third decade of the 21st century, that's not the way buying works. Buying in the vast majority of categories, the buyers are online and offline multiple times during their buying journeys. They go to the sites, they go to stores, they go back to sites, they deal with influencers, all of this, as well as salespeople. That's the big change. It's an omnichannel buying world. It is not a digitally physical world that is just not supported by the data, but it's an omnichannel buying world. That means you need a multi channel go to market response. And that's a big deal. That is a big change issue.

11:22
Tom Stanfill
Okay, that makes sense. So what is that? If I'm a seller, right? And that's true, which I do agree with that obviously there's so many different touch points and so many different ways that the buyer is influenced, which can cause them to buy, I guess, or can cause them to engage. What, what's my role? How do I need to change my role as a seller? Because I know that's the first, you know, your book talks about the four P's, right? People, process play, what is it? Pricing and partners. We talk about the people side. You know, you've talked about training in the book. What needs to change on how I train my reps to be able to address that new reality?

12:02
Frank Cespedes
Well, I mean, the first thing is you've got to know something about those buying journeys, that multi channel buying journey. And then where in that buying journey do my salespeople as opposed to marketing and its content, as opposed to product, as opposed to post sales service or applications engineering. Where in that omnichannel buying journey are my salespeople likely to have the most influence? I want to hire for those tasks. I want to train for those tasks. All right. And by the way, there's now technology that helps in charting those journeys. If companies are not using the technology, shame on them. You know, being smarter does count in business. It is a source of advantage. Then I think, you know, in terms of training, the first thing to note is that if you can improve your hiring, you're going to improve your training.

13:00
Frank Cespedes
Now, what I'm about to say is no longer politically correct, but that doesn't mean it's not true. Right. It is tough to train and develop someone who is a poor fit for that job in the first place. You can throw a lot of time and money, but it's tough to do that. So you start with hiring and then if you like, we can talk about that because hiring and sales has never been easy and it's certainly not getting any easier. But many companies take a tough situation and make it needlessly tougher.

13:36
Tab Norris
Well, Frank, it's something interesting in your book that I was drawn to was when you talked about that, you talked about how I think you did research of, I don't remember the dates, but this is what it used. These were the critical skills you were hiring for 20 years ago or whatever it was, and then how they've completely changed. And it was like it was a one and now it's a seven or it was a, you know, and so is that what you're talking about, that we have to kind of reevaluate our assessment of who we're looking for?

14:08
Frank Cespedes
That is one of the things I'm talking about. And that change, you know, we had a great database that research based on, and it changed over the course of a decade. Now, if we step back, that shouldn't surprise us. What I'm about to say, I'm going to say in what may sound like a glib manner, but it's kind of a yogi Berra ism. Yogi Berra. He says things. At first they sound kind of silly. Then when you think about it and say, in business, you do not compete with the dead. You do not compete with companies that have gone out of business. You only compete with the survivors. Now, what are the implications of that? What does it take to survive in a competitive market? If you have a monopoly, it's a different story.

14:58
Frank Cespedes
But in a competitive market, if you're going to survive, you do have to improve. You do have to adopt best practices. So it should not surprise us that the bar is always rising in a competitive market. That, by the way, is one of the glories of capitalism and competition and sales right now is kind of ground zero for that. If you look at the data tab that you're referencing, a lot of people misunderstand it. They look at what was focused on in the job descriptions, and then they look at what is now currently focused on and say, well, I guess that means we no longer care about those previous capabilities, like generating leads and so forth. No, that is not the way to interpret that. What those previous capabilities are now is table stakes. They're assumed.

15:58
Frank Cespedes
It is these other capabilities that as the bar has risen, it's more important.

16:04
Tab Norris
That is awesome, because I was confused by that a little bit. You know what I mean? I was going where you said people go. I was kind of going, wait a minute, that means we've kind of moved past that. But that's just baseline. We don't even talk about that. That's a given.

16:17
Frank Cespedes
Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, one of the oldest jokes in business. You know, the two guys out hunting, they shoot and wound a bear, who chases them, they run. One guy says, we're not going to outrun this bear. The other guy says, I don't have to outrun the bear. I have to. All I do is have to outrun you. Advantage in business is always relative advantage. That's good. That's the basic point.

16:39
Tom Stanfill
So what's next level stakes for sellers? And I know that's probably a context based question, but if you could.

16:45
Frank Cespedes
Well, it does vary by context. But in general, there are a couple of things going on. One is selling has become a much more data intensive activity. All right, that's number one. And by the way, we're only at the be, you know, the early innings of that. We still have a long way to go. Number two, and this is an implication for sales managers, the issue with most sales forces in my experience, and you know, Tom Tab, you should comment because you guys are at the coal face with this. But the issue with most sales forces in my experience, is not that they don't have data. They've got a ton of data. They don't know what data to look at. Well, that's a management issue. That is not an AI or data issue. It's a management issue to know what data to look at.

17:39
Frank Cespedes
And that gets me back to the buying issue. Then the relevance of the data is changing because buying is changing. Now, again, the answers to those three questions will vary by industry, by strategy, but those are three pretty good places to start my estimation.

18:00
Tom Stanfill
The data. So sales, let's return back to selling, is going to be more about the data or leveraging data, understanding data. Talk a little bit more about that. You mean like insights on the customer that I can capture through AI. That tells me, what's that? Potentially there's going to, there's buying need for buying or capturing information so I can leverage it to create emails and write more impactful in general.

18:29
Frank Cespedes
I think that's right. But again, let's, this is often misinterpreted. I rarely meet an executive who says, I want less data, not more data. Right. I mean, that's also one of the great ways in businesses. I saw this in the company I ran. When someone doesn't want to make a decision, you always blame it on it. Oh, I need more data. Right. The issue is not that our salespeople have to become data analysts or data scientists. No, they need to sell, but they need to sell informed by what the data is telling us about, who is a prospect, who is not. And by the way, this is becoming a bigger and bigger economic issue. Think about the so called SaaS crash over the last two years. As interest rates go up, plus the capital goes up, as selling cycles lengthen, time to cash lengthens.

19:28
Frank Cespedes
And the reality is, for the vast majority of companies, the single biggest determinant of time to cash, and therefore working capital and therefore funding requirements, is the selling cycle. In other words, the cost all about the forecast goes up. That's why data is important. Not because our people should somehow become mini mathematicians, that's a fallacy, but because we need to know more about this. Now AI can help with this. I'm on the board of a company. We sell AI tools. And the good news is people think about AI as a prediction technology. I think that's hype because of the data inputs. But the reality is that the AI analysis almost always is better than the current folk wisdom in the salesforce about who's a customer. And the reason for that is twofold. One is the sales comp plan.

20:32
Frank Cespedes
Most sales comp plans provide zero incentive for salespeople or sales managers to do good lead qualification. Right. You get paid on volume. What do I care about the cost to serve or the selling cycle or whatever? And the other issue is the data they're using, which tends to come from the CRM system, which is notoriously noisy and unreliable data, not because of the software, nothing wrong with the software, but as usual, because of the human inputs. Tom says that a lead is somebody that he spoke with that has a budget. I say a lead is anybody I bumped into in Harvard Square. All the CRM system does is aggregate those very disparate subjective responses. So that's what I mean by data analysis. And again, these are fundamentally managerial issues. They're not technology issues.

21:33
Tom Stanfill
It's how you manage the data. What about the challenges to influence customers given? So you have, I understand what you're saying about the data and knowing who our customers are and qualifying and leveraging the data to make better decisions and be more efficient. With my time. Close time to close, the gap in proposal to close or meeting, first meeting to close. What about influence, given the changes in buyer behavior, with the amount of noise? I think, you know, buyers are, you know, I said the other day in a talk, buyers are less available, less dependent, and more distracted because of just, you know, I don't need it. Buyers don't need to talk to sellers, but decision makers still need to have partners. Yeah. Right. They still need people to help them make decisions.

22:20
Tom Stanfill
And so I myself, belief right now is that sellers have got to elevate their capabilities to have those types of conversations and move away from, and I think this came out of our original conversation or move away from sort of the buying process of like, I need to buy products. I can do that without a seller.

22:36
Frank Cespedes
Yeah, no, I fundamentally agree with everything you said, and I think it's well said. And by the way, research supports this. The pandemic accelerated what you're talking about.

22:48
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

22:49
Frank Cespedes
It is tougher to get FaceTime with decision makers. All right. That's number one. Number two, it is true. I mean, this is just a core fact of technology. You know, buyers get a lot of information before they talk with a seller. Now, I'm not a big believer in these. What I think are these hokey statistics that people like to throw around. You know, 58% of the buying journey is done before a rep gets there. I mean, think about that. Think about a number like that. In a binary decision, I buy or don't buy. What does it mean to say 58%, 2%? How do we get that? But the real implication is that the days of salespeople basically being walking, talking product information, billboards, is gone. All right? Those days are gone. In that sense, the bar again is rising.

23:52
Frank Cespedes
What does this mean for salespeople? One is they got to better at articulating the value for the buyer. Surprise, surprise. I ran a business 1011 years. What impressed me after teaching this stuff for ten years was how much of an advantage you can have if you can do the basics better than your competitors. This, I think, is a classic example of this. We all understand some of the basics of selling, right? We're all selling profitability at some point. We're all selling what this means for your business or your household. Not in the abstract, but for your business or your household. That's what salespeople have to better and better at. And by the way, they do need, and there's no excuse not to do this by the third decade of the 21st century, they need to do their homework.

24:48
Frank Cespedes
They need to do their research about that. Buyers, again, I agree with what you're saying. It is supported by the research. But I don't think the implications taken Einstein. The implications, I think, are reasonably straightforward. Managers must manage. They either get serious about this or ultimately they fall victim to someone who does get serious about.

25:12
Tom Stanfill
You're really articulating what I think we probably, the drum we've been beating for all these years, you know, about elevating, you know, people's capabilities and learning how to really influence and doing the research and understanding the buyer and providing, you know, more custom solutions and not just being a bit all the things that we're, I feel like now finally people are going, I guess we have to change.

25:36
Tab Norris
Yeah, it's like before.

25:37
Tom Stanfill
It's like. Yeah. That you could be successful with a certain sort of typical, I'm going to show up and talk and I'm going to show up a lot and I'm going to tell my story, and I got my story memorized, and I'm going to go through the bullet points and I got that down and I know how to respond to what you say, and I just keep doing that work. And that worked. It worked in a declining. It worked enough. Now it's getting to the point where it's not working.

26:00
Frank Cespedes
I think there are two reasons behind the situation you've described, one of which I think is changing this. Years ago, when I was basically a brand new professor, I must have smelled like a graduate student. I was writing a case study, and a senior sales executive said something to me that stayed with me over the years. He said, frank, watch what you're going to find. Most companies are better at maintaining their equipment than they are with maintaining and developing their people. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And you know what I've discovered?

26:42
Tom Stanfill
More predictable.

26:43
Frank Cespedes
Yeah. But what I've discovered over the years is that in business, you ultimately get what you don't pay for. There's that element. What's changing here? Let's get back to data and the data revolution. The reality in most companies is that sales was basically this kind of black box. I have the kind of conversation I'm going to describe as a board member, I have seen on three different companies, sales leader has to make a presentation to the board. Does that. Then the board goes into executive session where they really talk. And three different times, the basic conversation was, well, I'm not sure he really understood the question. She doesn't really get how we expect to accrete enterprise value as opposed top line revenue. But he, she does make their numbers every quarter. Let's leave him alone. Those days are quickly disappearing.

27:39
Frank Cespedes
And the reason is that what the data revolution is doing is making sales less of a black box and more transparent to all the other functions in the company, especially finance. And as I'm sure you guys have discovered, finance executives are annoying. They cannot help themselves. Once they get data, they start to ask questions, and they ask those questions of the sales leader and the reality. And this is the advice I give to sales leaders who are less than 50 years old. The requirements for financial literacy in sales are increasing dramatically. If you can't speak the language of return on assets, return on invested capital, what your selling cycle means for time to cash, you are going to have a problem sooner or later in your career. That's the reality there that I do think is changing the issues that I think.

28:40
Frank Cespedes
Again, Tom, you very ably discussed.

28:44
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that is, I keep going back to things that we've talked about literally 20 years ago, and people you can tell they believe you. It's like talking about retirement to a 25 year old. It's like, yeah, you know, you're right. I get the whole time value of money. You're, you know, if I did save $1,000 a month, it really would be. Yeah, but I'm not going to do it. But it's like now the market is 55.

29:13
Frank Cespedes
Yeah, but you got to have a little empathy. I think one of the things, when, you know, the three of us have more or less spent our careers working with salespeople, selling, etcetera, we tend to forget how fundamental and central sales is in any profit seeking organization. So many other decisions in the company depend on sales forecasts and the ability of the sales force to make those forecasts. Hiring decisions, capacity expansion, et cetera. As a result, what most of the other functions want from sales is, quote, predictable revenue. I love that phrase. As though I wave a magic wand and it's predictable.

30:05
Tom Stanfill
I know what to say in my quarterly meeting.

30:07
Frank Cespedes
Salespeople, therefore, tend to have these short term metrics. Make your numbers this year, this quarter, this month, essentially, there's an incentive in sales to stick with the devil, you know, despite changes in buying. That's how companies get disrupted. But it's systemic. It's not just that the sales leader may or may not know what's going on. It's. It's a, it's a water issue because sales is so fundamental in an organization.

30:40
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, yeah. That's well said in our kind of closing. Frank, I'm loving this conversation. I could go in so many different directions, but I want to talk a little to the sales bit, management. I know that's one of the key elements of the people part of the book. And so we've talked about what needs to have change in selling, speak a little bit to the frontline leader and how they need to sort of rethink leadership. Rethink. You've kind of talked about the management piece because that's about the data and understanding the data. So talk a little bit about the leadership piece and the coaching piece and how you see that evolving or what needs to change there.

31:17
Frank Cespedes
Well, I do. I want to also, though, talk about the management piece as well.

31:22
Tom Stanfill
Okay.

31:23
Frank Cespedes
Things I want to emphasize.

31:24
Tom Stanfill
No, I said, frank, my show, you can't talk about it because I'm not very good at it, and I don't.

31:30
Frank Cespedes
Want to hear about it. Good leaders have bad followers. Okay.

31:36
Tom Stanfill
My nose bleeding a little bit.

31:38
Frank Cespedes
The big issue with sales we got.

31:40
Tab Norris
That's a. That's worth writing down right there.

31:43
Tom Stanfill
So the two things we've learned, Frank, because we're simple, don't compete with dead. The dead people and good leaders have bad followers.

31:50
Frank Cespedes
Okay, that's two issues I think here. One is, and we know this from 60 years of research about careers. One of the biggest transition in a career is moving from being the individual contributor to a manager. Right? Individual contributor learns to take care of himself, his accounts, his customers. A leader, by definition, has to get things done through others. Now that's a tough transition in any line of work, but especially sales. Why do most people go into and stay in sales? They value the autonomy. If I make my numbers, they leave me alone.

32:29
Tom Stanfill
Once you're a manager, I don't want a manager. It's the only people in the world that don't want to be managed.

32:36
Tab Norris
And now I got to be a manager.

32:39
Tom Stanfill
I'm in sales, so I won't have to talk to people inside the company. I don't have to play by the.

32:44
Frank Cespedes
Rules for sales managers. And, you know, I think I put the onus on the company. You know, most companies who do, who they make the sales manager, one of their best performing reps who continues to be a salesperson, but not a manager. And that leads to the second thing. And this is where I think the leadership issue is involved. Throughout my career, the single biggest complaint that I have heard about sales leaders from their colleagues, their other senior executive colleagues, is Charlie or Charlotte was a great salesperson. We made them a great sales leader. And they continue to be good at sales, but they're not really a business executive. They don't really own the business. As opposed top line revenue. That's becoming the bigger issue that gets me back to financial literacy and a variety of other things.

33:40
Frank Cespedes
And if you look at the C suite, there's some terrific research about this. Our listeners can read about it in the book. You've kindly mentioned, fewer people than ever before in american business history have made it to the C suite with prior prolonged experience in sales. 25 years ago, about 20% to 25% of Fortune 500 CEO's came from that background. As recently as six years ago, if you looked at the american Fortune 500, amazingly, only one CEO came from a sales background. Chuck Robbins of Cisco. That's a big issue. And it's not because people are biased against sales. There is a change going on in leadership. And clearly this function that's near and dear to us is not keeping up with it. And it shows.

34:34
Tom Stanfill
That is new information got that out of the book. That explains a lot, I think, of them, how senior leadership doesn't really understand kind of keeping sales in a black box. Like, just go do your job. And, and we see this a lot when we in a part of our engagement process with a new client. When we're hired to help change the sales organization, one of the first steps is to have, after conducting an assessment, is to have an alignment meeting with this, with the key stakeholders. And that is where we have to really educate them of what's happening on the front line.

35:10
Frank Cespedes
Yep.

35:11
Tom Stanfill
It's almost like you're talking to somebody about a car and you're the mechanic talking about the car, and they're like, I don't know how it works. We just drive it.

35:17
Frank Cespedes
But think about that, because I agree with you. I mean, I agree with you 100%, but what's one of the core responsibilities of any senior leadership team? To develop and implement a market relevant strategy. Now, you can do that simply by looking at data and not understanding what's going on at the interface between your customer facing people and prospects. Good luck. That's a big issue.

35:46
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Well, and it also, I think it undermines engagement and culture, because if you look at, we always like to talk about the pyramid being turned upside down. Right. Where the customers at the top, the sellers, serve the customer, the frontline leaders serve the sellers, who serve the customer. And at the bottom of the organization is the CEO, whose role it is to have everybody in the organization ultimately serve the customer. If you turn the pyramid around, then the information comes from the customer all the way up to the organization and CEO. And that's not a great way to drive purpose and engagement and being connected to what's really happening, which is serving the customer.

36:21
Frank Cespedes
Yeah, I mean, the way I like to make your point, you know the novelist John le Carre used to write the spy novels.

36:29
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

36:29
Frank Cespedes
In one of his novels, I said.

36:31
Tom Stanfill
Yes, tab, but I don't really know who he's talking. But he teaches at Harvard, so I thought I would say.

36:37
Frank Cespedes
I should say.

36:38
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I probably should know.

36:39
Tab Norris
Yeah, you didn't want to look dumb.

36:41
Tom Stanfill
You don't marvelously cray till you make it. Yeah. Don't ask me any questions about the books I've read.

36:49
Frank Cespedes
But in one of his novels, one of the characters says something that I think should be tattooed on a prominent body, part of a senior executive. What the character says is a desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world. And that's exactly right. And that's especially true of the sales world. And a lot of executives think they can do that.

37:14
Tom Stanfill
Wow. Who was the author?

37:16
Frank Cespedes
Right, see, now.

37:19
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Okay. I know, I know.

37:20
Frank Cespedes
He's a late british author. John le Carre. He's famous. You may have seen the movie the spy who came in from the cold.

37:27
Tab Norris
That's how I know he wrote that.

37:29
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

37:30
Frank Cespedes
Yeah.

37:31
Tom Stanfill
Well, Frank, tell everybody how they can learn more about you. What's the best place to check out the book or your other book?

37:40
Frank Cespedes
It's the usual suspects. I've got a LinkedIn page. The book is published by Harvard Business Review Press. You can go to their site or go to Amazon. I also have a website, but I confess I haven't been to my website. It's. I don't keep it.

37:56
Tab Norris
Hope it's still there.

37:57
Frank Cespedes
Yeah. I really don't know what the heck is there anymore. It's not hard to find people.

38:02
Tom Stanfill
You have one beautiful. Yeah. I always love it when people ask you, so where we get your book? I'm like, wherever you buy books.

38:09
Tab Norris
Yeah, I bought it, like, 3 seconds off of my iPad. It was really nice. It was really simple.

38:15
Frank Cespedes
Now you. But now you got to read it.

38:18
Tab Norris
Well, I'm halfway. I'm getting there, Frank. It's really. It's fascinating. I've loved it so far. I can finish it up.

38:25
Tom Stanfill
Well, Frank, thank you so much for tab. Any, before I end this up, anything?

38:29
Frank Cespedes
You.

38:30
Tom Stanfill
Any last questions you have?

38:31
Tab Norris
No.

38:31
Frank Cespedes
No. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were asking me.

38:35
Tab Norris
No, no, I was. That's all I was going to say. Is there anything that you kind of would like to leave us with? Like you, like any big couple of takeaways from your book that.

38:45
Frank Cespedes
No, I think you guys have covered a good range. You know, let's keep the listeners interested in. Hungry. I guess I would say farewell the way a guest executive said farewell to my MBA students a year or two ago. He, you know, he sort of looked at them and he said, now remember, stay positive, but test negative. So that's the way I like it.

39:15
Tom Stanfill
Seriously, Frank, thanks for making the time. I know you're not feeling well, a little under the weather, but you pushed through. You sounded great. Appreciate you serving our audience so well and go out and buy the book. I think it's. It's definitely worth the read I've started. I think I'm in chapter three, but sales management, that works. How to sell in a world that never stops changing. Thanks again, Frank, and thanks for everyone for joining us for another episode of sales with Aslan.