Episode 66
Why You Need to Have Authentic Conversations with Customers with Brent Keltner
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Highlights
- How he became a go-to-market and revenue acceleration leader (02:12)
- Defining the authentic conversations that you can have with buyers (04:27)
- Applying the skills he acquired doing qualitative market research to his revenue growth work (06:48)
- Why you should start with your customer stories before going into your product (09:41)
- Being a Revenue Officer: Getting the sales team, marketing team, and other team players in alignment (12:09)
- Shifting your focus away from your product to thinking about your customer’s WHY (14:39)
- The value of ensuring your core goal is to get into your buyer’s world (17:53)
- Pattern recognition: The one thing that he took from his academic training into the corporate realm (22:47)
- NOBODY cares about your product (28:36)
In this episode of the Science of Selling STEM, I will have a value-packed conversation with the Founder and President of Winalytics LLC, Brent Keltner, Ph.D. Winalytics is a go-to-market and revenue acceleration consultancy that helps clients reach their top growth potential by shifting from product-driven selling to value-driven go-to-market strategies. Brent is also the author of the forthcoming book “The Revenue Acceleration Playbook: Creating an Authentic Buyer Journey Across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success” Brent brings to the role more than a decade of experience as a revenue leader in enterprise to early-stage companies and ten years as a Ph.D. social scientist at Stanford and the RAND Corporation.
His clients have included Ascend Learning, Credo Reference, DealerRater, Lexmark, Mursion, Ready Education, True Fit, and Verisk Analytics. Brent and I will dive into the topic of authentic conversations: what they are, how to spot them, and how they differentiate a business. You will learn what authentic conversations with your customers should look like and how to build and train a sales team that can have these conversations. We will cover all aspects of having authentic conversations with buyers during our discussion.
You’ll also learn how to find out if your sales team is currently having authentic conversations, and how authentic conversations can lead to better discovery calls and more sales. If you’re looking to differentiate yourself from the competition, having authentic conversations is the way to do it. Listen in to learn more!
Quotes
“Every phase of the buyer and customer journey starts with your buyer why and then your customer why. Then look at how you can make them more successful. You will grow faster, you will have better buyer and customer relationships, you will like your work more, and you will learn every day” - Brent Keltner
“If you wanna capture your customer stories, don’t just go and show up with a bunch of random questions. Ask 6 or 8 questions around what you think is your value” - Brent Keltner
“Don’t start with your product. Start with your customer stories” - Brent Keltner
“Shift from thinking about your product and focus more on a story around how a customer used your product” - Brent Keltner
“Don’t focus on sales skills, focus on sales skills in the context of go-to-market skills because we should all be running authentic conversations at different depths” - Brent Keltner
Resources Mentioned:
Learn More About Brent in the Links Below:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkeltner/
Website - https://AuthenticityWins.com/
Email - BKeltner@Winalytics.com
Connect with Wesleyne Greer:
- Wesleyne’s Website - https://transformedsales.com/
- Wesleyne on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleynegreer/
- Wesleyne on Facebook - https://web.facebook.com/wesleynegreer
- Wesleyne on Twitter - https://twitter.com/wesleynegreer
- Email Her at wesleyne@transformedsales.com
Transcript
As a sales manager, you are judged by the
Wesleyne Greer:performance of your team, and you're praised when they do
Wesleyne Greer:well. But one thing that you've not been able to figure out is
Wesleyne Greer:how to get everyone on your team consistently hitting quota every
Wesleyne Greer:single month. On the Snack size sales podcast, we discuss the
Wesleyne Greer:science of selling stem sales leadership in the science,
Wesleyne Greer:technology, engineering and manufacturing fields is
Wesleyne Greer:difficult. You will learn from sales managers just like you
Wesleyne Greer:that will give you actionable insights and tips on how to
Wesleyne Greer:develop as a leader and achieve your revenue targets every
Wesleyne Greer:single month. So pop your headphones in and get ready to
Wesleyne Greer:listen to my guests today. They will give you information and
Wesleyne Greer:inspiration to ensure that you have actionable insights that
Wesleyne Greer:you can put into place today. Hello and welcome to another
Wesleyne Greer:episode of the science of selling stem today I am so
Wesleyne Greer:delighted to have Brent Keltner with when analytics here. How
Wesleyne Greer:are you Brent? I'm doing well. Wesleyne
Brent Keltner:I'm really excited for the conversation.
Wesleyne Greer:I am to let me tell you a little bit about
Wesleyne Greer:Brent. Brent Keltner is a PhD and the founder and president of
Wesleyne Greer:Winter Olympics a go to market and revenue acceleration
Wesleyne Greer:consultancy they help their clients reach top revenue growth
Wesleyne Greer:by shifting from product driven selling to focusing on authentic
Wesleyne Greer:and buyer and customer journey. Authenticity wins. When you
Wesleyne Greer:anchor each buyer or customer conversations on how they define
Wesleyne Greer:value you will grow faster before starting with analytics
Wesleyne Greer:he spent more than a decade as a revenue leader in enterprise to
Wesleyne Greer:early stage companies including Kaplan edge ventures plus del
Wesleyne Greer:Sol partners and college link. He began his career as a PhD
Wesleyne Greer:social scientists and spent 10 years conducting qualitative
Wesleyne Greer:research interviews at Stanford University. He lives in Boston
Wesleyne Greer:with his wife at son and daughter. They are active
Wesleyne Greer:members of park St. Charles and Boston Trinity Academy. Wow,
Wesleyne Greer:you're not doing a few things. You have a PhD you had many
Wesleyne Greer:companies. You have two kids and a wife. So tell me how did you
Wesleyne Greer:start your career and how did you get to where you are today?
Brent Keltner:Yeah, let's start at the endpoint and then we'll
Brent Keltner:walk in cheese's back I mean, we I think of myself as a go to
Brent Keltner:market and revenue acceleration leader. I love selling, selling
Brent Keltner:in the modern buyer centric market. If you're thinking about
Brent Keltner:selling outside of the buyer journey, you're thinking about
Brent Keltner:the wrong thing because sales as a standalone profession is
Brent Keltner:broken. Yeah, salespeople need to be guides they need to be
Brent Keltner:trusted advisors that starts on the website starts in
Brent Keltner:prospecting sales continues it continues in the expansion
Brent Keltner:motion. So I say that because I ran qualitative research
Brent Keltner:projects and I got really good at doing what we now call
Brent Keltner:authentic conversations wasn't about me wasn't about my
Brent Keltner:research project it was all about is what's in it for you
Brent Keltner:Mr. or Mrs. Bank, executive, telecom executive and CERN's
Brent Keltner:executive, what are you going to get out of the interview? What
Brent Keltner:are the peers we're working with ads you're going to be able to
Brent Keltner:learn from I got really good at that may be good at qualitative
Brent Keltner:research, you may be good at selling. I transitioned to the
Brent Keltner:dark side as academics call to the from the Academy to Kaplan
Brent Keltner:and then a bunch of other companies. What I found out is
Brent Keltner:running authentic conversations was not the way people were
Brent Keltner:trying to sell. People in my teams at Kaplan and edgy
Brent Keltner:ventures were trained to product sell, they were trained to drag
Brent Keltner:their buyers through their pain, pitch their product, handle
Brent Keltner:objections and close them down. And it's like where's the
Brent Keltner:partnership in that where's the buyers success in that so I
Brent Keltner:trained my teams on our own authentic conversations and it
Brent Keltner:was fantastically successful had four quick growth successes
Brent Keltner:started consulting on it we've had a successful consulting
Brent Keltner:business for seven years which is all about every phase of the
Brent Keltner:buyer and customer journey. Start with your buyer why and
Brent Keltner:then your customer Why come back to how you can make them more
Brent Keltner:successful, you will grow faster, you will have better
Brent Keltner:buyer and customer relationships, you will like
Brent Keltner:your work more you will learn every day.
Wesleyne Greer:So we have a whole lot to talk about here.
Wesleyne Greer:Because yes, your vision of conversations with buyers is so
Wesleyne Greer:aligned with my I often say stop vomiting product knowledge on
Wesleyne Greer:your buyers like and they don't care about you. So I'm really
Wesleyne Greer:curious about this authenticity because a lot of people are
Wesleyne Greer:throwing this word around now oh my authentic this or be
Wesleyne Greer:authentic that like how do you really define those authentic
Wesleyne Greer:conversations that you're having with buyers?
Brent Keltner:Get to me I'm an authentic conversation is just
Brent Keltner:intentionally focus on do we have a fit or not? The you and I
Brent Keltner:and look, you can have authentic conversations and a personal
Brent Keltner:relationship? Is our relationship going in a
Brent Keltner:direction we both want to it to go? Right? So it's really about
Brent Keltner:being working on alignment. It's about not you and I, it's about
Brent Keltner:we, and what are we doing together? So for us, a good
Brent Keltner:authentic conversation just has three parts business personal,
Brent Keltner:you start by just agreeing, are we talking about something we
Brent Keltner:both care about, because if I don't know what you care about,
Brent Keltner:then I'm vomiting at you, right? Whether it's in my business life
Brent Keltner:or personal life. And once I know what you care about, good
Brent Keltner:karma, personal respect is focused on that. Share the
Brent Keltner:elements of your product, share the elements of your customers,
Brent Keltner:stories that align to what you care about. And then the third
Brent Keltner:part is see if you care. Did I deepen your sense of fit with
Brent Keltner:me? And if so what will you do about it next, so let's agree
Brent Keltner:what we're talking about. Let's work towards deeper alignment or
Brent Keltner:not. And then let's agree to what on both sides we will do.
Brent Keltner:And if you have conversations like that, you'll have more
Brent Keltner:great conversations every day, not good conversations, but
Brent Keltner:great conversations that lift you out of your day, and you
Brent Keltner:together are imagining a better future that you're actively
Brent Keltner:working towards.
Wesleyne Greer:Hmm, that's so good, really thinking about and
Wesleyne Greer:when I listened to you, one thing that really draws me to
Wesleyne Greer:why this is so important is you're talking about us and
Wesleyne Greer:listening and actually walking along that buyers journey. So
Wesleyne Greer:you started your career doing market research, and many people
Wesleyne Greer:don't even actually understand what market research is help us
Wesleyne Greer:talk to the audience about what you did specifically in that
Wesleyne Greer:world, and how it helped you doing your work that you're
Wesleyne Greer:doing now?
Brent Keltner:Yeah, so I did qualitative research, and it was
Brent Keltner:more looking at human capital strategies. How are people
Brent Keltner:investing in their people to then drive business growth, but
Brent Keltner:it's related to qualitative research you can do in a market
Brent Keltner:research phase, when you're interviewing customers, what I
Brent Keltner:found what I learned quickly, as if you had a structured set of
Brent Keltner:questions, six to eight, that you went through in every
Brent Keltner:conversation, you could see the patterns quicker, right? Because
Brent Keltner:you and look, it doesn't mean they're not some every
Brent Keltner:conversation is gonna go a slightly different question way.
Brent Keltner:But if you have those questions, you commit to asking in every
Brent Keltner:conversation, you see the patterns quicker if you go to a
Brent Keltner:sales conversation, and you sort of commit to a structure where
Brent Keltner:I'm going to start with some discovery on your why. And ask
Brent Keltner:three or four questions, and I'm going to share more on me, but
Brent Keltner:I'm going to stop and ask you where you're seeing the most
Brent Keltner:value. And then at the end, I'm going to ask what are you
Brent Keltner:willing to do about it? Right? So as I became a revenue leader,
Brent Keltner:I use that same structure to like, what is a good first call?
Brent Keltner:Let's just commit to asking six or eight common questions. So we
Brent Keltner:know how good that call was, at the end. And for good market
Brent Keltner:researchers. And I listened to an awesome podcast about a woman
Brent Keltner:who drives growth by doing customer stories. So if you want
Brent Keltner:to capture your customer stories, don't just go and show
Brent Keltner:up with a bunch of random questions. Write as six or eight
Brent Keltner:questions around what you think is your value. And you start
Brent Keltner:with an open ended question. Where are you getting the most
Brent Keltner:value out of this relationship? Are there any things we could
Brent Keltner:improve? And do better? Because that's always just asking, but
Brent Keltner:then you probably have three questions around specific
Brent Keltner:things, you know, you do well, specific gaps that you help
Brent Keltner:companies solve process or capabilities, you don't ask
Brent Keltner:those every time and get a range of response. So that more in, as
Brent Keltner:you said, just a little bit more thoughtful, just being more
Brent Keltner:intentional. taken five 10% of our time to prep and reflect we
Brent Keltner:do better,
Wesleyne Greer:huh? You know, one of the key things that I
Wesleyne Greer:when I'm working with sales teams, I tell them, Hey, have
Wesleyne Greer:your new salespeople do I call them win loss reports like
Wesleyne Greer:they're the new kid on the block, give them five questions
Wesleyne Greer:to ask the deals that were won in the deals that were lost in
Wesleyne Greer:their territory, or just have them pull random ones because
Wesleyne Greer:like you said, it's like hearing the voice of the customer
Wesleyne Greer:getting that story and understanding and as a brand new
Wesleyne Greer:salesperson. That's the best way to learn. Hey, this is what we
Wesleyne Greer:do really well. This is what we don't do. Well, I don't want to
Wesleyne Greer:step in that mud.
Brent Keltner:I love that. I was on a call today with a guy
Brent Keltner:named Austin Kennedy who's the CRO at a company called hu which
Brent Keltner:does immersive simulations for training different types of
Brent Keltner:skills. I had never heard this before, but they start their
Brent Keltner:onboarding with customer use cases and stories. Were really
Brent Keltner:powerful, you just said the same thing is, don't start with your
Brent Keltner:product, start with your customer stories and then come
Brent Keltner:to how your product helps with us. It shifts from what we
Brent Keltner:talked about when you start with customer stories, it shifts from
Brent Keltner:you and I to we as peers that are working on a common problem
Brent Keltner:we're both trying to solve. So I love that idea of new sellers,
Brent Keltner:do a win loss report, absolutely, actually really know
Brent Keltner:why they bought or why they didn't buy
Wesleyne Greer:Exactly. And the crazy thing is, it's when we use
Wesleyne Greer:this voice of customer when we stop talking so much. And
Wesleyne Greer:actually listen to the buyers. It gives us so much insight. I
Wesleyne Greer:was actually on a call today. And when I'm walking through,
Wesleyne Greer:I'm delivering a proposal, I always ask for agreement. Do I
Wesleyne Greer:have this right? And they were like, actually, no, you don't
Wesleyne Greer:have it right? This is what the challenge that we're going
Wesleyne Greer:through is. And so it helped me shift my trajectory to ensure I
Wesleyne Greer:was meeting the customer where they are because they weren't
Wesleyne Greer:here. They weren't all the way up here. They were still down at
Wesleyne Greer:the baseline level. And I
Brent Keltner:love that you said that you did that with the
Brent Keltner:proposal, because people often forget honestly. And you know
Brent Keltner:this every single conversation, things change, new players get
Brent Keltner:involved. So once you think you know your buyers, why start the
Brent Keltner:next conversation? Do you still know the backers? Will IRS
Brent Keltner:things change? Or can they go deeper? Can they help you
Brent Keltner:quantify or they can help you tell you more about why that
Brent Keltner:would make them more successful? And then before you get to a
Brent Keltner:proposal? Have them confirm it? Put it at the top of the
Brent Keltner:proposal? Why are they talking about working with you?
Wesleyne Greer:Exactly. And you know, the crazy thing is the
Wesleyne Greer:meeting was scheduled and the person emailed and they said, I
Wesleyne Greer:thought you said you're gonna send me a proposal so we can
Wesleyne Greer:review for it before our meeting. I said we don't send
Wesleyne Greer:proposals. We present proposals why exactly what you said,
Wesleyne Greer:because if you send somebody a proposal, you're putting the
Wesleyne Greer:onus on your buyer to interpret it the way that they want to
Wesleyne Greer:interpret it, you can't tell them the story around it. You
Wesleyne Greer:can't give them the why and help them remember, you came to me
Wesleyne Greer:with this problem and this problem, and this is the
Wesleyne Greer:solution to fix it. That's right. So you mentioned that you
Wesleyne Greer:were a Revenue Officer at a company. So tell me as a Revenue
Wesleyne Greer:Officer, how did you really ensure that you got all of the
Wesleyne Greer:players on the team, the sales team marketing team, COO? How
Wesleyne Greer:did you get everyone in alignment in that role?
Brent Keltner:Yeah, I mean, now we call them value plays, and
Brent Keltner:content pathways around your value plays. But I think what I
Brent Keltner:realized early on, and success stories are your most important
Brent Keltner:type of content. But there are others. I mean, blog posts, and
Brent Keltner:you know, white papers that we write, or even webinars. And I
Brent Keltner:think what I realized early on, and we now do consulting around
Brent Keltner:this is you got to get cross go to market team alignment on
Brent Keltner:those value plays. Right. So let's take a example of a
Brent Keltner:company called agility that I just got a nice email from Chris
Brent Keltner:code is their VP of Customer development, and they have a
Brent Keltner:sequel analytics platform that now allows you to manage from
Brent Keltner:the same sequel codebase, across the entire enterprise, right, so
Brent Keltner:people can have their versions within share to save library. So
Brent Keltner:analytics at scale now becomes a lot more doable. And so they
Brent Keltner:were selling that right as they were selling kind of features of
Brent Keltner:hey, when you would like to have a code library, and when you'd
Brent Keltner:like to, you know, be able to share that code, etc. And then
Brent Keltner:they sort of realized, if we roll up, what's the problem that
Brent Keltner:solves? Well, for a manager, an analytics manager, it makes
Brent Keltner:their team 30% more productive, right. And they had stats on
Brent Keltner:that they can do the same amount of coding 30% more time, they
Brent Keltner:roll up to the chief development officer level, or data officer
Brent Keltner:or whatever it they've not only make the whole enterprise 30%
Brent Keltner:more productive, but they can get to business insights, a lot
Brent Keltner:quicker supply chain insights or whatever it is warehousing. So
Brent Keltner:as they build their value plays, okay, now, what are our best
Brent Keltner:stories around each? What are our best insight blogs around
Brent Keltner:each and so now thinking not content is an individual asset,
Brent Keltner:but content tells a story about how we help with that buyer?
Brent Keltner:Why? So what I found is if you just got good at aligning your
Brent Keltner:content to different buyer, why's that you help with that
Brent Keltner:could align your go to market team, from marketing, to sales
Brent Keltner:to customer success through to your product is building value
Brent Keltner:plays with content aligned to each much easier for people to
Brent Keltner:understand, are we all talking about the same thing?
Wesleyne Greer:So how do you shift from being so focused on
Wesleyne Greer:your product to really thinking about those value plays that the
Wesleyne Greer:why's that your customer like the reason behind it? What is
Wesleyne Greer:that paradigm shift that people need to go through to get there?
Wesleyne Greer:So
Brent Keltner:technically, you already described it right? As
Brent Keltner:you start with your win loss analysis, you start with your
Brent Keltner:customer base. Ways You start with your customer stories
Brent Keltner:because when you tell customer stories, it's not only not you
Brent Keltner:and I but us peers, but it also shifts, right? It's like you
Brent Keltner:talk about your product, how did one of your customers use your
Brent Keltner:product, it Now very quickly becomes about an outcome,
Brent Keltner:similar with a win loss analysis, and very, very quickly
Brent Keltner:becomes did it help with an outcome or not? Somebody else.
Brent Keltner:So shift to thinking about now your product, but a story around
Brent Keltner:how a customer use your product. That's the easiest way to do it.
Brent Keltner:But there's a bigger mindset problem is what I'm coming
Brent Keltner:deeper, deeper understanding, we like talking about ourselves,
Brent Keltner:right? We like talking about ourselves, people get
Brent Keltner:uncomfortable with uncertainty. You know, our brains are often
Brent Keltner:wired to hear confirmation, not to learn right not to go into it
Brent Keltner:saying, hey, I need to ask questions, understand, get to a
Brent Keltner:conclusion before so you need to commit leadership and then as a
Brent Keltner:team, to I don't know, I got to get the answer out of the
Brent Keltner:conversation. And that means I got to shift to a learner
Brent Keltner:mindset. Not a knowing mindset, but a learner mindset, every
Brent Keltner:conversation, I'm probably going to need to learn new things
Brent Keltner:about my buyers and prospects. And I need to commit to that and
Brent Keltner:build that behavior. And I'll stop for some questions before I
Brent Keltner:keep going on this topic. Because it's a big one. You
Brent Keltner:know,
Wesleyne Greer:when I, what I kind of equivocate that to is a
Wesleyne Greer:lot of times when a salesperson or even a sales manager, they
Wesleyne Greer:show up to the meeting with their list of questions, and
Wesleyne Greer:they're like, these are all the five things that I want to know.
Wesleyne Greer:And I always tell people, I'm Rachael, I do nothing like the
Wesleyne Greer:books I do. When you go to a discovery call, you have one
Wesleyne Greer:question? And that is your opening question. And this
Wesleyne Greer:actually comes from Deb Calvert, she calls it the command
Wesleyne Greer:question, you have one strong question, you open your
Wesleyne Greer:discovery with open the meeting with and you listen, you focus
Wesleyne Greer:on the person, right and listen to what they're saying. And when
Wesleyne Greer:you listen to what they're saying. And you get in their
Wesleyne Greer:world, they're more willing to go on that journey with you.
Wesleyne Greer:Because like you said, it's hard to change. It's like hardwired
Wesleyne Greer:in us to think about ourselves to do what we want to do. But if
Wesleyne Greer:you step into that buyers world, that's when those wheels start
Wesleyne Greer:turning.
Brent Keltner:Yeah, I love that. And I assume in this, your
Brent Keltner:command question you listen, and then probably do a little bit of
Brent Keltner:recapping and then ask more questions.
Wesleyne Greer:Absolutely. Just like I do my podcast, anyone
Wesleyne Greer:who's ever been on this podcast, some podcasts give you a list of
Wesleyne Greer:questions. I used to do that, because that's what you know,
Wesleyne Greer:they teach you to do, yeah, you send the questions. But I don't
Wesleyne Greer:do that. Because like, every single person, their story is so
Wesleyne Greer:interesting. And I want to learn about them. I don't want it to
Wesleyne Greer:be self serving, and only ask you a prescribed question. So I
Wesleyne Greer:literally asked that one question. I start with same
Wesleyne Greer:question every time, guys. You know, tell me about your
Wesleyne Greer:journey. And based on the journey, I'm asking you
Wesleyne Greer:questions.
Brent Keltner:Yep. So I love that. And I think what's most
Brent Keltner:important, and what you said is our whole goal is to get into
Brent Keltner:our buyers world and understand their why for the call, we often
Brent Keltner:think about and understand the goal of discovery is to get to a
Brent Keltner:buyer success statement, how can we make them more successful and
Brent Keltner:seeing that future together? And you can do that with one
Brent Keltner:question and then follow on questions. But at the end of the
Brent Keltner:day, they have to be excited about doing something with us,
Brent Keltner:or it's gonna go absolutely
Wesleyne Greer:nowhere. Absolutely. Building a learner
Wesleyne Greer:mindset
Brent Keltner:is not an individual pursuit. Because we
Brent Keltner:individually, you know, you and I have a certain disposition and
Brent Keltner:that practice these skills over and over again, I can be pulled
Brent Keltner:into product pitching, it's hard. I do do it sometimes. But
Brent Keltner:I built that mindset for years and years and years and years
Brent Keltner:and years. A lot of new teams, when you think about making this
Brent Keltner:shift, if you think individually, it's not going to
Brent Keltner:happen. What you need to do is we also encourage you get into a
Brent Keltner:team based mindset, where you're coming together as a team every
Brent Keltner:two weeks, and you're asking questions about your buyer and
Brent Keltner:your use case and your success stories could be sharing deals,
Brent Keltner:but you're intentionally saying we need to learn from each other
Brent Keltner:because the market out there is so challenging that we need to
Brent Keltner:learn about a buyers quicker. And we actually encourage an off
Brent Keltner:week where you have coaching with individually in pairs with
Brent Keltner:a peer or your your manager and then a team call. So it's 3% of
Brent Keltner:your time 3% of your time a week is basically like I'm going to
Brent Keltner:be an active learner. The other awesome thing about the CTU call
Brent Keltner:is that bi weekly call their CEO joins us and Kenny sets up their
Brent Keltner:CEO joins to basically says it's important that you all show up
Brent Keltner:to be active learners and is that kind of commitment that
Brent Keltner:puts companies on a different growth trajectory. What we hear
Brent Keltner:way too often so we have experienced salespeople, and I
Brent Keltner:say that means they're good at product pitching because your
Brent Keltner:experience is backward looking forward looking is how do I get
Brent Keltner:better at selling to each buyer and I can all I learned that
Brent Keltner:from my buyers and my peers
Wesleyne Greer:Hmm. So if you just wanted to scratch this
Wesleyne Greer:little nugget that you know I love to talk about is that no
Wesleyne Greer:matter the initiative that your company is going after, or
Wesleyne Greer:trying to implement, whether it's sales training, Google ad,
Wesleyne Greer:whatever it is, if leadership is not involved and invested, it's
Wesleyne Greer:never going to work. And so a lot of times, what we see is I
Wesleyne Greer:say, companies are throwing money at the problem. They're
Wesleyne Greer:like, Oh, yeah, more sales, training, more sales training,
Wesleyne Greer:oh, let's do this. Or let's do that. And what happens to the
Wesleyne Greer:manager, the leaders, they're in the back of the room, or they're
Wesleyne Greer:declining calls, because they're not invested. And so for them
Wesleyne Greer:showing up show this is important to me. And not only is
Wesleyne Greer:it important to me, but I'm your manager, I'm your leader, I'm
Wesleyne Greer:the CEO, but I'm still showing up to this call, right? Because
Wesleyne Greer:I want to learn and having that lifelong learning, right, are
Wesleyne Greer:really understanding that we're not like a finite being or a
Wesleyne Greer:finite person in our development, that we continually
Wesleyne Greer:have to learn new skills. And as a team, we're good because when
Wesleyne Greer:one person on the team does wrong, or when one person on the
Wesleyne Greer:team goes in vomits product knowledge that one person
Wesleyne Greer:they're talking to tells what 10 of their friends, but the one
Wesleyne Greer:that's doing it, right, they tell one person and it stays
Wesleyne Greer:there. So as a unit as a company, we have to get
Wesleyne Greer:stronger.
Brent Keltner:Yeah. And I love that it starts with leadership,
Brent Keltner:setting a direction. And I just want to add one thing to what
Brent Keltner:you said is this is not about I mean, look, I was raised an
Brent Keltner:academic I love to learn. As a revenue leader, I don't spend
Brent Keltner:time learning about my buyers, because I just want to be touchy
Brent Keltner:feely, right? I spend time learning about my buyers because
Brent Keltner:I close more quicker and higher dollar values, and I expand
Brent Keltner:quicker. And I've written a whole book with 20 case studies
Brent Keltner:about how this works. But the reason to be authentic, is we
Brent Keltner:will win a lot faster. When we as you said the whole goal of
Brent Keltner:discovery is why are they on that call? What problem can I
Brent Keltner:solve for them continually bringing them back to that and
Brent Keltner:so the reason to be authentic, you'll enjoy your work more, but
Brent Keltner:you will win faster.
Wesleyne Greer:Yeah. And I think you get a faster Yes, and
Wesleyne Greer:you get a faster No, because there are also times that it's
Wesleyne Greer:not a good fit this past month or two clients, I'm like this is
Wesleyne Greer:just this is not a good fit for us. For you, it's not going to
Wesleyne Greer:be beneficial, you're not going to achieve your goals. And this
Wesleyne Greer:isn't a good fit for us. And again, when you have that
Wesleyne Greer:authenticity and you step into your actual buyers world, like
Wesleyne Greer:really going not like tiptoeing not sprinkling, but all the way
Wesleyne Greer:into their world, and you really understand their challenges, and
Wesleyne Greer:they're like, I need to go on this journey, you're gonna take
Wesleyne Greer:me I want you to pull me along, I was actually going to ask
Wesleyne Greer:about your academic background coupled with what you do now.
Wesleyne Greer:Because I mean, you know, getting a PhD is no small feat,
Wesleyne Greer:right? You got to be smart, I will say to do that. And you get
Wesleyne Greer:really good at researching and learning and doing all of those
Wesleyne Greer:things. And sometimes one of the challenges with academics is, as
Wesleyne Greer:you said, when you translate over into the corporate realm,
Wesleyne Greer:it doesn't always go as smoothly as you've gone. So tell us a
Wesleyne Greer:little bit about that transition you made from the academia into
Wesleyne Greer:the corporate realm, if you will.
Brent Keltner:So for me what the academic training taught me
Brent Keltner:to be really good at from a revenue leader point of view is
Brent Keltner:pattern recognition. Right? It's just really good at how do I win
Brent Keltner:by for each buyer, and what's the overall value prop. And so
Brent Keltner:that's I kind of train my brain to get really good at pattern
Brent Keltner:recognition, or the academic training wasn't great, was
Brent Keltner:recognizing some of the things that you alluded to around the
Brent Keltner:change management, needing to build the coalition of support,
Brent Keltner:right, needing to get all levels of buy in that this we're going
Brent Keltner:to shift I just sort of assumed everybody looked at the world
Brent Keltner:this way. And so I not only one of my first job roles at a major
Brent Keltner:dustup with the, you know, like the president of the company on
Brent Keltner:this point, but then through to my work with edgy ventures, Tom
Brent Keltner:directly who was my CEO there now as the CEO of Charlotte, I
Brent Keltner:was awesome and authentic conversations externally. One of
Brent Keltner:my internal colleagues called me the bulldozer. No, this is the
Brent Keltner:direction we're going. Right. So that was great at the pattern
Brent Keltner:recognition, not as good at the how do we build the coalition
Brent Keltner:support, and that's been, you know, I've gotten much better at
Brent Keltner:that. But that was the good and the bad of being trained as an
Brent Keltner:academic.
Wesleyne Greer:Wow, a lot of times, and I don't know if
Wesleyne Greer:that's a necessarily an academic thing, but I see that a lot with
Wesleyne Greer:leaders, right. It's like if the customer is important, I care
Wesleyne Greer:about what the customer thinks. But my colleagues maybe my
Wesleyne Greer:subordinates and I don't think not that they don't matter as
Wesleyne Greer:much but you just don't have that in your mind is hey, this
Wesleyne Greer:is somebody I value in this is actually a customer too, right?
Wesleyne Greer:Like you're, you're the person, if you're a salesperson, your
Wesleyne Greer:operations person that is actually a customer, right? You
Wesleyne Greer:need to treat them like their customer, because guess what, if
Wesleyne Greer:they don't like you, they will make your life so difficult. And
Wesleyne Greer:none of your stuff will get executed and all your products
Wesleyne Greer:will fall through.
Brent Keltner:Yes. And when I think about authentic
Brent Keltner:conversations internally, this idea of you can have fed or not
Brent Keltner:one of the things with our early growth companies, we have three
Brent Keltner:buckets of segments we work with, and the early growth
Brent Keltner:companies would be kind of, you know, call it two to seven, 8
Brent Keltner:million in revenue, more and more of the work I do at CES is
Brent Keltner:like you got to set the Vision for growth. And if people aren't
Brent Keltner:a good fit at that stage, that's okay, their Y has to align with
Brent Keltner:your y too often I'd see people can just focus on consensus
Brent Keltner:building, which kind of mutes the message. And so I think even
Brent Keltner:internally, you have to listen, get people's buy into the
Brent Keltner:message, but you have to start with a direction.
Wesleyne Greer:Yeah. And when you think about the message and
Wesleyne Greer:the people that you have on the boat, if you will, a lot of
Wesleyne Greer:times people are trying to shift that why or shift the vision to
Wesleyne Greer:the actual people that you have and like know, what is the
Wesleyne Greer:person you need in this position? What do you need them
Wesleyne Greer:to do? And then you figure out, Is this the right person for
Wesleyne Greer:this position? It doesn't mean that they won't be with the
Wesleyne Greer:company, maybe there'll be in a different position? Because what
Wesleyne Greer:you need at this point in the company, this is not aligned.
Wesleyne Greer:Yeah, I love that. So tell me, you mentioned that you wrote a
Wesleyne Greer:book. Talk to us about your book.
Brent Keltner:Yeah, the book is called the revenue acceleration
Brent Keltner:playbook. The subtitle is creating an authentic buyer
Brent Keltner:journey across sales, marketing and customer success. And so it
Brent Keltner:really was 20 years in the making, because I was 13 years
Brent Keltner:as a revenue leader. And seven years as a consultant, it was
Brent Keltner:the first time I actually wrote down what I had been doing as a
Brent Keltner:revenue leader and consultant. And so it's very much a playbook
Brent Keltner:focus, right, this idea of how do you get organizational
Brent Keltner:alignment, you start with value plays and content pathways, but
Brent Keltner:then the book kind of goes through team by team, how does
Brent Keltner:this apply to our prospecting team? How does it apply to the
Brent Keltner:sales team? How does it apply to the land and expand motion,
Brent Keltner:which cuts across a couple of teams? How does it expand to the
Brent Keltner:customer success organization? And now it's really about how do
Brent Keltner:you take those value plays and in every buyer and customer
Brent Keltner:interaction really anchor on their why bringing it back to,
Brent Keltner:you know, as you did in the proposal, bringing it back to
Brent Keltner:why they're talking to you why they're doing a first call, why
Brent Keltner:they're doing a second call, why they're talking about closing
Brent Keltner:with you, what they might be talking about doing next with
Brent Keltner:you. And so we think we are talking more and more about
Brent Keltner:don't focus on sales skills, focus on sales skills in the
Brent Keltner:context of go to market skills, because we should all be running
Brent Keltner:authentic conversations at different depths. But even your
Brent Keltner:prospectors, good prospectors invite a conversation, right?
Brent Keltner:They ask questions, they share success stories, good
Brent Keltner:salespeople, you know, deepen that conversation, get to an
Brent Keltner:initial close, good sauce, customer success, people they're
Brent Keltner:not selling, but they're surfacing new ways to work
Brent Keltner:together through a habit of discovery. What else could we be
Brent Keltner:worth? This is our initial success. So we're having success
Brent Keltner:with are there these are other problems we solve for there are
Brent Keltner:other areas we can be working on. So your idea of there's an
Brent Keltner:initial proposal there's follow on but it all comes back to why
Brent Keltner:are you on the phone with me? What am I helping you
Brent Keltner:accomplish? How am I making your future more successful?
Wesleyne Greer:So I really like what your your whole basis of
Wesleyne Greer:your book because it brings me back to? I think it's Simon
Wesleyne Greer:Sinek? Yeah, start with why the book Start With Why right. And I
Wesleyne Greer:remember when I read that book, I was like, Ah, this is good.
Wesleyne Greer:Because a lot of times some people start with the how or the
Wesleyne Greer:what, but if you start with the why the why helps you understand
Wesleyne Greer:from all phases of the organization, again, to the
Wesleyne Greer:person answering the phone to the person fulfilling the order
Wesleyne Greer:to the person making sure that they're collecting payments,
Wesleyne Greer:that we are aligned as a company. And when you have
Wesleyne Greer:alignment as the company that helps like you said, it just
Wesleyne Greer:accelerates your revenue to 1020, a hundredfold.
Brent Keltner:Yep, start and continue on the why every
Brent Keltner:conversation and you will have that outcome. There's another
Brent Keltner:way of saying when you said that I was fortunate to have David
Brent Keltner:Meerman Scott as my book coach for this book. And you know,
Brent Keltner:he's been saying for years, nobody cares about your product.
Brent Keltner:Nobody cares about your product, and then we still show up and
Brent Keltner:vomit our product, what they care about is what does your
Brent Keltner:product do for them? So to your point, I mean, that's the whole
Brent Keltner:point of the book is if you come back to your buyer, why in every
Brent Keltner:interaction you will grow faster.
Wesleyne Greer:So I take that nobody cares about your price
Wesleyne Greer:and nobody cares about you. I actually say that we care about
Wesleyne Greer:you, your parents care about you, your spouse, your kids,
Wesleyne Greer:your auntie your cousins, but your customer, your buyer, they
Wesleyne Greer:don't care about you, they care about themselves, and they hear
Wesleyne Greer:about the problem that they have and how you can help them
Wesleyne Greer:achieve that success. 100%. So question for you tell me about
Wesleyne Greer:something in your life that you are most excited about
Wesleyne Greer:accomplishing, either personally or professionally?
Brent Keltner:And can that be future looking in the next six
Brent Keltner:months? Absolutely. So I have been doing karate with my kids
Brent Keltner:now for probably eight years, seven or eight years. And my son
Brent Keltner:and I, this fall we'll test for he will test for his first
Brent Keltner:degree adult black belt, and I'll test for my second degree,
Brent Keltner:adult black belt. And so training with him and the idea
Brent Keltner:of testing with him is feels awesome. It's been a great
Brent Keltner:journey for all of us.
Wesleyne Greer:That's amazing. That's amazing fatherhood. And
Wesleyne Greer:not just, you know, being a parent, but actually being
Wesleyne Greer:present and doing something that your kids enjoy. Right? So going
Wesleyne Greer:into their world.
Brent Keltner:They do karate, because I asked them to, but I
Brent Keltner:don't know that they would do it otherwise. But I do. I think
Brent Keltner:your point is really well taken as they've gotten older. I've
Brent Keltner:tried to figure out what their interests are, and how can I can
Brent Keltner:align to it. So we just had a great family trip to Ireland and
Brent Keltner:Scotland and my son loves hiking. So went on a couple of
Brent Keltner:hikes with him. And that was just awesome time because he was
Brent Keltner:in his own. And so I love that it's a great site direction, you
Brent Keltner:know, figure out what they care about and be supportive of that.
Wesleyne Greer:That's awesome. That's awesome. Brent, this has
Wesleyne Greer:been a wonderful conversation, I really enjoyed you know,
Wesleyne Greer:connecting on that authentic conversation and surrounding
Wesleyne Greer:yourself with the why, right, the company's why and stepping
Wesleyne Greer:into the buyers world.
Brent Keltner:Ya know, I love that it's always awesome
Brent Keltner:Wesleyan to talk with like minded revenue leaders. There's
Brent Keltner:more and more of us that think this way. But we're still the
Brent Keltner:minority, a growing minority, which is a good thing. So I
Brent Keltner:really appreciated the conversation.
Wesleyne Greer:And if people want to get in contact with you,
Wesleyne Greer:what is the one best way
Brent Keltner:they could just go to the website authenticity
Brent Keltner:wins.com which will bring them right to our book landing page
Brent Keltner:on our homepage, or they can email me at be Keltner. And when
Brent Keltner:a linux.com I'm happy to take questions and often do after
Brent Keltner:podcasts.
Wesleyne Greer:Awesome. Well, thank you so much, again for
Wesleyne Greer:sharing your time, your talent and your expertise with our
Wesleyne Greer:audience.
Brent Keltner:Thank you. Aslan, really enjoyed the conversation.
Brent Keltner:And that
Wesleyne Greer:was another episode of the science of
Wesleyne Greer:selling stem and remember and all that you do transform your
Wesleyne Greer:sales until next time.
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