#219 Tim Stansky - How Lusha is Increasing Sales With Technology

Tim Stansky: 0:00

Organisations are reviewing the value of our sales technologies, not just once a year. It's probably happening two, three, maybe four times a year. We're either a product or solution that you're using. It's really helping you. You have a greater perceived credibility with customers as being unbiased, helpful. They're generally very kind in giving people patience. I've found in my life experience customers will ask a CSM a more vulnerable question than a commissioned or insented salesperson.

Luigi: 0:34

Welcome to another episode of the how to Sell podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Preston-Enzi, and as always, I'm joined by my co-host.

Dave: 0:44

You need to change that. You're the co-host of the show. You've got to get used to it now. Luigi, we're four episodes in.

Luigi: 0:51

I'm not used to it Two hundred and eleven episodes. I'm still not used to having a co-host, Dave, especially Now people start something along the podcast, so it's a good one. It's okay, dave. I keep getting messages saying look, it's great, the new format, but I still only turn up because of you. So I'm like thank you. Oh, okay, all right we'll see.

Dave: 1:13

Mum doesn't care, mum doesn't care.

Luigi: 1:17

I know Mum, she always likes my posts. She's like is she on LinkedIn? My mum's on LinkedIn, what's?

Dave: 1:24

Her role is Luigi's mum.

Luigi: 1:28

Yeah, she's 70. She's 70 next month and she's always in there. She's posting and commenting on my feed. I'm like, hey, it boosts the algorithm, Dave.

Tim Stansky: 1:37

I'm wondering what skills and certifications being Luigi's mum requires. You don't want to know.

Luigi: 1:44

A lot of patience. That voice that you just heard, folks, is this week's guest. We're super excited because if you've been living on the rock, you would be living on the rock. If you haven't heard me talk about my love affair with a company called Lucia, it literally changed my world a couple of years ago. It's probably, yeah, my absolute love affair. Tim is the head of enablement. Is it the head or director of enablement, tim?

Tim Stansky: 2:18

Director now, but Director.

Dave: 2:21

Pretty happy about that She'll caveat that this is a non-sponsored podcast.

Luigi: 2:25

Yeah, this is a non-sponsored podcast.

Dave: 2:27

We just really like the tool.

Luigi: 2:29

I just love it. I showed it to a team about how many people were in the room the other day. Dave of business owners.

Dave: 2:34

I was about 60 to 70.

Luigi: 2:37

Yeah, and I pulled up Sales and Ave, tim and I did a bit of a how do you build a list? And then all of a sudden this magical box popped up on my right side of my screen and Lucia and people were like how did you get the number? And somebody said, oh yeah, I use a polo. I said, no, this is better than a polo. Probably shouldn't say that to you. Polo is sitting. But anyway, as we get into this week's episode, we have Tim. Thank you for joining us on this week's How to Sell podcast.

Tim Stansky: 3:08

Happy to be here.

Luigi: 3:09

Yeah, awesome. And just before we get started because this is obviously we've interviewed a whole number of incredible folks in enablement to help our listeners build their how to Sell to Enablement playbook, do you mind maybe sharing with us how you got started in the world of sales and enablement?

Tim Stansky: 3:28

Sure, my sales career started as an individual contributor in traditional media radio, and then also in print and in television and made that leap into digital with a HubSpot partner Right when HubSpot was literally in the CIC in Cambridge and Kendall Square. And making that transition was magical. To stay current and how the media changed and the way that our world changed through devices. So I was in sales, I was fighting new sources of revenue and it was just called training back then. And then training evolved into enablement, and in doing that for, I'll admit, 30 plus years training in enablement, so since last century, that's really interesting, time, and what motivated you to move to enablement?

Dave: 4:29

What was the difference that you found? What was that attraction?

Tim Stansky: 4:34

It was being a young rookie on the staff where all the big accounts are already taken. All the ad agencies were taken and there were some consultants that the owners of the radio station hired. One of them became my mentor to find new found sources of money calling on consumer packaged goods. So we found pockets of revenue that weren't subject to ratings of radio stations at the time. It wasn't the small mom and pop local store budget. These were global brands that had big budgets for market development funds. So I started scoring and crushing numbers and learned under this consultant and also grew a department in Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia and New Jersey for private broadcaster and then worked with the network around the US, Eventually parlayed that into a startup, a Google Premier partner at the time that was funded by the largest newspapers in the US. So they saw where the digital dollars were going. They just couldn't replace those dollars with the pennies. Trained across the US, literally from Massachusetts to California, the border of Texas and then across the Canadian provinces with a partner called Post Media. So from Montreal to BC to Vancouver was a great experience. And that's how I eventually landed at Oracle to develop true enablement, global discipline, and uniform content. Oracle was like getting an advanced MBA. What I found is I wanted that spirit of the creativity of the sale back in media days and the startup that I worked with. It was funded by the newspaper and that's how I fell in love with Lucia. I had the opportunity to join Lucia and build out a sales and event program for a complete startup.

Luigi: 6:31

Yeah, what a journey. So you went from yeah, an incredible journey because obviously Oracle, one of the biggest companies in the world right, and you would have had the opportunity to really see it across different markets, very disciplined, and now you're applying. And what's the challenge? So you've gone from a beast of an organisation and to Lucia, who is growing fast to roles, hiring roles across the US and around the world. What's been the biggest challenge that you've had to deal with? Moving from a large entity to that of a startup business?

Tim Stansky: 7:16

Understanding the blank slate in front of me. It's the blessing and the curse yeah, there's nothing broken to walk into, in fact there's nothing to walk into. So there we go and I consider my time at Oracle almost five years as a real blessing in an education, excellent discipline, literally you are certified, very stringent ways on certain content, delivery and the uniformity of the contents. The discipline of oracle is great and I bring that discipline to Lusha, but also the spirit of Lusha and that as a product, like growth company, it's very user friendly, it's intuitive, it's easy to implement and, fortunately, people like luigi and a lot of Customers love Lusha. And it's a growing space, as you know that you've got some fine competitors in the space. So what's it like? Some days it's brilliant and some days it's the face palm emoji. You go, you, what, what? We're growing and appreciate that.

Dave: 8:21

I'm interested in what number of employees you were at Lusha? Because of the recloser enablement, you know, when we talk to people it's usually A role that people think you need to be at a certain size in order to get someone in. But it seems like it just seems like you can correct me where you're quite early in Lusha and they hired you quite early on, or am I wrong?

Tim Stansky: 8:48

I'll say that I wasn't. I won't say that you're wrong. I'll say that I wasn't an early employee, Lusha, six years old, when I joined last year. There are already a few hundred people. Can tell me that our HQ in the Boston office grew from a co-working space and now I think we're upwards of forty or sixteen, the Boston office, which is primarily a sales office. Yeah, there are some rules of thumb that cfo's will say x, number employees, a ratio of enablement, and that's one of the things that sales enablement struggles with Justifying itself. And when I came to Lusha and started to talk to colleagues who were in similarly sized companies three hundred or so, some people actually had teams already, enablement folks and also Someone had it I almost fell out of my chair that day when she told me yes, I have an admin for my learning management system, in addition to my sales, was added. I thought, yeah, wow, holy headcount, lucky you. So fortunately, I'm a lean organisation for enablement, based in boston, but supporting, tell me, globally, and it's a one community.

Luigi: 10:09

Yeah, I really want to touch on this time when Lusha made the decision to hire an enablement professional. What was their motivation to do that, like what was happening in their business?

Tim Stansky: 10:26

I'll tell you the table was set for someone to walk in and build an enablement effort. The cmo at the time greeted me and she said we've got a good PMM set up, we've got products set up, we have a growing sales organisation that has hit a critical mass where the Tribal learnings by manager are no longer enough. And one of the leaders actually said to me in the interview Is that we've gotten, we've been successful. We now have to grow to a disciplined approach and no more freestyling. And I'll describe it lovingly to my colleagues who might be listening. Some days it's like a lot of different pirates all on their own ship with a knife between their teeth, going out and selling, and we want to have a more disciplined, focused up and can approach globally.

Dave: 11:18

Scott, from start up to grown up, it's that transition. Yes.

Luigi: 11:25

But it's really interesting. You bring that up right because you mentioned the growth occurred, because I just signed up. I found Lusha, it was a plg, no product lead Sale where I found this platform and I've To be honest, when I first found a team I think I've shared this with you before I didn't want anybody else to know about it because it was like my sleepwear weapon in sales. I was like I had a tool that gave me mobile numbers and email addresses, some. What is amazing. So, but then, yeah, I mean, nobody ever rang me. I never heard from anybody from Lusha for a number of years. I just keep paying. In fact, I remember when I did speak to somebody like, that pricing you've got is no longer available anymore, because I was one of the early adopters. Right, so, grandfather pricing, yeah, but it is interesting because you mentioned that Business was now looking to. You know they had a real focus, strategic growth Goal, and they were looking for more predictability and discipline in there and creating a real sales rhythm, and that's one of the drivers.

Dave: 12:38

Pardon the interruption, but I have to let you know about this free resource. The growth forum newsletter has over 10,000 subscribers that are learning how to sell. Each and every week we send you tips, strategies and also some tools in tech on how to achieve the most out of your sales pipeline. If you're ready to level up, sign up for free at growth forum dot I o forward slash newsletter and get the first issue.

Tim Stansky: 13:02

This week there's a point at which managers don't have the bandwidth To do tribal training. And the good part about tribal training is managers often train and coach in their own Spotlight of success and many managers have never gone through the education of adults learning the styles of the way people learn. Do sit next to me, do it, I do, follow me, shut up, follow, shadow me on this call and then rinse and repeat. That doesn't work at scale, especially as your growing head count and so forth. So I'm not props to the managers that are training their own people but they don't have the bandwidth or consistency to bring that, that approach, to it. So there the table was set for me, as I said, from PPM to CMO to the sales leaders, from xDR organisation, the ae's, the am's customer success. They knew they needed a role and it was identified. I was just very fortunate when I was itching to stop swimming in the discipline swim lanes to have some creativity building something Lush was. There is an opportunity.

Dave: 14:22

Just been thinking while you were talking, yeah. What are the challenges you know that you face when you can't focus on implementing disciplines? No routine training. You know what are the best practices that you try and apply in those situations.

Tim Stansky: 14:44

Setting a baseline, establishing what great looks like, getting that buy in from sales leaders, getting them involved, and then creating the discipline approach with reinforcement, reinforcement along the way, and I'll say as much as I in the first year did a lot of Training in groups and then pairs threes and a fair amount of one on one coaching. That's not scalable. That allowed me in year one to build out not only my internal credibility but also figure out what works at this Company that has. You know, we do really well in mid market. We're making incredible strides in the enterprise market. How do I take what I have in my three decades of sales Enable in sales training and sales experience, cuz I am a sales person at heart. Those are the stripes that I wear. I'm what is working and what is not. And then create an opportunity to support those managers who are the ones who actually hire fire, have the one-on-ones, do the pipeline reviews and spot that to them. I need to get things done at scale.

Dave: 15:58

Yeah, let's change gears a little bit now, and this podcast is all about how to sell and we wanna talk to you about in your role how you buy. It's always a tough one for people selling to salespeople, right, they know all the tricks well, not so tricks, but they know all the mechanisms, the questions and things like that. Can you walk us through, if you have one recently, a scenario where you're looking to potentially purchase a new product or service within your role, and let's start to dive into that area?

Tim Stansky: 16:35

Sure, and for people listening, that some salespeople might perk their ears up and go, oh, this guy's a prospect.

Luigi: 16:44

Trigger event, folks trigger event.

Tim Stansky: 16:46

Trigger. Well said, luigi. Every company, saas and tech company rethinks their sales tech stack increasingly and in the last year that we've had, it's my belief that organisations are reviewing the value of our sales technologies, not just once a year. It's probably happening two, three, maybe four times a year where you were either a product or solution that you're using. It's really helping you and you can. You hear from the salespeople and the sales cubicles and so forth, and then you encounter some of the things that you've invested and you go. It's not really buyers remorse, but it's just. I'm not sure about this and we're reviewing some of our technologies. Right now. It's just early September. The American football season starts. We're recording this. So the day we're recording this, NFL football regular season starts, New England shout out to the Patriots. It's celebrating Tom Brady this weekend, so that's monumental. But I bring that up because this time of year people are rethinking and planning and buying going. Should we look at this? The first of the year is usually the calendar year, a contract, but for us salespeople we have to rethink when the contract expires. When is it up for renewal? Is it auto renewal? Are we only coming in hot in the last 90 or 60 days to ask about a renewal or have we been supported? And as we're rethinking some of our technologies or possibly adding technologies, I've been getting overtures as director of sales enablement from certain tech companies and because we in the podcast and everybody listening we're buyers but we're also sellers, so I always look to see what was the subject line. Did they show me? They know me? Did they offer an insight For those that I pick up the phone that has my mobile number? If you've used it? One person actually said I use Lucia to get your mobile number. That's great and, that being said, I will entertain the cold call. I will actually thank them for picking up the phone and cold calling me, because I believe that salespeople rely too much on automation and email and the passivity of social selling, but I truly appreciate that person that can smile on the phone, get through to me and show me value real quickly. I'm watching some of the overtures from the vendors that want to unseat an incumbent and some started in mid-summer and, because we're in early September, no one has persisted in over 60 days.

Luigi: 19:54

Okay, that's really interesting.

Tim Stansky: 19:55

Not one, and a couple had some really good messaging, but I wanted to. I'm not ready to entertain a demo yet, but it will be for those listening. But a lot gave up and it breaks my heart a little bit because they're not aligned to my buying cycle. They were aligned to their own cadence, whatever platform they're using. They've tied me up in a sales loft or something like that. Okay, I'm gonna hit them this many times and leave a message, one created voicemail, an animated GIF or GIF, however we might pronounce that. But then they gave up.

Luigi: 20:34

Yeah, this is really interesting. Actually, this is good, Tim, because I'm taking some notes, right, and I've got so many parts that we could break down, and I do want to go back to that prospecting piece in a moment around your subject lines and show me. You know me, but I think what's more important here is the short-term, the short-term focus versus the long-term focus, right, and I think for most of us that have been in sales for a period of time, we know that I might engage with you today and you might not be ready to buy. Like you said, you're buying a cycle. In the buying journey, you're probably at a different stage because you've got a provider in place or the problem that you're seeking to solve isn't a priority right now. It could become one in six to 12 months. And I think this is a massive gap that exists in the marketplace is that when a salesperson talks to a potential buyer and the buyer says not now, we forget about them and go to the next one, when, in fact, that nurturing that educating, you know, spending time with you just to give you maybe some insights, touching base every month or two months, keeps the seller top of mind for the buyer so that when they do get to that point of hey, I'm moving to that point of consideration. Now you know what I'm gonna go talk to somebody from X because they've just been drip feeding me really good, insightful content. Has anyone done that that you've been engaging with?

Tim Stansky: 22:09

No, I think it's a huge opportunity for your venture. Yeah, yeah, One of the emails that arrived in my inbox today was did you get my last email?

Dave: 22:24

Yes, I did.

Tim Stansky: 22:25

It's still out there, it's. I was like, no, oh no, I'm sorry for you.

Luigi: 22:32

It's still out there. It's still out there. What about the thoughts? The thoughts one, that's the one that just doesn't.

Tim Stansky: 22:39

The quick question. That one was hot, I'll say, seven years ago. Quick question.

Luigi: 22:45

Yeah, I got that one last night actually. Yeah, I've worked back then, yeah, should I be speaking to somebody else, tim? What about that one? Do you get that one? I got that one this week. Should I be speaking to somebody else at the Growth Forum? Well, you can if you want to. I've got quite a few actually.

Tim Stansky: 23:08

Usually not a fan of bashing the competition, but one of the competitors who's trying to unseat the incumbent did it very tactfully with a very tactful one sheet of if you're considering these recent things- they're different. It went right to just the right line.

Dave: 23:31

Just enough yes, yes, and that's fine. I believe that that's fine If you're comparing benefits and things like that. That's good too, because you may not know.

Tim Stansky: 23:43

Exactly, an unknown need, like Luigi talks about unrecognised need, I think was the term the unrecognised need he did you think. So that at least got me thinking Didn't know that about you, and that's something else I should consider. It's a little bit of a competitive trap maybe, but they went right enough to the line to say, hey, if you're thinking about this, here's some things to think about.

Luigi: 24:05

Nice. Yeah, that's true. I like that. I do like that because it's a. Did you know? It's coming from a place of? Hey, I just maybe providing some education here and If there's a gap there that could trigger you to go to, you know what? I want to learn a bit more.

Tim Stansky: 24:20

You've inspired me that the called action might be. Have you thought about, have you considered this? You know, maybe we could workshop that. It's just a concept of someone, that's Consideration and not in comparison stage have you thought about oh, didn't know that, I should think I should. Thanks, I should know about that.

Luigi: 24:41

Yeah, I really, I really like that and if we can just go back a step to that. So you're currently reviewing. We won't talk about which platform, right, but you're currently reviewing and it's a renewal, right. So you're thinking about whether you renew or do you move to a different provider? What's driving that, like if it's delivering on its promise, what's driving you to think about changing?

Tim Stansky: 25:12

Little fails, where the promise isn't being, that Little cracks in the wall. Just when is a hack or work around? We don't have that yet and I feel that pain of being on the recipient's side. Usually it's us saying it's on the road map.

Luigi: 25:33

Yeah.

Tim Stansky: 25:34

I heard about the road map from the other side of the communication. Okay, now I know how crushing that feels. I wanted sooner than great.

Luigi: 25:44

And so, given that there's a couple of cracks, has the current, your current provider, have they done Anything to cement the relationship with you or try to create additional value that would Keep you there, or have they kind of just left you to go on your own? Do you have a great one?

Dave: 26:09

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Tim Stansky: 27:05

We are. This is one of the problems of us being in sales anywhere. Yeah, had sales rep turnover and I'll tell you the two things Smart providers who are listening to your podcast, the things that are keeping us with the incumbent are in probably the best CSM I've had. Any vendor from anywhere I've bought Okay, incredibly efficient, responsive, attentive, top notch. I've literally said to the leadership in that company, how many raises have you given this person?

Dave: 27:43

Nice, actually the self. It's just been the connection with the human behind the. It's the reliability.

Tim Stansky: 27:50

It's that insurance insinuated insurance policy and it's also, unfortunately, complacency. So today two of the stakeholders and I had a meeting and we literally listed why there are pros, cons, and must haves. We revisit the must have and need to have because We've had. We've had changes in our organisation. There are new stakeholders in this decision on the tech stack. So yeah, reminding me to tell my sales people Understand the frequency of turnover within a company, shifts within an organisation. Different stakeholders don't assume because you had the contract and you've got a great CSM, that they're gonna stay. We really have to worry slightly.

Luigi: 28:36

Yeah, and with that right. So that conversation that you're having about, you know, do we change or do we stay? Have you spoken about the fact that if you do change, you might not have the same CSM? Yeah, okay, so the CSM is actually becoming a value Creator for the current vendor, for your current vendor, oh yes.

Dave: 29:03

Okay, I can like from a business owner who can guarantee they're not seeing the CSM as an asset like that. As a, as a, as a pillar of retention, because, yes, it's okay to win a new deal, but retaining them you're having to retain them. Look what's happening with your team now, every month or every year, you know this whole Monthly recurring revenue and your recurring revenue. It's basically a contract for a period of time and then you need to sell it again so that CSM is critical in that, in that piece to look like so yeah, I think about.

Luigi: 29:38

I find that really interesting. Yeah, that's really interesting, right, because I think Sometimes it doesn't. People don't evaluate that in the sales process. They're not thinking about, well, what relationship do you know my prospect has with the current vendor, and who could it be? And if they don't determine that in the buying cycle, they're not able to address that in the proposal they put forward, right?

Tim Stansky: 30:04

So I think it's really interesting that you're sharing that and thinking about logo retention, not only keeping revenue, upsell, expansion, additional licences, seats, whatever. That's critical to two companies and I say to our own CSM's it, Lucia you have. A greater perceived credibility with customers is being unbiased and helpful. They're generally very kind in giving people patience. I found in my life experience customers will ask a CSM A more vulnerable question than they will say a commissioned or insented sales person.

Dave: 30:52

Question team when you know you're looking at a vendor. You got the contract, you're ready to start down the decision making process. Talk to me, who's involved in signing off on the agreement? Do you need to get consensus across a few different groups or you're the final decision maker? What does that look like inside, inside the business?

Tim Stansky: 31:16

You turn this into a med pick episode. So I would start by saying level of investment. When it is a major commitment, I report to the CRO, which is why I absolutely love my job as director of sales and the ability to report to CRO, not operations, not HR. No shade or shame on those organisations. But I really want to be aligned to the number. My recommendations have to go through a CRO on the investment level out of either an allocated budget or a found budget. Certainly, procurement comes in and I absolutely need to do my due diligence of having at least two other credible quotes From reputable vendors and my recommendation typically done in three's. It's my habit of saying things in three. Here are the three reasons why. And preparing as we coach on the CFO by a personal need of a business case for the CFO radio. This is, if we don't have this. This is our downside. This is the expected investment I will get now. Some of it may be productivity, some of it be in revenue, but I need to be able to make that case to the CFO of what happens if we don't invest in this.

Luigi: 32:39

Yeah, that's a cost of inaction, right, yeah, this is amazing. Look, tim, I'm actually like I said, this is being really good for me because I've got a page of notes, but I just wanted to say I know we could keep going on this and we could probably do another episode which is on that med pic it's on the business case requirements. But just for our listeners, where is the best place for them to connect and find you?

Tim Stansky: 33:07

Oh, linkedin, Tim Stansby. Okay, I'm open to networking, a big fan of YouTube, for sure, and I will say that I always tell vendors the process, or process, of picking your English. This is how it goes, but I warn them you will be dealing with procurement.

Dave: 33:32

Yeah.

Tim Stansky: 33:32

You will. And that's just because, being a salesperson, having made my sharpest offer and trying to protect value and trying to protect margin, it's soul crushing to send a fellow salesperson to procurement because you know there has to be something better than what was offered to me.

Luigi: 33:53

Yeah, and also, just before we wrap up this part of our segment I just want to bring back, because Tim did say something really, really important he liked. You know there's somebody picking up the phone and smiling where they call and if you've got the tool, you've got Lucia. This is a plug, you can get his number right. And I just want to maybe, if we can go back to the day that we connected to him. It's been some time ago, but can you maybe share? I don't even know if you remember, but how did our relationship start?

Tim Stansky: 34:29

Oh, I remember the start of the friendship because I became a fan. It was an overture by email, yeah, sincere enthusiasm as a self-described power user, and explained not just I'm a power user how he used it. So this was Luigi's email to me and I was refreshed in my new role at Lucia and I thought who's this crazy Aussie amazer? And that's the other thing. When someone comes into a new role or is in a building mode, they are in education mode, they are open to building things, they're bringing their life experience and probably they prefer vendors with them. But I knew I was open and then when Luigi had a sincere conversation with me, I knew. So it was an email. He showed me, he knew me, he knew I was in the role. I think you knew that I was new and where I came from. But there was the sincerity and the brevity of your messaging and, having worked with you and knowing what a great call opening looks like with an insight and asking some questions the motivation question it's a fantastic formula.

Luigi: 35:51

So yeah, Now we've made it to the feeling ritual. We've obviously developed an incredible relationship. But again, I think, like I said for our listeners, you've got Lucia. If you haven't got Lucia, just download. I think you get like five credits for free to start with and you'll be able to get Tim's details. Send him a note, tell him what you loved about this episode and then you can tell him what you love about using a tool like Lucia. So thank you so much, tim. Thanks for the contribution you make to the enablement community, to sales and everything that you do. Mate.

Dave: 36:24

Cheers. Thanks, Tim. What a cracking episode that was with Tim. He's a weapon.

Luigi: 36:31

Yeah, he's good and I think it's not just. You can see that he's got real experience. You know he mentioned 30 years, so he's coming from a place of knowledge, like a real deep knowledge. But what I found and I can't wait to dive into this, you know he's worked at both, like I recall, a beast of an organisation to that startup that's now growing up, that's turning into that larger business. So he's definitely got a very interesting perspective.

Dave: 37:06

Yeah, and what I found that that was great was and what I've seen across the sales enablement people that we're spoken to currently is that when they're sold to, they're actually trying to help the seller because they feel the pain right. They've got that empathy right, they do right, which is really good. I would have thought that they would have been a little bit hard and say I know you're doing these, you know trying to use these questions on me, but they're actually trying to help the sale and make it easy for them which is really good.

Luigi: 37:37

Yeah, I like that. It is interesting. You know, people that have been in that role have an empathy and they also feel the pain when somebody's facilitating, maybe not facilitating the process in the way they could right. So that was really interesting as well.

Dave: 37:55

But look, if you're listening to the episode after the episode, you're going to find a common theme here, like Tim brought it up. He brought it up about persistence. So people stop too soon, you know, unless you know they're buying, buying pattern or they're buying cycle, you know, you're just going by your cadence. You don't know when Tim's ready to buy. He's buying right now, he's ready to take demos. But you know, some of those vendors have stopped, so lost deals, not because their product was no good, but because they just, you know, ended their cadence and thought that was it. You know, the whole keep the email shorts, you know, come with some insight. It's, you know, hard to do with. Some would say probably easy to do, but it's, the blue plan is there. So look, Louis, let's go in. How would you sell to Tim?

Luigi: 38:49

All right, so let's break it down based on what Tim shared. Right, we're going to break this up into two parts, because we've got the prospecting part, yeah, which is the whole. We've got to get his attention. But then I want to talk a bit about the fact that there are stages in his buying journey that he spoke about, right, he spoke about um. He had some, some, some tech that he needed to buy, but he wasn't ready to buy for a period of time, and I want to talk about that because this is critical, yeah, so, first things first. He mentioned, if you go back to what he said, he said, I think this is really, really important. If anyone was to do some research on his profile, they would see that he came from Oracle, yeah, and they would see that he came from a business global. He mentioned, you know, had an LMS support. He had a whole support staff that were helping run enablement, regional, enablement heads. They probably would have had um enablement folks or enablement professionals for different teams, depending on who they're selling to. And then he's gone to Lusha and he doesn't have the massive team behind him. He doesn't have, you know, all the bells and whistle, he doesn't have all the support staff, so he's on his own, yeah, so the very first thing that I would be doing from a prospecting perspective is I'll be taking that into consideration that he's gone from huge team to no team and he's still got to do like he's still tasked with a huge job because he's trying to service, like I said, he's servicing 60 sellers just in Boston and that's not including Tel Aviv, right? So he's still trying to serve a large team and he's only got two hands. He's only got two, um, like, do you know what I mean? Like he's not, and he only has a certain amount of time in the week, and so he also mentioned that some of the gaps were around getting the leaders. The leaders have been essentially being focused on trying to drive discipline with the team. So the first thing I'd be doing from a prospecting perspective is considering the fact that he's made a change from large to small and going in with a message like that, right, going in with the message around hey, understanding, you've moved from a larger business and you've probably tasked. We've got more tasks to focus on now in this role than you had in your previous role. There might be some gaps, right, and I've got some insight on how you can accelerate some of your enablement initiatives, right, and we'd love to share some of that insight with you. So I think we've got to give consideration to where they're at in their new position, right, and that's how I would reach out to Tim from a prospecting perspective. Second to that, given the fact that he mentioned that his insight led right, he wants to learn, yeah, and again, he's probably going well. This startup plan is a bit new to me, so what insight and education could I share with Tim? That would be how startups are tackling enablement, because the way startups tackle it is different to a large-scale business like an Oracle or a Salesforce, right.

Dave: 42:15

How would you cut you off there quickly? How would you work out, before talking to Tim, that he's looking to learn? Is there anything that you would do, whether it be you're rating his LinkedIn, seeing what his post is that he's looking like, how would you come to that decision where he needs to learn?

Luigi: 42:39

Well, I think the fact that you know yeah, I do some research first I'd absolutely check out his profile and have a look at what type of content he's engaging with and you can actually see it like. If you go to his profile now, you'll notice that he is following certain thought leaders in the sales community in the sales enablement space. He's looking at particular pieces of content, so that's an indicator that he's searching for stuff. Yeah, yeah, and you've got to make a bit of an assumption. When you're reaching out to someone, you've got to come up with a bit of a hypothesis on where they're currently at in their position. But that would be my hypothesis around Tim and going into that new role is not having implemented enablement in a startup for a period of time and there could be some knowledge gaps, and I would be coming from a place of hey, I'm not trying to sell you anything, tim. I'm actually trying to provide a bit of support and guidance on what others are doing to enable startups, you know, enable businesses like yours that are going, that are at this stage of their journey. Yeah, so that would be my first part. Now to address the second part that Tim spoke about, which is vendors reaching out. Put me in a sequence. He's said Siles, loft or something like that, a number of touch points, and he's saying you know what? I've currently got a provider, I'm not ready at the moment and then they go For me. That's a big red flag and that's a great opportunity for salespeople, because the relationship funnel is your most important funnel right. Building relationships and creating value for those relationships will deliver as incredible return on investment in the long term, and this is why it's important to really think about your buyer persona and think about okay, if I know that I can educate Tim and I can maybe create a bit of a nurturing series of content, I could maybe find some podcasts that I think Tim would really like. I could maybe reference a couple of points of that podcast, find a report and enable the state of sales from LinkedIn or Salesforce, whatever it is. Yeah, stats from HubSpot. If I can maybe just create a monthly little series and email with a couple of data points, maybe drop a LinkedIn note to say hey, tim, I found this article. I think you might find this valuable. It talks about ABC. If I'm dropping that monthly with a periodic call right All of a sudden, if I do that for 12 months. What's Tim going to think about me at the end of the 12 months, when he's got to come up to renew his platform? He's going to go. You know what, I'm going to talk to Luigi.

Dave: 45:26

That's not a lot of work, right? It's not what I'm probably thinking. Oh God, I've got to do this every month. I've got 100 deals. Look, you can manage this within your CRM. Schedule a task. Make it manual. Make it manual, so it's really relevant for them, right? Because, like you said, you need to be there when they're ready to buy. But a lot of people will get scared and I reckon it scares the keyword because they're scared of adding more to their play, because you know, have you ever come across that? Yeah, absolutely.

Luigi: 45:58

But it's a myth, right, I'll tell you why it's a myth. Because they go oh, I've got to add more. It means it's more work. But the reality is it's less work because if I can build an engaged database or my relationship funnel, I've said I'm selling to enablement and I've got 30, 40 people like Tim in my funnel and people go that's a marketers job, blah, blah, blah. I'll tell you there is a lot of when you do that, like Tim said. When I reached out to Time to say and told him that I was an advocate of the platform, I knew that he changed because I was following. It was in my sales navigator list that was updating because I was looking for a trigger event of enablement people in the tech space, x amount of people that when somebody had changed a role in that list it notified me. It just happened to be Lucia tech, right, I used my love affair with Lucia, that allowed me to personalise. I did drop a little bit of insight in there as well and that got me an appointment with Tim. Right, did he buy straightaway? No, he didn't. It took quite a few months but I continued to nurture. So there is something. There is a lot of benefit to be gained from actually taking the time. It literally takes a few minutes to take a little snippet, pop it in a LinkedIn note or an email to say I think you might find this valuable. It talks about ABC. No call to action, no CTA to say let's book a time or find a time on my calendar or let's catch up and talk about this. No, just give without any expectation of return, because the law of reciprocity will kick in. And if you've got a spreadsheet with your links right and you've got some email templates that you can then go and grab, you can pretty much do it. And if you, if you are in a business that's got a sequencing tool or you've got HubSpot and you can create a workflow, just workflow that stuff out and it'll automatically send it. But, like I said, there's something to be gained by sending that personalised note. Drop a voice note on LinkedIn and say hey, you know I loved what you posted. You shared about X. I actually found this incredible post. I'll drop the link underneath this voice note. Like humanising the process. If you're giving value and nurturing a prospect over a 12 month period without any ask, why would the prospect look at this and go. You're annoying me, leave me alone. Don't give me stuff that can potentially help me. Whoever says that right? So this is where I think sellers have a great opportunity: Spend more time nurturing, spend more time caring about the people that you serve. Give as much value as possible, because I tell you what. It'll pay significant dividends. And I'm not putting tickets on myself, Dave, but I could. Literally my pipeline could start from zero tomorrow and I'm confident because I've built strong relationships. I'm continuing to educate and nurture my relationship funnel. I can turn that pipeline on again tomorrow. Within 90 days, I'll have closed X amount of business. Right, and we've seen that right. We've seen that in the growth forum in the past four weeks.

Dave: 49:18

Yeah, as much as I love to give you shit on selling tickets to yourself, I agree.

Luigi: 49:24

We can turn it on because we've got equity in the relationship funnel. So that's my two biggest takeaways for listeners today. Right, when you're prospecting, you've got to go back, go and research where they've come from, because it'll allow you to come up with a bit of a hypothesis. It'll allow you to come up with a point of view and then think about how that point of view relates to where they're at in their current role and where they're going. So that's from a prospecting perspective. And then from a sales perspective, don't always think that they, just because they're not ready to buy today, that means you just leave them alone and call them in 12 months when they've got a renewal. Think about that nurturing process. How can you educate, educate and nurture and give, because that'll ultimately give you a return. So there's my wrap up, for how do we sell?

Dave: 50:15

to Tim in Enablement, I think, with that, what a great way to end the show. We're almost at the 55 minute mark, so it was a bit longer, but there was a lot to get this one here and we didn't want to leave any of it out. So thank you, Luigi, thank you Tim as well, and if you want to find out more on how to sell and more information to help you in your role, just visit the growth forum. Everything's there, it's ungated. Enjoy it, and until then, we'll see you on the next how to sell episode.

Luigi: 50:47

For our listeners. If you want to get access, we've got actually a marker course that you can get access to. That's on a growth forum, which will. It's a bit of a masterclass on how you can prospect and how you can drive opportunities to close.

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