Inside The Pipeline: B2B Sales and GTM
00:27:59 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:27:59] S0: my friends read it. What's the best sales advice that you've ever been given? [00:28:05] S1: So I'll I'll I'll give a... One that sticks... I don't know if it's the best, but but what came to mind that I think is worth sharing is from a legendary sales trainer who passed away a couple years ago. So I'll give a shout out to Skip Miller, r I p Skip. And he would say he had all these great sayings [00:28:22] S0: Mhmm. [00:28:22] S1: For different just, like, normal things, but he he'd have to... You know, it's room of 50, a 100,000 sales reps. He trained the team at Tableau Yeah. Famously from kind of zero up to the acquisition. And he would say it's not about the dog. Okay. Which was his proxy for it's not about, like, your product. Right? Rep... Like, reps love to talk about their product. And so he would say, it's not about the dog. Like, that... It was just his funny saying for it. And if you would... When you would do it... When you're doing a a mock pitch, he would genuinely bark at you if you started talking about your product too much. And you would give a pitch, and then he would say sort of in his very funny animated way, he'd be like, that's a good sentence, but it's a little woofy, Nick. [00:29:06] S0: Yeah. Yeah. [00:29:06] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Kinda woofing at me, and I couldn't I couldn't really hear you because you're barking. [00:29:10] S0: Yeah.
00:29:10 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:29:10] S0: Yeah. [00:29:10] S1: And it's just always stuck with me and me... My my... One of my directors here, Travis, was a sales leader with me at at at Sendoso too, and We always like, that's sort of our inside joke now. If you have a chance, we bring that back of [00:29:25] S0: That's great. [00:29:26] S1: As a shout out. [00:29:26] S0: And so really what people should be focusing on actually is the business that they're talking to and the potential problem that
00:29:34 · Nick Casale, Tris Tusa
[00:29:34] S1: they're solving. I mean, like, it... I do think it's it's a... It's it's very... It's standard advice. Right? It's cliche, but, like, you really can't drive home. And this changes for you the minute you first buy software. Like, at whatever point that is for you in your career, you realize that you've spent so many hours wasted demoing your product. Like, however much time you demo and are talking about your own product in a sales cycle is just like... It's... I promise you it's too much. Like, they just... The amount people care is so dramatically smaller than you think. And, yes, there will be... You know, if it's a a huge buying committee, there may be that one person who really does care and thinks it's super, super cool. But the idea that that this whole group of people want to see your product over and over and over again is madness. See, I promise you it's madness. Like, they wanna talk about themselves and their products, and they wanna hear your stories about other people like them and how how they worked with you and what their life was like and what it's like now. They don't want to hear that the button goes to this button, which plugs into a third button, which will plug into all their existing buttons. It's just so immaterial, and I think especially now, it's as important as ever to remember that. It's more important than it's ever been. I'll I'll rephrase. Because software is not your moat anymore. And I think if you think it is, it's that... Then that's going away. [00:30:54] S0: Completely agree with this.
00:30:54 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:30:54] S0: Completely agree with this. [00:30:55] S1: It's like, features are very easy to build. Very, very easy to build now. We see, like, you know, product release cycles are are daily. Mhmm. And so the more that you're selling on your feature. Right? [00:31:08] S0: So it's about distribution. It's about building trust. [00:31:11] S1: It's about distribution. It's about non feature based differentiation for sure. Those And are very different things. It's like, what are you solving for? Right? I think, you know, if you're building a business, you do have to think about unique distribution and what you are... What is... What encompasses... Like, what are you delivering as the experience in addition that's in addition to the product? And I I think what people sometimes get mistaken is they assume that it has to be, like, very expensive, would be, like, a a a bad way of phrasing it. I'll I'll give you a really good example, which Yeah. Maybe carries, maybe doesn't, but, like, iPhone, I think, is a phenomenal example. Like, I think Steve Jobs... I think the box of the iPhone is like one of the most brilliant pieces of the whole thing. Like, do do you remember like the first Apple products you bought? [00:31:57] S0: I remember getting an iPhone... I probably went into the iPhone four. I think I was on a BlackBerry before [00:32:03] S1: Okay. [00:32:03] S0: Before then. But I remember the iPhone three g and the iPhone two. [00:32:07] S1: I bet you the first iPhone you got, you kept the box Yeah. For some amount of time.
00:32:07 · Nick Casale, Tris Tusa
[00:32:07] S1: I bet you the first iPhone you got, you kept the box Yeah. For some amount of time. [00:32:11] S0: I still got it. Yeah. That's I've got the boxes for pretty much all of my Apple products. [00:32:16] S1: It's a bridge to cross as a... As an example. Like, we're in software. There's not necessarily a box. But I think there's an important lesson there in, like, you can you can deliver a memorable experience with your product in a way that stays with people. And it doesn't have to... How much did they pay for those boxes? A buck? [00:32:35] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's it. And and I think also given your your past at Sendoso, like the physical Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting that you you really understand that. [00:32:45] S1: And you... And I think, like, you can... It's okay to differentiate on the quality of your people [00:32:51] S0: Yeah.
00:32:51 · Tris Tusa, Nick Casale
[00:32:51] S0: Yeah. [00:32:51] S1: Too. And that's... Think, you know, the delivery of the box is an example. Right? But, like, what would a reasonable proxy for that be? It's like onboarding in person. Right? We talked about the in person sale, like that meeting. Right? But, like, onboarding... Go onboard 10 customers in person and call me in a year and tell me if if that if that renewal rate was better, if that... If the Yeah. You know, if the expansion rate on those accounts was better. Right? And it's like, these are obvious. We are not awesome at it. We should do it way more. Right? I think everyone would agree with that. Like, it's an obvious thing, but I think often people were very quick to look for, like, moats and edges. And it's like, sometimes it's as simple as, like, what's the what's the most obvious thing we could... [00:33:30] S0: I've got a couple more questions because I know that we're coming towards the end. It would seem stupid of me to come here and not ask you, what do you think that the sales role looks like in five years? And usually people respond by saying five years is a long time. Yeah. It is. But for the context of this, what do you think it looks like in five years? [00:33:48] S1: I don't know that it changes a ton. That might be a really naive answer. Answer. [00:33:53] S0: This is gonna be like your ChatGPT graph. We're gonna whip it out in five years' time.