#70 - Make Sales Great Again: Building a great sales culture

Someone actually loves it when you define a problem and you have a solution, but they hate being sold to. So the modern sales process has to be a trusted advisor, not a pushy closer. They're guiding, they're educating, they're helping customers understand these problems and the implications. And the old school sales was like always be closing. You know, it's this sales hit my target, sales pressure based. Yeah. I think the customer centric is always be helping. Welcome to Seeking Growth, a podcast about how we're taking our B2B startup into a scale up. Hey, I'm Michael and over the many years have been obsessively learning what does it take to unlock product market fit. Grow go to market teams and build great management systems. And here with me is Zavi. Yeah, hey, Mike. I'm here to uncover the battle test lessons or with no fluff. While other content focuses on the founder or gives you vague advice, here we want to go deeper, bring down the messy realities of what it takes to get into growth. That's right, Zavi. And importantly, this show is about you. It's about bringing you on this growth journey as we are seeking growth, personal growth, career growth and growth from a startup into a scale up. So with that, Zavi, let's go. Hey, hey, Mike. How are you? Every day is a good day, Zavi. And I'm looking forward to today's chat. What have you got? Yeah, Mike, I've got something pretty interesting, allegedly a controversial topic, according to you. We started to, yeah, obviously, seeking growth. Started to scout the company with a few salespeople. And finally enough, I've got myself into a bit of a sales role. So I really wanted to chat about how we can make sales great again. There's some different philosophies out there in the world. There's a lot of this at last year, product-led sales, other people who hate salespeople, because all they do is cause issues for implementation and product teams and things like that. So I really just wanted to go into what actually makes a great BDB SaaS sales culture. And then what makes our one super unique? Because in my very brief time in the sales team, everyone is just so excited. Like the sales team, love each other, love the product and stuff like that. But the product teams and implementation teams love our salespeople. It's just like always so ready to put things up and things like that. So I really wanted to dig into what actually makes a great sales culture. And then what really makes our one unique or special, like what's our little special tool in there. So we're keen to get into stuck into today's chat. Great. So certainly for the non-sales people listening, and even for the folks that have done sales, it's worth just starting that sales is not a dirty word if it's customer-centric. Yeah, right. But sales can often be a dirty word if it's salesperson-centric. Right. And so I think there's like a lot of very valid negative connotations around the word sales. Yeah. You know, just think of all the classic archetypes of being pushy, annoying, you know, manipulative, sort of twisting an arm, being pressured driven, sort of that classic go to a used car, sales yard, and that sort of sterile typical engagement where you're just feeling ik the whole time. And so no one wants that at all. Like no one wants to be that person or some people may enjoy it. But there's certainly no one wants to be on the other side. And you know, I think that that often happens in sort of transactional based sales, I would say. Right. Where it's like, okay, I'm engaging with you one on one. Yeah. What can I do to create an environment where you can kind of make a quick emotional decision at some pressure, etc. No. Now that doesn't work in B2B, SAS at all. And if it does, it's going to be a temporary hit that's going to quickly bite when the us with churn, right? So yeah. Like ultimately in business to business sales on the other side, you know, they're making you know, pretty informed, considered choices. And these sort of like quite unquote sales tactics. Yeah, they're just going to burn the relationship, burn the brand, you know, all that sort of stuff. That's not what we're about. So I can maybe pause there for any questions you might have and then I can jump into what then is great customer centric B2B sales. Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about that point around the emotional sell. Like I think about some of my own experiences of like trying to be sold a fine plan or something like that. Even buying a house. So like in your home sales and like some of the culture and operating systems there, even those are large purchase was like so. Ike is the right words. Yeah. But yeah, so so you're saying in B2B SAS, we don't have the same luxury or like I said, not so much like luxurious experience and we need to take a more considerate approach, which is leading you to your what makes B2B SAS sales so great. Yeah. Yeah. When do we start there? Yeah, so I mean, I think that the sort of overarching theme is sales is not about the sale. Like that happens at the very end of a very long winding process if things go well. Sales is actually problem solving and aligning with the business that you're engaging with to see whether they have the problem that you can help solve. So like ultimately we're having conversations with an organization to say, hey, have you got these types of problems? And is there a problem that you even care about? And what are the implications if you don't solve this problem? Because there's problems everywhere. So does it does it hurt enough to consider changing the way that you're going about things because this problem is causing the implications that really hurt? And then what are, you know, we're not the only show in town. There's multiple ways that you can solve this problem. So like let's also be pretty candid in here all the ways that you go about solving this problem. And so here's the sort of back and up can business case, if you will, as to why we think it, you know, we work together with them in a consultative way to see if it makes sense. And then when you go through that whole process, you're basically engaging with an organization, yeah, in this problem definition problem solving. And you're ultimately needing to get a range of people often very rarely is a one person, right? Because in a business there's multiple people that are affected and need to input into the decision. But you're working with them and an often a champion to convince others in the organization that yeah, like we really should change the way that we're doing this thing. Like we do change our process, we need to change our, like so it's a pretty big deal, like a firm organization to say actually the way that we're doing things is broken. Yeah. And there isn't much better way. And let me kind of champion this better way because I've been working with, you know, Johnny from team Zipline. And that's a, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a, ultimately a very consultative, you know, almost like a management consulting style engagement where, yeah, sales is, is problem definition and, and sales is problem solving and sales is understanding the various stakeholders and how they make decisions at the organization. And then, you know, get, get to a commitment where everyone feels excited about what the, what the future looks like. And this sort of concept of aligning on the problems is probably the most important thing as to how it becomes customer centric. Yeah. I'll give you an example. If you reached out to me and you said, hey, mate, like a lot of startups similar to you have a challenge around filing their taxes across different countries and jurisdictions. And you know, you've got, you know, Zipline's got presence in a range of countries. Yeah. That must be really taxing. And challenging and getting all, getting all those, you know, elements together, you know, to get your international taxes done, right? Sure. Now, I hear that and go, yeah, like that is a bit of a challenge, but it's not like, it's not burning, it's not a burning problem like right now. Now, there may be something that I don't know about, like maybe there's some implications by us not having like our ducks, you know, lined up in a row and wore tight and all areas, but that's not really a massive challenge right now, right? So you could have literally the world's best, like tax, international tax, automation, whiz-bang, fucking amazing product. It could legitimately be incredible. Yeah. And we just be like, you know, like not really a problem for us right now. Might be a problem in two years time, you know, might be a problem in five years time. And so at the very start, you're really wanting to engage in, do you even have this problem? And if you don't, you're like, you bail, like good sales is not about trying to sell to everyone. Good sales starts by a lot of people. lining on, do you have the problem that we can really, really help you with? And so then if I use another example, if you came to me and said, hey, startups like you that are going from start up to scale up mode, you know, often have challenges around managing product adoption and getting the best practices around product adoption across customer base. So, you know, once they sign and implement, like how do you make sure that they're really getting the most out of the product and did it, did it, did it. I'd be like, yeah, actually that's something that, you know, I'd be interested in, right? And then we need to unpack, okay, well, what does product adoption look like here now? Okay, well, we lost 300K of customers last year. I'm just making this up, you know, because maybe product adoption wasn't that great. We've got two people dedicated to it. Oh, you're always bang thing, cost 50 grand a year. And you reckon you would have saved 200K of that. And we may be only one person flying and will that freeze me up another, you know, that freeze up a person to go do something else. Yeah. And I spent 50K to save 200K. Well, that's, that's pretty good, right? So ultimately what I just described there is what great customer centric sales looks like. That was a great story. Yeah. I was just trying to think of like how, I guess like being a great salesperson is really fundamental, like like it's not really that different to any other IC role in the sense of like, you know, you're trying to define this problem and you're trying to like work through like what is the most important problem. And then obviously the process changes from there around trying to make sure they actually, this is the most important thing for them. And then like building the business case and things like that. I think that was a, that was an interesting like little reframe there. And that's obviously within the customer centric sales. You're talking about correct, right? That's right. And the explicit examples come to mind like like obviously you worked at Microsoft and Blackberry, Dracan, they had great B2P sales teams. Yeah, Microsoft does, I mean a lot of the sales force has an outstanding sales organization. Yeah. I mean, there are, you know, HubSpot's got an excellent sales organization like the cat manager that we worked with originally when we is going back a few years. Sometimes it can be dependent on the individual, like as opposed to the organization, but yeah, like some organizations are known for having, you know, really good customer centric sales cultures. Yeah. And, you know, like the, the guys that we really like, there's an organization called Winning By Design. There has a lot of like sales training and content, you know, about this. And, you know, they speak really well about this and you know, they say like customers love to actually buy, like someone actually loves it when you define a problem and you have a solution, but they hate being sold to. And so the modern sales process has to be a trusted advisor, not a pushy closer. Yeah. You know, they're guiding, they're educating, they're helping customers understand, you know, these problems and the implications. And, you know, I think the old school sales was like always be closing. You know, as this sales hit my target, sales pressure based. Yeah. And I think the customer centric is always be helping, you know, and you know, you're helping and you're value based. But within, you know, you're not like going around like hugging and loving the whole world, like, you know, we're still, you know, we're still here to, we're still here to grow, right? And so I guess the, the, the reality is every company spends money on growing revenue, right? Whether you're buying TV ads, whether you're buying Google ads, Facebook ads, yeah. But there's no company or even nonprofit organizations that aren't spending money. Yeah. To be clear about who they are, what they offer and try to win new customers and new revenue right? Yes, yes. And in our scenario, like putting a bunch of billboard ads up, you know, TV ads is not going to really do anything like we need to engage with organizations. And so that's done through a sales organization. But you can't just pay someone to just go around. Totally. Yeah. Just delivering wonderful education. Totally. Yeah. It's our come based as well. Totally. Totally. That's probably a good segue into what's really well in the supply and world. I mean, last party we talked about, we really want to help like founders, I see, you know, people just, just reflect on on some of the battle scars that we've had. Yeah. And like how we've optimized our culture and we're not perfect. Yeah. But I think we've got something pretty good. Like what do you think really makes zipline sales culture so strong? There's a few things. Like, first of all, it's just the way that we had the bar very high for people to get a role where they're engaging with organizations and representing us. And you know, I'm pretty proud to say, you know, we haven't always gotten this perfect obviously, but where it hasn't worked out well, both us and all the person has gone, do you know, this is not a right fit for me. That maybe only been here for a handful of months or whatever it may be. But I think you'll hear a lot of our customers. Just go, wow, what an incredible, you know, sales process like just engaging with None was incredible. Yeah. You know, the work that Ben's really done with us has been amazing. And so I think that's the first thing, right? So it's like, if you truly are this customer centric, then that sales engagement should feel like you've engaged with a, you know, with a Bain or a McKinsey-like type experience. Where you really get me, you understand me, you know me, you care about me and you deliver value and you really helped us, you know, unpack these challenges and you helped us see, you know, a brighter, exciting future. Yeah. I think that the second thing is like, you just got, like, you know, if you have a great product that is genuinely market leading and that's something that you're really proud of every time that you do, you know, qualify an organization that they've got the pain and the problems. And then you go into like demo mode or you go into like showing like, if their jaws are hitting the floor and going, "Fuck wow, man." Like that, it's almost like this product knows me. It's like, it knows everything about our world in a way that I didn't think a product could actually do. You know, that makes the sales process a lot easier, right? Yeah. But you're not having to tap dance with a piece of shit like 1990s, bit of software. So, you know, it's modern software. It's like, it's actually good. Like, when they say, "Oh, can we talk to some of your current customers?" Yeah. Like, "Shitting yourself," you're going to be sure. Like, here's a list of, like, you know, almost pick anyone. Like, they're all like raving fans. Like, they've got this, you know, wonderful, before and after story. I think the third area is like the way that we collaborate internally. And, you know, I think this would be an asset test whether someone was to have a, you know, chat with us about a sales role or whether you were chatting with another startup/scala. You know, I'd really double click pretty hard on what's the product team and sales team collaboration and culture like. Typically, in a lot of organizations, they're pretty siloed. And the sales team are coming in with all their unrealistic asks or making promises and then throwing over the fence to product teams to go, "Oh, if I can build these features, otherwise we can't win this deal." Yeah. And it's a pretty, under the hood antagonistic culture and sales team always rolling their eyes going, product never delivered their features. You know, the product team are like, "Oh, the sales team always unrealistic." And then, you know, it's a six-month thing to like get anything through, do do do do. So like, I'm really proud of the way that we've got our organizations across go to market and product partnered all the way through the sales process. And actually our product team have KPIs not on hitting sales targets and bonuses and so forth. KPIs and quarterly, you know, KIs that are tied directly to sales outcomes or to customer outcomes. And including like, "Hey, we've got this new thing and we want to get a million dollars of new pipeline opportunity as an example, right?" Well, then it's like, it's not just on the sales team to go out and try to see whether they're arranged in organizations that connect with that pain. But all of a sudden, you're paired with a product organization that's like, "Oh, it's happy." Like, "Do you want to update the demo?" Or like, "Oh, what if we added this feature?" Do you know, "How about I come to the next meeting?" And they've got it in their KR to have product enable, you know, a million dollars worth of pipe. They're giving updates about it. I mean, like I think in our company, all hands last week, you know, we had like, I think software engineers describing like stuff that's happening, you know, when customers and it's like, "Wow, like all of a sudden this is not just about a sales enablement thing, that's like a band-aid at the end and it's all like this middleman between product that's like, you know, doing the sales enablement, it's literally like an entire fucking product organization is going, "What does it take to make our product better? What does it take to resonate more with the segment? What does it take to, you know, get more people excited through a sales process? Like how do we make the demo better? How do we make this resonate better?" Yeah. That's pretty unique to be honest, like that doesn't exist in many places. I think so. I just wanted to just just for, I guess like a bit more explicit and just like, "What does share some examples?" But I actually went through like, as you've sang some of those things, we've got this new solution coming up around like contractors and stuff like that and one of our designers was away and like, "We have to get this demo together." And then like the person that was like replacing him EV reached out to her and I was like, "Hey, can you help me out?" blah, blah, blah. And the demo was like in two days. She was like, "Yeah, like totally, like let's jump on a call and like sort it out." And she like started guiding me through like the different figments. and I was like, "No idea how to use figure." And I was like, "Oh, okay, can we do this, can we do this, can we do this?" And she was not like, in any way, like, "Oh, what are you talking about?" She really tried to empathize like, with like the customer lens and like, questioning me on some of my stuff. - Yes. - But then eventually, I actually got the outputs, they're in the end, even though it probably like, wasn't hard to her particular sprint goal or whatever. - Right, right. - Which I thought was like so, so massive. And then like, Nani was also talking about this, earlier today around like how, Tanme on any jib call and like jibs like our jobs and progress. It's just like, "Oh, like we have this customer thing, blah, blah, blah, "can you help it out?" He would like put that right at the top of like our collective intel or whatever. Which I think is like, so, so interesting. It's like, it's not this like weird tokenistic, hey, like, okay, sure, we'll help you out. If you really need it, it's a part of the DNA. And just for folks that are listening, that Tanme leads our product organization and Nani leads our sales. And yeah, I think there's just so many examples of this, like just on a day-to-day basis where we're really tied at the hip and it doesn't feel like, obviously there's two organizations that are focused on explicit goals and have priorities relative to building product and features or whatever it may be. But like, ultimately we are on the same team. In terms of getting those customer centric outcomes. And I think that comes through really, that comes through really, really clearly and powerfully as well. And I think, you know, if you're joining, if you're joining from, well, there's two sides to this one. Like if you've been in a sales role at, you know, other software companies or larger companies or in other places that don't have this type of culture, it's really disheartening when you've got like a really great opportunity with an organization and I'm just making it up. I just say it's 150K deal with, you know, ABC, you know, community care. And, you know, maybe they just need, you know, one thing added to the reporting or, you know, maybe in the future could we add this type of thing to the product? And it's a totally legitimate thing that's not just bespoke for that organization. It's a, you know, we validate that, yeah, do you know what? There's probably gonna be another 20 customers similar to them that are gonna find value in that. Yeah. To be able to get like a quick response and even have like product people, engineers, like seeing people, you know, jump on a call with that customer understander and be able to go, yeah, like we can do that. Like, yeah, if you sign up with us, like, you know, we'll get that done within an period of time or like we'll, and to be really like clear about that and us, you know, understand that. And it's not to say that like we do everything that, you know, comes in because that, of course, that that's not always the case. But I think that's sort of how that shows up. And then the flip side to that is us was the what the customer experiences, right? Like they often deal with these very large software organizations where they go, oh, you know, be great if we could do blinded blower or, you know, could you do that? And then they get the teeth sucking of like maybe and you know, maybe I have to look at our full roadmap release update, you know, next year and whether it's included. And it looks fair enough like because you know, they're building dollar software companies and they're not gonna have that kind of agility. But like it's pretty fucking cool when we've, you know, engaged with some organizations and then they come, you know, to us with a good idea. And then like literally the next week in a meeting, we show them a, you know, a demo of a concept or have you and it's like, you know, it's a live working thing and they're just like, wow, what the hell? And it's like, that's what it's like to work with us, right? And so that feels great in a sales role when you know that you can be really proud of the product agility and the speed in which you execute really great software really quickly. - Yeah. - To the great opportunities and feedback that we get from the market. And I would say, yeah, being able to execute product or that kind of a loss of the impact is incredibly unique and very hard to do. And so I think having that be almost like a shining beacon in the sales process is something that's really, not only appealing on the customer side, but it actually makes your job easier in a sales process, right? - Sure. - Yeah, so that's sort of, so I was like, when we talk about things that we've learned that are unique and I would encourage anyone who's looking at getting a sales role in a startup. Yeah, like one, we talked about the customer centric approach to we've been talking about the deep product and sales collaboration, which has these multiple, you know, downstream benefits. I think the other one to just be like really candid is that if you're in a role that is generating, you know, revenue and value to the company, then you deserve to have a fair slice of that, you know, fair slice of that cake, right? So, you know, we like to think of sales roles almost like, it's your own small business. And, you know, if you can make $10 a peer out of nowhere, then sure, like, you can have three bucks of that, you know, or whatever the number is. Like we're not here to, we're actually here to be really generous in the way that we think of incentive structures. Yeah. And, you know, there's a whole controversial topic around, you know, do you pay people bonuses and, you know, what about product people that aren't in sales roles? Yeah. We can have a whole separate episode on that. But like fundamentally, like if you're in a role that's like driving, you know, new revenue, like being able to be rewarded for the very hard work that is required to make that happen, like setting up a small business. You know, we've got many examples of people in their 20s and 30s earning well over 300 grand a year. Yeah. And it's kind of like hell, yeah. Like, I mean, if you're creating a lot of value for us as an organization, if you're creating a lot of value in the market with our customers, then we have no problem in this sort of high impact high incentive structure. Yeah. I was actually thinking about that one. It's like, that's probably one of those taboo topics, like, "Oh, like what? "Like you want to earn so much money?" It's like, well, in reality, it's like salespeople are probably, to some degree, driven by that that sort of incentive structure, right? Of being like paid, what they sort of fairly deserve for that. And how like, well we define that at a high level, it's like, I never, well, like, I don't sense that any of our salespeople would feel like, "Mike's just not gonna pay this or something like that." It's like, there's a very like open and clear kind of like, "Oh, if you hit these numbers and overachieve by these numbers, "here's how much like you could like, "really sickly earn from this." And it's just like all super plain, super simple, which is like, no weird, like caveats, do whatever things like that. But secondly, it's just like, I'd get the impression that you wholeheartedly want to like actually reward that person for those achievements and things like that. And frankly speaking, that's not even like a sales thing. I think I've noticed this like across the business when we talk about our product people and what the incentive is a tie to is like, when they hit massive achievements, like they're just like very fairly rewarded to us. - And we can talk about incentives in other areas of the organization, you know, product folks, have you better make up for this episode specifically like around sales, I mean, you know, the reality is like high performers are gonna bring in. Just like, you know, if you have a Google ad campaign that brings you a million dollars of revenue, that I don't know, I'm just make it up, like you sell a widget that makes 50% margin. So you made 500K in profit. - Yeah. - And let's say that Google like campaign cost you 100 grand, right? Well, would you be willing to spend 200K to make a million dollars in profit? - Yeah. - Well, of course, right? There's nothing bad about spending more money on a sales and marketing activity if it's like generating the results. So that's like the business view of things. And then for the person that's, you know, generating those results, I mean like very ambitious people who are, I mean, let's be clear, like you cannot be a high performing salesperson. Like if you don't have the smarts, the grit, and the ability to navigate like some pretty complex landscapes of people, you know, people, products and processes. - Yeah. - And so, you know, someone of that archetype, you can go elsewhere tomorrow and earn very good money at management consulting, some of his job, you know, elsewhere or could start their own business and have a range of ways of creating value as well. And so, you, we're not in the business of screwing anyone over like if we're generating value, then we're more than happy to pay fair, fair clipper of the ticket. And then I think, you know, the final thing that, you know, is important in a great sales culture is just, it is nested within an overall company culture that, you know, I'm really proud of, right? Like, this is a high agency. You know, there's a strong commitment to high performance, but, you know, high people care factor, you know, in terms of overall like wellbeing and support. There's a lot of like, you get to fail a lot, you get to throw your ideas in the mix. - Yeah. - If you want to have a crack at something, you can put on the table, if we say not now, you'll be clear as to why it's not now. - Yep. - And so, there's all this sort of stuff where it's like, we legitimately are on the same team. And everyone's very clear about what the company's trying to get done as well. - Yeah. - And so I think for all those reasons, that sort of makes, you know, what I'd like to think that while we're cooking up here in our growing sales org and it's exciting for us to be in a, in the in high growth mode again, like where we're, you know, looking to expand this team and, and so forth. - Yes, it's, it's it's, it's it's, it's it's. It's a fun time, like it's a fun time having a product that solves a real problem for an industry and solving it uniquely. You get to show how quickly you can iterate on the software and the product features in line with feedback from customers and you're taking a truly customer-centric approach all the way through knowing that as the results come in, everything will look after itself. I was just thinking, "I wonder if consultants will listen to this and go, 'Oh, wow!' I could earn much more money by the way." If you're a manager, look at it as a little bit. There is an actual sales process figuring out how they got budget, where they had that budget process. Again, not to twist the arms, but just so we're all clear on the effort, but you're right. You earn a lot more money in B2B sales than you're willing in management consulting. There we go. Anyone to load a KPMG? Yeah. I'm putting your application on. It's all via adsicblind.io. All right. Good chatty back. Until next time. All right. Woo!