In episode 2 of The Last Sale, we explore the importance of the human touch in sales with author, speaker, and accomplished salesperson, Andy Paul. Andy, with his engaging storytelling, highlights the art of listening and empathy that's becoming increasingly more important in how deals are done, even multimillion-dollar ones. From high-stakes negotiations to the power of creating genuine connections, Andy shares numerous stories from his career as this episode gets down to the basics of sales, building and maintaining trust.
Thanks again to your our sponsor, GoPayhawk. Stop overpaying and start thriving with GoPayhawk's payment process solutions. Visit GoPayhawk.com today and use code TLS24 to learn more about receiving a $250 credit on your payment processing solutions.
In episode 2 of The Last Sale, we explore the importance of the human touch in sales with author, speaker, and accomplished salesperson, Andy Paul. Andy, with his engaging storytelling, highlights the art of listening and empathy that's becoming increasingly more important in how deals are done, even multimillion-dollar ones. From high-stakes negotiations to the power of creating genuine connections, Andy shares numerous stories from his career as this episode gets down to the basics of sales, building and maintaining trust.
Thanks again to your our sponsor, GoPayhawk. Stop overpaying and start thriving with GoPayhawk's payment process solutions. Visit GoPayhawk.com today and use code TLS24 to learn more about receiving a $250 credit on your payment processing solutions.
And welcome to episode two of the last cell, where we investigate cells through stories of great salespeople. We have one for you today, andy Paul, I'm Kevin Hill, one of your hosts, along with Mr Richie Dagle. Richie, take it away.
Speaker 2:You know, andy is one of my favorite authors of sales books. You know I like books, kevin, and I like right with most sales books is that a third of the stuff, a third of the book, is really good and two thirds of it's kind of filler, it's like you know. But Andy Paul's book is different. It's straight, it's to the point. Every page is really good, you know, and his big thing is, hey, be a good human. Maybe that's the most important thing and sales is to listen to people and help people and be a good person. And let's focus on how to do that.
Speaker 2:You know, and hear some ways to do that in sales Super cool conversation and he's been part of some massive deals. Like some of the deal sizes he was discussing eight figure deals like just wild stories. I mean, he had some really, really cool stories in this episode about navigating, you know, multi-million dollar deals and flying across continents and like all the things that happened. One tactic which I'm not going to give away, which was fantastic, about how to better your odds when you're in a head to head situation with somebody else, which I thought was absolutely brilliant hint that involves, you know, accessing your partners and using them strategically.
Speaker 2:But really cool conversation. What were your big takeaways, Kevin?
Speaker 1:Just simplified. I felt after we had a conversation with Andy that I could go out and sell global satellite communications tomorrow. That's how simple he kind of made it and straightforward. So I really appreciate that. But without further ado, let's just jump right into the conversation.
Speaker 2:So I think that's a good place to start. Andy, I'm curious for someone who ran a podcast and is starting a new podcast what advice do you have for us who you know, for Kevin and myself, who have also previously ran a podcast, and we're here starting a new podcast?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, for me I don't know if this is advice for the audience or not, but for you, in terms of starting a podcast, is advice I give it a podcast is just remember that people tune in to listen to you and that's where the relationship is built. So, you know, just focus on, you know, inserting yourself into the conversation, because people ultimately are tuning in to hear your point of view, more so than the guests, because that's where the relationship exists. But you know, in terms of other advice is just, yeah, find interesting people to talk with. I mean, you've done it for before. You did it for three and a half, four years. I've done it, gosh, for eight years now and I find that I always like say it's sort of one of more selfish things I've done in my business career, because I've probably talked to a thousand guests over that period of time. And where else do you get the opportunity to talk to a thousand smart, interesting people? And, yeah, I've taken away as much from talking to them as probably the audience has.
Speaker 1:I think there's an important point of doing podcasts and something that people overlook who haven't done a podcast is how much you learn. How much you learn from the guests that you talk to is amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and yeah, I'm a firm believer that you know you're gonna find really interesting, intriguing thoughts and opinions from all spectrums. You know people all across the spectrum, and so one of the things I was intentional about with the new podcast I launched in July of this past year whereas my previous show had done about 1200 episodes of an interview podcast, which was, as I said, fun and educational and informative is I just wanted more voices in the conversation. So with this new format podcasts my show, the WinRate podcast every episode is me and three guests. So I wanted to have as many diverse voices, new voices, not just the same sales authors and, you know, experts and so on, but, yeah, people who are selling and people who are, yeah, from all aspects of the sales and revenue process, not just as authors and bloggers and so on. And it's been great because we have these conversations that bring points of view forward that that people maybe don't normally hear, and it's so important because I think sales is sort of stuck.
Speaker 3:You know, it's our recurring theme of mine, and what I write and what I talk about is this technology notwithstanding, we're basically selling and managing sellers pretty much the same way we have for 50 year, 50 plus years, and it's we really need to rethink, you know, I think, substantial elements of how we go about the business if we want to stay relevant in the process to buyers, and because you know they increasingly have options that don't involve talking to salespeople not that they're optimal, but they can get the job done. And so I think, I said, if we want to make sure that, as human sellers, we stay relevant, things have to change.
Speaker 2:For sure, and Andy help us. I mean there may be people listening that aren't familiar with you. There is the. I'd say there are few and far between, because you've done a great job of getting your name out there. Your book is fantastic. It's one of my favorite sales books, I have to say. But for those people that may not know you like just a quick introduction and how you went from where you were in sales to where you are as an author and podcast host and voice in the space.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I've been doing this for a long time, which I sort of lean into these days, because so, yeah, this is my 46th year in sales. So I was in the tech biz. Yeah, I started off selling large computer systems, you know, on-premise computer systems, to companies that for many of them were, were, is there initial for-end automation and computerization, so just sort of put a stake in the ground in terms of timing. So one of the things I learned really early on was was how do you help the buyer and really focus on that, how do you help them make this decision? Because it was a very monumental decision for companies at that point in time was, you know, we've been keeping basically large, you know counting systems and cost, job cost accounting systems and so on, selling a lot to the construction industry, and this is a big leap right, I mean one that we sort of forget about today. So for me, it really got me in this mindset of, oh, my job really isn't about pushing my products, really have to help these people make this decision, to make this change it's really, I said, decisive change in their business. So did that?
Speaker 3:I worked at Apple in the very early days of Apple, worked for a variety of startups up until the year about year 2000. It's been about 15 years selling large satellite communication systems to large enterprises around the world. So I wanted to start my own gig and my expertise really was how do you help small, no-name companies which all these startups were go and compete against the big guys for big orders and win? And that was I had been hired and worked for a variety of succession of startups doing that. So I started my own company, working with, again, small, mid-sized companies specifically on that task. I'd help them learn how to win, compete and win.
Speaker 3:And then sort of got the bug to write a book. So in year 2000, 2011, wrote my first book, got the bug for podcasting in 2015,. Started my podcast and, yeah, podcast got acquired in year 2000, or 2020, excuse me and I produced that under contract to come and acquire the podcast. But then sort of went on my own path earlier this year and started a new one. And, yeah, didn't anticipate when I wrote my first book that there would be an audience for it as more sort of scratching an itch and turned out people liked it and so one book led to two, led to three and now I'm actually hoping 24, shooting to get my next book published.
Speaker 3:Congratulations, oh, thanks. Yeah, it's been fun, right? I think that one of the elements that people miss and I think it's somewhat nature of the way the business has evolved is that you don't often hear salespeople talk about having fun. And I had this incredibly fun career and have had this incredibly fun career and a number of different chapters. You know I start off in direct sales. I said selling to the construction industry these computer systems, and then got involved at Apple in the early days of Apple and 81 joined Apple. You know it's a couple hundred million dollar company there, not a multi-billion billion dollar company.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, got involved in channel sales, which I hadn't been involved in before and then got back into direct selling, selling satellite communication systems what I know about satellite communication systems. I did that for 15 years for three different companies and, yeah, it gave me the opportunity to travel the world. I've sold on every continent but Antarctica dealt with huge companies that everybody knows and it was just fun, right. I mean we were the underdog by definition. Every deal we went into we were the underdog. And learning to be able to operate in that environment, to be able to win, you know, seven, eight, nine-figured yields, competing at these mega companies, was just a gas.
Speaker 3:But again, you don't hear people talk about the fun of it, because it was so creative, it demanded so much creativity and doing things different. And I said, you're always sort of the underdog. How do you help the buyer and how do you differentiate yourself? So that part sort of seems to be missing these days and because, yeah, it tends to be more about hey, we've got our process, I want you to comply with our process. This is our playbook. You know, here are the steps, that's it. Ah, da, da, da, da, da. And I think the thing that keeps people in sales especially the top performers, you know, certainly true in my case is autonomy.
Speaker 3:And that's part of what makes selling funds. You have the autonomy to say look, this is, yeah, my first sales job. First sales job. Yeah, my boss was very clear you are the president of this territory. Right, you're the CEO. Make your number. You know, obviously we operate within frameworks and guidelines and so on, but other than that, go make it happen. And you know, having that freedom early in your career, that constantly be experimenting and feel like you're in charge of your success is. I found that that really became important to me as I looked for different jobs as I moved up in my career. That autonomy was really important and I think it helped me perform at higher levels because, yeah, I was doing it. I was responsible for my own success. That's one of the themes I wrote about in my last book. Sell Without Selling Out is just yeah, you have to sell or you have to find that situation, demand it even.
Speaker 2:Yep. So, Andy, I have a couple oddball questions here. I think they're gonna make sense here in just a moment. But of all the places you've traveled and all the vacations you've had, where is your favorite location? If you had to go on one vacation, you only get one left. Where are you going on vacation?
Speaker 3:One left, it'd probably be Hawaii. Yeah, one of the benefits of being on the West Coast for most of my life is Hawaii's pretty close and it's just a place that speaks to me, I guess. And so, yeah, I think I've been. No, I not think I know. Last time we're there we counted up over 50 times. So yeah, and so that's yeah, that's sort of my go-to voice.
Speaker 2:And then, what is your favorite beverage? Could?
Speaker 3:be, anything.
Speaker 2:What's your favorite drink? Alcoholic or non-alcoholic, just what's your favorite?
Speaker 3:Well, probably water, but when I'm having fun, yeah, I enjoy a good beer.
Speaker 2:All right. So imagine that it's way into the future. You are sitting on a beach in Hawaii and there's just beer. Everywhere there's beers coming out of the sand. There's people walking around the beach with beers on trays, everywhere. There's beers coming in in the waves. There's beers behind you and you're retired. You are fully retired. You're no longer doing any more work. What is the last thing that you ever sold? What was your last sale?
Speaker 3:Oh, myself. So, yeah, that's my business, right? I mean, if, whether it's a consulting project or a coaching project or, you know, I have sponsors for my podcasts selling sponsorships, you know, ultimately it's me that I'm selling and it has been for, yeah, since I started my own company.
Speaker 2:So if the last sale I'll push a little bit deeper the last sale of you, what is that looking like? Is that a specific coaching job? Is it selling you to a company? Or what specifically does that last sale of Andy Paul look like?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to my age, is hard to predict my horizon. Yeah, that's a good question, I don't know. Probably, probably I had a gas, probably sponsorship of the podcast, I imagine, you know, if I I think over time I could see myself focusing mostly on that. But, yeah, hard to say.
Speaker 3:I mean, I still, I still am excited about what I do and I'm still excited about what I do and still curious about, yeah, opportunities to, to you know, spread the word and that you know the things that I'm passionate about in terms of sales and terms of sort of the human first selling and and obviously, with that event of AI in the last year and the form you know, chat, generative AI I had, yeah, been very been energized to say, okay, actually, I think that humans have a very central role to playing in sales. It might be in a little bit smaller patch in sales because I think there'll be fewer products that need humans involved in selling of them, but I still think those are strategic products that are very important to companies and if we're gonna be involved, as I said before, if we're gonna be involved, we need to do a better job and in order to maintain relevance. So I, as a mission, I still see that as something that I want to be involved with.
Speaker 1:I guess if you're in sales, you never really start stop selling, do you? Until the day that you die, you're always selling something. Might not be something for money, but you're always selling yourself. You're selling others around you on whatever idea that you have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, let me put a different spin on that, because I wrote about this in Sell Without Selling Out it's. You know what's the job of a salesperson? And so many sellers think, well, my job is to persuade a buyer to purchase my product. And, as I wrote about in the book, I don't think that's the job at all and it certainly hasn't been the way I've practiced it, nor do I think it's the way that most top performers do. Instead, I think job of a seller is to listen to your buyers, understand the things that are most important to them and then help them get that.
Speaker 3:And so this different spin for what you're saying in terms of always sort of selling is that's actually, to me, has always been a life lesson, right, what's my job as a spouse? Well, it's to listen to my spouse to understand the things that are most important to her, then help her get those things. You know what's my job as a colleague? You know my job is to listen to my colleagues understand things that are most important to them and then help them get that. So, yeah, to the extent that you follow that path, as I believe we do, sure you always serve selling, but to me, selling is really a form of helping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it certainly should be, and I think that's where the point that you made earlier. You know, sales organizations are sometimes run like in the same way that have been ran for 50 years and you get into helping buyers buy or I guess that would be a way to say it right Helping buyers buy versus 50 years ago, where it was more pushing your product.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, unfortunately it's still the way it's practiced by most sellers. It's still pushing the product, yeah, I mean it's. And this, I think, is really a critical thing, and I think you know we've been stuck in this long. This mindset for so long about, yeah, we're going to go persuade somebody to buy our product is that we really lose track of the buyer and the whole thing. And it's the buyer. Based on the study.
Speaker 3:Everybody's seen the studies I presume most people have you know from Gartner and others saying, I think Gartner's number is, you know, 75% of B2B buyers, decision makers, don't want to talk to salespeople. And you know my take on that, which I like to say as well that's completely wrong. That's 100% of buyers don't want to talk to salespeople. But if you're a seller and you find yourself talking to a buyer, it's because they need to. They didn't need to talk to you. They wouldn't.
Speaker 3:So you know what are you going to? If they need, what do they need from you? Well, they need your help and it's and this is you know I differ with other people. They don't need your help to buy something, they need your help to make a decision, and I think those are sort of a little bit different, right, and what the decision they're making is. The decision they're making is are we going to make this change in our business? And that change is represented by buying this product or service that we're looking at. And if you can really focus on saying, well, yeah, I'm going to help the buyer make this decision to make a change, then you're sort of taking it from a different perspective as well. I've got this, you know, I'm going to talk to them, I'm going to discover them, I'm going to qualify them, we're going to demo them. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, okay, well, if the buyer is looking at making a change, what's, what's sort of the pattern they're following?
Speaker 3:Well the pattern they're following is hmm, we need to sort of define the opportunity of what we want to achieve by making this change right, and so we need to find the outcomes we want to achieve. We need to find sort of the challenges, internal hurdles we may have to make that change. And then, once we've done that, then we'll go out in the market and say, okay, how can we make this change Right? What are the products or services available to help us make this change? And the last decision we make is who are you going to make the change with? Well, most salespeople come in and start pitching their product, right? Well, the buyer is in this mode of saying look, I'm just trying to define what it is we're going to do, and that's why they're talking to you, because that's the help they need.
Speaker 3:But we're so out of line with that in the way that most sales organizations are set their processes. You know, look at the stages in CRM system. They don't align to this. Hey, we're trying to find what we're going to do, then we're going to talk about how we're going to do it and then third thing we do is choose who to do it with. So, challenge for us as sellers. I said to maintain relevance is we really have to align ourselves exactly with what the buyer is going through. Right now it looks like there's two things that are going on there's the seller's job and then there's the buyer's job. Well, it's really just one job that's happening. That's the buyer trying to make a decision, and we said we need to be much more closely aligned with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that idea of the buyer being the hero of the story, as opposed to the seller or the company being the hero of the storyline. It's kind of switching. You know, if you're creating a narrative or a storyline, it's the buyer. That's like they're the ones that are should be winning and that the hero of this whole thing, this whole journey.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Well, it's interesting we have this whole sort of you know, the ties crested a little bit, but yeah, and sort of 2018, 2019, 2021, all the emphasis on storytelling right, especially in certain, the pandemic is, you know, we have tell stories, which is true, but I think most people missed the mark about what story we're socially telling and I think Richie, you had that as we're telling the buyer story. That's the only story they want to hear. They want to hear their story. You know how they're going to prosper as a result of making this change in their business.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, sellers were just not very good at sort of creating what I wrote about self storytelling. This vision of what success looks like and this is something actually happens has to happen very early in the buyer's process of making the decision, because then that becomes a target at which all of your subsequent sales efforts and efforts to help the buyer are focused on. Let's reach agreement on what it is, what the success looks like, and then, from that point, we have a much better focus discussion about how we can help you.
Speaker 2:So I want to just ask a few questions about your career. We kind of start, we're going to. We've asked about this fictitious last sale and now we're going to jump to the other end of the spectrum and talk about first sale and some other notable sales along the way that we have that we're curious about. But I have a feeling that we're going to. You know, hear how some of these themes developed in your career through some of these notable sales and, you know, perhaps our listeners will have some good takeaways from these stories as well. So, jumping into it, what's the first sale you ever remember making?
Speaker 3:Oh, I remember. So I was working for my first Java college, working for a company called Burroughs, and Burroughs at the time was the second largest computer company in the world behind IBM. But as for antitrust against IBM, at that point the next seven companies combined were still just a small fraction of IBM's revenues, and so at the time in the industry they called it IBM and the seven dwarfs. So we were dwarf number one.
Speaker 3:And in order to earn our stripes to go to a training class to learn how to sell computer systems, burroughs had this legacy product line of adding machines. So at the time they were about the size of a small microwave oven and cost $250 in those days, which you know, equivalent of 1,000 plus these days. But that was when handheld calculators were just coming out and they cost $50 bucks, $35 bucks, and that's what we were competing against. But we had to sell $5,000 worth of calculators, desktop adding machines, for they'd qualify to send us to computer training school. So, as in at that time, living in Oakland, california, in the San Francisco Bay area and my territory was the East Bay area and I would drive to business parks and, you know, 8.30 in the morning, get kicked out of the office by the boss, we'd drive down to business park, park the car, computer under one or calculator under one arm and a flip-chat portfolio under the other and just go door to door to door to door to door.
Speaker 3:And I hated it. But so I don't know, sometime after about a month doing it, because soon after I got hired I got sent away for two weeks to initial sales training class and then came back and go right down to the territory. So it was a Friday afternoon. It was like well, the situation's right. I was completely frustrated and demoralized and, yeah, you convince yourself to make one more call.
Speaker 3:So I was actually in Fremont, california, in South Bay, and there was a business called Bucks Welding and I'd sort of the tail end of this strip mall. I've been cold calling on, so figure, it was probably improbable, but went in and you walk in this welding shop. I'd never been in a welding shop before and the thing was it was like walking into a room with no light source at all because the soot was covered all the walls and it was just completely dark in there and I looked like to serve one man shop and I got my nice three-piece dark, soot, pinstripe white shirt and Buck was there. And Buck, I have no idea how well Buck was, because he was covered in soot from head to head, and so the foot looked like those old pictures of coal miners and I don't know he must have just sensed that I needed something because it was like business like this needs to spend $350 on a desktop adding machine.
Speaker 3:But he was so nice. He said, well, show me what you have Right. And instead of just saying, get the hell out of here, is that, show me what you have. So he cleared a space on top of a workbench and I went through my standard demonstration of this desktop adding machine and he just moved me and he said great, I'll take it, I was just like what.
Speaker 3:So I think my first sale was maybe somewhat of a pity sale and I thank Buck if that was the case. But yeah, that was the first one and made for the start of this career.
Speaker 1:An amazing career. It is Amazing career. It still is. Yeah, it helps us let's go from the first sale to the biggest sale and kind of the process of making the sale. I'm kind of curious because you're talking about satellite communications, which sounds like it's really major. It could be another deal in the computer systems. What would you say your biggest sale would be? Maybe the podcast.
Speaker 3:No, and the biggest sale was certainly a computer and satellite communications networks. Yeah, and we got some interesting ones. I probably can't talk about all of them because but you know, the last sort of real big one was with a company that was in the oil services business that wanted to have a network where they could transmit video images from the well heads that they were drilling from around the world to their geologists who are centrally located in the United States, so they could look at the composition of what was coming back up and make decisions about drilling and so on. That was big, and that was one where the size of the deal is so large that our company size was relatively small at that point that the potential revenue was a multiple of our own company revenues. So the the Then customers said well, you guys need to have a bigger company service prime contractor on this. So we are competing against Hughes aerospace use network systems, which is huge, multi billion dollar company, and that time I think our revenues are about 50 million a year. And so they they basically matched us with a large defense contractor to be a prime contractor on the deal, and as we start working through the process as a small company are.
Speaker 3:Our thing was always how do we, how do we set the stakes of the competition right? Instead, of, how do we change the buyer's paradigm for what they think they're they want to accomplish? Because it's also like a challenger method, if you will, right. But how do we get them to really shift? Because we could do that, then we thought, okay, we have chance to play on more level playing field Versus always playing by the big guys rules, because then it becomes the price competition. So so we're able to. We had some ideas for some new implementation of satellite communications technology to help them save bandwidth and costs and and Is really critical for getting their buying pretty early.
Speaker 3:So they down selected into A handful of vendors. They're talking to the two, which was us against this, against Hughes. And yeah, we're pretty sure that you had the inside track on on winning, but you can never be sure. So I've been taught early on by my first boss is that, look, you always, you always want to be the third option, meaning that if it boils down to you and someone else, the way you increase your odds of winning is you always have two options you present to the buyer. So then comes a choice between them, you and you, and that's what I did. So I did is I went out and found another Large prime contractor, in this case actually IBM, to also put in a bid using, based on our technology, and I think that's what Enabled us really to solidify the win was that when the buyer looked at it wasn't just a choice between us versus the other guy, was us versus the other guy, versus another version of us.
Speaker 2:That was like different Like this.
Speaker 3:Really critical lesson that sellers Really need to take the heart is and I've done this throughout my entire careers Is you never want to single thread. Your offer Is. Even if you're selling a standard product, you need to find a way to Package up at least two options, if not more, for the buyer to consider for your product or your service. And I said that's why I always call it the third option, and you want to be that third option and if you do that really doesn't matter the size of opportunity. Working on it will increase your odds of winning the deal.
Speaker 2:It's brilliant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just, it's easy to it's, it requires a little thought. If you have just a standard product yeah, we saw a SAS software product Well, but you need to sit down with everyone in the product and your sales manager and the CEO and so on. So, well, yeah, how do we? What can we structure? That's a little bit different Option and a different alternative for us.
Speaker 3:And everybody talks about multi threading and we're talking to all the multiple decision makers. Sure, those People sellers have been doing that, yeah, since the beginning of selling. But this idea of saying, look, you're being more creative how you present the options, because that really plays in the way people make decisions. You know there's been a fair amount of research into this and and Generally, you know sort of sequential decision making, as you know, people identify a problem, they identify options for, yeah, that could be a solution for the solutions, and they choose one. And there was, after you've ever read the book Decisive by the Heath Brothers, really interesting book and and in there they talk about research that had been done by this Pioneer and corporate decision making guy from Ohio State University I think Not sure he's still alive, but formally Ohio State named Paul Nut and he found that when you know companies go through his process of identifying, defining the problem, creating options for that they want to present to management for approval.
Speaker 3:Is that an overwhelming majority? The case, I think, is like ninety seven percent of the case, or something. Is there only present two options to decision makers? And yeah, you can then start to see as well, gosh, what if you present three options? Right, that suddenly it starts, starts changing the game. And so you know, this idea of creating multiple options I think is really, really powerful and sellers, you could do it, whether it's delivery, implementation terms, you know there's lots of things that levers you can pull to make that happen.
Speaker 2:You change your odds, right? I mean you want to start off with 50 50 odds, you or the other, or your competition, and then, by bringing another version of you to the table.
Speaker 3:Now your odds are two thirds, you know, yeah well, theoretically right and that's, but I think this is it's a larger point you bring up which is really important is that, again, this is where I was taught and the way I learned and the way I've practiced it throughout my careers. We're in as sellers, we're in the probabilities, business Plain and simple right. So part of our thought process around every action we take with a buyer should be is this increasing my odds of winning the deal or not? And if, what I'm going to deliver to you? If the question I'm going to ask, whatever, if it's not going to do that, then why am I doing it?
Speaker 2:Very good point.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, focus on probabilities. Yeah, what's going to increase the probabilities of me winning? And it's yeah. I remember reading about professional poker player I forget who it was that they interviewed and he says well, yeah, people think this is a game of chance, but it's a game of skill, right? There's a reason why the people are at the table at the World Series of Poker or whatever, because it's not because the cards have fallen their way, because at each move they make, they're calculating the probabilities of winning based on the move. And I think in sales, the very similar situation is, yeah, it would be very intentional about every step you take. And again, one of the themes I wrote about selling out and being intentional that, hey, this is going to increase my odds of winning.
Speaker 2:So what's an example of a sale where maybe the odds weren't in your favor For whatever reason, it was the hardest, most stressful, like made you kind of rethink, like what's going on here? What was the sale, that Gray Hair, inducing All of these types of thoughts and things that come to mind? Yeah, and what comes to mind there?
Speaker 3:Probably well, maybe a couple. One is when I lost right and which was such a lesson learned. At the time, this company was selling radio stations, just beginning to use radio networks, are just beginning to use digital distribution or programming to affiliates and so, coming as with we were around the companies that was getting that business and providing that digital distribution via satellite. And yeah, we're competing for the distribution network for ABC radio and it was pretty early in my career and but nonetheless I should have known better by guess. But the lesson learned is we thought we had it and you know, we had validation to the point that from our stakeholders that oh, yeah, this is the solution we're going to recommend, but it was a big enough deal and we this is part we missed or we didn't get enough face time with the CEO and yeah, I don't believe that every product needs to be sold to the CEO, but this is one that did and we did not have enough exposure to them and we're competing against the incumbent and they did and despite everyone in the buying committee telling us we had it, we didn't get it and yeah, that was that was stressful, having to explain to the board why we didn't get it. Yeah, it's just a misstep and so lesson learned right. It just and it's.
Speaker 3:I think the lesson is for sellers is that I think that said before is we don't we overemphasize in general in sales that you need to get to the C suite, because not every product, you know, if you're selling a copier to a big company, it doesn't need to go to the C suite.
Speaker 3:If you're selling, you know, paper clips, and in my first book I lay out this little grid that shows you how to sort of figure out how high within the organization you need to sell, based on sort of the strategic nature of the product you know as a product sort of tactical on one end of the spectrum versus strategic and strategic certified by cost and complexity and risk. So, yeah, yeah, that was. That was painful, and mostly the aftermath was painful because, yeah, so I had to go from CEO on the board and explain why we didn't have forecast that quarter, because we didn't get that deal. You know there's another big deal is we're in a company that was one that really enabled us to go public and so we're selling to a large, you know, the largest wireless service providers in Asia. They want to have this network communication, satellite communications, sort of backbone communications, are expanding cellular networks in Asia and sorry.
Speaker 3:An interesting story in that they had originally asked us to bid on it, but we were. We looked at the RFP and said look, you know, we're way too small to participate at that time in the company, we didn't have the resources, we couldn't have. Responded. I stayed in touch with the decision makers and after about a year and a half almost two years they hadn't made a decision. So I contacted the guy again. I said so what's happening? You haven't made the decision. He says oh, we haven't, you know, found something that can do what we want. But we're getting serious about it again because we need to do this from business endpoints. So I said, well, hey, can we come in and get a shot at that?
Speaker 3:So, yeah, see an CEO and I hopped on plane, went to Hong Kong, sort of blew away with this presentation about, because we had put a lot of thought in the intervening two years about what we were going to do and what we could do. But yeah, the stakes are pretty high because we knew this was going to be the deal. If we won was going to enable the company to sort of take a step up and sort of was driving our plans to go public as a company. So our big stress was we again. We knew we had the best technical solution, best business solution, but the size of the competitor was such we knew they could walk in any day and drop their prices 20%, take the business from us, and we couldn't respond to it. So, yeah, that was. That was pretty stressful as we sort of got to the last month or so and and before they said, ok, yeah, we're going to do a contract with you as just living literally every day thinking that the competitor would come in and just steal it from us.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's tough.
Speaker 3:Well, it spoke to the spoke to a couple things.
Speaker 3:So what it spoke to us is the level of trust that we'd built and credibility we'd built with the customer, even though we're smaller, even though we're unproven and we certainly had some hiccups in the implementation, but they're patient with us because the vision of what we created together, of what they could achieve, was not one the competitor could match. So, yeah, they may have been able to buy it at some point, ultimately less expensively, and I'm sure the competitor offered the huge discounts, but they chose not to take it because they had more trust that we could deliver what they wanted, and that is such a critical thing that that people just underestimate all the time. It's, end of the day, it's really. It's not not about your product If you assume that having a competitive product at a competitive price is table stakes the your ability to win the deals based on the connections you've made and the way you've differentiated yourself at the human level and help, the way you help the buyer make that decision. Not not the product and the price.
Speaker 1:It is all about that. They're all about making those decisions. So there's stressful, missed deal, stressful deal. You ever get in slumps. Sometimes you just get a bed and you're like you know what? Can I still make the sales that I need to make? Do I still have the it factor? I think we all go through slumps. And if you're feeling down or slumpy, I guess is there something that you do to turn your mind around and get out of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't. I'm not really conscious about being in slumps per se. There are situations you find yourself in that are more challenging than others, and so I think it's it's more for me a case of, ok, trying to figure out well, what is the situation I'm in and being really pragmatic with yourself about you know what's going on, that that's causing it, and it could be oftentimes it's external Right Is is.
Speaker 3:I think people don't pay enough attention to the impact of things that are going on in their life outside of work that have an impact on their ability to sell, because, again, we're serving, that we're in this human business and you know, performing perceptions of us based on how we come across and if your mind is is distracted by things that are happening outside of work, yeah, can have a canaveral impact on you and you're like to be, I said, pragmatic and self self actualized, but I may use that term to to degree that you can take a step back and say this is having impact.
Speaker 3:So, in my case, I went through some marriage issues and and these marital issues, yeah, definitely had an impact and I think over a period of six, nine months, I could start to see that my performance was just not not the level it needed to be at and so, yeah, to me it's more of those type of situations and, hey, you know I lost my mojo. Whatever, right it's, it's, yeah, it's more more the external and I see it, and people I've managed and worked with and so on is is, yeah, sure, they're frustrations and job and those can build and they can play a role, but I'd say, more often than not, when somebody's really struggling is I always start with what's happening outside of work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it looks like it looked last time. Yeah, I mean sure it could be a boss. I might one time work for a boss that was just intolerable and had to get out of the situation because the person was literally insane. But yeah, more often than not it's been other things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It makes me think back to when I was playing baseball. You know, one of the best managers I've played for was Rick Renneria, who went on to manage Cubs and then the White Sox, and I'm mad at the city of Chicago for both of those teams letting him go. Just such an amazing guy, but yeah, he was. He knew what was happening in everybody's life outside the field as well, and I feel like it's probably for exactly what you're talking about, because he knew that life is life. You know, like people there's this saying of like oh, he's the nicest guy off the field, but he's an absolute monster on the field. It's like well, mikey over here doesn't stop being Mikey when he steps onto the baseball field. Like that's also part of his life and who he is.
Speaker 2:You know what. There's a lot of crossover in that. So, yeah, that resonates quite a bit Kind of a two-part question here. What is the sale that you are, regardless of the size of the sale or how much money was involved, what's the sale that you're most proud of? And is there a sale that comes to mind that you're least proud of where you're like man, I wish I could have done some things differently, or I'm not super satisfied with how this went down. So is it the most proud of sale? You're like man, I feel great about this. And then there's this other sale that you wish you might could do over again or do differently.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, yeah, I mean the least proud are the ones you lose, right, for reasons that were avoidable, as, like I described, most proud, yeah, I think one of the things that and you talked about sales that maybe informed or reflected my vision of selling and the importance of certain things, that of the human side of things is so company I was with we were negotiating a deal to sell the first real-time satellite-delivered entertainment system to commercial airplanes, right? So this was well before Wi-Fi and all these other things. This was real-time radio delivered to the seatback, and so at the time there were no screens. This audio video was gonna come a few years after that, a number of years after that. But we were in this Fortune 5,000, 500, actually Fortune 50 firm to who is sponsoring this network, and so, as back in these coasts with the guy that worked with me, we were negotiating the final contract, and so I sat across the table from the senior VP of this Fortune 50 company and some of his people were staff members and myself, and the first day we made pretty good progress. We had planned to be there about three days to finish the contract, so at the end of the first day I got a call from headquarters back on the West Coast.
Speaker 3:That's when the co-founders of the company, saying how are the negotiations going? Good, I think we're day away maybe from oh, great, great. He says we've got a bit of a problem. So, oh, really, what would that be? He said, well, we were just reviewing all the spreadsheets that we had put together to calculate the costs of doing the project. The project had two parts. One is they were paying us to develop the product and then they were gonna buy a certain number of units. And they said, yeah, there was some stake on the spreadsheet and we're gonna have to change our prices. And so this is sort of a problem. We were right, you know, in the midst of the contract negotiations, we've pretty much agreed on those. He says yeah. He says yeah, we're gonna have to make change, otherwise we're just gonna pull out of the deal. I said, okay, well, you know what are we talking about. We're off by about half, I'm like. So what you're saying is that we have to double our prices. He said yeah, yeah, otherwise it's just, you know, we're not gonna make any money. And the CEO, I'm sorry puts foot down. And if we can't get at least a certain amount, which turned out to be a little bit less than twice, but still so I had it was.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, I had to go back into this conference room to this you know senior VP of this large enterprise and say we've got a bit of a problem. And it may not surprise you here the person, just he completely lost it. I've never been yelled at like that, accused of being you know all the worst things in the world, bait and switch, blah, blah, blah. This went on and on and on. And then they had security escort us from the business, from the building. Two days later we got the deal signed at the price we needed and you know, the lesson there was that we had built up a tremendous amount of trust, credibility, to the point where we could sit down with them and explain that the error was not. You know we're not trying to deceive them.
Speaker 3:It was not one of intention, it was purely a bit of a mistake. You know, apologized. Yeah, we've made a couple other concessions relative to helping me expedite the project and so on. But you know, basically two days later signed the deal for almost double the price away originally had been. It was not fun, by a stretch of imagination, but it showed the power of the connections that you make with people, the relationships and it's there's such a sort of a sphere, almost fear of using the word relationships in sales in the last five, 10 years or so.
Speaker 3:It's like, oh, it's not about relationships, buyers don't want to be friends, and it's like, well, sure, that's trust me, these people weren't my friends.
Speaker 1:But we had this trust-based relationship that existed.
Speaker 3:You know we had the credibility. We, you know we were completely. I thought we'd being transparent, up to it, but we became even more transparent afterwards. We had to be to show them. You know where the air happened and why, and you know at a level of detail that they understood that this was not, you know, a bait and switch. But absent those relationships, absent having invested in building those, we would have been done. You know, the deal have been done and just off the table altogether, and we weren't competing at the same time, we were the only one that really had the capabilities of doing this at that point in time. So it was strategic both for us as a company as well as for, you know, the customer.
Speaker 1:It's one of the themes in your lessons learned. It's after your story is. It's all about those relationships. It's all about the trust and credibility that you can provide. Yeah right, yeah well, did you?
Speaker 3:build and it's, it's, it's, it's a process, but you have to do it intentionally because you know that it's important and I think that's part of what I really learned in my career that a lot of sellers don't have the value or the benefit of is.
Speaker 3:You know, when you're always working for Small companies who are selling big things, right, I mean, there's a lot of startups out there, especially in the sass world. They're selling there, yeah, the software it's, yeah, relative, the value of sass, the sass models, right, it's not a big purchase up front. You can grow into it, you can start really small, a lot of value on that, but the sellers don't learn how to sell big. And when you do that you begin to understand, yeah, that trust really is important. You have somebody signing up for, you know, 10k a month for you know, a subscription to a sass product. The risk profile is pretty low, right for the decision maker Not that it's completely absent, because I can't always make bad decisions, but when it's, yeah, millions and millions of dollars, when it's strategic initiative for the company, because you know they're getting into a new business which often times sets up companies used our products is getting to the, you know, new businesses to expand their revenue, market share or whatever.
Speaker 1:It becomes very different.
Speaker 3:And again, another company we were talking to, you know, one of the largest companies world. That time they want us to build a product for one of their divisions and Been working the deal for about a year and and it got to point where it's time to bring CEO of my company to meet the CEO of this division of this. I said, one of the 10 largest companies world at that point and you know, bring them in, that we're a great meeting. I think it was really positive as, walking out, my CEO turns to me and said no way we're getting that deal.
Speaker 1:I said what do you mean it?
Speaker 3:says, well, they're gonna pay us to develop this product and they have on payroll More engineers than we have in an entire. Then we have employees in our company, people they're paying week after week to develop products like this. There's no way they're gonna give us, as I said no, you're missing the point. They are gonna give it to us because they trust us more than they trust the people internally to deliver the product they need. And, yeah, we got the deal. Yeah, we didn't have a paper. We did our product was purely on paper and but that's, you know, that's what we did as a company.
Speaker 3:It wasn't just me, it was, you know, everybody that you know interacted with the. The customer was part of building that trust and that credibility and we were very deliberate about establishing multiple touch points across our organization, across into there the customer's organization. But that was, that was it. It was the relationships, the connections. You know, if you don't like the idea of relationships and say the connections we built, they were trust based, connection, credibility based. And yeah, I, every time I read and Haven't seen as much the last year or two, but a couple years ago, like in the early days of pandemic, it was them loud voices served downplaying this idea of relationships and so on, and they were just yeah, I was vocal and just saying these people are just flat out wrong. You know, as we're in a business of a human business, as long as you're a human talking to a human, this is going to be important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, couldn't agree more. You know, the human element of things is never going to go away. So last, last question here, and I'm kind of wrapping two questions in the one again, but yeah, I think, yeah, I don't think it's going to go away.
Speaker 3:But I think, as I mentioned before, I think that, yeah, just the number of products that require human sellers to work with human buyers Is, you know, it's continuing to shrink. I mean, it's still a vast number of products, but it's, it's inevitable that you know, we grow more and more comfortable through the use of technology and AI Certainly help. This is buying things of greater complexity and cost without human intervention and that trend's going to continue, but it's, it's. I said, the number of products that still require the human is still very, very large. We're not going to see, you know, there's, I don't. If you remember, back in oh, 2014, 2015, forrester put out a report saying Some large fraction of B2B sellers would be gone by the year 2020 and suddenly we saw a net growth and and B2B sales employment over that period of time. So Humans aren't going away yet. But yeah, they're not going away yet.
Speaker 1:Uh, ai is going to probably going to help humans Sell good, right, if you're going to be able to sell.
Speaker 3:Good right If you're going to be correctly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, but you know I think, um, buying is always an emotional decision and you know there's logic involved. But it's emotion based in a lot of ways and you need you need help in making that decision and a good salesperson as the person who's going to be helping in that decision.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and people just need to. Sellers need to keep in mind If the buyer is talking to you, it's not because they want to, it's because they need to. So you need to understand what help they need from you. That's motivating them to want to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Well, Andy, it's. It's been a pleasure talking to you here on the last cell um our new podcast and and really appreciate you coming on and sharing your sell stories with us.
Speaker 3:Oh well, kevin, thanks for having me and and yeah, congratulations on your podcast. Excited to see how it turns out for you and and yeah, you guys did a great job. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Thank you and for our listeners, where can they find your new podcast?
Speaker 3:Wherever you listen to podcasts, so it's the win rate podcast and, um, yeah, 2024 we're gonna be making some, yeah, exciting additions to it and, uh, going to multiple episodes per week. So they are very excited.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Thank you once again, thank you.