Transcript
brian: and welcome to another episode of Close Mode, the enterprise sales show. I'm Brian Dietmeyer CEO of Close Strong. And today I'm really lucky to be here with you my friend, Brenda Lando Fridman who I met doing some work at Google google years ago. and And Brenda is currently the HubSpot sales director.
brian: She's also an engineer and an angel investor, quite an accomplished human. Brenda, welcome to the show.
Brenda: Brian, thank you so much for having me on your show. So happy to be back in touch with such an old pal.
brian: So, old pal. So, last.
Brenda: Just, you know, going back a few, going back to the teens, the 20 teens.
brian: last
Brenda: That's what I meant.
brian: Yes, the 2018s for sure. So last week, we were chatting and we started talking, you mentioned high velocity sales.
brian: And, and I was like, wow, that's a cool subject. Let's, let's talk about this.
Brenda: Yeah.
brian: So how how would you, how do you define high velocity sales? I mean, I have an idea. I'm sure our listeners do, but I want to hear yours.
Brenda: Yeah, well, thank you. And I don't know, should i could I tell, could I embarrass you for a second or no?
brian: Yeah, please. Oh,
Brenda: Oh, awesome. Okay. You gave a little little nugget there about some of the work that we did together back in the day. You taught me everything I know about negotiations and I read B2B Street Fighting probably more than once.
Brenda: And then I gave it to all of my team probably more than once.
brian: oh
Brenda: so And because you taught me everything I know about negotiating, I had in turn been able to teach that on to hundreds of colleagues over the years and really draw back to some of the stories that you told me probably 15 plus years ago. I still think of them all the time.
Brenda: So this guy.
brian: i appreciate I appreciate that. And you, you repeated a couple to me last week and you had them pretty dang accurate, I have to say. So yeah, thank you. I'm honored.
Brenda: People remember stories.
brian: Yeah.
Brenda: Right. Oh, so high velocity sales.
brian: Oh, yeah.
Brenda: Right. What is that?
brian: Yes.
Brenda: What is that? I don't i'm I'm almost certain I did not make that term up, but it's it's what you think about when you're I don't know, there's there are a lot of movies out there that you can watch where you see like a just a buzzing sales floor.
brian: Yes.
Brenda: Maybe there's like a gong when you know every time a deal is won. It's kind of all that. But just to get a little bit more scientific about it for a second, high velocity sales is really that shorter sales cycle. youre you Think about a smaller company.
Brenda: Think about selling to direct to the owner, fewer stakeholders, less less fewer steps in the decision making. And remember, something that I always anchor on is in in high velocity sales, hey, the folks that were that are buying from us, whatever it is that we're selling, they're not in the business of buying software.
Brenda: You're probably a business owner of a sub shop in Massachusetts, like my cousins are. Like they they did not get in the business with the intention of buying software. So really you're going straight to the owner, your sales cycle is short and you're really selling value.
brian: Okay.
Brenda: Basically the call can go anything like in 30 minutes, hi, nice to meet you. How's the weather? Is that a cute dog in the background to trust building, real quick discovery, moving into objection handling, sure sharing the value proposition, closing the deal, next steps all within a 30 minute span.
Brenda: And then doing that repeatedly, probably up to six to 10 times per day.
brian: Yep. I think about the the the trading floors, right? yeah
Brenda: Yes.
brian: you You put that idea in my head. Yeah. coffeeugh coffee is Coffee is for closers. I can't remember what the thing was. Something like that. It's not coffee is for closers. But so what you've mentioned some of this, but when when we were chatting last week, we were sort of shifted from enterprise sales to high velocity sales. and And what but you just hit on some of it, but what makes it harder maybe than an enterprise sale?
Brenda: Yeah. So I've done both just to to caveat and say both are hard. Drawing is hard.
brian: Yeah.
Brenda: And both have a lot of similar, let's say, common denominators, one of which is that relationships are still foundational to everything. In my prior example of the quick 30-minute, like, hello, nice to meet you, here's where to sign.
Brenda: there's still relationship and rapport building right at the top, but you have to do it quickly and then move on. yeah Obviously, enterprise selling can take months, even years to close a deal. so that is a totally different type of of sale.
Brenda: But what makes, I think, high velocity selling harder is that if if many of these organizations that have, let's say, hundreds or even thousands of of high velocity sellers calling on thousands of customers is when you're setting strategy, you're looking at data and one sort of tweak to an incentive can set an organization in a totally different direction. And you might not know if that thing worked until several months later. And so that's one of the things that I think makes high velocity sales tricky is really knowing what the repeatable motions are that will drive that
Brenda: longer-term success. And when I say success, I don't mean just bottom line for the company. I mean for the customer. It's over and over and over again at scale.
brian: Yeah. Yeah. and And by the way, I love what you said earlier about the, you know, people running these sub shops are not in the business of buying software, you know, and it, but it's such a fundamental and that's, and that's like one of your things is like the fundamentals. No, they're in the business of selling more subs it maybe be better subs and customer retention, all that sort of thing.
brian: So I wonder,
Brenda: And I use that example because all of us probably, I'm going to go ahead and guess that everybody who ever gets their hands on this podcast knows someone who runs, owns, has taken over, operates a small business of any shape and size.
brian: Yeah.
Brenda: You know, it could be anything from a law firm to like services.
brian: Yep. Yes.
Brenda: It could be landscaping. It could be a t-shirt manufacturing, an auto repair, you name it. And none of those folks signed up to buy software as a job.
brian: yes
Brenda: And so we had to really put ourselves in their shoes first and foremost when trying to to make the sale.
brian: Do you do think it's a different, I'm going to switch to like the the human side of this. I know for people in enterprise sales and but and sales in general, right? it It takes a toll on us and and leading salespeople is a certain skill to to keep keep us all and invested. Do you think it's, is it is it a different kind of human challenge or toll for people in high velocity sales? so Yeah.
Brenda: You know, it's there's a lot of, I thought about this exhaustively, and I think the short answer is yes. And that's largely because there's, you as a high velocity sales rep, you're spending time, let's say 80% of your day is spent not inside of your company, working cross-functionally, working with like your colleagues, peers, leaders.
brian: yeah
Brenda: It's external, on the phones, you never know who you're going to get when you do that cold call or dial. And sometimes you don't get folks when they're in the happiest of moods or at the best possible time of the day.
Brenda: And so there are certain days where you just go through the ringer of of rejection.
brian: yeah
Brenda: And so I'd say like the key word there is is rejection could be a lot more acute and recurring when in high velocity sales.
brian: Yeah, faster faster and faster and more often.
Brenda: You must say,
brian: So are are there are there keys to like what what would you say as a leader of a high velocity sales team? Yeah, what what's what's the trick to keeping people from getting their clock cleaned all the time?
Brenda: Yeah. So I think there is, there's like, there's things that you can control and things that you can't control, like everything in this world. And so we really stay focused on, on the things that you can control.
Brenda: And if somebody picks up the phone and they're feeling particularly grumpy, really doing our absolute best to be the bright spot in that person's day, to offer value as fast as possible.
Brenda: And there are times where it's just not the right moment, but doing your absolute best to to get out of that call with at least a nugget of value, potentially a better time to call, or at the very minimum, something to to add to our CRM in the form of notes.
Brenda: But again, focusing on what you can control and then taking a larger step back, really looking at who we hire, I suppose, for these roles, right? I put a post up on LinkedIn the other day just kind of poke in the bear about are all sales skills transferable?
Brenda: And I mean, I don't even know where I exactly land on that point. I'd say a large percentage are. But when looking for a high velocity seller, i do look for different inherent qualities that I would look for potentially in in an enterprise seller.
Brenda: And namely, that is that grit, resilience type of mindset, growth mindset, where you can kind of bear the the ups and downs that come at you every single day, those uncontrollables.
brian: Yeah. It, it strikes me too, that we, we all know about the the first impression thing and enterprise sales. You might have a while for first impression. Do you have nanoseconds in your space, right?
brian: To, to get someone to say, why, why speak to me?
Brenda: Nana's left.
Brenda: Yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you, can I do a quick anecdote? This is a story.
brian: Yes, please.
Brenda: Maybe somebody will remember it. And I was helping a seller who was really earlier in his career back two jobs ago, we back when we were still on the floor pre-pandemic. And I'm doing some call shadowing. I put my headset on. in this call immediately begins to tank like suck wind for the first 90 seconds.
Brenda: Then a dog barks in the background and my rep says, oh, is that a doggy? And then this dude changes his tone. Oh my God, it is.
Brenda: It's like a cocker spaniel.
brian: Yeah.
Brenda: Do you have a dog? And then my my my friend, my colleague, who probably hated dogs was like, no, but my boss has a dog who is sitting right beside me right now. And I just love her. Her name is Maya and she's a Boston Terrier. So he he created that really, he just saw the opportunity, he jumped on it.
Brenda: And then the call, and the the trust was immediately formed and the the customer was immediately willing to listen to the rest of what my friend had to say.
brian: Yeah.
brian: It's interesting because I was just writing the other day about sort of like the history of sales training, believe it or not. And, you know, in the beginning, it was all that go into the office, into the office, look at and and way back in the beginning, it was look at the pictures on his wall, right?
Brenda: Yeah.
brian: Look, is his, his, his.
Brenda: says
brian: and And and but it it was all personal relationship. And, and you know, i I was writing about this evolution into selling as a business process. But it just strikes me that like this is this is back to human, such human skills for the high velocity seller.
Brenda: yeah Yep. Yes. And I'll tell you what, I've done B2B and B2C selling. And for anybody out there who's really given thought to, you know, which truly am I sitting squarely in and really, truly what are the differences?
brian: Yeah.
Brenda: think that even if I were to do a little digging, which I haven't yet, but I think this concept of B2B selling really has taken off over the last five years. And there is absolutely an art and a science to B2B selling, which might be slightly different nuanced than a B2B, B2C sale. For example, account based marketing. I want to find people with this title at this company and and market directly to them.
Brenda: But what I would say is the same back to the lowest common denominator is that B2B selling, it's still people buying it from people. And so all of the sort of foundations and the principles that we've talked about so far absolutely are still in place.
brian: yeah
brian: Yeah, and I don't i don't want to misrepresent our conversation, but we're talking about generally that like you you start out in the high velocity sales and then when you grow up and get promoted, you get into enterprise sales. And you made a point to me that that yes, and perhaps there's some things that enterprise sales can learn from high velocity folks. tell yeah tell Tell me what you think about that.
Brenda: Yeah. Oh, gosh. What can enterprise learn from high velocity? i i believe truly that like so the concepts of of pipeline and I'm thinking of a funnel right now and I'm thinking about all the inputs that go into the top to get you the output, which is your closed one revenue that in its core, I'd say high velocity reps are absolutely skilled at because if they don't have a very accurate and full pipeline, there is absolutely no way they're going to get their closed one recurring revenue.
brian: No.
Brenda: And so I'll tell you what I mean by that.
brian: Yes.
Brenda: I actually have been of the school of thought that most companies and sales organizations so build everything, incentives, design training, development on all of it around Revenue.
Brenda: For me, revenue is absolutely critical. It's what makes companies tick, but it's also the lagging indicator. And so this might be a point of contention for some.
brian: yes
Brenda: I'm saying that on purpose because I might argue that we want to solve for activities and and in incremental activities, the inputs, the controllables. And so if we know that we have to, maybe the words are you know prospect into X number of customers every single day. In high velocity, maybe in the words of enterprise, it's we need to multi-thread into Y number of people every single day or week.
Brenda: It's still the same concept. And so that rigor, the process orientation, the things that I look for when hiring early career, Those folks who get their reps in as high velocity tend to become outstanding enterprise sellers because they have a repeatable process in place. They focus on the inputs, the activities that drive the known the the outputs, which is the revenue.
brian: Yep. I think you're speaking like an engineer. You're also speaking to my heart. I love the notion of leading and lagging. And I think you're completely right. Looking at lagging indicators is an audit function.
brian: You can manage, coach, lead against leading indicators. So I'm i'm i'm with you 100%.
Brenda: Mm-hmm.
brian: And i I wonder, you were talking about pipe a moment ago. And you know I've been using this number that I've seen in research, which I'm sure is directionally accurate that most sellers couple years ago had six X of pipe to revenue.
brian: and And now it's like two X. is that Is that similar in the high velocity environment? that Because then the the onus on enterprise sellers now is to close more of what's in your pipe because your pipe's not overflowing the way it used to be. Are you seeing that in your space?
Brenda: Yeah, I am seeing that. And I haven't really dug in to think about what the hypotheses are behind it. I am going to go ahead and say there's a lot more tooling out there and and AI that is kind of helping us reach out to customers at a greater scale. And so maybe our touch points, like activity volume in terms of email and calls and emails, like touch points on LinkedIn and all the rest is increasing.
Brenda: So you're getting sort of more more in your pipe, but it's a very it's a much lower likelihood of converting.
brian: Okay.
Brenda: And I wonder if that's honestly, and in a way, had an an unintended consequence of taking some of our focus around, like away from the good old fashioned way of truly finding the right person with the at the right time to bring your right message.
brian: Yeah.
Brenda: And I definitely feel like that swing, we're already almost probably on the correction course back toward that beautiful 6x healthy pipe where, yes, we want to leverage AI, but we want we don't want to leverage it for just, can I say spread and pray, like a volume perspective.
brian: yeah
brian: Yeah, yeah.
Brenda: We want to leverage it for more of a quality focused depth perspective, even in high velocity sales. Let me find the right person for my right message at the right time.
brian: Yep, it's qualified, right? Qualified opportunities. That's what keeps coming to mind as as you're going through it. So I want to end on this one because I've heard this a lot recently and I'd love your take on it.
Brenda: You're right. Thank you.
brian: You had mentioned that we're we're overcomplicating sales. Go ahead, tell me tell me your thoughts on that.
Brenda: Are we complicated? Yes. I think we are over-engineering sales quite a bit. i have And I think one of the ways that this shows up, so for anybody that this resonates with, we we could talk more about it another day.
Brenda: But I think the the number one signal or sign of an over-complicated or over-engineered sales organization is too many KPIs that change on a regular basis.
brian: Yeah. Yeah.
Brenda: I'm picturing a bunch of, has anybody ever seen like five-year-olds play soccer? And that just both teams follow the ball all around the you know, the I'm going say course, what is it called again?
brian: yeah
Brenda: Field. And that is like, it just goes to show when you don't have a strategy or a clear direction, people will just follow the KPIs as if they're the soccer ball. And if the soccer ball or the KPIs are moving all the time, you just get absolute chaos.
Brenda: And I've seen that so much in my career. And I try, very i love KPIs. I think they're a wonderful leading indicator type of incentive where you can put some bumper lanes up, especially around the earlier career folks.
Brenda: in the high velocity space, but there they're a very dangerous tool that has to be used incredibly appropriately. So and like anybody who's looking for advice on this, I would say less is more stick to the core KPIs as almost your rocks for as long as you possibly can. And any adjustments should be fairly minimal so that we can keep the sellers focused on truly building those habits that the KPIs are indicating they should be building.
Brenda: Sellers need quite a long time to build great habits. I'm sure you have some things to say about habits. And for me, KPIs are a great enabler of building the right habits of repeatable behaviors, but we I think they're usually misused.
Brenda: Thank
brian: So I'm going to, we've got a few minutes left. I'm going to sneak in a last question just because I'm i'm dying to to know your idea about this.
Brenda: you.
brian: So Jim Dickey, who's one of my advisors and I think ran chief sales officer insights for a while, and I was running sales mastery. He was, he quoted this phrase to me about, we are now selling at the speed of change.
Brenda: Mm-hmm.
brian: And, and it and it really struggled me. And, and I struggled with that idea. so I'm like, i I think you're right. And so we were talking about, and he was like, look, your value, maybe HubSpot value is shifting, your competitors value is shifting and your customer needs are all shifting real time.
brian: So I was speaking with a sales leader who said, you know, we used to have annual strategies. yeah you You made me think of this with the KPI shifting. and And he was saying, you know, we used to have annual strategies and then we'd revisit them next year.
Brenda: Okay.
brian: And he's like, everything's changing so quickly that we're revisiting the equivalent of annual plans quarterly to react to market shifts.
Brenda: Okay.
brian: and And then the challenge is, That often requires behavior change of reps to go, okay, yeah. we So there is one part of that KPI shifting, which I think is kind of necessary. And then some is unnecessary, but I'm wondering, yeah, if you see that, it's like, hey, we can do something better now, or for whatever reason, customer needs shift or competing alternatives are now shifting.
Brenda: Yeah.
Brenda: Yeah.
brian: Are you seeing some of that real time?
Brenda: Never. Nothing changes where I work. Just kidding.
brian: Right, exactly. yeah
Brenda: but Well, I've got two thoughts to this one.
brian: Okay.
Brenda: So two-parter, bear with me. The first part is I just pictured the game of whack-a-mole, which was my absolute favorite as a kid, Chuck E.
brian: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Brenda: Cheese. But I absolutely do not love whack-a-mole as a professional operating in high-velocity sales.
brian: yeah
Brenda: And so I try very hard to stay out of whack-a-mole territory and follow like you know the flavor of the week or the month because I Again, I think that, yes, there's always change. And so what you need to do, part B of my answer is like have some frameworks and and guiding principles that can set an organization up so that when the change is inevitable and occurs, you are ready.
brian: yes
Brenda: And so I have a magic formula for that, which is, and this is, I think this is specific to high velocity sales and is specific to sales in general. But what I think about it truly stands the test of time is yeah great hiring.
Brenda: great development and onboarding, and then the right incentives. And so if you hire the right people, you get them job ready in a predictable amount of time, and then you have the right KPI system, incentive system working,
Brenda: to in this in the sense that those are almost like bumper lines, these are the right customers talk to with the right message at the right time, then you are like 90% sure that you are going to be set up for success.
Brenda: And you're still allowing for creativity on top of that because you don't want to kill innovation. That's one of the fastest morale and and motivation killers of all time for a sales organization. So you want, you know, and and this is, I guess, this final thought, you know, whatever size your organization is,
brian: yet.
Brenda: If you're enablement, whatever, maybe you're solving for 50, 500, 5,000 people, you know, the folks who are sort of not performing, you know, top tier that are sort of toward the bottom, they don't want to be there. And these folks don't want to be by themselves and just to hide all the secrets.
Brenda: But the trick is how do you get the folks all sort of at least up to that point of like, we're all performing with the same level of consistent repeatable behavior such that that margin or that variance in performance across the the sales reps sort of starts to squeeze and become a lot more desirable.
brian: Yep. Yep. You, I heard you say something and and I may be sort of miss miss reading it, but you made me think about, uh, sort of is is the system or, or structure or processes we have in place enabled to accept real time shifts?
brian: Because I think it makes it because if if you're working with, with an an outdated system, which was set up to to be somewhat static,
Brenda: Yeah.
brian: it That makes it even harder. And it yeah that never occurred to me that it's the very structure that you're dropping these changes into. if If it's set up to do that, then it's going to work better. And I think that's that's a challenge.
Brenda: there and There's somebody who's, I'm going to go ahead and give this person a lot of credit, Reid Hoffman, blitzscaling concepts. When you're in hyper growth and you're withstanding a lot of bumps, there's a lot of change, there's a lot of just pain every single day.
Brenda: As long as as the leader you leadership team, you are setting that vision and, hey, we are going somewhere. This is so exciting. Just wait and see. Your day-to-day work ties to this very directly.
brian: Hmm. Hmm.
Brenda: You beat that drum. Then those bumps along the way will be embraced and absorbed. like with excitement. And if you can do that, if you can do that, your your or your system will absolutely be able to weather the change and actually embrace it and make make the most out of it.
Brenda: And I think that the foundational tenets of all of this working is a word we haven't used yet, but that's psychological safety.
brian: yeah
Brenda: So one of the things that we, you know,
brian: Hmm. Hmm.
Brenda: has been ingrained in me by leaders upon leaders dating back 20 plus years has been, you're nothing as a leader without trusts like safety, transparency, and openness. And so I've operated in a space like that for years. I create that space as much as humanly possible. And then I do definitely think that all the, that's foundational to all the other stuff that we we talked about.
brian: Well, it's pretty much foundational to every relationship. And, but it's so, it's so good to hear that because no, no, but we've done, you know, 80, 90 shows and we haven't really talked about that, that psychological safety, which I i think is, is really, really key.
brian: So yeah, you, you, you mentioned something else too, about the, again, what I heard was that this, is it motivating for a rep to know, and this is my argument by the way, so I'm, I'm leading, leading the witness.
Brenda: okay up
brian: that that the job of sales today is strategy execution, right? What what what is your strategy? and And I find that, you know, I'm just wondering if you do, I think as a lifelong seller, like that notion that, hey, I'm connected to strategy and that strategy might shift, but this is my job.
brian: It's the the the CEO, whoever made made promises to the board, to the investors and Then it turned into initiatives and now it's here for me.
Brenda: yeah
brian: and And I'm responsible for at least a portion of our strategy to get it executed. I really do think that's like an emerging role for reps, but we've got to connect it such that they can do it.
Brenda: We have to set the expectations. I think that if any, if for a leader to be a good leader, they they absolutely have to do a great job of setting expectations and that's all day, every day in every direction.
Brenda: and that's something that, you know, i think was ingrained in me early, but I have to consciously do every single day is really work with expectations and make sure you're hitting them, setting the right ones.
brian: but You have been super generous with with your time and and your ideas. And you know one one of the motivations for me to to do closed mode is to have a place where if you're wrestling with something, if you're wrestling with high velocity sales, you can come to closed mode and and listen to Brenda. Or if you're messing with pipeline or wondering, you know how do I run sales enablement?
brian: And you've added to that community quite a bit. And that that is my motivation for running this. So really appreciate everything you brought here today.
Brenda: Brian, thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed listening to your own put prodding questions and and getting me to think into cracks and crevices that I hadn't actually you know been thinking about for a long time. So I a lot of fun.
Brenda: I really appreciate you.
brian: Thank you.
brian: Ta-da.
