Sales Methodologies: Less Theory, More Toolbox

[00:00:17] Hello everybody, I am one of your hosts Scott Snowden coming to you from almost the sidelines of the Blue Jays game. I'm dressed and ready to take it all in this evening so I'll be heading over there right after we're done this episode. That sounds exciting, I hope it goes well for you. Is that hockey or baseball?

[00:00:39] I love you so much Andy. No, it's baseball and the Toronto Blue Jays are struggling to prove themselves this season and we're going to see if they can redeem themselves after dropping the first two games in this series. They better come out with a win tonight.

[00:01:06] Well, all the best for that. No ice hockey in the summer then apparently in Canada. That's great. There is always ice hockey in Canada but there is no professional ice hockey this late in the month. We did just finish the Stanley Cup finals which were quite exciting this year actually. Carolina came out on top.

[00:01:26] Well, well, I'm Andy Baqone coming to you from the United Kingdom, where we don't have baseball, we don't have ice hockey, but apparently when we invented both the games, you know, there we go. But we do have other sports so you know if you're a sports fan come to England and enjoy some lovely sports over here. Crickets especially entertaining, especially when they do the 2020. There you go.

[00:01:53] If you end up in a test match for some reason, that can last five or six days which is a slightly different experience. 2020 cricket is quite good. Anyway, Scott back to you. Well, everybody, we usually talk about the weather when we get started but this is the sports report today and not to be confused with the purpose of this podcast. You are listening to Tea and Timbits, global perspectives on business development to help you prosper.

[00:02:23] We are finishing the month of June and we've been talking about sales methodologies all month long. I have found this month to be one of the more informative, useful and insightful series of episodes that we've done. For me personally, I feel like I've taken a lot away from Andy's expertise and familiarity with all these things.

[00:02:48] So I highly encourage you to go back and check out those other episodes from this month. Even if you are well-versed in all these sales methodologies, I enjoyed the conversations that we had learning a little bit more about them and sort of tying them all together and getting a better appreciation for the situations and scenarios where they all apply. And where they can all sort of layer on top of each other.

[00:03:12] We are going to finish the month with our routine that we promised to commit to in 2026 about being a little bit more tactical and tool focused and share some practical advice on how to implement and execute some of the things that we talk about every month. So I'm curious to see where that conversation goes.

[00:03:38] And I will just throw it out there that, you know, I established a rule. I can't remember if it was last month or in April. When you were in London and we were sat there together. Yeah, yeah. You're not allowed to nominate your CRM as a tool anymore because we're talking on a sales podcast and that's always a useful tool. So I'll take that one off of the table and you can start scrambling to think about other tools that you want to suggest, Andy.

[00:04:06] But before we do that, I think it's your turn to share a little anecdote or story. Have you got one this week? It is my turn. And indeed I do. So listeners who are familiar with the podcast will know that we regularly release our podcast consistently on a Wednesday. And today is Wednesday. So it's very likely that we're going to be able to do that.

[00:04:30] But for me personally, it's Wednesday evening and we had intended to originally record this a little bit earlier in the day. And then we had to postpone it. And then when we started just about to get recording, there was a big power cut and I lost Internet and access to everything. And and then all of a sudden thought, OK, what is the way to make this work?

[00:04:52] And I was scrambling around the house to to find a way to connect with strong enough mobile data and powerful enough laptop that I can actually record this on. And that I would be able to connect all of my recording equipment to. So I became a little bit of a scramble.

[00:05:11] But while I was doing that, it made me reflect quite a bit on on the importance of having backups for things and having an alternative plan and always thinking sort of outside the box. And now, of course, I hadn't anticipated that in, you know, in a G6, G7 country that just because the sun came out. But apparently that's that's a thing nowadays. And obviously the wind's not blowing and we don't have any oil. So we're a bit stuck when.

[00:05:41] But. But. It's been. A challenge to to constantly rely on Wi-Fi, rely on electricity. And and actually before we started recording the episode, before we had the power cut, I was explaining to Scott that I had another challenge power related as well, because my my actual keyboard that I have for the laptop is wireless. And so the battery had run out.

[00:06:10] So I was scrambling to find one of these very specific cables that I needed. It's like it's like an old Apple lightning connector, which, of course, I don't use anymore because they stopped putting them in the phones for years and years ago. But I had to find one of those in order to be able to charge the keyboard for the Mac. And yeah. Having many backups, having many alternatives and and planning for the unexpected is not a bad thing to do.

[00:06:37] And my old partner, she had she used to have a bug out bag just in case something happened. And she was like, I don't want people to think I'm a prepper or one of those people. She's like, you know, I don't want people to tease me, but it's a good idea. And there was definitely a couple of occasions where we almost needed it. So, yeah, it's there you go. Yeah. The benefit benefits of being prepared, I would say, is is a good lesson that I learned this evening. I like that reminder.

[00:07:07] It's a good one. And I think, you know, it's not always about being able to just pick up and seamlessly carry on because you've got a duplicate infrastructure. It's it's just kind of knowing what you're going to do in the eventuality that things don't quite go according to plan. So it's there's having a backup, but then there's just having contingency plans, which I think are related.

[00:07:33] And in the case of of business, not not entirely unrelated. And I think what's important about when you have those systems and structures in place and contingency plans available is that you you test them. You don't just talk about them once and then and then keep them at the ready.

[00:07:57] But you need to actually role play some of those situations, make sure those those backup systems work. Make sure your contingencies are executable because there's nothing worse than than making a decision to rely on something and then needing to use it and realize the battery in that other alternative method has run out because we haven't needed to turn it on. Exactly something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So a good a good refresher. A good reminder.

[00:08:26] Yeah, I think it was during my military time and I, you know, I'm going to ask for apologies for or I'm going to apologize in advance to the military service that this applies to. But but but there was one of the ones I worked with during my time in the military who had a saying, improvise, adapt and overcome. And it really stuck. It really stuck with me. And it was quite handy because.

[00:08:53] So I've experienced a lot of stressful and strange situations in my life and having that in my mind, in the back of my head when these stressful situations occur is definitely a very helpful thing to think about. That's a good that's a good that's a good reminder as well. I like that framework as well. Well, I don't know.

[00:09:19] Is there a parallel there to having the right tools available for executing your sales methodologies? What comes to mind for you when you start thinking about the tools that are going to support sales methodologies? I think this is a bit more ambiguous. I'm curious where your mind went went first on on this topic, Andy.

[00:09:45] Well, now when you think of tools, yes, you think of very often first digital tools or, you know, physical tools like awkward. You need a car to go and visit your customers. You need a telephone to go and call them. You need an email and all that sort of stuff. Yes, those are tools, but those are a given. What is not a given, but should be in an organization is coaching and training.

[00:10:11] And those are very important tools in in sales methodologies and and the implementation and success of those. And that is having a, you know, a clearly defined. Training program. Yep.

[00:10:28] And training that you invest in continually for the team and and that you have managers trained to be able to coach their team in the methodologies and how they're using them. And and that they then build like playbooks as well. Sort of, you know, step by step guides and how to do things in a certain way, kind of role playing scenarios. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:57] As you can best imagine. With the certain types of customers and customer portfolios that you have. I like that. There's three there training, coaching and playbooks. I like that. I mean, training and coaching very similar, but I would differentiate those as one. One is the sort of strategic guidance and the and the accountability and the oversight and the decision making around the right sales method. Oh, they're very different.

[00:11:28] Implement it. Yeah. And then and then training is more of their routine, the practice of adapting, adopting, executing, following, and making sure that it's a it's a it's a learned behavior. And then those playbooks are that are that sort of foundation upon which the rest is executed. So I really like that. I I wanted to say here, you know, you said, okay, digital tools. That's that's a given.

[00:11:57] I and we did sort of take CRM out of the out of the out of the equation. Um, I think this is one of those, uh, situations where you need to be really choosy and you need to be really selective. And as I sort of mentioned off the in the introduction to this episode, what I came away with from all those other conversations is there are, um, these nuances and these moments.

[00:12:26] And it really depends on deal size and situational, um, adaptation that you need, um, to, to, to, to, to be aware of when you can sort of pull on one of these techniques or, or leverage one of these methodologies, um, for, uh, for the, for the appropriate moment. So I don't know if it's a tool, but I'm going to, I'm going to insert it in here.

[00:12:50] The, I think the, the process diagram is a, is an incredibly useful structure to have in place. This is, I think, I think it's kind of an iterative thing. I think it, it provides tremendous value to familiarize yourself with each of the methodologies that we talked about other ones that you learn about.

[00:13:11] Um, this is not the only, you know, consideration set, but do your homework and do your research and don't just rely on what you first learned or what you've been familiar with last time or what you've been using, uh, forever, because there might be nuances or new things that you're unaware of. So, and then learning about those other, those other programs, those other methodologies might just simply strengthen your belief that the one that you've adopted is the right, is the right one.

[00:13:41] But then you need to kind of step back from it and not say, oh, I, this is the de facto best way to do it. You need to then look at the business separately and go, okay, what is the best, the best way for us to perform this function and set up our, our sales, our business development. And what does that look like? What is that process?

[00:14:04] So, so document and define and create for yourself, your sales process, your sales methodology for your individual organization, and then come back to the methodologies and pick from those what elements are most appropriate to support, um, the ongoing implementation of the tools and the sales methodologies that you, that you have at hand.

[00:14:32] Um, for those of you that are watching this episode, we've just had our first ever disappearance of one of the hosts in the middle of me going on that explanation. And I got very enthusiastic and excited about it. I think the rest of the internet in the UK has just died on, on Andy. Uh, well, Hey, look, Andy's back. Uh, he dropped out for a moment there.

[00:14:56] Um, but you were just about to contribute a couple other thoughts, Andy, what are, what are your, what else are you thinking from a tools perspective here? Well, you see, in my opinion, it's, it's very important with preparation because once you've set up the, and established the methodologies and you're familiar with those. And you put the training in place, you've got the regular coaching in place and you've, um, you know, established all of the necessary.

[00:15:27] Kind of documentation and playbooks in order to be able to manage those in system. Then you need to start delivering that on a day to day and actually taking that out into the field. And, and that in itself is, you know, is incredibly important. And this is where the planning tools, uh, come into help. And, uh, and what we have there of course is, uh, what we, what we've used in the past is we've used a, a, a call planning document or a call planning card, depending on how it's done.

[00:15:56] And, uh, and, and that, that's typically focused on like five to 10 key points that you want the seller to focus on, um, ahead of the call that they're about to go on to. And that could be a telephone call. It could be a meeting. It could be an in-person thing. It could be a presentation. Uh, but in order to make sure that they're on top of those things and that they're applying the methodology in the right way, um, then you have those points that you're working through.

[00:16:26] I mean, typical things, of course, you know, and given things are like the objective of the meeting. And I say it's a given because it should be, but it usually isn't. Right. The other thing is, and, uh, and, and, and this again is also missed out. And, you know, I I've said that the objective of the meeting, it's really important to define what you want out of the meeting, what the goal of the meeting is, you know, um, the objective of the meeting isn't just to, you know, meet with a person.

[00:16:55] The objective of the meeting has to have a clear next step. And that's for both parties. And you want to define who's actually going to be attending, you know, what, what, what things you want to be testing, you know, what insights you want to be testing, what questions you're going to be asking. Um, and what your desired next step actually is as well, you know, define all of those things. And it's amazing going through that exercise of actually writing that stuff down, because once you've done that, it makes the meeting flow a lot better.

[00:17:25] And, um, and of course, as well, having a stakeholder map as well, you know, all who are the key people who need to be involved, you know, who, who are the people that you need to engage with both at the customer and internally, uh, depending on the type of role that you have, uh, will, will determine the, uh, the stakeholder map that you have. Uh, but there's also the opportunity strategy card or document that we can use as well, which is something similar.

[00:17:55] Uh, it wasn't called that. It was called something much more fancy, but I can't remember what it was. So I'm going to go with opportunity strategy card. It doesn't flow as well. Um, but it's, it's, it's, you know, we're coming then into, um, uh, into the elements of, uh, spin, you know, we're looking at, you know, why, why are we changing? Why now? Why us, you know, why, why should they do, uh, why would they do nothing? Uh, what, what can, what could potentially stop the deal and just brainstorming that or role-playing that or, you know, workshopping it, uh, ideally.

[00:18:25] And, um, so many people that skip those, those things. And this is why it's so important to have these, these cards, these documents in place, because every single time if you, if you have a routine of filling those out, uploading those into the CRM system, whatever that CRM system is, doesn't matter. Even if it's an Excel file, but just going through that process and doing that before every meeting, it's so easy as a manager to then follow up on it. Did you do your call prep?

[00:18:53] If, uh, as a seller, you go, oh, the call wasn't that great, or it was really great. And you look back and you go, oh yeah, well actually, you know, these things have changed. These things have developed. And that, that really makes a big difference. Uh, I'll skip the CRM bit of course, uh, because there are many ways you can actually tailor your CRM to your sales methodology. And I encourage people to do that.

[00:19:14] Uh, but, um, the, the, the best thing really is after you've, after you've done all that prep and you've then had the meeting, you've followed your methodology. You've then written it all up as a leader. You need to have some sort of scorecards and some sort of KPIs and measurements and things. And, uh, and then you're actually reflecting on that, you know, what is the, you know, the percentage of the opportunities that you're. You're able to take through to the next phase.

[00:19:41] What is, what is the percentage of, you know, stakeholders that are able to be mapped within an organization? All of those types of things, you need to be able to find things that you're measuring. You need to be, find a way to measure the health of your pipeline. You need to, you need to track the commercial outcomes. You know, that's, that's what I'm essentially saying, because you need, you need to know that the work you're doing is generating results.

[00:20:08] And that's where kind of those sales methodologies are very helpful tools to give you a structure to work within. But if you don't apply them and if you don't have a structure around it, and if you're not then following that up to see what's working, what's not working, then you're just, you know, you're just ticking a box. You're not, you're not actually doing anything. You're not developing the business and you're not checking commercial outcomes.

[00:20:35] And that's really, really, really important if you want to grow as a business and be successful as a sales team. I suppose when we have an episode that talks about all encompassing sales methodologies, and we don't just talk about one, but we try to talk about several of them. The tools could be almost endless. You're really defining exactly how you're going to set up your sales department, your sales function at your organization.

[00:20:59] And it's kind of an endless collection of things you could be doing and tools you could be applying. So I just want to reemphasize, you talked about playbooks off the top. I talked about making sure you pick the best components of each one that are appropriate for your organization. And you turn each function within that setup into your own tool. But brand it. Call it your own. Build it unique for yourself.

[00:21:28] Make sure it's not too far removed from something familiar or something that's easily trainable so that you can get a department that's rowing in the same direction and having the right kind of effectiveness together. But if you can do those kinds of things and build something that is truly yours, then that will actually become a competitive advantage. You talked about sort of having these checklists and providing accountability and scorecards and whatnot.

[00:21:57] And that reminded me that last night I was at the Canadian head office for a major global tech company. And they were showing off a customer engagement live call accountability dashboard using AI.

[00:22:16] And I can't help but throw this suggestion out there is there's all these sort of transcription and AI facilitators and call recording platforms. You can now have live insights surfaced that you can direct.

[00:22:34] And so you can go in and you can build your own AI agent to listen to your calls and coach you on the fly and encourage you and remind you and check things off your accountability list in the middle of a call. Don't forget, you got to get to this point. You got to do this action. You got to check for this. And it's prompting you and it's showing you whether or not you've been able to make it all the way through these things.

[00:23:00] It sounds like it's, you know, it's a little bit of an overreach on oversight, but I don't think so. I think it's a delightful way to make sure that you don't let the call get away from you or get off the call and go, oh, crap. I'm supposed to remember to get through a few points that I forgot about in the flow of the conversation. Yeah, it was a really good company that did that a few years ago.

[00:23:25] I think they were one of the first ones to do it, but I think now that the AI has got so good, then I imagine it's absolutely incredible what they can do with it now. Yeah. And even if it's not call recording or call monitoring, but you can just plop it on top of your CRM, but also your sales data, your templates, your documents, your files. And it can kind of help you. One of the best things about AI is it's great layered on top of unstructured data.

[00:23:53] You've got some hints and clues and whatnot that kind of tie the information and the data points and the touch points together. It can interpret and extrapolate and tell you like, hey, you could strengthen this this way. And it requires a little bit of configuration and coaching. But because you've defined this for yourself, you know how to give it those kinds of parameters and boundaries and make it work best for your organization. And does this work?

[00:24:18] I mean, we're on a tools episode, so I think we can drill in a little bit deeper into that one. Is this something that is a specific AI tool or is it one that you can do off the shelf kind of tools? So you need to make sure that you can use a call recording platform or virtual call service that allows you to add an AI agent into the call.

[00:24:47] And so all the call platforms have this capability right now. And then you can create your own AI agent. It depends which platform you've connected to and whatnot.

[00:25:00] But what I actually love about AI is it's democratized this kind of tool building and this kind of process management and creation and creative strategic creativity. The models are all different and you can pick the one you want. And we could we could we could talk all year about the the ins and outs of all of that kind of stuff.

[00:25:30] There are all kinds of different ways to make this to make this happen. So but some people aren't aware of just that fact that there are these capabilities. Now you can do these kinds of things with AI. So if that's something that is new to you, go and explore it or talk to your friends or call one of us to give you a hand with that. Absolutely. No, it's a very, very good. Good summary. It's really going to bug me now. What the name of that system? Is it Gong?

[00:26:00] Well, Gong does do that kind of thing. It does do the call recording and gives you sort of insights and advice after the fact. I'm sure I haven't seen the platform in years. I'm sure they've advanced it to to this level as well. Yeah. But that's what I mean is that they were they were definitely one of the first doing that type of thing. But yeah, I think I think probably even teams has its own version of it as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:24] Well, you can now do live translation like a Star Trek like universal translator. You can be on a call with somebody in a different language and they hear you talking to them in their language, but in your voice. And it's a it's bonkers. Oh, my new AirPods do that as well. Yeah. So I can have I can have like one AirPod in and I can be in another country and it will pick up on the language that the person or in London even.

[00:26:53] And it will pick up on the language that a person is talking and it will translate it into my head. Isn't that fun? It's just weird. It doesn't help me to learn the other language, but it's very clever. Well, maybe it will just all be able to converse in our old languages going forward. Well, Andy, it's always a pleasure. Um, I'm I'm grateful that we managed to get through this episode despite our our need to rely on contingencies and backups.

[00:27:24] And and I look forward to sort of carrying on our conversation into into the month of July, where we're going to turn our attention more to the marketing side of business development. We talk a lot about sales, but marketing goes hand in hand with all of that. So, uh, as always, uh, it's been a pleasure, Andy. And, uh, thank you for tuning in and listening to all of those folks who did.

[00:27:48] Uh, please go to T and Tim bits.com for the back episodes and to get in touch. We would we would love to hear from you and get some tips and advice on how we should improve everything that we're doing here at T and Tim bits. Andy, we'll talk to you soon. Pleasure as always.