(888) 815-0802A Holistic Approach to Sales, with David Masover [Episode 714]
David Masover, author of The Salesman’s Guide to Dating: A Sales Book About Making Connections… With an Unexpected Twist!, joins me on this episode.
Key Takeaways
- About David in Buda, Hungary, and Andy’s Hungarian connection.
- Why has sales training not evolved in America beyond “asking good questions and being curious”? Why does every new generation have to be taught these things? David shares his development in sales since 1991.
- The basics are usually “assumed away.” Companies don’t have a passionate culture for learning and study. There is a lack of focus on the core basics and fundamentals.
- Selling is about people. David cites Dan Pink on facts and true facts. Andy talks about correlations without causes.
- David “discovered” the sales process using the scientific method. Later, somebody told him it was the sales process. He thinks of it more as a sales framework.
- Should more effort be spent at the top-of-the-funnel or at the bottom-of-the-funnel? Can we scale the process to a higher close target than 20%?
- David describes front-loading sales efforts. Rather than setting a desired close rate, solve customer problems early and work towards the close.
- What does winning look like? What has to happen at each step along the way to the ultimate outcome? Andy calls it reaching the “deciding to make a change” with the customer. Win that decision to win the sale.
- David shares his experience with sales, consulting, management and sales again, including coaching reps. David has seen too many people mechanically reading down a script.
- Are you creating the opportunity to score? Andy relates it to soccer. Andy blames the corporate culture of the sales process. Activity metrics constrain innovation. Success comes when salespeople treat customers like people.
- David wants to see more sales coaching. Andy says managers coach on opportunities rather than coaching on skills. Andy says managers should divide their time on Process, Opportunities, People, and Education.
- David recommends a holistic approach. Look at what leads to the output, not just at the output. Andy talks about productivity vs. metrics or revenue vs. activity.
Episode Transcript
Andy Paul 0:00
Hey friends, this is Andy. Welcome to Episode 714 of Accelerate, the sales podcast of record. I have another excellent episode lined up here today. Joining me as my guest David mass over not David The author of a book titled The salesman’s Guide to Dating a sales book about making connections with an unexpected twist, which is absolutely true. And David has joined me today from his office in Budapest, Hungary. So we’re gonna start talking about David’s journey from the US and how he ended up being this well-known sales expert based in Hungary. And then we’re gonna delve into our core topic that we’re gonna talk about today, which is the back of the fundamentals and the basics. And one of the key questions we’re gonna get into is how do we successfully develop new generations of sellers without having to go back and reinvent the wheel every time a new cadre of sellers enters the workforce? And also talk about how do we educate sellers to develop their style or framework as David talks about it, their own style of selling you know, something that’s authentic to you that enables you to sell and when up to your potential so yeah might be based on methodology might be based On certain skills and behaviors, but it’s something that’s unique and authentic to you that really resonates with the buyer. So how do you develop that? So you want to make sure you stick around for this. Now, before we get to David, I want to take a quick second talk about the sales house. That’s my sales performance accelerator for b2b sellers. Now, in the typical sales training, you learn a lot of things, with the exception of how to win. You know, sales, winning orders is not the result of your process or the methodology you use. It comes from doing a lot of small things extremely well. On the sales house, I focused on teaching you the strategies, behaviors, techniques and skills you don’t learn in sales training. But that will make a huge difference in your ability to win new business. I mean, you may know how to build a relationship with a prospect but do you know the four core relationships, relationship skills that will enable you to accelerate building a trust based relationship with any buyer? Or perhaps you’ve been trained how to do a discovery Recall. But do you know the two most important pieces of information you need to learn from your prospects? Because knowing these will make the huge difference between winning and losing, and you haven’t been trained on that you encode how to qualify an opportunity, but do you know the one agreement you need to reach with your prospect before they can be considered truly qualified, and if you have that agreement, will increase your odds of winning the deal? If you’re not up to speed on all these things, then you’re in a competitive disadvantage. And a sales house is the resource you need to reach the next level and the level above that. members get unlimited access to checklists, playbooks courses, coaching, mentoring, and an engaged community to help you sell more confidence, trust and acumen so come learn how to become the winningest version of you in the sales house, visit salesforce.com that is the sales house.com. Alright, let’s jump into it. My guest David, welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to have you here. So you are our first guest Joining us from Budapest, Hungary. Wow.
David Masover 4:03
And I’m not even Hungarian,
Andy Paul 4:05
even when my wife was half Hungarian. So
David Masover 4:09
My wife is all the way Hungarian. Okay, question that’s following, right.
Andy Paul 4:13
It’s like, why are you there? Right?
David Masover 4:15
Yeah, that the short answer is she was pretty. The long answer usually requires several drinks. But you know, we probably don’t want to go there today.
Andy Paul 4:23
All right. Well, you and I will have to drink sometime. But did you meet your wife here in the states? Are Demeter hungry?
David Masover 4:29
So I met my first wife in the states and she was from Hungary. We met in San Francisco back in 2001. And she had never lived in Hungary as an adult. She moved to the states to go to university and that law school. No, we met and we got married and we decided, you know, if she didn’t live in Hungary at some point, as an adult, she would always feel like she was missing something in her life. In 2004, we decided, Okay, let’s go for two years. And you know, that was 14 years. ago, a whole lot of life has happened, you know, kids in divorces and marriages and you know that that’s the part where the drinks come in. But that’s how I got here.
Andy Paul 5:09
All right. So you’re 14 and have your two year plan.
David Masover 5:13
Your 14 my two year plan? Yes.
Andy Paul 5:14
Okay. Well, I’m just talking about this. And my wife does listen to my podcast occasionally, so she’ll hear this too, but I got remarried, second, married for a second time in 2010. moved from San Diego here to New York, where I am today at my New York office. And, yeah, we have a two year plan to move from New York to San Diego full time. And we’re in year nine of our two year plan. Welcome. Welcome to the club. My wife, Vicki will be glad to hear that there’s more than one of us. Well, you know,
David Masover 5:47
the old joke Do you know how to make God laugh?
Andy Paul 5:50
They make plans. Right? Your plans, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Alright, are you and the most important question, are you in Budapest. I’m in Buddha. Buddha. Excellent.
David Masover 6:01
Have you been here? Because it’s mostly people who have been here that know to ask that question.
Andy Paul 6:06
No, I haven’t been there. But I am aware of the fact that there were two cities. But as I said, My wife’s father was Hungarian, and left the country right before World War Two. And so she’s been back and she’s actually been there just a year or so ago. She was lecturing and brought a Slava and Slovakia hadn’t been to Budapest for a while, so she took the opportunity to go. So.
David Masover 6:28
Alright, listeners are coming to the neighborhood, drop me a line, I’d be happy to show you around. That’d be fun. I’m looking forward to it. So, okay, we’re gonna talk about sales. Now. There you go. We’ve record geography, right, people
Andy Paul 6:43
are accustomed to little digressions here and there on the show. Well, we did that. We did that. So let’s talk about a topic you and I talked about previously, which is why it seems like every time we get a new generation of sellers into the mix That we seem to be starting over again, but that we’re sort of recreating the wheel. Why isn’t there sort of this ethos that that sir, should permeate the environment now that, you know, as is why it seems like we’re still after literally 130 years roughly, of modern American selling? So start in the 1890s with a national cash register. Why do we still have time? Yeah, most of the selling training sales training is still about? Yeah, asking good questions, being curious about the other person. I mean, it keeps me employed. But yeah, why are we starting to teach these things?
David Masover 7:39
I think that’s a great question. And I think the really honest answer is I don’t know when it frustrates me. I have some theories. But in
Andy Paul 7:49
Australia, give us a theory. Well,
David Masover 7:52
you know, the reason that I think it’s strange is because there’s just so much information now. I mean, when I first started in sales, I started my first sales job at 19. In 91, it was tough. I had no background in sales. nobody in my family wasn’t so it was like, here’s a day of product training. There’s your desk. Good luck, buddy. I’m already selling. I was selling computer supplies, discs and ribbons. Remember those little balls that you put on top of your IBM Selectric typewriter? Yeah. Pure commodities right, sir. Rudel. And, you know, I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know where to go. Luckily one of my peers and one of my colleagues gave me an audio cassette. That’s how long ago that copy of Brian Tracy’s selling and it was totally over my head. He kept talking about closing. I’m not kidding you, Andy. I did not know what he meant by the word close. I mean, that’s how lost I was, What is why they keep saying that, you know, but now. I mean, fast forward to 2019 there’s so much information so many great books, great content, great podcasts. And yet I talked to many people who are colleagues who are Salesforce development consultants or whatever they call themselves. And you walk into a company and the problems are core basic fundamental problems. And I don’t know why they haven’t been solved. One theory would be that, that I think that many times the basics are assumed away. I think that there’s this kind of fundamental mystery around sales and selling. It’s kind of like finance, you know, money isn’t that difficult to understand, but people kind of don’t want to talk about it, so they don’t understand it, and they just let their finance guy and I think sales is similar if you’re not in sales, and you know, too many people who are, they don’t want to really think about it. They just want to hire someone who’s going to do it, and kind of hope it gets done. And so you wind up with these company cultures that just don’t have a it’s this passion for learning this passion for studying. You see some of it but not enough. And I think there’s There’s a lack of focus on just the core basics. You know, we’re all looking for the magic bullet, or the super tack, or the fancy technique, or the perfect cadence or the, you know, the millions of calls that have been analyzed to tell us what to say. It’s like, No, you know, the truth is just more fundamental than that. And I don’t think enough people start there. That would be my theory about one possible theory about why this problem keeps repeating is lack of focus on the basics and fundamentals. And it seems like
Andy Paul 10:31
to me that it’s being compounded a bit by technology these days that we’re giving people sellers the impression that Yeah, yeah, if you’re a little deficient in this area, you have a hard time connecting with someone making that initial connection, engaging their interests that Yeah, we’re gonna be able to handle that with you know, either our bot will take that to a certain point then hand it off to you but and, and I think that’s a false promise. Certainly AI is improving on many fronts. But AI is really bad at empathy, for instance, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. And that’s one that’s, you know, hugely complex if they can master empathy then true empathy. And that’s why it’s really interesting, but I don’t think I have to worry about that in my career. But, yeah, I think again, there’s people sort of being seduced and thinking that that technology can handle that. And so I think what we see especially the way we see some sales organizations structured these days with the increased our specialization, is that, yeah, we’re sort of reinforcing this in some ways that, that some of these things just are important that we can handle things sort of in quantity makes up for sort of the lack of quality in some areas where it really doesn’t, but what’s your thought?
David Masover 11:55
If you know, I think technology is really interesting, and I’m not a technology guy. I’ve been close to technology. For a lot of my life, but I’m a sales guy, you know,
Andy Paul 12:03
like for type ads, oh my gosh, Listen, man, I
d Masover 12:05
founded a.com startup company, but you know, it’s still a sales focus. But I think the dimension that that technology is currently bringing into sales is this idea that, that kind of we can break it down into a process. That’s, that’s very finite and sequenced. And, you know, I think people have been trying to do that for a long time. I know I tried to do that early in my career, I thought, Okay, I’m going to script out every possible answer that somebody says and I think a lot of people have tried to do that. I have to admit it, you know, hi. closet called script or whatever, right? But, you know, most people who stick with sales kind of through that part where it’s rough, and they’re trying to figure it out, come to realize that it’s about people. And yes, there should be a kind of a framework and yes, there are some best practices. And yes, there are some things that you can do consistently kind of at a framework level. But at the end of the day, it’s about people. And if that part can’t get injected into a technology process, that technology process is always going to be limited. But the technology process is very sexy, right? I mean, it’s compelling. It’s got a value proposition. Yeah. And I think that sometimes we can get a little bit carried away that like, wow, they’re AI analyzed a million calls. And if I say, three times, I’m lost, but if it’s only to say, yeah, that’s probably true.
Andy Paul 13:35
But no, it’s actually probably not. But yeah, anyway,
David Masover 13:39
either. Yeah. I don’t know. Like, it might be a fact. But like, I think Dan Pink in his famous TED Talk made the distinction between facts and true facts. So that might be a fact. But I don’t think it’s a true fact.
Andy Paul 13:52
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s, you can correlate something to everything. Yeah, exactly. And there are Big famous studies done about that, or you can take, I think there’s one I was reading about a book called every data, which is a great book about how we misuse data. And yeah, I think they they said something about the correlation between the number of lawyers and Samoa and like the murder rate in San Francisco. I mean, it was like, yeah, you can draw correlations everywhere. But yeah, there’s no cause.
David Masover 14:26
Yep. There’s actually a website. It’s called spurious correlations. I don’t know. Yes, they’ll up. But I know they correlated I think margarine consumption and divorce rate in Delaware. It’s like,
Andy Paul 14:34 Mm-hmm
okay, yeah, there you go. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think actually, that was based on a book I think and I think I’m not sure if the website is still up, but the book is still available. So well, so it seems like we for at least to me, it seems like we’re still going about how we’re building our sales processes a little bit backwards. Interesting. Your take on this because you wrote about the sales process when you’re relating your experience out of McDonald’s. Was that McDonald’s in Budapest? It wasn’t McDonald’s in Budapest.
David Masover 15:04
They’re all pretty much the same here. All right, all right. Don’t have pancakes for breakfast, but otherwise, it’s pretty much the same.
Andy Paul 15:09
Okay. And what do they call like the big mac denoting not the Royale or the Quarter Pounder?
David Masover 15:15
Yeah. Know that. Yeah, that’s from what’s that movie a pulp fiction. Right. Right. Right. I have a quarter pounder in Europe because they don’t have pounds. So it’s the
Andy Paul 15:23
one France it’s
David Masover 15:24
the Royal Yeah, yeah. Here’s the Chateau MC royal or something.
Yeah, it’s something like that anyway, right. But yeah, I mean, the reason that I know, I actually discovered the sales process all by myself. This is, you know, I did. Yeah, kind of, you know, kinda like Al Gore invented the internet. Yeah. Right after I figured out what closing was. Mm hmm. I started thinking, you know, how am I going to figure out this sales thing? My dad was a scientist. I’m like, Okay, I’ll experiment. So I looked at this big thing called sales and I started chopping it up into pieces. And you know, okay. What do I do first, you know, who do I target? And what do I say? And what do I do next? And before I knew it, I had this thing. And then one day somebody told me Yeah, that’s called the sales process. And I’m like, Wow, cool. Like I invented
Andy Paul 16:10
it.
David Masover 16:12
But no, I thought of it. And, you know, like, it’s funny, because now in hindsight, so many years later, I think I would have called it a framework instead of a process. Mm hmm. Because I think the word process, I don’t think it’s misleading. I think it’s a good word. But I think it’s a word that kind of takes people to a place that’s a little bit more granular than you want to think about this stuff.
Andy Paul 16:35
Yeah, well, I think a process assumes a logical conclusion, which rarely happens, and which, which I think is one of the problems with the framework , I think is interesting. But my point was, it seems like again, today we see companies, I believe, are engineering the process the wrong way. And let me give an example. So you know in the SAS business The devoted Trent’s my time and effort to top of the funnel activities generating a ton and ton of leads. But the close rate at the back ends pretty, pretty low. And they’ve accepted that because, hey, as long as we can get opportunities on top of the funnel really good at that, then we’ll accept this percentage of conversion percentages. But to me, it’s like, Yeah, but there’s so much waste in efficiency and effectiveness throughout that whole thing. To me, it’s so criminal is, why not start the other end and say, okay, instead of saying we’re going to close one out of every five opportunities, let’s set the stake in the ground, but we’re going to close. We’re going to outdo our initial, you know, selling just to see what we’re going to sell. Yeah, we think we can sell clothes, one out of every two operatives and close 50% of our opportunities. Now let’s build our process from there that says okay, we want to maintain that close rate. Now, how do we build our process out to scale in order to keep that close right? To me, that’s how I’ve done it where I’ve built teams. Let’s scale from what we know an outcome is and how do we maintain that level of outcome as opposed to? Let’s just focus purely on the inputs into the system. He,
David Masover 18:13
I always got uncomfortable when somebody wanted to know what I thought the conversion rate was going to be before we actually did some work. You know, I think I just really, it’s really tempting to say, Okay, now what do you think it’s going to be? And how should I know? And I’m happy to guess but it’s a guess. In my first book, mastering your sales process, I talked about this concept called frontloading again, which, you know, I could claim I invented but it’s obviously something that a lot of people talk about, because it’s smart. But the idea is, you know, if you look at all the steps that it takes to get to a sale, you know, and you start there. It’s not a good idea to say okay, they should all take about the same amount of time. That’s kind of a silly assumption to start with. All right. a better way to look at it is to say, okay, so if this is where I want to get at the end of the process, what can I do early on in the process to give me a higher chance for success? Exactly. So, you know, I don’t know what the number is going to be. But I know that if I want to be having this conversation at the end, there are things that I can be doing in the beginning, who I choose to talk to how I choose to get into that conversation, how I choose to ask questions in the beginning to really see if we’re a good fit together otherwise known as qualification, right? No, real nor concept,
Andy Paul 19:33
preliminary qualification,
David Masover 19:35
yeah. How can I? How can I know what’s known as discovery or needs analysis in a way that it’s not only going to give me the information that I need but give me an opportunity to position my solution. And when you set it up correctly, you give yourself that higher chance to convert at the end. So I think you’re exactly right. You know, you can wind up with it with a funnel that looks you know really like this, but Just like that, that just makes it hard for everybody, right? You burn out your salespeople, you burn out your customers and your prospects. Nobody enjoys that process. Why not? Figure out what problems you solve and train your salespeople to get into conversations with people that have those problems, help them understand the solution and work gracefully towards the close work every time. But your conversion rate is going to be an awful lot higher if you begin the process thinking about where you want it to be in the end and really working on it and that kind of a holistic way.
Andy Paul 20:31
Yeah, I mean, to me, I’ve done yeah, obviously talk to a lot of people you know, day in day out and sales because of this podcast and the work I do and, and one thing that’s so become clear to me and this is really the point you’re you’re making, I believe is that one thing we don’t talk enough about in sales and our educate people about is winning. right we got this process and the process assumes if we Do these things we won’t get an order, right. But there’s things that have to happen each step along the way. That and some of these are pretty point solutions that are finite, that make a huge difference in terms of your outcome. And so when you talk about front loading Yeah, I used a similar term because I was selling very large systems, so multiple millions of dollars for a long time. And I knew that there were always sort of two critical points in the deal. One obviously being the end getting the order but there was a midpoint that I knew that I sold to that point, that was pretty much the point where the customer is gonna make the decision. Yeah, we’re gonna make a change or not, right, we’ve had enough information, we can put our business case together, and we can justify going forward.
David Masover 21:53
It’s different from closing. It’s the point in the middle of the kind of the total sales conversation where the customer returns. And they’d be well,
Andy Paul 22:02
they’ve made the decision, they’re gonna make the change before then they haven’t yet committed to making a change. Now, the second order decision is who we’re gonna make the change with. But I knew that if I won that first one, I really focused on front loading, as you talked about really being high value early, early on when they reach that point, yeah, I might not have won the order at that point. But I called it and I won the sale. Yeah, it was mine. It was mine to lose at that point. Yeah. And so I wasn’t really focused on the CEO logical stage driven process all the way through to the end. I was focused on that midpoint because I I work like hell and I got my team member that worked with me to do sales that I taught. That’s the point you focus on focus on that midpoint, you win that your odds of winning the deal
David Masover 22:52
75 80% and if you don’t win that the odds of winning the dealer also certain
Andy Paul 22:57
Oh, yeah, then you stop selling to them. Right. You should know at that point. Right. So that’s the thing that, you know, we get to a qualification again, we talked about winning, winning so practical, it’s tactical. Yeah. And when we say everything is, you know, logical and we got the stage exit criteria and so on, it really stops people from thinking about Yeah, there’s something that happens every time I interact with somebody that could make a difference between winning and losing. Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like we’re not competing. Right to me. The reason that’s tractor sales isn’t hugely competitive right? I’m not Yeah, just I am I like I like I like to win I hate to lose. Bias fortunate working for people that were just, you know, so gracious and generous and giving me advice and tips. We’ll do this here and do this year. It’s the littlgs that you begin to accumulate over time. That becomes almost your own process. Yep. But it’s being replaced with a serve uniform. Vanilla bland. You know, the mechanized process we go through. But it’s a little things with the other person that really are critical.
David Masover 24:05
Yep. I went through kind of an interesting change. You know, when I, when I came to Budapest, I mostly worked in the region for quite some time. And from about 2010 until about 2016, I kind of diverted away from a lot of the sales stuff, or sales consulting, I was doing a lot of intra management work, the startup scene got really hot here. And I got involved in a lot of that. And it was only recently that I came back and I decided, you know, the region is great, but it’s a big world. And, you know, with my books, I could see that I was always getting a lot of web traffic from America. I thought, you know, let’s, let’s start doing some content on LinkedIn. Let’s see if I can generate business places in the world. And, you know, it’s it’s been it’s been successful, and it’s been fun. But as a part of that work, I started working with individual salespeople, not just sales organizations, but just individuals who would you know, pull a credit card out of their wallet and, and it’s a subset. It’s a small subset. You gotta love these people. What was really interesting was Just working with these ground level reps not in the context of their organization, I was doing a lot of call reviews. And I was shocked at a lot of what I was hearing, because on more than a few occasions, I was listening to reps who were clearly kind of stepping through a demo or stepping through a discovery. And it was almost as if they weren’t even a person. I don’t want to exaggerate it too much. But it was like, okay, I’ve asked this question. Now, I asked this question. And I might throw out this, you know, so does that sound valuable to you? Or can you see how that would provide value and it was so foreign to me? Well, you can do sales to be
Andy Paul 25:41
right. And you can hear that on calls, when you listen to call recordings is because there’s always they ask the question, the customer answers, and there’s a pause. Yep. And so the pauses, they’re taking a quick note, and then they’re scanning to the next question to ask. And it just becomes this thing that becomes so known as a sponsor. So as you’re right, it’s, it’s It’s not a conversation, it’s an interrogation. At best,
David Masover 26:03
yeah, it’s an interview. And I think that, you know, when we talk about what sales really is, I think it’s this balance between you’re doing the right things the right way. But with somebody, you know, you’re going through a process with somebody, the techniques and these frameworks and these processes, they’re there to kind of give us guidelines. You know, and I mean, we could go into the whole sports analogy thing, but that’s just been beaten to death. Right? But it’s a good analogy, right? I mean, if you want to win a soccer game, kick the ball into the goal, right, but there’s more to it than that. And well, there’s more to it than that part that kind of gets lost when you’re just going through the steps in a really mechanical fashion.
Andy Paul 26:48
Yeah, but absolutely. I mean, I don’t love them being huge soccer fans. So I love soccer analogies, but a big part of soccer is creating opportunities to score it. And and and you could say that that’s true at every game but I mean, yes people know goals or serve at a premium and soccer and and and you’re really measuring in some way Yeah, they creating chances to score and shots on goal that’s very analogous to, you know, individual interactions you have throughout the sales processes. Are you creating an opportunity to score? And yeah, if we’re too robotic about it if we’re too scripted, and I don’t want to put the onus on the salespeople, to me, this is really a cultural issue. Totally agree. Because, you know, as we adopt sales processes, it’s too easy for the sellers to feel well, even if I don’t succeed if I follow the process, that’s safer. Yeah. And sometimes even very experienced people I’m seeing are falling prey to this. And it’s, yeah, I’ve talked about this in the past I think it’s, it’s I was fortunate, I guess, when I was coming into sales to work for people that were willing to give me enough rope to hang myself.
David Masover 28:07
Yes.
Andy Paul 28:08
And, and I took it, maybe it’s just part of my personality . You know, I want to do it my way. But we have to get people to the point sellers to the point where they feel enabled to do things their way that they become the best version of themselves, not another clone of some person, whatever that means.
David Masover 28:34
But you’re absolutely right. When you say we can’t really put the onus on the sellers, because, you know, as I went through this process in this last year or so of talking to a lot of these reps, there were no shortage of them who wanted to try some of the things that we talked about and who wanted to innovate, and they wanted to experiment. And that was discouraged, especially if it was at the expense of the activity metrics.
Andy Paul 28:55
Well, that was the point. That’s such a critical point. I was about to say that I’m glad you brought that up because That’s what’s constraining people’s rights? I’ve got to hit this, this number. And, yeah, if I vary the process, and I don’t succeed at first, then I’m gonna get slapped.
David Masover 29:14
Yes. Yeah. And, you know, I think that I think that
it you can you can you can speculate or you can observe or you can document where all that came from. But I don’t think that matters. I think if an organization decides they really want to turn the tables, they have to recognize it as a problem. And they have to recognize that that success comes with their sales people work with prospects and customers as people, but that also goes up the chain. Right, the sales manager, the frontline manager salesperson relationship, also has to be more than mechanical and metrics and KPIs and dashboards and you know, the number at the end of the month. Sales coaching is something that I just don’t see happening within organizations.
Andy Paul 30:00
What do I think? Right, go ahead. I’m sorry. Good. Well, I was gonna say, I think part of the problem there is and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to jump on your point is, is, is that we don’t really tell people correctly what they should be doing when they’re coaching. And so, when you say coaching, what most frontline managers take that to mean is opportunity coaching. And, And to me, that’s okay. But you know, there’s really more to it, you have to develop the person. And so I think a useful construct for people to think about it is that there’s managing coaching, mentoring, and actually a new acronym that I’ve been gonna be writing about, which actually is o p o p words. You have your process, opportunities, people education, and this is how this is how managers should be dividing their time is the process is it I’m capacity building, right? This is where I manage organization, my processes where I hire people to recruit and build the capacity of my organization. The O is opportunity coaching. Yeah, this is why I work with the people on increasing our close rates, increasing our yield for revenue. The second P is people right? I’m developing the people. Coaching doesn’t develop people. What am I doing to invest in my people to help them become the best version of themselves? And the E is it creating a culture of learning or education in the organization? And I think people should start divide their managers divide their time Sir 4030 2010 through the acronym so 40 on process 30 on opportunity coaching 20 on on people development, which is really capacity building or capability building, excuse me, first P is capacity capability building, and then 10% on education and we don’t see anything close to that. Unfortunately.
David Masover 32:00
No, no, I think what’s really interesting about those categories is that there’s, you know, having thought about it for like 10 seconds now, you know, there’s at least two ways to look at it. You could look at each of these, each of these letters, each of these categories in a finite way. But I think what’s really exciting is when you start seeing how each one can impact the other. Mm hmm. How opportunity coaching can lead to education now education and haven’t really thought this through but like, I think you could really spend some time thinking about that. And the things that you learn from opportunity coaching should feed your development of the process. And the things that you learn, when you’re, when you’re developing the process should dictate the kind of education that you’re working on with your factory. So, you know, when you start thinking about it, not only categorically but also holistically, that’s when I think you’ve got the power to really take your organization to the next level, by when you’re stuck too much in the weeds, you know, just the metrics which are the output of whatever’s happening in the And what’s leading to that output? I think it’s really hard to make a truly significant long lasting impact.
Andy Paul 33:07
Well, it is. And that sort of leads to a point which, unfortunately, I don’t have enough time left to really dig into but which is productivity. And we have a whole slew of frontline managers that think that productivity just has to do with hitting the activity metrics, or whatever metrics they’ve set up, which really have nothing to do with productivity. I mean, to me, productivity is always about revenue output. revenue, how about how much revenue Am I producing per hour of selling time? Yeah, I mean, productivity. There’s a universal measure for productivity, basically, economists use and yet we seem to think that sales is immune from that. We don’t talk about productivity being a little piece as opposed to the outcome. So I don’t need to go on that soapbox now, but another time It’ll
David Masover 34:01
come out to Budapest. We’ll have a palinka. That’s a brandy. We’ll work that out.
Andy Paul 34:06
All right. Yeah, well, goulash, all that stuff. All that stuff. You got it. All that stuff. Yeah. My wife. Her father was Hungarian. He’s, I think he’s only like one Hungarian bakery left here on Monday, Manhattan. But every year she’s still got a certain Hungarian cake. I forget the name. But that really tasted like whipped cream, obviously. So nothing wrong with that.
David Masover 34:33
Right What I put on a lot of kilos since I’ve been here. Let’s put it that way.
Andy Paul 34:36
I can’t imagine. Yeah, Hungarian food is very good. Yep. All right. Well, David, unfortunately ran out of time. So tell people they can find out more about you and connect with you.
David Masover 34:47
David mass over comm and LinkedIn are the best places to find me.
Andy Paul 34:51
And that’s just David mass over after the last forward slash.
David Masover 34:54
That’s it makeovers like Passover but there’s only one as
Andy Paul 34:59
we go. One way to remember it. All right. Well, David, it’s been a pleasure to actually talk to you in person Finally, after months of communicating on LinkedIn, and I look forward to doing it again.
David Masover 35:10
Well, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Andy Paul 35:12
It’s been fun. Talk to you soon. Thanks. Okay, friends, that was accelerated for the week. First of all, as always, I want to thank you for joining me. And I want to thank my guest, David, mass over Join me again next week as my guest will be another David, David JP Fisher or D fishes. I call this return visit for David and order him to talk about empathy. You know, the term has almost become a cliche in sales. Every seller thinks they have it, most don’t. And you have to join us next week to learn how to develop the ability to be empathic and to develop that deep trust based relationship with your buyers. You’ll enjoy this conversation so be sure to join us then. Before you go, don’t forget to check out the sales house. That’s the one performance accelerator at the sales house.com. If you enjoyed the show, please go to iTunes, wherever you listen to it, leave your review. Really appreciate that. And so thanks again for joining me. Until next week. I’m your host Andy Paul. Good selling everyone. Bring DNA is leading a revenue acceleration platform that uses AI to help scale business growth. trusted by the world’s top sales teams across the globe. Ring DNA has proven to exponentially increase call Connect rates, opportunities and revenue wherever your teams live and work. So if your sales support team has gone fully remote ring DNA and arm your team with the tools they need to work from anywhere on the planet. Learn more at ring dna.com forward slash Andy that’s ring dna.com forward slash Andy
Andy Paul 0:00
Bring DNA is leading a revenue acceleration platform that uses AI to help scale business growth. trusted by the world’s top sales teams across the globe. Ring DNA has proven to exponentially increase call Connect rates, opportunities and revenue wherever your teams live and work. So if your sales support team has gone fully remote, ring DNA can arm your team with the tools they need to work from anywhere on the planet. Learn more at ring dna.com forward slash Andy that’s ring DNA comm forward slash Andy
it’s time to accelerate. Hey friends, this is Andy. Welcome to Episode 714 714 to accelerate the sales podcast of record. I have another excellent episode lined up here today. Joining me as my guest David mass over not David The author of a book titled The salesman’s Guide to Dating a sales book about making connections with an unexpected twist, which is absolutely true. And David has joined me today from his office in Budapest, Hungary. So we’re gonna start talking about David’s journey from the US and how he ended up being this well known sales expert based in Hungary. And then we’re gonna delve into our core topic that we’re gonna talk about today, which are the back of the fundamentals and the basics. And one of the key questions we’re gonna get into is how do we successfully develop new generations of sellers without having to go back and reinvent the wheel every time a new cadre of sellers enters the workforce? And also talk about how do we educate sellers to develop their own style or framework as David talks about it, their own style of selling you know, something that’s authentic to you that enables you to sell and when up to your potential so yeah might be based on methodology might be based On certain skills and behaviors, but it’s something that’s unique and authentic to you that really resonates with the buyer. So how do you develop that? So you want to make sure you stick around for this. Now, before we get to David, I want to take a quick second talk about the sales house. That’s my sales performance accelerator for b2b sellers. Now, in the typical sales training, you learn a lot of things, with the exception of how to win. You know, sales, winning orders is not the result of your process or the methodology you use. It comes from doing a lot of small things extremely well. On the sales house, I focused on teaching you the strategies, behaviors, techniques and skills you don’t learn in sales training. But that will make a huge difference in your ability to win new business. I mean, you may know how to build a relationship with a prospect but do you know the four core relationships, relationship skills that will enable you to accelerate building a trust based relationship with any buyer? Or perhaps you’ve been trained how to do a discovery Recall. But do you know the two most important pieces of information you need to learn from your prospects? Because knowing these will make the huge difference between winning and losing, and you haven’t been trained on that you encode how to qualify an opportunity, but do you know the one agreement you need to reach with your prospect before they can be considered truly qualified, and if you have that agreement, will increase your odds of winning the deal? If you’re not up to speed on all these things, then you’re in a competitive disadvantage. And a sales house is the resource you need to reach the next level and the level above that. members get unlimited access to checklists, playbooks courses, coaching, mentoring, and an engaged community to help you sell more confidence, trust and acumen so come learn how to become the winningest version of you in the sales house, visit salesforce.com that is the sales house.com. Alright, let’s jump into it. My guest David, welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to have you here. So you are our first guest Joining us from Budapest, Hungary. Wow.
David Masover 4:03
And I’m not even Hungarian,
Andy Paul 4:05
even when my wife was half Hungarian. So
David Masover 4:09
My wife is all the way Hungarian. Okay, question that’s following, right.
Andy Paul 4:13
It’s like, why are you there? Right?
David Masover 4:15
Yeah, that the short answer is she was pretty. The long answer usually requires several drinks. But you know, we probably don’t want to go there today.
Andy Paul 4:23
All right. Well, you and I will have to drink sometime. But did you meet your wife here in the states? Are Demeter hungry?
David Masover 4:29
So I met my first wife in the states and she was from Hungary. We met in San Francisco back in 2001. And she had never lived in Hungary as an adult. She moved to the states to go to university and that law school. No, we met and we got married and we decided, you know, if she didn’t live in Hungary at some point, as an adult, she would always feel like she was missing something in her life. In 2004, we decided, Okay, let’s go for two years. And you know, that was 14 years. ago, a whole lot of life has happened, you know, kids in divorces and marriages and you know that that’s the part where the drinks come in. But that’s how I got here.
Andy Paul 5:09
All right. So you’re 14 and have your two year plan.
David Masover 5:13
Your 14 my two year plan? Yes.
Andy Paul 5:14
Okay. Well, I’m just talking about this. And my wife does listen to my podcast occasionally, so she’ll hear this too, but I got remarried, second, married for a second time in 2010. moved from San Diego here to New York, where I am today at my New York office. And, yeah, we have a two year plan to move from New York to San Diego full time. And we’re in year nine of our two year plan. Welcome. Welcome to the club. My wife, Vicki will be glad to hear that there’s more than one of us. Well, you know,
David Masover 5:47
the old joke Do you know how to make God laugh?
Andy Paul 5:50
They make plans. Right? Your plans, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Alright, so are you and the most important question, are you in Budapest. I’m in Buddha. Buddha. Excellent.
David Masover 6:01
Have you been here? Because it’s mostly people who have been here that know to ask that question.
Andy Paul 6:06
No, I haven’t been there. But I am aware of the fact that there were two cities. But as I said, My wife’s father was Hungarian, and left the country right before World War Two. And so she’s been back and she’s actually been there just a year or so ago. She was lecturing and brought a Slava and Slovakia hadn’t been to Budapest for a while, so she took the opportunity to go. So.
David Masover 6:28
Alright, listeners are coming to the neighborhood, drop me a line, I’d be happy to show you around. That’d be fun. I’m looking forward to it. So, okay, we’re gonna talk about sales. Now. There you go. We’ve record geography, right, people
Andy Paul 6:43
are accustomed to little digressions here and there on the show. Well, we did that. We did that. So let’s talk about a topic you and I talked about previously, which is why it seems like every time we get a new generation of sellers into the mix That we seem to be starting over again, but that we’re sort of recreating the wheel. Why isn’t there sort of this ethos that that sir, should permeate the environment now that, you know, as is why it seems like we’re still after literally 130 years roughly, of modern American selling. So start in the 1890s with a national cash register. Why do we still have time? Yeah, most of the selling training sales training is still about? Yeah, asking good questions, being curious about the other person. I mean, it keeps me employed. But yeah, why are we starting to teach these things?
David Masover 7:39
I think that’s a great question. And I think the really honest answer is I don’t know when it frustrates me. I have some theories. But in
Andy Paul 7:49
Australia, give us a theory. Well,
David Masover 7:52
you know, the reason that I think it’s strange is because there’s just so much information now. I mean, when I first started in sales, I started my first sales job at 19. In 91, and it was tough. I had no background in sales. nobody in my family wasn’t so it was like, here’s a day of product training. There’s your desk. Good luck, buddy. I’m already selling. I was selling computer supplies, discs and ribbons. Remember those little balls that you put on top of your IBM Selectric typewriter? Yeah. Pure commodities right, sir. Rudel. And, you know, I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know where to go. Luckily one of my peers and one of my colleagues gave me an audio cassette. That’s how long ago that copy of Brian Tracy’s selling and it was totally over my head. He kept talking about closing. I’m not kidding you, Andy. I did not know what he meant by the word close. I mean, that’s how lost I was, What is why they keep saying that, you know, but now. I mean, fast forward to 2019 there’s so much information so many great books, great content, great podcasts. And yet I talked to many people who are colleagues who are Salesforce development consultants or whatever they call themselves. And you walk into a company and the problems are core basic fundamental problems. And I don’t know why they haven’t been solved. One theory would be that, that I think that many times the basics are assumed away. I think that there’s this kind of fundamental mystery around sales and selling. It’s kind of like finance, you know, money isn’t that difficult to understand, but people kind of don’t want to talk about it, so they don’t understand it, and they just let their finance guy and I think sales is similar if you’re not in sales, and you know, too many people who are, they don’t want to really think about it. They just want to hire someone who’s going to do it, and kind of hope it gets done. And so you wind up with these company cultures that just don’t have a it’s this passion for learning this passion for studying. You see some of it but not enough. And I think there’s There’s a lack of focus on just the core basics. You know, we’re all looking for the magic bullet, or the super tack, or the fancy technique, or the perfect cadence or the, you know, the millions of calls that have been analyzed to tell us what to say. It’s like, No, you know, the truth is just more fundamental than that. And I don’t think enough people start there. That would be my theory about one possible theory about why this problem keeps repeating is lack of focus on the basics and fundamentals. And it seems like
Andy Paul 10:31
to me that it’s being compounded a bit by technology these days that we’re giving people sellers the impression that Yeah, yeah, if you’re a little deficient in this area, you have a hard time connecting with someone making that initial connection, engaging their interests that Yeah, we’re gonna be able to handle that with you know, either our bot will take that to a certain point then hand it off to you but and, and I think that’s a false promise. Certainly AI is improving on many fronts. But AI is really bad at empathy, for instance, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. And that’s one that’s, you know, hugely complex if they can master empathy then true empathy. And that’s why it’s really interesting, but I don’t think I have to worry about that in my career. But, yeah, I think again, there’s people sort of being seduced and thinking that that technology can handle that. And so I think what we see especially the way we see some sales organizations structured these days with the increased our specialization, is that, yeah, we’re sort of reinforcing this in some ways that, that some of these things just are important that we can handle things sort of in quantity makes up for sort of the lack of quality in some areas where it really doesn’t, but what’s your thought?
David Masover 11:55
If you know, I think technology is really interesting, and I’m not a technology guy. I’ve been close to technology. For a lot of my life, but I’m a sales guy, you know,
Andy Paul 12:03
like for type ads, oh my gosh, Listen, man, I
David Masover 12:05
founded a.com startup company, but you know, it’s still a sales focus. But I think the dimension that that technology is currently bringing into sales is this idea that, that kind of we can break it down into a process. That’s, that’s very finite and sequenced. And and, you know, I think people have been trying to do that for a long time. I know I tried to do that early in my career, I thought, Okay, I’m going to script out every possible answer that somebody says and I think a lot of people have tried to do that. I have to admit it, you know, hi. closet called script or whatever, right? But, you know, most people who stick with sales kind of through that part where it’s rough, and they’re trying to figure it out, come to realize that it’s about people. And yes, there should be a kind of a framework and yes, there are some best practices. And yes, there are some things that you can do consistently kind of at a framework level. But at the end of the day, it’s about people. And if that part can’t get injected into a technology process, that technology process is always going to be limited. But the technology process is very sexy, right? I mean, it’s compelling. It’s got a value proposition. Yeah. And I think that sometimes we can get a little bit carried away that like, wow, they’re AI analyzed a million calls. And if I say, three times, I’m lost, but if it’s only to say, yeah, that’s probably true.
Andy Paul 13:35
But no, it’s actually probably not. But yeah, anyway,
David Masover 13:39
either. Yeah. I don’t know. Like, it might be a fact. But like, I think Dan Pink in his famous TED Talk made the distinction between facts and true facts. So that might be a fact. But I don’t think it’s a true fact.
Andy Paul 13:52
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s, you can correlate something to everything. Yeah, exactly. And there’s Big famous studies done about that, or you can take, I think there’s one I was reading about a book called every data, which is a great book about how we misuse data. And yeah, I think they they said something about the correlation between the number of lawyers and Samoa and like the murder rate in San Francisco. I mean, it was like, yeah, you can draw correlations everywhere. But yeah, there’s no cause.
David Masover 14:26
Yep. There’s actually a website. It’s called spurious correlations. I don’t know. Yes, they’ll up. But I know they correlated I think margarine consumption and divorce rate in Delaware. It’s like,
Andy Paul 14:34
okay, yeah, there you go. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think actually, that was based on a book I think and I think I’m not sure if the website is still up, but the book is still available. So well, so it seems like we for at least to me, it seems like we’re still going about how we’re building our sales processes a little bit backwards. Interesting. Your take on this because you wrote about the sales process when you’re relating your experience out of McDonald’s. Was that McDonald’s in Budapest? It wasn’t McDonald’s in Budapest.
David Masover 15:04
They’re all pretty much the same here. All right, all right. Don’t have pancakes for breakfast, but otherwise, it’s pretty much the same.
Andy Paul 15:09
Okay. And what do they call like the big mac denoting not the Royale or the Quarter Pounder?
David Masover 15:15
Yeah. Know that. Yeah, that’s from what’s that movie a pulp fiction. Right. Right. Right. I have a quarter pounder in Europe because they don’t have pounds. So it’s the
Andy Paul 15:23
one France it’s
David Masover 15:24
the Royal Yeah, yeah. Here’s the Chateau MC royal or something.
Yeah, it’s something like that anyway, right. But yeah, I mean, the reason that I know, I actually discovered the sales process all by myself. This is, you know, I did. Yeah, kind of, you know, kinda like Al Gore invented the internet. Yeah. Right after I figured out what closing was. Mm hmm. I started thinking, you know, how am I going to figure out this sales thing? My dad was a scientist. I’m like, Okay, I’ll experiment. So I looked at this big thing called sales and I started chopping it up into pieces. And you know, okay. What do I do first, you know, who do I target? And what do I say? And what do I do next? And before I knew it, I had this thing. And then one day somebody told me Yeah, that’s called the sales process. And I’m like, Wow, cool. Like I invented
Andy Paul 16:10
it.
David Masover 16:12
But no, I thought of it. And, you know, like, it’s funny, because now in hindsight, so many years later, I think I would have called it a framework instead of a process. Mm hmm. Because I think the word process, I don’t think it’s misleading. I think it’s a good word. But I think it’s a word that kind of takes people to a place that’s a little bit more granular than you want to think about this stuff.
Andy Paul 16:35
Yeah, well, I think a process assumes a logical conclusion, which rarely happens, and which, which I think is one of the problems with the framework , I think is interesting. But my point was, it seems like again, today we see companies, I believe, are engineering the process the wrong way. And let me give an example. So you know in the SAS business The devoted Trent’s my time and effort to top of the funnel activities generating a ton and ton of leads. But the close rate at the back ends pretty, pretty low. And they’ve accepted that because, hey, as long as we can get opportunities on top of the funnel really good at that, then we’ll accept this percentage of conversion percentages. But to me, it’s like, Yeah, but there’s so much waste in efficiency and effectiveness throughout that whole thing. To me, it’s so criminal is, why not start the other end and say, okay, instead of saying we’re going to close one out of every five opportunities, let’s set the stake in the ground, but we’re going to close. We’re going to out do our initial, you know, selling just to see what we’re going to sell. Yeah, we think we can sell clothes, one out of every two operatives and close 50% of our opportunities. Now let’s build our process from there that says okay, we want to maintain that close rate. Now, how do we build our process out to scale in order to keep that close right? To me, that’s how I’ve done it where I’ve built teams. Let’s scale from what we know an outcome is and how do we maintain that level of outcome as opposed to? Let’s just focus purely on the inputs into the system. He,
David Masover 18:13
I always got uncomfortable when somebody wanted to know what I thought the conversion rate was going to be before we actually did some work. You know, I think I just really, it’s really tempting to say, Okay, now what do you think it’s going to be? And how should I know? And I’m happy to guess but it’s a guess. In my first book, mastering your sales process, I talked about this concept called front loading again, which, you know, I could claim I invented but it’s obviously something that a lot of people talk about, because it’s smart. But the idea is, you know, if you look at all the steps that it takes to get to a sale, you know, and you start there. It’s not a good idea to say okay, they should all take about the same amount of time. That’s that’s kind of a silly assumption to start with. All right. a better way to look at it is to say, okay, so if this is where I want to get at the end of the process, what can I do early on in the process to give me a higher chance for success? Exactly. So, you know, I don’t know what the number is going to be. But I know that if I want to be having this conversation at the end, there are things that I can be doing in the beginning, who I choose to talk to how I choose to get into that conversation, how I choose to ask questions in the beginning to really see if we’re a good fit together otherwise known as qualification, right? No, real nor concept,
Andy Paul 19:33
preliminary qualification,
David Masover 19:35
yeah. How can I? How can I know, what’s known as discovery or needs analysis in a way that it’s not only going to give me the information that I need but give me an opportunity to position my solution. And when you set it up correctly, you give yourself that higher chance to convert at the end. So I think you’re exactly right. You know, you can wind up with it with a funnel that looks you know really like this, but Just like that, that just makes it hard for everybody, right? You burn out your salespeople, you burn out your customers and your prospects. Nobody enjoys that process. Why not? Figure out what problems you solve and train your salespeople to get into conversations with people that have those problems, help them understand the solution and work gracefully towards the close work every time. But your conversion rate is going to be an awful lot higher if you begin the process thinking about where you want it to be in the end and really working on it and that kind of a holistic way.
Andy Paul 20:31
Yeah, I mean, to me, I’ve done yeah, obviously talk to a lot of people you know, day in day out and sales because of this podcast and the work I do and, and to me, one thing that’s so become clear to me and this is really the point you’re you’re making, I believe is that one thing we don’t talk enough about in sales and our educate people about is winning. right we got this process and the process assumes if we Do these things we won’t get an order, right. But there’s things that have to happen each step along the way. That and some of these are pretty point solutions that are finite, that make a huge difference in terms of your ultimate outcome. And so when you talk about front loading Yeah, I used a similar term because I was selling very large systems, so multiple millions of dollars for a long time. And I knew that there were always sort of two critical points in the deal. One obviously being the end getting the order but there was a midpoint that I knew that I sold to that point, that was pretty much the point where the customer is gonna make the decision. Yeah, we’re gonna make a change or not, right, we’ve had enough information, we can put our business case together, and we can justify going forward.
David Masover 21:53
It’s different from closing. It’s the point in the middle of the kind of the total sales conversation where the customer returns. And they’d be well,
Andy Paul 22:02
they’ve made the decision, they’re gonna make the change before then they haven’t yet committed to making a change. Now, the second order decision is who we’re gonna make the change with. But I knew that if I won that first one, I really focused on front loading, as you talked about really being high value early, early on when they reach that point, yeah, I might not have won the order at that point. But I called it and I won the sale. Yeah, it was mine. It was mine to lose at that point. Yeah. And so I wasn’t really focused on the CEO logical stage driven process all the way through to the end. I was focused on that midpoint because I I work like hell and I got my team member that worked with me to do sales that I taught. That’s the point you focus on focus on that midpoint, you win that your odds of winning the deal
David Masover 22:52
75 80% and if you don’t win that the odds of winning the dealer also certain
Andy Paul 22:57
Oh, yeah, then you stop selling to them. Right. You should know at that point. Right. So that’s the thing that, you know, we get to a qualification again, we talked about winning, winning so practical, it’s tactical. Yeah. And when we say everything is, you know, logical and we got the stage exit criteria and so on, it really stops people from thinking about Yeah, there’s something that happens every time I interact with somebody that could make a difference between winning and losing. Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like we’re not competing. Right to me. The reason that’s tractor sales isn’t hugely competitive right? I’m not Yeah, just I am I like I like I like to win I hate to lose. Bias fortunate working for people that were just, you know, so gracious and generous and giving me advice and tips. We’ll do this here and do this year. It’s the little things that you begin to accumulate over time. That becomes almost your own process. Yep. But it’s being replaced with a serve uniform. Vanilla bland. You know, the mechanized process we go through. But it’s a little things with the other person that really are critical.
David Masover 24:05
Yep. I went through kind of an interesting change. You know, when I, when I came to Budapest, I mostly worked in the region for quite some time. And from about 2010 until about 2016, I kind of diverted away from a lot of the sales stuff, or sales consulting, I was doing a lot of intra management work, the startup scene got really hot here. And I got involved in a lot of that. And it was only recently that I came back and I decided, you know, the region is great, but it’s a big world. And, you know, with my books, I could see that I was always getting a lot of web traffic from America. I thought, you know, let’s, let’s start doing some content on LinkedIn. Let’s see if I can generate business places in the world. And, you know, it’s it’s been successful, and it’s been fun. But as a part of that work, I started working with individual salespeople, not just sales organizations, but just individuals who would you know, pull a credit card out of their wallet and, and it’s a subset. It’s a small subset. You gotta love these people. What was really interesting was Just working with these ground level reps not in the context of their organization, I was doing a lot of call reviews. And I was shocked at a lot of what I was hearing, because on more than a few occasions, I was listening to reps who were clearly kind of stepping through a demo or stepping through a discovery. And it was almost as if they weren’t even a person. I don’t want to exaggerate it too much. But it was like, okay, I’ve asked this question. Now, I asked this question. And I might throw out this, you know, so does that sound valuable to you? Or can you see how that would provide value and it was so foreign to me? Well, you can do sales to be
Andy Paul 25:41
right. And you can hear that on calls, when you listen to call recordings is because there’s always they ask the question, the customer answers, and there’s a pause. Yep. And so the pauses, they’re taking a quick note, and then they’re scanning to the next question to ask. And it just becomes this thing that becomes so known as a sponsor. So as you’re right, it’s, it’s not a conversation, it’s an interrogation. At best,
David Masover 26:03
yeah, it’s an interview. And I think that, you know, when we talk about what sales really is, I think it’s this balance between you’re doing the right things the right way. But with somebody, you know, you’re going through a process with somebody, the techniques and these frameworks and these processes, they’re there to kind of give us guidelines. You know, and I mean, we could go into the whole sports analogy thing, but that’s just been beaten to death. Right? But it’s a good analogy, right? I mean, if you want to win a soccer game, kick the ball into the goal, right, but there’s more to it than that. And well, there’s more to it than that part that kind of gets lost when you’re just going through the steps in a really mechanical fashion.
Andy Paul 26:48
Yeah, but absolutely. I mean, I don’t love them being huge soccer fans. So I love soccer analogies, but a big part of soccer is creating opportunities to score it. And and and you could say that that’s true at every game but I mean, yes people know goals or serve at a premium and soccer and and and you’re really measuring in some way Yeah, they creating chances to score and shots on goal that’s very analogous to, you know, individual interactions you have throughout the sales processes. Are you creating an opportunity to score? And yeah, if we’re too robotic about it if we’re too scripted, and I don’t want to put the onus on the salespeople, to me, this is really a cultural issue. Totally agree. Because, you know, as we adopt sales processes, it’s too easy for the sellers to feel well, even if I don’t succeed if I follow the process, that’s safer. Yeah. And sometimes even very experienced people I’m seeing are falling prey to this. And it’s, yeah, I’ve talked about this in the past I think it’s, it’s I was fortunate, I guess, when I was coming into sales to work for people that were willing to give me enough rope to hang myself.
David Masover 28:07
Yes.
Andy Paul 28:08
And, and I took it, maybe it’s just part of my personality . You know, I want to do it my way. But we have to get people to the point sellers to the point where they feel enabled to do things their way that they become the best version of themselves, not another clone of some person, whatever that means.
David Masover 28:34
But you’re absolutely right. When you say we can’t really put the onus on the sellers, because, you know, as I went through this process in this last year or so of talking to a lot of these reps, there were no shortage of them who wanted to try some of the things that we talked about and who wanted to innovate, and they wanted to experiment. And that was discouraged, especially if it was at the expense of the activity metrics.
Andy Paul 28:55
Well, that was the point. That’s such a critical point. I was about to say that I’m glad you brought that up because That’s what’s constraining people’s rights? I’ve got to hit this, this number. And, yeah, if I vary the process, and I don’t succeed at first, then I’m gonna get slapped.
David Masover 29:14
Yes. Yeah. And, you know, I think that I think that
it you can you can speculate or you can observe or you can document where all that came from. But I don’t think that matters. I think if an organization decides they really want to turn the tables, they have to recognize it as a problem. And they have to recognize that that success comes with their sales people work with prospects and customers as people, but that also goes up the chain. Right, the sales manager, the frontline manager salesperson relationship, also has to be more than mechanical and metrics and KPIs and dashboards and you know, the number at the end of the month. Sales coaching is something that I just don’t see happening within organizations.
Andy Paul 30:00
What do I think? Right, go ahead. I’m sorry. Good. Well, I was gonna say, I think part of the problem there is and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to jump on your point is, is, is that we don’t really tell people correctly what they should be doing when they’re coaching. And so, when you say coaching, what most frontline managers take that to mean is opportunity coaching. And, And to me, that’s okay. But you know, there’s really more to it, you have to develop the person. And so I think a useful construct for people to think about it is that there’s managing coaching, mentoring, and actually a new acronym that I’ve been gonna be writing about, which actually is o p o p words. You have your process, opportunities, people education, and this is how this is how managers should be dividing their time is the process is it I’m capacity building, right? This is where I manage organization, my processes where I hire people to recruit and build the capacity of my organization. The O is opportunity coaching. Yeah, this is why I work with the people on increasing our close rates, increasing our yield for revenue. The second P is people right? I’m developing the people. Coaching doesn’t develop people. What am I doing to invest in my people to help them become the best version of themselves? And the E is it creating a culture of learning or education in the organization? And I think people should start divide their managers divide their time Sir 4030 2010 through the acronym so 40 on process 30 on opportunity coaching 20 on on people development, which is really capacity building or capability building, excuse me, first P is capacity capability building, and then 10% on education and we don’t see anything close to that. Unfortunately.
David Masover 32:00
No, no, I think what’s really interesting about those categories is that there’s, you know, having thought about it for like 10 seconds now, you know, there’s at least two ways to look at it. You could look at each of these, each of these letters, each of these categories in a finite way. But I think what’s really exciting is when you start seeing how each one can impact the other. Mm hmm. How opportunity coaching can lead to education now education and haven’t really thought this through but like, I think you could really spend some time thinking about that. And the things that you learn from opportunity coaching should feed your development of the process. And the things that you learn, when you’re, when you’re developing the process should dictate the kind of education that you’re working on with your factory. So, you know, when you start thinking about it, not only categorically but also holistically, that’s when I think you’ve got the power to really take your organization to the next level, by when you’re stuck too much in the weeds, you know, just the metrics which are the output of whatever’s happening in the And what’s leading to that output? I think it’s really hard to make a truly significant long lasting impact.
Andy Paul 33:07
Well, it is. And that sort of leads to a point which, unfortunately, I don’t have enough time left to really dig into but which is productivity. And we have a whole slew of frontline managers that think that productivity just has to do with hitting the activity metrics, or whatever metrics they’ve set up, which really have nothing to do with productivity. I mean, to me, productivity is always about revenue output. revenue, how about how much revenue Am I producing per hour of selling time? Yeah, I mean, productivity. There’s a universal measure for productivity, basically, economists use and yet we seem to think that sales is immune from that. We don’t talk about productivity being a little piece as opposed to the outcome. So I don’t need to go on that soapbox now, but another time It’ll
David Masover 34:01
come out to Budapest. We’ll have a palinka. That’s a brandy. We’ll work that out.
Andy Paul 34:06
All right. Yeah, well, goulash, all that stuff. All that stuff. You got it. All that stuff. Yeah. My wife. Her father was Hungarian. He’s, I think he’s only like one Hungarian bakery left here on Monday, Manhattan. But every year she’s still got a certain Hungarian cake. I forget the name. But that really tasted like whipped cream, obviously. So nothing wrong with that.
David Masover 34:33
Right What I put on a lot of kilos since I’ve been here. Let’s put it that way.
Andy Paul 34:36
I can’t imagine. Yeah, Hungarian food is very good. Yep. All right. Well, David, unfortunately ran out of time. So tell people they can find out more about you and connect with you.
David Masover 34:47
David mass over comm and LinkedIn are the best places to find me.
Andy Paul 34:51
And that’s just David mass over after the last forward slash.
David Masover 34:54
That’s it makeovers like Passover but there’s only one as
Andy Paul 34:59
we go. One way to remember it. All right. Well, David, it’s been a pleasure to actually talk to you in person Finally, after months of communicating on LinkedIn, and I look forward to doing it again.
David Masover 35:10
Well, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Andy Paul 35:12
It’s been fun. Talk to you soon. Thanks. Okay, friends, that was accelerated for the week. First of all, as always, I want to thank you for joining me. And I want to thank my guest, David, mass over Join me again next week as my guest will be another David, David JP Fisher or D fishes. I call this return visit for David and order him to talk about empathy. You know, the term has almost become a cliche in sales. Every seller thinks they have it, most don’t. And you have to join us next week to learn how to develop the ability to be empathic and to develop that deep trust based relationship with your buyers. You’ll enjoy this conversation so be sure to join us then. Before you go, don’t forget to check out the sales house. That’s the one performance accelerator at the sales house.com. If you enjoyed the show, please go to iTunes, wherever you listen to it, leave your review. Really appreciate that. And so thanks again for joining me. Until next week. I’m your host Andy Paul. Good selling everyone.
