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. 166 – Plan to Crush 2023 – Part 3
In this episode, Tom and Tab tackle another segment of this three part series.
They wrap it up by discussing the specifics of how to develop a plan, define your numbers, and the key elements of actually implementing that plan in order to crush your goals in 2023.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the full transcript:
00:14
Tom Stanfill
Tab, it’s Tom here at the ASLAN headquarters about to kick off another episode of SALES with ASLAN. I appreciate you joining us.
00:23
Tab Norris
Of course. It’s good to be here. Sun shining through upon your face. All as well. They can’t see that on the podcast.
00:33
Tom Stanfill
This is why you are the best co host in the business, because you said the sun shining – now we’ve got color. I love the vision that you create the artistry with your words.
00:48
Tab Norris
Thank you.
00:49
Tom Stanfill
Beautiful. Well, welcome. I’m glad. I love our series that we got going here. Tab, how do we crush our number 2023? By getting back to the basics it’s all about the fundamentals, baby. We’re revisiting the fundamentals at the beginning of this year. This is another, I think, a really critical element to being successful. It’s something, tab, that you, I think, are better at than I am. I may have more experience, potentially, I don’t know. I think you’re naturally better at creating a plan. I think maybe I’ve focused on it more because it’s an area where I don’t like to be hemmed in. We’re going to talk about developing a plan, like a very specific plan, and what are the key elements of creating a plan. I found for me, this was very helpful in determining and getting me to the next level of success.
01:48
Tom Stanfill
I kind of was the guy that, like, wandered around when I first started my career in sales. I’m going to wander around.
01:54
Tab Norris
People love me.
01:57
Tom Stanfill
I’m going to wonder, what do you want to make a lot of money. I want to be successful. I want to make a lot of money, and I’m going to wander around like, well, what’s your plan? It’s a plan. I’m going to plan. I’m going to wander around. By the way, I was successful, but there was another guy that came in, and he had a plan, and he was more successful.
02:22
Tab Norris
He made you look, like, not quite as successful.
02:25
Tom Stanfill
That’s it. That’s better.
02:28
Tab Norris
Well, Thomas, it is funny you say that we’re talking about this now because I know you brought this up a couple of weeks ago, but I don’t know if anybody else feels this way. A lot of times it’s easy. You get rolling along as a salesperson and things well, maybe you did a great plan to start a few years ago. You’ve just kind of gotten comfortable, and then, like, I was reading the paper this morning.
02:49
Tom Stanfill
We’ve talked about it.
02:50
Tab Norris
You just read everybody’s laying people off. Is there a session? All of a sudden, you start getting a little knot, and you’re your stomach. Well, maybe this is a good wake up call. Get back to the basics. Really don’t just leave it to fate, but let’s have a clear cut plan going in. I have never, Tom, in my 30 years or whatever it’s been, have ever said somebody come to me and say, Tab really planning killed me.
03:16
Tom Stanfill
Planning just ruined you’re. Bringing up another aspect that I actually wasn’t thinking about. Tab. Another important element of having a great plan or nailing down your plan is that’s what you can control what you do. If you break it down and say, this is my plan and this is what I’m going to do, then I narrow in on what I can control versus worrying about all the things that I can’t control. That’s one of the benefits of having a plan. If you’re kind of wired more like me and you’re like off the seat of my pants, I don’t like the plan. I don’t like to think of it nailed myself down. I just don’t enjoy it. The benefit is this is what I can tell. I remember what’s doing that early in aslam days when they were struggling and we would say, this is what we have to do.
04:07
Tom Stanfill
We developed that and we worked it and it worked.
04:12
Tab Norris
It does work.
04:14
Tom Stanfill
Now we have a seven figure business. Tab a seven figure business.
04:18
Tab Norris
It makes it sound so good.
04:19
Tom Stanfill
Doesn’t that sound cheesy? Seven figures. You want to make seven figures? Let’s dive in. Tab. Let’s get it. Without any further ado, I want to talk about the first part of the plan, which is defining the numbers. I want to talk about how you define the numbers. There’s four steps to defining the numbers. Part of a plan, a critical element of your plan is numbers. Especially in sales. I can’t speak for engineers or accounting.
04:47
Tab Norris
They like numbers too.
04:48
Tom Stanfill
They probably do. I don’t know about their plan, but our plan in sales is very numbers. Maybe other roles, but here’s the first number you need to start with is your number. If you’re in sales or you’re a leader. You want to first start with what do you want to make? Like what’s your income number? I want to make this much money this year. This is my goal. Because if you don’t start off with what you want to make, everything else really doesn’t matter. We start there and figure out it’s funny, I went into this year not really thinking about that. I actually don’t naturally default to figuring out what I want to make, like having a goal, saying, this is the how do I make the income? Because it feels, I guess, a little selfish, shallow. But it’s important. I mean, you’re going to make a number.
05:53
Tom Stanfill
It’s not like that’s what your motive is, how much money you make. But it helps to say, this is.
05:59
Tab Norris
What I feel shallow. Just go really on a low number and you’ll feel better about yourself. Yeah, I just have to make very little. That’s why I planned accordingly.
06:09
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I plan to make very little money.
06:11
Tab Norris
I love it. But start with the plan. Don’t just let your manager, your boss, or whatever tell you what your number should be. I mean, I made that mistake earlier in my career. What’s my quota? I thought, that’s a really good point. My number that’s not your number.
06:25
Tom Stanfill
No, your number is your number. By the way, if your number is, I’m just going to make up a number. Your number is 125,000. And your quota, you have to work. Your quota is requiring you to make 200,000, which sounds kind of weird to say, but you might be in the wrong role.
06:47
Tab Norris
Yeah, you may have a problem. That expounding job may better for you.
06:52
Tom Stanfill
The opposite is also true. You want to make 200, and if you hit your number, crush your number, you’re going to make 125. That’s a problem too. There needs to be alignment. Yes, there needs to be alignment with the role that you have. It’s always better if it’s fine, nobody’s going to complain if you sell more, you make more money then.
07:13
Tab Norris
But start with your number.
07:15
Tom Stanfill
Start with your number. Which one number? Right. And you want to be smart. I hope everybody knows what smart stands for. Specific measurable. Attainable, relevant, and time bound. I think probably the most important elements of that is that it’s measurable. If you hit your number or not. Obviously, income is easy. Is it attainable? Right? I think that’s part of going to be this process. And obviously time down. It going to be by the end of 2024? Or you may want to do it in quarters, or you may want to.
07:44
Tab Norris
Do it.
07:47
Tom Stanfill
Every six months. The next thing you want to do is you want to figure out, okay, what’s the mix of my business? In other words, how do I get there? This is a little complicated because there’s multiple different roles, but in B to B sales, business to business sales, there’s really two roles tab, as there’s really hunters and farmers, account managers, and there’s business development reps. Right. Let’s talk about more complex is the account manager because they often have three types of accounts. They have accounts that they’re funding, accounts that they’re growing, and accounts they need to acquire. What do most account managers want to focus on?
08:31
Tab Norris
They love to defend. Defending is fun. Dinners, nice pop ins.
08:37
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, exactly. By the way, I’m all for that, right. We all want to spend time with our friend. You don’t get a lot of rejection. Receptivity is high, life is fun. We’re talking to people who want to talk to us. I always recommend, as you’re building your plan and your account management, you start with Defend. How much money? What’s my number for Defend? Right. If you can get to 50% of your quota with Defend, that’s where you start. It’s much easier to defend than it is to acquire it’s much easier to defend than it is to grow. We start with the defend, and then we say, okay, well, if I grow my business, let’s just say 30% defend. You’ll hit 30% your number. If you defend your existing account, then if I grow my existing business, where am I going to be? Well, I might be at 80% of my business.
09:25
Tom Stanfill
If I defend and grow my existing accounts, then I’m at 80%. That means you’re not going to hit your number, right. That means that 20% of your number is going to come from acquire. If your business development, it’s all acquire. You may have a little to grow. You might have a little grow, you may have some existing accounts, but you’re probably not anything in defense. If you’re more of a business development, the role is you mostly got to find new logos. Why is that important, Tab?
09:56
Tab Norris
Ask me, well, Tom, why is that important? How’s that good set up?
10:06
Tom Stanfill
Well, it’s obviously rutorial, but it’s important because you’ve got to know if you’ve got to acquire, that’s really more for the account manager.
10:17
Tab Norris
Well, and now tell me, I’ll ask you this question because I have a lot of account managers say to me, but Tab, I go well over my quota if I just defend my existing accounts. What do you say to somebody who says that?
10:32
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that’s where there’s a lot of rub in organizations where leadership is saying you need to acquire. The rep is saying, Why?
10:44
Tab Norris
Do you realize that I actually hit my monetary goal?
10:48
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, there’s two reasons why you still should acquire even though you may hit your number with defense. There’s two reasons. One, that’s going to change.
11:01
Tab Norris
Yes.
11:02
Tom Stanfill
Right. You’re in a market where what you’re going to do currently will not work in the future. If you don’t start building your pipeline when that reality hits, you’re going to be in trouble. Why is organization say, hey, the market is coming at us? For example, we work with certain companies that were selling certain equipment in COVID and they were crushing it. If you said, hey, you need to develop a new pipeline, they would say, you’re crazy, I’m crushing it. They say, well, this market is not going to be this market forever. You need to go build your pipeline. Right. The reps that did, now in this market, they’re crushing it still. Everybody else is really just demand fulfillment. There’s going to be a day where you got to create demand, and so you always want to have your eye on that. The other reason is because you’re not serving your customers, right.
11:57
Tom Stanfill
If there’s a market out there that needs what you offer and you have a new solution, for example, I would say if you can really hit your number of defend, you probably don’t need to acquire, but you at least need to grow.
12:12
Tab Norris
Yeah, just be always staying ahead because I always tell same thing. Excellent answer, same thing. It’s like, just know you’re putting yourself at risk because you lose a big account. They go away. All of a sudden, your compensation changes in the middle of the year because they’re trying to drive more growth out of certain accounts. Just always have your eye on it, even if it’s only 10% of your time, fine, but be proactive in some way, shape, or form.
12:42
Tom Stanfill
Always be sowing new seeds because you never know when the drought is going to come. Totally agree. So there’s a self centered reason, right? The self centered reason is if demand dries up, you got to be able to build a pipeline. The more you get ahead of that, the better. The other centered reason is you want to serve your customers. You don’t want to go to an organization who’s saying, hey, we have these new solutions, and it’s really great for our customers. You look them in the eye and go, I don’t care.
13:11
Tab Norris
That doesn’t matter to me.
13:12
Tom Stanfill
I don’t care about customers. I don’t care about serving my customers. Now, obviously there’s a lot of account manager out there that are probably right now saying, look, I don’t have time. It’s not about I don’t want to I don’t have time. And I get it. There’s some conversations that you need to have with the organization, but you don’t want to say, I don’t want to serve my customers. You want to say, help me take some things off my plate so that I’m free, that I have the bandwidth. You got to be honest with yourself and say, do I really don’t have the bandwidth? That’s a good question.
13:46
Tab Norris
Business development, basically it’s the same, except for you take the defend away, right?
13:52
Tom Stanfill
You just take defend away and maybe even grow. Maybe you’re spending a lot of your time looking for opportunities, and they’re not easy opportunities. The reason that’s important is because it drives the next thing. The first thing you need to do is start with your numbers. Second thing is you need to look at your mix of business to grow and acquire. That’s what drives the next thing that needs to happen is what do you need to do in each one of those buckets? Defend, grow, acquire. Again, yours might just be acquire. Yours might be grow and acquire, or yours might be all three. What do you need to do? Not how well do you need to sell, but what do you need to do in each one of those categories to hit your number? So, for example, in defend, I might need to I’ve got to defend 20 accounts.
14:43
Tom Stanfill
Okay, great. I got to defend. What does that mean? I meet with them once every six months, once every quarter, once a month, once a year. What does that mean? Right, so that becomes a metric that you look at what do I need to do historically, or what do other people do to defend their accounts? So there’s a reality to it. Then same thing for grow or acquire. What do I need to do to win more opportunities? Everybody that I’ve ever seen that was successful in sales, and then that’s a pretty strong thing. But let me say it this way. Every organization that I’ve seen and we’ve worked with hundreds of organizations over the years that are really good at building a sales organization have defined their numbers. It’s like eight meetings leads to two opportunities, leads to one deal. It’s like they have that number.
15:34
Tom Stanfill
They’re always clear on eight, two, one, or ten, two, one, or whatever it is. We know what our number is. Here are the numbers. If you know that so if I have to create $500,000, a new opportunity, and my average deal size is $250, so I’ve got to win two deals, which means I need four opportunities, which means I need 816, whatever. I now know what my numbers are, and it’s probably not eight. It might be 2020 meetings leads to when I say eight, typically that means leads, right. I’ve got eight people saying, I’m interested in this. You might have to get 50 to get eight, to get two to get one, right? So there’s 50 meetings. You just need to have a real clear picture of the pipeline and what ultimately and I think that number can be developed by looking historically at what you’ve done or what other people have done.
16:40
Tom Stanfill
But those numbers are available. I mean, I think in most cases, those numbers are available. They’re not. Then I would make some assumptions.
16:47
Tab Norris
And guess what? If you’re running those numbers and it’s not working, guess what? You got some other problem. There’s something else going on, and it’ll kind of connect you to that.
16:58
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, exactly. Everybody is they make 50 meetings. That generates eight leads, real strong interest. That leads to two opportunities to one close. And those metrics aren’t true for you. That could be an indicator that there’s an execution problem. Once the numbers, this is the part that I think everybody probably is tracking with me. Maybe this has been just an easy review, but I think what a lot of people are missing is the next step, which is come up with your point system. If you think about the productivity metrics that you want to look at, and I think of productivity versus activity. So productivity is what do I do? What are the things that I do that actually move a deal forward? Like, one of my favorites is a discovery meeting with the decision maker. Not a follow up call, hey, checking in. It’s a first discovery meeting with the decision maker.
18:02
Tom Stanfill
A lot of organizations I’ve seen measure that. First meetings. The first meeting with the decision maker. That’s a big productivity. So, like, contact is activity. I sent an email. I reached out on LinkedIn. I made a phone call. It doesn’t move anything. It’s activity. It sounds you shouldn’t measure that, but it’s not productivity. I like to get hyper focused on productivity and then come up with points associated with those productivity metrics so that you have an easy system to see if you’re productive every month, right? In other words, let me just make sure I made clear. Let’s say your productivity numbers, like you say, I have to hit 50 points to know that I’ve done what I need to do to hit my overall for the month, overall sales numbers.
18:57
Tab Norris
To clarify, your points are made up of a certain number of discovery, meetings, presentations, whatever it is. You’ve defined that, and you may now, here’s a good question as we wrap this up, is do what do you do? Because I hear this is a question I hear all the time. What do you do if the organization you work for doesn’t have a point system? And they just track activity, right? They just track activity, and it’s all about activity. Do you find that? I mean, I know we have some companies that do a good job of it. We see the opposite.
19:39
Tom Stanfill
Here’s what the reps will tell you, and here’s what the front line will tell you, because what happens is senior leadership says, I want to know these people are working. Yeah, I want to know that they’re working. It’s about the senior leadership’s numbers, view of the numbers. I want to see what my people are doing. I want to see that they’re working hard. We want them to we want everybody to prospect and go out for new logos. I know these account managers are not going after new stuff, so we’re going to make them do it, and we’re going to require this level of activity. What the managers will tell you is it becomes an exercise in creative writing.
20:14
Tab Norris
That’s good.
20:15
Tom Stanfill
In other words, whatever activity metric you want to throw out, you will get that number. Now, it will have nothing to do with reality, but they will give you numbers, and the numbers will match what you tell them to be like. We need to have 50 phone calls. I can’t tell you one of our organizations where I’ve come in under the radar and watched what the reps are doing, and you’ll see them make five phone calls and hang up right before lunch, and then they’ll make five phone calls. People will actually call them. They won’t answer the phone, and they’ll call them back to get credit for two. They’ll do all kinds of things. First of all, it needs to be their plan. You as a rep need to say, this is what I need to do. That tells me I’m going to sell what I want to sell so like at Aslan, for example, we knew that if we have one of our key productivity steps was an assessment presentation or what we call a recommendation.
21:12
Tom Stanfill
In other words, we would assess what’s happening in the sales organization and so that we could put down this really works for almost anybody. We would spend time understanding what’s happening in the organization were hoping to serve and then we would present back to them what we call the X rays. Here’s what it looks like in your organization. Here’s our recommendation. We knew if we did one of those a month, you would hit your number.
21:37
Tab Norris
It was that tight and clear.
21:39
Tom Stanfill
If you do one of those a month, you’re going to hit your number. So guess what? The number of points that you needed to have per month was 50. Guess what? The assessment presentation was worth 50 points.
21:52
Tab Norris
Can I guess? I’m going to guess 50.
21:55
Tom Stanfill
50.
21:56
Tab Norris
Yeah, that’s it. I love it because we don’t care. Because that’s what drives revenue. That’s what’s going to drive success. I don’t know if you do this, Tom, so I always encourage people. If your system that your company has for you is not doing it for you.
22:08
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
22:09
Tab Norris
Don’t let that bog you down.
22:11
Tom Stanfill
Create your own system.
22:12
Tab Norris
You don’t have to share it with anybody if you don’t want. It can be your own. But you need to have a system.
22:16
Tom Stanfill
That works for you and you can communicate. This may not work if you’re in a really big organization and what’s happening is three levels above you, but you can communicate to your frontline manager. Here’s what I’m doing. I have a plan. I need to get 20 discovery meetings. My discovery meetings are worth three points. If I do this, it’s worth 20 points. If I do this, it’s worth I’m focused on the points that drive deals. By the way, I can make 1000 contacts and do zero.
22:46
Tab Norris
It’s great because I encourage this too, because I guarantee you sit down with your manager and say, you may see my volume of call. My calls are down because what I’m doing is I’m working on LinkedIn and I’m working some referrals here, but it’s leading to these discovery meetings. If you don’t just know that I have a plan, keep your eye on that because that’s what drives revenue. If the salesperson comes to frontline manager and lays that out, I don’t think your manager is going to have a problem with that.
23:14
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. By the way, if you really need to contacts are important. Like, you do need to measure your activity and you may want to do that manually. I still think salesforce or whatever, I’m not going to capture like, I used to go to trade shows, walk the floor, and I would meet with 30 people in a day, like have 30 live conversation that doesn’t show up in salesforce right. I would track it because I wanted to track the activity so that I knew that I got a certain point. I think it was one point for having 20 activities a day. I can’t quite remember. The point is, there’s a lot of things that you do that ultimately drive an opportunity forward. Develop a point system based on what will lead to the success that you desire, and it moves the opportunity forward. If there’s one thing that you do, like if I do three of these a month, like presentations or capabilities presentations, I’m going to win.
24:15
Tom Stanfill
Those three metrics should have the points equal to your monthly goal.
24:24
Tab Norris
That’s awesome.
24:25
Tom Stanfill
I find that to be the most helpful. That is not original to me, but I don’t know where that came from. I know one of our reps, I think, had that idea, and I’m like, I love it, and we implemented it.
24:40
Tab Norris
So you start with your number. You figure out how you’re going to get there. It going to be account management, business development?
24:47
Tom Stanfill
What do you have to do anymore?
24:48
Tab Norris
What do I do? Have a point system?
24:54
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. What’s your metrics? What has to happen? We got to know again, it’s the number of meetings that leads, the number of interested parties that lead to opportunities that lead to you got to know that formula and then the metrics that drive that. Right. That point system will be built off that.
25:15
Tab Norris
Okay. I love it.
25:17
Tom Stanfill
Beautiful.
25:18
Tab Norris
So is that all I need, Tom? Am I done? Okay, I got my point system.
25:25
Tom Stanfill
That’s the numbers, right? That’s the numbers. I think if your plan is going to be successful, you need to figure out who are you going to target? I think this is also part of your plan. When you’re thinking about your plan, you got to have a target. You got to have a who. Who am I going to go after? I’m just going to go after everybody. I think the reps that are most strategic are the most successful, and they have a mindset. It starts with this mindset of, I’m choosing who I want to pursue versus trying to get chosen.
26:05
Tab Norris
Yes.
26:05
Tom Stanfill
I think that’s a really important distinction. It’s like, I know who I want to serve, and I am going to choose who I’ve served. Now, it feels kind of weird because we’re out there looking for people who don’t know about us, but we’re not saying anybody wants to talk to me. I’m like, no, I choose who I want to preserve because there’s a lot of energy that’s going to be expended on trying to get with those organizations. I love the idea of the fishing analogy. All right. There’s a lot of fish and a lot of water, right? Excuse me for this analogy. If you don’t fish. I think everybody understands fish there’s lots of fish. I got to pick which fish, and I got to figure out where I’m going and what are they eating. If I start narrowing on the fish and I can start to go, okay, I know how to pursue those fish.
26:56
Tom Stanfill
If I’m trying to go out for everybody, it just becomes very I’m just all over the place.
27:02
Tab Norris
Yeah. So, yeah, I like it because it’s one thing to pick a number. You got to pick a number. You got to know your number. If you stop there, you may have troubles. So now you’re saying pick a strategy. So go, okay, what are my numbers? I got to pick, what are the criteria I’m using to figure out where I fish?
27:22
Tom Stanfill
The criteria I would always think about it in three categories. When I think about the criteria as choosing my quote unquote fish, my prospect, and I like to think of it this way, and this doesn’t track with all the different marketing terms or what salesforce would put, but I always thought about it as suspects versus prospects. Suspects are people that like, okay, you demographically. Maybe some people want to think of it as leads versus I forgot how marketing qualified leads. There’s all kinds of different terms, but I think of it as just simply suspects versus prospects. Suspects are people that just fit a demographic profile. They’re in a certain sick industry, and there are certain size. That’s all you don’t know anything about them. You’re like, oh, they’re manufacturing, and they’re bigger than this, and that’s my market. Okay, that’s very generic, but that doesn’t tell me enough to say I need to focus on them.
28:19
Tom Stanfill
The way that I think about prospects, you’re like, I think if I spend enough time, these people would this organization would be a qualified opportunity. The way that I pick my prospects or qualify the people I want to pursue is I ask three questions. Is there an opportunity? Can you win? Is it worth winning? Is there an opportunity? What I want to do there is I want to look at what’s the criteria of the organizations that I work with, what is the common criteria of the people that want my solution, that need my solution, and look for something that I can easily identify. For us, for example, tab in the sales training space, the criteria that we don’t have to talk to them necessarily. We don’t have to have a conversation. We just know that this is true, as we called it, the rep effect.
29:17
Tom Stanfill
In other words, the sales rep had a significant impact on the revenue. That’s a criteria that would tell us, oh, there’s an opportunity for training versus an organization like Apple. This was several years ago. We were talking about this. The market was coming at him. There’s a line outside the door.
29:41
Tab Norris
Yeah, probably not that worried about it.
29:44
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. They’re like, I think we can handle the training. I think it’s right. They want product training. When it’s difficult to sell, the difference between you buying from me and not buying from me as a salesperson, then that’s more of a qualified opportunity for us. Think about when you look at your market, if you serve small business, what is the criteria of the small business owner that, wow, these people really need us? If you tell me this about them, they’re going to need us. They have this number of this is going on in their organization. There’s change or something you can identify on LinkedIn, something you can identify by knowing about their industry. That’s really important. I think the other is it worth winning? Most people know that they just stop, right?
30:33
Tab Norris
That’s not real hard. Okay. This has got growth. It’s got a big growth opportunity or it’s got high margin or whatever. To your point. I don’t think that’s the hard part.
30:42
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. The whole where we’re headed for this is you want to know, are the fish biting? That’s what tells you the fish are biting. I want to know they’re hungry. Something tells me that I’m in an area where the fish are biting. That’s the opportunity. Is it worth winning? That size can you win? Is what other people overlook.
31:04
Tab Norris
Well, I just think to validate this, how you say you learn more when you mess up than when you do it right? I say that a lot because you mess up a lot. One year, you and I, obviously, we’ve worked together for a long time, and it’s amazing what you can learn by an experience versus telling. If you told me this, you and I talked about this. You talked about this, and I was like, yeah, whatever. We ended up one year, and I tracked it. We get done with one year. Tom, I worked and this is early days. We did everything. We sold, we delivered. We did it all, and we get it done with the first year, that year, whatever year it was. I had worked twice as hard as you, I am sure, selling, pitching, the training, you didn’t, and you made twice as much money as I did.
32:03
Tab Norris
That was extremely painful for me. It was the greatest lesson I ever learned, because you did this and I didn’t. Because what you did is for every deal you land, you lose a deal. If you’re spinning your wheel, like, what I would do is I’d take anything that was shiny. I’m fishing for all of it. I’m throwing all kind of stuff. I’m throwing bread. I’m throwing worms. I’m throwing shrimp. I don’t care. Just bite it. Well, then I get locked on.
32:32
Tom Stanfill
There fisher bite over there.
32:35
Tab Norris
I’m like I’m just like squirrel running around. So you’re exactly right. I thought that’s a great example of the power of this. What’s scary and maybe some of our listeners are like this. It’s hard to walk away from something that’s real money sometimes, but that could be the smartest thing you ever do.
32:54
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. We are just talking about, again, spending the time to prospect. I like what you said, tab, is every time you’re working on a deal, you’re losing a deal. Your greatest resource or your more scarce resources time. Most of how you spend that time ultimately is going to determine for most of us how successful we are. It doesn’t mean we won’t be successful, but it’s going to determine how successful it may determine. Be the reason that you don’t hit your numbers, because you spend time pursuing opportunities or a certain prospect or you weren’t strategic in your mindset, but if you think about it from the customer’s perspective and you stop this is why it’s called a plan. You stop and you think, who really needs us? Like, who? If I spend the time and the effort and the energy because you got to reach out to every prospect at least eight times just to even get them to understand who you are and what you do and break through all the noise.
33:47
Tom Stanfill
It’s so difficult to break through the noise. You have to focus. This scattered approach really is not going to work. I mean, we’ll talk about that under strategy in a second, but you can do a scattered approach. I think the targeted approach is more successful. You got to figure out who you’re going to target.
34:05
Tab Norris
Yeah, you can do it. I’ve done it. It’s not the most effective way to make money and hit your number. So I love it. I love this. Tom, build your plan. Define the numbers in four steps, which you clearly defined, then develop. Here’s my number. Now it’s my target. Like, what’s my prospect target? And then you just set it right. Now I need a strategy, right? I need a strategy to put it all into play.
34:31
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. We always tab, we talk about almost everything. We always start with mindset. Like, how do you think about this? A lot of people are waiting on marketing to come up with to solve this problem. They’re waiting, hey, if you guys will generate more leads, I’ll sell more. Let me know when leads come in. I love that idea. I like the idea of somebody just putting opportunities in front of you. I think that’s a wise strategy for a marketing organization or an organization to give talented people, put talented people in front of opportunities. I love that strategy. In reality, we don’t want to depend on another person for our success. We don’t depend on another department for our success. A lot of people will say, well, cold calling doesn’t work. Right. I have to depend on marketing, I would say. What do you think marketing is?
35:27
Tom Stanfill
Marketing is cold. I mean, if it doesn’t work, then marketing can never generate a lead. Marketing is doing something to get people to notice the organization. You can do the same thing, but you can be more targeted. It starts off, and I know I’m making broad statements, and there are things that marketing can do that’s not cold calling. There’s some really creative things that people are doing, organizations are doing. For most of us, a high percentage of us, there are strategies that we can implement to get people that would not talk to us, to talk to us. And it does work. It starts with believing that you are responsible for that number, whatever the number beyond defend, you got to go get. It may be prospecting within an existing account, or it might be prospecting for coal account, but don’t depend on marketing. So that’s number one.
36:17
Tom Stanfill
If you think about your strategy, let’s talk about acquire versus grow.
36:22
Tab Norris
Yeah, because it’s a little different, obviously.
36:24
Tom Stanfill
It’s a little different. So acquire, there’s the referrals. You can get referrals. There’s strategic referrals, obviously, is from talking to people who already love you and asking who else can you serve that have the same need or problem? I love doing that. I think it’s important to do that. There’s a way to do that. I don’t really want to dive into that here. Another option that can bring opportunities to you is strategic alliances. I mean, who’s serving the same decision maker, selling something that’s not competitive? You’re talking to the same people, you share leads. That’s great. I think the one let’s talk about the hardest one, which is cold, and I think I go back to the cold is I would come up with a site fishing strategy. I know we talked about this, the site fishing strategy, which is where are the fish biting?
37:21
Tom Stanfill
You spend a lot of time working few fish versus trolling, which means you just ride around the water, you put a bunch of lures out, and you don’t really know you’re drinking beer, you like beer. You’re drinking whatever you’re drinking la Croix, the kids are drinking lacore. You’re driving around and you put a bunch of stuff out in the water and you hope you get something and you’re having a blast. That’s one strategy. I don’t find that strategy working very much. There’s so much noise. That what’s working today is you pick a very narrow target. We talked about the criteria before, and you focus. So, for example, pharmaceutical companies, what are they interested in? If you serve the healthcare market and I narrow into a really small slice of that market, and I come up with a really tight message, that’s my lure, that’s the beta.
38:12
Tom Stanfill
I get really focused on that, and I understand what they’re doing and I’m going to really hone in. I find that strategy is more effective. Some people call that account based marketing, but it’s saying I’m going to really narrow in on the market, and I’m going to narrow down a message and I’m going to really work on. Keep massaging that message until I get through versus scattered approach where I’m throwing a lot out in the market. I think that’s the most effective strategy.
38:37
Tab Norris
Yeah. What it does, it changes that from Cold to warm. Now, if you’re very targeted with all the information that’s out there, you should never do anything cold, ever. That’s a whole podcast in and of itself. We’ve probably done one on it, but I mean, that’s encouraging because it helps everything be much more relevant. You can make things more relevant. You can connect to just trolling to me is just grab a phone book. The old days, you throw .
39:08
Tom Stanfill
It’s another analogy I would use if you don’t like fishing analogy.
39:13
Tab Norris
That’s not violin. Can we do violin?
39:15
Tom Stanfill
Think about another analogy. Is like Cold called door to door.
39:21
Tab Norris
Oh, yeah.
39:22
Tom Stanfill
Okay. If you look at a neighborhood, it’s got 500 houses and you knock twice on each door. No one opens the door. You just keep knocking. Go to the next door, knock twice, go to the next door, knock twice, go to the next door. Not one of those five houses will open the door. If you look at that neighborhood and you said, I’m going to get ten of those houses to talk to me, ten of the people living in those houses to talk to me, and I’m going to come up with my strategy, I’m going to focus on it. I’m going to put a flyer in the mailbox, I’m going to knock on the door, I’m going to call, I’m going to email, and I’m going to figure out what. I’m going to make a phone call to the neighbor next door, and I’m going to find out what’s happening, and I’m going to meet with one of the kids at the home high school who try to find out what’s happening.
40:02
Tom Stanfill
I mean, the analogy is probably breaking down, but the point is, if you just knock a couple of times, nobody’s answering the door.
40:10
Tab Norris
Right.
40:12
Tom Stanfill
You’ve got to narrow okay, whatever that looks like for you’ve got to narrow it and spend a lot more energy on fewer prospects, which part of that is talking to people and finding out what’s happening within the organization. That takes time doing research, so more time, fewer that will get you that will be successful if you’re account manager tab I think the first thing I would do as a strategy is to come up with the blueprint of the account.
40:46
Tab Norris
Oh yeah.
40:48
Tom Stanfill
It’s like what’s happening in this account? Try to get an understanding of what’s your account share and what else is the opportunity and what else are they buying? What are the department, what’s the landscape of what’s happening in that organization? That will develop your strategy for then know how you can rank your accounts and then build your strategy from there.
41:13
Tab Norris
I will tell you, if you’re an account manager and you’ve been in your role for a while and you’ve had success, this may be the best thing you’ve listened to on this podcast. Because I’ve been training a lot of account managers in my life, and you’d be amazed how many highly successful ones when we talk about this. Go. You know what, Tab? You’re not going to believe it. I went I just assume they love me here. I mean, of course I’m getting all the business and you challenge me to go do a blueprint. I’m blown away. There are projects going on. I’m losing business, I’m at risk. So I really do. I highly encourage that. No matter how successful you are, just double click into some of your accounts and make sure you’re mapping them out. A big fan of that.
42:01
Tom Stanfill
It’s the easiest thing to do because we’re just like the way we talk about these things. You say, look, regardless of what you’re buying from us now, let me have a better holistic understanding of the account. That’s where you start. Great point, Tab. I think the most effective strategy when you’re working inside of account is sponsorship.
42:23
Tab Norris
Oh, yeah.
42:25
Tom Stanfill
How can you find people who love what you do, who also is connected to the decision maker in the other areas of the organization? That’s the easiest way to navigate up if you’re in manufacturing. How do I move from the concrete to the carpet? Well, the best way is to find out who in the concrete is connected to somebody in the carpet. However that is, the easiest way is to get people who are connected to the people you want. That’s the key. Because everything it’s political. Inside organizations, it’s just like high school. It’s political. Even though there’s titles don’t always mean everything. I mean, it doesn’t mean that rank doesn’t equal influence. Find out who is connected to the people you want and get sponsorship. That’s the easiest way to get the meeting. Once you have the meeting. Here’s another little tip I would give you that I found super effective.
43:20
Tom Stanfill
Again, this is about again, once you focus and who you want to pursue based on your blueprint and the criteria that you develop, this is where it starts to make sense to do free value added work. How can you do free work for people? Hey, we’re already working in this division over here. I’m now introducing you to this. I don’t know how we can help or if you understand the value of what we’re doing. What can I do for you? Whether it’s an assessment, whether it’s research, whether it’s a demo. How can I do free work for you to help you see the value or help add value to your business? Let’s meet and talk about how that’s helping. That second part is really critical. Don’t do the work without a commitment to leverage that work to get you to the right people. But I find that super helpful.
44:13
Tom Stanfill
Inside accounts effective, I should say.
44:16
Tab Norris
I totally agree. So I love this. Build your plan. You start defining your numbers. Where am I trying to go? Figure out where I’m going to prospect, where am I going to fish? I love that analogy. And then my strategy. It’s a little different if it’s a choir versus grow, but making sure that you have a strategy in place. So I think that’s excellent.
44:39
Tom Stanfill
Beautiful. Well, I hope this was helpful in the development, developing your plan for the year. Again, most of you probably have a plan, but maybe this will help you tweak it or see that there might be some missing elements. Again, if you are in management and you’re a leader in your listeners podcast, it needs to be your team’s plan. Team members plan, not your plan. Nobody’s motivated by your plan. No one’s motivated by your goals. So help them come up. Tell me what to do. We’re going to start with, what’s your number? I don’t have a number. Well, then that’s your first assignment. You build the plan around their numbers. They’ve got on it. You meet with them about their plan, it’s about their plan. I didn’t do what you’re wanting me to do. This isn’t about what you want me to do. This is about what you want to do.
45:27
Tom Stanfill
By the way, if they don’t want to do what it is that they need to do, then that becomes super clear that this isn’t a fit. I don’t want that number and I don’t want this plan. Like, well, then that’s what we do.
45:37
Tab Norris
Here, let me introduce you to my accounting department.
45:41
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, because a lot of times managers are working harder than the reps. For them to be intrinsically motivated, it’s got to be their plan. Well, as we always close out the podcast, we always love to remind you that we love comments. We want to know how we can serve you better. So please give us some feedback. Let us know what topics are interesting to you, how we can again serve you better, provide better information. Always want to learn from our audience. So, dad, good to see you, my friend. Thank you to everyone for joining us for another episode of SALES with ASLAN.
