Episode 25 explores a conversation between Jeff Wilson and Greg. With over 30 years experience in sales leadership, Jeff spends most of his time currently focusing on consulting in sales acceleration in small businesses. He explains some of the trends and tricks that he has come across that influence the sales process and the growth of that part of the growing business. Greg and Jeff talk about how they each celebrate the victories in their companies and how doing small things like this increases moral and keeps people in all sectors of your business motivated. Because he does not only work for software companies, Greg questions Jeff on how his system is so adjustable and what he does when he is not familiar with an industry that he is consulting in. Jeff hosts his own podcast, Re:Source, where he brings in guests to talk about the sales process and all aspects of growing a business, have a listen to the episode Greg is featured in!
Greg Dickinson 0:09
All right. Welcome, everybody to The Convenience Factor Podcast. I'm excited today, Jeff Wilson's going to talk to us a lot about sales acceleration. Well, before we get started, what's cool is that I could probably throw a stone in hit Jeff, which is rare for me when doing podcasts. Usually, the last two or three I did, and it was in, I think, Germany in London. So a little bit further distance. But Jeff is here in what we call the upcountry of upstate of South Carolina. So let me let me turn it over to Jeff real quick and let Jeff introduce himself, and then we'll get started.
Jeff Wilson 0:42
Hey Greg, thanks for having me. I really appreciate that. So yeah, Jeff Wilson. In regards to sales acceleration, my consultant within that that network, my actual company is settled scope is in addition to my LLC, so I have been in sales executive sales leadership, Greg, I would say pretty much my whole adult life 30 plus years, so very, very, very excited to be a guest on your show here.
Greg Dickinson 1:09
Well, it's not fair. If he's been in the 30 years, I've been in the 30 years. But look, I look like this is this is audio only. Thank goodness. Right. So let's go. Yes. So tell me a little bit about that. I mean, I reached and I kind of invited you on the podcast is I mean, I think it's an interesting perspective was sales acceleration. So when I start asking my questions, kind of tell me about that model, right, sales, job salesman, ratio, and kind of, I don't think it's something that a lot of people know exists, and you can find, you know, kind of fractional CFO and fractional CTO, but, you know, coming from a sales perspective made very interesting, you know, perspective you guys take? So let's just talk about that real quick.
Jeff Wilson 1:53
Absolutely, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. So, the CFO, the CTO, and the one that became most popular before CRO, which is where I place myself and sales acceleration was CMO. Right? So you have to outsource finance, then outsource operations, then outsource marketing. So yeah, it really is great. And you're right, unfortunately, a bad thing is a lot of people don't know people like me exist. So for me, again, 30 plus years of sales leadership, and I tell people all the time, Greg, I am a sales process nerd self-proclaimed, right, like building out those sales processes. So for me, the value proposition is really working with small businesses, right. And in a lot of cases, these small businesses, either one of two things are occurring, the owner of the company, or an executive in the company is charged with leading the sales team. Two things exist in most cases. Number one, they don't want to manage the sales team, you and I, we we are one, right. So we know we can sometimes be difficult to manage, right. So sometimes they don't want to manage the sales team. Another thing that exists and sometimes at the same time, is they don't have the capacity, they don't have the experience to run a sales team. So someone like me and outsourced sales consultant can come in and provide a lot of the stability, put a lot of the processes in place, whether it relates to the sales process, in general implementing a CRM, compensation plans, those types of things, just things that in a small business owner not having walked the walk, right, it's just just didn't have the experience in developing and they have done great with their organization through sheer grit and determination. They built out a great organization, but they feel like they've hit that ceiling, they are they are having trouble growing. So that's where folks like me are able to come in and assist.
Greg Dickinson 4:01
Okay, and you know, and I think what people are gonna be thinking, right, because that's what I'm thinking is that, well, you know, let's say Jeff has got the chops. He's got the experience, he's done this before, but boy, he hasn't done it in my business, right? So he doesn't understand our positioning, he doesn't understand our differentiation and understand our "market". So help it because I hope you understand that right. From that, because the first question I would want to ask if someone came to me because I think 100% You're right. I mean, even you know, in any business I've ever been associated with, you know, five or six startups, you know, it's always it's always led by one person until that person gets, you know, exhausted and fundamentally what the other problem is, I think, is it's not a full time job. It you know, I'll go do this for three or four hours on Monday and then I get dragged into something else r"unning the business", maybe your product management issue, a product issue, a customer issue, and then I'll get back to it tomorrow right so but let's before we kind of log off into that problem, but walk me through that kind of that if people have any reaction than I do, which is hey, you know, you don't know my business.
Jeff Wilson 5:04
Yes, yes, you're exactly right. If I get an objection to the value proposition that I just laid out to you, it is exactly that. All right, Jeff, great, but you don't know anything about selling labels and ribbons. Okay, You're exactly right. So the conversation, at that point, Greg really has to be very pointed. And I say that the individual, you're exactly right. I don't have experience in your industry. But I don't need to, because I'm going to be working alongside you. And Greg, with all due respect, you don't have the experience that I hold, as it relates to sales leadership. So in tandem together, we're going to spend a lot of time on the front end, you're going to be helping me understand your industry, I'm going to be there to call on you to ask you questions as we go through this. But at the end of the day, you're going to be my resource to understand your industry, your company, but all of these things that I'm going to outline for you, they are industry, agnostic, you need to have a plan, you need to keep score of your plan. And again, if those two things are happening, and we constantly are tweaking the plan to ultimately get the result that you want in terms of revenue growth, we're successful.
Greg Dickinson 6:29
So can you understand that so So? So? Is that your value prop to the executive? Two questions? Is there a size and company that really is hot for you, or kind of, you know, you've had success? A lot of places or size? And then you know, kind of if you think about selling right to poor question, think about selling there's all kinds of areas, right there is the you know, the sales team there's recruiting of the sales team, there's that "sales process", there's a kind of pipeline management, there's you know, activity kind of management, and you call the scoring just now so, you know, is there a kind of a size that works best for you? And then kind of those disciplines, right, that are all required to be successful? Are you where do you start in a certain place? Or does it matter where you start? Or, you know, how do you build that, you know, that success and get those quick wins and help that person to see the light of hey, you know, this is really gonna go to help us?
Jeff Wilson 7:26
Absolutely. You touched on that. The question of whether or not this is a full time, 40 hour, opportunity or need, and it is not. So for me, a sweet spot for me and the company, is those small businesses that are under $20 million. And the reason for that is Greg, someone's doing over $20 million, they are probably going to invest in a full time salary for a VP of sales, the employee burden that comes along with it. So again, under that $20 million, really is a good fit. Okay? Yes, there is a starting point of all of those things that you listed. And the fundamental base of that is a sales process. Okay. So when I sit down, talking with the owner or the executive team, I'm really wanting to understand where what what's that endpoint? Where do they want to be? So, I don't know, Greg, if you or your listeners are familiar with EOS entrepreneurs operating system. So an interesting fact EOS is is something that small businesses adopt and implement from a standpoint of running their organization. And it really identifies the operation seat, the finance seat in the sales seat. Now, interestingly enough, there is a venture capital organization called the Firefly group. They purchased EOS about three years ago. Last summer, they purchased sales acceleration. Okay. So we now have a nice toolkit to bring into our clients, but fundamentally understanding that sales process, I need to know where does this organization want to be in three years, and then work backwards, right? So if you need to have this in revenue, or these benchmarks, or these KPIs in place, let's work backwards from that. So the sales process really takes me there. I typically will start to say, let's talk about these these very decorated wins that you've that you've amassed in your organization's timeline and history. And then we walk through the sales steps that got us there. Then I say, give me one or two that you really thought were in your grasp, but you lost them at the last minute. And then we walk through the sales process of that. Once we memorialize that, and I'm pointing to my left Here I've got a large whiteboard. Once we document that, we find very quickly, Greg, that there was a sales process step in the sales process that was missed, right for the ones that we lost versus the ones that wrote one. The reason being that sales process was never documented. So we start there, then we take a look at, okay, this is a sales process, we feel like if repeated, we'll we won't when you talk about recruiting, we then look at what is the existing sales team that we have? What's their capacity? What's their bandwidth? From a standpoint of lead generation marketing? Those types of things? Can it get us to that number that the organization wants to be? So that really takes us to that next step? Let's build out the sales team. When do we need to have those folks in place? And we've obviously, as a part of the sales process? We've we've understood at this point, how long does it take us? Right, from identifying the lead to closing the sale? So that's really where we start in regards to that process, spending a lot of time with the ownership. And again, overcoming that objection, if it surfaces around the fact that you don't know our industry, you don't know our company, understanding that sales process in the very beginning. We get past that very quickly.
Greg Dickinson 11:20
Yeah, listen, I can definitely relate and see that, you know, it's interesting, right? It's very interesting for folks. Yeah. Are we offshore our development, right? People don't even think twice about the fact that we're going to, why do you do that? Well, there's different levels of expertise I need, I can't hire all those expertise. So it's, you know, really good reading, you could use the cloud as an example, to say the same thing, right? The reason we go to cloud is it has all the attributes we need. And when we need it, we go get him. Right. And but that's, you know, and I think what you're hitting on that people need to kind of comprehend is this, this idea that A: it's fractional, B: it's an unbiased, and sometimes probably painful process to say, hey, here's your sales process. And by the way, it really, you're, you can't call it a sales process. It's a motion of some sort you're doing, but it's not really the, you know, the process. So I think it's pretty cool to have that, you know, unbiased review of the process. And then, you know, bringing bringing forward those other ideas. So, you know, hats off to you, I think that's a pretty cool thing. I'm going to flip the script a little bit here now and say, okay, so you talk to a lot of companies, you've been doing this for a while you got 30 years experience, etc? If I, if you were talking to a business five or 10 years ago versus today, would you talk to them differently? Right, Have you have you found that those different sales tactics that used to work are no longer working and kind of, you know, hitting on that we call the convenience factor, right, the idea that the that's a buyer has fundamentally changed and what sales need to do to continue to sell is different than it was 510 years ago, 20 years ago, but I like to focus on the on the near term of five or 10, what do you think about that? What do you what do you what's your experience?
Jeff Wilson 13:03
Yeah, absolutely. From the building blocks the process, in the things that I've talked about, that I'm building out as an outsource sales leader, haven't changed, but the delivery has, and you know, when you talk about customers out, if you'll allow me, I'd like to talk about two types of customers, one being the sales team, right, a customer of the in the company, and then the final customers, the ones that are purchasing it. So again, like you said, with a convenience factor leading remotely, right, leading remotely, you have to be very, very nimble at that. And what I mean is, in years past, you know, usually a sales leader coming in Monday morning, hey, let's have a roundtable meeting. My offices is near your office, and we're all kind of gathering together. Let's talk about what the week looks like. Let's celebrate wins. You know, a lot of companies I'm sure you've been a part of them and may be a part of your company. We get a new contract, we ring the bell, right? It might be available on the wall. It might be a cowbell. It might be a trumpet that sounding but we're celebrating that right around for mine because
Greg Dickinson 14:13
I don't see it right here. But I do have one in every place I've been it was gifted because I always had a bell ring and it was pretty easy, a pretty crappy bell. And so this last place I purchased my last one, this guy gave me a really nice cowbell. I'm at my wit's like it's here. I know it's here. So that's pretty funny, though. Thanks for bringing that up.
Jeff Wilson 14:31
Yeah. Well, and I'll take this a step further. I won't mention the company, but I really liked this idea. It's a software company. So you can relate to this. But when they would bring on a new customer in the corporate office over the audio sound system, they would play the wedding march. Right. So we're married, we are partnering with somebody.
Greg Dickinson 14:56
I need to I mean, listen, at the end of the day sales is hard, right? And I think it gets You know, there's a, there's a gentleman on my team, I won't, I won't embarrass him. But, you know, he was always on the delivery side of software. And he used to always pick on us salespeople, right? He just, you know, when I ran sales for Ariba, he was with me there and it was all bla bla bla bla bla now, right? He's part of a startup, our startup, right? And he's the kind of selling things are like you know, and so, you know, now you kind of appreciate why the heck we celebrate, right? Because it's, you know, more can go wrong than can go right. You know, it's like, it's like one of my best sales leaders ever worked for us to say, Greg, you always tell our customer don't be afraid to tell me yes. Yes, only bad things could happen for me. So I'm gonna be very intended, right? Because, yes, that can happen. So anyway, I interrupted you, but I thought that was a pretty cool, you really think they're so? So you're talking about remote and being in limbo checker?
Jeff Wilson 15:53
Yes. So nimble to the to the sales team, I tell you as as an outsourced sales leader. And let me address that fact that I didn't earlier talking about full time. So in my role, if I'm an outsourced sales leader, I'm given that that company eight hours per week, okay? All right, so, so in that with working remotely, and being nimble, you and I are using Microsoft Teams for this, there's a lot of others. But I can have an impact on a group and an individual in a matter of minutes, right? sharing documents, sharing screens, those types of things. So I have found in these past two years, we've been forced to do it. But Greg, what's come out of this is a level of efficiency. It's really been fantastic. Now, not to say that that takes away, I still am having face to face meetings with the sales teams that I'm in charge of leading, and then transitioning to the ultimate customer. Overall, I will say customers have embraced the technology, they have embraced the opportunity to have these conferencing web based demos. And again, talk about a level of efficiency. Now granted, when we're getting into the core presentation, we're discussing a contract. Fortunately, the world's opening up more more companies are allowing us on site. But in the early stages, when we are again, vetting and trying to confirm is this a good fit for us and the customer, the prospect video conferencing has been fantastic, and level of efficiency has come about. So that's really what hits my mind. You're like, what was different, you know, from from five years ago,
Greg Dickinson 17:40
and I think you'll probably agree with this, right? I think the first thing that's encouraging for me is that, you know, kind of, you know, WebEx and GoToMeeting have been around for 20 years, right? And you can always do this, but people are really reluctant to be like, you and I are right now on a video looking each other as it just we're lucky now. You know, 90% of every online meeting, I have people you know, people are there pictures, then what you just hit on is what I what I try to tell people, when obviously, it's a little bit about what we do as well here in Oakland, him is the fact that you got to be concise, right? I mean, people are distracted today, when you get someone in a room, it's much easier to to keep them for an hour really and keep them engaged. But if they're on a zoom or a team or a WebEx or whatever it is, right, they can take their camera off, they can go do other things, they can look at their phone, and somebody will do it without even consciously knowing that everyone can see him doing it. Right. And so I think the I think the idea here is that, you know, is you got to also make sure that you use that time wisely, right. And like, you know, we're gonna do this podcast, we're running it that, you know, we're going to be running up to the 20 minute mark, why 20 minutes? Well, because, you know, people will listen for 20 minutes and move on. If I made it an hour, Jeff, no one's gonna listen to us. Right. And I think that's where, you know, our customers call it, you know, the, you know, obviously, through our technology, but they're able to deliver what they call snackable answers to questions in a quick burst, right? 12345 minutes, not 90 minutes, right? I think that what you're saying is, well, it's it's deficient. But if you're I'm sure if you're a consultant with team, yes, you guys want to use it wisely. Right? Just because you have an hour doesn't mean you should run the follow up.
Jeff Wilson 19:14
Yeah, yeah. And I'll give, I'll give you a plug, because I've had the honor of having you on my podcast, right, the resource podcasts and you talked about the fact that you can take from a video standpoint and really go to where somebody's wanting to be, you know, they they're not, they're not having to sit there and work and look at a 30 minute demo to find how to do this step. Right. So you have taken them you have the ability and I think a unique selling point for for AMI down is that you can take them directly to that is searchable as categorized. So your hats off to you for recognizing what the consumer is wanting.
Greg Dickinson 19:52
But it just behavior right at the end of the day. If you look at the searches on YouTube, I think I lost the stat. I think it's like 64 something percent of all searches start with how to, right? Because how do I change my email? How do I change wiring my house? How do I add a speaker system? How do I, you know, do this in software? Right? And we all right would prefer that's what you and I are talking about here, this video interaction, we'd all prefer to do that, right? I mean, you look at the face to face meetings in the 90s, you know, and then you know, and now then it moved to online, because even back to my last time, Hiperos, you know, customers would say, Don't come to me, right? Because if you fly all the way to Phoenix, there's only gonna be two of us in the room because the other 15 people are spread out across the world, right? So there's no use you doing it? I was old school. Yes, I'm coming, I'm gonna put a suit on, you know, I'm going right. If I'm going to ask for money, I need to be there. But but so that started changing. But now, right, we we the one you know, there is any good news out of what happened last two years is that we've been forced to be remote. But I think there's a you know, that discipline of being able to use video efficiently is what needs to be done right? Don't don't just, Hey, I got you out for an hour. So let's just use the whole hour. And I'll you know, I'll ask him every question I want to ask him then I'll ask him again, those same questions. You know, not not not why so so from a sales perspective and coming in and helping organizations. We talk a little bit about about video but but have you seen any of the you know, this idea this concept of there's a lot more written about this now around salespeople need to be more guiding, right guided selling approach, because a lot of the quote unquote, data they used to have that the customer had to come to them for they can find on the internet. So there's, there's a little bit less of a window of of time being spent with that that buyer. And so hopefully, they're a little bit because I that, you know, that's gonna have to be a learned skill. I think I just found your philosophy.
Jeff Wilson 21:49
Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I like to use and I think it falls into the same term is a consultative, right. I mean, search, certainly. And this is, this is a part of the sales process. And I'll build out because we were talking about I use the term needs analysis, right. So we, you talked about getting to yes, I tell my folks, the quicker we can get to know, the better off we are, we need to find out, is this worth our time and their time. So to your point, I work very closely with with organizations and sales teams. To drill down, we just start whiteboarding, what are questions that we're going to ask? And are some of these questions fluff that we can get directly to the point? So I like what you term guided, is asking the right questions to see is there alignment against what the customer needs? versus what we have to offer? How quickly can we get there? So absolutely. Now not guided in the sense of let's let's make them purchase this. But let's guide them to a quick discernment. Right? of should we even be talking? But let's let's get there very quickly. And so yeah, I very much subscribe to that philosophy. And a lot of what I do is getting to that point now, certainly thought provoking questions, because, you know, they're different different types of pain, right, like Leighton pain, real pain. I mean, you know, again, getting to that point, some people don't realize that they have as big a problem as they have that we can help them fix. Some don't want to realize. So, again, God had questions to get to that standpoint to uncover it, or so valuable.
Greg Dickinson 23:40
We can do a whole podcast on that. I mean, I think this idea of consultative, and getting to know right, because it ended up getting, I talked to someone it's funny because you know, my technology a little bit is modernizing and automating some things and I talked to a CRO about three months ago. So I'm Greg, that's all BS. Because if I get some on the phone, I can convince him to buy and I'm like, I applaud. I'm like, Are you serious? Like, like, like, you make an app? And you really believe that right? Because I think that I think that the the approach that works to your point is let's ask some questions. Let's, you know, uncover some things. Let's have a conversation. But the end of the day, if it's no, I'd rather know that this week than six months from now, and it's a hard skill, right? Because most salespeople don't want to watch that keep it accurate. There's, there's a 2% chance or something like that. So I think that, you know, hats off to you to be able to walk in again, I think that's one of the vantages of this you know, kind of fractional is you can be brutally honest, right and come in and sometimes say, hey, you know, that picture is not not not as good as it should be. Here's what we need to do to change that. And I think that's sometimes people get all wrapped up in activity, right? And activity is not necessarily progress. So, hey, we're running down the wire here. You see, you touch a lot of people you talk to a lot of people give my audience one or two words of advice. I can take back to the office today and be be better at what they do.
Jeff Wilson 25:02
Wow. I would say probably voice, just voice of the customer, right Lake lane and be willing to get some critical feedback on how you're doing as an organization. However, be prepared to act on it. If you're not going to act on it, it's not worth your time and actually couldn't could be hurtful. If you do ask for feedback, and don't act on it. But what I would say is, get in front of it be vulnerable, be willing to listen to what your customers think about you. I have seen companies pivot from a from a remarkable standpoint, when they're willing to do that.
Greg Dickinson 25:44
Great advice, and it listens, no one wants to hear bad news. But you know, to your point, right, get out, get out there and have those conversations and get that feedback. And I think, you know, very strong advice there that don't ask how can I help you? And then come back three months and ask you How can I help you again? Or what do you think because if you haven't done anything, if they give you three things that are really important to them, and you haven't addressed any of them any way, shape, or form, and if you can't do you got to be honest about that. Hey, I know that's important you but based on where we are organizational, we're not gonna do that right now. It's probably something we'll tackle next year. That's just as good, right? But don't thank you very much, Jeff. Write it all down and then don't do anything. Hey, Jeff, thanks so much. I love what you guys are up to love for you spending some time with us today. And we'll be talking soon. I'm sure have a great day.
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