Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Most leaders obsess over adding fuel. Fuel is what's going to create growth. So sales, marketing, new hires, technology, capital, new products. And so if you just remove the friction, you might not necessarily need to inject more fuel into the organization. And so some things, and we've talked about a lot of the friction, but poor communication, unclear priorities, slow decision making, weak discovery for us. Right? Weak discovery.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: I'm Dennis Sorensen and this is the Think Big, Win Bigger podcast. This is the podcast for sales leaders and salespeople who know they're capable of more and are looking for a system that is predictable, repeatable, scalable, and forecastable for growth. It's not theories, it's not motivational speeches. It's an ambitious way to operate your business.
In this episode, it is part two of my conversation with my good friend Blaine Sibby from Zenith Roofing. So let's get into it.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Can I ask you a question?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: You bet.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: There's two things that I think play into two main things. There's probably more, but how do you think fear or ego plays into that?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: I think that they play into it in a couple of different ways. So I was actually rereading Mike Weinberg's new sales simplified book, and one of the things that he talks about in that book is being a sales professional and really treating sales as a profession.
And what that means in the way that he was describing it is.
And this happens to me all the time, like, well, I'll meet sellers for the first time in one of the trainings that we do, and I find out that they've never read a sales book or they read one sales book in their entire career.
I find it interesting that people aren't really thinking about sales as their profession and therefore investing in their skill set to constantly be sharpening their sword, if you will, to make sure that when they get onto the sales battlefield that they have, you know, they have the ability to perform and to win in that battle. And so, you know, Mike talked about it in this particular chapter of the book I was reading. He described it as arrogance and ignorance. And so I actually started thinking about it, and it'll probably be part of my training going forward is what I'm going to call the sales AI trap.
And that sales AI trap is really that arrogance and ignorance. So what you were asking me about in my mind really starts with, do you think of yourself as a professional? And if you do, and you invest in your skill set and build the, what I call build sales muscle, you know, just constantly be building sales Muscle. Like, you know, I rode around with you. I know you're building physical muscle. Right. When you. Because, you know, that's what you do, and that's what you probably did in the Marines, right? You were building physical muscle. Well, you know, as a seller, you got to continually build sales muscle, because if you don't, it's just like. It's just like a physical muscle.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: It atrophies. If you don't work the muscle, it will atrophy. And so the first answer to your question in my mind is really, are you a sales professional and are you working continuously to build sales muscle?
And then to the fear side of it, in my mind, part of the fear comes from the fact that you haven't built the muscle. When you plan and you prepare and you practice, you gain confidence, and that confidence is what helps you as a seller to overcome the fear. It's like so many of these things to me, Blaine, are just so interconnected. It is the. It's not understanding that they're connected that causes so much of the friction in the experience of a seller and also in the experience of a sales leader. Because I'll get someone who will. Who call me, and they'll want us to do a sales training. But the thing I need them to understand is I can do it, but it's not going to be a silver bullet.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: If what you need is to fix a number of these foundational issues, my sales training will help, but it's not going to solve the problem by itself. And that's the piece that I think so many people miss, is that sales training is like. It's like going to the gym. Yeah. You're going to. You're going to work some muscles. But if. If you don't do anything with it outside of the sales training, then, you know, it's just like one session at the gym and.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Oh, I got one. I got it. All right. Sales training, I think, is like a bunch of supplements that you buy, but if you don't actually go to the gym, they mean it's wasted money.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: There you go. Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's better. That's better. Yeah. You know, you're exactly right.
You're exactly right.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Here's how I was thinking. If I could just add.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: I love that. And I'm thinking about the sales rep with fear and ego of. Without being genuinely curious, and they create this friction for themselves of not being able to take control of their meetings and their situations because they haven't planned or Prepared or practiced. They allow themselves to be led by throughout the process of the sale. And maybe during a proposal presentation or client meeting or the ego of I'm not going to ask, you know, how their business works or anything, they. They expect me to know that, you know, or I'm scared to ask and I feel like I don't know. Those things are internal frictions now. And that all comes from not preparing, planning, or practicing too. And you don't have to know everything. And I think it's good to be genuinely curious and remove that friction by asking those questions. And now you have a better understanding. You gain confidence that you know what you're talking about when you meet with them next time. That's another connection point with them for bonding.
These are the things that I think everybody can just gain from talking like that. And obviously the four P's, the three P's first.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think you've got it. And I think like a good exercise as an example for like a team meeting with a sales leader with their team would be just to simply sit down and have the team, everybody just start writing down discovery questions or questions that they want to ask inside of their customer account. Because I think, I think part of it is, you know, you said it comes back to plan, prepare, and practice, but it's planning those questions, preparing those questions, and then practicing those questions. You know, when I first started out in my sales career years ago at ncr, you know, I actually just, I got, you know, my yellow legal pad and I've got all these questions written down. And then as I got more and more experienced I had, I kept adding new questions that I. Or replacing questions on my list with new questions because I got better and better at knowing what I needed to ask in order to do it. But sometimes I would just take that actual pad into the meeting with me and just. And simply say to the client, hey, I've got a few questions that I've written down that I'd like to run through with you. And actually just walking through and making sure that I asked all the questions and I didn't have a single client that pushed back on me having a written list of questions to go through, you know, in the meeting with them. And I actually think they appreciated the fact that at one, I had put some thought into it. And, and two, that I was going to try to be thorough. And then one of the questions that I always asked in that list or near the end was, are there any questions that I didn't ask that I should have asked.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: You know, because interestingly enough, if you build some rapport and you're having a good discussion in most cases, I would find especially higher up in organization, individuals will help you. They'll help you in sales if they, if they actually think, if they actually believe you're trying to help them and trying to help yourself. So you've invested in actually doing the work before you came in to be prepared.
I actually think they'll lean in and they're willing to help you.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Asking for help, not a bad move at all. People helping people with powerful stuff. I mean, that is another sort of fear and ego point of friction. And to add to the downstream effects of these, of not asking these questions and the friction that you, that you gain from it is, I got done with that meeting and somebody back at the office, this for me example, we're putting together a plan for their building and we want to select a roofing system for them. We'll keep it easy in this scenario. Well, you know, they want this.
And then the estimator is like, well, why? Oh, I didn't ask that. Or you know, here's my favorite, this is my favorite wordplay that my childlike salespeople will do to me. And I'm saying this, and they watch this. They know. I say it to them to their face too. I said, did they not, they say, oh, they didn't tell me. And then my follow up question is, well, did you ask? No.
Then don't tell me that they didn't tell you. Just say that you didn't ask. Let's not, let's skip that step, okay? Let's move past that. Yes, you created a point of friction because you didn't ask. Let's just own up to it now and be accountable.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think, I think that's, that's why this whole discussion, and I think a discussion with, with our, with ourselves and with our sales teams about the point of friction. And really, you know, like in that example, did you just create one or did you remove one in that interaction with the guest? Sales math. Sales math. Yeah, it comes back to, it comes back to sales math. So, Blaine, you know, a couple of times during the podcast I've heard you bring up this, this concept of fuel that you learned about in your, your management classes that you were taking at Kellogg. I wonder if you could expand on, on that concept of fuel for us.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Absolutely. So the whole concept of fuel versus friction comes from Professor Loren Nordgren and his book the Human element. He was one of my favorite professors there. I was always very excited when he came in to instruct a class. And so what he talks about really is that most leaders obsess over adding fuel. And what he means is it's like fuel is what's going to create growth. So sales, marketing, new hires, technology, capital, new products, more meetings, more activity, things like that. And so if you just remove the friction, you might not necessarily need to inject more fuel into the organization. And so some things, and we've talked about a lot of the friction, but specifically that he references in there for friction is poor communication, unclear priorities, slow decision making, weak discovery for us. Right? Weak discovery, bottlenecks, just lack of account.
Those are the things that I think that really drag you down. But if you're so hyper focused on the next new thing or the thing that's gonna give you this, the silver bullet, the sales training, right? Where's our silver bullet? That's a fuel based mindset. Instead of just looking internally and saying how do we get better and make it easier and remove the obstacles from our path so that way we can be more efficient and get on the right track to close some friggin deals.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: When I think about what, what we do, you know, like, like I was saying, we, we can go do a sales training. In my mind what I hear you saying is the best way to take advantage of a sales training is to actually have a really a process driven system that you can get the most from the fuel that you're bringing into the organization.
And not just to throw fuel at the situation, but to actually make sure that the engine that you're putting the fuel into is going to operate with that fuel and really be as efficient as it can be with that fuel as possible.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: That's exactly right. And I'm glad you brought up the automobile analogy because I was going to say yeah, you can drop a bigger engine in your vehicle, but if your parking brake is still on you, you're not going to go much faster.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: No, that's good because one of the things that I've thought a lot about recently and some work that I did with a client and this particular client helped me kind of think, you know, helped shape the thinking in my head about the concept of you know, like a process driven fully integrated system. And what it means in my mind is you have the system level which for me is plan, prepare, practice, play, ambition, strategy and execution. And then the next level that you come into it with is really about the methodology which you bring to the sales pursuit or the sales process. And that methodology might be, in my world, it's a combination of things. It's a combination of value selling, a combination of the challenger sale, it's a combination of all of the principles that Weinberg teaches.
So there's, there's a lot of things in the method layer that I think about and then the next layer down in my mind is really that the motion or the sales motion itself. And so it's the, it's the things that the steps and the stages that the sale goes through in that creating, advancing and closing process.
And so the best organizations, because a lot of times what I see is an organization focusing on that method, that method level and they're doing a training in that method level, but they're leaving the system unaddressed and they're leaving the process just to sort of, or the motion to just sort of fend for itself.
Or you're doing a training in the motion and you're leaving the method and the system to sort of function for itself. And so it's what I think the best operations that I see, the best performing organizations that I see have that all three levels fully integrated and performing as one process driven system across the system level, the method level and the motion level.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: There you go again with the perfect labeling and compartmentalization of tasks orientation. So once again, hats off to you, Dennis. No, I couldn't agree. You have to more.
You have to do this as a holistic approach. You can't be fragmented. The more fragmented you are, the more friction you induce onto your organization and onto your people and then that bleeds out into your supporting team members as well. And all, and all that staff, you have to have it all working cohesively, you know, like as your body functions. You know, just because you have one thing wrong over here doesn't mean it's just, it's isolated to that area, it could be coming from another area. And it's just, it's manifesting itself at that point of pain or whatnot. So I really like that because it's a constant break. And I've seen it, I've lived it, I've felt it where you're just disjointed. And if you don't have a collective comprehensive plan to address all three levels, you're just going to trip yourself up.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: You were talking about fuel as an organization or fuel at the organization level. But how do you think about, how do you think about fuel at just the seller level or the sales level? And so because you were saying fuel is this, you know, this thing that drives the, you know, the, the thing that you want more of in the organization.
So how do you think about sales, sorry, fuel at just that sales level?
[00:16:42] Speaker A: I think we already touched on it a little bit. And that is more meetings, right? More meetings, more activity.
But what does that actually mean? So, yeah, we have more meetings with people. That's good. That's going to fuel growth. That's, that's our silver bullet. If I go out and have a hundred meetings a week, but they result in nothing, then it doesn't matter. We've driven to nowhere. More activity, more calls, more events that we've gone to, more trade shows, more, you know, golf tournament sponsorships, anything like that.
That's at the individual level. I mean, those are probably the most, most common ones that I would say at the, at the individual level or hey, I got more opportunities, I have more opportunities. But if you have unclear priorities, you have weak discovery, then those opportunities mean nothing at the end of the day or nil for those who are watching the World cup right now. So just figured I'd throw a soccer reference in there.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: So as you, you know, as you, as, as you were talking, I was thinking about it in terms of, well, as a seller, we think about fuel as closing the deal and we think about fuel as, well, maybe making more proposals and closing the deal. But the reality is sort of living in play is just, I'm just going to make a bunch of proposals and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna try to close a bunch of deals where I think if we remove FR our own sales motion, we can actually get again more efficient in the end and actually create more fuel, create more real closed business, more real valuable proposals by removing friction from the entire process.
That's how I was thinking about it as you were talking.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: You're absolutely right. And so let's expand on that. And I'll say I talked about downstream effects. And so the downstream effects of that, which is going to be another friction point of friction, is going to be now you have a million proposals and what do you have to do with those proposals? You have to follow up on them. Okay? You have to maintain contact with these people, all while still continuing to fill your pipeline. It becomes this never ending cycle of like hoping something is going to land because there's no way that you have enough time in the day or in your year, you know, for these deals. And I know a lot of deals, like in my sales cycle alone, I mean, they're a lot of them are capital expenditure projects that are years in advance. But if you fill your pipeline up with too many of those, there's no way that you're going to be able to follow up on them. So it just becomes wasted energy at the end of the day. And that's a point of friction that you want to remove. You want to have a pipeline filled with high quality deals, you know, of, you know, high octane fuel. So I agree with you and I just wanted to add that point to it.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: No, I think it's a really good point and I, and I'm really glad that you introduced this concept of fuel and it's, it's something that we may have to spend some time on in another, in another episode of the podcast. And so I'm always learning from you. So I learned, I learned the point of friction and today I learned fuel. So I thank you for your constant teaching of me as well. So I appreciate that.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: No, absolutely anything I can do to give back to what you've given me, I mean, hey, that's a win in my book.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Well, I appreciate that. And Blaine, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your very busy schedule and away from your, your team to do this with me and really appreciate you being here.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Thank you, Dennis. Always a pleasure. Always looking forward to chatting with you.
Excited about upcoming football season to I get to chat with you on that stuff.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: So thank you.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Thank you again for joining me Today for episode 14, the Conversation with my good friend Blaine Sibby from Zenith Roofing. Special thanks to my Blaine for being on the podcast and until episode 15, just win.
