The Top Three Issues Killing Your Sales Deals | George Bronten - 2044

You did everything right, or at least you thought you did, and the deal still fell apart anyway. This one is coming from the archives, and the principles hold up just as well today as they did when we first recorded it. George Brontén, founder and CEO of Membrain and author of Stop Killing Deals, broke down the three deadly assumptions that quietly sink B2B sales deals, and how to catch them before they cost you the close. The Three Assumptions That Quietly Kill Deals Deals rarely fall apart because of one dramatic mistake, they fall apart because of small, invisible assumptions that go unchecked from the first call all the way to the close. The first flawed assumption is believing salespeople are simply born with the right traits, which leads to hiring extroverted, competitive people regardless of whether those traits actually fit the sales environment being sold into. A transactional sale and a complex, multi-year B2B sale call for completely different skill sets, so hiring for one generic "salesy" personality type instead of the specific environment is a mistake that shows up later in lost deals. Why Buyers Don't Decide Rationally The second assumption is believing buyers will act rationally once they're shown a logical case for the product, when in reality people buy with emotion first and rationalize the decision with logic afterward. Proving a product is the better choice on paper doesn't guarantee a rational decision back, because the buyer's hesitation is usually tied to internal risk, politics, or past experience that logic alone can't resolve. Understanding that gap between what buyers say and how they actually decide changes how a rep should run a sales conversation, shifting it from a pitch toward a genuine discussion about what's really driving the decision. The Myth of the Naturally Disciplined Seller The third assumption is expecting salespeople to be naturally disciplined enough to do whatever it takes to hit a number, when discipline is actually a set of habits that has to be built deliberately, not a trait people are simply born with. A lack of discipline shows up in small, specific gaps, like failing to identify every stakeholder in a deal or skipping a promised follow-up, and those small gaps are what let a deal quietly stall. The fix isn't willpower, it's building daily habits and structure into the sales process itself, so discipline becomes the default instead of something a rep has to summon on a hard day. The Number One Deal Killer: Not Knowing How the Decision Gets Made The single biggest issue killing B2B deals is not understanding how the buying decision will actually be made, or who besides the friendly first contact needs to be involved before anything moves forward. A rep can have a great conversation with an enthusiastic champion and still lose the deal entirely, because that champion was never the one with the authority or budget to make the final call. The fix is asking directly, early in the first call, how this kind of decision typically gets made and who else needs to weigh in, instead of assuming the friendly voice on the phone speaks for the whole organization. Why Discipline Determines Whether Deals Survive A lack of discipline often shows up as avoidance, like a rep who knows there are more stakeholders to loop in but skips that step because the conversation feels uncomfortable. One real example was a sales team that avoided engaging technical stakeholders because those conversations felt intimidating, so those technical buyers later torpedoed the deal out of fear the product would automate away their jobs. Once that sales team was coached to have those uncomfortable technical conversations directly, framing the product as freeing people up for better work instead of threatening their jobs, their win rates tripled. "If you can always identify all the right stakeholders in every deal, and if you have a sales team and you just focus on that for one year, you're going to improve your results massively." — George Brontén Leadership Advice, Books, and Quotes George Brontén is the author of Stop Killing Deals: How to Avoid Deadly Assumptions and Achieve Sales Excellence https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Killing-Deals-assumptions-excellence/dp/9151941821, which breaks down the three assumptions covered in this episode in more depth, along with practical ways to diagnose which one is hurting your own pipeline. Resources Connect with Brontén on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgebronten/. Learn more about Membrain https://www.membrain.com/, the sales enablement CRM built to guide, coach, and support B2B sales teams through the selling process. Grab a copy of Stop Killing Deals https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Killing-Deals-assumptions-excellence/dp/9151941821. Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey http://thesalesevangelist.com/survey. https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/lc5yAa8P We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-evangelist/id788738885, Google Podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3RoZXNhbGVzZXZhbmdlbGlzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kaXI3Pj2AhVKcjABHW5PDVwQ9sEGegQIARAC, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-sales-evangelist-sales-trainingspeakingbusiness-marketingdonald, or Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1NjzsFjQwVrgboUfDvbzd5?si=LdQOJDc1T-WBPMxr1h3RsA. Audio provided by Free SFX, https://freesfx.co.uk/ Soundstripe https://soundstripe.com/, and Bensound http://www.bensound.com/. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

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• 1:53Speaker 00

  What's killing the deals? I mean, you did everything right, at least you thought you did, and you worked the whole process, but somehow, some way, the deal just keeps falling apart. What is it that you're doing wrong? Don't worry, I have been there exactly. And my guest today, he has some ideas of what could be causing it, based on some of his experience and data. And I promise you, some of these things are probably what's happening to your deals right now. Check it out.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. On this episode today, we have the one and only George Bronten. We're bringing back this episode. We did it a while back, but the principles that George shared about why deals are slipping and why they're falling is not only relevant then, but it's also relevant now. And I'm telling you, man, this is some good stuff. We have over 2,045 episodes. So in this bank in the archive, we have some gems that some of you have never heard of before. And I'm like, this is fire. We're bringing it back, and I know you're gonna like this one. So if you're finding benefit from this episode, please take it and share it with your team members. Share the podcast with your team so they can find benefit from it.

• 3:11Speaker 00

  So they can say, listen, all of Donald's episodes on fire and we love it. And it can help you out as well. So I'd appreciate that a long way. But let's dive in, listen to what George had to say, one of those three things that causes deals to slip and see if you can adopt these and apply them and maybe diagnose yours and see if you could fix it. Check it out.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Welcome to the show, George.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Oh, man, of course, I'm excited to have you. I'm excited to pick your brain and get a chance to touch base with you. And first off, I want to congratulate you on your book. So great job on that, man.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. Yeah, hard work, as you know.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, we know that struggle of pushing through with the book. So we're excited to celebrate that with you. And today, we're going to talk a little bit more about what's causing us to kill these deals. A lot of sales reps are killing deals and don't know why or how they're doing that. But before we get into all of that good stuff, I want to hear about you. Tell us a little bit more about what you do right now, George.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm the founder and CEO of membrain.com. And we call ourselves a sales enablement CRM. So basically, what we have done is we've built the CRM as it should be. And so it's a CRM. Yes, we have all the contacts and all the information like that. But it really, what it has that others lack is the how to. How should we sell? What's important? How can I be guided and helped and coached in my B2B sales environment? So I'm the CEO of that, and we're driving that company forward, signing up a lot of new customers and partners around the globe. So lots of fun.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Well, awesome, man. Well, congratulations. And we'll make sure to link back to membrane CRM in the show notes.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Get that link to it there and learn a little bit about it. And if you're watching on YouTube right now, just go ahead down below and you'll see the link where you get a chance to connect with George and check out the CRM and some of the great tools that they have, they're offering. But George, deals, we're in a situation right now, deals are dying left and right. This is a global pandemic when it comes to sales deals.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  How can we? But you know, in all seriousness, a lot of people, I mean, sales reps, I think we're in a different era. The pandemic has put us in a whole different era, a whole different way of doing things. And salespeople typically have deals that don't make it. But I think even more so, we see more and more deals that are falling off and not getting passed to the right level. So I want to hear from you today and get some insights. What are the top three things that you see that are killing sales deals for B2B sales reps? And then maybe we could discuss each of those. Does that sound fair enough?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, absolutely. And I wrote the book before the pandemic. And actually, I had people tell me that I shouldn't call the book Stop Killing Deals because using the word killing in the middle of a pandemic might not be wise. But I decided to use it anyway. I think we are killing deals and not, I mean, of course, now the situation is very, very special and different than usually. But even before the pandemic, what caused us to kill deals is just, in many ways, is just assumptions, different types of assumptions that we make as human beings. I write about in the book how I made some really stupid assumptions,

• 6:26Speaker 01

  like 10, 15 years ago, when I was growing another company. And that was that I was assuming that salespeople are somehow born. You either can sell or you can't. And then that's how I went about hiring. I was just trying to find those people who were born salespeople.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  And what were you looking for in that scenario with? Because I know you're, I know this is something that many individuals have fallen in. I fell into that same category when I was learning about sales in college. I was like, well, you gotta have it, right? What did you look for when you saw someone in the?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Great question. So I guess I was looking for those traits that you had sort of learned were salesy traits. So very extroverted, social people who also were very competitive by nature. So they wanted to win, they wouldn't take no for an answer, just looking for that win. And when you look at sales, I mean, sales is very, it's a very broad profession, right? You can sell something that is very transactional, and that's going away because Amazon is taking all that away. You don't have to have a salesperson on your, in your company even to sell transactionally anymore. Or you can have a very, very complex sales environment, right?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  When you're selling, I don't know, multi-year sales cycles, really difficult, complex solutions. And the types of skills that you need in those two very different sales environments are quite different, right? So just looking for one type of person is just not the right way to go about it if you don't first understand what type of sales environment you're in. And that was a mistake I made because we were selling, we were actually moving away from selling quite a low price transactional products into selling more high-ticket, complex, very intrusive products.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  So they were, they messed around with the buyer's processes internally in their company, which made that purchase for them very risky.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  So I sort of, I was looking for the wrong type of traits for the sales environment I was trying to improve. So yeah, I think assumptions in general for human beings is something we, that can trip us up quite a bit.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  One of the principles that I've learned in my vast 36 years of life is that idea of assumption, right? That we just never, ever assume, you can't assume. And I've made the mistake, I remember one of my leaders once, he said, when you make an assumption, when you assume, you're making an ASS out of you and me.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good saying, yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Oh, makes total sense. And I think you're 100% right on it. So we can't assume on the type of sales reps. And I think also you're saying that we can't assume if we're a sales rep, we can't assume that our business, that this person, because they say that they want our product, that means they're gonna buy. Is that what you're alluding to with, with this whole idea of assuming as a seller?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, those are two ways that we can assume, we are assuming about ourselves, we're assuming about buyers. I think we also, this, the buyers, if we can prove to buyers that we have a great product or offering.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  And if we can help them rationally see that this is a great choice, and we then assume that they will be rational about it. That's another assumption, that people are rational when they make their decisions. They're usually not, right? There's this saying, you buy with your heart and then you rationalize your, your choice with your brain. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. So assuming that salespeople have certain traits, assuming that buyers will behave in different ways based on rational thoughts. And another assumption that I point out in the book is this idea of sellers somehow being more disciplined, that they, they will do whatever it takes to achieve the targets

• 10:24Speaker 01

  that I set up for them as the leader or owner or whatever role you have. And that was also something that after reading and just life experience, you find out that we, as human beings, aren't very disciplined. We have to really work on that, whatever, in whatever discipline we're talking about. I mean, I have to work on actually doing my exercises every day. But it takes effort, right? It would be much easier to skip it. So being disciplined is, is sort of, I don't know, it's not really about being, it's about getting those habits into, into your daily life that, that makes you look disciplined from the outside.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  So, understanding that our deals, so these are some of the top three things that you're looking at and you're seeing from your experience as a sales leader, from working with organizations, that's causing our deals to kabosh, they're causing our deals to, to die, right?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I think that's what, I mean, holistically looking at this, that's what's causing sales to, in general, sales teams not being very functional. If you sort of dive in and look at the actual deals, then of course we need to get a bit more granular, I think.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  And if you look at the deal level, what we're seeing is that a classic example is that you're just talking to that friendly, right, on the other end. Someone who downloaded your white paper, listened to your show, called you up and they're, they're so happy just to speak with you and you think, wow, I've got a deal. But of course, we know that you have to engage all the other people that need to be engaged in order to come to a decision that will make this deal come through. So I think that's a massive, maybe the top one really in B2B is not understanding how will this decision be made? Is there even a decision to be made? Because they might find some other project to work on, right? So just figuring out how they will make a decision

• 12:15Speaker 01

  and which people will be involved, I think is the number one thing killing deals.

• 12:25Speaker 00

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• 13:28Speaker 00

  So when you look at some, you know, some companies, they have like, they follow like banter, they follow different methodologies to, to be able to get that information, is that something that your team or that you express to individuals to figure out in that first meeting? And if so, how do you encourage them to go about doing that? And I just want to get your feedback. We have a lot of new sellers listening to this episode.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yes, sure. And there are many, many different methodologies on how you should qualify, how you should have an exploration call. I think they're all good and they're all have their, their benefits. In a, in a first call, hopefully you will have a dialogue with the other person and figure out how, what they're trying to accomplish, like what are they trying to solve? They're not out, they're not in business to buy your stuff.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Dang it.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  They're, they're in business to do whatever they're doing. So you have to understand what are they doing? And, and what are they trying to accomplish? How could you help? So it's really about helping. I think that's sort of a mind shift that I think a lot of salespeople need to make. It's, it's, selling is about helping someone improve their situation. It's about helping someone buy, but beyond that is about helping them get from one place to a better place. And hopefully that involves you and your products, but sometimes actually doesn't, right? But you can still help. You don't have to sell to everyone. I think that's, we all, as sellers, we want to sell, of course. But if we sell to someone who really shouldn't buy our product, that's not a good situation.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  It's better to tell someone who's not a good fit, say, you know what, you should buy from my competitor. They're a much better fit for you. Maybe in two years' time, when you have this situation, we can help you. But right now, if you buy my, my solution, I don't think it would be the best solution for you. So go buy that other thing right now. That creates trust over time.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, because there's, for me as a buyer, if somebody was to do that to me, it shows me that you're, you are not desperate for the money, you're not desperate for the opportunity, you're trying to really fix what issues that I have. And I think especially when we're new to sales or we're trying to hit quotas or we're going through, you know, a tough spell, that desperation comes off and it's, you know, I think buyers can just almost like smell it or feel it. And then that leads to you doing things that are questionable. And I love, one of the points you point out in the book is about salespeople is that they think that their decision is being made based on logics and reasons, when oftentimes it's not based on logic and reason, it's because of, you know, poor habits or choices that happened maybe five years ago, 10 years ago. So how can we recognize that then and then transform

• 16:00Speaker 00

  that idea to behave in a, to behave more logically then, if I'm making sense with that?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think we have to understand that people are people and, and in part we're rational, but in, in a large part, we're more emotional and they, depends on the complexity of the sale. I mean, I also, I don't want to make things sound more complicated than they are. If you're selling something that one person can make a decision about, then don't overcomplicate it. But if, if you're in a complex B2B sales environment where there will be more people involved, then it's better to slow down in the beginning and talk about, I mean, the problem, what are you trying to accomplish? Who will need to be involved in this decision? What could happen? Have you made a decision like this in the past? What happened then? What went wrong? What went well? Et cetera. So really have a very open

• 16:52Speaker 01

  discussion about the issue, right? The issue they're trying to accomplish. And after that, if you hear that you can solve the problem or help them solve it, then you can go into more detailed sort of, yeah, solution-based ideas.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  You say this, and like you said, you know, it's very simple on the surface level. I don't know if you've come across this with sales rep, it seems like some of them, and I think it goes back to the picking of the right salespeople, where some of them are afraid to have that dialogue with a buyer because they feel that it may be too pushy or it may be that you're, you're getting too, you're getting too intrusive. But I mean, you gotta get that information. Am I wrong on that? Or have you seen that with sales reps or where especially the newer ones? Or the ones who are not performing, they're very timid and they're afraid of asking some of those questions. It's just like, it's like, it's like if I ruffle the feathers too much, the buyer is not going to want to give me the answer when it's, in my view, it's not true.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Right. I think as a new salesperson, I mean, if you're really new, there's a lot to learn. So it can be quite difficult to jump into a high-level business discussion with a C-level executive. You might not even be there yet. So you need to, of course, gain those skills in order to have that dialogue in a way that it creates value for the other person. So I think partly, in part, it's easy to say, have this value-creating dialogue and et cetera, right? But you, I think if you don't have all the skills needed, then you will be afraid to ask some of those questions because you don't know how to handle the responses. But you just have to get there, right?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And I think it's okay to ask questions that might be a bit outside of your comfort zone and say if someone responds to you in a way that you can't really, don't really know how to handle, say, well, this is a bit beyond what I can comprehend at this time, but this is how I interpreted, did I get that right? Or it's okay to be a bit vulnerable, I think, as a person, as a salesperson, especially if you're young and new. But you have to get out there and have those dialogues, don't be afraid to ask, ask a question. But I think it's really important to come across as caring. Like, I'm here to help and we happen to have this solution and this product and that may be able, that can help you. But I really want to understand where are you going? Where are you at? Where do you want to go?

• 19:15Speaker 01

  And then I can show you how, how our solution might be a good fit. But I have a, I don't think I put it in the book, but I have sort of a model in my head that is trust, align, grow. So like a pyramid. So first you have to gain the trust of the other person, no matter if it's a professional relationship or a seller buyer or, or is your, your fiance, you have to trust each other, right? Or else there will be no future. And, and then you need to align, like how could we align? What do you want? What do I need? What do we both want? Can we align? If we can align, then we can grow. But a lot of salespeople and organizations just try to sort of jump right to grow. Like buy this, buy, just if you buy my stuff, then we can grow this account.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  And we, there's so many things in sales that I think were just terminology-wise, it's a best, a bit messed up. Like accounts. For me, an account is something you withdraw from. I have a bank account. I can go withdraw money from my account. When we're calling customers' accounts, I think it's like, ah, should we really do that? Is that a good thing? Because we have to look at it as collaboration. I need to help you with something. And I have value I can bring to you in order to, for you to achieve whatever you need to achieve. So I will gain your trust, I will align with what you want to do and I will help you grow. And if we're aligned and if you trust me, then we'll grow.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So do with that, is it more of like the three sides to the pyramid or is it like a base, middle?

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Base, middle, top, yeah. Base, trust, right? If you don't have any trust, you'll get nowhere. You can ask all the questions in the book and take any methodology, but if the other person is not really respecting you or trusting you, you won't get far. I mean, you call it, I mean, and that's why social can be quite good. If you can build some kind of reputation on social as being a helpful person, that can already establish some level of trust or even have that meeting. And then when you have the meeting and you, you come across as a trustworthy person and you, you know what you're doing and you can have a good business dialogue, then they'll trust you even more.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  So I think it's really important to start off with that, that trust. And trust also comes from just doing what you promise, right? So if you have a first call and you promise to do something, make sure you do that in time, always. Then the next time they'll trust you. So trust first, alignment, growth.

• 21:42Speaker 00

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• 22:26Speaker 00

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• 22:47Speaker 00

  Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share wealth of information, and I feel that we've successfully done so. As a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask, could I coach them? Could I train their team? Could I come and speak in an S K O? Could I consult for them? And that is how we gain the majority of our business, and still to this day. So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it, and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world, and it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation.

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• 23:44Speaker 00

  You know, we talked a lot about the assumption in the first two, but the last one I want to talk about for a few minutes is discipline. It's one of the factors that prevents salespeople from winning and just causing them to kill deals. Why don't you talk to that for a second? How is not being disciplined or the lack thereof hindering or causing us to miss the mark?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's just human nature to try to make shortcuts. And like, right now, I see a lot of spamming going on in sales.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Oh, my goodness, bro.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Right. You buy these tools and you spam people because you're, I don't know, lazy, or you think you're gonna sign a bunch of deals without doing anything. And instead, if you would have taken the time to learn about your customer, you reach out to them professionally, you call them, you have a dialogue. I mean, that's where you want to get to without just spamming people. So if you call someone, and a discipline is could be something as simple as calling someone, having a dialogue, booking another meeting, making sure that you do everything you need to do before that meeting, obvious one. If you create an opportunity, you talk to a friendly, and you know you have to identify four other people, and you don't identify those four people, you don't even ask who those other four people are, and that's undisciplined.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  That just means that even if it sounds like this other person is coming with you on this journey to buy your product on the sales process, you can be pretty sure that someone will pop up their head and say, hey, what are you two up to? This is not a project we want to do. There's no budget for this. What the heck is going on? So that's just undisciplined, because you know that this will happen every time. This was actually one of the main reasons I created this company that we now are growing called Membrane, because my salespeople in my former company did not want to talk to technical people, because they felt that was so uncomfortable. They didn't know how to talk to tech people. So they just skipped it.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Like, well, the C-level, the executives will push the techs and make sure they say, this is a great idea. But of course, that never happened. Instead, the tech people say, well, this thing you're trying to buy here to automate, because we were selling IT automation, to automate my job is crap. Of course, they said that, because they thought they were going to lose their jobs.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  And all because the salesperson was not comfortable talking to these guys. So we just have to coach the salesperson. You know what? These tech people will love you. And they go, no, they will never love me. They don't even like talking to me, because they think I'm a stupid salesperson. No, no, no, it's just mindset shift here. You need to talk to them, to explain to them that they didn't become tech people to update servers on a Thursday night, when they could be at a game or be at home with their families. They can automate that, and they can do fun stuff instead. That will get them on your side. And they're like, oh, that's a pretty good idea. And then they started having those conversations, which tripled our win rates.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  That was one thing, one thing only.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  And I think what it comes back down to, what you said a few minutes ago, it's the idea of being, going back to the human connection, right? And it's being, because if I, I have clients, and it's amazing that upsell, where we don't even try to upsell them, but because we have conversation, you discover new problems that they're having or different challenges, then they naturally don't, they go back to your pyramid, right? They have that trust factor. So then, all of a sudden, we can see opportunities that develop, and they come back to us over and over and over again, because they know we're looking for their best interest. And it's because of that connection. I got an email this morning to George, and this email was, it looked good. It smelled like it was a real email, but then it got down to the very bottom. And obviously, I had a guest on my podcast, and one of the things he said was, change

• 27:26Speaker 00

  that, you know, to unsubscribe to if you don't want to hear from me again, or something like that. And when you see that at the bottom, you know that's really the new name for the unsubscribe, because I wasn't automated. My name was in the email perfectly, because it was a merge tag.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And it just didn't, it didn't speak to me. They didn't, it's like, it didn't try to, you know, understand my business or try to understand what I was doing. And for that reason, I just hit delete, and it wasn't, it didn't connect. So, but taking the time to do so, reaching out on LinkedIn, making something personal, the lack of the discipline is going to reflect in that pipeline. And obviously, you guys, when you guys discovered that, you saw a tremendous increase in those win rates.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yes. And that's really one of the points I'm trying to make in the book, is that we don't have to overcomplicate things. Like, if we can find one or two things we can improve, that can make a massive impact on the results we see. Like, if you can always identify all the right stakeholders in every deal, I mean, if you have a sales team, and you just focus on that for one year, just do that, you're going to improve your results massively. So it's really about mastering the basics of sales, because a lot of times I see people want to take shortcuts, like, yeah, like the spamming thing that's now going on, right? We buy these tools and we send out these bands, and that's going to work.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  No, it's not going to work.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Instead, take the time to educate yourself as a salesperson, educate your sales team to understand your buyers, to be interested, be curious, help them, be open, be friendly, be empathetic, and know what you're doing. Because that's even worse, I think, when you're actually, because I respond to these emails sometimes, just, just because I'm in the space. And say, oh, that's a very nice email. So what do you do? How can you help me? And you get a response, which is just even worse than that first email. That just really pisses me off, because now you've, your sucky email sequence got me

• 29:39Speaker 01

  to respond, and then you blow your chance to make a connection. That's even worse, I think. So really, you have to be relevant, you have to be interesting, you have to be interested. I think sometimes that's what's missing. And understand that your buyers are human beings, they're people. They want to go forward, they're going to grow just like you, and they want to be a better person, hopefully, and build a better company. And now it's a strange time, right? So a lot of times, right now, when we talk to people, it's all about, nobody's making any decisions, all the budgets are frozen, et cetera. And no, they're not. I mean, not everyone's. I mean, a lot of people are doing really well, a lot of companies are thriving. You might need to change who you're selling to for a while, or maybe forever, but just

• 30:23Speaker 01

  be creative and be curious.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Love that. One major takeaway you want folks listening to this episode from all the things we discuss, if there's one piece of advice you want them to leave with, what's that, George?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Identify, or have someone else maybe identify what's holding your deals back, and fix that one thing. Focus on that one thing that can help you improve your win rates. I think it's identifying all the stakeholders and understanding how, why people should make a decision and how they will make that decision, but it might be a different one for you. But focus on one thing at a time, don't try to do everything at once.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  George, if people want to get access to your book, do you mind talking to that for a second, telling folks about it, how they can get access to it and all that?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, see if I can show it. Stop Killing Deals, it looks like that.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Looks good.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  So just search for it on Amazon and get it from there. There's also a website, stop.killing.deals, pretty cool URL, if I may say so. And there are lots of resources people can download from that without even buying the book. So that could be a cool place to go to.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  And you're pretty active on LinkedIn.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  I am, yes. And I blog, I blog every week, and membrain.com/blog, you can subscribe to that, you get my posts. So yeah, I am. And my name is strange, so it's easy to find me there and hook up with me.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Well, we'll have it in the show notes, and if you're watching this on YouTube, on TSC TV, you can see George's name right there underneath his image. But George, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Thanks for your wisdom, and congratulations on the book and all the great things you and Membrane are doing.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on the show.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Anytime, man.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  Hey, this was a short but sweet episode, but it was on point. So if you haven't done so already, please connect with George. Tell him you heard him here on the Sales Evangelist Podcast, and see if you can apply those things. I'd love to hear which one of them that makes more sense to you while some of your deals are slipping, or maybe one of the deals you diagnosed, and you saw that it's, this is the issue. Please tell me, you'd love to hear what that is. I want you to thrive, I want you to succeed, but most importantly, I want you to raise your level of thinking, I want you to go out and do big things. See you on the next one.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershun Obayal. Our video engineer is Dasan Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristy Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Sales Podcast Network.