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. 176 – The New Realities of Selling

In this episode, Tom and Tab are joined by special guest, Jesse Rome, our new VP of Training here at ASLAN. In what our hosts claim to be “the best episode ever,” the guys share their perspectives on selling in a post-COVID world. They unpack how we’ve had to shift our approach to selling, how to be effective sellers in a hybrid work environment, and best practices for what seems to have taken hold as our “new normal.”

Listen to the conversation here:

Or check out the full transcript:

00:13
Tom Stanfill
Tab. Welcome back to the studio for another episode of Sales with Aslan. I’m your host, as everybody knows, Tom Stanfill. And you are?

00:23
Tab Norris
Tab Norris.

00:24
Tom Stanfill
Tab!

00:29
Tab Norris
Yeah, that’s me.

00:30
Tom Stanfill
I wanted to say the hostess with the mostest, and I don’t know where I got that. I think that’s something my parents used to say, hostess with the most.

00:37
Tab Norris
I don’t know. I think that was from the Mary Tyler Moore show or something like that. I don’t know. Something really old.

00:43
Tom Stanfill
I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tab. I’ve never seen that show.

00:45
Tab Norris
Yeah, of course.

00:47
Tom Stanfill
You’re definitely dating us. How you been, my friend?

00:49
Tab Norris
I’ve been good. It’s good to be in the studio with you again. Always looking your dapper self. I like your hair today. Everybody can’t see that, but it looks fabulous.

00:58
Tom Stanfill
No, I’m having a good hair day. Low humidity here in Atlanta. Yeah, definitely a reason to tune in the value we’re bringing to our audience. Low humidity will help your hair. Yes. Now I’m excited about our topic today, Tab. As our audience is going to soon learn, we’re going to have one of our top consultants, new leader, join us and talk about something that I’ve been personally experiencing, which is how have we needed to shift our approach to selling post COVID? Because my thought when we entered into COVID is this was kind of a blip, right? We’re going to have to learn. We’re going to have to shift. We’re going to have to sell virtually, and that’s going to be new for some of us who haven’t been selling. Inside certainly was new to sell. Almost all your meetings were happening via Zoom. So we had to adjust to build what we call virtual intelligence and get the right equipment and learn how to work whether teams or Zoom or webex or whatever it was, and learn how to do that.

02:06
Tom Stanfill
We’ve all done that. I think everybody’s probably on the speed. But then we thought, oh, well, COVID will end, and then we’ll go back to normal like we’re going to go back to the way it was like for us. Our process was very much on site when were selling these large projects, we would do a lot of work before we even would make our presentation. We would assess the organization and we’d make recommendation. A lot of on site meetings with all the players. Well, that’s not really happening for us, and I think it’s not happening for a lot of our clients. The customer is kind of liking the whole virtual, and some are sort of wanting to stick with the way we sold before, and then some reps are no, they’re back out in the field. They’re traveling just as much. So there’s this sort of hybrid approach.

02:55
Tom Stanfill
So that’s the focus. What have you been seeing, Tab?

02:59
Tab Norris
Yeah, it’s very strange because I’m like you. It’s like we had pre COVID. We had COVID. Now we have post COVID, and it’s like, I really don’t know. This is why I’m excited to get our guest perspective and your perspective, because I was with a client a couple of weeks ago, and even within this one client, all these sales, I kept going, well, isn’t it great? You guys were all back out in the field and doing your thing the way you used to do it? And they’re like, well, wait, time out. About two thirds of us are. The other third of us are not. And it kind of depends on your region within the organization. So it’s not even like, a whole company. It’s very strange. It is a really strange transition time. So I think this is a perfect time to kind of kick this around.

03:48
Tom Stanfill
Well, welcome our guest tab, why don’t you?

03:52
Jesse Rome
Yes.

03:53
Tom Stanfill
You really are responsible for bringing him into the fold, and we’ve loved working with him. So introduce our expert panelist.

04:02
Tab Norris
Yes, our panelist. First time on sales with Aslan, which is really a special time in everyone’s life. If you ever get that opportunity, and I know that Jesse feels that way, maybe you can’t see the tears.

04:15
Tom Stanfill
Made it. If you make it on the show, you’ve made it. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

04:21
Tab Norris
Yeah. So you’ll get, like, soda and a Clark bar. I think, for every guest, that’s what we do. We take care of you, Jesse. But no, I do. I’m really excited. Jesse Rome. He lives Scottsdale, Arizona. And Jesse I got to know Jesse. Jesse’s background is he’s from Washington, DC. Went to Pitt. He’s a Pitt Panther, but ended up his career. He started with, basically worked with Yelp, and then he joined DoorDash. And that’s where I got to know him. He was over training for sales, training for DoorDash. And I started working with this guy, and I’m like, this guy’s awesome. I learned a lot. Every time I was with him, I was learning things, and it worked out. Won’t go into the details, but he has now joined Aslan as of how long has it been, Tom? It’s been three months. Two months. Two months.

05:25
Tab Norris
It seems like about a year. You can ask him. We could ask him when he gets on. He’s not, of course, not here yet, but anyway, he’s in the green room.

05:34
Tom Stanfill
We provide puppies and kitties in the green room. He’s back there, and he ordered the red M and Ms. He wants red M and Ms and puppies.

05:43
Tab Norris
This is the longest introduction for a guest we’ve ever had, I do believe.

05:47
Tom Stanfill
But anyway, he had Biden on the other day and Michelle Obama, they were like they just came out, probably because they were headlined. Their name is welcome, Jesse.

05:59
Tab Norris
Jesse is awesome. He is our new VP of Training, and he has an incredible experience in sales leadership training, sales training, lots of things. So welcome, Jesse.

06:11
Jesse Rome
Happy to be here. Happy to be here. Quite the introduction. I’m sure the bullet point list that you had planned out was, well, I.

06:19
Tab Norris
Think Jesse much longer than that, but.

06:21
Jesse Rome
I really appreciate it.

06:21
Tab Norris
I cut it in half. I just carved out to make inappropriate things.

06:27
Tom Stanfill
Well, Jesse Tabs at the ocean. As you know, he’s at the beach, so he’s already halfway through a Bloody Mary. He’s like, yeah, we’ll do a podcast.

06:35
Tab Norris
I have one of those drinks with a little umbrella in it.

06:38
Jesse Rome
It’s all good as he deserves. Well, I’m happy to be here. I’ve been listening to this podcast for a long time. I’m not sure what number episode we’re on, but I’m sure it’s going to be the best one. So excited to dive into it.

06:51
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, excellent. Yeah, we’ll note to Sam, our producer will star this one. The best episode ever. It’s a perlative right there. I love it. Well, there’s definitely pressure, but Jesse and I were bantering about. I wanted to have him on the podcast because of his expertise. I knew he had something to offer. But as were talking about the topic, he was the one that initiated this topic of saying what are the best practices. Now we’re post COVID, and what I think probably is going to be most important to our listeners is you’re coming in from working with a lot of different clients right now who are in multiple different roles. So tell us a little bit about how you landed on this topic and what you’re seeing out in the field.

07:36
Jesse Rome
Yeah, absolutely. And just a little bit more on my background. I started off overseeing large sales teams, mostly inside sales, and so learning a lot of processes, how to be effective kind of hour by hour, week by week, and then running sales strategy. And now just not overseeing inside sales reps, but outside sales reps, account managers, customer success, all those types of organizations. And now working at Aslan, we’re overseeing large enterprise clients that are doing all the above and more just at a higher level. And so I’ve seen kind of the full scope and seen what best practices are working at each stage. But what we’re not seeing is some of these teams aren’t communicating with each other on what are the best practices and how they could also be used in some of these other roles. And so it’s been a unique perspective, not just working with every type of sales role, but seeing it both pre COVID during COVID and after COVID.

08:36
Jesse Rome
And I think there’s a lot of learnings that we had during COVID and some people remember them and some people just need a reminder of what made them so efficient during that time.

08:46
Tom Stanfill
For some reps, it’s just like it was pre COVID. And so now they just go back and reminders. For some reps, the customers really changed and the way that they buy now make decisions and the process that they put in place don’t necessarily match up with maybe the best way to evaluate your solution. So it’s a lot of mix, but I think it’s important to share what we’ve seen that’s working out in the field. So what’s your number one priority or what’s the most important thing you can tell a seller right now?

09:24
Jesse Rome
Yeah. And you look at some of the statistics, there’s like six in ten sales reps right now that when they have a process that works for them, they’re not going to change it. And so nobody here is telling any sales rep, you have to go change who you are. But if we want to talk about the difference between good and great, that means looking within yourself, figuring out how you can have continuous improvement, be 1% better every day, et cetera. So there’s a few areas I’d like to dive deep into today. The first area is, how can we fill the gaps? And what I mean by gaps is, when you have time gaps or open gaps on your calendar, how are you being proactive with that? The second area I want to dive even deeper into is a disciplined sales process. And how can you be more aware of your sales process and more disciplined when you’re both in the field or at home?

10:16
Jesse Rome
And the third topic that we all love to talk about, especially as trainers, is owning your own development. You can’t just wait for somebody to coach you at all times. So let’s start with kind of filling the gaps and where we see a.

10:30
Tom Stanfill
Lot of being productive maximizing your time.

10:34
Jesse Rome
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think back to during COVID we go from kind of going into the office, out of the office. Now we’re in our own home office, sometimes in our own kitchen, and it was a mess. We had no idea how to be organized. Right. Your kids are running around, the dogs are jumping in the zoom calls. Everything was going crazy, but it took us a little while, and then we got really disciplined. We figured out our calendar, we blocked out our lives and separated personal from professional. And then now that we’ve gotten back post COVID, those lines have started to blur again, where some people are going fully out into the field maybe two days a week, and then they’re at home, but they’re not fully kind of at the office like they were during COVID So what I’ve seen is people that are proactive with their calendar and actually scheduling proactive blocks have been a lot more successful.

11:30
Jesse Rome
And we can go into a few examples, but Tab, have you seen any of those trends as well?

11:35
Tab Norris
Definitely. It’s one of those things where it’s almost like some people are so excited that they’re back in the field, they can hardly stand it. You know what I mean? They’re going back to their coffee shop, they’re going out to lunch, there’s just a freedom there. But that can be a negative too, right? Because if you’re not really disciplined like you said, and kind of plan accordingly, we can waste a lot of time and we don’t want that either. I’ve seen that trend, definitely.

12:15
Jesse Rome
Yeah. And what we’re seeing is the hardest part of the job is prospecting. There’s no doubt about it. The most fun part about the job is building rapport and engaging with your prospects. And so now that we’re back in person, you get to go do the most fun part of the job. You get to drive around, you get to build rapport, you get to build relationships. And because of that, in a lot of scenarios, our relationships are up, our engagement is up, our close ratio and deal velocity is up. But the time that we used to spend when we left the Zoom meeting and now we’re still sitting at our desk like, well, what do I do for the next 2 hours? I’m going to prospect. Now we’re spending that time driving. And so I think we need to be much more proactive. When you talk about these coffee shops or waiting at the airport or when you’re even talking on the phone, maybe with a friend in the car, we need to fill these gaps proactively with prospecting blocks or research blocks so that you can make sure that you’re not falling behind on your sales pipeline.

13:18
Jesse Rome
And we’ve seen that with a couple of the recent clients that we’ve worked with internationally. How are they filling the gaps and going deeper in earlier in the sales process? So that’d be the first big takeaway.

13:29
Tom Stanfill
I think the key word is proactively. It’s like if we look at our week and we say, I’ve got to spend 4 hours this week building my pipeline and some people it might be 20 hours, it depends on where they like you said, there’s a lot of different types of reps. Some reps are growing and defending accounts and some of prospecting is moving upstream in accounts. For some is they’ve got to win new logos. Whatever the plan dictates, I have to find this many prospects to win this many opportunities to hit my number. If I’m proactive about planning my year, my month, my week. And I look at my week ahead and I say, this is what I have to do because I just won’t do it. I have to say these are the four. And we just interviewed a couple of weeks ago, a top EP from a SaaS company.

14:22
Tom Stanfill
And that was the first thing he said is like, why are you successful? I plan 4 hours every week of the things I hate to do. And he also created accountability around it, like he had it planned with other people. So for that 4 hours and it wasn’t four solid hours, it was four 1 hour blocks that he would do the things like build his pipeline or the things he doesn’t want to do, and he just protected that, and he planned it out every week. And I think that’s key.

14:50
Jesse Rome
And the other thing you said, Tom, was that the customer has changed. Right? And when you talk about filling the gaps, you can’t be everywhere at once. We’ve talked to multiple clients, and we hear this pushback when we’re training reps, when we’re managing reps. I can’t be everywhere at once. My territory is too big. I can only travel to them once a year. All these different kind of narratives that you’re telling yourself, but you just spent two years overcoming that narrative. You spent two years doing Zoom meetings, getting used to phone calls, engaging in clients in ways that you would never have before. So to be in 2023 and to live in the 2019 life just will not be scalable. So we need to remember, you can still fill gaps with having your own hotspot and doing a Zoom meeting from a coffee shop, having phone calls when engagement and setting up meetings, it doesn’t always have to be in person.

15:45
Jesse Rome
In person, in person. So the customer has changed, and the customer wants that because, as we all know, they’re busy, and maybe that’s right for them.

15:55
Tom Stanfill
This reminds me of a guy early in my career, or maybe probably was early. I think it was even pre aslan, but I was working with an office leasing guy because we was looking for office space. And so he’s taking me out for the day. One of the most impressive and annoying things I ever saw. He’s taking me out for the day to look at office space in between the office buildings were visiting. He would prospect while I was in the car.

16:24
Tab Norris
No way. Awesome.

16:27
Tom Stanfill
He would prospect.

16:28
Jesse Rome
Now, what was pretty impressive for the same listing.

16:36
Tab Norris
Yeah, maybe that wasn’t quite as impressive as I thought.

16:39
Tom Stanfill
That’s an extreme example, but I still remember. And guess what? He crushed it. Yeah, he crushed it because he’s like, he’s even prospecting with these with a client. He’s calling other clients. I’m like, this is amazing. I mean, part of me was like, what? But now he could have done a better job of explaining to me. Like, he could have won. Look, I love you. I’m not going to be calling anybody, but we’re in the car together, and you probably have things to do. So I have a couple of calls I need to make. And he could have softened it, but he just like, I’m making calls, and I’m like he’s like, you don’t care about me, and I don’t care about you. You need space. Now, I don’t know if I recommend that, but the point is, you got to do the work. If you don’t build your pipeline, you’re going to die.

17:22
Tom Stanfill
You have to find a way. And I think what really it’s all just there’s so many distractions we’ve gotten out of rhythm and people are busier, reps are busier. There’s just so much coming at us now with the pace of things and being at home and being at the office and not being settled. It’s just so much things are happening. Maybe you don’t have the support you used to have. I think it’s harder to plan, but we got to protect our time.

17:46
Tab Norris
Yeah, I 100% agree with you. And I think that one of the and you said that we’re out of our rhythm. I really like that because that’s what I feel. I feel like it’s always shifting, you know what I mean? And I can just speak. This is more for me. I used to kind of know how I would communicate with a client. I mean, how we did it. I had a system, I had a process. And now sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can’t. So it’s really frustrating because you’re constantly having to adjust. And I think that’s probably true for a lot of our sellers. You used to have the way people bought kind of fit, maybe it was 90% of the time. It was always this way. And now we’ve got all there’s nuance and there’s adjustments and there’s change, Jesse. We’ve even seen it with this one client we have.

18:37
Tab Norris
We want to do everything in person, but because of our salespeople, we can’t do that. I think we’re seeing it all over the place.

18:46
Jesse Rome
Absolutely. This might be the perfect transition to dive into the sales process a little bit and where we see people making strides in a post COVID world now that it’s kind of opened up with face to face but also where people are struggling. Now. I’ve worked across many different organizations and now I’m seeing firsthand working with these large global companies kind of where they’re seeing success and where they’re not. A lot of people are relying on the increase of relationship and engagement and replacing that with the quality of value that they’re actually able to deliver. And so what we see is, sure, they’re still able to have great deal velocity and great retention, but they’re selling products instead of programs, right? They’re selling smaller deals. And that all based on my experience, is stemming back to discovery. And so when you have this hour block that you might usually have with a client, if you were on the phone, you might fill it with 510 minutes of Rapport, 2030 minutes of discovery, go on, so on and so forth.

19:54
Jesse Rome
Now that time has shifted to 15 minutes of Rapport, right. And building relationship and having fun and being in person and less time for discovery, which leads to maybe quicker value, more shallow value and smaller deal sizes. So that’s a big area that I’m seeing, where if we are more disciplined in our approach and it can be simple, right? You can have three objectives going into any meeting. If you have three objectives going into any meeting. You know, you have to get through those before you move on. Ideally, you’re diving deep into those while still establishing your relationships. But we’re seeing deal velocity, retention, engagement. All these things are up. So to the salesperson, they’re like, this is fun, this is great.

20:38
Tab Norris
Right?

20:39
Jesse Rome
But how can you go from good to great? It’s not just about velocity, right. It’s about the size of the deal. And that all stems back to the discipline during Discovery.

20:49
Tom Stanfill
I hadn’t thought about that. Jesse so what you’re saying is now that I’m face to face, my rapport building, relationship building is again, of course, this changes depending on the type of clients I have and the nature of my relationship. But the rapport building went from five minutes to 15 minutes. I’m eating up time because I’m face to face now. I’m eating up time talking about other things besides how can I determine what problems they have and who’s involved in decision making? Where are they in their decision making process, and what are their budgets? And all the questions I need to ask to determine is it qualified? Can I help? And how do I obviously understand what their needs are? So that’s what you’re saying. That’s what’s happening.

21:33
Jesse Rome
And when you’re in person, you’re just excited. And when they tell you that first pain point, I’m so excited to tell you everything we can do. Right. And how can you blame them? You’re right there. You can see the problem. You’re looking at it’s on their whiteboard right in front of you. But when you’re virtual, you’re a little bit more disciplined because you might have a second screen with a checklist on it, or you just came out of a one one with a manager where they coached you on how to do this call. If you’re in person, that coaching happened a week ago. If you’re in person, you’re on the adrenaline of the relationship. If you’re in person, you feel compelled to maybe get to the point because you can see their emotions as to how they’re busy and they have other things going on.

22:13
Jesse Rome
And so we need to come up with some sort of three step process or three objectives that people can be disciplined for going into that’s easy to memorize right. That can discipline them going into these Discovery meetings.

22:30
Tab Norris
Yeah, well, I mean, what I’m seeing is just had this with another I was training a bunch of account executives a few weeks ago, and they said the same thing. We kept talking about their challenge with Discovery, and we kept coming back to, how are you setting this up? And it’s almost like they said, well, we used to do that, and then we used to do that when were out in the field. And then everything was virtual and everything was rushed and everything. And now that we’re back in the field, we’ve kind of lost that habit. We’ve gotten a little sloppy with our setup. We’re not coming in with a tight agenda and objective. And it was a big light bulbs were going off like, oh, my gosh, I’ve got to get back in that habit because I’m wasting too much time without really getting down to the core issues.

23:25
Tab Norris
I just had that conversation two weeks ago.

23:28
Tom Stanfill
So to make sure we’re being clear and kind of summarize this, jesse, you’re saying because of the new sort of the new found freedom, excitement about being out in the field, we’ve lost some of our discipline and our objectives. And so we need to keep that in the forefront to make sure that we go into every meeting with clear objectives. And then we’re focused on those and we don’t just sort of enjoy, hey, we’re just building relationships again. It’s good to see we move into that. And I will say I think that works, by the way, half the time.

24:05
Tab Norris
Absolutely.

24:06
Tom Stanfill
Even the fact that you want to build relationships, well, 50%, using obviously, just round numbers, but half of the world you’re going to work with are task oriented. They don’t want to build you’re building a relationship with them by being focused on the objective. The other half are relational and they’re willing accomplices in this. They’re like, sure, let’s just hang out. They love that. Good to see you. Yeah, let’s hang out. You’re going to listen to my stories? I love somebody to listen to my stories. And as we talked about on our show previously, you got parrots and doves who love the relational stuff. Well, the owls and eagles don’t. Right. So I think that’s a really good point. We’ve got it for the people that are more relational. We need to help them remember why we’re there and agree with the objectives and do the thing.

24:56
Tom Stanfill
We can build rapport along the way. I’d like to flip it and talk about the other side of it, which is I’m having to sell more virtually. And so, yes, I’m out in the field, but I’m still having to sell virtually because the client is now bought into the whole why don’t we just have a zoom meeting? That’s what I’m seeing a lot. Oh, I know. You fly in and meet with me, and you’d meet with this team, and then you’d meet with that team, and it makes sense to come in. Sure, if you’re willing to spend the time and the money, come on in and we’ll spend two and a half hours, and we’ll have lunch together in between. And so that’s where you’re building more relationship. And even the most highly task oriented people, over lunch, they’re going to start talking about other things besides work.

25:41
Tom Stanfill
That is not happening now.

25:44
Tab Norris
Zero. I can’t get on site with anybody. It makes no sense to me. I could get meetings all day long, Tom. I mean, it was almost like, do I really want to spend the money on that flight now, I would do anything. And it’s like, they won’t do it. They’re like, well, nobody’s going to be here. We’re all spread out. And the only way we’re all going to be they’re spread out. That’s the biggest issue. Philadelphia, but that’s great. But we have people now in Dallas and they’re in St. Louis, and so that’s a waste of time. Everybody’s saying that.

26:16
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. So I think especially if you’re selling more complex deals, there’s multiple decision makers located in multiple locations. And what I’m seeing that the successful sellers are doing, and I’ve had to adjust this myself, is they have to define the sales process because the customer is not defining the right sales process. If we let the customer lead the buying process, if you will, they don’t know how to evaluate our solutions. And I say our meaning. Anybody, whoever’s listening to this call, you think about your solution. The customer may have bought it once, may have never bought the solution. Maybe they’ve bought it a handful of times where we’ve worked with hundreds of organizations that have had to figure this out and implement a solution. So we’re the ones that need to define what’s the best way to evaluate, what’s the best way to determine what problem you have, what’s the best way to evaluate what’s the best solution?

27:17
Tom Stanfill
And if we let the customer say, well, look, why don’t we meet with the team and we’re going to spend 45 minutes and we’re going to meet with the team, what’s, the team? Ten people? Yeah. Then we want you to do the Capabilities presentation. Okay, well, we’ll schedule 30 minutes for that and 15 minutes Q and A. We’re talking about a million dollar solution. And you’re going to make the decision based on I’m not even going to have an opportunity. And then yeah, then we’re going to do an RP and then we’re going to base the decision on finalists and then we’ll have you come in, maybe I’m like, that’s not the best way. So I think it’s super important for sellers to step back and define what is the best process for evaluating a solution. And then they got to sell their process, not their solution.

28:00
Tom Stanfill
You got to sell your process. And it’s funny, I’m currently working with a company and then I’ll shut up, that gets this. They are going through, they’re emulating an Onsite meeting virtually. So what they’re doing is they’re setting up multiple 30 minutes meetings with the different stakeholders so that we’re having Q and A sessions that would normally happen on site before. Now, that’s going to lead to A Capabilities pres based on cultural fit and understanding. It’s the same way it used to be. They’ve mapped it out virtually. So I haven’t had to sell them on changing that.

28:42
Tab Norris
Because you just answered my question. Because I think it’s the ability to adapt in a new world. But don’t cut it short. You may just have to think about it differently. This is the good to great thing, jesse, you were bringing up. That’s a great example of good to great. I can’t make them do it the way it used to be, but I can’t just go, oh, let’s just do it ineffectively and let you do it wrong. Let’s work together and let’s come up with a process that fits in these new parameters in the new world we live in. That’s awesome.

29:17
Jesse Rome
What is the part going back into mostly zoom meetings that you feel like is missing? Is it that time to meet the team? Is it that time to build the relationship? Or is it the time per meeting that’s allocated so that we can have a conversation and it’s not just presenting a solution or one sided?

29:36
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it’s not about building a relationship. It’s about understanding what the needs are. So if you’ve got a learning team, like for us, you have multiple teams that are involved in implementing a solution. All of those teams play a role. They all have needs. They all have decision drivers. And so if you walk in cold and make a 45 minutes presentation on something that literally would take you probably 8 hours, if you had 8 hours, you could say, okay, I can walk you through everything you need to know to address everybody’s concern. Whether I know it or not, I don’t have 8 hours. I got 45 minutes. And then, by the way, people are late. So now you have it 30 minutes, and maybe you got an hour, but then people are late. Or then you do the Q and A. Whatever it is, it’s just a short period of time.

30:22
Tom Stanfill
So you need information to understand what they’re doing, to then feed it back to them because they don’t have all the questions. They don’t know everything in our world, we need to assess what’s happening for us to then provide value on what they should do. So, yeah, I think the main thing is just more time. And I don’t think it’s necessarily engagement. I think people are engaged. I think it’s primarily just time. Now, some people that are selling struggle because it’s a tangible thing. Like, I need to show you the equipment, right? And you’ve got to duplicate that. And there’s a way to do that virtually for some there’s not. And so I think the main point is the rep needs to figure out what needs to happen for the customer to make the right decision. They need to know what’s the process needs to be and why.

31:20
Tom Stanfill
Because a lot of times I’ll talk to a reps and they’ll say, well, I just want the customer to do this. And I’ll go, Why? Well, because I feel more comfortable. Well, that doesn’t motivate anybody.

31:29
Tab Norris
Right.

31:30
Tom Stanfill
Well, I’ll feel better if we have a relationship. They don’t care. They just feel more comfortable. Like they can leverage their charm, and they feel more like they’ve got more charisma. Which is one thing about COVID it’s made us better.

31:46
Tab Norris
Yeah, there’s no doubt about that.

31:49
Jesse Rome
In a lot of ways. Yeah. And the world you’re talking about is much more in the acquire bucket. Right. People that are going after new business and you need a set process and making them aware of what that sales process is and flipping the conversation to more the account managers, those that are defending and going more in. The field where they’re kind of going appointment to appointment and they don’t have many stages before they have that appointment because they’re having their annual review, quarterly review, whatever it is. Those people are going right in. And to your point, they’re like, here’s the new product, here’s the new analysis, here’s what’s going on. And they’re not like when we talk about we need to tell the client what our process will be. We need to set an agenda. I can’t wait to go over everything that’s important for you to know how to grow your business.

32:39
Jesse Rome
But before I do that, I just want to ask a few questions as to what’s been going on the last three months, twelve months, what are your pain points, so on and so forth. And so I think it can go both ways. And some of it is more over a span of weeks, and some of it is how can you be more efficient in that 60 Minutes block? Totally more disciplined to communicating your process to the client.

33:03
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, if you’re walking in and you’re meeting with somebody, you’ve been working with your account manager, and you have a relationship that’s just more about and you’re on site, there’s not much change there. And I think it referred what you said earlier in the call about how to be disciplined around that makes sense. But if I’m trying to grow account and I’m trying to expand my footprint in the account, and I’m working with other stakeholders, and they now only want to work with me virtually, it’s easier for me to get a meeting, typically, because I can leverage my existing relationships. But now this is where the process comes into play for how do I assess the needs of the rest of the organization and how do I get connected with them? Because they may just say, let’s have a Zoom meeting. Tell me what you got.

33:46
Tom Stanfill
Okay. Well, yeah, so Bob said, Just talk to me. That’s great. Let’s have a Zoom call, or maybe stop by next week when you’re in and tell me what you got. And that’s not what we need to do. Well, okay. I think it all goes down to the fact that the customer typically dictates process.

34:07
Jesse Rome
Yeah.

34:08
Tab Norris
And that’s wrong.

34:09
Tom Stanfill
And have I been a decision maker? I did this process. Like, I remember one time were evaluating marketing firms, and our head marketing guy knew one of the firms really well and the other two firms, he didn’t know it. They were meeting with us for the first time. He’d invited him in to the party and he said, we’re going to do a 45 minutes capabilities press and one of the firms, the rep had multiple meetings, lots of information was ready for that call, knew exactly what to present. And then the other two never met any of us and they agreed to the 45 minutes. Little press yeah, those other two reps lost before they ever showed up, never had a chance because they’re like, there’s no way in the world you’re going to evaluate our firm in 45. So they should have said no. And here’s a fun fact for what I think is amazing.

35:03
Tom Stanfill
Every time I’ve said no to a customer, they’ve changed. Every time I’ve said, I’m not doing that. Why aren’t you doing that? Because here’s the reason why it’s in your best interest for me not to do that. One of the things that they’ll say to us all the time, which I think is relevant to a lot of our listeners is they’ll want to do something or make a decision without meeting the team or about meeting the key people or seeing something. And I’m like, there’s no way in the world you’re going to be able to evaluate our solution like you want to. A simple analogy, you want to judge our restaurant based on our menu versus tasting our food. You can’t do that. It’s just pretty pictures and words. If you really want to evaluate a restaurant, you have to eat the food. So if you really want to evaluate our solution, you’re going to have to do the following you need to meet the team, you need to do these things and you need to be able to communicate that.

35:57
Tom Stanfill
And they’ll go, okay, because that is.

36:00
Tab Norris
A perfect example of what we’re talking about. That a lot of companies would have done that in the past, but now they’re going, well, I’ve been buying without meeting people for the last couple of years so I don’t need to go back to that. And what we’re saying is good to great. You need to move back to that when you can because it’s a better way to evaluate, it’s a better way to buy. That’s really good.

36:28
Tom Stanfill
You don’t take a hard stand. Like I’m confident when I take a hard stand because it’s the truth. It’s like if it’s true versus, okay, well, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. We waste so much time with RFP responses. It’s like, hey, we want you to do this for the RFP. We want you to spend days writing something for people who and then well, tell me about your process afterwards. No. Tell me about the stakeholders. No. Tell me about how you’re going to evaluate the vendors once you get the RFPs. No okay, well enjoy your RFP process and by the way, here’s what they’ll do. After you spend all this time and effort, they won’t even respond to your RFP. I mean, there are so customers are happy to waste your time. They have no problem with that. And I’m not saying they’re bad people.

37:12
Tom Stanfill
They’re just doing what they’re told to do, or they’re just for following a process that seems relevant to them, and they want to follow people who know where they’re going. So I think we need to demonstrate that and don’t be afraid to create the fork in the road.

37:25
Jesse Rome
That’s great. That’s great.

37:27
Tom Stanfill
All right. Yeah.

37:28
Tab Norris
I’m sorry, Jesse. Go on.

37:29
Jesse Rome
I was just going to say the other part of the sales process I feel that we have maybe dropped off of is kind of how to end these meetings, and that is on Zoom. We have our calendar in front of us, and we’re like, here’s the calendar. This is when I’m available. Let’s do this. And when we’re in person, we’re relying on rapport so much. We feel so good about the relationship. We’ve just built it’s. Yeah. I’ll give you a call next week. We’ll schedule something. You like me, right? You like me. I like you. Yeah. This was awesome. And then you don’t get anything further because, hey, I don’t want to pull out my phone. I don’t want to pull out my laptop. It’s hard to see my whole calendar when I’m in person. And so the next discipline, when we talk about a sales process, the first is what I was saying is discovery.

38:13
Jesse Rome
The second part is that advance. What are the clear next steps when you’re in person, when you have all those people in front of you? And that’s where you talk about a clearly defined giving them the agenda, telling them ahead of time, kind of what the steps are, how this conversation is.

38:30
Tom Stanfill
Going to go and what it’s going to know. Your process. You can do that.

38:33
Jesse Rome
Yeah. And for some reason, even though we say it when we’re in person, we’re having so much fun, we don’t even bring it up. I’ll let you go. I’ll call you next week.

38:41
Tom Stanfill
Man, I am so guilty of that. I watched myself do that. Well, I shouldn’t say watched myself. I did. I remember thinking I should button this all up, but it just feels like we’re all connected, and it felt so good to be face to face. I’d flown out to meet with a company, and I forgot what city I was in the middle of the Midwest, and it was like, great. We’ll meet next week. Sure. That’s great. Whatever. Still haven’t met with them.

39:10
Jesse Rome
I’m sure it’s a great conversation, too. You might be with them in a few months. How do you shorten the sales cycle? Discipline. And that’s all it is.

39:18
Tom Stanfill
That’s a really good point, Jesse. I’ve forgotten about that. Yeah, it is true. Because I normally was pretty disciplined. I’ve always been disciplined about it. But, yeah, it’s like, you’re in your office. You’re like, I got my calendar, and then now I don’t have my calendar. How can we do that? Well, I could pull up my phone, but that’s great. That’s great.

39:35
Jesse Rome
And transitioning, when you talk about you didn’t do that, like, who was holding you accountable? It’s just your tab.

39:41
Tab Norris
It’s all my fault. That was my fault. I didn’t coach him right. I didn’t coach him correctly.

39:45
Tom Stanfill
TAB’s fault, Justin, because we’re not your fault. Now it’s your fault.

39:48
Jesse Rome
We can’t depend on Tab. That is my next point and my last point. We can never depend on Tab. Let’s just underline that. No, but in all seriousness, owning your own development and this is something that I’ve seen across all the organizations I’ve worked in, will always be something that’s the difference from good to great. But I think that what we saw during COVID is that those that did not used to do that, those that used to just depend on managers all of a sudden were forced to kind of owning your own development because were siloed. We were absolutely kind of alone in this world, and were recording our calls. We were listening to podcasts when were going on walks with our dogs. We were on Zoom meetings with our friends. We had team channels where were very social and interacting. Now we’re back in the field, and we’re siloed in a different way, where we’re no longer kind of connected in our phone to our friends all the time.

40:44
Jesse Rome
We’re not necessarily talking to our manager nearly as often. And so I think a big passion of mine as both a rep, a manager, a trainer, a sales strategist, all those things is to build really great habits. And one of those habits has to be blocking out time for your own development.

41:04
Tom Stanfill
That’s great. And the other thing that’s making that more difficult is that when you were selling all via Zoom, so easy to record a Zoom call exactly, and then you could just say, well, how great was that? Now we’re out in the field. No one’s watching me not advance that and get agreement to the next step. And if I would have listened to the call, maybe I didn’t have the.

41:33
Jesse Rome
Awareness, but your notes aren’t as good when you’re in the field. You don’t report in the CRM nearly as much when you’re out in the field. A lot more things were recorded when were at home, but who’s to stop you from clicking the voice memo button and recording yourself when you’re in the field? Who’s to stop you from right when you get in the car writing detailed notes of what you think you did well and what you think you could have done better? What’s to stop you from doing some of these things that’s so good?

41:58
Tab Norris
Well, I mean, I just think about even I don’t know if you’re this way. When I first started selling, virtually, it was awful because I would look at myself, don’t even talk about the recording, because it took me a long time to figure out how to turn off my self view. It was awesome because it was like I was getting feed. I mean, I felt like I was doing self assessment every time I did a discovery meeting or I did a presentation or anything like that. It was very powerful. And you’re right, and that’s now it’s gone. Now I don’t have that constant self assessment going on.

42:39
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that is so key. You got to watch your game films, and you can simulate that back to I love your point, Jesse, about being responsible for your own development. It’s my goal and the most successful people I’ve worked with, and then I’ve been in sales now gosh, what, almost 40 years? 38, something like that. It’s just hands down. You can always tell the number one sales rep in any workshop, or you meet them. They’re always learning. They’re the ones asking all the questions. They’re the ones taking all the notes. And I always go, that’s the number one rep. And you think they’re the not, oh, you must be the new person because you’re taking notes, asking these questions. Oh, no, that’s the number one rep. I just delivered a workshop a couple of months ago. This rep has already made $700,000 this year, and she was the most engaged and asked the most questions, the most humble, the most trying to learn.

43:35
Tom Stanfill
And then I was traveling this weekend with another with some friends, and I was meeting a new couple, and she was the same person asking all these questions. What do you know? I was like, oh, she must be probably trying to learn how to be good in sales because she’s asking me all these questions. No, she was the number one rep. So it’s just a constant truth about a consistent truth about people that are good, but we got to figure out a way to do that. And I think one of the ways you can do it is role plays. Don’t forget role plays. Like, if you’re a leader listening to this, I used to do that all the time. You’d create a scenario that you do with your manager and then record it. You could just record on your phone. I mean, it’s easy to do, and you can simulate that, and then your coaching session going to be based off that, and you can hear yourself if you’re a rep and it’s recorded, and.

44:28
Jesse Rome
It doesn’t even have to be your manager. I know my wife perfectly pitched the old solution I was selling because we would do role plays all the time. She could be a role, she could be a trainer. At this point, she’s sick of it. But these role plays work, and there’s different types of development. There’s the reactive where you’re kind of listening to yourself and thinking. And then there’s the proactive like, what do I want to get better at? And that’s the books, the podcast and all that. But there’s simple things that you can do in a proactive sense. And I think a lot of us are either one track. We’re one track where we’re either like, I love to reflect and ask for feedback, or we’re proactive where we just want to learn and we don’t want to think about ourselves. We don’t want to think intrinsically and look in the mirror and all that.

45:15
Jesse Rome
So I think a great one proactively is just signing up for Google Alerts and subscribing to different channels that have to do with your industry. And whether that’s Harvest Business Review or that’s industry Dive or that’s Google News and whatever your territory and your vertical is, you can just get served a lot of this information. So even if it’s not sales specific, you’re broadening your knowledge so that you can become way more successful in your specific vertical.

45:43
Tab Norris
I love that. I was talking with a client, Jesse Guy. He’s amazing. I worked with him for years, and he’s phenomenal. And were having a conversation about something, and he said, tab. We were talking about someone being successful. And he goes, you know why they’re successful? Because they have a learner’s posture. I love that term, a learner’s posture. He said, People that have a learner’s posture, they constantly look for ways to get better in every situation that they’re in any and every situation. And that really stuck with me, that’s what you’re talking about is creating a learner’s posture and creating habits to do that.

46:24
Tom Stanfill
I love it. And in the good ones, if you think about how you can assess yourself, if you’re open to doing that, it’s actually pretty easy. In selling, there’s only four main capabilities when you’re interacting with a human. If you’re working, whatever their level is, there’s really only four. You engage the beginning of the meeting. You discover, you build value, you advance. All of them have outcomes. So if you just simply this is what I do. If I just simply go through those four capabilities, how well did I engage? Did I set a real clear agenda for the meeting? Was it another centered purpose? Was it clear about what we’re trying to accomplish? Discovery? Was I clear? It’s kind of something you talked about earlier. Was I clear about what I’m trying to uncover, what I want the customer to reveal? Did they do that build value?

47:17
Tom Stanfill
Did they agree with what I’m recommending? Did they change their opinion about the right process or who else needs to be involved? Or maybe it’s even buying my solution advanced. Is there a clear? All of those are measurable. So if I just go through that checklist of those four things and I can see anywhere where that didn’t happen, that clues me in to where there may be a gap. And now I can focus more one of those areas, and that may be where I work on it or create my role play or ask questions or get feedback or whatever. I will say this, too, for people who haven’t been selling a long time, and there’s a lot of fear related to getting feedback. I was that guy. I remember. Tab we started working together. You’re like, I love feedback. Like, bring it on. Show me how it sucks.

48:03
Tab Norris
It’s like you had that learner’s posture.

48:06
Tom Stanfill
I didn’t like to be exposed. Yeah, it was too painful for me. I was too tied to my success. It was like, I sucked at that. I don’t want to know. So it’s like, I’d rather live in this sort of fantasy-land of, I think I’m good! But if you embrace it and you start to get feedback, selling becomes the easiest thing you do. You get over it. It’s kind of like actors do. You just get over it. You get used to being on stage. You get used to flubbing your lines. You just push past the fear, and then you start to open. That was a whole new world. I learned that from you, Tab.

48:46
Tab Norris
Well, I remember some incredible times together where you were learning that, and it was incredible how you developed and really put yourself out there, especially public speaking. You’re a great example of how you can change your posture, and it does have an impact. So it’s awesome.

49:12
Tom Stanfill
It’s good to develop why you don’t want feedback… o it might be something that’s not unknown to whoever’s listening to this and maybe senses there’s a resistance. They may not know why. For me, it was fear. It was completely fear, which is ridiculous when you think about it. Oh, so I’m afraid of getting feedback from my coach because he might not like me or I might not. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I’m afraid of not being good at my job. Well, the only thing that’s keeping me being good at my job is practice.

49:45
Tab Norris
Right.

49:46
Tom Stanfill
It makes no sense, which most fear doesn’t make sense. Jesse, anything else we need to be aware of that we haven’t covered? This has been super helpful for me. I’ve learned.

49:57
Jesse Rome
Yeah, those are the main three topics I came prepared with. We’re seeing a market that’s changing, and so that means that you have to be adaptive, and that’s the reality here. And a lot of what we’re doing is working, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to work forever. And so I think to have that learner’s posture, what we call it like to have a growth mindset and to seek feedback and to be reflective on your process and to acknowledge that there are gaps in your day and you are not allowed to, three months later, complain about performance when you know you didn’t maximize the gaps in your day. To have that self awareness in this type of market, it’s everything right now.

50:41
Tom Stanfill
I love that closing point… to see if you have a learner posture. All you’ve got to do is say, who’s killing it right now in your organization? Who do you know that’s killing it? Go talk to them and ask them how are they organizing their week? What are they doing? Because this is ultimately a lot of what we do, is we talk stuff you don’t see. Stuff you don’t see. So go talk to them. Don’t compete with them. Go talk to them. Go say, what are you doing? Help me be like you. They’d love to tell you, and then you can start to see what works. Jesse thanks, my friend. Love having you on board. You’ve already made a huge impact. We didn’t even talk about your trip to Scandinavia!

51:26
Jesse Rome
No, we did not. That’s for the next podcast.

51:29
Tom Stanfill
He just got back from Copenhagen and Stockholm.

51:33
Jesse Rome
Stockholm, yes.

51:34
Tom Stanfill
I’ve had Copenhagen before. In a little can.

51:38
Jesse Rome
Very different haha

51:41
Tom Stanfill
Very different. Yeah.

51:42
Tab Norris
Jesse, thank you.

51:43
Jesse Rome
This was a pleasure. And I hope to earn another appearance soon. This was great.

51:48
Tom Stanfill
Sure.

51:49
Jesse Rome
Thanks for having me, guys.

51:50
Tom Stanfill
You did a great job. Thanks, guys. And thanks for joining us for another episode of Sales with Aslan.