Transcripts
Hello.
Kevin Dieny:Welcome back to the Close The Loop podcast.
Kevin Dieny:I'm your host, Kevin Dieny.
Kevin Dieny:And we will jump back into the second part of the episode on data
Kevin Dieny:versus deals, intuitive driven decision-making versus data-driven
Kevin Dieny:decision-making here in a second.
Kevin Dieny:I wanted to do a brief shout out to my former colleague, Matt Widmyer.
Kevin Dieny:He's moved on a new position, but I really have enjoyed having him as my coworker.
Kevin Dieny:I've learned a ton from buddy.
Kevin Dieny:The chair is always here for you and you're ready to do more episodes with me.
Kevin Dieny:With that, thanks for listening and enjoy the rest of the episode.
Matt Widmyer:That's a fun conversation always having too with, um, you know,
Matt Widmyer:a sales leader will come up and say, this doesn't work, stop doing it,
Matt Widmyer:but you actually have data in your back pocket saying it does work.
Matt Widmyer:A fair question though, is ask it's like, how do you know this
Matt Widmyer:doesn't work, even though you kind of know in the back of your head?
Matt Widmyer:Um, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a matter of like, you know, it's not like
Matt Widmyer:a contest or anything like that, but it is like, I think you have a good idea.
Matt Widmyer:And I think that you're all everyone's intention is well here, but I think that
Matt Widmyer:if maybe it didn't work in the past, but maybe that's changed, you know,
Matt Widmyer:you have to look at, you have to also accept the fact that things change.
Matt Widmyer:Um, in terms of like the marketing, you know, like a marketing is gonna get data,
Matt Widmyer:they don't need, that's just part of it.
Matt Widmyer:Um, The main thing is like, okay, did something get learned one way or another?
Matt Widmyer:If the answer is yes then cool.
Matt Widmyer:And it's not about the one extra data point for that one extra person,
Matt Widmyer:it's about, um, getting enough from everybody to be able to accurately
Matt Widmyer:change or not change something.
Matt Widmyer:And, um, that should be done by scale.
Matt Widmyer:If you have.
Matt Widmyer:one Data point, it might not help that one person, but if it helps the other
Matt Widmyer:five or six, and now it's a new process that we have in place based on that, um,
Matt Widmyer:that could be the difference of thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars,
Matt Widmyer:hundreds of thousands of dollars for the company over the course of a year.
Matt Widmyer:So it's, um, it's a matter of.
Matt Widmyer:Scale.
Matt Widmyer:It's not a matter of like that one time that they were about to go to lunch.
Matt Widmyer:And then you walked over and told them about this new thing.
Matt Widmyer:We're introducing.
Matt Widmyer:It's about the big picture.
Matt Widmyer:And if it is about the big picture you want the the other leaders in the
Matt Widmyer:organization, at least the main point person in sales should take the time to
Matt Widmyer:understand it, and then let their team know why it's important instead of just
Matt Widmyer:griping about having to do one extra.
Matt Widmyer:thing And then, you know, obviously if the, if the sales leaders are having that
Matt Widmyer:conversation all the way up to, depending on the size of your organization, all the
Matt Widmyer:way up to maybe even the owner, right?
Matt Widmyer:Like, Hey, this isn't happening.
Matt Widmyer:I really need this.
Matt Widmyer:Can you help me out?
Matt Widmyer:Um, usually the answer, if it's, it's all about selling, even if, even
Matt Widmyer:though marketing isn't technically in sales, you're still going to have
Matt Widmyer:to sell somebody on why we should be doing something a little bit
Matt Widmyer:differently, but for the sake of.
Matt Widmyer:learning Um, it's both teams have skin in the game.
Matt Widmyer:Absolutely.
Matt Widmyer:And the end goal, like you said, is to deals are the end goal because
Matt Widmyer:without deals that, you know, we the company doesn't stay afloat.
Matt Widmyer:So how do we make more deals happen?
Matt Widmyer:Salespeople have to absolutely understand the value that marketing provides
Matt Widmyer:and marketing has to understand what salespeople do on a daily basis.
Matt Widmyer:It's a two way street.
Kevin Dieny:So let me, I mean, you make a really good point, so it's kind of
Kevin Dieny:hard for me to make the counterpoint.
Matt Widmyer:Hah hah that's, that's my goal.
Kevin Dieny:So here's the, here's a little argument
Kevin Dieny:against, um, what you're saying.
Kevin Dieny:Cause what you're saying is great, but just from like so many examples, we could
Kevin Dieny:have data that conclusively almost beyond.
Kevin Dieny:a doubt Show significantly that something is either not working or is working.
Kevin Dieny:And if we did more of something or less of something, it would have
Kevin Dieny:an overwhelmingly positive impact.
Kevin Dieny:It could be totally obvious that something is going to make a significant
Kevin Dieny:impact on the overall business.
Kevin Dieny:It's going to sell more.
Kevin Dieny:Let's say the data shows this and to let's say the marketing team,
Kevin Dieny:let's say to another team, it's like, oh man, this is my golden ticket.
Kevin Dieny:Okay.
Kevin Dieny:That comes to.
Kevin Dieny:The sales team that goes to another team that goes to their
Kevin Dieny:management and go away up the chain.
Kevin Dieny:Whyin Why would the company not do something about it?
Kevin Dieny:Now?
Kevin Dieny:One of the big reasons that can happen is that a company and a team is
Kevin Dieny:strained in it's leadership capital.
Kevin Dieny:So.
Kevin Dieny:If the change requires leadership or teams to adjust in some way that they're
Kevin Dieny:just unwilling to do they're inflexible to do it requires too much for them
Kevin Dieny:to actually make a difference on.
Kevin Dieny:Or if, look, we just, uh, their manager's like, look, I can't ask them to do that.
Kevin Dieny:I can't police that.
Kevin Dieny:I can't enforce that.
Kevin Dieny:If it's an unenforceable thing, I can't make it a rule.
Kevin Dieny:That's just inherent then Right.
Kevin Dieny:So.
Kevin Dieny:When, even if the data says, look, there's jolly rainbows at the end of this,
Kevin Dieny:there's a, there's a, a treasure chest.
Kevin Dieny:All you have to do is follow this.
Kevin Dieny:path Why in the world wouldn't they do that.
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:The other side is going to be like, well, I can't ask my team to gather that.
Kevin Dieny:I can't ask my team to do that.
Kevin Dieny:I don't have any management capital.
Kevin Dieny:And by that, I mean, I can't ask my team to do anymore.
Kevin Dieny:I've already strained my ability to ask them I'm whipping them.
Kevin Dieny:I'm forcing them to do something and I can't ask them to do another thing.
Kevin Dieny:And I'm spent, and I can't.
Kevin Dieny:So that's a separate problem.
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:Than the data problem, it's a separate one.
Kevin Dieny:That's a leadership management problem.
Kevin Dieny:to tackle But at the end of the day, it's like, man, I just brought them a gold.
Kevin Dieny:I just brought them the path to the treasure map and they're
Kevin Dieny:not willing to go do it.
Kevin Dieny:And that can feel really frustrating.
Kevin Dieny:So, um, that, that would be a point I would say that could come up in
Kevin Dieny:a, in a company, in a business.
Kevin Dieny:Is that the.
Kevin Dieny:They could have all of the signs and all the data that in the world to show them
Kevin Dieny:that there's something that's going to drastically increase their selling, but
Kevin Dieny:to them, they're going to, they're going to weigh things, not necessarily costs.
Kevin Dieny:They're going to weigh things against that.
Kevin Dieny:That may come up and say, it's just too costly.
Kevin Dieny:It's not the dollars that are too costly.
Kevin Dieny:It's it's, you know, this is not a team that can do that.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:So it's, it's usually it.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, salesperson and it, as a disclaimer, I'm a sales person at heart.
Matt Widmyer:I always have been.
Kevin Dieny:We're not bashing.
Kevin Dieny:We're not bashing the sales side.
Matt Widmyer:But salespeople are, everybody knows they're for the most.
Matt Widmyer:part Just very generally speaking, they're allergic to.
Matt Widmyer:change And when it's, cause they all have a process you know there's a CRM
Matt Widmyer:process, but they all have their process and the way they do things and a lot
Matt Widmyer:of them are successful what they do.
Matt Widmyer:So if I'm a sales leader and even if you are bringing me that golden ticket, if.
Matt Widmyer:If my top performer, Tommy only works off spreadsheets and
Matt Widmyer:had does things his own way.
Matt Widmyer:And he makes me look really good.
Matt Widmyer:Cause he's consistently sells every single month.
Matt Widmyer:He doesn't need your data point is basically what that's saying.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:But it, which is the wrong message to convey, but that's it, that's
Matt Widmyer:where things start getting tricky.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:It's like we're making exceptions for some and not for others.
Matt Widmyer:Uh, there's no universal rollout.
Matt Widmyer:This process, my advice to the marketing people out there is to absolutely
Matt Widmyer:introduce new things, uh, but do it in small little bite sized chunks.
Matt Widmyer:If you introduce five new fields at once, um, good luck.
Matt Widmyer:It's probably not going to happen.
Matt Widmyer:Now.
Matt Widmyer:You can require the fields from, uh, most CRMs, have the ability to put a
Matt Widmyer:requirement on these fields But then you start, you know, if it's not a data point
Matt Widmyer:that's collected over the phone or through email or whatever, it's not going to,
Matt Widmyer:it's going to be a bogus thing anyway.
Matt Widmyer:And then you're back to where you started, which is not
Matt Widmyer:being able to rely on the data.
Matt Widmyer:So be I would say, you know, we do a pretty good job of it here.
Matt Widmyer:Just, you know, we we we we aren't trying to change the world overnight,
Matt Widmyer:you know, it's just like, Hey, I wonder what this would look like if
Matt Widmyer:we got this and stuff, it's, it's usually no more than like one or two.
Matt Widmyer:At a time and it's, it doesn't happen, you know, very frequently.
Matt Widmyer:I'd say a couple of times a year, um, tops.
Matt Widmyer:So, um, just very, very, very gradual process.
Kevin Dieny:I think what's important here too, is we're kind of throwing this
Kevin Dieny:bone at the management side of any team.
Kevin Dieny:Uh, the reps May not have full control over and a lot of what
Kevin Dieny:we're discussing here, right?
Kevin Dieny:Like they're just like, look, I'm at the whims of what I need to sell.
Kevin Dieny:So whatever my billing, my accounting, my company needs me to do to sell
Kevin Dieny:that is absolutely a a minimum, the things that you're asking me to do
Kevin Dieny:in addition, they better be important to my manager, my manager better be
Kevin Dieny:like, yeah, I want you to do this.
Kevin Dieny:Cause otherwise, you know, it's getting in the way of selling.
Kevin Dieny:Um, there's this really painful stat comes from Salesforce.
Kevin Dieny:You have it too Matt Sales reps spend only 34%.
Kevin Dieny:So roughly a third of their time on selling activities.
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:So a third of the time on selling activities.
Kevin Dieny:So what's the other two thirds.
Kevin Dieny:So only a third is spent selling your salesperson is only spending a third
Kevin Dieny:of their time spent selling So what is the other time being spent on?
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:Well, if it's administrative.
Kevin Dieny:Data entry if it's okay.
Kevin Dieny:You know, walking over to someone, having meetings, like what's getting in the way,
Kevin Dieny:and if you're a leader or your manager, like, well, not adding anything more to
Kevin Dieny:that, taking away from their selling time.
Kevin Dieny:So it, like you said, it's gotta make sense to that sales team,
Kevin Dieny:that sales managers, especially, especially if they're trying
Kevin Dieny:to guide and manage their team.
Kevin Dieny:If the sales manager is just kind of there.
Kevin Dieny:I don't know Hoo rah the team.
Kevin Dieny:Um, it's not going to matter to them anyway.
Kevin Dieny:Uh, the management's goal for a team that they are over would be to
Kevin Dieny:help and improve what they're doing.
Kevin Dieny:And if it's look, my job is to help my team be more efficient.
Kevin Dieny:Data has a huge impact on that.
Kevin Dieny:But if it's not, you know, learning your own organization is kind of a big
Kevin Dieny:thing for at least any team that wants to work better or more collaboratively
Kevin Dieny:with the sales organization.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, there's, there's different kinds of managers here, right?
Matt Widmyer:There's people managers who are really good at getting the raw, raw going get
Matt Widmyer:the, you know, getting them, keeping the morale up and keeping everyone motivated.
Matt Widmyer:And there's data managers, um, data managers are buried in
Matt Widmyer:spreadsheets and dashboards and reporting and all that stuff.
Matt Widmyer:And that's, you know, you need to look at both.
Matt Widmyer:You need to look at what's going on the dashboard and what's
Matt Widmyer:happening outside of the dashboard.
Matt Widmyer:You need to get.
Matt Widmyer:Um, get feedback and figure out, you know, Hey, how's this going?
Matt Widmyer:And, um, you know, it's, it's tough, but you do need, I think the ideal
Matt Widmyer:manager should be a combination.
Matt Widmyer:of both Um, they they're making good business decisions, uh, based on data that
Matt Widmyer:is being collected and presented to them.
Matt Widmyer:And they're keeping at this while they're simultaneously keeping
Matt Widmyer:the morale up on their team.
Matt Widmyer:It's, it's, it's not an easy job to, to, to juggle both those things but that would
Matt Widmyer:be, I don't know if you'd agree here, but that would be based on my experience.
Matt Widmyer:I would think that would be the ideal.
Matt Widmyer:manager
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, cause that's a repeatable trainable,
Kevin Dieny:scalable, standardized.
Kevin Dieny:Um, the other thing here is like, okay, so let's say there's a recipe.
Kevin Dieny:If I was to put together what, as a marketing side, as another, another
Kevin Dieny:part of the business, you want to improve sales, you want to help sales.
Kevin Dieny:You want to understand what's going on there.
Kevin Dieny:You really do need to have that conversation.
Kevin Dieny:Okay.
Kevin Dieny:What's your process.
Kevin Dieny:What's going on?
Kevin Dieny:How do you do things?
Kevin Dieny:You know, what what's required of you?
Kevin Dieny:Uh, what things does you manager pay attention to?
Kevin Dieny:You know, that's really another good way to start, but other things are
Kevin Dieny:like, well, What parts along their process are really contributing to the
Kevin Dieny:value and what parts are not right?
Kevin Dieny:Like what's the 34% they're spending on selling activities.
Kevin Dieny:And what's the other stuff like knowing what meetings they have may
Kevin Dieny:not be that important to you, but knowing what the whole projects and
Kevin Dieny:stuff they are involved in might be.
Kevin Dieny:So how you're going to work with that team?
Kevin Dieny:How are you going to work with a selling organization is going to
Kevin Dieny:come down a lot of times to having a bearing on the closing of a deal.
Matt Widmyer:Absolutely.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:So from their side it is how are you going to help me?
Matt Widmyer:That's it, that's what it comes down to you, you need
Matt Widmyer:to be able to be ready ready and able to answer that question too.
Matt Widmyer:It's not as quick as they'd like, no matter how you slice it usually.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:It's usually an overtime period of thing, but you also do, you know, it is it's
Matt Widmyer:funny cause uh, It should be the sales.
Matt Widmyer:If you come to us, if I'm a sales leader and you come to me with
Matt Widmyer:something that could change my team, I want my team to do that period.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:So the other side of the coin is like, oh, well, Tommy again, number one, rep
Matt Widmyer:is Tommy who works off only spreadsheets.
Matt Widmyer:Well, I don't, I, Tommy, can you fill out this data point?
Matt Widmyer:Because, uh, I think we can close a lot more deals like this time.
Matt Widmyer:He's like, yeah, I get lost.
Matt Widmyer:And just going to keep doing my thing.
Matt Widmyer:The manager's not going to get, if he keeps closing month over month,
Matt Widmyer:it's, it's a very hard conversation for a sales manager to have, right.
Matt Widmyer:Because maybe they're even buddies.
Matt Widmyer:Maybe they go golfing on the weekends or whatever.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:Um, it's a tough conversation for sales managers to have, because.
Matt Widmyer:It's what kind of consequences are you going to introduce, right.
Matt Widmyer:To hit this person this over performer, not doing a marketing activity.
Matt Widmyer:And it's interesting.
Matt Widmyer:Cause I've seen this a few times since usually, you know, it's, it might be
Matt Widmyer:a stern conversation at the very most, but then it it's, it's usually, um,
Matt Widmyer:it usually doesn't help a whole lot.
Matt Widmyer:So, um, there are other things that can be done, but it is, it does need
Matt Widmyer:to be enforced it's on the salespeople.
Matt Widmyer:It's on the sales leaders who are going to be benefited the most
Matt Widmyer:by this golden ticket scenario that needs to be enforcing this.
Matt Widmyer:And it's, um, it's a tough pill to swallow, but if you hold
Matt Widmyer:everybody over performers and under performers to the same standard and
Matt Widmyer:roll this out as a global change.
Matt Widmyer:Even you know, sales managers will put their spin on it.
Matt Widmyer:Look, I don't like it either, but it trust me, it's a, it's gonna, it's gonna work.
Matt Widmyer:If I'm a, if I'm a sales person, um, no one's ever going to get fired over it.
Matt Widmyer:It's just, and and again, it's a tough thing to, it's a.
Matt Widmyer:Tough ask, but, uh, for, for some things, but again, allergic to change.
Matt Widmyer:So it is, you have to choose your battles and in a situation like that,
Matt Widmyer:it's like, okay, maybe we can just get that data point from everyone
Matt Widmyer:else, except for that one person.
Matt Widmyer:And then eventually the cream will rise to the top, but,
Matt Widmyer:but it, it, sometimes it does.
Matt Widmyer:And sometimes it doesn't.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:So, um, Yeah, that's the unfortunate truth of everything happening.
Matt Widmyer:But, it is because by having that conversation and worse.
Matt Widmyer:Okay.
Matt Widmyer:So what happens if you do okay, I'm going to write you up if you don't put,
Matt Widmyer:uh, that data point and that field.
Matt Widmyer:So now you're creating this, like this perfectly happy employee has
Matt Widmyer:now taken like a morale hit and then even the other people around the team
Matt Widmyer:are like, Yeah, what's going on here.
Matt Widmyer:It's like, this is getting weird and this was this used to be fun.
Matt Widmyer:And now they're just like making us do all these weird things.
Matt Widmyer:So it's going to, again, you have to choose your battles, but I think that
Matt Widmyer:the best thing, small gradual tweaks, um, And they need to be held accountable
Matt Widmyer:because you aren't going to come over as a marketer and go over to the sales
Matt Widmyer:team and be like, Hey, well, how come you didn't put this in this field?
Matt Widmyer:It's not your job to do that.
Matt Widmyer:It's your job to come over with recommendations.
Matt Widmyer:And then it's up to the sales leaders to be able to implement some of
Matt Widmyer:these things, to make us all win.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:So let me, we'll go into like the final bit concluding bits here, but let me just
Kevin Dieny:totally slam the gut intuitive-driven organization for a second here.
Kevin Dieny:I'm just going to totally slam that argument.
Kevin Dieny:All right.
Kevin Dieny:And then we can do that on the other side, if we want and
Kevin Dieny:then go totally pro that side.
Kevin Dieny:So here's the total.
Kevin Dieny:Anti-intuitive driven argument.
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:So if you're a selling organization and you're going off intuitive, driven,
Kevin Dieny:not, I'm not saying a hundred percent, but if you're, you know, you're leaning
Kevin Dieny:more toward the intuitive driven.
Kevin Dieny:side Okay.
Kevin Dieny:What that creates is like a culture, a pressure on your sales team to
Kevin Dieny:constantly have the right, almost perfect intuition at all times.
Kevin Dieny:It also requires the manager to not quite know how to train their team
Kevin Dieny:perfectly, but to rely more on gut it's, it's kind of like, uh, it's, it's
Kevin Dieny:so much like football teams, right?
Kevin Dieny:It's not knowing exactly how fast your teams are running.
Kevin Dieny:How, how many plays and things have been executed.
Kevin Dieny:well How well they've done on certain downs in certain places and certain
Kevin Dieny:combinations of players, it's just sort of watching them and then, you know,
Kevin Dieny:intuitively making the assumption, taking in the information, assessing,
Kevin Dieny:you know, what's happened and making kind of guesses and estimates.
Kevin Dieny:Now the the track record.
Kevin Dieny:From Any study is that human beings are absolutely terrible at making predictions.
Kevin Dieny:They're absolutely terrible assessing risk.
Kevin Dieny:They just kind of do maybe whatever they just recently saw.
Kevin Dieny:Oh, we played against a team that, you know, did a lot of things that
Kevin Dieny:worked well against us, you know, in a bubble that's like just taking that
Kevin Dieny:information may you know, it's not a hundred percent helpful all the time.
Kevin Dieny:So intuitive driven selling just has so many pitfalls.
Kevin Dieny:Of being repeatable because it's not necessarily repeatable every time.
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:There's.
Kevin Dieny:It's there's so many possible customers, possible, patients possible everything,
Kevin Dieny:and it it's so much easier to standardize quantify just some of the basic points
Kevin Dieny:along the journey and see how we can impact and influence those things.
Kevin Dieny:If you don't simplify everything down, you're really dealing with everything.
Kevin Dieny:And if you ask if I'm on the marketing side and I go over to the sales team and
Kevin Dieny:I have a meeting with them and I say, Hey I'd like to know what's going on.
Kevin Dieny:What's you know, what's gonna happen with you guys.
Kevin Dieny:Can you tell me what your initiatives are?
Kevin Dieny:What projects you're doing, what you'd like, you know, how things have
Kevin Dieny:been going with the stuff I've given you and all they have is just, Hmm.
Kevin Dieny:Let me just think for a minute.
Kevin Dieny:Okay.
Kevin Dieny:Let me just tell you from, you know, a few minutes of thinking about.
Kevin Dieny:it Everything you need to be successful.
Kevin Dieny:It's never going to be good.
Kevin Dieny:It's not going to be great conversations.
Kevin Dieny:It's going to be purely anecdotal.
Kevin Dieny:It's not rich.
Kevin Dieny:It's not filled with the, with the context you like the intuitive,
Kevin Dieny:intuitive, driven side is like, look, no other team could understand us.
Kevin Dieny:There's no way they get the context and then what we're doing and how
Kevin Dieny:we're selling and how that, how they're going to influence and impact us well.
Kevin Dieny:The flip side is if we don't know what's going, if the other
Kevin Dieny:teams don't know what's going.
Kevin Dieny:on If they don't understand even any contact, any valuable context,
Kevin Dieny:they don't get enough context.
Kevin Dieny:There's no way they're going to know.
Kevin Dieny:And it creates barriers on both sides.
Kevin Dieny:So to me, intuitive driven creates let's say four massive problems 1 it
Kevin Dieny:makes it so that it's really hard to make the right decisions because most
Kevin Dieny:of them are going to be coin flips.
Kevin Dieny:2 It makes it almost impossible for other teams to work with you.
Kevin Dieny:So it almost bashes cross functionality and throws it out the window.
Kevin Dieny:You're basically going to be in a sales team, operating in a silo.
Kevin Dieny:Your salespeople are going to have to do the marketing.
Kevin Dieny:They're going to have to do the selling.
Kevin Dieny:They're going to have to do the support, you're piling so much on you.
Kevin Dieny:You thought you were going to spend spend more time.
Kevin Dieny:selling Wrong.
Kevin Dieny:Uh, 3 the next one is culture and sustainability.
Kevin Dieny:You are in no way creating a culture that new people can
Kevin Dieny:come into and learn quickly.
Kevin Dieny:It's really hard to make your team more efficient without, you know,
Kevin Dieny:the right information and data.
Kevin Dieny:And sometimes if something goes wrong, you may not know what the heck's going on
Kevin Dieny:4 and last, uh, forecasting predictions.
Kevin Dieny:So you're kind of ended up, you can't be strategic when you're only living.
Kevin Dieny:day to day When your week to week, when, you know, at the end of the month, you're
Kevin Dieny:like, oh man, I hope we hit our numbers.
Kevin Dieny:You should know that, like a pretty good, you can even know a few weeks, months
Kevin Dieny:ahead of time with pretty high confidence.
Kevin Dieny:What's going to happen if you understand your pipeline.
Kevin Dieny:So you can have the answers, you can be way more strategic and you
Kevin Dieny:can make decisions that impact the.
Kevin Dieny:flow Right at a time and a point where it's actually going to make a difference.
Kevin Dieny:So that is my very brutal slam of why being highly intuitive driven is
Kevin Dieny:just terrible for an organization.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:And if you don't want to look at data, you might want to hire a fortune
Matt Widmyer:teller as a sales operations person.
Kevin Dieny:Hey, the monkey, the monkey or the octopus picking bets, right.
Kevin Dieny:In Vegas it was more successful than every other human hedge fund manager better.
Kevin Dieny:It was incredible.
Matt Widmyer:Give them their own office with their own
Matt Widmyer:crystal ball and everything.
Matt Widmyer:Oh man.
Matt Widmyer:This has been fun.
Matt Widmyer:This is one of the, um, this is definitely one of the jucier ones.
Matt Widmyer:And this is a, this is a very debatable thing.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, I would be surprised if anyone listening to this has not experienced this
Matt Widmyer:to some degree, um, at their organization.
Matt Widmyer:So this is, this has been a fun one for me.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, I'll, I'll just quickly name a few things that are wrong.
Kevin Dieny:If you're too data-driven we think we've laid them out.
Kevin Dieny:You're going to alienate sales team.
Kevin Dieny:If you have data that doesn't connect to deals that you're just.
Kevin Dieny:Wasting time.
Kevin Dieny:Uh, it's gotta make sense, gotta be able to show value there.
Kevin Dieny:It's got to mean more than just to your team.
Kevin Dieny:It's got to mean something to the whole company.
Kevin Dieny:And in addition, there's, you know, how complex is it?
Kevin Dieny:It's really important that everyone on the sales team, everyone on the
Kevin Dieny:marketing team, marketing on whatever team understands what all the data points mean.
Kevin Dieny:If you look at a data point and you're like, what does this mean?
Kevin Dieny:Again?
Kevin Dieny:Like you may have been told and you just forget, that's fine.
Kevin Dieny:But if you have no idea, What all this stuff is that you're gathering.
Kevin Dieny:That's a huge red flag.
Kevin Dieny:Why am I gathering this data point?
Kevin Dieny:Like, why do I care this person's name?
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:Like there's a reason behind that.
Kevin Dieny:And it's pretty important to know it is helpful for you, but you know,
Kevin Dieny:And then the last one is like, Teams are stretched usually with resources
Kevin Dieny:and time or management capital.
Kevin Dieny:So having a, you know, good assessment like, okay, right now,
Kevin Dieny:this team's underwater, probably not a good time to ask them to
Kevin Dieny:gather data like you've mentioned.
Kevin Dieny:So, uh, that comes from a little bit of collaboration, communication, both sides.
Kevin Dieny:If it has to involve like leadership at the top to force it to.
Kevin Dieny:happen Uh, my best, not my favorite way for that to happen, but it can happen.
Kevin Dieny:So that's probably the slam against both sides, little bit brief
Kevin Dieny:on the data side, but data is just, I'm just a fan of the data.
Kevin Dieny:And I can, there's so many times learning this along the way that you, even if
Kevin Dieny:you're a fan, you have the treasure.
Kevin Dieny:map And you feel like you're just going to change the world, you
Kevin Dieny:know, take the world by storm.
Kevin Dieny:It just doesn't end up happening because there's a lot more involved than just
Kevin Dieny:simply, you know, more data does not always mean more deals and more deals
Kevin Dieny:do not always come from the gut.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, it's funny too.
Matt Widmyer:Cause you see, you know, I wish we had enough examples of someone who
Matt Widmyer:was very good at using a CRM and they're like a rockstar salesperson.
Matt Widmyer:It's it's, it's usually the opposite.
Matt Widmyer:They're usually either really good at the CRM and not so
Matt Widmyer:good at selling or, or they're.
Matt Widmyer:Not that they don't use CRM nearly as much as they should be, but they
Matt Widmyer:are, you know, they do sell a ton.
Matt Widmyer:So it's like, it's tough because it doesn't paint a very good picture for,
Matt Widmyer:for what we're trying to convey here.
Matt Widmyer:It's uh, it's I wish we had more case studies, but it's like, yeah, it is.
Matt Widmyer:It tells a bad story, right.
Matt Widmyer:For the people who were entering everything in perfectly.
Matt Widmyer:And, um, you know, they, they aren't having that much luck on the sales side.
Matt Widmyer:It's it's unfortunate, but it does happen that way.
Matt Widmyer:too
Kevin Dieny:There are tools designed to help you get back leadership
Kevin Dieny:management, capital like tools that.
Kevin Dieny:Analyze your team for you teams that tell you what your team is doing.
Kevin Dieny:Teams, uh, tools that may even gather information from, you know,
Kevin Dieny:conversations that are happening with your team, with customers and stuff.
Kevin Dieny:And so that they don't have to be the ones doing all the data entry.
Kevin Dieny:And there's a lot of stuff out there designed to try to help a team,
Kevin Dieny:a management, a leadership role person, anything like that, to make
Kevin Dieny:sure that they're getting the data.
Kevin Dieny:If you need data, if the company needs it and the team won't do it.
Kevin Dieny:They're probably going to go force another team to do it.
Kevin Dieny:And it's unfortunate if you turn like entire operations around the selling
Kevin Dieny:the sales team to do the things that that sales team should be doing,
Kevin Dieny:it's unfortunate, but I've seen it.
Kevin Dieny:It happens.
Matt Widmyer:yeah, those companies you're talking about too, are either either
Matt Widmyer:just taking over the market too, and now that everything's going remote and
Matt Widmyer:everything, um, that's becoming a lot more of a need than it was in the past too.
Matt Widmyer:So that's a, there are definitely tools out there that you can use to do that.
Kevin Dieny:So I would say, you know, find the right combination of
Kevin Dieny:data, uh, that is the most meaningful that you could take action on that
Kevin Dieny:you plan to take action on that you were important to measure that
Kevin Dieny:people understand down through the organization and that will ultimately
Kevin Dieny:impact and the closing or the selling of more revenue for your organization.
Kevin Dieny:Now, if it's like pick a side Like, okay.
Kevin Dieny:Pick the data side or pick the intuition side.
Kevin Dieny:I'm on the data side.
Kevin Dieny:I'll just, I mean, I'm just gonna be forthcoming, but it's not like pure data
Kevin Dieny:is going to be the winner and it's not like intuition is going to be the winner.
Kevin Dieny:There's some right combination of that.
Kevin Dieny:And that kind of depends on management, leadership styles, culture in the
Kevin Dieny:company, and a lot of other factors.
Kevin Dieny:So is there anything else, Matt, you want to say that we may have missed
Matt Widmyer:yeah, I mean, no, I think, I think we pretty
Matt Widmyer:much, I think we nailed it.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, I think we've, we've been going back and forth and I think
Matt Widmyer:just, you know, small bite-size chunks would be my advice, build value on
Matt Widmyer:both sides and do the ride along.
Matt Widmyer:I mean, it's, it's a little bit harder, especially if you have remote teams now
Matt Widmyer:it's a little harder to do it, but take the time to understand what the other
Matt Widmyer:person goes through on a daily basis.
Matt Widmyer:It's kind of like what, you know, if you apply, if you ever apply to be
Matt Widmyer:part of the police force or something like that, the ride along the physical
Matt Widmyer:ride along in the police car, it's like, are you sure you want to do this?
Matt Widmyer:Are you sure you want to, um, it's kind of the same type of thing.
Matt Widmyer:Do the, do the ride along with your marketing guy or, you know, with the,
Matt Widmyer:with one of the salespeople and kind of figure out, you know, why is it.
Matt Widmyer:Maybe you thought it was going to be a really simple thing for
Matt Widmyer:those couple extra data points.
Matt Widmyer:Maybe it's super cumbersome on there, but, you know, from based on their experience.
Matt Widmyer:So, um, just take the time outside of, um, out step outside of the numbers.
Matt Widmyer:And I guess just look at what's actually going on, I guess would
Matt Widmyer:be my advice to both sides.
Matt Widmyer:Really.
Kevin Dieny:I'd also, say if you're a manager of one of those teams, including
Kevin Dieny:a manager of another team or someone from the other team and to like a man in, to
Kevin Dieny:a weekly monthly I don't know how often you have a team meeting or something,
Kevin Dieny:uh, clues them in into what's important.
Kevin Dieny:That's sometimes a pretty good way to just do it and they
Kevin Dieny:can just be a fly on the wall.
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:You don't have to take any extra time to do anything that could
Kevin Dieny:be the very simplest step to involving increasing collaboration.
Kevin Dieny:They may have.
Kevin Dieny:ideas For your business or be like, oh, why, you know, we don't
Kevin Dieny:need these other, you guys have been gathering these data points.
Kevin Dieny:I didn't even know.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of things that happen there.
Kevin Dieny:So, this has been a very in-depth back and forth debate on whether
Kevin Dieny:companies, whether anyone should be focusing more data or more deals.
Kevin Dieny:So, with that, we'll, we'll close out.
Kevin Dieny:So thanks Matt.
Kevin Dieny:And, thank you for listening to the Close The Loop podcast.
Matt Widmyer:Absolutely.
