Tell Your Story – Marty Yaskowich #90

Transcript:

Wed, Oct 19, 2022

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

sales , people , crm , marty , salespeople , organization , business , sell , story , talking , strategy , executives , meeting , career , software , spend , important , questions , role , prospect

SPEAKERS

Marty Yaskowich & Christopher Smith

Intro

Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith, talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Listen to find out how the best of the best achieve success with their team and CRM technology. And remember, unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes.

Christopher Smith

Welcome to sales lead dog. Today on our episode, we have joining us, Marty Yaskowich. It’s Marty, welcome to sales lead dog.

Marty Yaskowich

Thank you so much, Chris. Glad to be here. Really excited to spend the next few minutes with you.

Christopher Smith

Marty is a very busy guy. Right now beyond like the many different things he’s doing. He is the principal for three one strategic consulting. Are you telling me about three one?

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, it was kind of born out of, you know, a series of corporate positions that I’d held various senior executive roles at a variety of different companies. And what I was finding was always the need and desire among mostly executives in the in the sales roles, but also in just the C suite to you know, have a better and tighter corporate strategy, have a nice tight brand strategy and story to tell. And then really a sales or go to market strategy that kind of brought them all together. So, the thinking behind three one is a consulting practice, led by me but supported by others in my network that can help executives form tell those stories to the market in whatever industries they’re in. We work a lot with startups, we work a lot with scale ups. But we also have some very established businesses and companies that need all of those services. And at various points in my own career, I have been the owner of those various strategies, I love all three of them, I didn’t want to just, you know, sort of focus on one and not approach the others because I believe that all three need to be working very well together in order for any business, any organization to be successful.

Christopher Smith

That takes me back when I started this company 50 plus years ago, I just thought, Oh, I’ve just gotten to sell. But there’s so much stuff that you have to do to understand this. Like you’re saying there’s three pillars here that you’ve got to have nailed down to be successful. And it’s not just about selling, you have to have a brand you have to have every there’s just so much involved. It took me a while to figure that out. But once you do, it just makes it so much easier.

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, I think it takes many of us and it took me a long time in my own career, you know, the years of working in those different roles to really understand how all three of them connect. So, you know, the way I position our services is somebody who’s kind of been there and done that and seeing it and seeing what has worked and seeing what maybe hasn’t and, you know, I have a real strong passion for brands, I have a great passion for leading organizations at the corporate level and that strategy level and keeping everyone on the team really connected. But I still love the pitch. And, you know, the salesperson, me and it’s funny, like I’m on this podcast about being a sales leader. I remember, you know, I was in my first role at a creative ad agency, so sort of Don Draper esque selling, if you will. And I was describing it to my dad, my dad was a elementary school teacher, you know, is his experience in business was very, very limited. And he said, well, you just tell me what you’re doing at this new job that you have described. And he goes, Oh, you’re in sales. I’m not in sales. I was very reluctant, very reluctant into the whole. And now I spent, you know, 25 years, basically pitching every major company in North America, everyone from Samsung, and T Mobile and Verizon, to Uber and Clorox and McDonald’s. So, for somebody who never thought they were in sales to begin with, I’ve made a pretty solid career out of helping people tell their story in sales,

Christopher Smith

more and more. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So that that’s one of the things I wanted to talk about is that you really come in sales from, I think, fairly different perspective, or perspective than I think most people that get into sales. And so, can you talk about how you leverage this, you know, coming from the creative side, or you know, just the world that you come from? It’s very different I think for most salespeople,

Marty Yaskowich

yeah. Well, first of all, I started in a in an industry where you’re selling people, you’re selling services and ideas and creativity. Those are very intangible, right? The last five years I’ve worked in retail software sales, much more tangible product to talk about, you can talk about speeds and feeds and data and you know, all the all the great things that that those systems can do. But for 15 to 20 years, I was really, I was really pitching and telling the story of an amazing group of people who when they come together can make magic and that magic often is very, very intangible. But I can tell you that the people who bought those services and we won a lot of pitches and we worked with a lot Got a great clients over the years and you know, you get exposed to all their strategies is they really do want to fall in love, right? And what people fall in love with and what they remember our stories, they don’t remember how many individuals were at your agency or they don’t remember how many gigabytes your system can process over somebody else’s. Those are those are immaterial, they are falling in love, it’s no different than dating early on, they’re falling in love, and you need ways to get them to fall in love with you quicker, deeper than the other guys. And so for me, the idea of sales, you know, in my career has always been about being a great storyteller, having a great story, creating a great story. Sometimes, you know, maybe even stretching a little bit that story into a place that maybe makes you even a little bit uncomfortable. But the reality is people want and they remember stories, and they want to hear your story. And it’s no different when you’re meeting someone for the first time. What do you do? Who do you do it for? You know that that curiosity that creativity has to be there. And that you know that gel has to be there from the beginning or selling is very, very tough. And it becomes you know, what’s your price? What are your speeds versus somebody else’s pizza? That’s, that’s a race to the bottom. And we’ve all seen that in sales.

Christopher Smith

Oh, yeah, no, I love that. And I wish I could remember the name of the person at this young SDR. I was listening to a podcast, and she was talking about how she gets people to engage with her. And she’s like, I picture myself, I’m at a cocktail party, and I’m going around talking to people, I’m not going to walk up to someone at a cocktail party immediately, like launch into my pitch, I want to get to know them and build a relationship. And I’m like, I love that analogy. Yeah, that it’s like I’m building a relationship before I try to sell.

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, and the other. The other thing I’ve always you know; somebody said it to me very early in my career. And it’s really stuck with me, which is this person who speaks the most in a meeting thinks the meeting went the best. So, if you have 60 minutes with a prospect, and you gobble up 58 minutes, is that telling them all about you and your product and your service and your company and your business? And all the case studies that you have? And then at the end, you say, are there any questions and they say no, well, guess who thinks that the meeting went the best? But if you approach that same meeting with, I’m really curious about your business, I’m, you know, and you’re asking good questions, and you get them to open up and maybe even tell you some of their biggest challenges. Well, that’s the key to selling, like really getting them to do the talking. Most of the formal business development or sales training I have has been all around, you know, treating every call, like a discovery call, where it’s like, I’ve got a deck, and I can share the slides with you. But like, honestly, the best meeting is when you never even get to the deck. You just have a great conversation with somebody and your curiosity, and you’re asking good questions, really comes to the fore. Before I did all of this, I was actually a journalist and a broadcaster. And I worked in sports journalism for a few years, it was my first real job out of out of university. And I remember before my first broadcast, I was sitting, I was the color commentator, analyst. And I was sitting with the with the play-by-play guy. And I said, so what do I do? And he said, well, when I stopped talking, you start talking, and you better have something to say. There’s something there’s something very true to that in sales. And with a bit of a twist, which is when they stop talking, you better have another good question to ask. Right? It’s not just about filling the time with Okay, well, let me tell you about more about, you know, our company or what we do. It’s told me more about that thing. You mentioned something there that was really interesting or insightful, and I want to learn more about it. If the more you can get them talking, the more you can get them opening up about their challenges. They’re kind of giving you the answer sheet to the test, right. And as a salesperson, we’re trying to get to that answer sheet as quickly and effectively as we can. And again, some of that is, you know, sharing some anecdotes about yourself some great stories. The other flip side of that is really asking great and pointed questions. And as a former journalist, I can tell you, lots of lots of great stories never get told, because the person doesn’t ask the right follow up. You mentioned something there. Let’s just tell me a little bit more about that. Right. It’s the best sales tool in the world is just the follow up question. Tell me more about that.

Christopher Smith

How do you balance telling your story with trying to get your client to tell you their story?

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, that’s a really tricky one. And I think over the years, I’ve actually discovered a couple of interesting ways of doing it, but also some really like logistically foundation foundational ones. One of the things we did at the agency for years, we had, we had a placemat that we put in front of people in, so we go into a pitch or a presentation. The first 15 minutes are always a big waste of time because everybody introduces themselves. It’s it takes up a bunch of time that you actually want to have with your prospect. But the reality is, you know, that’s important time you’re getting to know them, they’re getting to know you. So, what we did was we made this this place card, and it had all of our team’s faces, a little bio about them some key things about why they’re in the room today, what they’re going to be talking about, and maybe a little anecdote. So, if we were talking to an automotive client, or prospect, you know, this is Marty and Marty is the strategist. And he’s going to be talking today about these things. And Marty’s first car was a 1976 Honda Civic, right? And I didn’t tell that story. We didn’t spend a minute or a second in the meeting talking about it. But guess what happened when they started reading the placemats. They all wanted to tell us what their first cars were. And it’s, yeah, maybe we still spent 15 minutes introducing ourselves. But the connection we made was so much stronger than if we just all stood up there and said, I’m Marty, I do this. This is Susan, she does this. This is Jane, she does this, right, like taking that thing that we all hate in a meeting, which is, oh my gosh, we got to do these introductions and turn it into something really positive and much more meaningful, but also not using it all the time that we didn’t, you know, we didn’t want to use for it. So, there’s some there’s some tricks like that, that I think are just like gold mines, like just gold mines that when you come across it, you’re like, of course, this is the way to do it. It just makes so much more sense.

Christopher Smith

So, let’s talk about strategy and its role in the sales process.

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, what I see in sales today. And I still get, I still get a ton of cold call outreach, let me let me phone you and tell you about my thing. Let me let me take 30 minutes and tell you about my thing. And I just feel it’s so programmatic. And it’s so impersonal. And you know, it is in some cases, they’re trying to pitch me on something, I haven’t even worked in that industry. For five years, I haven’t even done the basic research and looking at my LinkedIn profile to see that I’m no longer at that, at that place. And I just think it’s so lazy. But I think again, great salespeople, they do a lot of research, they do a lot of understanding who is their, their biggest customer, who is their the, you know, the prospect that’s really ready to buy, able to buy and, you know, ultimately wants to buy. And so that strategy of like that combined with and what are we going to tell them about how our solution maybe meets their needs. Understanding that need, obviously, in discovery is so critical. And it’s such a huge part of the strategy. But identifying those people early on, I think is so important. I think most salespeople spend way too much time talking with levels of an organization that are not the buyer do not have the budget, and are trying to check a box, and then you get into a game of box checking against everybody else in the business. And that’s a really, that’s a really dreadful way to sell and to try to sell because it’s not very effective at all.

Christopher Smith

Oh, no, it’s not at all. And it’s I’ve seen this real change over LinkedIn. You know, where I still get I get bombarded with emails like everyone else. But my LinkedIn account is amazed at how much that has changed over the last couple of years with the same type of engagement, or they’re not really spending any time and it’s the same kind of thing. Like, oh, I see we have a whole bunch of people with connections in common I thought we should connect, or you know, it’s like you and 1000 other people. And I was like, come on, learn who I am, like you said, Yeah, you know, demonstrate you’ve spent a little bit of time figuring out what my business is who I am and what I care about.

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, it’s that basic research is actually a very lost art in sales. I would say like, even just just Google my name and see what I’ve talked about, or Google prospects name and see what’s important to them, and what associations are they a part of, and where they will, you know, where did they volunteer? And what do they coach? Are they Little League? Are they like, there’s just so much information available to you as a salesperson to go into some of these calls, without any of that without having established any of that? Just seems like, you know, you haven’t just done the basic homework of what you need to do in this business to be effective.

Christopher Smith

Oh, no, it boggles my mind. And so if you’re engaging with a new client, and they’re like, Marty, we need your help. What’s the first, you know, 90 days look like for you, when you’re working with a client? What are you focusing on?

Marty Yaskowich

Well, I’m focusing on what are their biggest challenges, right. And sometimes what they think is their biggest challenge is actually not really truly their biggest challenge. So where I try and come into most of the engagements that I’m doing on the consulting side are a little bit of a diagnostic as well. You know, maybe it’s, it’s just spending some time with their executive asking the right questions, probing a little bit deeper. But what I also find having more worked on brand and brand strategy for many years is, if you just ask the executive about the brand, you get a very different story than if you ask people on the front lines or the receptionist that you know, the headquarters who answers the phone, or, you know, there’s lots of different pockets of an organization that have a very meaningful role in, you know, what you say to the external market and what you say internally to your employees, that without kind of getting that information, you’re probably telling a very thin story that maybe the C suite wants out there, but isn’t really that true, and that real to the organization. And so, most of what I try and do early on is really spend some meaningful and quality time with people across all levels of the organization, new hires, people who’ve been there a long time, people who work in the warehouse, people who work in the front office, you know, obviously the brand marketing salespeople, you have to talk to them, but their lens is pretty finite. So, you need to kind of broaden that out. And I really encourage executives that I work with, to let another lot of third party you’ll ask them those questions, because nothing will shut down a great sharing meeting than having the CEO or the founder in that meeting, because it’s their baby at the end of the day. And it’s really hard to call them ugly sometimes. But people, if given the opportunity will actually share the truth or truth with somebody and as long as you’re willing and open to hear that. That’s a really powerful thing. I think for any organization to go through.

Christopher Smith

I believe that we do the same thing. I mean, so much of what you said, it’s the same kind of thing for us and our practice when people call so like, hey, we need help a CRM. And I start digging into the whys. Like why do you think you need help with CRM, and CRM is a symptom, but there’s usually a whole bunch of stuff that that you have to because it’s like, oh, yeah, I can fix your CRM. But if we’re not fixing all this other stuff, it’s not gonna matter. You know, because all that stuff is impacting, you know. So, it’s like, same thing for you with brand. Like, if you don’t understand that all the other stuff, it’s all hitting your brand.

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah. And I mean, CRM is great. I know it’s very close to your heart, Chris and I, I lead it an enterprise CRM, upheaval in my in my last role as the sales lead, I certainly see the value in it. But at the same time, if the behaviors around that CRM aren’t consistent, and new and adopted, sticky notes, and whiteboards work just as well, people are up, if people are updating it, if you know you’ve done a huge Salesforce or a large CRM implementation, and nobody’s using it, it’s just a lot of money that you’re pouring down the sink every day. Really,

Christopher Smith

exactly. Because you’re not dealing with the people, you’re they’re not understanding the people that are using the system, what their needs are, what’s going to make their life better their job better. You know, the other systems that are around that they have to deal with the processes, there’s so much involved, that as a leader, you have to address all that stuff and create a strong foundation. And I love that approach. What are some of the common struggles that when you’re engaging with others? Are there a shared set of struggles?

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest one, and this is why I think the way I position our group is, is kind of looking at all three of those areas is, I think it’s one thing for, you know, the sea level of an organization to set a strategy, and this is where we’re going, and this is the lighthouse. And then the marketing people go off, and they make up a brand. And they you know, they’re so deep in the brand piece. And then the sales team goes out. And they disregard both of those things, and they just go sell anything to anyone that will buy, right, because they’re incentivized in a different way. So, like, the, the way that those three systems work together is so critical. And, and again, like making sure that the connection is being made between, you know, what are we saying to our employees about where we’re going and who we are? And, you know, why, why, why we’re all here, what is our purpose? What is our fight, right? So that marketing and communications can tell that message externally and support the sales team with, you know, kind of air cover about this is, this is what the business is about, or this is what the software does. And then the salespeople can, again, reinforce that, again, because the biggest problem that you have in most organizations is consistency of messaging internally and externally. And so often, what I find is the external messaging is great, they’ve got great ads, or they’ve got great, you know, something content out there. And their, their sales team might even be, you know, really kind of lockstep with that content. And it’s great. And then you go talk to employees, and they’re like, we don’t really believe it, Marty. It’s not, it’s not our truth. And you know, we don’t operate like this, or the product team is like, that’s not what we’re building for. You know, we’re getting told, we’re getting told to build something different and we’re going in a different direction, and you have this organization that’s doing this, you know, converging in different places, and they’re just not synched up. And I think often it takes somebody from the outside and in my in my experience, somebody Who’s got experience in all of those areas to come and shine a little bit of a light in the corners and say, I think maybe there’s a disconnect here. Because if what you say to the outside world of your organization, and what you say internally to your to your staff are different, that’s a really, really big problem. And you might get away with it for a while, but you will not see the larger the long term success that I think is really critical. If all of those pieces are working together.

Christopher Smith

So how does that happen with these disconnects happen? Is it that strategy has been developed on its own without sales or marketing, being involved? Marketing is doing its thing without sales and strategy be involved? Is that what’s happening here? Or how does this I think,

Marty Yaskowich

I mean, we all work in sales. So, we know, KPIs, right. But when you have KPIs that don’t align immediately happens, right? So, sales is incentivized in a certain way. And, you know, the people out there, whether it’s STRS, or the account executives, or whoever, are getting compensated some ways, or they’re getting measured in some way. Well, guess what we do what we get measured on there, right? So, it better me Yes, same thing with the brand and the in the marketing people, like if they’re incentivized in a certain way, but that doesn’t line up with how the sales group is thinks about the way that they’re incentivized or whether they’re being graded on, those things will just never, they’ll never work well together. And you know, people always say, oh, we have a lead of sales and marketing, and they oversee both. And it’s like, Yeah, but what are you measuring? Right? Like, what, like, what you’re measuring matters to people write how they, how they progress in their career, how they, you know, get compensated more over the lifespan of their career, those things matter to them on a personal level. So, they’re going to they’re going to go to that that’s the that’s the brightest light for them. And they’re going to be drawn to that flame. But again, if those things and the corporate measures aren’t in sync, again, it’s the same problem. And it’s challenging. I’m not here to say like, this is really easy. If it was really easy. There wouldn’t be you know, folks like me, are you needing to go into organizations and really kind of show them that like, hey, this isn’t working. This isn’t working. And you know, doing it in a way that’s dynamic and uplifting, and gives people something to kind of rally around. You know, that’s the way I’ve always approached it, again, coming from a creative side, coming from a storytelling background, whether it was journalism, or on the marketing and brand side, you have to get people excited about, hey, this is where we’re going. And this is why this is why we’re going there more important.

Christopher Smith

No, I love that. I always talk about that all the time, you have to have a why you have to tell story to people, why we’re doing this, why this is important to the organization, why it’s important to the customers why it’s important to them? You know, yeah,

Marty Yaskowich

I’m, I had no idea. Totally. And we, you know, we’re on the same page there for sure. I also think as salespeople, and people that are telling that story, there’s a skill that not everybody has, which is they need the 32nd version of that story, they need the two-minute version, and they need the five to 10 minute version. And I feel like a lot of sales leaders focus on the long and large version, make sure you have the all the points, but sometimes you have an elevator ride, sometimes you have a you’re at the coffee break of a meeting, and you have just a split second to kind of get that point across. And I think that is a bit of a lost art of the seller today, which is they don’t have, they don’t have that library of, you know, short, medium, long versions of the same of the same story. And whether it’s a product, you know, story or whether it’s something much larger about, hey, this is where our organization is going. That’s one of the things that I try and teach in the workshops that I do, which is have that library of, you know, all of the stories and have them on top your head, but also have, like different versions of them, that you can tell very quickly, or, hey, let’s sit down and take you through this case study. And it’s long and rich and like there’s multiple pages, but sometimes you just don’t have that time. It means the story can be no less effective. It’s in some cases, it’s even more effective when you can tell it quickly and effectively.

Christopher Smith

Right. And that’s what people remember to like. People remember the stories, they don’t remember the details of, you know, lectures mentioned, the specs and that kind of stuff. Nobody remembers that. Yeah,

Marty Yaskowich

yeah. And you only have to look at, you know, civilization over the last two to 10,000 years. That’s how we know everything. That’s how we remember everything. That’s how our grandparents taught us how to do things. That’s how our parents taught us to do things. They told us stories, and because we remember stories, it’s literally in the cortex, like it’s in the brain to be able to do that. And so, when I think of, you know, when my dad said, oh, you’re in sales, I was like, no, no, I’m in storytelling. And that’s very different. And like the thankfully I grew up in a family of storytellers, so I learned the craft, if you will, around the, you know, the supper table every night, but dining room table, but it’s no less than it’s not It’s important, it was refined in Journalism and Broadcasting, where you have small bites that you have to get a point across very quickly and move on. And then you know, evolved into, you know, the creative experience and understanding how stories work there, right through to, you know, enterprise sales in a SAS organization. It’s funny, like, I look at my career, and I say, it’s very disparate, it’s all over the place. But there’s this common thread that continues. And, you know, as I was thinking about what I wanted to do in this latest chapter of my career, that became a thread that I wanted to continue to weave through all of it.

Christopher Smith

If I’m a sales leader, and I’m looking at my landscape around me and my business, and I’m starting to sense that, hey, you know, everything Marty said, I think that’s true about my business. What do I do about it? What should I be focused on to start implementing some change and addressing these issues?

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, I think the first is to look inside to look internally. And that’s why I think the corporate strategy and the product strategy and like, where are we trying to get you in? What is our ambition? What is our big goal? What is our mission, like? What is our man on the moon, if you will, and setting that and making sure that, you know, internally, if that’s not clear, and that’s not bought in, if people aren’t bought into that, that you’re just it’s going to be tough to get any of the, you know, the external, you’re gonna have just people going and doing whatever they need to do to, you know, to get a reaction that they think there are being implemented on. So, I really, you know, I started there. And starting with that, why I call it the fight. You know, what are we as a business fight for? It’s a question that not a lot of executives are asked, but when they’re asked it, they, they certainly think differently about their business, what do you fight for? Right? We all want to grow our business, we all want more revenue, we all want more sales, we all, you know, we can all say those metrics, and those KPIs are very easy, very easy to set out. But what do we fight for? Right? Very different. And I always say like, if you’re fighting for something, generally, that means that somebody is fighting for the opposite. So, you know, I think sometimes when you really push executives on, on that kind of why type of question, they come back with things that feel very vanilla and very same, same, but it’s like, wouldn’t every software company say that? Wouldn’t every manufacturer of shoes say that? Like really pushing them to like, why are we doing this? And why are people going to be drawn to work for us to work with us to partner with us to buy from us. If you don’t have that at the core, all the rest of the echo of the ripple in the water is a little bit meaningless, or it can just be completely misaligned. So yeah, start internal, move external.

Christopher Smith

I love that I takes me back to what very early on when I started this business, I was in a webinar where we had a sales consultant come in and talking to us all and he held up a sheet of eight and a half by 11. Paper. And he said, every one of you that’s on this call, right now you’re this sheet of paper, they’re the same as the 500. Other sheets in this ream of paper, you all say the same thing, and you’re marketing your message and all that you’re no different than any other sheet of paper, you have to find a way to make yourself different. You know, and, and I’m amazed at how many companies haven’t gone through that exercise to really figure out. Yeah, you know, we make shoes or whatever. But what makes our shoes special, right? You know, and what makes us different, and really honing in on that and making that part of the core of like, you’re seeing the core of what you’re doing.

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, I mean, again, like we all want to sell more, we all we all want to grow our business, we all want more revenue well and sell more shoes or more software or what have you. But why you know why it’s important, and why somebody is going to be drawn to that and stay with that, ultimately, is, is a much it’s a much more challenging question to ask. And I think, again, for a lot of founders, and a lot of executives in the C suite like they’re so head down on other things that they seem, are very, very important that they never kind of step back. They never sort of step back, we have an expression that I’ve heard many times in my career is like you’re so far inside the bottle, you can’t read the label, right? And sometimes it just takes somebody else to come in and ask some questions, and say, hey, are you thinking of maybe a little bit myopically here? Or what about this and tell me more about this? And through that exercise, and I’ve done those types of exercises with, you know, Capital One credit cards and Uber and Clorox and like, you know, Verizon, you get a better read in a better understanding of those, those businesses and they start to understand themselves in a much, much different way. And technology is the toughest and I I’m sure a lot of your listeners are in sort of Technology sales type of role, because it’s so prevalent today. Everyone’s in software and everyone’s developing software. But it’s so hard to differentiate sometimes the software like it’s just and you know this, you’re in CRM. I mean, there’s a ton of them. There’s a ton of them out there. And they offer to 1000s of CRMs. Out there. Right, exactly, exactly. So how, like, what makes your CRM different? What makes your product your widget? Your, your software solution different? It’s a really, really challenging question. And sometimes it’s who it’s for. And sometimes it’s, you know, it’s the type of people we employ. I mean, there can be a lot of differentiators that are out there. But a lot of organizations don’t think of it they just think, well, we’ve got to check the boxes on the RFP, and we’ve got to, you know, we got to software, it’s, it’s it is choosing it. Well, they’re humans too.

Christopher Smith

That’s right. That’s right. No, it’s crazy. It’s, it’s really understanding that it’s going deep, it’s really hard. One of the things that when we engage with a client, we do a lot of workshops and things very similar. Sounds like how you engage with yours. Yeah. Usually, when we start out, there is a lot of disconnect. A lot of times, it’s around strategic goals, always number one is going to be more revenue. But beyond that, we’ll ask the executive team, okay, what can you rank your strategic goals? What’s next and priority? That’s when we start seeing that misalignment. And when we go through our process, it forces him through that process, it helps to create that alignment in that focus. does the same thing happen when you engage with your clients? And you’re taking them through your process?

Marty Yaskowich

Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll say this, this is really critical for us is to make sure we have the right people in the room to start with. Because and I’m sure you see this on the CRM side, if you’re dealing with a mid-level individual who has been given a task, go get us a new CRM, Chris, right? There, they’re only feeling like they’re being measured on that they’re not trying to like make the company better. They’re not trying to create a new purpose for the company. You know, they won’t even entertain a challenge in the sales process of maybe this isn’t really what you need. Or maybe you need something in addition to this, they’ve got a task, they’ve been given a task, go get us a CRM, go, go get us a new point of sale, Retail Management System, go, go get us a new agency, right. But if you’re dealing with the right people in that room, who can actually take that minute and say, hey, let’s step back and really look at like, maybe Chris and Marty, you’re onto something here, maybe this isn’t, maybe this is a symptom and not, not the real, not the real cause of what’s causing us this pain. That’s where that’s what’s really important. And I think, again, a lot of salespeople in it, you know, I’ve read a lot of literature, the challenger sale, I think, was, you know, one of those books that came out and just kind of blew everyone’s mind, like going into a sale and like really challenging people, that’s great. If you have somebody who’s actually capable of acting on the challenge, if you can challenge them, right? If not, you’re just you’re just trying to convince, you know, some mid-level IT manager to basically swim upstream at their organization and take on their boss and their boss’s boss and their boss’s boss, really, really hard. Totally, really hard. They’re just looking to check. They’re like, anybody who actually does come in with that challenge, I think actually has the exact opposite effect. These guys are just making my life harder. And I don’t, I don’t want to swim upstream. And I don’t want to take on my boss and my boss’s boss, and my boss’s boss. So that’s like, that’s such an important and critical step of all of these new ways of selling storytelling, the challenger sale like all those things, it’s somewhat meaningless if you’re not in front of the right audience.

Christopher Smith

You can’t see any better than that. Marty, we’re at our time here on sales lead dog, it has been absolutely wonderful listening to you. If people want to reach out connect with you, if they want to learn more about three one, what’s the best way for them

Marty Yaskowich

to do that? Yeah, on LinkedIn, Marty Yaskowich, which on LinkedIn, you can find me there. And I’d be happy to happy to chat more with any of your listeners and followers, you have a great thing and I can’t I can’t say it enough. But thanks so much for the invite to join today. And it’s been a great conversation. I feel like we could have talked for another hour

Christopher Smith

and I wish more than they do. Because I want to get into this kind of stuff. I could go forever. I don’t think my listeners necessarily want me to but there you go. There you go. We all have lives. Right. So, Marty again, thank you for coming on sales lead dog. Be sure to check out the show notes. We’ll have Marty’s link to his LinkedIn profile on the show notes and Peller crm.com. Forward slash sales lead dog. You’ll find this episode and many more. Marty thank you again for coming on and welcome to the pack.

Marty Yaskowich

Thank you so much.

Outro

Thank you. As we end this discussion on sales lead dog, be sure to subscribe to catch all our episodes on social media. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Watch the videos on YouTube. And you can also find our episodes on our website at empeller crm.com/salesleaddog. Sales Lead Dog is supported by Empeller CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed.

 

Quotes

• “For somebody who never thought they were in sales to begin with, I’ve made a pretty solid career out of helping people tell their story in sales.” (3:46-3:54)
• “The reality is people want and they remember stories, and they want to hear your story.” (5:50-5:56)
• “As a former journalist, I can tell you, lots of lots of great stories never get told, because the person doesn’t ask the right follow up. You mentioned something there. Tell me a little bit more about that. It’s the best sales tool in the world is just the follow up question.” (9:10-9:27)

Links

Marty Yaskowich LinkedIn

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter