Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: A confused mind never buys. They're confused about what they're going to get, when they're going to get it. Is now the right time? Can they afford it? If there's confusion around that they typically, you know, will defer the decision, not make a decision at all or just say no.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: If I got on a meeting with you and I found out a robo SDR call me, I would be pretty offended personally. Listen to your calls, go back to the tape. The game tape is going to give you all your answers. I believe that there are only three sales objections. This going to work? Is now the right time and can I afford this?
[00:00:35] Speaker C: Yo, Mike check. What's up everybody? You're listening to the Street Pricing podcast, the only show where proven SaaS leaders share their mindset and mistakes in pricing so we can all stop guessing and start growing. Enjoy, subscribe and tell a friend. Now let's break it down with your host and sought after slayer of bad pricing, Marcos Rivera.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: What's up and welcome to the Street Pricing podcast. I'm Marcos Rivera, author, founder and CEO of Pricing IO. And today we have Stephen Steers. He's the president of Steers Consulting Group, Sales maestro. We're going to have a lot of fun unpacking sales today. Steven, welcome to the show.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Marco, it's great to be here with you today.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Oh, man. Awesome to have you. I want you to do me a quick favor for our audience. Tell us a little bit about you and what you do.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: All right, so I work with services businesses, software companies, to help founders fire themselves from sales and increase conversion rates. So we're in a weird time with the economy some. Something like that. And you have less leads. I help you make more from those very same leads that you have.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: That's phenomenal. Fire myself from sales, something that my team probably desperately wants me to do. Okay, I gotta, I gotta know a little bit more about it. So how do you get people to fire themselves, man?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Well, it really comes down to I work with SMBs, right? So companies between 2 and maybe $30 million, depending on how you want to measure it. And one of the most common things I see in businesses of all sizes, but especially theirs, they don't really have much of a process that they work. Some of those businesses are still founder led and the founder knows every in and out of the business and they deploy that in all of the contexts. But when they hire someone in, they don't have a playbook to teach the person on how it's actually supposed to work. So one of the things that I do with folks is I sit with the founder. I go through all the assets, I help them build the assets they need so that when it comes time and you're ready to hire a salesperson, you can hire them into a system that works, that's measurable, and if something does break, which it invariably does, you know exactly where to go to check out the constraint and then update, train, or move your team forward.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. I think there's some founders probably listening right now thinking like, ooh, let me lean in. How do I get away from being in the day to day sales and maybe, you know, free up some more time to work on my business and do other things? I'm going to double click on that today. But before we jump in, are you ready to get street with me?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Let's get street, man. I love it.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Let's do this, man. So a quick roadmap for the audience here. This podcast is based on the book Street Pricing. And so I break it up into these three sections. The first one is Rewind, which is let's hear a story. Could be a success, a struggle. And for you, I'm thinking this could be something more sales oriented. You know, maybe how founder was struggling or did really wonderful with your framework. I want to hear a lot about that. The second thing is now we're going to move from rewind to play. Play is what's working today. So I want to unpack the ways you're able to help these entrepreneurs or founders fire themselves from sales and really increase those conversions, because that is top of mind right now. So we're going to get into that and then finally fast forward. So as the world keeps changing, which is changing crazy fast speed, I want to know, how do you, how do you see this sales and changing as. As things evolve, you know, with tech and AI and just all sorts of crazy, crazy economy things, whatever. So we're going to get into that piece at the end. Does that sound okay?
[00:03:42] Speaker B: That sounds awesome. It's going to be a lot of knowledge bombs, gems and fun conversation with you today, Marcos. I'm looking forward to it.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: I cannot wait. I'm going to also listen, pricing and sales are. They're hand in hand, you know, linked arm in army. We're going to get into a little bit of how they intersect as well. So I'm eager to jump in and sink my teeth in. So why don't you start us off with a quick story?
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Well, I think one of the things that pops up. I was running sales at a podcasting company. We would book people on podcast tours. And this was run by a good friend of mine. And they had a kind of standard pricing way that they would go about it, but they would sell the entire package of podcasts upfront. We were noticing people were really interested, but there was a lot of friction. And, and so they didn't want to spend all of this money upfront because they weren't going to get their bookings done as quickly. So what we did is we re established it and said, hey, it's get started for $1,000, right? You can just get started today. Here's how we do this. And then you could pay on a pay per success model. And once we flip that over, we saw conversions jump up. I think we tripled their revenue that year by making that small change. So when I think about pricing, one of my favorite things about it is it's really packaging and positioning an offer. And in a way that makes it like, yeah, of course I can do that today. And then the rest of it comes into how you manage that relationship to make sure, obviously that they're paying you, they're getting what they paid for and more. But I think that positioning, that art side of, hey, let's make this easier for you to deal with is what can really move the needle in a lot of businesses with pricing.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: No, man, listen, you're. You're speaking my language in a lot of ways right now.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Here's.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: Here's something I want to. I want to really hone in on because you brought up when you changed that offer mix. I call it the offer mix. What's the packaging? I hate? How do you get somebody into this thing? From my point of view, it's really something that reducing friction is where I think most founders and most SMB folks, anybody in sales really, really forgets to evaluate how much friction is in the deal. By friction, I mean they. There's something preventing them from saying yes. And the way I look at it is it's not always about value. Here's the mistake, right? Value based pricing. Oh, it has high value. They should just buy it, right? Well, no, hang on a second. Right. Think about how much effort it takes to get to that value. Think about how much risk there is in getting to that value. Think about how much time it takes to get to that value. So there's all these other elements about how they get to value is really important in the sales. And if you can, sure. If you have something valuable, they'll you know, you think that you're just going to buy, think again. The idea is they. It needs to be tangible enough for them to want to take that step. And by you repackaging, by making that thousand bucks and then making a success base, you just took away all the risk of, well, is this going to work? How long is this going to take? And the effort?
[00:06:12] Speaker B: And.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: And you now made it a lot easier for them to take that first bite and chew. And I think that's a big. A big one you just did.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think when you make it a kind of success model, it's like we're in business together, so I'm meeting you with a certain risk as well, technically, which kind of puts us on an equal footing. It's like, hey, you pay this down payment so we can get everything started, but we're working together to make sure you're successful. Like, I've been at a lot of conferences the past few weeks, and I've been thinking about this where I call something the. To frame this as an anecdote. I say it's a one push up moment. If I just met you for the first time ever at a conference, Marcos, and I rolled up on you, and I said, hey, can you do a hundred pushups? Now, no matter what shape you're in, you're probably like, who the heck is this guy? What the heck is going on? And you'd probably like, yeah, maybe. And you probably just go away from me, or you probably just think it's very weird. But if I instead went up to you and I was like, hey, Marcos, I really like your hat. I'm curious, random question. Can you do a pushup? And you'd probably laugh, and you might even do one. Why that reference? A lot of folks, especially in sales and even with the way that people price their items, they're asking people to do a hundred pushups right away. But if I get you to do one pushup, it's much easier for me to ask you to do one second one, a third one, a tenth one, and then eventually get up to a hundred, because we've stacked up the trust on the interaction. And so, same thing with the pricing or packaging and offer. You want to put it in a way that makes people say, yep, I'm willing to put some. Some cash on the table to make this happen. Because the way you've packaged it means we're going to be in business and we're building trust along the entire way.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: I think that's super powerful. I think One thing you're mentioning is stacking up the trust. Trust is something you accumulate and so you have hopefully, hopefully you try to accumulate it. Right. I had an old boss of mine, he used to tell me that trust was like a bank account. He used to tell me you make deposits and withdrawals and it all depends on what you're doing. Right. What you're saying, are you credible, do you follow through, know things like do what you say, say what you do, that type of thing. And it's these small, little, little elements that build the trust and starts to stack. It could be as simple as hey, I'm going to call you at 2:30. And you end up calling them at 2:30.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: I'm going to send you this document by tomorrow morning. You send them the document by tomorrow morning. Right. Is these small things that happen throughout the build trust, but it doesn't end there. Now with the offer, as you're saying here, the one push up offer versus the hundred push ups, you're giving them a very, I think familiar, I would say low risk entry point into what you're offering and trying to do.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Hopefully it's enough to, you know, it's enough to get them, I don't want to say the word hooked, but the idea is that they, they like what they're, what they're getting and they want more eventually. Right. And so from here there's a, I think a very clear path. But a lot of folks forget this and why do you think they're asking people to do a hundred pushups?
[00:08:52] Speaker B: I think it comes back to people don't do proper discovery. I think that's one of the. So when I talk about, and when we get to it, but you brought it up here so I think it's the right time to mention it. When I say I help people increase conversion rates, one of the ways I do that, as I listen to their phone calls, you'd be surprised that some companies that are making a decent amount of money, they don't have a call script. People are just winging it. Every conversation is different. And so when I say they're not doing proper discovery, if you want to establish value, you want to establish a pathway for folks, you have to understand what their pain points are. And that comes from sequencing and asking the right questions. So one of the big misnomers I hear in sales especially that it just causes me to cringe is, is people are talking about you need to establish urgency, make the person feel urgent. Which just sounds like high pressure tactics.
My philosophy Is I believe you can only unlock urgency with good questions. So that when you're playing it back to me, what's happening in my business or my life or whatever it is you're selling, I can't help but understand that there's something at stake if I don't take action. And that's why I think proper discovery, if you ask the right questions, it's much easier for a person to say, oh, wow, I actually need to make a change.
And then, and only then, can we talk about, hey, so here's the fastest step you can take today to start making that change. It's gonna take a year, two years, or three years to get you to that whole place, but here's the fastest, least frictionable way for you to get started today. And I wanna help you with that.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Got it? Got it. That to me is a. Is a whole reframe. I think everybody listening here needs to understand. Right. So there's. It starts in the beginning, like with discovery. And whenever I listen to sales calls as well, or I talk to folks about selling, because ultimately, when I'm changing their pricing, I'm also, you know, reorganizing how they sell. There's a. An interesting thing that if they don't get the right discovery in place, they have a hard time asking good questions.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: So I call it the discovery deficit. If you have a discovery deficit, you have to ask better questions up front. And this goes back to even simple things like here's the script and here's what we need to know. And you don't want to be robotic about it. Right. You want to have a real human conversations with other humans. Right. And I think a natural connection that tends to happen between just two people talking. Right. But I think that's a really smart thing to do. Are there in your mind, like, a few basic questions in sales? I know it's probably context. You know, I get all that. But any few basics that you think, hey, man, if you're not asking these, you're probably missing out, you probably have a discovery deficit.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: I think it's thematic more than anything else. And I think for anybody's business, you'd have to tweak them in your own way. But I'd say they fall into themes. The question should be around what's the bigger goal the company has over, I don't know, next year, two years, three months, kind of whatever realm your services or products play in. The key to that is you want to understand the larger overall business goal, business strategy, and what the business Wants your product or your service should always be in service of the bigger goal. That's the thesis that your product or service can help to affect. So ask what the big picture is for the business. The next would be where they are in relation to that big goal. Are they on track to get to there? Are they, do they have the right type of people on staff, et cetera, et cetera. Take them to that high place of thinking of what absolute success looks like in 12 months and then bring them back down to reality. And they're going to be like, oh, I don't think I'm prepared. And then the next question is, well, what do you think is missing? And they're going to identify some things. We don't have the right team, we're over budget or whatever those things are. And you want to ask more, as you would say, double clicking questions on certain parts of those. But if you follow that general theme, what did we do here? We created a gap. And if there is no gap inside of your sales process or your discovery, the there is nothing that you can sell and no problem that you can solve. And so one other piece about discovery. I can nerd out about this for hours, but your goal of discovery is to actually qualify people out. Most people are working to qualify somebody in so they can make a pitch and then make a sale, which again, I understand, but if you really think about it, you want to go for all those guideposts and ask all those questions. So you know, you know what? Actually, I don't think this is the right fit for us. And here's why. That's. That's the perfect scenario.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a flip, man. That's a flip discovery. Instead of trying to figure out is this person an A qualify in, you're saying, no, you should be qualifying out. Right. Meaning you may not be a right fit for this.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Yeah, because. Because if you, if you really think about this, I've had this in my career too, and it still happens from time to time. And people I work with and maybe you can relate as well. Qualified somebody in the sales cycle takes way long. People start ghosting and then they just don't answer. That usually means we didn't qualify them hard enough at the start of the conversation to understand really how much it is that they want to solve this problem. So when I say qualify people out, you really want to be rigorous at the start of understanding where they are, what problems they have, and how much they really want to solve that problem. So that your job really as a Seller or a service provider. And I'm sure you'll agree here is I want to hold you accountable to your goals. I'm only working inside of your company because you said you want to work on this big thing. I know a faster way to get you there, and I have to hold you accountable for that. And if I can't do that at the earliest start of our relationship, what's it going to look like down the line?
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Now, that is very, very, I think, solid advice for anybody listening here today, right? So I think in the beginning, especially in smaller businesses, you want to make every sale, win every deal, get every dollar you can possibly get. I mean, you got to pay bills, right? And kind of the reality of things. But I think what ends up happening is you, if you leave the gate to open and let all these other folks in, it ends up leading to other problems, right? Which could be a churn problem, could be just a bad fit and, you know, a client that just takes too long and is too expensive or, you know, just doesn't go too well and you don't get a referral out of it. And so ultimately, qualifying out and holding that line pretty rigorous, rigorously is a great way to ensure you grow profitably with the right set of customers going forward. Might be a little scary, though, to think, like, wait a minute, I'm trying to scary.
Find a way to say no here. This seems kind of counterintuitive and weird, right? But I think in, in the end, it's just the rigor to make sure you let the right gaps through the gate, right? Cause you need to identify that gap and let it through the gate. That's where you want to solve and grow. Look at that. A gap to the gate, to the grow. I just made up a framework. We're just talking right now. Let's go. Let's go.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: So I've earlier on in my, like, business career too, I would work with kind of anybody who had some, some green, right? We've all probably made that mistake in our business. But that's dirty revenue because it's way harder to work with these folks. They want more than then we can give them. We're changing what we do to try and assuage this particular customer instead of having a very clear, solid thing that we know works and holding them accountable to that. So again, we've all been guilty of this. I know, especially smaller companies, you need the money. I get it. But that's expensive money because you're going to have to spend a lot more time and cash and other things to service this account because it's not the right fit. And that's expensive for you on the back end because you're exhausted, you don't get the referral, and they may not have as much success as you'd hope they would have. That's a little too much, in my opinion.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: It is too much. The reality is the trade off a lot of folks need to make. It's not easy, though. And again, being an entrepreneur, you being one too, like, there have been moments where I'm like, oh, I probably shouldn't do it, but I gotta make, you know, payroll, I gotta pay the bill, I gotta pay rent, whatever it is, and you, you go on and do it. And then here's the thing you ultimately like. And I've talked to folks like this, and I even looked in the mirror myself. Oh, why did I do that? I shouldn't have done it. I should not have taken that client every time, every time, every time.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: It never changes. Yeah.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: Just being real with you on that team. I want to take a quick pause here to ask you for a huge favor that'll mean a lot to me. Please review and share the show. Share it with your team, your friends, your peers. Not only will it help them stop the guesswork in pricing, but it'll also help you and increase the chances that you'll take action and change for yourself. All right, much love. Now back to the show. So let me give you an opportunity to say, okay, if there's one takeaway for anybody who's maybe struggling with, with, with selling right now, and you know, thinking about that, that story of breaking it down to that thousand dollars offer, you know, with the success rate or the success based metric, what would you tell them and what's the big takeaway?
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Listen to your calls, go back to the tape. The game tape is going to give you all your answers. So again, I'm talking to a lot of people these days. I've been to a lot of conferences, and everybody's talking about how much more difficult it is to get stuff at the top of the funnel. It's more expensive, it's more time consuming. And I think when we get to it, too, AI is a great tool, but it's not helping with outreach because everybody's hitting the automated button and they're just getting solicited and it's, it's hard to get that signal inside of all that noise. So you're having less conversations inside of less conversations. If you're not reviewing those things and Coming up with the right standards or knowing where you're getting objections or how your customer is thinking or feeling about things. If you're not reviewing that on a regular and consistent basis in a market like this that's changing so rapidly, you're losing out on so much great learnings for your company, but you're also ceding market share to those that actually do take the time to review it. So if you. If you're not recording your calls, record them. If you're not reviewing your calls, review them. You'll have a ton of answers inside of that.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah, no excuses. That's a really good advice. There's no excuse today. There's so many tools to. To record your calls and analyze them and break them down and do all that stuff to get the game tape. It's easier than ever now than it was, say, five or even 10 years ago. I would say that's a tangible, actionable thing that somebody could do on Monday is start recording that stuff. Man, thank you for that.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, easy.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Do it now. Sure.
I'm going to move us from rewind to play because there's probably a set of things. You know, you have a framework, you have a methodology. You just talked about these themes earlier on the discovery side, but there's probably something that you're finding that really helps unlock these founders, these entrepreneurs, these leaders in selling and increasing that conversion. What do you think is. Is the most powerful thing right now in your framework? Or maybe you can step us through a little bit more?
[00:18:31] Speaker B: I think there's a couple of things. So if I have a sales call framework that I teach folks and I give the script away for free, maybe I could put that as a resource for your listeners as well.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: But I think one of the key pieces inside of any call is you want to summarize the needs that you found. Okay, why? One, it shows that you're listening to your prospect, right? You've heard what they have to say, and you give them a chance to say, oh, no, maybe you missed this, or whatever. But that solves a very powerful objection. So I believe that there are only three sales objections. They come up in various forms or different words, but they're basically, is this going to work for me? Is now the right time and can I afford this? There's. They're all some version of that. So again, if you're prepared and you've got your team and your objections on how to handle those types of objections, you have good stories, good examples, good anecdotes. You're in a good position to be able to counteract those as they, they pop up. But I think the key features here in selling things the right way is. So like I talked about selling it all up front versus making it a smaller package. I've seen a lot of folks in what I do, so I sell consulting. We would kind of just go straight for a retainer in most cases.
And that used to work. That was just kind of like people, that was the standard way of people doing stuff. People don't want to pay those now or if they do that, you really have to earn the right to ask for a retainer. So one of the big things that I've noticed here is instead of going straight for the retainer, we do a smaller, easier to pay for, easy to manage, clearly deliverable project paid. Of course that helps us understand what we have to work with and what the opportunity is. And then from there I'd make recommendations for some retainer based work if it makes sense based on the findings we have or other projects we can work on based on the findings we have and what I've found here. Not only is this a more higher converting thing because it's a small thing, I know what I'm going to get out of it. The trust stack of being able to ask for more and upsell or cross sell different services is based on a factual document and experience that we built together. So when I make a recommendation for hey, here's what I think your team needs, here's what I think it would look like. It's not just me, oh, I have this service, maybe you should buy it. It's based on the data we've uncovered together from reviewing these other parts of your business. Here's where I think we could be most effective. So I built out a plan for that and then I have some upsell and downsell versions as well. So that there is another thing we could work on. And I found there's way less friction, it's way easier for people to understand and it kind of gets past the oh, I'm just going to be paying you for a couple of months now. It's, I'm going to get this deliverable from our work together. And I think again it's the same thing. Six and a half of one, half a dozen of the other. But it's the mental exercise of packaging it to say I will have this by this time. And I think that's something I've seen in the market that's been helping a.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Little bit that is, that to me, when I listen to that, tells me the value of clarity, which there's an old sales. An old sales saying that I used to get from one of my mentors, which was a confused mind, never buy. And if they're confused about what they're going to get, when they're going to get it, is now the right time? Can they afford it? If there's confusion around that, they typically, you know, will defer the decision, not make a decision at all, or just say no. And where I'm finding, I think you're. I'm putting words in your mouth here. Right. So you got to stop me. But there's a, there's a, I think a lot of value in giving someone a, A tangible outcome. Right. Here's what you're going to get by this time. Here's what this means and make it super clear and what they pay for that. And I think that clarity and that sort of direct line of, okay, here's the money leaving me and here's the thing I want coming back. Those are the things that I think folks want to hone in on if they want to increase conversion.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Definitely. And I would also say too, again, I'm on the services side of the business with consulting, so I work with models and other things. But something I've really tried to work on and explain more to clients to help them see the vision is what are the phases of our work together. So here's what we're going to start with. Here's what it looks like in totality, but we're only going to start over here. And once we have this, that'll inform this next phase. Should we decide to continue to work together, that will then inform this and inform this. So it's an ascension model of here's what we could do. I'm not here to give you all of this again, if you want it, I'm happy to do that. But let's just start with this piece and continue to build on our work together. And again, that builds trust. It's small, and I think it creates a big, big chance for you to make some really cool deals with people by building on their actual trust instead of just going for the big check at the first time.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're also hitting on another thing, which is the tendency to, to grab or try to grab as much cash as you can at that single point of sale. I think that's a big mistake. I think you want to, like you said, stack up the trust, build a relationship. It takes Patience. And here's the thing that I think where I had to train myself because I'm naturally an impatient dude. Like, I want shit now. I want it done.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Yes, me too. I want it. Y.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Right.
But there's the. Exactly.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: But my. My point is like, that patience of just like that first step and building. Building up from there does take a little bit of, at least for me. Rewiring and training. Is there. Is there anything that you. You help or coach folks to help them be a little bit more patient at that first sale?
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Patience. I'm always looking for some. I'm turning over all the cushions in my couch trying to find more patience. Well, I think it's a mental model. It's a mindset. So, again, cash is great. Let's never get that twisted. I like me some cash. It's a great thing. But I'm an entrepreneur, and that means I have to think long term if I want to be in this business or. Because all you have at the end of the day is your reputation. And then again, I'm already.
Somebody said, oh, Stephen, you like working on Double Hard Mode. You're a consultant and you work in sales. And I was like, maybe you're right.
But when I'm in a. Like, most people don't wake up in the morning and say, oh, you know what I need today? I want a consultant. Almost nobody says that ever. So the only thing I have to work with is the fact that people can trust me. They can see me, they can see that I'm verifiable, and they know I'm not going to offer something that's not going to be in service of their business. Like, period. That's all I have. So when I say that, what helps me be more patient is, yes, some days it takes longer, some deals take a lot longer. But when it all stacks up, it's like the amount of people who can say, that's a person that's worth talking to, it evens itself out. And I think there's way higher level of gain and way higher value relationships I get out of that because people know I'm not just trying to go for the cash. And so, again, I can't answer that for anybody else but myself, but I'm thinking about five, 10 years out the line from now where I've got some crazy, amazing beachhead clients who are paying me all kinds of money, and they're making all these referrals because of all the patience I demonstrated here. So, again, still a hard thing to do every day. I'll be 100% honest with you. Really, really tough. But when I think about it, the Stephen that is going to be sitting down and having a nice cocktail or something or carne asada with you in San Diego at some point, it's like, I'm really glad I sat down and didn't, didn't rush.
That's what, that's what I'm working for.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Listen, I think that's, that's, that's really golden advice for anybody listening here. Right. It won't be easy. Sometimes you are tempted to try to get as much as you can.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: It's so hard off the table.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Right. But, but waiting here in the, in the end, I think all good service providers, consultants, all those things, you really, you really in the trust game when it comes down to it, right?
[00:25:41] Speaker B: That is the game.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Patience does, does build that. You have to allow time for that reputation to get there. You have to allow time for people mentally to get there. And that in itself takes some discipline on your end, which doesn't come, you know, overnight. I get that.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: It's a muscle.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: It's a muscle.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: It's a muscle. That's exactly. Yeah. Like, I mean, again, anybody who's selling anything, you have to follow up with people. You have to have some compelling thing to share about things. You have to be a person with a vision if you're going to stay into this game at all. Right. So start getting clear on what that looks like for yourself and act as if, Right. If you have this great sterling reputation in your marketplace, it didn't come from just grabbing cash off the table. I promise you it didn't. It came from a lot of other things. So start thinking about what that bigger picture looks like for you in 5, 10 years and start working yourself backwards. And if that means I gotta go on a walk while I'm waiting for these emails to come back in or whatever it is, that's a small price to pay for what I know I'm gonna have on the back end.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Well said. Well said on that one, man. So in thinking about now, by the way, that's a lot of. It takes a lot of human to do that, right. Is to pause, to be patient, to build. But let's talk about fast forward here in a second and talk about things that are not human. Right. And you mentioned it a little bit earlier, right? AI is coming in. You're seeing a lot of hype around these AI sales reps or SDRs, I think, come in and qualify and all that. Now I Don't know if you remember like the robocalls from back in the day and some of you, all these other in the chatbot and the chatbot revolution that never happened and all these things, right? So AI is here and now folks are starting to pick them up and say, hey, why do you need to hire this, you know, $75,000 year SDR, this 22 year old, when you can just hire my AI bot for a fraction of the cost? Isn't that the right way to go? When you hear that, especially in your line of business working with folks working in sales, give me your reaction. How do you feel about AI and these, these SDRs or sales reps happen?
[00:27:29] Speaker B: So I can only give you my initial gut reaction, right? So I say that with the big asterisks on everything, this is only the status quo as it is today. And the funny thing about AI that makes it super exciting and very scary to be flat is today, right now as we're recording this podcast, is the worst it will ever be.
So it's only going to get better, it's only going to improve, it's only going to get smarter and understand more things. That said right now, in my gut, I still believe, firmly, firmly believe we're still humans solving human problems in a business context and in a sale. If I got on a meeting with you and I found out that you had a robo SDR call me, I would be pretty offended. Personally, I would just something about that doesn't feel like it's in integrity now again, I get like we have these things that are sending dms and stuff like this that's, that's already got its own little weird stuff. But like, I think we're more accustomed to text and stuff coming out of it. But you got me on the phone, you qualified me, you asked me questions, you spent some of my actual time. Something about that doesn't sit right with me. And I'm willing to bet for people who are selling things mid five figures, six figures, seven figure contracts, they're also not going to want to deal with that as well. So I get the value of it because it certainly is a friction point for a lot of business sales in general, especially on the phone. But I don't think it sets the right message for your company because you're not willing to make the effort to go after the prospect that you want to get all this money from. So I don't like that. That said, it could really drastically improve stuff. It could be a great training opportunity for, to train actual SDRs. But I think going back to a point we kind of made earlier, right. Where we talked about dirty revenue, where we get this money into the company and we feel gross about it, that $75,000 you might have to pay to a person, that's probably potentially cheaper for your reputation in the long run because people know that you actually build an organization and a culture that stands behind your product instead of just having a machine run it. That's my two cents. That's how I'm approaching it for now.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: So I completely understand that point of view and I align with it. I talked to someone about this the other day and she said, so what? I'm not worth a human on the phone. That's how she took it. She took it like, I'm not even worth talking to a person about this. You're going to give me a machine. And going back to also what we were talking about, building trust right from the get go and, and getting folks. So you can't really build trust with the machine. Machine is going to follow its commands and protocol. Yeah. What the protocol is supposed to do. All the movies we've seen and go, you know, go down a crazy path and goes rogue.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Takes. Takes over the world. Right.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Starts discounting your offer.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: You, you laugh. Right. But I hear people worried about that stuff. The, the thing is, is people, they view that as a cost cutting measure. They don't view that as increasing the quality of the call. And correct. To me, it's lazy quality. It's lazy. That's. Thank you. And that's what she said. And, and she, she almost felt like, well, if I'm not worth having, you know, talking to another person, that I'm not, I'm not going to do business with you. And so she didn't, she hung up on it. She didn't even continue on the sales process. And, and not only did she hang up, she also had like a, a little sour taste in her mouth. And she's like, oh, you know what? I don't think I want to do business with these guys. But what it did, the third piece was it also increased her likelihood of talking to the competitor who did have a human come in. Right. So it. Not only you don't get the sale, you lose rep and you nudge them to the competition who's not doing it. And I think that's something you got to be really thoughtful about.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Yeah. I think AI is a tool. Right. But a tool in the wrong hands becomes a weapon.
And I think we're still Very early days in a lot of this stuff. And again, my opinion. I've reserved the right for my opinion to change on this as I see more. Better. Better evidence or use cases. But at least for what we're talking about here, where we're in the trust game, I already can't trust you from the first interaction.
I don't know what you can do to get that back for me. And I think that's a. That's a misguided thing for a person to try to build a reputation for their business as it goes forward. So that's. That's my two cents. Strong opinion, but loosely held.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Hey, you know what? I. I think there's. There's a lot of credence in that. And from. From my point of view, too. Again, it's. It's. How do we make sure that there's that clarity in the beginning on who you are, what you want, what you want to do, and then the clarity in terms of what they get and all the questions that they have in their mind which leads to conversion. So in a way, clarity leads to conversion. Right? There's another one. Here we go. Right. Got. You got me started. You got me started.
Listen, a lot of knowledge bobs all the way throughout here, okay? But if somebody were to ask for the tldr, like, hey, just give it to me straight, man. What's the big one, too, that I need to know? Because I gotta go. What would you say to help out, you know, somebody in sales right now?
[00:32:09] Speaker B: Record your calls, listen back to your calls, take notes, train your team. You do that, you're setting yourself up for all the success you want.
[00:32:16] Speaker A: Golden. Golden. I love that. And that's something somebody can do next week. If. If they're listening and if they really want to move forward, do that. Here's the thing, man. There was. There's too much knowledge coming out of you, man. You got all these great ideas. You got great punch lines. You got great hair. You should be.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: I'll tell my mom. My mom and my dad would be very happy.
The hair's all their fault.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: They're proud. They're proud, right? Hey, I got curly. People don't know this about me. I'll say it on the show. I got curly hair, too. A lot of people don't know that.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: So. So here's the thing. Here's the thing. I got to know you as a human being, man. And so you. I honestly want to understand growing up. What was that favorite song? Something you could listen to over and over again. Bonus points if it's hip hop. Doesn't have to be. Tell me a little bit about what you love to listen to.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: I have a couple of hip hop, but my favorite song of all time, all time. It's been since I'm 12 years old. I still listen to it multiple times a day. Like every day is just Jimi Hendrix. The stars that play with Laughing Sam's Dice. It's one of his rare B sides that was only released in Britain. I think it is just absolute sonic brilliance. Complete reckless abandon and complete skill and just get. I get goosebumps every time I listen to it. And for over 20 years, that's my favorite song of all time.
Hip hop wise, it's. I'm stuck between my favorite albums of hip hop would be Jizza, Liquid Swords, Nas, Illmatic or Tribe Called Quests. Beats rhymes in life like those are always playing in my house all the time. But I would say a favorite song song has to be Jimi Hendrix. The stars that play with Laughing Sam Stuyce. That's my favorite. How about you?
[00:33:52] Speaker A: I'm a skinny Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx. Salsa, like everything, right? I listen to all sorts of stuff, but those are some pretty ill like all of them. That what that tells me though is you like that lyricism, you like the way you do stuff together.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: I can't listen to this stuff today. I can't listen to it. They're just grunting and whatever. I mean, again, if that's what you like, no problem. But I just.
People used to spit, man. They have a point of view and yeah, like, ah, those are the days, the 90s.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: And you would like remember some of them quote their lines. They were so damn good, right? Nowadays I could listen.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Listen to Illmatic and rap every verse the entire way through. Jizza Liquid Swords rap every verse the entire way through most of Tribe Call Quest. I'm from Queens, New York too. Like, I could 90s albums, I know front to back, back to front. And you could be at a party and the song comes on and you go. And then you just make great friends because you know all the lyrics. Like, yeah.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: And then everybody knows, right? And then they go, oh, and they remember that one, right? They jump up and down. I love it. I love it. Listen, I want to thank you. Those were the days. I guarantee it. For me, I want to say that the things that you said today, I think are going to push people forward and give them the tools to at least. At least start, man. And from my perspective, I want to thank you for coming in here and sharing.
Just being open about, you know, what it takes to really fire yourself from salesman. That was fantastic.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Thank you for having me, man. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Would you ever come back in the future, tell me how you doing?
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. I would love to, man.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: We could talk more music.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: We could probably do that. The whole episode, man. The whole episode. Just based on the three albums you just dropped. Thank you again. And team, that was Stephen Steers. You guys follow him on LinkedIn, check him out, check out his book, listen to his content. The guy knows what he's talking about, gets results, and I think he puts a lot of human in the sales process, which I think is something we don't want to abandon, especially in the age of AI coming forward. So take a lot of those lessons, whether it's the record, your calls, take notes, sit down, really nail down that discovery, those three themes, all that. Take it, get 1% better, take it forward, move away from the guesswork and remember, stop guessing and start growing until next time.
