Aligning Your Marketing and Sales Message for Success

• 47:42

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Sales alignment, marketing message, ideal customer, sales strategy, buyer’s journey, sales coaching, sales effectiveness, sales process, sales training, sales management, sales tools, sales integration, sales metrics, sales improvement, sales techniques.

SPEAKERS

Damon Pistulka, Walter Crosby

 

Damon Pistulka  00:08

All right, everyone, welcome once again. The faces of business. I am your host, Damon pistolka, and I am incredibly excited today for our guest, Walter Crosby, repeat offender, coming back again. Thanks for being here, my friend.

 

Walter Crosby  00:24

I appreciate the invitation. I love the repeat offender moniker.

 

Damon Pistulka  00:29

That’s awesome. Yep, yep. We forgot what to call people, so that’s just what I did, started doing. But thanks for coming back again. Today, we’re going to be talking about lining your marketing and sales message for success. Walter, one of the people I respect out there teaching sales managers, sales teams, how the heck they need to do things. Let’s let’s hear a little bit about your background and how you’re helping people get their sales together.

 

Walter Crosby  01:01

I’ve been in sales, professional sales, right with a, getting a w2, and commissions, for 40 years. So I’m old, and, you know, I tell salespeople, you know that I’m working, maybe working with managing or coaching, if there’s a way to BS, I’ve already done it. I’ve I’ve done it. I tried it, I made it work. You’re not going to get it past me. So, you know, just, just accept that fact here, honesty is the best way to go transparency. So, but I’m, I’m a sales guy at heart. I do development work. I do training, I do coaching, and, but at the end of the day, I think like a salesperson and, and that’s really about to me, way I was taught help people, you know, be straightforward, you know, my conversation start off. I’m not really sure I can help you yet, so let’s have a conversation. Ask each other some questions, and I promise, if I can’t help you, I’m going to tell you, but I probably can refer you to somebody, and if I can, I promise to tell you that too. So it’s sort of that old school idea that you know the telephone still works. Just because you send out 100 emails in the course of a morning doesn’t mean you did any real prospecting.

 

Damon Pistulka  02:32

Yes, so

 

Walter Crosby  02:34

it’s just, it’s a older, older philosophy. But I just love working with sales people and watch them elevate yes one.

 

Damon Pistulka  02:45

So working with the sales people today, what do you think are some of the most common problems that you see?

 

Walter Crosby  02:55

How much time I got Tim, I was

 

Damon Pistulka  02:57

saying the most common See, so you only have to talk about one or two.

 

Walter Crosby  03:03

I think a really, really big one that business owners don’t really think about is they don’t identify who the ideal prospect is, who that ideal customer is, who the buyer is, right? So I was talking to a prospect the other day their IT and MSP people, and the salesperson was in the room with me and the CFO and the CEO, and they just hired her, and she was all excited. And I’m like, Hey, so tell me, like I’m a sales guy, so I talk to people all the time. Maybe I can help who’s your who’s your market, who, who are you trying to reach? And she’s automotive. We’re in Detroit, yeah, that’s automotive. Okay, could you be less specific, right? General Motors and Ford and Ford? She’s like, Well, no, they have their own it. People like, oh, okay, so who? Who is it? And 10 minutes later, she realized she had no idea who she was supposed to be talking to. She had less of an idea of what she could really do to help the people that she didn’t know who she could help, right? Yeah. And I looked at the CEO, and I’m like, you know, dude, this is your fault. You just hired her. She’s capable. She’s excited, but you’re pointing her. You haven’t given her direction. Yes, you got to tell her who that person is, who that buyer is. What do they care about? What do they want? What do they don’t want. What questions should she ask, and where do they hide? And Automotive is just a little too big, right to you know, tier one, tier three, the little bangers that have machine shops. Well, they got one computer. They’re not really a client. Like, okay. So we ruled out the guy with one computer, and we ruled out the fortune 100 companies. Still, that’s a little big of an area, yes. So if we don’t tell our sales people who they should talk to and what we should talk about, that’s a failure on leadership.

 

Damon Pistulka  05:20

Yeah. Yep. And you know what I think is interesting about that in our conversation today, you know, with aligning your marketing and sales message is, if you don’t tell your marketing people, it’s the same thing, and if everyone’s together and you really take the time to learn that what your ideal buyer is, and a lot of times, like you’re talking with IP, you might have multiple buyer or people involved in the buying process, you know, what are their pain points? What their normal perspectives that you’re coming so you understand what that is. Your sales people aren’t effective, and your your marketing information, or whatever you’re creating, sounds like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, nobody even understands what’s going on.

 

Walter Crosby  06:03

Well, it can even get worse than that, right? So let’s pretend for a second you have your marketing right, and it’s it’s speaking to your buyer, and they know who your buyer is, and the message that that the sales people bring to them is, is incongruent with everything that the marketing. You got them excited, you warmed them up, they’re like, this is interesting. They’re leaning in. And then they they, they go to the trouble of talking to the to the salesperson, and the salesperson pitches. Let me do a demo. Let me talk about these cool features I really like, right? Like my wife and I a couple years ago, we’re rebuilding our our kitchen. We ripped it all out and started from the studs. So she dragged me to these people that you know, like, let’s go look at the and see what you think. So we walk into this one showroom, and the ladies, like, you know, ask this one question, how big is your kitchen and like, I don’t know. Maybe you should measure it. I don’t know what it is. Well, let me show you what I like. And I’m like, Hold on, why do I care what you like? Like, I don’t know if you live in a trailer park or if you live in an apartment, or you live in a, you know, a million dollar house, like, I don’t care what you like. I mean, figure out what it is I want and what we need, right? And, more importantly, ask a couple of questions. Like, who’s in charge of the to this to buying decision? Yeah. And so the we went there because of their marketing. We went there because their brand sounded like something that we should look into, and then, boom, we get a knucklehead who, you know, who just starts talking about what she liked. I did get business out of it, though, because I called the CEO and said, your sales people suck.

 

Damon Pistulka  07:59

But it’s a it’s a great example, though, because how many times have you seen a great commercial, a read something online, and go, Man, I gotta check this company out. And and you go, like said, it could be visit. Could be your online experience. And it stinks. Completely different from that.

 

Walter Crosby  08:17

If you lack that congruency, or you you lack that ability to flow, because the conversation is going to be different, right? But if it doesn’t connect, and it just sort of throws that whole wrench in the system, you’re going to fail. You’ve shot yourself in the foot before you even start. And I think, I think the other thing you asked for another common problem, another common problem that that I see on on the regular is that they give sales people scripts on on the the words that they say they they they should tell right? So they’re, they’re given stuff to the sales people like go say these things and and we don’t know where the buyer is. So we talk about it as like a buyer’s first process. So we the buyers coming to us as a salesperson later in the process. If you remember back in the 70s, when you had wanted to buy a car, you had to go to a dealership and talk to a guy in a clip on tie and short sleeve, yeah, shirt, right? Because he held all the information. Now, like you can buy a car sitting in your pajamas at home and have it delivered to you. So buyers today are coming to us later in the process, they’re coming to us more educated than they were, so we don’t need to start dumping and pitching right that’s the worst thing. What we should do is try to understand what the buyer needs, what the buyer thinks he wants or she wants, and then start to understand if we. Something that can help them and really dig into it with questions so that that message needs to be congruent, the questions need to demonstrate that we have credibility, that we really know what we’re talking about, and often the buyer has made a like a decision that they think they want this. And you can’t tell them, No, you’re wrong, right? But what you can do is ask questions, to get them to think about whatever it is that they’re whatever their belief is, to start to challenge it a little bit, to get them to question it, to make them think differently about their problem, right? Because the status quo is often our biggest competitor. So we want to, we want to flip that switch, right and start asking different questions. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  10:54

yeah, that’s a that’s the case. And so many people don’t realize that that is their biggest challenge to sales in a lot of industries is the status quo. We don’t need to do anything, not doing anything. We’re just going to keep going the way we are, because it’s less risky. Yes, there’s, there’s known risk anyway, in what they’re doing. Yeah,

 

Walter Crosby  11:16

well, so which makes it less risky, right? Because we know the devil that we’re dancing with. If we go come with you like, I don’t know you. I don’t know your company. You just look like you know what you’re doing, but you probably don’t, right. When we started with the guys we have 10 years ago, there was all kinds of problems, right? So I don’t need trouble. I got five years to retirement. I’m just going to write it out. But if you figure out what their real what their real issues are, and you start to have that conversation about what’s really what’s not happening with that they needed to happen. Then maybe you got a shot. Mm, hmm,

 

Damon Pistulka  11:53

yep, yep. So when you see these marketing and sales get their messaging together, their coordinated effort. They they have a smooth handoff. What are some of the telltale signs of that?

 

Walter Crosby  12:12

Your win rates increase, okay, the conversion from that marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead, right? That blends together. There’s less conflict, that that flows more naturally. So the deal flow has fewer bumps in it, right? There’s always bumps, there’s always challenges and things, but we can get farther. We can get quick. We can move quickly at the front end because we’re aligned with our message, and it requires marketing and sales to play nice in the sandbox. I always think about the the old days, you know, the marketing people were kicking sand at the sales people, and the sales people were throwing pails of sand back at the marketing people, because, you know, their stuff didn’t work, and we didn’t do a good job, and we didn’t follow up, right? And I think everybody realizes that there’s enough data out there that if we stop pointing fingers and really try to figure it out and work together, it’s, it’s like any other relationship. If we, if we work together and say, Hey, this doesn’t work. What if we tried this? But we can’t do that, but maybe we could do this right? Then you have those, those meaningful conversations and good things come out of it. And because you, if you’re attracting the wrong buyers, it’s going to be really difficult to close, and you’re not going to be able to help people. Yeah, we get a lot if we get alignment there. And sometimes, you know, marketing and sales were children, and we need an adult supervision, yeah, that, you know, we need that. We don’t necessarily need the CFO, but we need that COO or the CEO to kind of supervise things and make sure that the strategy is there and that we’re, we’re literally being, you know, being nice to each other. But once that work, once, once those conversations are flowing and it’s open and honest, you know, you know you can, you can make some real progress fast. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  14:22

yeah, that’s for sure. So I say real quick. Trish Stewart stopped by, thanks so much for dropping the comment. She said, Ask questions a challenge, and think differently about the problem, because often our biggest competitor is the status quo. People stay with the devil they know because they don’t think about their problem, and thanks for dropping that comment. Trish, and she said, after that, she said, great advice, and that’s what you were saying earlier. Walter, thanks. Thanks so much for stopping by and dropping the comment. Trish, thanks, Walter, for dropping that nugget with us today. The I tell you, it is, it is. Interesting when you see marketing and sales teams who are not aligned, and you and you just wonder how they I mean, it’s, it’s hard to understand, unless it’s a really big company, how that would go on that long without an executive coming in and going, listen, we got to be here together. We got to be doing this together.

 

Walter Crosby  15:25

I just you’re applying common sense to this. And I don’t mean to demean business owners and leaders, because they got a lot on their plate, and they started a this usually started a business for a reason. They’re passionate about something and and sometimes sales and marketing. To some business owners, it’s this black bag of magic. Yes, they don’t understand, you know? They could take a machine apart and put it back together. They can improve upon it. They can take a design, right? They have that that’s their that’s their strength. So they don’t, they’re, they’re, they’re sort of intimidated by the the other side, and they’re not really sure. So they kind of, like, I just hoping these guys will figure it out, which is like hiring a salesperson and like hoping they’ll figure it out. Yes, and, you know, we know that that doesn’t work very often. So if you give, if you if you get them, if somebody just, if, just starts to listen as the business owner, because they know more than they realize that they know, yes, right? Yeah, and it’s intuitive for them, because they understand the underlying premise of the business. They understand why they did it. They understand what’s really, really important. So if they just sat in those meetings and listened and allowed everybody to talk, I think some things would come out of it. So if you’re in, if you feel you’re in that boat as a business owner, just go sit and like, Hey, I just want to, I want to be a fly on the wall here, and I want to listen to what’s going on and try to understand and see if I can help. Because that, because if you’re, if you’re in a meeting, and you’re a leader, you should be the last one to talk anyway, right? So especially when you’re, you don’t have all the answers. I would, you know, dollars to donuts, that business owner has more insight than they realize on sales and marketing, and they can help. So just get in there and listen.

 

Damon Pistulka  17:37

That is such great advice, because I think you’re you hit it on a lot of points here. First of all, business owners don’t think they’re, you know, I’m not a marketing person, I’m not a salesperson or whatever. But they do have that underlying, as you said, why we’re doing this, how we really help people the most, what we’re really here trying to accomplish every single day. They know that in their heart, and if they can communicate that, after listening to what’s coming out of those sales and marketing people and going, Okay, what do you think? And again, listening and asking more questions, like you said before, and helping them to understand, it’s a huge thing. It’s a huge thing because they do know that the owners, the founder, these executives, know, know why they’re in this and what they’re doing, and sharing it without telling is a great way to do that.

 

Walter Crosby  18:30

Yeah, because, because, just by listening to it, they can start to fill in the gaps, and they’ll know it’s working when the other people in the room, their team members, are like, Oh, I didn’t know that, right? And the sort of the little light bulb goes off over their head. Then you know that you made some progress. You still gotta keep working at it, right? You still gotta check because it’s a it’s iteration after iteration. Marketing is, marketing is, is one of those. You need some expertise in it, but fundamentally, you got to know which direction and who we want to talk to and what’s important. And they, they got all of that inside them, and somehow we got to, we got to pull it out of

 

Damon Pistulka  19:18

them. Yeah, it’s like, like you said earlier, that the not getting a salesperson and letting them go without really giving them the information. It’s the same thing when you do that with marketing or, you know, it’s just the more you can let these people understand who we’re helping, how we’re really helping them and land, let them do their their work in, you know, really positioning ourselves, and then talking with those potential customers the best they can. They’ve got that other skill to do that.

 

Walter Crosby  19:57

Yeah, it’s, it’s almost like we give them the. Context, as the leader. We give them the like. Well, this is the why, and this is how we’ve done it. But that why is often absent, right? If it hasn’t been shared, yes, and I see it a lot with I see it a lot with companies who have core values. And the core values are great. They’re meaningful, right? They’re not just platitudes. They actually people live them, talk about them, and they talk about them in meetings. It’s like, well, if we do that, it’s kind of against our core value over here. So really, should we do it right? So they have good core values? But what, what they often miss is that that the vision of the the leader, the owner of the business, it isn’t complete. They share their vision, they share their ideas, they share the context. But there’s a there’s another step that needs to happen, where each individual employee needs to understand what they can do at their level of function every day to fulfill that vision. Because the vision often sounds grandiose, and it’s, it’s this big, warm and, you know, it’s sort of this gigantic vision is meant to help the community or the world, or whatever the whatever the appropriate situation is, so they don’t necessarily know how they can be as a shipping clerk or as a salesperson, right? Or the social media director, what can they do every day to make sure that that we stay on that path? And it really requires them to communicate and talk about that at each level, right? So that CEO should show up at the sales meeting every once in a while, should show up at the marketing meeting, should show up at the finance meeting. So right to make sure that everybody is is getting it and understanding. Sit back, listen talk last you know, make people feel comfortable and then and just listen to make sure that you know what they’ve envisioned, what they’ve what they think the vision is, is really understood. Don’t make assumptions.

 

Damon Pistulka  22:22

Yeah, yeah, that’s a great that last piece, like you said, giving each person how they’re contributing to the overall emission and getting achieving that vision is so important. Otherwise, they don’t really feel it. They don’t feel how it’s it’s a congruent piece, group of people working together and rowing the boat in the same direction,

 

Walter Crosby  22:44

yeah, yeah, and then giving the customer what they what the customer really needs. And sometimes the littlest of things could save the day, yes, if that person felt like they had the authority to do it, and I’ve told this story before, where I work for a manufacturer, and we had an order that needed to go out one of my customers, and the guy on the shipping dock literally held back one of the boxes that were going that was being shipped out. So there are parts in the boxes. There were five boxes, and he only shipped four so he shipped them all out. And then he called me and said, Hey, I didn’t ship out the box. I’ll go out tomorrow. And I’m like, What do you mean? Why didn’t you ship it all out? They need this stuff. Because, yeah, it was the the box was damaged, and there was a bunch of stuff in there broken. I needed to go through it and make sure it’s right, because I don’t want to ship out bad stuff. And I’m like, Dude, that’s, thank you. That’s, that’s awesome. Thanks for telling me. So I called the customer and said, Hey, Gary, made this decision not to ship it. You could got enough stuff to get started. We’ll pull it together. We’ll have it ready tomorrow. I’ll drive it out to the job site and deliver it to you. And they were like, You did what? He made that decision and like, yeah, it’s just, if you got broken stuff, you would have to, it would have been yeah thing, right? And they, you know, the next time they came into our office, they brought him a bunch of stuff, right, swag and hats and things, because they truly appreciated it so. But that little thing holding back a box was how he could, you know, live our vision of taking care of our customers so that they were in, you know, weren’t inconvenienced, yeah, right? Because we would tell people, Hey, we do the same thing as all those big companies. So 98% of what we do is exactly the same. So let’s talk about the 2% right? That was the 2% is that we got people thinking on the job. Yeah, crazy.

 

Damon Pistulka  24:49

That’s a great example, because those little things, you know, whether it’s a someone like that in the shipping department, where someone on the phone that that recognize what a. Situation should call for and said, Okay, this is what we’ll do. And they feel com, the customer service person feels comfortable, and the person on the other end of the phone, like those people you talked about, might go, Oh, my goodness. I never thought that that would be a solution that they were going to propose. And that is awesome.

 

Walter Crosby  25:23

The solution is great, but sometimes it’s just like, I understand why you’re upset. I would be too Yes, right, right. If, if, if the customer service person says that, or a salesperson says that, like, all of a sudden the resistance drops, like, at least they get me, yeah, at least they understand and respect what’s going on. So now we gotta, now we gotta figure it out, which is the next couple of steps, but it’s just those little things. So the the person answering the phone, the customer service person, if they have that license to say, you’re right, this is, this is screwed up. I don’t know how we did this, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it. And let’s, let’s, don’t judge us on the fact we made a mistake, judge us on how we handle the mistake. Yeah, and then you flip that,

 

Damon Pistulka  26:12

yep. And that’s the thing, when you talked about the 2% you know, if your sales and marketing people are aware of the fact that we do 98% of what everybody else does, but our 2% is why you want to do business with us. I mean, it’s a great thing to talk about with your sales people and your marketing and have them talking about with the world, because that’s, you know, and getting that message through down to the individual person, and then giving them, empowering them, like you said, with a shipping person like that, to make those kinds of decisions,

 

Walter Crosby  26:44

and if we don’t tell them that, sometimes people are afraid to make a call. Yeah, guys like you and me, we make calls all the time, and we’re wrong a lot. That’s okay, right? We learn from it, and we’re willing to do that. But some people, you know, they’re afraid they could lose their job or get yelled at or something which is legitimate. So like, tell them, You got ability to make a decision within these parameters, and if you got to go outside those parameters, ask, because we want to, we want to do the right thing, and, you know, doing the right thing right now with the way certain companies operate. You know, it, it’s not how it works.

 

Damon Pistulka  27:29

Yeah, big deal if you can, if you can do it better than them and and do the right thing, that makes a big difference, that’s for sure. So as you’re as you’re out there talking to people. What are, what are some of the things that you’re really enjoying about working with people in sales today.

 

Walter Crosby  27:52

I love watching them Elevate, right and and what I mean by that is, you know, when you work with a salesperson over the course of a couple of weeks, when you’re working on an idea, and you get them to believe in the idea, and you get them to, most importantly, believe in themselves, right? That, and then they go try it, yeah, and they’ve been in the field for a couple of days, and they’re on their way home from freaking Iowa, right? They gotta drive for a couple hours, and then they call you up and say, hey, you know the thing that we talked about this week? Yeah, well, it worked. I’m like, great. I you know, I wish you weren’t so surprised, but tell me about it. Yeah, and, and they’re all excited because the thing worked. Now they get a little bit closer to to doing more things and taking more risk. So that’s what I like. I like to get paid. Don’t get me wrong, yeah, but I really like, I can tell that that guy or that gal who calls and I’m like, You made my week right there, that that really makes my week because you did something that you didn’t think you could do, and you did it well. You helped. Like, yeah, I might have helped, but you did it. You took the initiative. You took and tried something that you hadn’t done before. That, to me, is the fun part. Yeah, it’s a and that works with sales people and sales managers, right? Sales Manager who learns how to create accountability that’s positive, or learns how to coach their people, right? Rather than bury their head in a in a CRM or try to be the hero. It’s just that’s the part, because sales is such a slight edge business, right? We can win or lose for the silliest of reasons, most insignificant of reasons, a bad handshake spilled into coffee at the table, right? You know, just looking, you know, any of those things could cause us to deal. Asking the wrong question. So it when I see them try something new and it works for them, that’s, that’s a big joy. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  30:09

yeah. That’s a huge thing, as you said, because sales is a slight edge, because you’re usually, almost always you got, they’ve got other choices when they’re looking at something,

 

Walter Crosby  30:23

yeah, if they got, if they don’t have other choices, then you know, you’re working for the government or a big monopoly.

 

Damon Pistulka  30:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a lot different there. So we, we’ve got a lot of, we’re not going to talk about it much, but we got a lot of people that think AI is coming for sales, people coming for SDRs, coming for this. What do you see? What are your thoughts on? Have you seen people try it? Have you seen you know what? What’s going on in your head when it

 

Walter Crosby  30:57

comes to that AI is not going away? Yeah, right. It’s been around for a very long time. It just got a better publicist the last couple of years, right? Yeah, and there’s a lot of money thrown behind it right now to make it better, yeah, so. And it has made better. It has gotten better. If you remember, you know, years ago, I forget the name of the principal, but every three years, computers got faster and cheaper, right? Well, that’s happening with AI in terms of its capacity and its speed and its intelligence. So I think that’s happening like every six months, major things are happening, yeah. So is it going to take your job? I’m not worried. We had, I have a client who was, is building a an agent, a bot, and you know, it’s, it’s a, it sounds like a real person, right? It can be responding to questions. But I had, I had a VA that was really worried that, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s losing, he’s going to lose his job because of the AI. And, you know, we did a demo like, let’s, let’s have the bot come in, make the phone call with one of the sales people in the meeting. And you know, let’s see what it does. So we did that, and when the meeting was all over the the I talked to the VA afterwards, because what he does is qualify leads. Somebody raises their hand, he calls them, qualifies them, and then flips it over to the salespeople, which is the exact situation you were explaining. So he listened to the bot operate. He’s like, I got nothing to worry about, right? Because he just heard it. How, how, how easily it could be confused, how much it actually sounded like a robot, the delays, right? So if you’re speaking to a certain type of buyer where there where you just need a couple of questions for them to make a transaction, it might work. It might work. Okay. If you were got a complex sale and you’re trying to figure out something from a skeptical buyer, hmm, it’s going to be a bigger lift. Yeah, I think the way I’ve been looking at it lately, I use it as part of my, part of one of my processes where it helps me. I give it a premise, or give it something I wrote and like, hey, use this format to improve upon it, but you still gotta read it. Still gotta humanize it. You gotta make it your voice. And I, you know, I’ve got it understanding who my customer is. I gotta understanding what my voice is like, and it does a good job of that. But it isn’t perfect. Yes, it will, as they call it, what hallucinate, yes, on things. I wouldn’t trust it for research. It does a good job of doing outlines, something that takes 90 minutes. You could probably get it down to 30 with the with its help, it’s a toolbox where you have to know how to use all of the tools in it. And I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned about it is our our education system has taught us to memorize things. It’s taught us to learn things in a certain way, but it didn’t teach us to think critically, and it didn’t teach us to teach, and that’s what this requires, yes. So us to write a prompt to tell it what we wanted to do, and if we tell it to do something, and we don’t give it enough specificity or enough context, it goes over that way right when we wanted it to go this way. So you. I think it’s, it’s, it’s great, it’s exciting to watch. But I don’t know. I’m not really worried about it taking my gig, yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  35:09

I don’t think I’m with you there. I think it is a great thought partner, like you said. It can help you re, you know, work through things a little bit, give you some different perspectives, and, and, and sometimes, I mean, for the kind of things I think we’re talking about is, you know, in a sales or marketing perspective, you know, you could be sending it a marketing piece of content, or whatever it is, and say, Hey, what do you think our ideal customer would would think when they saw this? It could give you some good ideas. Maybe, what changes would you what would you think about? Or if you’re talking about a sales salesperson, talking about their conversations, what are some of the questions I could ask them in this situation, it might help with those kind of things. Just the ideation and going from zero, going from zero, really give me some ideas, give me some things I wouldn’t think about, and there,

 

Walter Crosby  36:04

if all of those things, it’s, it’s good at you still gotta humanize it. Oh yes, I think there’s one area in sales that there’s some some really good work being done is, you know, one of the best ways to practice in sales is role plays, right? Yes, you know, I’ve been calling them scrimmages lately. So if we can do role plays that are low risk, right? And you get AI to help you with that, so there’s, there’s bots that you, you give it a scenario, and you tell it you’re Bob from this company that has this issue, and then you have a salesperson deal with, you know, the bot, and you can start to analyze that. You can look at the transcripts, you can start to count things that that stuff is really, really powerful. And there’s lots of tools out there right now that you know, every time you go and do a search, there’s a new tool that that does it just a little bit better. So that’s a great way to use AI to help you as a salesperson, yes, to help you get better it, and then just, you know, some basic stuff with, like, taking trans, trans transcribing notes, yeah, from a meeting, right? Yeah, you’ll, you know, being able to get the notes from from a zoom call or a phone call, and then having that where you can be laser focused on that buyer and really be paying attention and asking the right questions, because you’re not asking taking notes. You got your thing, doing it for you. Yes,

 

Damon Pistulka  37:36

that is a huge part. And I have noticed that in my own work is that with the note taker running in the background, you can, you can focus in on the conversation, really understand what’s going on. And then it’s a huge benefit, too, if you’re going to meet someone again, to go back and review a few days before to make sure, hey, everything’s good on my end for this. What are we talking about the next time we’re together? And, wow, it’s just it’s so powerful to help you with those things,

 

Walter Crosby  38:07

and in where the AI can help that. So you, if you have, if you have the meeting and you have, like, say, six or seven zoom meetings in a day, like, like, I do, you know, you don’t always have time in between of them to take the notes. Yeah, so if you you could take the transcription of those those notes, give them to a virtual assistant, right? And say, Here, take the transcription and put the notes into this format for me, so I have them. And then create an email with the to do list, you know, that that we needed to do what we agreed to do at the end of the meeting. You know, take the summary right? That can save you a lot of time, improve your effectiveness, you know, make you look, look more professional, because you’re doing follow up emails that summarize things and that that doesn’t cost a lot of money. It’s part of a lot of our basic packages. Now, yeah, so instead of fearing it, right, it’s not going away. You know, horses weren’t big on automotive, you know, cars, the guy that made the wagon wheels wasn’t real thrilled when, you know, we stopped using wagons. We have to iterate. So I think we start to look at how we can, in sales, use the tool to help us get better, right? Instead of fearing it, dive into it and learn about it. And don’t, you know, just don’t be one of those Yahoos that just repost what’s written, because it’s, it’s so embarrassing. Thanks.

 

Damon Pistulka  39:47

I love it. I love it. Yeah, I see you know it is, it is a there are going to be some interesting tools developed in it and and no doubt it will. It will get better over time. But it is, it is, you. Really, really a great way to, you know, get off the mark from zero to help you refine some things and a lot coming around. But I agree 100% don’t think it’s going to be eliminating a whole swath of jobs anytime soon. The last thing to do before we wind up here. You got something that you’re launching here, you’re going to talk about a little bit the sales integrator, what we got going on there? Walter.

 

Walter Crosby  40:33

The premise might piss some people off, but the premise is basically for companies that are using the EOS system, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, great system for a company to run their business, right. There’s structure to it. You know, you got your people, your scorecards, your vision traction, you know, ability to talk about meetings and have structure to it. It’s a great system, but I think there’s a flaw with sales teams that that don’t necessarily fit well into it. And what I mean by that is EOS is really internally focused. You create a VTO, which is your vision, right? You you create your three uniques about you know what makes you special? Guess what? You get your sales people to go out and talk to people outside your company. Nobody cares. Nobody cares what your vision is. Nobody cares what you know your three uniques are. It’s all cute. It’s great. It’s going to help you, help your people, help your customers, but it doesn’t help the sales people in a meaningful way. So the sales integrator is is designed to do just that, to integrate the sales team into the EOS system so that the business owner knows what the sales team needs, what’s missing, and it helps them use their current tools more effectively. I’ll give you example. You know, one of the things that in the people part of Eos, they’re looking at right seats, right people write seats, yep, and GWC, right. Get it, want it, have capacity for it. Well, when you look at it from, from the EOS perspective, and you look at a salesperson specifically, they’re, they’re they’re taking a guess. They’re not really sure, right? Because sales people, we’re weird. We can sell you on us. We can deal with that, right? We can make you feel you know that we understand what’s going on, and we can buy ourselves six months. So what we’re able to do is help that business owner look at some data, look at what’s really going on, to see if they’re a fit. So we’re holding a mirror up to that, and we’re using what they have in the context that they’re that they’re operating. We’re not asking them to stop doing what they’re doing. We’re saying, here’s some things that will make this better and integrate it in, and some of it is what we talked about, right? Getting the Message right, because it’s not about them, it’s about your customer, right? It’s not about persuading and selling and pitching. It’s about the buyer’s journey through your company. And is it effective scorecard making sure that those are forward looking, not you know, laggers, yeah, the the ability to get some traction, right? So we have all of that that figured out. I’ll be launching an ebook that people can get that will outline the whole idea. They can read through it and like, oh, I can do that, and I can do that, and I can do that. Okay, you got the information. Go do it right? And then so other sections, they might need some help with it. So we have a whole turnkey process. We’ll sit down and talk to a business owner about their priorities, and we’ll help them see from an EOS perspective, if you do 123, it makes 456, easier, right? If you get these two things right, the rest of it flows easier, and that’s unique to each business. Everybody’s a little different. So the process is pretty streamlined and simple. It’s not easy. Yeah, it’s tough. You got to be able to say, we got to do something different, and that’s usually the challenge, yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  44:43

yeah. Well, that sounds awesome. So when, when are the when is this going to be rolled out? The end of the month?

 

Walter Crosby  44:53

What? Yeah, it’s, it’s just simply not ready yet. And I’ve been. And I’ve been tweaking it and tweaking it, and I know good enough is good, but, and I’m not looking for perfection, yeah, but I’m looking to give somebody something that they can be like, Oh, that makes sense, and I can do that part, right? Cuz a lot of these, a lot of entrepreneurs, especially the ones who run in Eos, they’re smart. There’s if they just, if they take an idea, they can run with it and solve some of these problems. Yeah, so I can get them, if they mention your show and they ping me on LinkedIn, or ping me on, you know, any of the the social media, I will send them the book for free, but they got to mention you in the show.

 

Damon Pistulka  45:42

All right, that’ll be awesome. That’ll be awesome,

 

Walter Crosby  45:46

and that they can have tomorrow. What’s that? The book is ready. They could have that tomorrow. Ah, very cool.

 

Damon Pistulka  45:53

Very cool. So Walter, thank you so much for being here today. I I just love being able to talk to you, because you are out there helping so many sales people, sales managers, improve how they’re doing it. Improve, like you said, help them level up, improve their results. Man, it’s just and in your your real world, advice that you give every time we talk is so awesome, so awesome.

 

Walter Crosby  46:22

That’s very kind. I appreciate it. It’s funny.

 

Damon Pistulka  46:25

Yeah, I’m not kidding. Every time we talk, I just like, you can it just exudes from you. You know what the heck you’re doing, and you’re helping a lot of people. So thank you for being here today. And if people want to reach out to you, what’s the best way to get a hold of you? Walter,

 

Walter Crosby  46:40

you know LinkedIn, I’m the only Walter L Crosby on LinkedIn. And my pictures there, I have a cigar in my picture so you know it’s me, yeah. And my website, helix, sales development.com, is an easy, easy way to connect.

 

Damon Pistulka  46:59

Alright, alright. Again today we have Walter Crosby helix sales development, talking about aligning your marketing and sales message for success, a lot of other stuff. Great advice. If you got into this late, you want to go back to the beginning and listen to Walter from the beginning, because he just gave us a sales master class in about 40 minutes. So thanks everyone for being here. Walter, hang out. We’ll finish up offline. And want to say thanks Trish for dropping the drop in the comments, thanks for being out there today. Thank you to all those people that were listening and didn’t comment. We appreciate you being here. We’ll be back again. Thanks everyone you.