TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE
Chris Battis: On this episode of Intent Topics, I walk into a huge rant by Logan on why more deals aren’t closing, and he’s fired up. Logan, how’s it going buddy?
Logan Kelly: Huh? It’s all right.
Chris Battis: Yeah? How was your day?
Logan Kelly: My day was great. I’m doing awesome, but I feel like I keep on having the same conversations, like deja vu.
Chris Battis: Nice. You seem a little punchy. What’s on your mind?
Logan Kelly: I feel like the amount of opportunity that I have seen wasted by salespeople is enormous.
Chris Battis: What do you mean?
Logan Kelly: Okay. So, I’ll back up. Well, I got my start in sales, like door to door selling Comcast back when I was about 18. But then in the car business, which is where my kind of education of what it takes to be a real professional salesperson. No, you cannot take a day off. If you are not on as a car salesman, you don’t make any money. If you are, you make a ton of money. That’s how it goes.
Chris Battis: Nothing in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Logan Kelly: And some people get lucky. And they’ll beat you one time. And you say, “All right. That sucks.” But what I’ve seen in that business, in that industry, and then a lot in the B2B space, think about this. In the B2B space, the likelihood of you seeing you messing up a deal because you haven’t followed up or you said the wrong thing, it’s not as in your face as when you’re just sitting there with somebody.
Chris Battis: Sure, sure. Or somebody walks off your lot.
Logan Kelly: Yeah.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: So, the metaphor is this. Because of the sense of urgency is not inherent. In the car business, I knew if a person left the dealership, they were unlikely to buy a car. Now it was 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, there was the internet. I could not be a slimy car salesman. You had to like be composed, you had to show value, you had to be a good person. You couldn’t be an asshole.
Chris Battis: Yeah. Those days are gone.
Logan Kelly: But you had to close them. You had to convince them to buy, you had to build urgency, you had to show value, and there had to be a sense of urgency in yourself in order to do that. Were you going to say something?
Chris Battis: Well, yeah. Just the amount of materials they have against you, and how much you’re forced to be authentic or you’re going nowhere.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. You’re dead.
Chris Battis: Yeah. It’s in the water.
Logan Kelly: Yeah.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: So, now, I see in that industry there’s a lack of urgency, and then I see companies like, “We’re trying to find suppliers. We’re trying to find vendors. I have lunch with people, and I hear these stories.” Right? And it’s this sense of urgency in B2B is no different. These are bigger deals. In business to business, it’s a bigger deal than a car.
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: But so often, there’s let’s break out why people don’t chase, and don’t have a sense of urgency. The first one, you have people pre-qualifying themselves out of a deal.
Chris Battis: Give me an example.
Logan Kelly: So, it’s like, “Oh, that company can’t buy because …” Right?
Chris Battis: Oh, right. Yes.
Logan Kelly: A lot of times, you know a guy who says, “This happens,” or whatever it is in your business.
Chris Battis: Oh yeah. What you refer to, “Oh, they’re too young. I Don’t want to teach them everything. I need to teach them to even get the order,” and then we don’t even know if they’re going to last because they’re entrepreneurs [inaudible 00:04:34].
Logan Kelly: Yeah, exactly.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: Exactly. Yeah. Too chaotic.
Chris Battis: Yeah. It sounds like a little bit of canvas stuff there. But yeah. I see a lot of that.
Logan Kelly: So, you see these salespeople. I see it all the time. Luckily, I feel the people that we work with, like our clients and stuff, a sense of urgency is always there. Because we’re putting quality in front of them. So, we try to make sure we check all that out. But go ahead.
Chris Battis: And they’re paying us to do what we do. And if they don’t see value in it, well, I guess there’s kind of this balance sign. If they don’t see value in it, they won’t be urgent. They won’t be urgent if they don’t see the value in it, none of this works, and the relationship’s done.
Logan Kelly: Right. So, back to what we were talking about. You got sales people pre-qualifying themselves out of a deal.
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: Right?
Chris Battis: Yeah. Number two. What’s two?
Logan Kelly: Okay. So, that’s good.
Chris Battis: That was one. Yeah.
Logan Kelly: Okay. Number two. A lack of urgency to understand what the next step is. So, you’re on a phone call, and you get off without asking somebody to take the next step. What’s the next step?
Chris Battis: Right. Next logical step too. I see this sometimes as people think the next step is just one thing, but it’s actually that step in the seller’s mind is actually maybe a little too far down the road, and they’ve made some assumptions about how far down the road they were, and they potentially skipped steps, like for example, internal buy in on a large-
Logan Kelly: Yeah. Absolutely.
Chris Battis: … deal.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. So, that’s what it comes back to. If you’re selling something, control the deal.
Chris Battis: Yeah, the deal. Yeah.
Logan Kelly: Right? I’ve never bought your service. Tell me how to buy it. If I need to pump the brakes, convince me why. If you don’t feel comfortable telling me why of your price right now, don’t just tell me it’s not time to go over price. Screw you. Tell me why you need to gather more information to validate that.
Chris Battis: Yeah. I had a wicked bad experience with that years ago. I was trying to set up some … I forget the company. I wish I remembered the name of it. It’s dashboard software. Dharmesh Shah is invested or whatever. I would say the name if I can remember it. I’ll Google it. You know the name. The dashboard software that we looked at? Anyways, I’m trying to build dashboards for inside the office in Portsmouth and HubSpot for these different teams, and this sales rep would not even get me to the point where I could have like, “Give me a ballpark conversation of like what this would would be.”
Chris Battis: And he goes, “Well, there’s onboarding, and there’s this, and we’d have to talk about it.” And he wanted all these like deep dive calls, and all he cared about is my decision making authority and all that, which is great. I get that. Don’t get me wrong. But it was so frustrating trying to get a straight answer on how it would go, and I was like, “Get the hell out of here. I’m not talking to you anymore. I don’t even care.” And I never looked at it since. It as years ago.
Logan Kelly: Yeah. So, I feel like we’ve kind of melded this together. So, it’s two, urgency on the next step. Three, have a sales process and follow it. Most sales managers ,worth their salt, will have a sales process identified. Many sales managers and sales leaders have a problem with holding people to those processes. That makes a miserable buying experience for their customers. That’s what happens. If it’s not a miserable buying experience, they don’t see it, but they see deals die on the vine. Blind stall out because there’s no urgency, there’s no commitment to take the next step, there’s no urgency.
Logan Kelly: And then the fourth one, I’m just throwing them at you, is curiosity. So, there’s a little curiosity, and I’m so tired of hearing like Gary Vaynerchuk talk about curiosity like it’s some grandiose idea. It’s like, “What are you trying to accomplish?” Right? “And what I’m selling help you accomplish that?” I don’t care what color your cat is, but I do care how I can help you. And you see a lot of people get on these calls only talking about themselves, that kind of thing.
Chris Battis: So, go back to the interview stuff. What are you saying here? So, he’s saying you need to be curious, and you’re like, “Why are people being told to be curious?” That’s step one, even though it’s four in this. But if you don’t have any curiosity, don’t show up. Is that what you’re saying?
Logan Kelly: Yeah, yeah. I think he’s made it into this like buzzword among the business bro culture.
Chris Battis: Yeah, yeah.
Logan Kelly: Which is not. It’s not some noble thing to have curiosity. It’s just just try to establish what somebody is trying to accomplish deeply enough, and then how can your product sort of help your prospect solve it?
Chris Battis: Yeah. So, I don’t know, where soapbox curiosity or mandatory, but I’ve seen lack of curiosity. Oh, I am with too much curiosity in the same or in a different capacity of just managing people. If I have a huge customer success background, I’m trying to keep customers, I’m trying to get them successful in the engagements. And there would be employees that I would be like, Dude, you have to have some curiosity in order to figure out what to do here?” It’s not always going to be this process.
Chris Battis: And it’s a little creativity, a little curiosity. Why don’t you go check it out? Maybe this complaint, maybe the reason things are going well actually has a neat little thing that we could solve in this person’s field.
Logan Kelly: Sure. Yeah. I think curiosity is good. But here’s the problem when salespeople exhibit so much curiosity, and so much empathy, and have no detachment, they fall in love with the customer. And when the customer says no or has an objection, what happens?
Chris Battis: They’re crushed.
Logan Kelly: Or they believe that. They’re rationalizing that. They’re rationalizing, giving up the deal. They are rationalizing why they shouldn’t follow up with the person. They’re rationalizing why they shouldn’t try to convince the person that this is actually the right deal because they enough about what the client or their prospect is trying to accomplish, and they know deeply how their product can solve that.
Chris Battis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Real quick though. But it’s also not a mistake that is not being empathetic. There is a way to be empathetic in the situation as well. And that’s probably where some of this curiosity-
Logan Kelly: Sorry. So, the way I think about it is empathy. If somebody’s crying, then you say like, “Hey, I understand you’re having a tough time. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: Sympathy is if somebody is crying, then you cry with them. And so, the problem is, I think when you have people who get not curious enough, then you can’t establish fit. When you get too deep into the sort of weeds with the customer, all the things they’re trying to do, then the ability to detach and really focus on how your product can help them solve their problem goes away. Does that make sense? Am I crazy?
Chris Battis: No, you’re not crazy. Let’s get back to like this whole lack of followup kind of topic. You seem a little better now. Do you want to follow up with the importance of following up with a good leader, being creative with them?
Logan Kelly: I think all of this kind of goes into this sack of all the reasons that people let opportunities die. When you convince yourself from the get go that this customer can’t buy, you never go through your sales process. You never see, “Maybe there’s an opportunity. Maybe there’s the ability to get creative. Maybe there’s, you know, it’s not this product or service, it’s that product or service, and they inquired on this one, and maybe you’re going to make less of a commission so you don’t want to deal with it.” Or whatever these things are.
Chris Battis: Are you saying that there’s never a time when you’re like, “There’s no way this deal is going to close.”
Logan Kelly: Yeah, bro. I think what I would say is that salespeople and sales leaders need, or leadership at a company, period, need to accept less stuff just dying so early in the process because it’s an epidemic.
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: We’re convincing ourselves that pushing too hard is bad. I don’t think it is. I think being tactless is its own thing.
Chris Battis: Well, I do think there is a level of qualification. I’ll take the perspective of being sold too. There are times when I’m seeing somebody not letting go, and I’m like, “Listen, I was never even interested enough to know the budget, authority to even go there.”
Logan Kelly: Tell the person.
Chris Battis: Yeah.
Logan Kelly: Tell them that you’re not going to buy. Disqualify yourself.
Chris Battis: And the best part or that or not the best part, but then they’ll follow up with like three more freaking emails. So, you’re just like, “Dude, I tried to be honest with you, and now you’re still …”
Logan Kelly: [crosstalk 00:15:27] process.
Chris Battis: Well, yeah. Well, that’s your classic sales automation, SAS software model that you see.
Logan Kelly: Yeah, I’m talking about the chase, not so much like, “These people have tried to automate their way into deals.” Right? That’s a whole other call. So, what I think is if people get just curious enough where they can dig, but not so curious that they fall in love with the customer and believe every objection they throw up, not try to pre-qualify the customer before they even kind of get everybody involved in the deal.
Logan Kelly: Not get disappointed that things stalled out for a week or a month or something, and they didn’t follow up. On the call, they ask for the next step, they asked for commitment to make the next step, you’re going to close more deals. So, the risk is, “Oh, I followed up too much with this guy, and he got a little bit pissed off.”
Chris Battis: Yeah, that’s fine. That’s not terrible, right?
Logan Kelly: It’s a much bigger risk. There’s way more money being left on the table. Because economically, you’re saying, “I’m leaving all this money on the table because my reps are not following up with this prospect deep enough into the process.” Or, “My rep is spending some time on a deal that he shouldn’t be.” What’s your CLV? What’s your customer lifetime value? 50 grand? 100 grand? What’s your rep’s salary? Five to $10,000 a month? What’s a few minutes?
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: And the rep telling me that they’re wasting time, sends me through the roof, and it should send all the sales managers through the roof.
Chris Battis: Right.
Logan Kelly: You’re wasting my money. That lead costs more than your time. That’s it. So, that’s my rant.
Chris Battis: That’s a good rant. That was good. So, what’s the punchline here? Give it to me in one packaged up punchline.
Logan Kelly: Every rep and every sales leader should require their reps to get one step further, at least, in the pipe or in the sales process further than they feel like they should. If the prospect says something, that would be a reason that you would pre-qualify them, and kill the deal, do the demo, do the discovery, see what happens. It might be good. You never know. Somebody throws out an objection, try to handle it. Don’t let the deal die.
Chris Battis: Sweet.
Logan Kelly: That’s the punchline.
Chris Battis: Dude, I love your fire today. This is great.
Logan Kelly: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We should wrap it up. I’m tired of hearing my own self.
Chris Battis: Oh, dude, I love it. I love it. I wish there was this every day.
Logan Kelly: Cool.
Chris Battis: All right, folks. This wraps up today’s episode of Intent Topics. I am Chris Battis.
Logan Kelly: I’m Logan Kelly. Go ahead and give us a five star review, and follow us on Apple Podcast and Spotify. We will see you next time. Thank you.
Chris Battis: See you, and take care.
