Transcript
WEBVTT
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Looking for a guaranteed way to create
content that resonates with your audience? Start
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a podcast, interview your ideal clients
and let them choose the topic of the
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interview, because if your ideal clients
care about the topic, there's a good
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chance the rest of your audience will
care about it too. Learn more at
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sweet fish Mediacom. You're listening to
be tob growth, a daily podcast for
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B TOB leaders. We've interviewed names
you've probably heard before, like Gary vanner
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00:00:31.859 --> 00:00:35.659
truck and Simon Senek, but you've
probably never heard from the majority of our
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guests. That's because the bulk of
our interviews aren't with professional speakers and authors.
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Most of our guests are in the
trenches leading sales and marketing teams.
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They're implementing strategy, they're experimenting with
tactics, they're building the fastest growing be
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tob companies in the world. My
name is James Carberry. I'm the founder
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of sweet fish media, a podcast
agency for B Tob Brands, and I'm
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also one of the CO hosts of
this show. When we're not interviewing sales
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and marketing leaders, you'll hear stories
from behind the scenes of our own business.
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Will share the ups and downs of
our journey as we attempt to take
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over the world. Just getting well? Maybe let's get into the show.
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Welcome back to be tob growth.
I'm Logan Lyles with sweetfish media. I'm
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joined today by Andrew Voice Slovik.
He is the director of sales over at
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zestful. Andrew, how's it going
to a man? It's going great,
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Logan. Just live in the dream. On a snowy Colorado Friday, I
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am right there with you from our
chat earlier. It sounds like I got
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a little bit more snow, but
we're enjoying falling the rockies together, even
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though we're separate recording this a few
hours away from each other. Anyway,
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Andrew, I was introduced to you
by a member of your team, Kate,
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over there at Zestful, and she
said, man, you guys just
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have to chat sales. So I'm
really excited to have you on the show
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today. We are going to be
talking about how to map your sales processes
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to your buyers journey, as opposed
to trying to shove your buyer through your
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sales process. Is the way I
kind of thought about it as we were
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chatting a little bit of so before
we jump into that, though, I
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would love for you to give folks
a little bit of your background and what
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you and the team at zestful or
up to these days. Yeah, yeah,
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so you know my background. I
actually started off my career as a
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first grade teacher and I absolutely hated
that and ended up working as an admissions
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representative for a for profit college which, go figure, turns out to sales
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job. I was really horrible,
and then I started investing in myself and
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finding mentors and and doing research and
reading sales books and went from literally the
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worst rep and my first three months
to the best rap and the next three
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months by investing myself, getting mentors
and reading books. From there I've spent
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most of my time working in the
startup ecosystem here in Denver, Colorado,
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either the first sales rep or the
second or the first sales leader, and
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then recently it's spent the last two
years as a sales consultant, sales professional
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for the Miller Heima Group, the
world's largest sales performance and consulting organization,
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before hopping right back into the start
up ecosystem here at zestful. And what
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zessful does is we are an employee
engagement and recognition platform. We provide organizations
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with the ability to provide their employees
with the fund to either engage or recognize
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them, and give them the tools
to decide how and where those funds are
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used, and that is coming through
a programmable debacard that their employees use.
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And, as a note, we
see eighty percent of Twentyzero plus employees use
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our programmable debacad every month because they
can actually find things that are rewarding to
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them, whether that's online or in
the physical world, based off the checks
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and balances that their organizations put in
place. Yeah, awesome. So basically,
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you guys are making it easier for
employees to take advantage of those perks
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and making it easier for employers to
roll that out and manage it so that
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those perks actually get used and then
they see the benefit, right. Thanko.
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That's it at the end of the
day, right. So if you've
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only, you know, created a
health and wellness program for your employees,
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your employees can still find find that
Yoga teacher that they love right down the
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street, the massage therapist that's actually
help them with their back problems. So
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whether or not. They're in Kansas, they're in Florida, if they're,
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you know, an Anchorage Alaska,
they can find things that are meaningful to
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them. It man. So,
as you guys have been scaling up there
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at Zesfel doing some great work that
we just talked about there, tell us
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a little bit about why, when
you join Zesfel, Andrew, it was
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important to you to design a sales
process that, you know, as I
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think about it, isn't just a
sales process, it's something that's been reverse
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engineered, starting with the fire journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so,
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you know, I wish I could
take credit for this whole entire philosophy
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of Lyne to how customers purchase,
but this is probably one of my biggest
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takeaways that I had from the Miller
him and group, and really with the
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day to shows Logan at the end
of the day, is that organizations that
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aligned to how their customers buy,
instead of dictating to their customers, this
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is how you should buy from us, candidly outperform the others on a three
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to one ratio. So they're winning
deals at at one rate compared to those
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who are forcing customers to buy from
them and their preferred fashion and ultimately,
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as a consumer, either if it's, you know, trying to go out
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and find, you know, insurance
from my home or if it's out there
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trying to find be to be applications
for my organization, I get really angry
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at sales organizations to telling me how
to buy and at the end of the
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day, my whole sales flossy comes
back down to how can I make this
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an easier process for my buyers and
how can I take away as much friction
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from them in our sales process as
humanly possible? Right? So it's just
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trying to be a good human being
at the end of the day and realizing
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that the way that buying and selling
has been done in the past is radically
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changed and, if anything, we're
trying to help our buyers learn more about
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their problems that they're coming to address
them with us, for trying to help
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them learn more and also teach them
new things about their business or those challenges
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throughout our sales process together. So, instead of trying to tell them how
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to buy, trying to help them
become better educated buyers as a yeah,
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absolutely. You know, you made
a great point about professional development leading to
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great results in your own career as
a sales professional. What we often forget
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about in sales is that no one's
teaching our buyers how to buy, you
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know, and oftentimes it is not. It's not defined for them. Is
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No one has given them, you
know, instructions, but there are things
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that you can pull out to understand
what is likely going to happen and you
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might, you know, be asking
that question of them the first time.
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They might not know, but you're
going to force them to ask that question
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so that you can figure out that
answer and then and then sell to it
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and insert yourself into that process.
So it begins with starting the conversation with
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those potential customers. I think you
did a great job of explaining the why.
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I mean a threeto one close ratio
from that stat that you dropped earlier.
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I think is very tough to ignore. And if we pride ourselves on
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anything here on BB growth, it's
beginning. It's getting beyond the wine,
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getting to the house. So tell
us a little bit. As you guys
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started off on this process at Zesspool. How did you go about conducting those
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interviews? Where did you reach out? How many people? Tell us about
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some of the nitty gritty logistics.
There's you started this process to uncover the
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information about your buyers typical buying process. Yeah, so you know it.
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It actually starts in a few different
ways, right. So we when I
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first started here, we had this
organizational inference that we really had three different
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types of buyers, right, we
had an HR buyer, we had an
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execute level buyer and then we had
a financial buyer. And what we did
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as a first step to help us
even understand if we were directionally correct,
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was we took all of our customer
data that we had and we appended those
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three additional resources that we had access
to. So one of the first purchases
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I made as the sales leader the
organization was for discover. Word for me
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if you're not familiar with the discover
or listeners, it's one of the best
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data resources out there. Their unique
in which all their data is validated by
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humans that are based here in the
United States, a really high quality,
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high fidelity data. And so first
and foremost we wanted to see within our
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data was our inference actually correct.
And what we found through the data was
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that we really had a few different
buyer percentage. As I mentioned, the
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h our journalists and executive and a
financial purchaser. But what we also found
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out was that we were doing data
and insights not only in the individual but
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fermographics as well. And so we
had this notion of small, medium,
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large buyers and we started categorizing those
by our small, medium and large based
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off a few other attributes. So
with company size as one, and then
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to understanding, where you know their
actual processes into their purchasing journey. So
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depending upon those three job titles,
I provide you Logan. Right. So,
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finance, HRUR executive, we started
reaching out to our existing customers within
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those buckets of small, medium,
largeized customers and also those persaunas or those
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titles within each of those organizations,
finance, HR and executive levels, to
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conduct interviews with those individuals, and
really the goals of those interviews were really
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the same across the board. Tell
me about how you first notice you had
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a problem. How did that go
off? Who in your organization actually raise
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their hand and said they had a
problem? What did it look like after
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they raise their hand and said they
had the problem? Who Do they share
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that information with? I would say
just kind of a blanket statement in sales,
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a lot of organizations feel like they
have really extend sales cycles and what
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they're really dealing with our buyers,
who are still just discovering more information about
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do they actually have a problem or
not. So the buyer actually hasn't started
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their purchasing process. They're still doing
their research. Do I even have a
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problem to begin with? And so
a lot of these organizations are saying they
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have, you know, six twelve
months sales cycles, but in actuality their
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customers are spending you know, four
or five months figuring out do I have
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a problem or not Logan, and
so that was something that we really wanted
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to understand with our customers and all
three of those buckets, regardless of rule
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or regardless of companies size, what
did their process look like to go from
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I think we have a problem to
concretely saying we have a business problem and
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we understand what those impacts are to
our business. So that was really step
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one, was to understand how it
goes from a maybe a problem to a
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problem organizationally. So we have documented
that out. So, as an example,
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and are super small customers, we
are speaking with the executives in those
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organizations and super small customer to us
as a company of under fifty employees or
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less, if that's fair for the
listeners, and we primarily deal with executive
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buyers there, and what they had
said is that for them, as an
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example, they realize they had a
problem when they started seeing him place church
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left and right. You know,
at Fifty Person Company, if you have
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two or three employees leaving on a
monthly basis, you're having some real problems
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kick off. And so what happens
when you start seeing two to three people
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start leaving the organization? And what
we understood was that those executives, while
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they know it's a problem, they
then therefore turn that over to their HR
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team to go ahead and further investigate. We'll start doing research within the employee,
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starting conducting employee interviews, starting to
do specific exit interviews around some of
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those pain points. And ultimately we
learned was that we see fifty percent of
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our small business fires being executives who
are so passionate about the problem they maintained
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and hold on to it, and
the other fifty percentage so busy that they
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offload this problem. And this whole
exploration of is it that big enough?
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Should we address it to an h
our generalists. And then from that point
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we knew and we research that if
it's an executive, what are the actions
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they take from that point forward?
That's a really easy problem to solve and
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the executive buyer can go ahead,
they have authority, they can release funds.
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But for us and a lot of
our larger deals, when we're not
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selling to the decisionmaker, initially what
we really want to know was, okay,
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your executive had said Hey, Logan, you need to go explore this
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problem. How do they start elevating
this back to the executive? How do
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they start articulating the impact of this
problem and the return on investment of addressing
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this problem? So that's really our
largest part of Focus and our buyer journey
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is really understanding of when we're outside
of the executive branch, how do we
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start looping back in and house information
shared and correlated back to the executive tree?
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Hey, everybody, logan with sweet
fish here. You probably already know
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that we think you should start a
podcast if you haven't already. But what
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if you have and you're asking these
kinds of questions? How much has our
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podcast impacted revenue this year? How
is our sales team actually leveraging the podcast
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That's sea steed dot US growth. All
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right, let's get back to the
show. A lot of sense starting with
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those buyer personas and then dividing up
your typical ICP into, you know,
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as you did, three different buggets
based on size, segment, which you
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could do by employees or revenue size, depending on you know, which is
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really, you know, most telling
for you in the way that they might
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approach things, it sounds like to
me, Andrew, you guys ask some
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some open ended questions. You ask
them repeatedly, but they weren't, you
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know, choice a, B or
c. There were some open ended questions.
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Did you mix in some closed ended
ones to try and aggregate some specific
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data points in the other questions that
you were asking to uncover more of the
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buying process. Yeah, yeah,
so that's a great question, Logan,
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and you're absolutely right and I'm glad
you pitch up on that. So in
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our really early stage phase conversations,
we exclusively went in with open ended questions,
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right. We weren't necessarily trying to
confirm or deny certain assumptions about their
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purchasing process that time. Right,
we least wanted to understand thematically. Are
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Small, medium large purchasers or these
personage within as organizations? How might they
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go about this process? So we
did really three rounds of interviews. Right.
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So we started off, and I'm
apologies for the editing or the lack
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thereof, but it's really a three
wave approach. It's start with our data,
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test them of our assumptions, step
to go into these more higher level
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open ended questions, and then step
three is try this out with close ended
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questions, both with existing customers and
with prospects, most importantly. Right.
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So it's great that we know how
current customers have purchased the can we start
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taking these inferences and testing these and
making these informed hypotheses by ultimately going to
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ahead and validating these right. So, once we started having a typical journey
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for let's take an example of middle
size organization, two hundred, two to
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five hundred employees, right, what
we had been experiencing previously and what we
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had been able to gather through our
interviews was this initiative starts in the sea
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sweet it gets kicked down to the
h our professionals and once it's kick down
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to the HUR professionals, they have
a fairly robust process and which they will
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ultimately get that information, gather that
information passed back to the sea suite within
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sixty days. And so for us
we really spend time validating with HR professionals
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of Hey, what are the questions
that your executive team is going to be
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asking you? What information do they
are they going to be asking you?
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And specific in the HR or perks
and benefits space, one of the big
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questions that we know when somebody is
really far along and they're purchasing path,
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and this is something that, regardless
of industry, regardless of size, is
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going to be really helpful for all
people and that listen to this podcast,
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is what are the questions that show
higher level of commit it in our interest
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into the purchasing journey and for us
perk's benefits. One of the biggest questions
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that we see buyers have, whether
it's up front or later stages there,
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is where the tax implications of pricks
and benefits? What? What is this
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actually due to our employees and if
somebody is in an early stage sales conversation
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they're not going to be asking about
the tax ramifications of a perch or benefits
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program. But if we're able to
go through one or two demos before that,
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we know that by them asking that
they've already evaluated us and move this
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beyond that first demo stage to their
solution selection criteria. They've seen us as
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a reputable vendor. We've provide enough
information and now that our organization wants to
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learn more about the Gotchas, they're
dotting their eyes, crossing their tees then.
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So it's coming down to that fact
of we know when we start getting
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asked about taxes and benefits that this
is a higher level or more interested prospect
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and we've been pushed further down the
sales process and as a result of that
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we've also started testing about where in
our sales conversations with their customers, is
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it meaningful to interject information or insights
around taxes and benefits? The other thing
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that I mentioned earlier on our conversation
is we're always trying to educate and that's
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something that the vast majority of sales
people aren't doing. They're just trying to
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sell stuff. They're just trying to
sell and make money for themselves. They're
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not actually trying to help address problems, and so if we take a legit
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and interest and try to help them
think critically or definitely about a problem,
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they take us more seriously and go
for their in our sales process. So
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now we're trying to figure out how
early we can bring up that topic of
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taxes without derailing the sales cycle.
I don't have an answer for that yet.
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We're still in data feedback loops right
now, but that's something that you
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know, to my competitors, I
hope you don't figure out before me,
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but I think we're I think we're
pretty close. Yeah, well, that
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helps. Yeah, and I think, as you mentioned, what bb sales
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people in sales leaders out there listening
to this Andrew can take from that is,
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you know, I wrote down find
your late stage indicator questions. From
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that it's not always going to be
tax implications like it is in the perks
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and benefit space that you guys serve, but there are going to be those
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late stage indicator questions and you know
that ties in nicely with what my last
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question for you was going to be, Andrew, is you know, how
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did you start to build processes around
that buyer journey that you uncovered? It
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sounds like you know one of these
is to figure out those late stage indicator
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questions and now find ways to to
test for those. When do we start
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asking that question? And does that
mean that a deal moves from this stage
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to this stage, because now we've
gotten that indicator because we took the time
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to figure out what is that indicator
question and now you're trying to figure out
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where do we provide education throughout the
sales process? So what are some other
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tactics that you would recommend to other
sales people and other sales leaders to implement
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these feedback loops with the information they
gather from this data collection and theory testing
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and then implementation into their sales process? Yeah, so for me it was
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first and foremost coming up with a
fairly vanilla fire journey. Right. What
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is a buyer journey, regardless of
organization size or that, where that individuals
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role could actually address most of how
people buy? Right? I think the
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individual has probably done the best work
on this. It's actually a resource that
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your entire listeners can find to sales
acceleration formula from Mark Rowe Grosje a rogue
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Broge A. He's one of the
original chief sales officers of hub spot.
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Highly recommend that book and resource to
your listeners. But it puts together a
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really nice framework of problem awareness to
solution research, to identifications to solution research
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and so on so forth. I
think that's a really compelling way. So
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what is it? Just a vanilla
fire journey that you can align to number
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two. For me, as far
as capturing gathering that data, I would
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start with my best customers. My
costmar is that I have the best relationships
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with. You know, these are
the types of customers and I would encourage
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you to work with them that when
you are testing out a new product or
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new feature, these are the first
customers you go to adopt to. Who
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are those customers? That are the
ones that your organization is trained to for
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reference conversation. So these are the
customers that are going to give you more
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of an open Kimono type of approach, like let's just give you everything and
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anything, and these are the types
of customers that you can have really came
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to conversations with. And, at
the end of the day too, if
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you don't see yourself having those types
of customers, you can always incentivize certain
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customers to do that. Right.
So for Zestful we're in a position,
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and we're very thankful, that our
entire product is and touching and impacting them
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play experience. So we generally have
very happy customers. So we just went
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out and saw who had the most
engagement, reach out to those customers and
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got great insights. So I would
really start off with who are my best
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customers? The number two is who
are the customers I want to replicate?
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Doesn't Nessily mean you have a tremendous
relationship with them today, but do you
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think that there's a market opportunity and
one of these things right now and total
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candor, we are really excited about
working with fast casual or fast food restaurants
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for a zestful. We've had a
lot of interest. We haven't had a
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lot of bites, and so we
are even calling those people out in a
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sales process of we don't know how
to work with you. We think there's
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a way to work with you and
we're really, really passionate about this use
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case and we've just been very transparent
with them up front and that we would
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like to learn about this journey with
you. What concessions can we make to
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your business, to you to help
us learn about how to work with organizations
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such as yourselves? So that's another
thing that I would say is, if
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you don't have that data, or
if their markets that you want to get
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into, make strategic investments or bets, and those bets can be offering a
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discount of service or offering a mortorspoke
service to this customers. So you can
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learn and breathe and do what they
need to do throughout their sales cycle to
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figure out how you can bring on
more customers. That look exactly like yeah,
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absolutely, I love that, and
you think about, okay, we're
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getting new interest from this new market
segment. We don't have an offering that
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just and maybe we don't have the
messaging that just hits the nail on the
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head with these folks. In this
specific sector and going to them and saying
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look, it's not like we're using
with case studies of your specific example of,
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you know, fast casual restaurants with
twenty five locations and you know whatever
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they look like. You know because
what I've heard from from going in some
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of their researches, kine, of
the worst things you can do in a
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sales process is throwout case studies where
the prospect cannot see themselves in that other
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customer shoes. Right you throughout the
case study where you get that question of
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have you ever worked with anyone like
us, and you him and hall.
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Instead, you know, do what
Todd Campony says in the transparency. So
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I lean in to those areas of
imperfection and you may just have a champion
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in that organization who needs more and
you might be able to find out what
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they need by just being candid and
say no, we haven't but we haven't
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quite figured this segment of the market
out yet, but if you help me,
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I think we can come up with
something that's really going to help you.
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So help me, help you,
and that candor can lead to those
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deeper conversations and might be able to
help you go further in that niche,
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then then you could by just kind
of throwing a case study at them and
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moving on and just hoping that they
bite off. Right. Yeah, no,
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I love that and I firmly believe
in candor and sales process right,
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whether it's disqualifying somebody because you know
they won't enjoy your service. Right.
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I had a company other day,
Thos all in Canada, and I before
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we even started a call, how
to call attention to the gentleman of saying
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we only you know, focus on
us d should we still progress in this
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conversation, on on or your time? And he absolutely said yes, we're
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actually opening more US offices. So
it's please do that. Right. But
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on the candor front, it works
in both directions. If somebody says hey,
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you know, at the end of
the day, you know Logan,
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I have no interest in working with
you because you haven't worked with another restaurant,
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they're probably not going to be a
good resource to help you figure out
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that market. But at the same
time, if those people are saying hey,
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yes, those are the innovators,
those are people are in give you
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and your organization grace and understand that
both parties are apt to commit something to
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make this relationship work right. I
would say that, overall, if a
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buyer is expecting a hundred percent frictionless
process, you're not being set up for
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success with any organization or any product. Yep. So those buyers who understand
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at the end of the day,
I'm not going to hide anything, I'm
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not going to pull any punches,
it's going to treat you like a human
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and share what information I have.
Those are the types of buyers that you
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want to partner in with and the
type of buyers that can actually help you
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learn how to sell more effectively.
Yeah, absolutely, Andrew, I love
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it. You know, as we
were introduced, I was told we were
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going to have a great conversation and
we've done that and we've shared some knowledge
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with listeners and I'm probably going to
be picking your brain even more as I
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build out our sales processes, and
this idea of interviewing some of our,
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you know, ideal fit customers has
been something I've been thinking on. So,
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if folks like me are excited to
learn from you even more than this
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twenty minute conversation or so we've already
had, Andrew, what's the best way
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for them to reach out or learn
more about what you and the team at
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Zesfell have going on these days.
Man, sure so. Anybody's always welcome
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to email me Andread zestfulcom. I'm
an open book. I apologize if takes
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me more than twenty four hours to
get to it. I will respond to
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you, so please know that.
Second of all, I am on twitter
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at a voice Slavic vis in victor
o j slavise in victory k. You
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00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:34.799
can find us at get zest for
is zeschoolcom. The two things that I
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would just share as far as like
top resources for me as a sales leader,
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actually three. I'm going to be
a liar in your your reference from
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the Logan if you haven't read the
sales acceleration formula from Mark Robers, a
377
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highly recommended I think it's a must
read, one of the better written sales
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books on modern sales in the last
five years. It's top five must read
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for me for any sales professional leader. Number to see USO INSIGHTSCOM. See
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US o insightescom is one of the
largest on runs the largest ongoing sales excellent
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study globally and they've been doing these
studies on what does a world class sales
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organization do compared to all others for
last twenty years. I feel that they
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have some of the best data and
they've been looking at some of the same
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issues and challenges for the longest period
of time. It can actually take a
385
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historical view to show you true trends
in analysis. The last one, I
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think Gong actually writes in the best
content out there period. I'm glad you
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brought that up. Logan, I
think they write some the best things and
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if you do software demos, I
would highly call attention out to their upside
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down demo. I thought that was
probably one of the better resources. Not
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Really Germain to our conversation today,
but as far as best sales content ran
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out there, I thought they're upside
down demo was one of the best written
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features I've read in two thousand and
nineteen. Yeah, absolutely, Andrew.
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Those are all really great resources to
share with listeners. Will do our best
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to share those links in the show
notes. If you want to hit the
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thirty two back button and just grab
here, that might be another way to
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00:29:03.819 --> 00:29:07.259
get them. Andrew, this has
been a great conversation. I've got to
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give a quick dount out to Kate
Marshall, who's going to be the host
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of the perk series on crafting culture
that we're partnering with Zesfel on. Should
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00:29:17.849 --> 00:29:22.130
be dropping pretty close to the same
time at this episode drops. So if
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you are interested in the employee engagement, the perk space and building a culture
401
00:29:27.519 --> 00:29:33.400
that leads to growth within your organization, another area where other than this conversation
402
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where we're jamming on sales and sales
process that we've been working with the folks
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00:29:37.079 --> 00:29:41.390
at Zesfel on, just search crafting
culture in Apple podcasts or wherever you do.
404
00:29:41.549 --> 00:29:44.990
You're listening. All right. Well, that does it, Andrew.
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00:29:45.069 --> 00:29:47.910
Thanks so much for a great conversation
today. Man, this was a ton
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of fun, log and my pleasure. Thanks so much too well. We
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totally get it. We publish a
ton of content on this podcast and it
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can be a lot to keep up
with. That's why we've started the BB
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growth big three, a no fluff
email that boils down our three biggest takeaways
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from an entire week of episodes.
Sign up today at Sweet Phish Mediacom Big
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Three. That sweetish Mediacom Big Three