The B2B Sales Playbook: Effective Strategies for Enterprise Success With David Fatusca

Episode 43 David Fatusca
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[00:00:00] David: understanding, what the importance is for this particular project in that person's world.

[00:00:05] What are the repercussions if this project doesn't go ahead? what are they going to do? What's the alternative? And the alternative might not be a competitor. It might be, you know, something that happens internally. But until you've got all these data points, you really don't have a really high level stance that you can help push this deal faster.

[00:00:25] ​

[00:00:30] Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Allan Dib. Today, my guest is David Fastuca. And I had David on because, there's a special topic that keeps coming up all the time. People ask me, what about B2B sales? You know? and it's funny. A lot of people read my book and they say, Hey, I can see how this applies to B2C, but how does it apply to And then vice versa. I'll get someone email me saying, Hey, I can see how that applies to B2B, but. I'm in B2C, how does it apply to that? So today [00:01:00] we're talking B2B, meaning business to business sales or enterprise sales, and David's got a lot of expertise around that. He's in fact, he's written a book called the B2B sales playbook, which is a great title, really tells you exactly what it's about.

[00:01:14] And so, welcome to the podcast, David. Great to have you on.

[00:01:17] David: Allan, it's awesome to be here, mate. Pleasure. Thank you.

[00:01:20] Allan: So David, how does B2B sales fundamentally differ from other types of sales? So answering that question that people always ask, which is, Hey, I can see how some of these techniques work in a B2C environment, but what about B2B?

[00:01:34] David: Yeah, look, there is a, decent crossover. We must say like even with the things that we teach and showcase within the book, a lot of it can be applied to that B2C nature of selling. I guess like the biggest difference is Within the B2B space, there might be multiple people in the buying decision.

[00:01:52] And what I mean by that is, say you're selling a CRM, you're typically talking to like a CMO, so Chief Marketing Officer [00:02:00] or Head of Marketing within the business. Then the CMO might need to talk to their Head of Finance, and then might need final approval from a CEO. So there's a bit of a process, there's a bit of a buying committee.

[00:02:11] Versus on the B2C, it might be just your life partner or it might be just you making the decision on that purchase, depending on what it is you're buying. So, generally it's a bit more complex of a sales process.

[00:02:26] Allan: I mean, in my experience, all of my businesses have been in the past B2B and. is more complex because there's more decision makers. It's also more complex because there's longer timelines. And the other thing is a lot of times the person you're dealing with. May not be the one who controls the purse strings, right?

[00:02:43] So they may not be the financial decision maker. They may be the technical decision maker, maybe the CTO or whatever. They love your solution or whatever, but you've got to get the finance guy across the line. You've got to get the CEO across the line or whatever it is. So what are some of the ways that [00:03:00] you're handling that situation where, Hey, maybe the person you're dealing with.

[00:03:04] Is all, you know, all guns blazing, let's go, let's buy or whatever, but there's a roadblock upstream somewhere.

[00:03:10] David: Yeah, and I'll throw even a more of a curvy one to that. Back in my previous company, Locomote, often the times the people who we were selling to weren't even actually the end users of the product itself. So there was that extra layer. We were talking with procurements and potentially EAs as well. So they weren't leveraging the tool that the end users were using.

[00:03:32] But to answer the question directly, that's where you require a bit of a multi threading approach. And what I mean by multi threading is yes, I'm talking with the CMO selling the CRM option. I do know, you know, and he or she is going to be my champion. So like my biggest supporter to push this through, but may come up.

[00:03:49] with, you know, some objections from the finance and then the CEO. So it's multi threading where. We're trying to get ahead of the potential [00:04:00] objections. We've created, you know, in other scenarios and in different industries, a bit of a battle card of here's what to do to get your CFO across the line, you know, whoever's holding the purse strings, here's how to get your CTO involved because often CTOs, they're quite.

[00:04:16] You know, risk adverse and any new system that comes into their arena that they need to look after is a burden on them because there's a lot to do. So how do you tackle that? So it's understanding their frustrations, their pain points, and tackling them head on and bringing those objections up at the forefront rather than those objections and conversations happening when you're not in the room.

[00:04:39] So a great way is to invite those people. To call whether it's face to face or online and air out, Companies that are similar to you and with departments, you know with a CTO, you know often run into these type of Hurdles to get this over the line. Here's how we address that. So it's answering the unasked [00:05:00] questions Before they get asked when you're not there

[00:05:03] Allan: So that's all well and good if you can get them on the line. Like one of the issues often we faced is that, you know, the person we're dealing with, we're reliant on them selling in internally to the other people, and we, we really can't get a meeting easily with some of the other people, or if we can, it's kind of going to be very late in the game.

[00:05:24] So there'll be like. Hey, send us the proposal and then they'll forward that proposal on to, you know, the finance guy or the CEO or whatever. And we know what's going to happen. The finance guy is going to open it, scroll to the bottom where it says the price and go, Oh shit, that's too expensive. Right.

[00:05:39] So how are you dealing with that kind of situation?

[00:05:42] David: Yeah, I've done a few creative things in my past and this is probably my uh, you know, marketing hat background coming into play. So there's been times where we weren't You know, privy to who these people were or they weren't invited to the meetings. So some basic research is always nice and easy to do.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Go on LinkedIn, understanding. This is where you need to really understand your ideal customer profile and the buyer persona, who you target and who's potentially the anti sponsor and reach out to them, direct yourself. So you can do this via LinkedIn. You can use third party tools. Like Lucia or Firmable, if you're here in Australia, to get their email address, phone number and so forth, so you can be proactive and reach out.

[00:06:25] And even if all those fail, what I've done in the past, something a little bit cool, is I sent a handwritten letter in a coloured envelope, something very specific that talks to you, and QR code, which is a little video of me talking to them about the project that's on the table. Going to those efforts, right?

[00:06:45] puts you in a league of your own and gets you an audience with those people, even if you may, you still may not talk to them, but at least you've had some cut through, they've seen your name, they've seen your brand. And even if they don't act or look at anything, at [00:07:00] least now, when they're looking at two or three providers on their desk, Similar sort of pricing.

[00:07:04] It's like, okay, I know this name. I know this brand cause they've actually trying to be proactive with me. A little bit of trust factor has born and spawned from that. So let's go down this, let's explore this route. That's worked wonders in the past.

[00:07:16] Allan: Yeah. I love that. I think as I think about, The things that have gotten much more congested, much more blocked up is all our digital inboxes and what's less congested and what's more opened up is physical inboxes, right? So people don't get a lot of mail, physical mail anymore, or packages packages are such a great hack.

[00:07:38] I mean, have you ever received a package and just thrown it out unopened? Pretty much never, right? It's got probably a 99. 9 percent open rate. So if you can send someone. A package or a handwritten note or something like that, physical in the mail. I'm not saying that's necessarily going to close your, all of your deals, but it's definitely going to get attention.

[00:07:57] It's going to get opened. It's going to get [00:08:00] through gatekeepers and things like that. So I think that's a really good hack.

[00:08:03] David: Yeah, and you've done this yourself as well, Allan, like with your book often I remember when you sent me one of your books, you actually sent me two. And in there was a note to say, you know, pass this on to a friend or colleague who you think you will get benefit from it. I thought that was genius.

[00:08:16] It's definitely a hack I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal from you. But I thought it was a great thing to do. All right. And it was that showing that reciprocity of, you know, you giving and now me being able to, you know, I immediately thought of, okay, cool. Who can I give this to? And you know, it just sparked a conversation of me talking about, oh yeah, this is a book from a friend of mine.

[00:08:36] You'll get some value from it. And it just helped build that bridge. I thought that was a great little hack.

[00:08:40] Allan: Well, the other psychology behind it as well is. You giving that book to somebody gives status to you, right? So, I'm not asking, going out and asking for a favor. Hey David, could you please help me out here or there or whatever? I'm actually saying here's something valuable that you can give to somebody else that's going to.

[00:08:59] Give [00:09:00] status to you. Like, cause the person who's receiving that book from you, they're going, Oh, thanks David. That's amazing. I needed help with marketing or whatever, and I've got this valuable resource. Right. So I think a lot of the psychology behind referrals and how they're done is super important, but back to, um. working with other decision makers, another hack that I've used in the past, rather than attaching a proposal as a PDF we send a loom video running through the proposal. So we don't attach the PDF so that when they forward that to their CFO, the CFO has got to press play and watch us go through the proposal.

[00:09:38] Maybe they fast forward through some of it or whatever, but at least they can't just Scroll down to the bottom page, look at the price. So, and a lot of times maybe they will listen through and you know, you don't have to make it a 30 minute video, whatever. But if you're like running them through the proposal page by page, here's some of the problems that we're going to solve.

[00:09:57] Here's some of the, the issues that we've [00:10:00] identified in your organization, all of that sort of thing. Here's the timeframe, here's, and here's the, your investment. And this is why it's this much or whatever. Then you're not as reliant on. On that person, the CTO, whatever, trying to sell that within the organization, because they often are probably terrible salespeople.

[00:10:18] They're not going to tell your story as well as you will. Right. So,

[00:10:22] David: And look, one addition to that is, I think that if you look at the top three ways to send a proposal, right? At the bottom is just sending a PDF. You're sending a PDF in an email and the reason why that's number three is because you're leaving it into the unknown. You don't know next step. You don't know if they're looking at it.

[00:10:42] You might get an email open and a click through, but you don't know how much they've looked through. There are some sort of deal room types of platforms out there, but that's why that's number three. Number two would be the Loom video that you mentioned, right? Use whatever tool of choice, but a video of sorts that you can track how much they've [00:11:00] watched of the video and how many times they've watched it and get alerts of that.

[00:11:04] The reason why that's number two is that once they've watched the video and once they might have watched it two, three, four times and you'll get those alerts, that has then sent you a trigger which then has earned you the right to pick up the phone and give them a call to ask questions next. The number one way to deliver a proposal is to do it live with them and that's on a call whether it be Zoom or face to face and you're walking them through the proposal, ensuring that they understand everything that you've got in there and then getting that real alignment and then if you can, inviting the other stakeholders, you know, that are part of that process as well.

[00:11:42] The reason why that's number one is that especially if you're looking into someone's eyes, and as you're going through it, you can see whether they're nodding their head and understanding, or if they're getting that puzzled look, and then you can engage in that conversation and make adjustments on the fly.

[00:11:56] Then, most importantly, when he gets at a pricing page, [00:12:00] that's when they're either leaning back in their chair, Or fallen off, or, you know, you know that you're on the market. And then the final step from there is that then you can do the next steps live with them. It's like, okay, great. Now from here, what happens next?

[00:12:13] Booking that next call or another meeting needs to take place internally. But you're doing that plan of attack that happens with them live on the call. And you can make adjustments to the proposal then and there before they pass it on. So that would be the top three ways to send a proposal.

[00:12:30] Allan: What are your thoughts about not doing proposals at all? Like I mean, the way some corporates buy, they you have to like in that industry, but, I've worked with sales trainers and I've used this myself as well, where, you know, if someone asks me, Hey, send me a proposal nine times out of 10, it's because they're just like, you know, Hey, you know, just a way to kind of delay or put you off or say no without saying no.

[00:12:56] And so my response nine times out of 10 will be look, we just don't do [00:13:00] proposals. So this is the terms that, so this is how we structure our program. This is how much it costs. This is how long it'll run for. This is what we'll deliver all of that just in a simple dot point body of an email.

[00:13:11] This is, tells you everything that, that we're going to do. And do you have anything specific that you want us to cover off? But what are your thoughts about proposals? And how do you structure that?

[00:13:20] David: I agree it's a, you know, in most times it's a stall tactic. Other times it's a lack of trust in your brand and understanding of what it is you're actually going to provide to them. So then it comes to that term that I hate using, you know, it depends, right? So if you're Let's just call it a, you know, web development agency and you're also supplying some CRM workflows and automations and there's quite a lot in the project, then requesting a proposal to understand exactly dot by dot, what am I going to get?

[00:13:55] What are the terms? What does success look like? You know, it can be valid and [00:14:00] warranted, especially if I'm getting three or four different options from different suppliers. Okay. If you're going into say like a coaching program or something that's quite, I wouldn't say off the shelf, but more, you know, something that is more productized like you mentioned before, like a simple email with a few dot points you know, that's a hundred percent fine, you know, what we do with in Growth Forum, you know, we've got three models, i'll talk them through that on a call, show them what it looks like, and then I'm get a decision then and there.

[00:14:29] If they need to speak to a fellow co founder or someone else, then I'll do the same thing as you. I've just got the dot points that I reiterated on the call. And that's your proposal. Cause a lot of that, you know, it's just becoming a bit of a time suck as well, from sending out those proposals.

[00:14:47] And, you know, we've got a lot of data that shows, either way, it hasn't got a sending out a proposal. Doesn't mean you'll get a higher rate of closing. It's often the ones that say no, I don't need it Just give me a [00:15:00] dot point summary are the ones that are ready to go So that gives you a good sense as to how ready this buyer is versus not

[00:15:06] Allan: Well, I know myself as a buyer I've been on the other end and where I'm like, I'm ready to buy, just send me a link to, to pay or put the deposit or whatever. And they're like, Oh, I'll send you a proposal. I'll send you a docusign. And I'm like, Oh my God, like just take my money, please. Like,

[00:15:22] David: How crazy is that Or have you copped the one where now before you can buy I need to introduce you to a colleague That's gonna run for XYZ And you're like, dude, I don't have another two, three hours to spend here. I'm ready to go.

[00:15:34] You know, that's where it comes to, you know, presenting your offer and outlining your experience of buying from you in a way that your customers want to buy.

[00:15:43] So, and that's the first sort of feeling and interaction they get with your brand is the sales process. You know, was the sales process nice, smooth, accommodating, helpful, then that's going to give me a good sense as to what I'm going to expect. working with you and your brand when the project kicks off.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] If it's a painful experience and you were slow to get back to me and there was issues along the way and you didn't understand my objectives, then that probably gives me a good indication of what it's going to be like working with you. So it's like your first impressions, you know, is that sales process?

[00:16:17] Allan: Dave, one of the biggest challenges in B2B sales, I think is the long lead times or lead times blowing out. So, and that literally kills companies because, you know, what you thought was going to be a three month sales cycle, you did the, maybe a proof of concept or whatever it is now is. You're now at six months and you know, they've, it's all looking good and everything like that, but we're still not getting any further.

[00:16:43] So what are your thoughts around kind of reducing lead times and especially in a B2B context? Yeah.

[00:16:52] David: it comes down to that initial sort of discovery call of understanding You know, if you've come to me, Allan, and you said, I need [00:17:00] to revamp our sales process, then I'm going to dig deeper. It's like, okay, cool. That's surface level. You want to revamp it. Why you might have lack of conversion or not enough deal flow in the business.

[00:17:10] Okay, cool. Let's go a little bit deeper. How's this going to affect the business? Well, If we don't get these sales through by X time, I'm probably going to have to let people go. Okay, now we're getting, you know, to a time frame specific mechanism here. Okay, so what is that time frame? Within the next four months, Dave.

[00:17:28] Alright, cool. So, if you need to get sales up and going faster, then we need to start this project within the next three to four weeks at the latest allow enough ramp time so then you don't have to let those people go. Right? So it's understanding, what the importance is for this particular project in that person's world.

[00:17:48] What are the repercussions if this project doesn't go ahead? what are they going to do? What's the alternative? And the alternative might not be a competitor. It might be, you know, something that happens internally. But [00:18:00] until you've got all these data points, you really don't have a really high level stance that you can help push this deal faster.

[00:18:08] Otherwise, you feel, you start to come across with, you know, commission breadth and looking like you just want the sale, when really you haven't unearthed the why this person has reached out to you and why they need this project. Unless you haven't uncovered that, Then you really don't have a strong leg to stand on pushing that deal cycle faster.

[00:18:28] I'll never forget one deal opportunity we had within Locomote, where it was a tender, it was with, through, for a university, and these typically take a long time. to go through. But, during a few of my conversations, I felt a bit of a sense of urgency because the person was asking for a few things, which usually happens towards the end of a deal.

[00:18:51] So then I'll just pry and ask more questions. I'm like, okay, so, you know, why is this such a burning project? This seems like you're putting, you know, you've got three or four things on your plate. [00:19:00] This seems to be priority number one. Like, why? And this wasn't exposed within the tender itself, but they were sunsetting a product that was managing their travel process and they had a hard date to go live.

[00:19:13] Bang. As soon as I knew that I was like, okay, well, if in order to hit that deadline, you need to select a supplier by X date, whether it's us or someone else, you need to get all the data, you know, internally from your existing provider. We need to cleanse it, make sure it's all good to go. We need to put it into the platform.

[00:19:30] We need to test the workflows, then we need to roll out a bit of a training program. So, you said that your date to go live with this is X, and, but the tender closes on Y date, that's not enough time. You're going to be scrambling and the project will be at a high risk of failing. So, this is the date we need to, you know, aim to achieve, which was eight weeks sooner than they had initially put down on paper.

[00:19:56] And they presented that to the committee and it got approved. [00:20:00] Right, but that would never have happened unless I dug deeper and asked more questions as to why is this a priority for them. Because they had to make a decision. It was like, otherwise they're left with nothing.

[00:20:09] Allan: So, you know, you're the sales manager, you're going through the pipeline. There's three or four deals that just seem stalled. what are some of the tactics that we can practically do to get them back on track?

[00:20:23] David: Look, the best tactic is get on the phone. Don't be scared of the phone. Pick up the phone, call up that prospect and just reiterate why they initially reached out to you. Hey Allan, calling back, you know, this deal seems like it's probably lost priority initially when we spoke You mentioned that you had a project that you wanted to go live by X date Just want to know is that still a priority anymore or is this put to the back burner?

[00:20:45] Right and then train and elicit a direct response from that There's nothing worse than having deals that clog up your pipeline. That looks nice You got a you know, that gives you the illusion of a healthy pipeline But really, you're just sandbagging it with [00:21:00] half baked deals. The best thing to do is to them out if they're not an opportunity, put them into like a nurturing cadence where you can keep them warm, and when the time comes when it's a priority for them, then they can reach out to you and you can get going.

[00:21:13] But you really need to understand, there's a reason why people ghost you. And that's either they've lost, the priority of the project has dipped, they've lost trust in you and your capability to deliver, And then the third would be that they found a, another supplier. So you want to understand where they are in one of those three, and then make a decision for yourself.

[00:21:34] Allan: with CRM sales data, especially as a manager. You know, a lot of times you'll score the deal as being, Hey, we're 50 percent there or 70 percent there or the likelihood of closing or whatever. How do we make that actually realistic? Because sometimes the, you know, the salespeople are potentially much more optimistic about it closing than reality dictates.

[00:21:58] my personal view is [00:22:00] someone who's given me a verbal, yes, I would put that in, into the CRM as a 50 percent probability of actually closing. Whereas I think a lot of salespeople would put that in as an 80 or a 90 or something like that. What are your thoughts around how do we have the data actually reflect reality?

[00:22:17] Because sometimes the pipeline looks amazing. And then the reality is that we're not actually getting what's in the pipeline.

[00:22:25] David: I think this comes with a bit of experience, if I'm being honest, I'm quite brutal with like our pipeline. And even if someone has signed the contract and it's closed one, it's still not a hundred percent in my pipeline. When they've paid their first invoice, then I move it to close one. Right, because anything can happen from signing a contract.

[00:22:44] Okay, it's great, but doesn't mean anything until You know, money's been transferred and the project can actually commence. So this is actually just reviewing sort of past deals. This is where you need to get some good data if you've got a, you know, a solid CRM in place and a bit of history there. If you're starting [00:23:00] fresh, then you're starting fresh.

[00:23:01] And that's also understanding your sales team. So you might have, you know, a bit of a pessimist, which within the team. score their deals lower because they want to feel if something comes across, then it's safer. Then you've got the optimist who, you know, putting something at 80 percent because they had a good discovery meeting, but they haven't even got the proposal out.

[00:23:20] So this is about having really solid checks and balances and priorities before you can move a deal to the next stage. There's a really cool CRM out there called Membrane, and they ask a range of questions before you can move a deal across, based on your sales process, based on the industry that you're in, and then it It calculates based on other companies that are similar to yours and in the industry on what the close rate should be.

[00:23:49] And if you're only talking to one person within the business and typically an organization of that size, you need to speak to three, then it's going to score you lower because while you might be having an amazing conversation [00:24:00] with one person, you haven't engaged in the other decision makers like we spoke about earlier.

[00:24:05] So that deal is at risk and we'll flag it. So yeah. You don't have to use a membrane, for example, but say you use HubSpot, it could be that before you move the deal to proposal, have you engaged two or three contacts from that company? If it's no, then you can't move it across and you need to start to engage there.

[00:24:24] So once you start to get that sort of rhythm in place, then forecasting becomes a lot more. Trustworthy rather than, on relying on the seller's intuition of what you think. Cause then you have your, you know, weekly stand up and it's all good. Yep. I think I'm going to close this deal this week.

[00:24:41] And before you know it, five weeks later, they're talking about the same deal closing for the last five weeks. That's where you don't want to be.

[00:24:48] Allan: that's exactly right. That's exactly right. I've been there many times. So, I'd love to know a little bit about your book. So it's called the B2B sales playbook. Is that right? [00:25:00] Uh, And so what are some of the new or different concepts that are in that book versus some other books or some of the things that are kind of well known in B2B sales right now.

[00:25:12] What are some of the different angles that you're bringing in?

[00:25:15] David: I guess when looking to create the book you know, we're Luigi, my co founder and I, we're avid readers. We've got a shelf full of all of our other authors books and they're awesome, right? When we're looking at, okay, this is something we want to embark on. We're like, we don't want to just create.

[00:25:32] Something that's similar but slightly better. We wanted to create something that's truly different, that we believe, in our opinion compared to what's out there. So we pull all the good bits and pieces from All of the inspiration that we've got over the years, all of the coaching and training that Luigi has done, his coaching and training, you know, that he applied to me back in my Locomote days, and we've compiled that all into one book where it's chapter by chapter, it breaks down [00:26:00] all the tools, the tactics, the coaching that's required in order to go from zero to an exit, if that's your ideal path.

[00:26:08] It's not to be, there's a few ways you can read the book. You can read it obviously from cover to back like traditionally. Or you can pick and choose your own adventure based on the problem that you have within your business right now. You might have an issue where, you know, you're getting a ton of great leads.

[00:26:25] but have got a really poor close rate. So you can go directly to that chapter. We share, you know, a story. Something that you can apply right away and give you the tools that you can apply within the business and install right away to get results. So it's not one of those sort of fluffy mindsets books even though we do cover, you know, the mindset part of an ideal salesperson.

[00:26:47] The whole premise of the book is to be very tactical so you can read the book from start to end and not even engage with us at Growth Forum and build out your whole sales operating system and start to get results as soon as [00:27:00] you complete the book. So that was the primary goal because we know within the business we can only serve so many people.

[00:27:07] But we want to, we wanna have a larger impact, right? Like similar to you, your book has impacted hundreds of thousands o of people, right? And we aspire to have the same goal with the book to, you know, be the little black book that sits on every founder and sales person's desk, which they can have little sticky notes coming out of every angle of the book.

[00:27:26] Where if they've got a problem whether it be cold calling or how to get someone to respond to an email, or even back to our early comment about, you know, dealing with deals that are ghosting you. Go straight to that page, get the insights, get the takeaway, and then apply it right away.

[00:27:41] Allan: So, with the book, are you taking people through the whole process from start to end or is it Hey, we're, we've got this problem and then we're addressing that specific problem and there's potential exercises around it or how do you do that?

[00:27:56] David: Pretty much from start to end, you know, a lot of people skim over the [00:28:00] basics, and it's like any great sport or athlete, you need to nail the fundamentals before you can go to anything fancy. unless you know how to kick a soccer ball, then you're not going to be able to do a scissor kick or anything special on the field.

[00:28:13] So you need to master those basics. And that's what we go through a lot in the book. Doing your ICP, your buyer persona, a lot of people have these sort of things that they've done a year or two ago. It's a PDF doc that just sits in a Google Drive and they don't look at it. We flipped that around and go that's something that should be reviewed weekly based on the conversations that you're having.

[00:28:33] I was on a podcast earlier in the week and the individual was telling me that they update their buyer persona. on the weekly because of how fast things are changing where they would call people via mobile and then all of a sudden they noticed that their call acceptance rates started to drop. So then reverted to landline for the same persona and then the call acceptance rates skyrocketed.

[00:28:59] So then they made an [00:29:00] adjustment to the buyer persona for now we're reaching these type of people at this time of day on this type of phone number. And they skyrocketed from there, which is great, but that's the real minutiae of the little things. It's not a fancy AI automated sort of clay hack.

[00:29:18] switching up how you're reaching out and what channel you're using can deliver amazing results. So that's where, you know, we believe this book is quite an evergreen book. It's not something that is great for six months and then it's, you know, you need to update it six months later. We do bring in. All the great frameworks and sales methodologies that are out in the marketplace that have stood the land of time.

[00:29:41] And we've created our own in there based on what we've been implementing over the last five to 10 years and what's delivered great results for us and for the people we train as well.

[00:29:50] Allan: You mentioned something that I wanted to get onto, which is AI. I ran an AI marketing workshop a few weeks ago in San Diego, and one of the things that I [00:30:00] demoed it, it was just, I mean, it blew me away when I first. Saw it, but I set up a sales agent and I trained it on all the transcripts from the last year of all the, all of the sales that we've closed.

[00:30:12] So we record all of our sales calls with our team. So we've got, I think, five, maybe six sales people in the team. And so I asked, Hey, can you just send me a Google doc? All the transcripts of all the deals that we've closed over the last year. And so it was like hundreds of pages of long of transcripts and we trained this voice sales agent, and you could actually talk to it.

[00:30:36] So you get, you know, so it'll ask you what your problem is, why you know, all of that sort of thing. And it was just scary. Good. I don't know if we're. I'm ready to use it in real life right now, but I think it's going to be pretty, pretty close. What are your thoughts around using some of these tools and devices in the sales process?

[00:30:54] David: Look, there's some amazing tools out there, and they're getting, like you mentioned, scary good, which is [00:31:00] great, because then what we should be doing is focusing on the part where, you know, AI can't do at the moment, right? And this could be the closing part of the calls, so getting appointments and bookings set into the calendar.

[00:31:13] That will get easier over time but then the closing of those and the questions and then going live on a video call like this, you know, people want to speak to humans, especially if I'm going to hand over 10, 20, 30, 000 of my hard earned money, I want to talk to someone. So we think, look, leverage the tools as much as you can, that it's going to give you the right amount of value, but be cognizant of, because of all these great tools that are out there.

[00:31:37] Just be smart because a lot of people are now getting smashed with so much more, like doing custom and really personalized emails was hard back in the day. When I say back in the day, I'm talking like 12, 18 months ago. Now, we're all getting, our inboxes are getting hammered by really great personalized emails.

[00:31:56] But because there's so many of them, we're [00:32:00] now switching off and ignoring them. So, one of the big things that we advocate within, you know, the B2B sales playbook is having a multi channel approach. So not relying on email alone, phone alone, or social selling alone, but combining all those channels to be where your customer, where your prospect is at, because everybody likes to communicate differently.

[00:32:21] I know I'm quite active on LinkedIn, so I respond to a lot of LinkedIn messages. Other people ignore it. People love email, some people hate email, so you can't rely on just one channel. You need to be where your customer is, and that's where AI probably still has some time to go, to do those multi channel sort of campaigns.

[00:32:41] But it'll get there eventually for sure.

[00:32:43] Allan: How do you think about prequalification? Like some people are really loose. They'll like let almost anyone in on a discovery call waste a lot of time with unqualified prospects or whatever. Others are much more aggressive around, Hey, qualifying someone before getting someone on [00:33:00] a call.

[00:33:00] Some use like in our team we have like a type form where it's a multi step type form where we ask a bunch of questions. And then we've, we also have a setter who give them a call and, set up an appointment for them with a closer. How do you think about that?

[00:33:16] Like, is it, do you lean to being more aggressive around prequalification, less aggressive? How are you thinking about it?

[00:33:22] David: More aggressive to answer that bluntly, it's, you want to make sure that your team is spending the time with the right type of leads. And those who aren't, you know, ready yet, that's fine. You might have a different offer. It might be that, you know, at this stage of your business and it might be that, you know, you only work with companies that are spending X within marketing because you know that they need those resources in order to execute the playbook that you set out for them.

[00:33:49] But before they get to that, if they say they've only got I'm just making up a number here. A thousand dollars a month to spend on marketing and your barrier to work with you is 10, 000 a month, [00:34:00] then there's a wide gap. And no matter how good the call goes, you know that the results won't be there. So you might have a different offer and that's where you might send them your book or you might have a lighter course that they can take, you know, an accelerated course that they can get to that level.

[00:34:13] So, I'm very heavy on ensuring that they're the right leads, but also, you know, cause you've already spent the money and the effort to get these other leads. I always like to think about what can we offer these people to get them into our world earlier. And then through that, they built the trust. So when they're ready to spend, you know, the larger amounts to get the larger results, they've already earned the trust and it's purely, you know, a one call close type of transaction.

[00:34:43] If you think about You know, Commonwealth Bank here in Australia did something amazing where they would visit all the primary schools and set up these, you know, Dolomite accounts, which were cool little space characters and I'll get all the kids involved. And I still know some people that, you know, [00:35:00] were a Commonwealth Bank user when they were a child and now the same with the adults, right?

[00:35:04] So the bank was getting them when they were young. If you take that sort of approach to your business as to, okay, this is not the right customer for me now. But what can I offer them to get them into my world? So then when they are ready and then when they are the right type of customer, the close is very simple.

[00:35:20] Allan: It's been a real pleasure speaking with you. Is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you?

[00:35:27] David: No, I think we covered a lot there, you know, like I think sales and marketing is one of those things where people can either see and work in separately. I think we both strong believers that they need to work together. They work hand in hand and the best companies in the world have got them together.

[00:35:42] So. I think this conversation's been great. It's bringing sort of those two worlds together and more people need to hear, you know, from the other side as well. More salespeople need to understand marketing and become a marketing person themself. And marketers need to understand the sales side so they can enable [00:36:00] salespeople to win.

[00:36:01] And then if you win together, happy days.

[00:36:03] Allan: Nice. So I'm really looking forward to reading your book, the B2B sales playbook. So, is it out now or is it coming out

[00:36:09] uh,

[00:36:10] David: It is, depending on when this episode goes live but March 25th is the official launch date for the book. So if you listen to this after that, the link will be in this episode, but you can also go straight to Amazon and get your copy now.

[00:36:22] Allan: Perfect. We'll link to all of those resources. Thank you, David. I can't wait to read it. Thank you for

[00:36:26] David: Thanks Allan. It's been great.

[00:36:28] ​

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