The most successful sellers and the most successful companies. They treat pipeline generation or
PG that I'll call it for the remainder of this as a process, not
an event, and the most successful sellers commit to it through preparation and execution.
You're listening to the Audible Ready Podcast, the show that helps you and
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Let's get started. Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast.
I'm Rachel klap Miller. Joining me today is our own John Kaplan. Hi
John, I like that Rachel. For our listeners. We started this and
Rachel wasn't happy with her opening because she didn't she didn't bring that passion,
conviction and enthusiasm. And you just killed it, Rachel, you just killed
it. Thanks for redoing that. You sound great. Good to be with
you today. Yes, I am excited about this conversation despite the first stake
that all of you won't here, but because today we are talking about consistency,
and you know, in sales and being a great seller, we talk
a lot about the fundamentals of selling, and so often a lot of those
don't mean anything if you don't do them consistently. It's a great critical component
of great selling, John, I know that's a topic you also speak about
a lot. Yeah. Well, I think I did a post and you
could just put that in the show notes where I analyzed this quote that I
heard from Denzel Washington and one of my favorite actors, and I heard him
say this that the Academy Awards. Without commitment, you'll never start, but
more importantly, without consistency, you'll never finish. And I just love that
quote because it's we're going to build off that today on this podcast. But
what I found is that the most successful people in life definitely start more than
others. They start more than others, but most importantly, they finish.
And the gap between the two is the juice here in this conversation, it's
consistency. So it's a great topic and I'm looking forward to discussing with you.
Yes, today, we're going to talk about five things we need to
commit to. We need to be consistent about them if we have a quota
to make. And so let's start with the big one, pipeline generation.
Yeah, I mean that's a great place to start because you know, consistency
in about pipeline generation. It's all about consistency. You have to make it
part of your routine and you can't let it get away from you. Meaning
so, for me, the most successful sellers and you hear me say that
a lot, I'm not saying that. If you're listening, you're not one
of the most successful sellers, but I'm trying to create a benchmark for you.
So when I say the most successful sellers and the most successful companies,
they treat pipeline generation or PG that I'll call it for the remainder of this
as a process, not an event, and the most successful sellers commit to
it through preparation and execution. Let me talk about it further. So you
got to block out specific time for PG without distractions. And I'm not going
to try to name what distractions are because they're different for everybody else. I've
seen people since COVID. You know, they can have a dog barking,
they can have babies crying, they can have all kinds of stuff going on
in the background. And they're not distracted. But you know what your distractors
are. So when I say that, do it without distractions, whatever those
are for you. And then Rachel and PG preparation is the key. And
what I found Rachel is, you know, artificial intelligence is for me,
it's a tremendous value. It's a tremendous value today. And my own preparation
what used to take me hours now takes me minutes to pair for sales calls.
And I personally just because it's part of the you know three sixty five
Office three sixty five that I use. I use Copilot and you know it's
built right into the platform for us, and so there's no excuse not to
understand who you're calling on what they may be experiencing in terms of industry or
their company or departmental struggles. And you know, when I was starting at
it out as a seller back in the day was Xerox, I was told
don't ask people questions that you could have gotten the answer from somewhere else.
Another thing that they told me is if it's been in print, you should
know that your customers expect that you would have read it. And today with
artificial intelligence and the way that we can gather information and get access to information
that's even more of a reality today. Last thing on this pipeline generation,
Rachel is like, I call it a call sheet. And the wonderful people
that text systems back in the day, they had this in Mike McSally,
you know, they had these things called call sheets and these were all the
you know, they do unbelievable PG every day, one of the greatest PG
machines I've ever seen. And these people wake up in the morning, they
say, and they did it the night before, So they have a list
of all the companies that they're going to call on that day the next day,
Who am I targeting? And what are my three p's for that conversation?
And that's you know, for me, it's purpose. What's the purpose
of my call process? You know, what am I going to ask this
person to do and payoff? What's in it for that person? Why is
it a benefit for them to speak with me? So, you know,
a purposeful call sheet with the three p's of targeting your people. And what
I'd do is I'd role play these a little bit and I'd say, Okay,
I'm going to pick up the phone and call this CIO today and these
are my three piece like the most elite sellers I've ever seen, and they
grab other people and I don't care if you're remote. Pick up the phone,
spend five minutes and go over your call sheets with your partners and you
know, with your peers, and say these are three p's that I want
to use for this, you know, economic buyer, for this champion.
Give me some feedback and that's legit, Rachel. So for me, consistency
around these things for pipeline generation is critical. Yeah, making it part of
your routine. And this next one area also helps with pipeline generation if you're
consistent with it. And that's building relationships really good. And when I think
about relationships, they really come into parts for me building relationships and nurturing or
maintaining relationships. And as I think we can all attest to the base.
For me, the best relationships over time are those that you nurture when you
don't need something. We all know how it feels to be contacted by a
supposed friend. I'm doing air quotes here by a supposed friend who only calls
when they need something. We all have friends like this or quotes air quotes
friends. It's it's a universal feeling around the world. We also understand how
it feels when people reach out to us to just let us know that they
were thinking about us, or that they have some information that made them think
about us. And so for me, this isn't rocket science and it's as
old as dirt. As a species, we as humans were designed to be
social beings, So this should always work in your favor, unless you get
sloppy. You know, many times I make a weekly list of people that
I want to reach out to, not because I need something in the moment,
but because I feel like we can add value to one another regarding some
topic or regarding some situation, or I just haven't talked to them in a
while and I wanted to let them know that I care about them. And
you can translate that into business very well, because this transcends business relationships.
Building and maintaining and nurturing relationships is really being human. So I think it's
a great topic, and being consistent around that is what we're talking about today.
So let's shift out to actual sales execution, something I know that is
difficult to do but critically important, and that's being consistent in discovery. Yeah,
it's it's really good, Rachel. You know, John McMahon and I
do the Revenue Builders podcast and we've been doing it for I don't know,
Rach, it's been a couple of years now, just about two okay,
two years. And when we ask our guests all the time, you know,
where do you feel like, what's the most important part of the sales
process and where do you feel like people struggle with? Have you have one
hundred percent of time? But always it's not closing, it's not negotiation,
it's discovery. And I really really like that because it comes to light in
so many different ways. But when we're talking about consistency, it's about holding
yourself accountable to doing enough discovery, staying consistent, and staying in discovery long
enough in order to get the right information to move your deal forward. And
so let's talk about what does KAPA mean by like staying long enough. And
I want you to think about one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
It's from the movie Brave Heart. And if you remember that movie, it's
about William Wallace and it's played by mel Gibson. And in this one scene,
what I really love is that he's yelling to his men in this one
scene and the opposing army is coming towards his men, the British army is
coming towards his men, and he's yelling hold hold. And many of you
have heard me do this live and some presentations, and I really get a
kick out of it. But if you go watch that scene, you just
google it like Brave Heart Hold, and there's memes about it and gifts about
it. It's pretty cool. But you can feel the tension as the horses
kind of draw near, you know, all the while William Wallace is shouting
hold, hold, hold, and he didn't want his men to raise their
spears too soon because in doing so, that would have given away their strategy.
And so what does that mean for us today? So you know,
Rachel, I think about like holding means to fully execute your discovery before you
try to sell somebody something. And you and I have discussed this a lot
where we talk about kind of an outside in mentality. First, make it
all about the customer before you earn the right to make it all about you.
And I also like to think about discovery. It's simple for me.
I think about like three buckets that have to be filled up. So I
got to fill up these three buckets of information about the customer before I can
make it all about me. And then there's three buckets that I have to
I have to fill up to make it relevant, to make myself relevant.
So let's talk about first three buckets I'm gathering in discovery, it's what we
call positive business outcomes, require capabilities or the decision criteria, which should be
heavily favored, you know for you by influencing your differentiation into that decision criteria.
And the third bucket is metrics. How are they going to measure success?
And is that favorable for you? So my responsibility hold hold. I
can hear this in my head when I'm on a sales call. I want
to talk about let me tell you how we do that, let me tell
you how we do it differently or better, let me tell you where we've
done it before. I want to talk about that, But I can't effectively
do that until I fill up those three buckets. So that's what hold means.
Hold means go outside in be very very consistent in the way that you
make it all about the customer. First, in discovery, you hear what
their problems are, you understand what your relevance to those problems are. You
formulate your value proposition, and then you deliver it. That is being consistent
around that, You're going to crush it. Yes, And you know when
you are are consistent in your discovery and you really execute the art of discovery
practice hold all of those things. It gets you the information you need to
be a great qualifier. And that's our next area for consistency, being consistent
when it comes to qualification. Yeah. So yeah, for me, this
is a really really powerful one and I've seen it, like you know,
you know my background, Rachel, I come from a company back in the
day at PTC. They went forty three straight quarters over ten years of never
missing their number to Wall Street. They went from zero to a billion dollars
in less than ten years, and the stock split five times in seven years.
Okay, so that's the PTC story. But why do I mention it
Because for us it was all about qualification. It was all about qualification in
every aspect of sales execution. And we qualified early and often. And you
know, the most outstanding qualification criteria on the planet is medic or medpick or
variation of that, and I'm getting a little frustrated now people are putting,
hey, let me tell you my version of medica or medpick or whatever.
You I was okay, I'm okay with the p being added because you know,
I think people really they do all the hard work and then they mess
up on the paper process. I'm okay, but you know, Medicus,
but I hate you know, we got all kinds of things that are added
for people just trying to be different, and that's a little frustrating to me.
But that original criteria is still the best on the planet. And for
me, those who are committed to qualification, they don't cut corners. And
it's not about checking a box. It's you know, it's about a qualified
answer with evidence to the questions of Medica or medpick. And so, sales
leaders, if you're listening to this, use the qualification criteria to help reps
get unstuck on deals. Be consistent around this. Don't use medic as a
compliance tool. Use it to build confidence and conviction, help people get unstuck.
And being consistent around that is really critical. Yes, so our fifth
area of consistency, and this one can hit all the rest of them that
we've talked about and that's consistently avoiding excuses. Yeah, he get me all
fired up here because you've heard me say it. You know. It's a
mantra that I learned at PETC. I think it actually came from John McMahon
on a forecast one day when we were not giving the answers that you know,
we should have been giving and certainly that he was looking for. I
think he said on the call, we used to have these big forecast calls.
They were brutal, Rachel, They're just tough. They're tough, and
I think one day he announced, Hey, the excuse department is closed,
and so it really made us all think about, you know, what kind
of answers that we were giving on the on the forecast, And really McMahon
what he was doing was he was like, hey, you know, have
some pride in what you do, like, don't make excuses. It's okay
not to know, but it's not okay not to be doing anything about it.
Most of the time. Because we're not doing anything about what we don't
know. That's when we start to make excuses about how hard it is or
if you only knew and what happens is is and I think John was really
smart on this. In this area, excuses breed mediocrity, and mediocrity breeds
contempt, and that contempt really it gets fostered from the A players. And
when A players get contempt for what they're experiencing or for a culture, you
know, this leads to a bad culture that will soon become unpredictable and unreliable,
meaning it won't make their number. And so for me, the excuse
department being closed, and you know, I just say, if you want
to be more consistent, slam the door on that excuse department it and weldit
shut. I like it. I like it. So some great things to
think about here as we're trying to execute and get a rhythm around our own
sales execution. Key areas to be consistent in pipeline generation, building relationships,
not leaving discovery too early, be consistent with your discovery qualification, and finally
avoiding excuses. The excuse department is a close John, wrap us up with
the bottom line. Yeah, So I'm just going to go back to that
quote. I wanted to sync in and just kind of, you know,
let it foster in your brain a little bit, but without commitment you'll never
start. More importantly, without consistency, you'll never finish. And so today
we should ask ourselves a few questions. What do I need to commit to
today? Where do I feel like I need to be more consistent today?
Who am I going to to build a relationship with today? And what relationships
am I going to nurture today? And lastly, what am I making excuses
for in my life? And how can I slam the door shut on the
excuse department? Go crush it, go, crush it, slam and shut.
John Kaplin, thank you very much. You're welcome right. Thank you
to all of you for consistently listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. At
Force Management, we're focused on transforming sales organizations into elite teams. Our proven
methodologies deliver programs that build company alignment and fuel repeatable revenue growth. Give your
teams the ability to execute the growth strategy at the point of sale. Our
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