Mike Boyle:

It was interesting that you use the term leaking. What would be leaking?

Andrew Deutsch:

Well, imagine there’s always sort of been, and I’m speaking in generalizations because it’s not everyone, but there’s always sort of been what I always called that kiss or kill mentality. That as you’re going through the leads in your funnel, if you get a no, they’re gone. They’re not viable. There’s no future for them. And now with tech that’s out there, those no’s have value. When you rule out a lead, you may discover that if you’re paying attention to those pieces of it, it may lead to the need for a new product development. Maybe the reason that all of those people left your funnel are because there’s a need that you’re not meeting. Or they don’t recognize that you do meet the need that they’re looking for. In the old days of the sales funnel, you would see a chart where the first two steps are sales. I mean the first two steps are marketing and then they turn it over to the sales team. And of course, I always call that throwing a turd over the wall. Here it is guys, go sell it.

Andrew Deutsch:

Whereas in the maturity of the sales funnel, it began to where now marketing was going further down the funnel before sales. And now marketing has learned that they need to be involved at every level to check the leaks, the stuff that’s leaking out of the funnel that didn’t make it. And also at that point of sale, because if marketing is not involved at that point, how are you going to convert all those people who just bought your product into voracious advocates for your brand? They’re going to go out and shout from the hilltops, how wonderful it was to do business with you. So a true sales funnel is an hourglass. And you’re collecting those customers at the bottom of the hourglass and continuing to nurture them. Not just because you expect them to buy again, because you expect them to love your brand so much that they’re going to convince the world that there’s no other business out there you should be doing business with.

Mike Boyle:

Well, let’s hang here and talk a little bit about sales teams. How do we turn sales teams into selling machines?

Andrew Deutsch:

The mistake that people have made in the past is thinking that salespeople are only motivated by commissions. So one of the things that we do, and we have an organization that we deal with that does, we actually look at our salespeople as human beings not as selling machines, as we convert them into that. Because when you really understand what are the personalities, and motivation structures, and the attributes of the human and compare those to high-performing salespeople, what you find are the true motivation strategies of your sales folks.

So for example, I was coaching a sales team years ago and looking at the study of this individual, he was not motivated at all by money, but he was motivated by what money could buy. So in the coaching process with this gentleman, if you were to say to him if you close that deal, you could get a commission of X, he go, yeah, yeah. If you said to him, if you close that deal, that’s BMW money. That’s that down payment. All of a sudden he was motivated and crazy.

Other guy on the team, he didn’t care about the money either in the same way. For him, he was more interested in how others viewed him as a salesman. So in the same conversation, if you sell that item it’s this much commission. Eh. It’s BMW money. Eh. You’ll be the number one salesman on the team. Really? I’m that close? Oh. And he would go out and do it. So to answer your question, now that I’ve gone the long way around the block, the way to create monstrous sales teams that go out is to actually understand and know the personas and every detail of your people. And treat them as individuals in ways that get them to work together as a team.

Mike Boyle:

Let’s suppose for a moment that you’re a retailer or a manufacturer listening to us right now, how would you advise those folks to go about building and executing a strategic online, go to market playbook?

Andrew Deutsch:

I would inform and make sure that they understood that it is a team approach to developing that strategy. The marketing team will be responsible for truly looking at the qualitative study of who that customer is. What are the personas, and there maybe multiple types of customers that you’re dealing with. But in looking at each of those, what are the actual problems that they have that you can solve? What are the challenges, what are the needs, the desires? And then look to the organization as to what do we make and do, and how do we behave in ways that actually matter to that consumer? And then involving the sales team in the development of the strategy so that when they go out, they can speak to the actual things that matter.

An example, imagine you’re a car manufacturer and you as the engineer who happens to be the CEO decides that all customers out there are excited about the fact that we use thicker steel and quality paint. Things that you think matter. When actually your consumer for the model car that you make is more interested in safety for their family, reliability, and comfort. So there’s a disconnect. Now you’ve got your salespeople out on the word of the CEO, talk about steel and the customers don’t relate. Well, if we knew that there was this niche in the market that wanted those things that we just described, and the marketing team gets that feedback from the sales team, then they’re equipped with the messaging and all the work that marketing does to the world and the audience. So that the salespeople can speak to that, to the customer who’s the fit. I know it’s a little contrived way of bringing it around, but it’s about the team. It’s not about just making the sales guys go out and do their job.

Mike Boyle:

Yeah. It’s a synergy that needs to be built,

Andrew Deutsch:

Absolutely. Yep.

Mike Boyle:

Between those two department, which is really, it’s just… And that’s an age old issue.

Andrew Deutsch:

Look at construction of a house. So the designers design a house. And of course the guys who come out to dig the hole go, the guys who designed it don’t know what we do. They dig a hole. Then the next crew comes in and they have to build the foundation. The foundation isn’t right because the guy who dug the hole isn’t right, according to them. And then the next guys who do the framing blame… Each as you’re passing it to the next, passing it to the next, passing it to the next. Well, what would happen if in the design process of a house, you knew who was going to be doing the building and you brought them in and shared the plans with them before you finalize them. And had everyone along the way, understand what they’re going to need. And then you start building.

It’s that way in a powerful business also. That if you listen to teams where the marketing and sales are constantly butting heads, the sales guys will tell you, the marketing guys create these programs that can never be implemented because they don’t know anything about our customers. And the marketing team is saying those sales guys, they’re just doing what they want to do. If they would only follow our plan. And that’s when the truck hits the telephone pole and everybody gets hurt.

Mike Boyle:

Andrew, I watched a recent interview with you where you were talking about companies, companies that are not B2B or B2C, but you referred to them as B2H as in Harry. Tell me about that.

Andrew Deutsch:

Yeah. B2H is business to human. What happens so many times is there is a difference in the way that you build a strategic marketing plan for a business to business company, and a business to consumer, direct to consumer. But all of them have one thing in common. There’s a human or humans that are making those decisions. So if you recognize that the buyer is a human and the people the buyer reports to are humans. And every one of those have certain needs and desires for that position. Now the consumer is buying for itself, and family, and otherwise in a consumer market. In the business world, there’s other factors that matter. If you recognize the motivation structures of the humans in each of those situations, you can then build a marketing strategy.

For example, if you’re selling, I don’t know, industrial screws, and you say, eh, it’s just a screw. They need it for production. Well, if you recognize that the human in the purchasing department at the end of the year, wants to make sure that they never run out of screws, wants to make sure that no screw ever causes a production to shut down because it’s defective. Notice all of those motivators behind it as to why he buys screws. All of a sudden, you’re not selling a commodity of screws. So the conversation can be buying from us, we keep track of your inventory every day, and you’ll never run out of screws again. And our defect ratio is so nominal that in a year’s time, you’re probably not going to find a defective screw. That’s a very different conversation dealing with his personal human needs, rather than, I have a product that does this.

Mike Boyle:

So we may be hearing that term a lot.

Andrew Deutsch:

I stole it. I heard someone else use it and I grabbed it and made it mine.

Mike Boyle:

You’re an honest man Andrew Deutsch. How should companies go about aligning AI for predictive sales modeling in their systems?

Andrew Deutsch:

Now you’re asking me questions that I love to talk about. We’re actually partnered with a group that there are some of the most advanced AI programmers in the predictive modeling area. So this is a good example. Imagine some of the problems that industrial distributors have. Think of the Fastenals, the Graingers, these massive companies. They have problems with sales churn. They hire 100 guys, 10 to stay behind. I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea. They have issues with no one in the building understanding all million SKUs that are in their catalog. The salesman doesn’t know where to begin. Doesn’t know what to offer next. Doesn’t have insight. So you take 20, 30 years of data and you put it into an AI system for analysis. And then you examine in each of the silos you sell into. You look at what were the actual purchasing patterns, what were the yeses and the nos.

And you bring that into the AI that’s going to do all the work to figure it out. So example that I always use is the industrial cleaning space. So I’m a manufacturer with a thousand different cleaning chemicals for sale. And one of the silos that I sell into is nursing homes. And I use this example often. Nursing homes have different personas. There’s the, we love the elderly. We want them to die with dignity. All of that, the very powerful side of the nursing industry. And then there’s the, you know what? We just hold them until they’re gone. We don’t really care about them. We buy the cheapest products because the bed will be replaced as soon as that guy’s gone. And I know it’s a little cynical but you know they exist for the purpose of this model.

So, if you know that about them and you can score every single one of the existing customers, you then can help a sales guy with maybe three questions at the beginning of a meeting to figure out what persona they are. So with an AI system, they say nursing home loves their people and out will come a predictive model based on all other companies that are within that mindset of the products that they tend to buy with the probability. So now I’m a brand new sales guy. Before I would have to figure this out on my own. Now on a first visit, I know three questions that can get me to understand who they are. And I know what the most probable first items are to break the seal and get a first sale. Okay. That’s one.

The next guy is I’ve been in the company for years and making a great commission. So I don’t spend much time. Now, every time I walk into a client, it’s going to go through that predictive model. And it’s going to say, your customer buys 12 items from you. You ought to suggest these three. And he can increase the sales. And by the way, every yes and every no will adjust those probabilities every moment of every day. So it’s predictive. It’s not having a sales analyst once a month giving you an idea. So that’s the next step. The third is, your marketing team has just come up with a list of 20 nursing homes in a territory of a sales guy whose fat and sassy and doesn’t do anything because he’s making his money. And doesn’t really want to do any effort.

Now through CRM and through accountability, he’s getting the name of the nursing home and he’s getting the three items he needs to open the door with. And if he doesn’t do it, then he’s not doing his job. Then the next level is customer service. So now every time somebody calls into customer service or order entry to place an order to the salesman’s not involved, they have a suggestion to make over the phone to help grow that business. You’ve been buying these four cleaners, have you tried our aroma system? You know what? I can throw a sample in there for free if you’ll take it. And they can help drum up more business. Now it goes back to the marketing team with that AI in place. I get my monthly sales flyer, guess what the top 10 items are? The ones that are most likely to be relevant to me. And I’ll continue to open those emails every month because it’s relevant to me. And it doesn’t speak to the chemicals that I would never buy.

Mike Boyle:

What tips do you have for companies who are contemplating doing a CRM implementation?

Andrew Deutsch:

Know what you want to get out of it before you start searching for the right CRM? What do you expect it to be? Do you expect it to be an electronic babysitter in a Rolodex? Or do you expect it to be an additional tool so that your salespeople can duplicate themselves? And then the next most important part of it is to keep your IT team out of it until you choose the one that has the right functionality for your company, but get their buy in at the end to make sure that it’s workable within the system. Because the IT team and the finance team should not be involved in the actual implementation part until they’re needed. It has to be a total buy-in by the sales team, or it is not going to work. If they’re not the ones who own it, chose it, and see what it’s in it for them, you’re going to have the hardest time waiting for people to start using it and benefiting from it

Mike Boyle:

Kind of along the same lines there, adoption. Any tips for companies who might be having adoption issues with this new technology?

Andrew Deutsch:

Typically, that adoption issue had it been done right from the beginning, wouldn’t be an issue. But if you’ve gotten to the point to now, you’ve gone through the trouble, you’ve got the CRM up in place, and the team isn’t using it. If somebody can’t figure out a way to show the salespeople what’s in it for them and how it’s going to benefit them rather than, hey, we’ve just given you a whole new set of administrative tasks, because I need the info. You’re going to fail. For me, the first time I used a CRM was a company that I don’t think is still in business, but it was an electronic babysitter. And it was just extra work. It was a way for the company to know what we were doing every day. And it had no functionality to help me at all. And we hated it.

The next time around, we were involved with the CRM that had all sorts of truly adjustable and helpful tools. So if a proposal went out to a client based on what we would tell the CRM, it would keep us alerted and reminding to follow up on it and keep us in check.

So I had been out of the country for almost three weeks and completely forgotten about a proposal. I know this makes me sound like a true professional, $1.2 million piece of equipment and I had forgotten about it. And I got off the plane and I was waiting for my luggage. And I look at my phone back in the Blackberry days and there’s an alert on my calendar that came from the CRM. So what is that? Oh, crap. I got to call this guy. So I picked up the phone and I called him. He says, Oh my God, I’m so glad you called. We got to make the decision today. And I needed one more piece of information and we couldn’t reach you. So we were able to work it out. I got the info he needed and we closed a $1.2 million deal. I would’ve lost had it not been for an alert that came from a CRM. That’s when I was sold. It saved my butt and it made me money.

Mike Boyle:

Last question I have for you today Andrew is about technology tools. Again, because you live, eat, sleep, and breathe in the technology world and beside your own company. Are there any new tools that you’re excited about these days that would be of interest to sales and marketing teams to be aware of?

Andrew Deutsch:

One that we’ve brought to market, and again, it isn’t our software, but we provide the training is, is a system. And this is great being an audio podcast because people will have to check it out afterwards called the Virtual Presenter Course. We found ways to answer the question, how can you be present in the room in a Zoom meeting when you can’t physically be there? How can you be more interesting, impactful, all of those great things in a sales meeting or presentation? So we’ve developed training to use this open source software that’s out there so that when you’re in a Zoom meeting, you can properly do a PowerPoint presentation, walk through a video, demo a website. Rather than being that little head in a box off to the corner, you can be actively in the window while you’re doing that.

And I’d encourage when the podcast goes out, you throw the link in there. But if you go to virtualpresentercourse.com, you can check it out. There’ll be a link that actually, for your audience, it’ll get them like 50 bucks off if they want to take the course. What we found is that salespeople that are using this tech where they’re keeping people interested are so much more memorable than that boring guy who isn’t quite focused and doesn’t understand how to give a presentation well and loses his audience. So that’s one tool that we’re advocating for.

Mike Boyle:

Andrew, thanks. It was a real pleasure.

Andrew Deutsch:

It was man. Thanks so much.

Mike Boyle:

I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thanks for joining us today. Now don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast. It’s everywhere, Apple, Spotify, Google, we’re on them all. And we look forward to having you check out all of our previous episodes as well. And speaking of episodes, our very next one, it’s just around the corner.