20 Years Of Sales Experience In 15 Minutes
I reveal the five critical elements that separate top-performing MSPs from the rest. I'll show you why owning your pipeline, focusing on process over outcomes, mastering discovery, selling with conviction, and maintaining a winning mindset are essential for reaching the top 1% of sales performance.
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Welcome to Repeatable Revenue, hosted by strategic growth advisor , Ray J. Green.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
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Transcript
Speaker 1
Most people I talked to aren't happy with the amount or the number of new sales that they're getting, and it's not because they they suck at sales, it's because they are missing these five things. So let's fix that right now. Hey what's up? I'm Ray green, former managing director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and CEO for Investor Group's leading turnarounds.
::Speaker 1
Now the founder of MSB Sales Partners, where we hope it companies scale sales and managing partner of repeatable revenue, where we work with just a small number of B2B businesses to go in and actually scale their business towards an exit. And I've been in sales in some capacity for over 20 years. Like 15 of that has been sales management.
::Speaker 1
I've turned around eight sales teams. I've hired hundreds, maybe a thousand, salespeople in my career. And I know that these five things that we're about to dive into will put you in the top 1% of sales. So what are they? You own your pipeline. You are responsible for your pipeline. Doesn't matter if you are an 80 type of person, where you're just closing and you know, and you have an SDR is supposed to be setting up your opportunities.
::Speaker 1
Doesn't matter if you're an SDR who's getting fed leads from the company or from marketing. At the end of the day, if you were in sales, you own your pipeline. Some environments are optimized for success, right? Like, isn't it awesome when you have marketing that is running consistently and effective and the messaging is dialed in? You've got a well constructed funnel that's going to feed you those leads and qualify the right people.
::Speaker 1
You've got a good sales process, you've got all these things like that are completely dialed in. And if you have that awesome, like, that's great. But the fact of the matter is, most environments aren't perfectly optimized, right? Like we want the perfect conditions. We want the ideal conditions as a salesperson, like I just want to focus on making the calls or I just want to focus on, you know, closing the deals.
::Speaker 1
I just want to focus on whatever is right. Like if you're a closer, you just want to close. And I get it. I as a as a manager or as a business owner, I just want you to close too. But when the conditions aren't optimal, the conditions aren't perfect. You've still got to take the responsibility of saying, you know what?
::Speaker 1
Like, okay, you're not feeding me the opportunity. I'm going to go create my own pipeline. I'm going to be responsible for my results. I'm going to be responsible for my outcomes. And if that means I've got to go pick up the phone, I've got to go knock on our door. I've got to go send an email. Then that's what I'm going to do, because I'm responsible for this outcome.
::Speaker 1
And come hell or high water, I'm going to go do it. That mindset has served me very, very well, like throughout my entire career, whether it's been in sales or in, you know, sales leadership roles, like the idea that there are not going to be any excuses, I'm not going to say, oh, you know, it's the economy or it's the process or it's the leads or it's the lead quality or it's the SDR.
::Speaker 1
You just got to table all of that shit. Here's the reality. If you feel like you're in an environment where you can't succeed, right? Like you're set up to fail, right? Like, you know what, Ray? Hey, I hear you. But, like, they don't even have, you know, a website. They don't have this. Or there are some legitimate reasons that you can't go create pipeline for yourself.
::Speaker 1
Then you need to get the fuck out of that place because it is going to ruin your career. Sales is about results. Results are your reputation. And if you are not getting results and you don't take ownership of at least going to another environment, right? Because you're not taking ownership of building the pipeline, well, then you've at least got to take ownership of going and saying, hey, you know what?
::Speaker 1
I'm going to find another opportunity because I'm in in a results based role that becomes my reputation. My reputation is how I get hired. That is my earning potential. And if I'm not going to do something about it, then I'm sabotaging my career. So a big part of my approach to sales and just the way that I've thought about it my entire career and the best people that I've ever led is share the exact same mindset is I own my pipeline.
::Speaker 1
I own the results because I am responsible for achieving an outcome, and I'm either going to go get that outcome or I'm going to change the environment, because that is how I'm going to be measured at the end of the day. The second thing is, as odd as it is because we are in the results game right? Like we want these specific outcomes, we want the sales.
::Speaker 1
We know that's how we're measured. Interestingly, the second thing that I'll say has been a pattern of the top 1% highest performers that I've ever worked with and served me well in my own sales. Even the sales management roles has been detaching yourself from the outcome and focusing on the process being a sales professional is a lot like being a professional poker player.
::Speaker 1
You've got to have a process, and you've got to have a process that you trust to run, because losing an individual hands along the way is just part of the game, right? And you can't start changing what you're doing based on individual outcomes or individual deals. So in poker, you know, if you're if you're playing and you go, you play a bad hand but in a good way and you lose, you didn't play it the wrong way.
::Speaker 1
Like you can't change your entire process based on the outcome of that individual hand. Just like in sales, you can't change your process based on the outcome of one specific deal, but you want to be able to do is take a step back and say, do I have a good process? Am I running it consistently? Do I trust that it's going to work?
::Speaker 1
If the answer is yes to all three of those things, and I can promise you this, you are at some point going to get Nos. You're going to get no's from people that should have given you yeses, right? Like you're gonna run that process. Here you go. Damn, I didn't get the outcome that I wanted. The last thing you want to do is go wholesale, change your process and start all over.
::Speaker 1
Likewise, you may play a bad hand a bad way and still get lucky to win, right? Like in poker, you may get like. All right, you know what? I'm gonna go all in on this thing, even though I know I shouldn't, and holy shit, I actually won. Now, does that mean you should play that hand over and over and over and over that way?
::Speaker 1
No, I, I promise you, statistically, it's a math game. Like you are going to lose net net at the end of the day, what you also don't want to do is interpret like these false positives where you're like, hey, you know, I skipped these steps and accidentally won this deal. What I should do is do that all the time, right?
::Speaker 1
Or you have a great sales day. On a day where you only put in, like half the effort. Like, does that mean you should put in half the effort all the time? Like, no, any. Duke is a former professional poker player, and she has a great book, called Thinking in Bets. And in it she uses an example of somebody that drives home drunk, gets home safely.
::Speaker 1
Does that mean they should follow that process again? No. Like, you want to detach yourself from the outcome because it leads to bad decisions and it leads to false interpretations. What you want to look at is the process, and you don't want your attachment to a specific outcome to drive the wrong behaviors. You don't want it to start.
::Speaker 1
You know, having you reek of commission, breath and start sounding desperate or worse, start leading to bad habits and bad processes. Instead, you want to zoom out, right? Like and not look at the individual deal, not look at the individual hand. Zoom out and say, is this process on the whole going to get me the outcome that I want?
::Speaker 1
And if so, I'm just going to accept that there are going to be some loss deals along the way. That is the nature of the business that we are in and losing. That does not necessarily mean that we need to do wholesale pivots or change things up. So trust the process. Detach yourself from the outcome of the individual deals.
::Speaker 1
All right. Now the third thing that's going to put you in the top 1% of sales that I've learned from 20 years of sales experience and seeing hundreds of top performers is all roads lead to discovery. Does something I tell virtually every sales training program that I run, any sales coaching session that we run. When you are running your IT sales process, you've got some form of discovery right where you were going to ask questions.
::Speaker 1
You are going to identify problems, pains, needs. If you're if you're running it the right way. Virtually every common objection that you are going to get in your sales process can be reverse engineered and addressed proactively in your discovery process. Price objection. If you get to the end of your process, let's assume you've gone through some type of qualifying process and discovery assessment.
::Speaker 1
You know, then proposal you get all the way through this, all of this, and then you've got price objections. So the question I would have for you is did we not address that in some way, shape or form earlier in the process in discovery during conversation reference? What the industry averages for companies in that particular industry and what they're spending on it.
::Speaker 1
Do you have any price filters injected intentionally along the way to identify that this is going to be an objection later? Right. Like, you know, it's going to come up the same thing if, you know, hey, I need to talk to another decision maker. Did we not, in the discovery process, ask them, hey, who do you who do you tend to to talk over these decisions about it with.
::Speaker 1
Right. Like do we did we not get a sense of are there other people that they are going to want to get input from or involve in the decision? And why do we not address that when we sat down earlier? We know that that comes up a lot at the end. Or something as simple as like urgency, right?
::Speaker 1
Like you get to the end of the deal. They're like, hey, you know, right. This is pretty good. You know, I think we're going we're going to think it over or we're just not ready to move forward yet. You know, it's just a lot of work to get these other projects done for us. Okay. So there's no urgency to move in the deal.
::Speaker 1
I would I would say, why are we not asking earlier in the process? Hey, Ray, what makes this a now decision? Like, why are we why are we talking today and not, you know, six months ago or six months from now? Is there any particular reason? Today is the reason we're chatting like I want to identify. Is there some then our contract or an event or a transition or something in the business?
::Speaker 1
What led us to talk right now, even if we're going outbound, I want to know that because if I went outbound, there's still a reason that they responded to that outbound marketing or that outbound sales activity. There's a reason. So if there's no urgency, you're going to identify that earlier in the process. And this is across all industries right.
::Speaker 1
Like my life. And then political fundraising and with different companies and private equity and in cross different industries, I can tell you there are almost always no more than five objections in any sale that make up 80% of the objections that you're going to hear 80% of the time that you get an objection, it's going to fall into one of five categories.
::Speaker 1
And the 5th May slightly vary from industry to industry, but in it, you know what these are, right? Like you hear them and you see them all the time. Reverse engineer what those are and identify how can we install questions or conversations in our discovery that allow us to address that objection if and when it comes up later in a way where it's like, oh, wait, right.
::Speaker 1
I'm okay. I'm confused. When we talked earlier, you had mentioned that there wasn't anybody else that you actually talked to these decisions with as, as something changed for you, right? Like you're now able to use their own words in the rebuttals that you're looking for, like a silver bullet on it, like their words are your silver bullet. You just have to get them out and attract them at the right time.
::Speaker 1
Right now, the fourth thing that is going to put you in the top 1%, like if you want to leverage all of my learning over the years, this one is fairly simple. Conviction like belief in what you do is the ultimate sales act. Now listen, I'm not saying that you know, it has to be your life's mission. I'm not saying it has to be your your passion.
::Speaker 1
You don't have to wake up. Like getting out of bed like, hey, I'm going to go get some light, right? Like I am saying, you've got to believe in what you're selling. You've got to believe in who you're selling it for. You've got to believe that when you take somebody money, when they sign that agreement and they become clients and customers of your company, of your business, that you genuinely believe that they are better off because of it, that you know and have confidence that you're going to deliver good service, that you were going to exceed expectations, and that you are going to deliver on the promises that you've made as a salesperson.
::Speaker 1
Because if you do believe that you are going to sell differently, the words that you say will be different. How you say them will be different, your body language will be different, and you will be more likely, more confident to challenge limiting beliefs, challenge objections, challenge the you know, the question or the pushback or the smokescreens that you're going to get because you're thinking, hey, you know what?
::Speaker 1
If I don't close this deal? In other words, if I don't sell this person, yeah, I'm going to lose some commission. I get all that, but they're going to be worse off. Right? Like the people that I know that are absolutely crushing it. They actually think of it and they go, you know what? If I don't close this deal and they get hacked, or they get some ransomware or something happens, like in X number of months, like I've let them down.
::Speaker 1
And so it's my job, it's my obligation. It's my duty to actually run this process and execute and close the deal because they're better off with me. If you're agnostic, if you don't really give a shit, or worse, you actually don't believe in your company or the services that you're delivering that also comes through. You exude that, you project that, and you are very unlikely to, like, get in there and challenge the the objections or overcome the obstacles because you don't you don't really care that much, right?
::Speaker 1
Unless you're just like a pure sales sociopath. So the ultimate sales hack, if you want to absolutely almost guarantee that you were in the top 1%, is to believe and have conviction in what you're selling. And if you don't, same advice. Go somewhere else that gets it there. It is not worth your career, is not worth your reputation, and it's not worth the results that you're not going to get because you don't believe.
::Speaker 1
And even if you start getting results like it's not nearly as rewarding, right? So if you're a place you don't go find somebody that can leverage your talents and you feel better about selling it right now. The fifth thing that all top performers that I have worked with have in common and share is that they don't see things like mindset as some cliche bullshit.
::Speaker 1
Now I'm going to break this down, make like really actionable, really tactical because there is a lot of like, you know, fuzzy woowoo shit around mindset. Mindset does matter. And I'll give you a very clear example. I cannot tell you how many times I have hired a couple of sales reps into the same system right at the same time.
::Speaker 1
Okay, so they've got the same comp plan, they're selling the same product, they have access to the same lead pool. They're using the same CRM. They've got the same sales manager, they're in the same office. They're probably sitting right next to each other. Right. So you've controlled for virtually every environment, and one person says, gosh, I you know, Freddy's suck.
::Speaker 1
I can't I can't ever get anybody on Friday. Nobody's in the office on Friday. Or, you know, of all these leads, like, hardly any of them are qualified. Like these are these are barely qualified. I only talked to a couple qualified people this week like this isn't this isn't fair. Or, you know, making all these calls sucks. Like, I don't want to sit here and, you know, dial for dollars and, you know, make more phone calls in the exact same environment.
::Speaker 1
Says I love Fridays. Like, Fridays are awesome because the only person left is like the decision maker, the business owners, the only ones that are around on on Friday or you know, man, I, I get leads like, oh, this is awesome. I used to have to, you know, go out there and go get my own stuff like this.
::Speaker 1
This sure beats, you know, trekking around in the snow I get to to make these dials inside instead of having to go out and go canvass and go do door to door, right. Like same scenario, same things are happening. And it's a completely different perception from one person to the next. Now, who do you think is better results?
::Speaker 1
The person that sits down and says, I have to do all this, or the person says, I get to do all this, all right. And that's what I mean when I say mindset. Mindset isn't cliche bullshit. It is the intentional reframing of things to ensure the highest likelihood of success. Again, if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else.
::Speaker 1
But the last thing you want to do as a human being, and certainly as a sales professional, is sit in a virtual or real or otherwise, and not have the mindset that you're going to win, right? Like if you're going to do that, you're not there when the person that thinks they're going to win has a higher likelihood of winning, I promise you, I've seen this over and over and over.
::Speaker 1
And here's the thing to remember mindset is a choice. It is literally a choice to reframe or not reframe it as a choice to see it one way versus another way, and the person that sees it in a way that optimizes their chance of success, optimizes their chance of success. They were higher likelihood of getting the result that they want.
::Speaker 1
So there you have it. Five things from my experience over 20 years that I have seen be incredibly consistent across the top performers and have served me incredibly well in getting the results that I have over the years. I hope it's been helpful for you. If you want free sales tips in your inbox every single week, I will link below to join my newsletter.
::Speaker 1
If you are an MSP or a business owner and you want access to the MSP Sales toolbox where I have templates, playbooks like I'm constantly dropping new things in there. Feel free to drop in your email and get access to all of those resources as well. And if you want more sales tips here, of course, go ahead and subscribe to the channel on iOS.
