I Trained 250 IT Salespeople - Here's Everything You Need To Know
After training over 250 IT salespeople and analyzing real performance data, I've discovered 7 key patterns that separate top IT sellers from everyone else.
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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
I'm built sales organizations in a lot of different industries. 12 in fact, and selling IT services is hard, but there are some distinct differences and patterns that you will see between the people and the companies that are consistently crushing it and sales and the people and the businesses that are consistently not crushing in sales. And I'm going to break down in this video seven patterns, like very specific things that I've seen that differentiate the people that are doing really well from the people that are.
::Speaker 1
Let's dive in. Hey what's up? I'm Ray green, former managing director of the US Chamber of Commerce and CEO for investor groups, now founder of Mssp Sales Partners, where we help IT companies scale sales. And with them I lead sales, coaching, sales training. Last year alone, I ran 192 sales trainings with people who are selling IT services, and I have access to the sales data, like I have access to the sales that they're reporting.
::Speaker 1
So I can see what they're doing and what they're not doing. I can see the sales data. I can see what correlates to high performance and what doesn't. And I've seen some really interesting patterns emerge over the past year or two. And I want to highlight seven. They're very distinct and incredibly consistent that I'm going to share with you that differentiate the top performers from the bottom performers.
::Speaker 1
sales process and they think: ::Speaker 1
So they end up running this very laborious process, right? They go in, maybe they do a qualifying call, then they do a little bit of research, then they show up and do, you know, an hour long discovery. They then work on a proposal, then they go to the proposal meeting and they wait until then to address price, and they wait until the very end after they've invested all of this time.
::Speaker 1
And it's very possible, in fact, probable, that if you've not talked about price even floated a range at all until the very end, the sticker shock that can happen at that point means all of your time was completely wasted. The best salespeople are addressing price early. They're addressing it often, and they're addressing it confidently. They are not hiding behind the fact that their services cost money, and they're not the cheapest game in town, and they want to get that kind of out of the way upfront.
::Speaker 1
Like they don't have to give a specific number, but they oftentimes say, well, you know, companies your size are typically investing x percent or, you know, the industry average for your industry is people are investing X percent or they say, you know, hey, company is your size are oftentimes investing between this and this. Are we is that completely out of range?
::Speaker 1
They're doing something like that very early on. In fact, a lot of the bigger it companies are actually just putting it on their website. Like as a first line of defense, you get to the website, you actually fill out and says, hey, fill out a form for a free quote. Here's what we estimate. But this is an estimate.
::Speaker 1
We we really need to do an assessment and understand, you know, what the what the situation is and how many stations you have and what you really want. And if that number scares you, that's okay. Like you can go to somebody else. And what they're doing is they're pushing those people back to the market where a lot of smaller IT providers are going, gosh, I can't get new customers.
::Speaker 1
I'm going to fight over the cheapest people. Meanwhile, all these other companies are grabbing all the profitable companies and stacking them into the MRA model. So if you want to crush it and you want to make the best use of your time and you want to attract the best clients, and you want to run the most efficient, optimized sales process, then address price early and address price confidently.
::Speaker 1
Don't be ashamed of the fact that you charge money and hopefully good money and profitable money, because if you're not charging enough, you go out of business or you skimp on services. And that means that ship rolls downhill and you skimp on their services and you skimp on their security and all the other stuff that goes with that.
::Speaker 1
Don't be ashamed of the fact that you make money. The second pattern that I've seen, the top performers don't confuse networking and prospecting. If you're a full cycle salesperson, you're responsible for going out and getting your own deals, or you're working them through the system, you're nurturing them and you're meeting, you know, potential clients at, you know, networking events, things like that.
::Speaker 1
If they are leveraging networking and they're a top sales performer, they are doing it intentionally. They are not making the mistake of thinking, you know what? If I just go to all these chamber events, all these golf outings and all these, you know, networking events, like whatever is if I just go to these, then automatically these people are just going to turn into leads.
::Speaker 1
That's not how it happens. That's like me sitting on LinkedIn and descending connection requests to people going, man, I hope they buy something. If I just talk to enough people without any intention, without any scripting, without a playbook, without deliberately moving them through some kind of process that I have into a customer, that's not how it works. Like you've got to run a process and the top salespeople, they are networking, they are going to events.
::Speaker 1
They are going to these networking deals, and they are showing up to these virtual calls and they are starting new connections. They are doing it with the distinct goal of turning this connection into a sale. You're in business and your job is to sell. Your job is to maximize revenue, which then maximizes your income. Whether you're the salesperson or the business owner.
::Speaker 1
There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with the fact that I am here to start a business relationship. This doesn't mean I've got to spam you. If it's a digital thing right away, it doesn't mean that I. As soon as I meet you at a networking event, I've gotta be like, oh, hold on, let me get my plans.
::Speaker 1
Like, here are all the plans. Are you ready to buy something? That's not how it works either. But without intention, networking is just networking. You'll end up with a whole bunch of contacts. You'll end up with a whole bunch of people. But that doesn't mean that you're there. First call for IT services. When you build this massive list of people who aren't qualified and people who don't have any intent, and people that you're not intentionally nurturing through the cycle and kind of disqualifying along the way and saying, this is a real opportunity and this is not a real opportunity.
::Speaker 1
You're not being honest with yourself. You end up with this huge, unmanageable list. You want opportunities, you want sales, not friends. Hopefully you've got your own friends. But you know what? Sell them something good. Deliver something good, and they'll love you forever. That's a good way to make some friends. But don't confuse networking and prospecting. Networking can be a form of prospecting, but only if it's intentional.
::Speaker 1
If you want to make it intentional, have categorization, right? Like take people and say, all right, is this person even in my market? Like, are they in my demo or are they in my vertical? Are they and are they even an mql a marketing qualified lead? Like if they're not okay, like it's just a contact call, then look at and say, okay, can this ever be an opportunity?
::Speaker 1
Right? Is there a potential opportunity or do they mention anything about it? Are they at a company that we like to target? Are they in the vertical that we like to go like that we like to target within a size a company that we like. Did they potentially mention, you know, you know, we're going to be looking at you in a year or two and then is there a real opportunity.
::Speaker 1
Then you look at and you say, what's the specific next step that I need to do to move that forward? And when you do that, then a lot of volume can actually help because you're bringing in and you're filtering, you're organizing and you're segmenting your list down to something that's manageable, something that you can actually follow up with, and something that qualitatively has a high probability of return because you've done at least an honest job of saying, hey, there's a there's a few different categories out here with 12 contacts, really only one prospect.
::Speaker 1
And that is how the top salespeople are looking at a top performers. Don't confuse presenting information with closing a deal. The process of selling your services is a consultative sales process. There's usually multiple steps. It's not necessarily a one call close unless you got some inbound traffic on. It's usually, you know, you've got a couple touchpoints along the way and it culminates.
::Speaker 1
It ends in some deal where you're presenting information, you're presenting a slide deck, you're presenting a PDF, you're giving some sort of presentation, you're walking them through. Hey, based on everything we've learned, this is why you should buy from us. And here are the plans. And at that stage, you can do one of two things. You can present the information and then leave it for them like, hey, I presented all the information, it's now in your hands.
::Speaker 1
So I'm just going to step aside from the process and let you guys decide and just, just let me know where you land. Or you can make it your objective to one, move them towards a decision and then to make that decision favorable to buying your stuff. I was actually, auditing, a $10 million IT company recently, and I was listening to some of the, some of the sales calls were auditing the whole process.
::Speaker 1
And I was I'm listening to some of these calls. Pretty good process. Like I actually got to listen to the discovery and then all the way through. But at the end the at the, at the end of this presentation with the slides, the salesperson says, all right, what I'm guessing you guys probably want to want to think about this.
::Speaker 1
And, and we'll follow up. So do you want to you want to get something scheduled for like a week from now or something like that? Like he didn't ask for the sale, and I actually I made a video about it because I was like, oh, no, no, no, I didn't even ask for the sale. Even if you're asking for the sale, don't necessarily take the first response and say, okay, we'll call them like, hey, we want to think about it.
::Speaker 1
All right, cool. I'll let you think about it. You know, you want to you want to touch base next week, or you could say, hey, that's phenomenal. I think that's great. Hey, just for my own understanding, on a scale of 1 to 10, like how how do you feel with ten being, hey, I'm, we're ready to sign a contract right now.
::Speaker 1
And one is like, don't, please don't call me again. Ever. Where are you at on this? Like, can I just get a sense of where you are and you use that to start a conversation where they say, oh, yeah, we're at a six because she's like a 6 or 7 because they don't want to tell you that they don't like you.
::Speaker 1
They don't want to tell you because you're a salesperson, that they're ready to buy. And so it's like 6 to 7 okay. Awesome. Like and then you use that you leverage that. What would it take to make it a ten? There are a handful of different clauses that you can use to actually move people to a decision. What you can't forget is that your job isn't to present information as a salesperson.
::Speaker 1
Your job is to get a decision. Now, that decision is not always going to land in your favor. Just the nature of the piece. But no decision is where so many of these deals go to die. And it's because the salesperson thinks the objective is present. All the information in an exit, right? And it's not. It's to present the information in a compelling and persuasive way and then lead that prospect to make an actual decision, which by the way, is the hardest part of sales.
::Speaker 1
And when sales really starts, a lot of people are qualified to present this information. Now, I'm sure up to this point, if you ran a decent discovery and you put together a good proposal, like there's some things that you did from a skill set standpoint, but there are way more people that are qualified to present that information than there are capable of saying, now let's move them to a decision and let's make the probability of that decision being in our favor as high as humanly possible.
::Speaker 1
Top performers understand all roads lead to discovery. Everything that happens towards the end of the deal can be traced back to something in discovery, which means if you are constantly fine tuning your discovery process based on the feedback that you're getting at the end of the sales process, you will eventually run an optimal kick ass, smooth shit discovery that helps you close more deals, because you will learn every objection that you're getting, every smokescreen that you're getting, every thing that happens.
::Speaker 1
At the end of that call, you go, how did that happen? Damn it, you go back and you change something in your discovery process to ensure that that doesn't happen again. Let me give you an example. You go through your process and you get to a deal. And somebody at the end of this deal, somebody says, we're going to do this.
::Speaker 1
We're just not ready to move forward right now. Like this. This isn't a huge priority for us yet. Like, so how about we revisit in a few months as a salesperson? I look at that and I go, How did that happen? And what can I do in discovery to ensure that that doesn't happen again? In other words, can I go back and add a question in my discovery process that says, hey, what makes this, a now issue, by the way?
::Speaker 1
Like, why are we why are we chat now, not six months ago, six months from now? And there's always a reason, like there is a reason if somebody gets on even a ten minute qualifying call for you, there's a reason people do not just get on calls for the hell of it. They do not just get on calls to waste their time.
::Speaker 1
If they are on that call, it's for something like minimum. It's, an element of curiosity, but there is a reason that they're taking the call. And by the time you get to proposal, they've now they've invested some time into this. We want to know at the beginning from the discovery process, how do we avoid that objection later?
::Speaker 1
I'm going to ask that question. Discoveries that if and when it comes up later, I'm hey, I'm I'm confused. When we talked, you said such and such in this. Do you can do this with everything you can do this with. Well, you know, I don't actually make the decisions. You know, so-and-so makes the decision. So I get to talk to them.
::Speaker 1
And can I add something in my discovery process that's that gets that out, right? That identifies that almost everything that you can imagine can be addressed in discovery, with a process that's been fine tuned over a period of time. The best people are using discovery like a damn ninja like they can in discovery. You can actually take the time to understand their buying process.
::Speaker 1
So like, tell me how this is how this how this works. Like, who do you typically discuss these with. Like how does this play out. Right. Like those are the things that you can learn early in the process that affect your chances later in the process. But the bottom performers just kind of run through discovery like it's a check the box exercise, and then they don't use any of that information or they don't get the relevant information.
::Speaker 1
And if they do, they don't necessarily use it to tailor the presentation and tailor the proposal and the sale to the actual person that you're selling to. My best advice there is don't shortcut it. Don't try to use your assessment as the discovery. It's not a good enough tool on its own. Despite what all the vendors say. I'm sorry.
::Speaker 1
Make sure you give yourself enough time and don't skip it, right? Like even if somebody comes in hot and they're like with, you know, they look and they seem like they've got high intent, you might want to slow down a little bit. Let me ask a few questions like, let me make sure, because I can't tell you even how many of those deals end up lost later because something wasn't unpacked on the front end.
::Speaker 1
The fifth thing is the best salespeople know their unique selling points. They know what differentiates them. They know why buying services from them is going to be different. They have a good lock on a real USP, not something that everybody else is claiming. So a really good example of this is in a training room with a bunch of IT companies.
::Speaker 1
You can say, okay, whoop, whoop, who knows their unique selling points like how are you differentiated? Why are you different? Why are you better? Why should somebody buy from you and not from somebody else? You get some hands that go up. Well, you know, or our customer service is great. We, you know, we love our customers. We have somebody that that answers the phone.
::Speaker 1
Okay, who else in this room can say that same thing? Like, it's like half the room does. Oh, yeah. Like we just about all of it's the same. If you go in there, you think that's unique, then you are commoditized yourself, and the best salespeople are doing everything that they can to differentiate themselves because the premiums are earned and differentiation, okay.
::Speaker 1
You don't hone premiums on the commodity. By definition, commodities are based on price. It's basically I'm thinking I'm going to get the same basic thing. So let me just get it at the cheapest price is a very rational buying process. So what you need to do is you need to understand what makes us different. Do you have some proprietary tech stack that's not it's not accessible to anybody else, a specific culture within your organization that makes you execute better.
::Speaker 1
Do you have awards? Do you have CSat scores and, you know, customer satisfaction scores? Do you have more Google reviews? Do you have unique plans? Do you have a unique billing method? Do you have no contracts? Do you have a kick ass guarantee? Do you have something that really makes you different? And when you think you have it right, like go get 3 to 5 bullet points, you say, you know what?
::Speaker 1
These are going to be our best angles. Like when we're talking to people, these are going to be our best angle. You know, we've got we've got a dialed in onboarding process and we can have everybody up and running in ten days or less with, you know, x number of hours invest or whatever it is that I challenge you go look at five other providers, like service providers in the area and say, do they have the same?
::Speaker 1
Could they claim that they have the same thing? Like, that's how you really know that you've got a unique selling point is when you have something that they can't even claim that they do. Right, because it's something proprietary. It's something that only you can do. It's something that's based on your strengths. It's something strategic. It's something in a market.
::Speaker 1
And this is especially true if you're charging any premiums, right? If you're if you know that you're one of the higher priced games in town, which, by the way, fucking awesome you should be. That's how you make the most money. But you got to be able to tell people why you charge more. Very rational. If I don't understand as a buyer, the key differences between different providers and one comes in at 30% higher than another one.
::Speaker 1
Then I'm just going to okay, I think I'm going to go over here if I don't understand what's involved in that. But if you can help me understand how that benefits me, how that adds value to me, how that keeps me safer, it keeps my systems running faster, it keeps them running more efficiently and improves communication and helps my profitability does something that helps me.
::Speaker 1
What are the things that only you can claim? What are the things that allow you to earn more in terms of rates and what you're charging and position you as the obvious choice for the perfect ideal client that you're actually targeting? What are those things? Dial them in by point being. Identify what already makes you unique, and then think about it from a sales and strategy standpoint as you operate, what are things that we can install into our operations that allow our salespeople to then go out and position us as the obvious and the premium choice for our ideal clients?
::Speaker 1
Okay. The sixth thing that the top salespeople are doing that the bottom salespeople aren't. They are understanding their competition and the other players in their market and in different way, at a different level than anyone else. They do research like they go through. They like they know who they like. They've been on their website. They know what their unique selling points are, right?
::Speaker 1
Like they look at the competitors like, oh, like they're going to consistently use this initial block of ours that they have as their their introductory offer. That's what they're going to use as their advantage. How am I going to strategically address that? They understand the market. They identify who the players are. Then they look at it and say, okay, what are their advantages?
::Speaker 1
Well, we know they're the cheapest game in town. Well, that's the thing. I like to compete against that. So where are they slacking. Right. Like where their weaknesses and they're doing the actual research. Now what I used to do with teams is we would build up battle cards, right? Like, okay, get on the whiteboard, name every one of our major competitors that we hear in objections.
::Speaker 1
First week we're going to go do some initial research. Let's go identify what we think their their USP looks like, at least from the outside okay. So then you create a little profile card so she understand your market and how to play in your market and play to win. Then the next week maybe you go do like funnel hack them like go through the booking process and look at the introductory offers and look at some of the marketing and you just build up this arsenal of information as you go.
::Speaker 1
And then the next time you walk into a prospect's office and they say, oh, yeah, you know, but we're with so-and-so already and we're thinking about changing. Ideally, you already know what their weaknesses are, and you could say something like, oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Like, what's what's what's leading you to to consider that is it the boom boom boom?
::Speaker 1
I mean, they're a good company, like, you know, bad like, I'm sure they're a good company. I've just been selling this lot, so I've heard that. So that's that's not new to me. What you've done is you've confirmed their concern, like, oh, shit. Like we're like, I feel validated, like, so we're not the only person going through this.
::Speaker 1
And you promoted yourself as somebody who now knows the industry. Right now, you're not just everyday salesperson like you're professional, maybe even have some information that might help me make a decision. Now, how do they get that information? You can go get whatever is public, right? Like you can do some on AI. It's like a great tool right now.
::Speaker 1
You know, perplexity is a tool. It kind of acts like Google search on steroids. So you can go in and say like, tell me everything that you can about, you know, a certain competitor or a certain company. But a lot of the really juicy information actually comes from asking your prospects to give you the agreements. Right thing.
::Speaker 1
Don't be a chicken. Hey, you know, I'm just I'm not sure where we're at, and you know where our agreement is or how many months or what the term is or, you know, I'm not really clear when you ask them about what they're investing now or what their budget is now or how they're paying, and they're like, well, you know, I don't know what kind of changes I'm okay.
::Speaker 1
Are you do you know if you're charged when you know a new employee starts or not? I'm not really I'm not really sure. Joe. I tell you what, what I could do for you, if you want is I could. I can take a look at the agreement for you and and tell you kind of what your what you're up against.
::Speaker 1
Like what the what the terms are going to be. And it would actually help give an apples to apples comparison because every I.T company charges just a little bit differently. And so it gets confusing for you. So if you have it, I'm happy to see it and give you a look and make it a little bit easier for you.
::Speaker 1
Now when I get my hands on those agreements now, I can really see what the belt like, the bells and whistles, all what's happening and the rates. Well, everybody give me that agreement. No, and I know a lot of you right now don't know I, I'm not going to ask. That's like super uncomfortable. And people are going to tell me to fly a kite.
::Speaker 1
I said, okay, you might be right. Sometimes like they may say, no, no, I'm not comfortable. You. That's fine. Don't be a chicken. Though. They don't be a chicken about this because the information that you get is a gold. Mine is a wealth of information to help you in your long term sales strategy. So ask and if you get it, half the time, you're getting crucial information that's going to help you make a lot more money later on.
::Speaker 1
Now, here's the other thing about this where you ask and when you ask in the process matters. Because if I say, hey, here's what we're going to do, and, you know, I've got an hour set aside today, we're going to go through some stuff. By the way, can I have a contract of your provider? And I get like, who the fuck are you?
::Speaker 1
Like, nah, I'm good. Yeah, okay. I don't trust you. Do you have an established any rapport? You don't have any credibility. I don't you don't have any authority that I saw. No, no. Like so you want you don't want to ask before you've had the chance to earn a little bit of credibility, build some rapport. And I mean real rapport, like actual reputational.
::Speaker 1
I believe you know what you're doing. Not like chummy, chummy rapport, but once you've established some of that trust, you can ask. And when somebody doesn't want to give you an agreement, it can be a symptom of, hey, you know what? I have an established of an A first here. Like that's that's that's a flag actually. Okay. It's something this is the most controversial.
::Speaker 1
This is the one I have a lot of, you know, like okay, there is zero correlation between going first in the process of presenting your proposal and going last in the process of presenting your proposal. This is one where you say, wait, is this a difference between the top and the top? People are always going first or they're trying to go first.
::Speaker 1
They're trying to go last in the bottom are no, it's actually it's a placebo. It's a complete placebo because it is split. What I have found the difference is the people that think going first matters tend to win more deals where they go first, and people that think that they win more deals when they go last tend to win more deals may go last when you first and you like going first, it's great, but you're like shot in the arm, like boom.
::Speaker 1
All right, I'm I got this. Like my probability is pretty good. The problem arises when you think going first helps you close more deals and you've got a really big deal, and you know who you're up against. And so you're already kind of like, and you are now going last. Right? And so that placebo helps in one way.
::Speaker 1
But in another way it can really work to be counterproductive. The thing that I've seen with the top salespeople in the bottom salespeople is they take that placebo, and they leverage it when it's in their favor, and they ignore it when it's not. They don't get overly superstitious about this thing. Somebody is going to argue. It's really good.
::Speaker 1
Now, I was up, I was up to this point with you, Ray, but I can tell you definitively going first always matters. And here's why. It going last always matters. Here's why. And I get it. I've heard it. I've heard all of them. But there really isn't. It's a it's a situation. Like a lot of times you hear people like, oh, Friday sales suck for sales, you know, and then somebody else's Fridays are awesome for sales.
::Speaker 1
So guess who sells more on Friday? I'm the second person. So this is me saying don't let it get in your head. In fact, no, this is me saying letting get in your head when it helps you sell more stuff. Don't let it get in your head when it doesn't help you sell more stuff. All right, so there you have it.
::Speaker 1
Seven patterns that I have seen that distinctly differentiate the people who are doing really well in sales and selling the most in the people who are. I would love to know if you have any questions on this. If you do drop them in the comments below. I take a look at those and I will either record, a new training or video for you, or, should you note in that in the comments if I have some some feedback and I hope this video has been helpful to you.
::Speaker 1
If it has, feel free to check out my MSP sales toolbox. It's actually just a collection of sales tools, forecast models, sales interview questions, playbooks. I take all my resources and I basically plug them in there and you get lifetime access to to all of them. And the link to do that is in the description below, I think.
::Speaker 1
So feel free to do 100% free. Just drop in your email. We send you access to all the stuff and then you have access to it forever. And I put new stuff in there at least every month, like when I'm doing these videos, when I have like a new template or something, I just usually drop in the same place.
::Speaker 1
So go ahead and jump into that and subscribe to the channel and see you in the next video. Adios.
