The more you have, the more you need, and salespeople today have a lot. But stripped of every tool in your arsenal, what would you actually need to sell? And would you have what it takes to succeed?

Join Darryl and long-time friend Greg Meehan, Senior Sales Strategy Consultant at Skaled Consulting. They get to the root of what you actually "need" to be a success in sales, why entitlement is a barrier to high-performance, how to decimate every excuse in the book, and just how important hair is to your standing as a seasoned sales sage.

🔗 LINKS

Find Greg on LinkedIn, or at Skaled.com.

Find How to Make Appointments By Telephone by Allan Pease here.

Find The Transparency Sale by Todd Caponi here.

Those episodes were #193 with Thibaut Souyris, and #190 with Victor Vatus.

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn.

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Are you in sales, but you're not using a sales engagement tool? Then you're probably losing out on revenue because you are not engaging with prospects at the right time, with the right cadence, and with enough persistency. You need VanillaSoft.

INSIDE Inside Sales is now a member of the Sales IQ Network. We help sales pros to self-generate pipeline to smash their sales targets. Find out more by checking out our Create Pipeline Course.

How is everybody doing today? Welcome my friends to another episode, a killer kick ass in your face. Let's get real episode of the inside inside sales show. You realize that the highlight the highlight of my show, I have a one, two punch highlight. The number one highlight is just that first five minutes.

When I get to talk to you and I get to catch up and I get to share stupid stories. I know you're all secretly fast forwarding, but I'm okay with that. Cuz it's more for me than it is for you. And then the second part is when I bring on my guests now my guest today, full disclosure, he's, he's an imposter.

He's not very good. He doesn't know a thing or two, but every once in a while, you know that friend that wants to tag along, they want to be with the cool kids and you do it at a charity. Well, that's gonna be our friend today. I may be lying. I may be just busting his chops right now. I've been known to do that.

You can be the judge and then you can tag me on social and say, darl, you lied. He wasn't nearly as bad as you said he was. I mean, he wasn't great, but he wasn't nearly as bad. So that's the setup for the guests. Let's we'll wait and see when I'm done my little die tribe. If he's still there, or if suddenly I'm gonna be doing this show by myself.

So there we go. How to win friends and influence people by Darryl Praill. Okay. So I have this wonderful thing going for me that almost every single one of you, don't all right, you ready for this? And, and, and you will not have it despite how hard you try, how much money you invest, how many people you Badger, you will not have what I have more than likely.

For years to come. Can you guess what it is that I have that 90% of you don't have? Okay. I know you're out there shouting it at me. You're all wrong. Stupid people. This is what I have that you don't have. I'm old. That's it. I said it and no matter what you say or do, you're just not gonna catch up to me until enough time has gone by.

And you finally go, I remember back in the twenties, when Preo said he was old. Son of a bitch now I'm there. That's what's gonna happen. You wait. Okay. What does that matter? Well, let me tell you, I wanna give context. I wanna give context just how decrepit and ancient I am. Okay. When I first began marketing and marketing was kind of like a second career.

Remember I was a computer programmer for several years, and then I evolved into product management, into product marketing and then into marketing and then into sales. In fact, my first job, as you all know, my very, very first job was a sales job. And then I said, that's scary. Get me the hell outta here.

No Amazon, no Facebook. No, no, no MySpace, no concept of the word, SAS. All right. In fact, before SAS, there was as P just, I'll give you the acronym, you look it up. What the hell does that mean? And in that time we did things very differently. So for example, If I wanted to reach you via advertising, which I can do today on a Google or social media.

And I get real time analytics and I get all this great insight. I get this great technology that it says just like mind blowingly, incredible. And I can optimize and change in the fly. I can, I can change my creative, the drop of a hat. Does anybody drop hats anymore? Just a question. I could do that.

Whereas back then, what I had to do was I would call up a graphic designer. They would whip me up like 10 different advertising concepts. They would come to my physical space. Pre-work from home and on phone course stiff backer boards they'd have printed off in black and white cuz color printers didn't exist.

Or they would've have hand drawn these advertising concepts. And I would look at them as they leaned on the floor or on a window ledge, or they'd be on a boardroom table and everybody would gather around and we would point and, and, and gesture and say, I like this. Don't like that. Maybe take, you know, number one and number seven and put 'em together and do this and make a, you know, a Frankenstein out of it, whatever, that's how we did it.

And then. When we would finally select the ad, it would go to print. And like a month later, the magazine would appear how I got a response to know that you reacted to that advertising was, we had bingo cards. I'm not making this up. So, and the back of the magazine, there would be an insert stapled into the magazine and you would have to look up the vendor.

So my case say Agool and he'd say, oh, AOR pulse was on page 42, the ad. And you would punch it. It's a punch cart. Or you would check it with your pen and you would fill out your name and your number and you would rip it out. And it was prepaid postage paid. Free and you would drop it into a mailbox. And that would go to the magazine publisher who would then compile all these and then call me up.

And they would fax me a list of all the names that I need to follow up with for information. And that my friends was leading edge marketing using advertising. And that was how my sales reps got their quote unquote inbound leads. It's dramatic. It's incredible how life has changed. I could go on. It's just one example.

And that was what we did every single time. Like you probably don't even know this. The biggest part of my American job whenever we had a product release was the bomb. The Bo N the bill of materials. Why? Because the bill of materials said, this is the box that the CDs and the printed manuals and whatever car, the partner.

Advertising is all gonna go into and be sent it to production. These are stupid things that don't exist anymore, but the reality was everybody made a shitload of money. Millionaires were made people's lives were changed and life was grand. And when we look back on that, we say, how could you ever do that?

Well, and I would tell you that I learned more in that process than I ever do today. And I still fall back on the lessons learned. Because I had that experience that you don't have available today. So what do we have? We have the world that you live in and we had the world that I lived in. This is old versus new.

This is old school versus new school. This is white hair. Versus not white hair.

So with that, how does all that relate to sales? And I thought to myself, who do I know who has neither not white hair or white hair? And I thought, Greg Meehan. He's got no hair. He's the right guy to come in and talk to us about where you are overlying on technology and where maybe a little bit of old school is gonna give you more immediate success.

He is a senior sales strategy consultant with Skaled consulting. Skaled consultant creates the future of sales with weekly tactical sales advice, LinkedIn insights, and just general all around. Goodness, you can check him out on LinkedIn. You can go to Skaled Consulting, that's Skaled with a K, S K A L E D .com to learn more about what they do. He is my good friend all the way from Kuala Lumpur, Greg, how are you doing today?

So. So that's, that's where, and so we showed at me like we, like we do in this community of ours. And then and then we became very good friends and would often call and vent with one another as CROs about our frustrations or our challenges or our issues with our respective sales teams.

So Greg is actually a really talented guy and and I love, we were talking Greg and I said, what's PA you know, what's your passion these days. And he said, ah, Darryl, it's it's technology versus, you know, the hard skills. And I, as we talked about it, I'm like, dude, this is old school versus new school.

This is what this is. So let's just go have some fun do it. Let's let's see what Greg has to say. What's the bee in his bonnet. Greg, where do you wanna start on this? Is there a topic specifically? Is there a setup you wanna deliver? Talk to me.

And it was like, okay, welcome to Malaysia. Welcome to sales. And that was it. So the tech stack that we had was I posted about this. It's a I had a phone. It was actually a hand handheld phone, not one of these walk around wander a headset or anything like that. I've got a fancy setup now with a great mic and all this kind of stuff.

None of that. It was a phone with a cord on it. It was basically like a, it was bomb proof. It was a tank of a phone. You just slam it down all the time. I had that, I had a, an Excel spreadsheet on a, on a, it was like a desktop computer that used to make a hell of a noise. When you started it up, we had Microsoft outlook and that was.

and then it was like, okay, well go and call some people and basically sell financial services over the phone. Fill your boots. There was no onboarding. There was no training. There was no tech stack. There was no playbook. It was basically when I, when I got on that plane from the UK and came into Malaysia, it was like flying back in time.

So whilst you have all the gray hairs in the world, I'm gonna top you on this one. Darryl, I've got zero. From kind of clear of this is, and, and it was that it was that experience. And I'm basically, I was just trying to kind of found my way and then I kni again. I was just really bad at my job here. Go down.

Here's one for you. I used to drink so much coffee and so much water that would spend all my time during the camp in the pantry or in the bathroom. And the reason why I did that was because I didn't wanna make any cold calls and that, and that, and that was it. That was the only, that was the only reason why I did it.

And then, you know, fast, fast forward, Once I started to kind, I, I helped the office move. We moved offices and I found this thing by a guy called Allen Pease. And I talk about him all the time and was how to make it. I'm just, I'm just trying to find out my bookshelf, how to make appointments by telephone.

And I changed the game for me. And that was the only thing I was equipped with. The only thing that was equipped with was a, a method, a way, and a phone and that, and that was. . And then I went from nearly being fired twice. In fact, I had to fly back to the UK for personal reasons, one time. And then I flew back to Malaysia and the guy I was working for at the time, he said to my, my CEO, he said, I wanna wait for Greg to get back in the office and what I want to do.

I wanna box all his stuff up on a desk. And as soon as he walks through the door into the office, I want to, I wanna give him a box and tell him to get out. I wanna take him to the airport, get him on a plane and send him back to the UK. That's the kind of environment that I, that I was working. So empathy, nah, forget it, nothing like that.

It was a, it was a very cutthroat environment. And then when I found this thing, I basically started to call people and implement this new methodology that I, that I found and I started to book meetings and that was it. Then I just started to do really, really well. So that's a long way round of saying you don't need a lot to be a success.

Typically lots of onboarding. We're gonna have a slow ramp partial ramp of maybe the first three months, cuz we can't make commissions because we don't have a pipeline. So we want to be compensated for that. It's as well. We expect initially to, to have marketing, send us all the leads because we have nothing to work ourselves.

Cuz we don't have a network. We're just brain spanking new. And where else can I go on this? Well we expect every single tool in the book. Because, you know, we want, we want AI copywriting. We want the best sequencing and cadence, you know, sales engagement platform. We want the world's best database, like a zoom info or something.

We wanna have every single phone call recorded and then telling us what we do as our next steps. And we want, we demand NA NA you bought a book. We demand the. The company or the sales leadership to train us on all the sales skills, because if I'm not succeeding, it's because you didn't equip me.

And if you don't like it, I'm taking my LinkedIn profile and I'm leaving this company. I'm going to the next, company's gonna do it for me. is, is that what you're saying to me, the bit of a difference between, you know, time periods or expectations as a sales pro?

And I think right now they should, right. They, if the tools are there then they should be implemented well. And once they are. Perfect. But I think people doesn't overline to salespeople on technology, technology doesn't work. I can't get the right email address. I can't, I'm only getting through to gatekeepers, so I can't speak to anyone.

That's why I didn't hit pipeline. Now. That's why I didn't hit quota or, you know, I can't hit my number because I don't have X, Y, and Z. Okay. Now this is, this is gonna be a polarizing thought.

This is we're gonna transition stage right now. We're gonna bridge from the middle ground to the latter, half of the book, just so you understand what's going on. And really what Greg has just set up for you is to say you probably have a lot of excuses, and if you wanna be successful in the career, like he's been successful, you had to ditch those bloody excuses.

And now we're gonna give you some tough love. We're gonna be polarizing. See, that was my soft, gentle narrator voice. Okay. Over to you, carry it on. Polarize us, baby.

And I, I appreciate that people go through tough times when I was in this job. It was basically you do the job or you get sent home. Literally not sent home around the corner, sent home on a plane. So it was kind of, it, it was single swim again. It's not for everybody. I picked up different territories so that I could get into work at six.

Doesn't matter how many tools that you have or don't have, you're just gonna be prepared to go through that. And that's the, that's the thing you've gotta work hard. You've gotta do those additional hours. Isn't I've always said sales is not 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM for me. It just isn't it's it is just not the, it's just not the job. There you go. All right. That's that's my two cents.

There's no value in this episode. Greg is substantially younger than I am. I want to be clear about that and he's looking, ruggedly handsome for those watching the video.

That's what he does. He's a former. Chief Revenue Officer. So he's, you know, he's, he's been in your shoes. He's been the sales rep. He's been a CRO, I'm a former CRO. So let's talk a little bit about what I would call excuses that the, I would get these on a regular basis and, and the answer was always, but that excuse goes away.

Darryl, if you had bought us this piece of te. All right. And therefore let's, and, and then I would have to rebut. And again, this is a tough love episode folks. This is a, you have to park these excuses and let me make sure I'm clear. I say that when you give those excuses, you're actually not doing yourself a favor, a hundred percent.

What you're saying to your leaderships is, is. You're not committed. It says that you don't necessarily have what it takes. Now you can have a discussion without it being excused. In other words, you can say, you know, I will do this. I'm fine. If we had this piece of technology, I anticipate an X percent improvement in my productivity, which will result in more, you know, Y percent more pipeline, which will result in Z percent more deals closed in revenue.

And if you want to consider that maybe we get a trial and we AB test it, but in the interim, I'm just sharing my problem. But you know, here's what I'm gonna do. So I'll work through the excuses. I. Oh, I have got, okay. So one of the biggest excuses I got was I there's two top of mind. One is. The data isn't good.

It doesn't have all the data I need to contact this person. Or if it does have it, all it has is a phone number to their main switchboard or to a gatekeeper I do not have, and I do not have their mobile numbers. So how can I get ahold of these people? I, my, my, my connection, right? My conversations suck because the contact information marketing or sales ops has given me sucks.

That's the excuse. To which I respond. And then Greg would love your answer. I'm sorry. Maybe you're not aware. There was a date not too long ago when none of this existed. And Greg ironically opened up and talked about that. Here's a piece of paper you've heard past essay. They, they were given a phone book and it started making your calls.

Right. And the reality is I remind them, you are all given a base salary plus. Commissions. So you have an OTE, right? The base salary is not because your employer is just a generous group of people. The base salary says we recognize you're gonna have to put some work in. So as part of the base salary, if you get to the switchboard, we expect you to say things like, oh, I'm sorry, it's not you, Greg.

Can you tell me who does that? And how would I get ahold of Susie? What's your email? What's her phone. or you go to LinkedIn and then once you, if they don't give you anything, you look for it, you look for the job or the title, then you do a personal connection, but you actually put the time in to do a little bit of research, little investigation on your own.

So number one for me was the bad data. Excuse. Number two for me is the marketing's not giving me enough leads, excuse, and that's why I miss my number to which I say to you. If you are just a trained monkey who are taking credit cards for leads, that marketing gives you. I can do that with a much more affordable resource.

I need you to either find your own leads or take the leads that marketing gives you. And, and grow the opportunity size. In other words, multi-thread the account do proper discovery. Do you know, personalize your messaging based on the persona, the contact title that you're reaching out to, as opposed to just taking the call and, oh, you want two seats?

Okay. Here, your credit card. Boom. Here's the, here's the order done? That doesn't help me. Doesn't help you. So those are my two laments on technology versus excuses versus. What I would call core sales skills. Any comments on that? And if none, where would you go? What are yours that you hate when it comes to excuses?

We've gotta find that reception number, that main main switchboard number. And that's what we used to do. That's what we used to have to do. And then we used to have to work with the gatekeepers to see. If they could help you out and put you in touch with the right people or the right department, and then you work on your sales skills to actually navigate there.

And if they're not available that particular prospect that you're trying to get a hold of, is there somebody else that you can talk to in their office is their personal assistant available to have a conversation with, to run some ideas past them, to see if it's relevant to their executive? I think when we start to kind of over index on this technology side of things, it's like, okay, we're gonna rely.

you know, the zoom infos, the Apollos of the world to give us this information and it stops there. They can't give us this information, therefore it's not available anywhere. And therefore I'm gonna move on to the next lead. It's like, okay. But what if you actually spent a little bit of time to then do some research and then actually pick up the phone and speak to the gatekeeper or actually call a number and then see the last four digits of the number and then trying a different combination of numbers just to see if you can actually get through to that depart.

because the numbers were there. I mean, if you have a look on a website, it's a whole host of different numbers that you can actually call so bad data. We didn't have any of this technology. When we were making calls over here, there was nothing available to us. So we had to get creative. We had to find a way to get in touch with people.

So there is always a way around, I think I just wanted to take a, take a step back in as to Darryl, if that's okay. As a salesperson, you are fully accountable for your. that's it. And as soon as you take accountability and responsibility for that number, you are gonna go out of your way to make sure you hit that number.

As soon as you start either making excuses or trying to find a way out of getting towards that number and point your fingers about all these things that you didn't have. Do you then kind of shut down your creativity about how you're actually gonna achieve that number. and that's gonna be the death of your pipeline.

It, it really, really is. So I think Joco willing calls it extreme ownership. If you take full ownership of that number and you treat your pipeline, like it's your own business, you will find a way to get hold of these people to actually talk to them. Cause by the way you owe it to them as well. If you are selling something that's really awesome and can solve, 'em a bunch of different problems and help 'em sleep better at night, it's on you.

It's your duty to try and get hold of them and tell them this story so they can. because otherwise your competitor's gonna find a way that's it? That was number one, right? Bad data. What was the second one that you mentioned, Mr. Darryl?

That's why when you go from an SDR to an AE, to a director, to VP, to SVP, to CRO, these are all skills that you carry with you. The ability to communicate either like this or over the phone, you need to develop these. marketing, not giving you enough leads. Honestly, for me, they were always just a cherry on top.

It was up to me to develop my own pipeline. That's how we're gonna hit your number. Well, I suppose, can I caveat this a little bit? It depends on how KPIs have actually been set by, by management. If they're saying, you know, 50% is gonna be allocated by marketing, 50% is gonna be, you know, self-generated then there's a conversation to be had.

But realistically, if I'm thinking about my own pipeline and my own quota, my own target. I'm gonna be thinking, I need to go out there and make this happen for myself. And then anything else that comes in from marketing is gonna be that cherry on top. That's gonna take me way over the line. There you go.

That's my very long 2 cents on those two subjects. Anything you want to deep dive on anything you agree with? Don't disagree with hit me. Come on, Darryl. What have you got?

And I am a firm believer that you invest in yourself. If your employer pays for training for you, that's just. Cherry on top. It kind of, as you just thought that both marketing gives you a lead that's bonus, right? Mm-hmm but the excuse that I'm underperforming, because you've not trained me on how to be a better sales rep and that's your responsibility above and beyond the base salary you're giving me and all the benefits you're giving me and everything else.

That's your responsibility. I just find, I say bullshit, you know, does, does the photographer hire his client and say, Hey, will you lend me your camera so I can take your photos? No, that photographer invests in their own gear. They invest, they go spend hours learning a new lens, learning a new body. They go and practice different settings in different environments.

They are constantly studying. That's what a photographer does because it's their craft. They live and die by how well they know their craft word of mouth, by how well they know their craft inbound by how well they know their craft reps enough with the excuses that you've not been trained. And it's our fault. That's my opinion Greg.

We're gonna miss coaching moments. We're gonna miss those moments where you should have negotiated like this, or you should have made this call or this activity would've been. so whose whose fault is that if, if your leadership and your management are giving you these things and the, you, you are MI you're still missing your number, realistically, ask yourself, what are you doing to help yourself to, to better yourself?

Not so you can just do better for the job and, you know, hit your target, but really like you. Take pride in your craft. Like I do. I, you know, I, I think forever, I'm gonna read and learn as much as I can about sales and revenue and leadership. Like I've got three or four books around me right now that I'm, that I'm leading on most recent one.

Todd Caponi the transparency sale. I'm gonna drop this in. Yes. I love that book. That was one of the most recent ones I read and it, his, his bit on negotiation, the four levers and how he presents it in that client meeting is legit. I love it so much. That's that's a really awesome book. But for me, I always took pride in my, my profession as a, as a salesperson.

I didn't, again, the training that was provided, if any, through the company was that cherry on top, but really for me, I wanted to do better for myself, that self development, that self learning, I'm all about that. And that's how you get better. That's how you separate yourself from a pack. Because, you know, there's this 80, 20 law.

There's a reason why like 80% of your business comes from 20% of your reps. What are those 20% doing? They're going out and making themselves better. They're not relying on other people because they're fully accountable for how well they're gonna do. They put in, as they say the hard yards and it takes a long time. It doesn't happen overnight. I am fully with you on this one, Mr. Praill.

I want give you the tools like I want you to be successful. Greg said that, you know, I'm the same way when I neg negotiate a, a sales leadership role. The first thing I say is what's my budget to invest in technology and how well staffed is the rep. You do have a rev op team, right? And then how well staffed are they ready to be a marketing op sales ops?

You know, cetera. We do want to equip you. We do want to pay you well for what you do, but we don't want reps on our teams. Who are not committed to their own success, because if you are that rep you suck the life out of the team culture, I'm just shooting straight with your kids and every single one of your reps right now who are listening to this and are saying, you're probably, if you're not, if you're not feeling a little nervous listening to this, and you're, I guarantee you're thinking about somebody else on your team right now, who is that person?

So your leaders want you to succeed, but you need to own it. And there are so many basic things you can do time blocking sounds stupid, block your, you know, Greg talked about that, how he would work a long day and he would time block based on time zones. He talked about that, right? That's a simple thing you can do.

All right. Developing your own skills. Greg talked about that. He sucked and then he bought a book and then he didn't suck. All right. That's investing in your own skills. Now, some would say he still sucks. and you know, who am I to argue with that assessment? Exactly. But the point is like the photographer.

So let's my last point. This is not a sales issue. This is a work integrity work ethic issue. No matter what career, if you leave sales and go somewhere. This same discussion will still apply. You need to own your own success. You need to overcome adversity. You need to work through the disadvantages. You have eventually there become a choice where you feel like they're just being cheap or they're not investing you, or they're not committed to you.

Fine change jobs. That's not a you issue. That's a demo issue. You've got permission. I wanna be clear in that, but you know, if, if you're early in your sales career, This is gonna be the difference between success and not success. If you're into your sales career, you know what I'm talking about, and you're probably already thinking who can I give this episode to, to listen and hope they pick up what Greg and Darryl are putting down.

So that's it. Old school, new school Greg tells more about Skaled and about your incredible capabilities.

So we have a look at their GTM strategy, their outreach strategy, their playbooks, that they have, even the technology stack that they're working with. And we have a look at the conversion metrics and all that kind of cool stuff. And then we have a look at the other side, those that are really on that precipice of scaling really fast and basically setting them for success.

When you have a look at sales process, people, technology data, we wanna make sure they've got it all in place so they can actually ramp up and really go rocket. That's what we do over here at Skaled consulting. Did it do a good job outreach?

We had a wonderful friend Thibo on where he was talking about outreach. I mean, what you're seeing here in a very com different conversation altogether, but where I'm tying the two knots together between Greg and, and if you, her two to episodes go Debo was the importance of. The importance said another way.

Outreach equals prospecting equals pipe. That means best as I can put it to you that way. Right. And pipe is life. Jeb. Blood says that all the time pipe is life. Mr. He's not wrong.

It was Victor Vatus and Victor talked about how you can use guerilla tactics grill techniques to get in front of sales prospects. Right. In other words, it wasn't about what we talked to about today. It wasn't about objection, hand discovery. It was about being outside the box and doing something completely unexpected.

Right. And why was sitting here talking to you? He messaged me and I just wanted to share this. And he messaged me because as we record this, his episode is live this week. And, and this is what I love about a sales rep who owns their own success. All right. He said, Darryl, this was, it gives I won't, I won't want your numbers.

This was my typical best performing sales sequence conversion rate, where I gotta reply. Here's the percentage reply I got. Right. And there's a number. He goes, I updated my sequence this week. And, and in it, I said, Hey, I'd like to invite you to my podcast. So he is not selling 'em, he's just offering them a piece of content.

Give this a listen. And like you, my good friend, Greg, he is a sales rockstar and consultant advisor. So clearly mm-hmm , this is a chance for him to sell his own credibility. And that's all he said, and I've never had a guess, come back to me and say, I took your show and put it into my sequence, his response rate, according to what he just set me more than quadruple with that one line.

Why do I share this? Not because Victor's a great guy and you school listen in that episode. But because he's doing exactly what Greg talked about here, which is about owning your own success. So Victor took initiative to try to improve the response rate he was getting by trying something new, as opposed to just saying my response rate sucks.

I love. That's what a good sales rep does. And that is why you need to reach out to Greg. You can find him on LinkedIn. He's a good guy. I like him a lot. We'll keep him around. He's kind of fun.

If you think your leadership needs to hear it, cuz you know what leaders can suck too. Share it with them, but more than anything, what you need to do is share the inside inside sales show with your colleagues and your peers. Get them listening every single week, because like Greg said, you need to own your own success.

And that starts here at this show with the world's best smartest people, including reluctantly, Greg, my name is Darryl. I'll talk to you next week. Take care folks. Talk to you. Bye.