[105] Crafting Your Sales Process w/ Damian Thompson
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Bootstrap Web. This is number one zero five. As always, I'm Jordan and Brian with me and we have Damian Thompson here today to talk about sales. But before we jump into that, bring in Damian, let's give just a quick two minute update on what's going on. Brian, what's happened over there?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Not much. You know, enjoying being back here in Connecticut. It's it's still been pretty hectic because we've been, you know, still in an Airbnb, but we just got into contract on a house in Orange, Connecticut, which is where we'll be living. So hopefully, all will go well.
Brian Casel:Things seem to be going smoothly. So by April, we should be getting in there and closing, and I'll be setting up my new my new office and, and all that kind of fun stuff. So I'm excited about that. I mean, audience ops is going pretty well, growing, growing the team. I I talked about in the previous episodes how we're looking for a marketing tech person, somebody to run PPC ads and and help set up, marketing campaigns and automation funnels and all that kind of fun stuff.
Brian Casel:So still looking for someone like that. If if you're interested, you can check that out at audienceops.com/jobs. And, I'm also in the process of training a salesperson, which we'll be, picking Damian Damian's, brain about today, talking about sales. And then the the Landing Pages plug in is coming along, and that's, we're gearing up to to get that out the door, you know, sometime in in late March. I'll probably be doing webinar workshop around that and, yeah, excited about that too.
Brian Casel:So that's it.
Jordan Gal:All right. Cool. On my end, it's all cylinders firing on the launch of the new product. It's now thirteen days away. We've got marketing site, we've got onboarding, we've got some user testing, we've got PR, blogger outreach, all that happening over the next thirteen days and somewhere in between there, my wife is going to give birth to our third daughter.
Jordan Gal:So it's going to be a fun two weeks, but that's it. So we're all really excited. It's just one of those like kind of very crazy exciting times with a ton of work, but the kind of work that you enjoy doing because it's just, you know, now we just want to see what happens. The other thing to mention is I found a great new Chrome extension. I don't usually think to recommend anything, but this thing cracked me up and it's actually useful.
Jordan Gal:It's called go fucking work. Basically, it's like one of those, like, when you open up a new tab. It's not when you open up a new tab.
Brian Casel:It's like when you open Facebook or something?
Jordan Gal:Exactly. You put in a list of sites you don't wanna visit during the day, and then when you try to open up Reddit, instead of being like, oh, you should really go back to work, it's like, you fucking loser, go back to work. This is giving you a giant giant, you're like, you're a loser. You're gonna die soon. Go back to work.
Jordan Gal:Fuck you. Go work. It's just very vulgar and aggressive. I think it's the appropriate level of, you know, of of motivation that I need during the day.
Brian Casel:That's the perfect hack right there. I like it. Yeah. Cool. So let's I mean, let's get right into the episode.
Brian Casel:Let's welcome our our guest, Damian Thompson. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks. So that's a great segue because I have a fucking vulgar language as well. So now I'm the the the bar's been set in the podcast, so we're good to go now.
Brian Casel:We'd have it no other way.
Jordan Gal:Hey. It's just a Chrome extension. That's what it's called. But
Brian Casel:So so, Damian, you're, like, the sales guru, and and Jordan and I have have, you know, gotten to know you and heard you on various podcasts and various communities like the Dynamite Circle and Tropical MBA and all that kind of stuff. And so I don't think that there are enough folks out there really talking with authority about doing sales and building sales teams specifically for software products and productized services and that kind of stuff. You've got a tremendous background in doing sales, not just talking about it, but actually doing it and building teams. Of course, now you do some coaching around that and training, with your company's sales abilities. So basically, we're here to kind of pick your brain so the audience can kind of listen in as well.
Speaker 3:Fantastic.
Brian Casel:So if somebody is thinking about launching a new business, launching a new startup, whether it's a product type service or a software app or something, how early in the process of launching something new should they be thinking about the sales process? I I kinda just personally, I I feel like it it comes as as too much of an afterthought too often. And and it's really just so core from the from the get go. But I'm I'm just wondering about what your thoughts are on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So a couple of things. So I'll I'll put a couple disclaimers here at the beginning. So, you know, when when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right?
Speaker 3:So I just wanted to set the stage a little bit. You know, my expertise is b two b. Like, I love b two b. It's what I spent twenty plus years doing in software and service company. So I I looked through that lens.
Speaker 3:So almost everything we talk about from my perspective will be B2B. Now human nature is human nature. Right? And so if you understand influence, if you understand how to get things that can be applied to B2C, but in B2B, you know, that sales process, you know, it's a couple of things I say, because I work with, you know, b to b software and service companies. You know, a lot of times they're very clever, smart product people.
Speaker 3:Right? And they put together if they scratched into their own or they've seen a gap in the market, they've created a product to scratch an itch, and they look at these things very process oriented. That's hilarious. You're absolutely right. So they build the product, you know, using, you know, a methodology that's tried and tested and but they don't do the same thing with their sales and marketing.
Speaker 3:They say, hey, whatever, you know, either I'll build it and they'll come or it's so good it sells itself for all these ridiculous things that, you know, that don't happen. And so, yes, the the earlier the better. Think I one of the biggest mistakes that, you know, founders make when they when they develop a product or services is there's two big problems. They they both have the same issue. One is they either don't pay enough attention to this at the beginning and figure out how am I gonna get this in front of more people.
Speaker 3:Right? And how am I how am I gonna convince them it's actually something they need? And then when they're actually ready, they built their sales up to a level where if it
Nathan Barry:is 10,000 a month, 20,000, whatever that number needs to be, they say, Now I'm ready to go out and
Speaker 3:start building this sales team. I'm gonna go find this magical unicorn who's gonna come in, he's gonna build this sales process for me. Right? Or they're gonna build their we're gonna figure it out together and this person's gonna come in, they're gonna be a self starter and all these ridiculous words we like to throw around and because they they look at his sales as, oh, it's icky or it's that I'm I'm a product person. Like, I'm an engineer or I'm a you know, I don't wanna be a marketer.
Speaker 3:I don't wanna be a salesperson. And so they either don't put enough time into it or they hope they're gonna bring that expertise in house from someone else. And both those things are generally fraught with failure. You know? And if I look at, you know, a big part, you know, you know, that that kind of that a big part of that niche that you guys are in, like the Rob Wallings and the kind of, you know, the bootstrap, you know, non funded startup world.
Speaker 3:Now you look at Rob, and Rob is, you know, one of the most product people you can get, but he's a marketer. Right? He understands how important marketing is to get out there, so it's something he had to learn, it's something he had
Nathan Barry:to do, and we've worked with Rob for a
Speaker 3:couple years, but, you know, he takes that seriously. Like, that's a huge piece of his pie is figuring out that revenue side of the business, and and that's it. So one the things I tell a lot of founders, especially when they're kind of earlier when we're working together, and they have a struggle with this I'm a product person, a not a sales and marketer. And I say, okay. Forget the word sales and marketing.
Speaker 3:Replace sales and marketing with revenue. Right? That's what you need to replace it with. Right? Revenue.
Speaker 3:Like, that's what matters. Right? How are you going to get revenue? Because that's future growth of your business. That's the future product.
Speaker 3:You can't build the product out of version two, version three, you know, waterfall, whatever you wanna do if you don't you know, cost innovation in your product doesn't happen if you can't afford to do that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, and and I do think that there's also a separation between sales and marketing. Everybody says, oh, sales and marketing, you know, but there's so much focus on the marketing piece. You're building funnels and ads and automation and all this kind of stuff. But sales is such a critical piece of that that I just feel like is undervalued.
Brian Casel:But even like, for example, like talking about Rob Walling, for a while in in the the growth of Drip, he was talking about, medium touch sales. I mean, that's that's basically sales. Like, was talking to people and and getting the you know, those first few 100 customers on board. Like, you have to get on the phone or you have to get on Skype calls or do some sort of like screencasts and and presentation and, like, doing things that don't scale. You hear about, you know, Nathan Barry's, process of growing ConvertKit.
Brian Casel:I mean, you know, similar thing. I I went through the process in in Restaurant Engine, going through it certainly, you know, every day in audience ops as well. So, yeah. I I think yeah. Like, thoughts on, like, the separation between, like, marketing and sales?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'll go even farther. And I think this this dovetails well to your first question, which is the biggest change in sales in the last decade has been not just is sales and marketing different, but sales itself is not this catch all thing. Like, there are discrete functions inside of sales. Right?
Speaker 3:So really when you look at sales, there's essentially three, maybe four things it does. You know, it's lead generation and qualification. Right? It's customer acquisition, and then it's customer retention, especially in the SaaS and product service world. Right?
Speaker 3:Retention is this huge piece. And so those three skill sets are very different skill sets. And, yes, you can call a person a salesperson, but the hunter versus the farmer, we've known this for fifty years in sales, but yet you were responsible for doing your own lead gen, acquiring new customers, account management, all these things, and that's just not natural. Like, you know, I'm a hunter. I love to kill.
Speaker 3:I love going out and finding new business. It's what, you know, I get, you know, personal satisfaction from that. The account management is not something I'm, you know, is not my is not my forte. So, you know, you have some of the business says So sales is not just not lumped under marketing. It itself has discrete functions.
Speaker 3:And if
Nathan Barry:you think of it that way, if you
Speaker 3:think of it like that medium touch sales are perfect example, this goes back to your question about thinking about earlier in the piece. You need to figure out if you've got the kind of products you're gonna have to talk to people, then you're gonna have to figure out a pricing strategy that makes sense for you to actually invest in talking to people. Right? And that's the challenge. So you create a $19 a month SaaS solution, but you've gotta talk to people, you're in trouble.
Speaker 3:Right? That you are that is not a good business. And so this is why those that sales function has to be thought of earlier in in your, you know, product plan.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I think this is where it gets complicated for software as a service and specifically the bootstrap world where generally speaking, these solutions are not enterprise solutions that can justify paying a salary. So then you're faced with, look, if you're going the $19 route, that's much more pure marketing, especially if you don't have funding because you need numbers. But if you're going somewhere in between a $102,100, dollars 500, dollars 1,000 a month type product and you want to talk to larger customers, a lot of us in this community have bought into the predictable revenue, Aaron Ross version of things and like you described distinct functions. Now, when you come up against reality is where it gets difficult.
Jordan Gal:So, right, let's dig further into it and ask you, how does this get addressed? If I'm running a SaaS that sells for $250 a month, I can't hire three people. Which functions are the most important for which stage, which function should the founder do first, which function should be outsourced or someone brought in. So that's where it starts to get difficult because in theory that makes sense. But then in practice, you have these constraints that make it difficult.
Speaker 3:Sure. So a couple parts to that question. It's a great question. So the first thing is this. I'm I'm gonna feel like I'm everyone's uncle here.
Speaker 3:So uncle Damien is gonna give everyone some advice. Right? And here's my advice. I'm gonna give I'm gonna give advice on advice. Be very, very, very careful who you take advice from.
Speaker 3:Right? So this is not just the, hey. Don't take life advice from the 20 year old Internet marketing life coach. Right? I mean, so like that we we we can see through that pretty easily.
Speaker 3:Aaron Ross is a perfect example. Big fan of Aaron. Got a call with him later this month, you know, we travel the same circles. I love him. I love what he's done for the selling profession.
Speaker 3:I think he's done great things. But understand his niche is a very specific niche. If you haven't raised VC, that model will be very difficult to afford. Right? But also, this is the thing I love now.
Speaker 3:Almost all sales advice on the Internet now is by a couple of really good companies, SalesLoft, you know, all these kind of great companies, but they're sales enablement tools. So they're selling sales tools to salespeople. That's a different sales process than almost everybody else. Right? So if you're selling tools to engineers or operational people, or if you're selling unsexy software to non sales and marketers, you're not what works for them is not going to work for you.
Speaker 3:So, you know, that that's the big thing. Like, I think it's like cold email, all these things that, you know, worked so awesome for so long that just don't anymore because the advice is huge to a specific audience, but it's not being presented that way. It's not their fault, but they're not yeah. It's not being they're not being disingenuous. They're saying, hey.
Speaker 3:This works for us. You should try it. But it's this echo chamber of salespeople selling sales tools to salespeople. So, like, you have to be careful about advice. That's the first thing.
Speaker 3:The second thing you said is, which is great, is, yes. You can't afford those three people right away. So you have to figure out what's important. One of the things I talk about is is you have to be the first salesperson in your organization, which means you have to wear all three of those hats at first. Right?
Speaker 3:You need to figure out how you do lead gen. You need to figure out how do you acquire acquisition, and you need to figure out customer retention. Like, you have to do that. And I mean, like, you literally doing the emails, the phone calls, the discovery calls, the sales process. You know, sales is a process.
Speaker 3:It is something you want to document, something you wanna understand. And I don't you know, it doesn't have to be a 100 page SOP, you know, the more detailed, the better generally if you wanna hire a team. But at some at least a Trello board. I don't care. Like, you know, a Kanban style board or some sort of sense.
Speaker 3:Our first stage is, you know, you know, identifying our, you know, prospects. Our second stage is, you know, qualifying to see if they're a good fit, if we're a good fit, and defining those stages and understanding that first discovery call as I call it. You know, what are the six to 10 questions you need to ask on every one of those calls? And if you haven't had those calls, you won't know exactly what that is. So you have to do it first.
Speaker 3:So what I suggest for most founders is you outsource the functions that are the highest ROI. And so, you know, at first, you're doing all of it. You start making enough money or you're not. Then generally, I think the first thing you can start to outsource and when say outsource, I mean, even employees. Right?
Speaker 3:So if they can give this task to someone else. It's probably lead gen lead qualification. Alright? So one, you don't wanna trust selling to anybody else when you're, you know, at that those critical phases, $5 a month, $10, 15, whatever that number happens to be. Like, you need to be the person talking to the customer.
Speaker 3:The other thing is even if you're a product person, even if you're an engineer and you don't have twenty five years of sale experience, you're probably gonna be the best salesperson in your company. Because if you're selling tools, you're the founder. You're more passionate about it. You understand it better than anyone else. No one's gonna have that kind of drive you have to get customers on board.
Speaker 3:So you wanna own that piece at first. So I would outsource or so I would the first task I would look for someone else to do would be that lead gen piece. And the great news is these days that can be done a bunch of different ways. You don't have to actually hire someone in house. There are services that do that.
Speaker 3:There are things that cannot do that or there are tools you can use to kind of do some of that functionality at scale. But then when you actually look to bring your first person on that kind of business development rep, sales development rep, what you're gonna call them, that's a great function to bring internally because here's the other challenge I get founders is when you hire salespeople, you need to hire two. Because if you only hire one, you never know if if they're successful, great. But when they're not successful and they're not gonna be successful for a couple months, it takes time to ramp these things up. You'll never know whether that person's not successful because they're just not doing a good job, because your messaging is off, because your market is off, all these things.
Speaker 3:If you have two people, one's doing well, one's not, then you've got an HR problem. Then there's a personality issue, you know that. So the cardinal rule in sales is you kind of have to hire two people because that's the way you figure it out. So that makes it even more expensive. And so that early lead gen is a piece you can generally get someone on board, that's the cheapest salesperson you're gonna get on board.
Speaker 3:It's the function that you can measure activity levels matter. Right? So, like, how many touches are you doing a day? I mean, you can actually go down to a you know, if you're measuring account acquisition, so customer acquisition, that piece, that's measured the best way to measure that is revenue. How many customers are signing up, that's a real easy ROI.
Speaker 3:You're signing up x number of customers at y number of annual revenue. I'm paying z level of compensation, this makes sense. And also because that piece is harder, it's not as follow step one, step two, step three. I mean, are parts there are sequences to follow, but you actually want them to be responsible for a closing business. Right?
Speaker 3:But that first step is being, hey. This is what we expect you to do. This is the activity level we want you to have.
Brian Casel:So so when you're like, before we get into building the team and and recruiting and and evaluating salespeople, you know, most bootstrappers are still in this first year trying to figure out the sales process themselves. So like, what are the action really, like, what are the milestones that they should be looking to hit within the first six to twelve months of, okay, nail down the lead generation process. Nailed down the the sales call process and the follow-up process. Like, what are the things that that someone needs to figure out before they can kinda take the next step in in terms of growing the team?
Speaker 3:The way forward is very simple most of the time. You know? But simple isn't easy. Right? And the analogy I love to use, I overuse it, I'm a perfect example.
Speaker 3:You know? You know? I I I'm a little overweight. I know how to lose weight. You know?
Speaker 3:I eat better foods. I eat less of them, and I exercise more. Right? That's very simple for talking about lose weight. But to actually put that into a daily practice is very difficult.
Speaker 3:And business is the same way. You know, we make these things more complicated than they need to be sometimes because actually the simple part is actually difficult to do. So your your first year, you've launched a software tool or a SaaS or
Nathan Barry:a product type service, and
Speaker 3:you're updating your hustle up business. You know, the reality is is, you know, they talk product market fit a lot in the VC world. It's something that I think it's almost come we just kind of forget it. But it's a great terminology because it's really what it is. You have to figure out who the people are that have a big enough problem that are willing to part with money to you to solve that problem.
Speaker 3:Right? So figuring that out is, you know, is straightforward, but it's difficult. So, you know, that's the first piece is who what market are you gonna address and how are you gonna address them? And while that's looked at a lot in the product side of the business, it's it's really a marketing function. Right?
Speaker 3:I mean, it's really, you know, product place, those kind of great four p's we used to learn back in college, but, you know, the reality is is that you have to know who are you gonna serve, how are you gonna serve them, you know, and and and why are they going to give you their money. So you understand that's the first piece. Then it's going great. Now you understand how to do that, then the first thing you have to figure out is how do you get in front of more of them. Right?
Speaker 3:So how do you how do you figure out what that looks like? Like, you know, what that lead gen funnel should look like. Alright? And so that's the first step, is how do you get in front of more of them.
Brian Casel:I guess that's kind of figuring out, like, a mix of inbound and outbound activities that that work to to bring in leads.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely. And I I I would say kind of just reverse engineer it as well. Say, okay. Look.
Speaker 3:If, you know, if we're selling a, you know, $200 a month, you know, solution to someone and, you know, we want to sell x number per month. Okay. Great. Then what does that what does that look like? I you know, you wanna get, you know, quick and dirty, you know, draw some lines in the sand, but you need to figure out what that sales process is.
Nathan Barry:But the sales process, again, this goes back to kind of the Pictorano stuff,
Speaker 3:you know, the sales process can be pretty straightforward for if you're selling, you know, whether it's a product or service or a SaaS, it's pretty straightforward. Know, you're gonna get a disqualification call of some sort. You wanna do a demonstration of your product or a demonstration of the services that you deliver. Right? Possibly an evaluation of some sort.
Speaker 3:Right? And then some sort of closing event, some sort of sale event you wanna have. So having that roughly mapped out, then you gotta understand, okay. Well, let's just say you're selling a SaaS or a software tool. So it's okay.
Speaker 3:So it's discovery, demo, eval, sale. Alright? Four stages. Well, you know you're not gonna get a 100%, you know, flow through each one of those stages to the next stage. So you're reverse engineer it.
Speaker 3:Well, I know that someone who's qualified you know, of of every first call I do, one out of two of them goes to a demo. And I know that one out of two demos goes to a trial. And I know one out of three trials becomes a customer. Let's do the math. Three times two times two.
Speaker 3:Right?
Nathan Barry:I say, okay. I know I need to
Speaker 3:have 12 discovery calls now in order to get one new customer. And that's what I and so that you gotta figure out that. So that's my my acquisition funnel, what that looks like. Okay. Now how do I if I want five new customers, that means I need 60 discovery calls.
Speaker 3:Alright? So I need 60 leads a month. So how do I get 60 leads a month? Now you go, it's okay. Now what's my outbound mix?
Speaker 3:What's my inbound mix? And and and again, you know, you can belabor this too much. You get to overthink this way too much, but you need to understand that acquisition funnel, how many people should you be talking to? And also, a great way to sanity check it. Alright?
Speaker 3:So if you're saying, okay, if I wanna do five new sales a month for the software tool when you're just the founder first because it's a $200 tool, whatever that number happens to be, and you say, okay, that means I need to do 60 discovery calls. Well, that's, you know, 15 discovery calls a week. Right? That's three a day. That's, you know, that's a lot.
Speaker 3:Right? And so, like you said, you know, is that is that realistic while I'm also building the tool and all the rest of it? So now, okay, now maybe I need to focus that's that's my entry level SaaS, there's also a $500 and a thousand dollar one. Well, now I need to focus on what is that product what is that market like for the thousand dollar tool, and maybe they're the ones that should be talking to. And so and again, this goes back to the very first question of when should I think about this stuff?
Speaker 3:It's really that's very, very early because this is, you know, what this is again going back to the VC world giving advice, you know, a, you can't afford a huge team of, you know, BDRs and account execs and customer service reps and all that kind of stuff. Now that you cannot afford them, their business model is different. And this is the biggest thing that people know, they understand it, but they don't they know it, but they don't understand it. Like, you know, if you're venture backed, your business is raising money. Your business is not acquiring customers profitably.
Speaker 3:Right? And so if you're if you're a startup, if you're bootstrapped, your job is acquiring customers profitably. Right? And so you need to figure out what a profitable customer looks like to you. And that's the biggest kind of disconnect between most, you know, software sales advice out there and what actual founders need to do to acquire customers.
Brian Casel:Yeah. This was like the biggest kind of moment for me in in the past year or two making the transition from Restaurant Engine into Audience Ops was this idea, like, start with it doesn't necessarily have to be a productized service, but something with a higher price point to get easier, more profitable sales upfront to help fund your progress going forward. And then get into launching the software tools or the educational tools or and kinda growing from there. That that way, you know, the the cost to acquire a customer is is manageable. I wanna kinda focus in on the on the actual call process.
Brian Casel:Or the consultation, kinda leading someone through each of those stages. I know that you've talked Jordan, you and I have talked about, like, you know, holding a demo. You know, sales demo call. I wonder how that applies to, say, a productized service where there's, you know, no actual software to demo. You're kinda just, you know, talking through a solution.
Brian Casel:But the other question related to this is like, I mean, what I've been doing at Audience Ops is we typically have an inbound consultation comes through and we just have one consultation call. Occasionally we'll have a follow-up call but most of the follow-up happens over email, you know, and and the proposal. Does it is is the best practice to separate it into into multiple calls? And yeah. So I like, any any thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I say yes. So I mean, look. All businesses are different. You know?
Speaker 3:Obviously, you know, if you can get people to pay you, you know, off of one call versus two, it makes more sense to do one. However, here's what I've found working with, you know, dozens of product service companies in the last couple years is that, you know, breaking off the discovery call and that kind of, you know, demo if you're doing a trial. But if it's a product service, call it a presentation where you know, presenting, hey. Here's how we do what we do. So you're still demonstrating your service.
Speaker 3:You're just not doing it through a fancy, you know, tool online. You're just kinda doing it. I walked through a slide deck is what I kinda walked through. Right? But that's the second call.
Speaker 3:So here's why I like separating it. Again, it's gonna depend on your price points and a bunch of other things in your market. And, you know, the biggest thing it really depends on is outbound versus inbound too. Like, an inbound lead is predominantly more likely to say yes to you than an outbound lead. Right?
Speaker 3:Because they found you, they have some understanding of you, they spend an hour on your website, they might have come through to some of your authority or expertise. And so you're farther along in that of know, like, trust equation.
Brian Casel:Actually, I I never really thought of it that way. So inbound leads because I I think currently with our company, most of the leads are inbound. We we've done some outbound, and and we've found that it is a longer, more drawn out sales process for sure. But I guess the inbound leads, it it makes more sense to to to do like a one call and and some email follow-up, whereas the outbound, it it should really be structured into in like multiple calls.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the reason why I like a multiple call for an outbound lead is is the fact that it's them showing up for a call is a great buying signal. Right? And so not having to check the worst about being in sales is that you feel like a creepy stalker sometimes. Right?
Speaker 3:You find you're you're you're you're chasing people down like email or phone calls or whatever. And it's it's just not a great position to be be in, like emotionally and all the rest of it. So, you know, looking for people's buying intent is important. And if someone's not willing to show up for a second call and you're asking for a thousand, 2,000, $3,000 a month, likelihood they're gonna give you thousands of dollars since they're not gonna give you fifteen minutes of their time is very, very low. Right?
Speaker 3:So I think that's a great test for like a a a non very warm lead because, you know, the first part in you I thought this kind of this process I have people follow. The first part is kind of define and differentiate. Right? So you need to define, you know, who your target market is and what you do and differentiate yourself from other people. And that second step is all about expertise and authority.
Speaker 3:Right? Like, How do you demonstrate your authority in your niche and the product you serve? And if you get that part right, people like buying from experts. People like buying from people with celebrity in a Right? And so, like, there's you if you're getting inbound stuff, that's they they tick that box most of the time.
Speaker 3:Whereas when you're going outbound, sure, they probably check out your website right after you've reached out to them, but they're not it's it's generally nowhere near as warm that lead. So what you wanna do is say, okay, how do I get them to show up and and and make sure that this is gonna follow through without me becoming, you know, creepy stalker guy or girl. And generally, best way to do that is is to kind of separate it out to to to meetings. Now again, it depends. Right?
Speaker 3:So if you can get a majority of people to say yes on a one meeting, shoot, do one meeting. Right? Just focus on getting as many of those one meetings as you can. But in my experience, if you're selling to any kind of complex sales, so if you're selling software into any kind of enterprise and remember the enterprise is not just the size of the organization you're selling to, it's the complexity of their buying process. Right?
Speaker 3:So when you're selling a software out to a bigger company, or even sometimes smaller companies, have an enterprise buying process. Their buying process is collaborative internally. Right? So they have multiple people that are involved in a decision. They have multiple people that are affected by the decision.
Speaker 3:They have multiple people that want their input into that decision. So that complexity of sale, you, you know, adding steps to your sales process is a good thing in a complex sale. Now if you're selling a very straightforward, you know, hey, we solve this problem for you and we do it this way, then you can generally get by, you know, audience ops, for example. Now, if and then that lead for audience ops, I'm sure, you know, you do one call, you follow-up with a proposal, you follow-up with couple emails, answer there are couple of questions, and that's probably good for the vast majority of your inbound leads. Right?
Speaker 3:But as you go out, right, I'm I'm I would suggest that that second call where because here's what you're doing on that second call. The second call is, hey. Here's what we're gonna do for you. But more importantly, it's instead of being able to show them, you know, oh, ah, features of the software, what you're doing is you're showing them testimonials and case studies of other customers you've helped. Right?
Speaker 3:So you're getting your proof in your customer success, and that's how you're kind of you're helping them move along that know, like, and trust kind of paradigm.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's it's really interesting. And, actually, like, I I've literally had outbound leads, somebody who has responded to our outbound outreach, I got on a call and they literally said, well, hey, it all sounds great, they said this to me, but I don't know You know? Like, I I don't I don't totally feel comfortable with this yet. And and then it took know?
Brian Casel:So I I was like, well, check out her blog and check out her email course and all this stuff and, like, and these sample articles and everything. You know, but it's it's true. Like, there's that it that that have made sense to do, a multiple, you know, multiple call Yeah. Totally
Speaker 3:agree. Because the first thing I talk about in that second call so that first call is that discovery, that qualification call. And one thing I also wanna talk about here is that even with inbound, why I kind of like separating the discovery call and the demo call, separating them out as two separate instances is one thing I tell a lot of founders is you don't owe a demo to anyone. Alright? You don't owe a demo to anyone.
Speaker 3:And we rush to demo sometimes, especially in the software world, Cause we're so happy and proud of our tool and we're convinced that it's going to solve their problems, don't want to see it. The problem is you're going to spend time demoing tools to people that aren't qualified to buy. And that's time that we'd be better off actually doing more discovery calls or finding people that actually are are qualified to buy. So you're not you don't owe them anything is the first thing. So I think I like separating it there.
Speaker 3:The second thing is if you want to but that's a perfect thing. Right? You know, I love the the honesty of I don't know who you are. Right? I I got an email from some guy, showed up for a phone call, now you ask me for thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3:Right? So, like, you know, that's you think of it that way. Right? All interest is self interest. You put yourself in your in that guy's shoes, he's like, wow.
Speaker 3:It makes sense. I could be some Zimbabwe guy. Right? So I mean, it's you know, it it totally that that makes sense. And so the way you you address that is on that second call, on that demo call, specifically for your business, my first slide to them is I just recap our last meeting and remind them of the problems they have in their business.
Speaker 3:Alright? The last time we talked, you told me this, this, and this. I put some thought into it, and this means that you've got this problem, this problem, this problem. And so what's happening is you're showing them some insight into their business. You're showing them that you paid attention to what they said.
Speaker 3:All these psychological triggers you're signing up with them, oh, no. He actually, you know, he listens to me. Right? And he actually remembered what I said. You know, oh my god.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That is a problem for me. And and then the focus switches away from I don't know if you are to, okay. Yeah. I have these problems.
Speaker 3:Can you help me solve them?
Jordan Gal:It it all gels exactly with my, like, my experience. It sounds like yours too, Brian. You know, when an inbound lead comes in, it's just easier. It's just like they walked up to you at the bar and asked for your phone number. All you have to do is give them the phone But the outbound I think is the harder part, but also I think the outbound is almost like the bigger, it's the bigger challenge with bigger potential upside, right?
Jordan Gal:If the inbound, obviously we're all going to work on the inbound, we're going to do marketing, we're going to do content, we're going to bring up our celebrity and that kind of rolls on its own after a while. But the outbound is the one that you have control over that you can say, I'm going to spend more money this month on outbound and bring in more money, but that only works if if your process works.
Speaker 3:That's a great point. And and, you know, going back to what we this is why I love b to b. The reason why I'm in b to b is is that b to c, you can't really do outbound for b to c. Right? I mean, you know, A, you can't cold email the B2C because it's illegal.
Speaker 3:Right? You can't explain that. It has to be a business to business transaction. But even just, you know, realistically, B2C, the price points are lower generally. It's all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:You kind of need the inbound process. You've got to have it's almost all, you know, knowability factor. Where B2B is so, you know, it's amazing because you're exactly right. The opportunity is so much better for you. The vast majority of here's probably inbound.
Speaker 3:Inbound's great, you know, but get as big as you can, you know, pump the engines, pour gasoline on a fire. Absolutely. The challenge of inbound is this, is that means the person you're talking to already knows they have a problem and is looking for a solution. Right? In the b to b world, that is the minority of people.
Speaker 3:Right? Right. So you you you have to find customers that don't know they've got a problem, help them realize it. Or customers that have a problem, but don't know there's a solution to it or aren't actively looking for a solution. Right?
Speaker 3:That's the hugest part of the market. So, yes, that's going to take longer. It's harder to tackle. You know, it's all those things, but again, comes back to if it was easy, everyone would do it, and if everyone was doing it, you know, it wouldn't be as effective. So, it is why it's worth it to spend that time to get that outbound process right.
Speaker 3:But again, this goes back to the original part of this is why you've got to think about the stuff earlier in the piece of you need to figure out whether you're ever going be an outbound company or Right? And if you're $19 a month, you're probably never if you're buffer, you're never gonna be an outbound company. Right? You know? And and again, this goes back to listening to who you get advice from.
Speaker 3:You know? Nine 99% of people are not Slack. Okay? So don't think that just because Slack doesn't have a sales team that you don't have to have a sales team. Right?
Speaker 3:Or don't think that, you know, just because Slack can make a billion dollars selling a, you know, $5 a month solution, you can too. Right? You're not Google. Right? You're not you're not these companies.
Speaker 3:So, you know, don't, you know, be careful of, you know, obviously, if you want to try and test things, sure. And, you know, look at what the industry giants are doing. Absolutely. But remember, that's not who you are. And so you need to figure out what works for you.
Speaker 3:And, you know, it's it's why if you kind of think about this earlier while you're doing business, it actually makes more sense because that's when you have the most opportunity. When you're first doing your product, when you're first putting your product together, you've got your first release out there, your first you're early in your kind of release pattern of your software or your service. Like, early customer calls, you know, they're sales calls, but they're really kind of customer development calls. They're also product development calls. Right?
Speaker 3:You're trying to especially in productized services. Like, you're constantly figuring out, you know, what do people see value in my productized service? You know, what can I charge for that? Where would they perceive more value? How can I add more value?
Speaker 3:How can I add more price? You know, all those kind of things. And you're not gonna figure that out sitting down on a spreadsheet. You're figure that out talking to people that actually are gonna, you know, vote with their wallet, not with their, you know, their attention online.
Brian Casel:Absolutely. So when you're on the the call itself, are there any kind of tips, guidelines that or maybe things that that you do when you conduct these calls? Like, specific questions that you try to hit on or a sequence or, like, a direction that you try to go in and, like, how how do you kind of approach that?
Speaker 3:Yes. So that's a great question. So, you know, this is a big mistake people make on discovery calls. So, okay. Oh, they get convinced.
Speaker 3:Okay. I have to do this qualification. I'm gonna do it. Here's my 12 questions I need to ask, and they just kinda go into these questions. Well, going back to your guy who I don't know who you are.
Speaker 3:Right? Yeah. The likelihood that someone's gonna when I do mine, you know, I ask people what their revenue is, what their current monthly revenue is, what their growth is year on year, you know, kind of what their profit is from that. I I ask some very specific, you know, financial questions about their business, especially if they're an outbound lead. If that was my first couple of if my first second question was about money, they're not gonna tell me that.
Speaker 3:They're not gonna give me that answer. Right? They're gonna say I don't release that as a private company. I have to tell you whatever. So you have to how you ask the questions is more important than the question itself.
Speaker 3:So the general way to start that is this. Your first couple questions need to show that you aren't just asking questions from a spreadsheet. Alright? If all you needed was data points, you could put a web form up and just ask them a questionnaire on the web. Alright?
Speaker 3:So if you actually if these are important questions, the best way to do that is to ease them in. And the best way to ease them in is to do two things. One is to talk about them. Alright? Which seems pretty simple and straightforward.
Speaker 3:But two is how you do it. So those first two my first question is always the same. So when I when I call someone, this is the if I say it to all my founders, which is when you ask that first question, what you are doing at first is you're building rapport by what questions you ask and how you ask them. So instead of question one being, hey, Brian, you know, how'd you get the idea for audience ops? Or how long has audience ops been in business?
Speaker 3:Instead, I spend five whole minutes, you know, before our calls in call prep, and it's the simplest thing in world. I go to your website, I check your about page, you go to LinkedIn, I do some of things, and I ask the question this way, hey, see Audience Hops has been around for about two years. Right? And prior to that, you were doing restaurant engine. Right?
Speaker 3:How'd you get the idea for Audience Hops? That question is just so much more powerful because I've shown you, you're worth enough of my time that I actually wouldn't get a little research on my own. I figured out some of the answers to my question without having to ask you. Alright? And so then I know, question two is is to carry on from that depending on, you know, what your market is and what you're selling.
Speaker 3:But again, what I wanna know the second question is, I wanna know, you know, how does the business operate? Like, you know,
Nathan Barry:what do you kind of
Speaker 3:you know, is it is it just you? Is it a team? You know, like, how does that work? Then again, how do people win your business is not a good question. A better question is, you know, checking out your about page.
Speaker 3:Looks like there's about three of you right now. You know? Do you have contractors or something like that? And the answer is almost always yes. So again, how I've asked the question is I've taken just the modicum of effort to try to to do it.
Speaker 3:But it absolutely opens people up. Right? People say, hey. This person respects me. They respect my time.
Speaker 3:They've done a little research about the company. They're not showing up blind. Everyone loves to talk about their business, and all those wonderful things happen. And now when I get to question four, which is like, oh, fantastic. So, you know, what is your monthly revenue right now?
Speaker 3:You know? And what's that kind of growth year on year? They're much more likely to give me that answer. Or whatever that magic answer you need to go. It's like, hey, what's the problem with this process?
Speaker 3:Or what's your issue? When you get to the pain problems, you get those pain questions, pain questions, they evoke pain. No one wants to answer them. So the way you get them to answer them is to kind of lower their guard because you've asked those first couple questions in a very positive way, which shows you've taken you respect them in their time. And that's the biggest differences.
Speaker 3:And, like, literally, I have these questions written down in in a Google Doc, and I go through them with every customer I talk to, what I suggest my customers my founders do. And, you know, it's it's just the simplest rewording. And this is the power and magic of sales is that, you know, we automate all these things, and I love automation, and I love I'm a self prescribed SaaS hole. I love playing with software tools. Love to automate as much as possible, but at the end of the day, B2B, B2C, don't care.
Speaker 3:It's human to human at the end of the day. And understanding how people react, you know, asking getting the same data point, but asking it four different ways will give you four different responses to that data point. And so that's the part. It takes time and effort and energy. And just think about it, and, you know, it's not that difficult.
Speaker 3:It's golden rule stuff. Right? How would you want someone to speak with you? You know? What what do you hate?
Speaker 3:Know? I'll tell you what I hate. I hate showing up for a demo when I've gotta go through a demo of some software tool that I'm thinking about buying. And the first fifteen minutes are the guy showing me a slide deck about how much money they've raised. You know?
Speaker 3:And what awards they've won. All all that all that shit that Donald care about has nothing to do with me. Right? It's all and so what happens is I don't care how good the rest of that call is. They've lost me.
Speaker 3:I'm on the back foot now. Right? And so, like, you have to start strong. And the way to start strong is make it all about them, you know, put yourself in their shoes, treat them like someone, you know, you know, some cliches on sales that are that are actually pretty awesome. You know?
Speaker 3:And one of them is, you don't want be a vendor, you want to be a trusted advisor. Right? And the way you become a trusted advisor more than a vendor is, is you actually give a shit about the people you're talking to. Right? You actually care about the results they're going to get by using your service or tool.
Speaker 3:And you actually let them know, and you let them know, hey, I care about those results you're gonna get. Right? No one's gonna believe you say that. But you let them know because of the way you've treated them, the way you ask them to, you know, you again, respect. It's it's it's it seems so simple.
Speaker 3:It seems so easy to do. It's amazing how little people actually take the time to be respectful on these calls and actually take some time and effort and and figure this out. And, you know, we're all connected. Our inner our industries, when you're serving an industry, we know I mean, they're tiny. I don't care how big the market opportunity is.
Speaker 3:You know? We all know each other. Right? And if we don't know each other, we're one or two steps away from each other. There's always if you spend a little bit of time, there's always a way to warm these calls up.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and, you know, I think that actually goes to, like, a fundamental question when you're choosing which business to get into or or which market to to get into. I mean, if you can't empathize with your target customers and really step into their shoes and genuinely see it from their perspective, you know, I think it's just gonna be an uphill battle.
Speaker 3:It is. And it's also amazing. So I look at like Laura Roeder, right, at, at Edgar. Right? And so she's, you know, had this runaway success with her social media tool.
Speaker 3:But the reason why she had runaway success so quickly was because she's serving the same audience she served for seven and a half years. Right? So Edgar might be 12 old, 18 old, 24 old, whatever it is. But the reality is she's serving the same people and actually empathizes with them because they are her. Right?
Speaker 3:Eight years ago when she got into info products, she was stretching her own itch. Right? And talking to other versions of herself. Right? And then all she's done in
Nathan Barry:the last seven and a
Speaker 3:half years continue to serve that audience and just find new ways to do it. This goes back to what you're saying earlier, Brian. I agree. I think consulting, you know, products, you know, all these things are great ways to start and then figure out what that software tool looks like. But the most important thing is who's the audience you serve and, yeah, how you're gonna serve them can change, but why are you gonna serve them?
Speaker 3:Do give a shit about them? Is are you just, hey, the insurance industry has a lot of money. I'm gonna get I'm gonna serve the insurance industry. That's not a good long term plan for success. Alright?
Brian Casel:Yep. So I just wanted to spend, like, the last couple of minutes here, talking about that next phase. So I like, earlier, it's like when you're in that first year, what are those, like, milestones that you wanna hit when you're kind of a solo founder, bootstrapping your way through through the sales process? Alright. So you've been at it
Speaker 3:for a
Brian Casel:year. You've cash flow, you've got clients, you've got you've got sales coming in. But you've been doing it all yourself. So now, obviously, the next step is to start growing the sales team and removing yourself from sales. This is actually where I find myself right now.
Brian Casel:I'm in the process of training the first sales guy in Audience Ops. And it's just that the pain point for the founder at this stage is I've got a lot of other things that I need to be working on and pushing forward. And my calendar just has all these sales calls on it that I need to get off my personal calendar. I mean, that's how I view. But obviously sales need to need to keep happening.
Brian Casel:So what are the first steps? But really, like, what are the milestones and and, like, to look ahead to try to get over that hump for a foundation?
Speaker 3:Sure. So a couple of things. The first thing I'll say is this is you need to own something here, which is yes, you know, ninety days after you bring your salesperson on board, your calendar will be less full of sales calls, and then you're only getting involved in ones that really need you or the higher end deals. But for that first ninety days, your workload is going to increase, not decrease. Right?
Speaker 3:And so this is the this is the biggest mistake founders make is, oh, I got a sales guy. Great. He's all his now. Right? So, like, if you don't onboard that person, if you don't spend a lot of time and energy with them, right, you're going to fail.
Speaker 3:They're going to fail. You're going to fail. You're gonna look up three, four, six months later and you're going say, okay, well, that was the failure. And you're going make all kinds of bad decisions because of that. Oh, I can't just hire you can't hire salespeople in this business model or I can't do this or what are the kind things.
Speaker 3:When really it was is, you know, you wouldn't treat almost anyone else like that, and it's funny, you know, I think it's this kind of cultural, you know, we're not we don't love salespeople, and there's all these weird things we can do to salespeople. We're allowed to hang up on them. We're allowed to do these things that we wouldn't do to other people. Right? And so, it's funny when we bring employees on, treat them very similarly.
Speaker 3:You know, if we brought you know, you brought a developer the first time you you know, start bringing developers into your business, you know, now are you just gonna say, okay, great. You know, go to your home. Just figure it out. Just here you go. You know, there's the tool online.
Speaker 3:Just go figure it out. You would never do that, right? And so, but yeah, with sales, that's what we do. And so, you have to understand that for that first nine days, your workload is gonna be considerably more than what it is before you bring that person on. But that's good.
Speaker 3:Because what you're looking for now is, you know, you talk about kind of how do I know it's time to start thinking about that. Here's how I would say no. When you start having an idea of the metrics of the sales process, then it's time to start thinking about bringing other people to the business. So, you know, the simple metrics like, you know, what is you know, go to that reverse engineering of how many discovery calls do I need to do to be a real deal. Right?
Speaker 3:What is the average revenue per per deal? Right? With all those kind of things, when you start when those things when those metrics start to make themselves clear to you and you've got enough of a sample set that that, you know, that you feel confident that it's not just, you know, aberrations because you have three customers, then it's time to start thinking, okay, great. Because now you look at the ROI of bringing some onboard, like what they're gonna cost you. But also, you need, you know, you need a guide.
Speaker 3:Right? You need to say, okay. Well, you know, historically, you know, it's been one out of 12. How do we get that to one out of 10? And then how do we get that to one out of eight?
Speaker 3:Or whatever those numbers have to be. Like, you need that road map of understanding what works, what people actually do pay for. But also, how do you how do you increase that? Like, how do you make it better? Because that's how we're gonna measure those first three months of your salesperson you bring on board because it's not gonna be revenue.
Speaker 3:You know? Because they're just they're not gonna, you know, hit the ground running and all that kind of nonsense. It's just not gonna happen. They've they've got to learn you. They've to learn the product.
Speaker 3:They've to learn the process. They've to learn you know, they've got answer questions. I mean, they're babies. Know? Funny we're talking before this.
Speaker 3:We were all expecting kids here pretty soon. You know? And it's it's my first, both of already have them, but even I know that, you know, those first couple months of a baby's life, like, they're relying on you to live. Right? I mean, like, that that attention you have to give them is, like, if they don't get that and it's the exact same with a new employee.
Speaker 3:Right? Like, that first ninety days will set the tone for their entire career with you. Right? How you treat them and how you how much time and energy you devote to them in that first ninety days will will set the tone. It will say and I'm not saying set the tone like they expect that level of access forever, but it will set the tone of how they're gonna be successful or not.
Speaker 3:Right? Are you giving them enough of a runway?
Brian Casel:So that's a I I really like that that analogy. And so I guess the same question, like, in terms of milestones for the new hire, like, what what should we look to see them hit in in order to feel comfortable, you know, unleashing them on live leads and and and kind of phasing them in into the operation?
Speaker 3:Sure. This is gonna depend a little bit on the complexity of what you're selling and who you're selling into. Right? But, you know, for the majority of process services or, you know, non very large enterprise type sales processes, you know, they they kind of the hard and fast rule, and it's just a, you know, it's just a back of the envelope number. It's six months to get fully ramped up.
Speaker 3:Right? It takes six months for an employee to get fully ramped up in in sales. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't see success metrics or criteria along the way. So, you know, I think you can kind of break it down to thirty, sixty, ninety day goals. Right?
Speaker 3:And that thirty day goal should be something like, you know, it should be pretty internal. Like at the end of the thirty days, what I would like to see from a new sales hire is that they can perform the functions I want them to perform, which in my world means they can give me a demo of the tool, they can walk me through a presentation of the solution we desire. Right? They can clearly articulate who we are, what we do, how we do it, how we're different. So they can they understand because essentially product knowledge and process knowledge is what I want them to have by the end that first thirty days.
Speaker 3:Right? That doesn't mean they're not gonna out there. They're gonna be learning that by doing too. Right? So it's not just, hey, they're sitting in a classroom for thirty days.
Speaker 3:You know? But but that's what I want them to have the end of thirty days. Because, you know, you're going to find some people that, you know, that look great in the interview process, look great in the recruiting process, and for whatever reason, just never grok you. They just never get it. They just never kind of catch on to kind of what matters.
Speaker 3:And the earlier you figure it out, the earlier you can, move away from a bad hire is very important too. So you want to have understanding that they okay, look, I've got confidence that they understand us, they understand the market, they understand how to get out there. And that second sixty days is activity. Right? So you've figured out this is the kind of activity level I expect.
Speaker 3:If you're looking at someone who's in lead gen, it's, you know, the word touches is the one I like to use a lot. Right? What does that look like? So, you know, we and depending on what your cadence is and all this kind work that you're out. And again, need to have this 80% done.
Speaker 3:You've done it yourself, but then that 20%, you want to refine the process. You want it to be better. Right? So you're testing. Okay.
Speaker 3:Hey. We're doing a four email sequence, and now we're gonna do a two email sequence, plus we're gonna do personalized emails. Right? We're gonna add cold calling. We're gonna add webinars.
Speaker 3:We're gonna all these kind of things in, and you go Tesla stuff. But more importantly, you wanna see what their activity levels are. Right? This is my expectation for you. I want a 100 touches a day, whether that's 50 calls, 50 emails, or whatever.
Speaker 3:You figure that out. And you got second sixty days, you measure them on activity. Right? And then that third thirty days, that nine that sixty to ninety days, what you measure them on is you wanna start seeing the results you expect. So if your expectation is they're setting 10 discovery calls a week and they're setting two, you need to figure out why.
Speaker 3:Depending on how early you've brought this person on board, if you've done this yourself for a year, right, and you've been able to, you know, do this, and the biggest issue you're gonna have is and so Brian told me specifically, when you bring the sales guy on board, you know, the metrics that you're doing now on inbound versus outbound are are gonna be very different. Right? Like, not only is the outbound sales process longer, like, your success rate is is is smaller as well. Right? So, you know, getting that right messaging, that right cadence figured out with him to see what works in outbound and what kind of what active levels he can have is something you're gonna have to be very cognizant of and very focused on and figure it out so you get to a point they're both successful.
Speaker 3:But once you get to that point, it's simple. And it's, hey. Our expectation is x. Alright? You're at 80% of x or you're at a 140% of x, whatever.
Speaker 3:But this is the expectation of x. And the biggest thing is if you're if you need to figure out what that one metric that matters is, and then comp them that way. Right? So, you know, you shouldn't be comping your lead gen people on revenue. You should be comping them on whatever that X is for you.
Speaker 3:So discovery calls or successful demonstrations or however whatever that whatever the highest, you know, piece of performance you're gonna give to them, whatever that is, then that's how you comp, that's how you measure their success, and that's how you pay them. Right? The same way you don't you don't measure you don't pay a salesperson based on pipeline they add. Right? You pay them on deals they close.
Speaker 3:Right? If their if their highest function is actually closing deals. Right? A customer success person, you don't measure them on deals closed, you measure all of them on retention revenue, right, or upsell revenue or things they have control of. So you only measure them with what they have control of, but you want to make sure that your compensation ties into whatever they have control of.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I like that highest function mindset where if you're hiring someone to to schedule demos, then that's what they should become not what the demo turns into, if it turns into a client or not or how much revenue it turns into, but actually what what their goal should be, what what you want them to perform based on.
Speaker 3:And that's it. And the great thing about sales is and why I early in my career, why I gravitated towards it. You know, I started off on the engineering side, but I gravitated towards sales was there was no politics. Mean, there's politics to customer, there's no internal politics. There's some internal politics, but it's easy.
Speaker 3:There's the leaderboard. It's really easy for you to manage or measure my success or not. And so, people that are drawn to this field, lot of time that driving factor is, whether it's because they're competitive, whether it's because they want to know their place in life, whatever it happens to be, each personal motivation can be little different, but almost all of us are drawn to the fact that we like the fact that it's not what my relation with my boss is, it's how good am I at my job. And how good am I at my job is not some esoteric thing. It's something that can be measured and it can be weighed.
Speaker 3:And because of that, that's exactly it. So whatever that thing is that gets measured and weighed, how you want to comp me, that's how you want to measure me, that's the way you want to talk about my success or not. So of course, sometimes you've got to give them the soft skills too. Hey, you can't be rude to everybody else in the office and you hear some stuff you need to learn. But at the end of the day, if they are successful at that one thing, that highest function that matters, that's that's the thing you wanna focus on for them.
Brian Casel:Awesome. Well, well, Damian, I mean, ton of value here as always, but, you know, I I know that the audience is gonna get, you know, just gem after gem of this one. So you guys wanna go back and listen to this one twice probably. Thank you so much for for coming on here, Damian. Across oceans, across time zones.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Brian Casel:Awesome. So where can folks find you? What what are you what are you up to these days? What what's happening on your website?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So salesability.co. It's how it sounds, salesability.co. And you can always I like emails from listeners too. So damionsalesability.co.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So just helping b to b software service and SaaS founders you know, figure out that important thing. Right? Figure out that how to get from, hey. I've built a good product.
Speaker 3:I've built a kick ass service. How do I get in front of more people? Right? How do I get more of the people to say yes to me? And then how do I build on that team so I don't have to be the one doing this all the time?
Jordan Gal:Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Damian.
Speaker 3:No worries, guys.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Thanks, Damian. Catch up soon.
![[105] Crafting Your Sales Process w/ Damian Thompson](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)