Steve Richard is a serial entrepreneur with a mission to "help sales professionals become wildly successful." He was a sought after trainer, coach and speaker who leveraged his experience to create an innovative solution, ExecVision, that helps companies drive revenue by closing what Steve calls the Insights-to-Performance Gap. Join Greg and Steve as they discuss: 1. What it means to be prepared for a meeting today given all the data and information that is available to both sellers and buyers 2. How to use a simple technique Steve calls 3 X 3 Research - 3 points in 3 minutes so you do not light your marketing dollars on fire 3. Why the first five minutes of every call is so important
Today's B2B buyer prefers to be anonymous for as long as possible. And when you consider that only 3% of your target market is actively buying at any given time, you need to nail it with them, as well as with the 40% that are "susceptible" to looking, when you get them on the phone - for either a scheduled or unscheduled meeting. According to Steve, the key to nailing these meetings is data, coaching, and practice.
Steve and Greg also talked about Steve's FREE Call Camps, something everyone responsibility for demand generation should attend.
Connect:
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn and learn more about Leaders Fund by visiting www.leaders.vc.
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn and check out Omedym’s website and their LinkedIn and Twitter
Greg Dickinson: Hey, I'm excited today on the comedians podcast to talk to talk with Steve Richard, because I'm gonna let Steve tell you why. But at the end the day, Steve, let's get this started today, but you tell my audience all about yourself and Execvision.
Steve Richard: Yeah, Hey everyone, Steve Richard, founder of ExecVision, and I'm really a sales. I guess, sales entrepreneur originally founded an outsourced appointment setting business called foresight back in 2002, or sorry, 2005. And then And then from there, built up a company, a sales training business. And now finally, ExecVision and conversation and coaching intelligence. So companies that are recording calls, or in many cases, not recording calls that are trying to help their reps get better. How do we go about getting better? And I think for this audience, especially around demand generation, and following up on those leads, right, yeah,
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. And I think you know, the timing of what you do is perfect, right. I do think that, you know, this isn't a pandemic call. But things that have happened in 2020, some will go back to normal, some won't some, I think things will say the chairman and we, at the convenience economy, what we're talking about is the fact that the the buyer fundamentally has changed. They're looking for things on demand digital first and self service, which, you know, if that's the buyer, they're doing more on their own. How have you seen, right, your companies that are doing the demand? Gen. Have they had a change? Do you think that's happening in the world, the buyers are doing more on their own? And therefore, the tactics or the things that the man gen, that the calls that you're recording, the coaching you're doing, as it changed? is it changing? What you follow?
Steve Richard: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, so a couple things. One, is, first and foremost is you're right, because buyers have the general rule of thumb try to be anonymous for longer. They don't raise their hand, we all know that. There's nothing that's surprising about that, especially when there's these dysfunctional buyer groups that are happening. What ends up happening is when you finally get some information, they're seeing an explosion of intent data is happening right now, we've been testing smart links on LinkedIn, which is a really clever way of getting people, when they when they click on a content piece, you have their information, because they're signed in as LinkedIn, even though they don't have to fill out forms. So this whole thing that's, that's originally started with, like, you know, no web forms, with the different chatbot providers that are out there, has built in. But really, what that means is when you start gathering this information, the big trend that we've seen is, is on the sales side, the connecting of the dots, and the triangulation using the information that you do have, which is in a different format, in many cases than it used to be, it used to be a nice, good clean web form, you know, a decade ago, it just doesn't necessarily operate that way. Now, if you've got some intent data, if you have, you know, some secondary connections from your executive team into that organization, the the sort of sleuthing and investigation you have to do just looks different. And therefore the the initial engagement with that buyer or prospect is even more important, even if it's a customer account, and you don't have any traction, it's even more important than it ever was before. So I you know, every time I talk to one of our customers, I hear a couple things. One, we got to do more with what we're getting from these Marketing Leads. And even if we don't have leads to we got to do more with outbound. And we have to do more with the information that we do have whatever we do have.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, listen, I let's let's let's peel that back a little bit. Right? Because I think you're you're right. I mean, there's been a there's a there's a lot of famous companies out there that have the no forms of the line through it, right. And listen, it's not a it's not a made up marketing tactic. opt ins are down, right? Because we all know what happens when that form pops up. It's the same in my business where, you know, people don't do a request a demo form anymore, because they know what's going to happen. But you know, when you're pealing back is that when you do engage with that prospect, because sooner or later, they're going to engage with you, right, what you've collected and how you can collect things while they're doing their quote, unquote, anonymous buyers journey is more important than ever, because when you do engage Steve, right, you want to be on point you don't want to start back at step one. And they've already completed four steps on their own.
Steve Richard: That's it That's it and that's where the conversation intelligence piece comes in. Like I'm looking here, Greg, in our technology, we have a keyword category. And again, the keyword topic is marketing lead source, and things like learn about hear about information from us found you online and googled you and event we met you at the conference, those kinds of things. We got to understand where and how someone knows about us buyer knows about us, we got to do it quickly. And then like I talked about that kind of triangulating information another another topic is pre call research, or what we call three by three research. And what that means is how does the salesperson find three points on the company or contact in three minutes of research? So it's contextual information and to be able to say, hey, my understanding is that you are involved with I see that I did some research and learn to blank, all those kinds of things are really really important because you only have A short amount of time with that prospect. So we have to make sure that that little bit of time we do have with the prospect ends up being, you know, something that is memorable, something that grabs their attention, knowing something about them, the brain science section says actually puts them into the stage called system two, from system one. And when you flip them in the system two the likelihood of them, you know, actually engaging with you and having a longer scheduled discussion and other time is important. Now, this begs the question, and it kind of goes back to the core of your business and my business, I guess it's sort of the same, which is, if you got 3% of a market, that's that's actively buying, but then you have 40% of a market that's susceptible to looking how do we get more of the people who are susceptible to looking to talk to us, so that we can shape their buying vision beyond the online, you know, things that they're looking at? And that's I mean, Omedym, my my understanding is that, that that's the problem you're going for, as as anonymous web visitors, it's really the same kind of problem. We're going for the exact vision, but but when it comes for us, it's the actual conversation, what does that conversation sound like? So we get more of those people to talk, because if we shape the buying vision, we have a disproportionate chance of winning than if we don't, right, exactly, right.
Greg Dickinson: I mean, that's the, you know, we hear, you know, that the salespersons job is to, you know, control and influence. And my argument always is, well, you lost control, because they're doing a lot on their own. And you're, you know, the there's enough studies out there that say you only get 6, 8, 10 percent of the buyers time, so your ability to influence is now less, but to your point, if you can capitalize on some of the information you've learned in the past, then when you do engage, you have the opportunity to influence or if you can create a digital place where they can learn and discover about your company, you're influencing them in in a kind of a, in a digital way. You know, Steve's gonna kill me for this. But this isn't a commercial. We're going to talk about this later today. But he brought up that three by three. And if you listen to his call camps are on his website, they're fantastic. I listen, I'm not that smart, I need to learn something new every day, I was going through and prepping for this podcast and listen to his call captures a really good one about the three by three and where he came up with that idea, and so forth. So I kind of a little commercial for Steve, he had asked for his go, we're gonna talk about called camps in a bit, but go listen to some of his call camps, you'll learn a lot, you know, in the in the, in the day you collect, right? Do you think it's the coaching has changed Steve, in the last two to five years? Are you are you seeing different things that are needed to be collected in order to coach that inside demand Gen person, or is it kind of the same data just a little different way to coach what's going on,
Steve Richard: It's completely changed. I mean, first of all, the whole manage by walking around things, you know, dead, effectively, post COVID, I didn't even when people are vaccine, I just don't see a whole lot of people getting in each other's personal space, even after we're all vaccinated. So So you got it, you got to have visibility and transparency into what's going on, when you're not in the same place. And in some cases, in the same time, you can have a synchronous call coaching, which is which is completely different. Other interesting data that we've had around that, Greg, one thing is, is our CTO did this analysis of, of our customers and their call quality and how their call quality is changed over time, based on the coaching they've received. And not a surprise, you know, if someone's receiving coaching, they they get better, the call quality goes up, the scores go up over time, not a shocker. But what is interesting is if the activity level is low, so if the rep is in the bottom third of the activity level, then you can coach their calls until the cows come home, they won't get any better. Their call, quality never improves. And what that's showing us and telling us is basically if you have a low activity rep, instead of and by the way, that doesn't have to just be like an outbound rep, that could be someone that's sitting on an inbound call queue, you know, they're not sitting on the inbound call queue enough. Or if they're making outbound calls, you're just not making a high enough quantity. And they're not long enough, you got to focus on coaching activity level first, and, and then call quality. Second. And if you think about a metaphor of like baseball, or softball, again, if you got a softball player doesn't have enough plate appearances, then before you can really work on the swing, we got to focus on getting more plate appearances first.
Greg Dickinson: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that, you know, with with the, the calling today, right? And I'm sure you're seeing that, you know, let's let's make it a bigger bucket of activity. My guess is, I don't know, it's actually you probably do from your data is that the, you know, some of the activities that have changed or the amount of activity change, right? Because you can't listen at least right now No one's in the office to call right so unless you have your cell phone number, you're leaving voicemail 90 some odd percent of the time and then your activity emails right Get lost. I think that goes into some of your other activities you were talking about. Do you do you do you see a broader set of of activities that your your teams are now measuring so that they can coach you know, in a much more, you know, progressive way?
Steve Richard: Yeah, well, look, there's obviously email, social chat, and everything. Like that, that's that that's all, that's all good. But I'll tell you what, that the most successful companies that we're working with right now, they're calling cell phone numbers. And and they're getting they're finding and getting cell phone numbers, they're calling those cell phone numbers. They're they're getting the recorded calls in a legal compliant way for places where they can and and they're and they're leveraging that as part of their of their coaching initiative. And they're and they're seeing huge gains, we're actually seeing dial to connect rates have never been better ever, never have dialogue to connect rates been better. I'm talking levels. I started my career in 2002. And we I've been kind of informally measuring them. And then More formally, after 2005 when I started the company there, Greg, were talking to how to connect rates for director VPC level executives that are in like the, you know, high teens, which is like 17 dials that connect just unbelievable. That's unbelievable. I mean, they were up at 40 for a while.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, that's unbelievable. I mean,
Steve Richard: So I think I'll tell you what, I think I'm gonna give you a different answer to the question. Right now, there's a lot of self limiting beliefs and confirmation bias. It's happening. And sometimes it's recency bias. Oh, I made 10 calls last week, and I couldn't get anybody on the phone, therefore, I'm not gonna make any more calls. Or I, you know, I tried LinkedIn, and it didn't work. But I tried it nine months ago, so I'm not gonna give up on I'm not gonna do it anymore. It's, it's crazy. The whole world is is turned into like a big, scrambled egg. I mean, everything that you thought you knew, based, maybe you even did some AB tests, go back and retest them. And you're gonna find that everything looks totally different. I mean, it is it is evolving by the month, if not the week, in some cases, it's crazy.
Greg Dickinson: How amazing right? And that's why that's why people need to talk to you because I think what you're, you know, what we all read in the journals is what that particular company is selling, right? The other day all call calls, don't work, do this instead, this actually doesn't work do this instead, or Hey, Lincoln is hot as heck go do this. And they're selling you on. Right on doing that. And I think you're kind of a, you know, unbiased kind of, you know, truthful data source, authentic decisiveness, and we're just all reporting is what I'm seeing. And that's the value of your, of your technology is you can measure it for yourself. You can measure effectiveness, you can measure, hey, if they did this, and then they made a phone call, and they connected, what was their success rate? Right. And I think your point, the success rate is because you're coaching them on what voicemail losses used to lead, what's working, what's not, Listen, don't talk all the time. Right? Am I hitting the nail on the head?
Steve Richard: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. If you're not having the right conversation, then you could, you could have the best demand generation team in the world, you could have the best tools for getting anonymous web visitors to raise their hands and become known. You could have the best data sources in the world, you know, and you're just going to be a lot of people think they can just pump more in. Yeah, if I do more and more and more and more and more of all those things, all those marketing initiatives and demand Gen initiatives. Google AdWords, LinkedIn campaigns, you name it, that we're going to be fine. But if if that salesperson and that initial engagement, especially but then also the scheduled ones, clearly, I mean, obviously, the scheduled ones are really, really important. Now, we even talked about people doing zooms, and Microsoft Teams and everything like that, but it's really the first like, five to 10 minutes of either scheduled calls or unscheduled calls that engages that buyer. That is, you know, the ultimate moment of truth. You either you either get that right, or you don't, if you don't get that right, you're in big trouble. And if you're not, if you really don't have your arms around or measuring things like, well, when a rep gets Okay, so Greg, what do you do? Simple question, what do you do? What is your company do? And some of the reps are really good at answering that, and then flipping it back around and asking some questions. And other reps are horrible at it. And they just bla bla bla bla. And if you if you're not looking at those at those metrics to understand those conversion rates, you're just letting your marketing money on fire. What's the point? You see,
Greg Dickinson: That's the I mean, I think that's what people are missing, right? You're hitting something so darn important is that, you know, 10 years ago, you could have that blah, blah, blah call because the person on the other end you were trying to connect with didn't know a lot and they were they're happy to get any information they possibly can today, they've spent a month, two months, three months at ultimate number of sources on the web learning about you learning about your company, they know who you are, they like your LinkedIn profile. They went to Glassdoor they know about your company your values, your turnover rate, they've been to your website, they've been other places blog sites, and they know a lot so when you get them on the phone, you need to be there their take took that call or schedule that meeting because there's a higher level of interest in that person 10 years ago and you landed that call, they really don't know anything about you. I think there's a big difference because of our can, you know, this, this Hurry up mentality of people don't have an hour long time for a demo and you or an hour conversation or 35 minutes sales deck, they just don't want it, they want to get to the point, right? So
Steve Richard: I'll give you one of the biggest trends in that conversation. One of the biggest trends is if you think you're gonna do 21 questions and interview the buyer, and that first engagement and just ask all your qualification and discovery, you're sorely mistaken. buyers are frustrated by that they don't want that anymore. They're in, you know, in a lot of cases, they just they just hang up, or they just say, Look, I don't I'm not gonna answer any of your questions until you tell me some of you. So you got to be prepared to say something about your organization, or about trends in the market or topics that are relevant, that are that are going to capture that person's interest and attention and then flip it back around. Hey, Greg, before I go any further, do you mind if I ask you a couple real quick questions and get permission? The buyer has to give you permission to answer those questions yet. Otherwise, that discovery discovery, his interview is just done.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. And I think you know, that, listen, I'm not great at this. But you know, I always say, hay fever is something where we were seeing a lot in our customer data. Are you guys experiencing that? Right? That's your, you know, in a way, you're, you're giving them a fact? And then you're following it up with a question to see if they validate. Yeah, we're seeing that as well. Tell me more about that. Can I ask you more about that? Right. To your point? Hey, we're, we're gonna keep this on the other thing. Two more topics I want to hit you with real quick. And the other is that a little bit, we hear a lot about product lead growth, right. And the fact that the buyers right prospects suspects, buyers, customers want to see the product much earlier in the sales cycle. And oftentimes, right that touch point could be inside sales demand Gen. Are you seeing that? And if you are, how are your you know, kind of customers dealing with the fact that inside salesperson wasn't hired, right to give a demo, they were hired to prospect and find the and get meetings and you know, and qualify people, but yet, you know, oftentimes we see the data that suggests that, you know, in the first call, they're saying, you know, tell me about the price and tell me about product.
Steve Richard: Yep, yep. And and what what the companies are realizing because like you said, You can't make them all sales engineers, that's unrealistic. So instead, you have to have really good product driven offers, at the very top of the funnel that are thought out and are simple that anybody can can execute upon I think of a company that comes to mind is quota path. If you haven't checked out quota path, check out quota path. quota path has a free version, they've got a paid version, and they've got a way for you to trial, their paid version, that's very, very clever, very low friction, very easy for any, any any and every salesperson is able to do that you think about the old HubSpot website greater. I think about actually one of our customers is a marketing agency called within within.co and they have this really fantastic retail report. It's like It's like the retail pulse of what's going on in the retail world. The these are these are product driven offers that can you know, that can change the game on what the top of the funnel looks like. Yeah, if they're used effectively, But to your point, it can't be like I have to have a two weeks certification in order to use this stuff.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, yeah. And you, you know that, like I was just talking to a prospect of mine about an hour and a half before this. And, you know, they were talking about discovery, right? In the old days, when I was a pre sales engineer. You know, discovery was almost a mandate, I wouldn't even do a demo without it. Well, nowadays, there's like, Listen, I don't have time for discovery. Get the phone, I'll ask you, I'll guide you, I want to learn, I need to see, I want to validate whether your software's easy to use, as, you know, can it do the following not how but can and that's much earlier than it was before or you can
Steve Richard: Actually Greg, I'm gonna I'm gonna give you another trend that we're seeing ourselves in with our customers, which is what I call the peek in the window demo. And what that is, is like, especially for visuals, like I just have to see it just you they get a chance to see it interact with the product a little bit and then stop. The problem is that that the peek in the window demo has a tendency to turn into the harbor cruise demo. And over here, you'll notice this and over here, you'll notice this and that's not what this is about what this is about is like if there's that one thing, okay, hang on before real quick right before I share my screen with you. Let me even share it so they can see you're going there. Let me just ask you, what's the one thing that's most important to you just one, well, this is important, be great. And then show them something? Here's what you would do with that. Before I go any further. Greg, can I ask you a couple real quick questions. I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to harbor cruise you. I don't want to give you the harbor cruise demo. People people respond to that. But once you've once you scratch that itch once you've basically shown shown and proven to them, I am not the salesperson that's just going to say you can't see anything until I get the information I need. I'm willing to give you a little bit in order to get the human Law of Reciprocity kicks in. Yeah, of course that's in the book, influenced by Robert Cialdini, Robert john barrows talks about all the time. And then after that, you're usually fine. We have a 5050 back and forth. Exactly.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, listen what I try to tell people in the world is that in the early early, early stages of the funnel, the questions are, can you and they don't need to see it in detail. Later on They want to know how do you do it right. How do you set that up? How does it work? Will it work for me will it work in my environement will it work but in the early days, it's, I just want to know, can you do these four or five things? Right? And every buyer has a different take. So
Steve Richard: and then Greg said, just a point on that, when what it used to be is, can you was yes, we can skepticisms at an all time high right now, instead, instead, can you? And the answer is, hang on, let me show you my screen. Can you see my screen? And they see it? And then you say, Yes, we can, then they go. Okay. I believe that seeing really is believing it still is
Greg Dickinson: No, I listen, and and listen, you know, I tell people all the time that you know that SaaS came out, a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon. And there's been a lot of implementations and burgers that didn't turn out right. And, and no more is it you know, decision maker, one, it's a bunch of people deciding and you know, kind of getting buy in inside that organization. And they all want to kind of weigh in, right? It can't weigh in on a 30 page Word document that describes what your software does. They want to pretend like they're using it and seeing it. So we've killed that to a point, running out of time. But I do want i do want the audience to learn about these call camps, why'd you start them and tell people how they can find those and then tell me how I can find more out about you, Steve, and your organization. Today was fantastic content. Gosh, anyone listen to this today that didn't say Hey, Steve, someone I want to talk to you more but but the call camps really blew my way as a way that you guys are investing in the in the community and building community tell me about that.
Steve Richard: Thanks. Greg. That means a lot. So so the I mean, the backstory for ExecVision is I was working with all these I was a sales trainer. And I was working with all these clients. And I saw that two thirds of the time, they didn't get better a third of the time they did. And if I looked at why they were using call recordings, although we actually have a version of our products, we can have product like called coaching intelligence that it doesn't have to be connected to call recordings. But from from that moment forward, what I was just listening to the community, I was listening to sales leaders, Marketing Leaders, that have inside sales teams, field sales teams, SDRs, bdrs. And they were all saying the same things we need to drive consistency, and how our teams do our calls. So I took it upon myself and I started a webinar series where we break down it was the only one at the time there have been copycat sins, but break down real call recordings for what works and what doesn't. And and then go through it with excellent sales leaders or in some cases, sales training providers of different methodologies. And it really took off it's sort of exploded, because people they don't like roleplay I mean, let's be honest, I wish I did. I wish I could sit here Greg and lie to you and say, Oh, I love role playing I hate role playing. I think it's BS. I hate when people give me a simulated scenario and asked me to record myself doing it. And I know it's not real. It just I just can't get my arms around it. I don't care. I don't play the same way as I practice. I wish it was but I went to Georgetown with Allen Iverson
Greg Dickinson: Hey, listen, if we could all practice the way we play. I would be on the PGA because I'm killer.
Steve Richard: So so called Camp, check it out. If you if you if you link with Connect me on LinkedIn, you'll see it on LinkedIn. We do these. They're all all recorded. They're up on YouTube as well. 30 minutes to an hour long breakdown real calls what works? What doesn't it's free sales training. It's no no gate. No BS. Just me giving back.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, it's it's fantastic. Hey, Steve, it's been wonderful today to have you on here. I usually end my my podcast by telling having you tell the audience what they can do right now, that will make them better. But I think this whole, you know, 15 minutes was about those things. You've hit on about five or six different things that I think people need to think about for a second pause and think about it and go back to the office and say, are we doing this? Are we doing this? Are we doing this? Because I think you're on the forefront of seeing real results and real data and not role playing and not you know, kind of guessing at what would be the next you know, kind of Avenue so couldn't be
Steve Richard: Greg, one more? Everyone call your sales line Secret Shop yourself, you will be surprised what happens?
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, no, we tell people all the time to go to your go to your website and hit the request demo button and see what happens. And you'll get a call back like four or five days later. So that's the same thing as secrets, call your line and lock to see how interesting that is. And people really, you know, people forget that. That's your first touch. And even you know, how frustrated are you when you call your gas company, electric company, cable company, you name it. Right. And it's just a mirage or detract, you know, United Airlines and you gosh, it takes you like 20 minutes to get to what you're so mad that when you talk to somebody, right? You have no intention of buying anything. At that point. Hey, Steve. Thanks again, and we'll talk soon.
Steve Richard: Yeah, thanks, Greg. We could do this all day, but for these people, let them go. Alright. Have a good one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai