Critical B2B Sales Systems and Processes

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
B2B sales, systems and processes, customer experience, marketing alignment, sales funnel, buyer journey, emotional factors, customer-centric, sales and marketing alignment, buyer psychology, customer acquisition, sales strategy, customer engagement, sales process, marketing insights.
SPEAKERS
Humza Adam, Damon Pistulka

Damon Pistulka 00:08
All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon Pistulka, and I am excited for our guest today, because I’ve got none other than Hamza Adam here today, and we’re going to be talking about critical B to B, sales, systems and processes. Hamza, thanks for being here today. It’s great to

Humza Adam 00:33
be here. Damon, I’ve been really excited, looking forward to

Damon Pistulka 00:37
so good, so fortunate that we could arrange and have you on here today. So I just want to there’s one thing, when I was preparing for this, you’ve been or had hands on touched, helped to influence over $5 billion in sales, right? So I just want to bring that up for people to listen to it, because that’s that’s more than there’s a lot more zeros than usual on that number. So here’s a bit of the story

Humza Adam 01:07
behind that, but, but go ahead. Damon,

Damon Pistulka 01:09
no, go ahead. Go ahead. Let’s hear the story first, then we’ll get going. Yeah,

Humza Adam 01:13
yeah. So, so just in terms of my background, so I’ve, I’ve worked in different industries, from telecom all the way to aerospace, yeah. And when you’re wondering, where does that those kind of numbers come from? Well, when I was working in the in the aviation industry, I was working for an aircraft manufacturer, and I was basically in the business of selling and marketing airplanes to airlines, yeah, all around North America, so Canada and US and well, but into Latin America as well, but mostly into the North American market. And basically the big names in Canada, West, shit and Air Canada down south in the US, I had Delta united, American Southwest. Oh, wow. So names you might recognize there. And basically I was involved in marketing and selling all our product lines of airplanes. And each of these airplanes is worth in 10s of millions of dollars. Yeah, right, yeah. And especially when you’re selling in in North America, you’re not selling one or two airplanes, right? You’re, you’re selling fleets of airplanes, right? So you’re getting into numbers like 20, 3050, sometimes well over 100 right? Yeah. And that’s the way those numbers add up real fast. Yes,

Damon Pistulka 02:36
they do. Yes they do. Well, that’s awesome, because I think you know from those experiences and your experiences now you in H factor solutions where you’re helping people in sales. You You got a lot of experience putting real world solutions into place to help people sell more.

02:56
Exactly, that’s the whole idea. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 02:59
so let’s talk about your background a little bit, because you have a master’s in engineering management. Now, you don’t typically see someone with that degree going into sales, but what really pulled you into the sales career path? Yeah, so

Humza Adam 03:17
Well, part of my background is actually also aviation. I had a master’s based on what they call human factors, getting into the safety side of aviation, and I actually did a little bit of work on accident investigation, which was interesting. And then I decided that, you know, did I want to get an MBA or not? And I said, Look, I have a very strongly technical mind, and I want to be able to leverage that. And so I ended up deciding to go ahead and get a master, Masters in Engineering Management out of Florida Tech eons ago now. And basically the whole idea was, I want to be able to work with businesses and develop a career in different capacities that I I actually worked in different areas, in many different businesses. I worked on in the operations and supply management side, big telecom company for a while, and then I had a bit of a hankering to get into get back to aviation, and so I started attending a few conferences. And at one of the conferences, I met with the VP of Marketing at one of the big airline aircraft manufacturers, and we got to talking, and he thought my background was really interesting, and one thing led to another, and they hired me on as part of the sales and marketing team. Now I did have some sales experience in other areas as well, which which they thought was useful, but also my. My aviation background and my understanding of the industry was was pretty relevant. So that’s, that’s kind of what kicked it off for me in terms of B to B selling in a very big way.

Damon Pistulka 05:10
Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. So what do you think are some of the more unique aspects when we look at B to B sales, and especially B to B sales that are in more technical, higher ticket, longer term sales processes.

Humza Adam 05:31
Yeah. So what I often see there is, and I see this across the board in many different types of organizations I work with. And so I develop a developed a bit of a methodology to be able to help these companies out. So what I typically see is the way you can picture it is, you can picture a triangle, and at the apex of the triangle you have strategy, okay, so that’s at the top end of your triangle, okay? On the right hand corner, you’re of this triangle. You have your your systems and processes, okay? And on the left hand corner, you have your people, or what I would call your talent side of the equation, okay, and very critically, you want to make sure that in the center of your triangle is your ideal client, your best clients, alright, are in the center of the triangle. Okay, now, and the reason you want to look at it that way is that none of these aspects strategy or systems and processes or the people side of your business should be functioning in a vacuum, right? Because that’s a recipe for all kinds of problems. Yeah, they all need to be centered around the customer, right? The client, right? And what are we trying to help this client accomplish with all the different things that we do, with all the capabilities that we have, what, how are we going to improve the lives or the businesses of the people that we work with and work for? Right? Because without customers, there is no business. Yes, right, and, and this is one of the challenges that I see, is that people often lose sight of that right to focus on, you know, here’s our strategy, here’s our vision. This is what we want to do, right, and it has nothing to do with their customers, right? Who they’re they’re there to serve, right? Or they build processes, and the processes are not connected to either the strategy right or the talent side of the equation, or even the customer side of the equation right. Sometimes businesses, people and businesses build processes to make things easier for themselves and not to improve things for their customers, to make things we should be thinking about making things easier and frictionless and better for our customers, our prospects, our clients, right, giving them an amazing experience all the way through, right? And this is something that I often find is missing, you know, when a lot of organizations because they just don’t really think about it in this way? Yes,

Damon Pistulka 08:30
yes, yeah. So that brings up a great point. So when you’re out talking to B to B companies, how many of them do you think really make it easy for a customer to do business with them? I, you know,

Humza Adam 08:49
I would say, you know, in my, in my experience, it would be less than 20% right? Yeah, because I find that a lot of businesses, well, some of them, they start off, and they’re very customer centric in the early, early phases, because, well, you know, they need to go out there and they need to touch the customer. And you have the leadership is, is very much in tune with, what does customer want? What do we need to build for them? Right? How do we need to create this to create good value, right? How are we going to sell? Often times you have the founders themselves are involved in the selling activities, right? And so you have a very good, you know, connection with the the end customer, right? But what happens over time is, as you grow, you add those layers, and people at the top get very disconnected from what’s going on at the front line, with the customers, with the clients. And then you start getting all these bureaucratic things creeping in that do nothing right. And not only do they do not. Thing they might actually do, you know, be be a detractor or have a negative impact on the whole customer experience, yes, on the whole client experience, right? So, so I see this as a pretty good big gap, which, which is what I, you know, obviously, that’s a big part of what I do is try and help them kind of navigate and and close that gap and understand the importance of really shifting the focus from, you know, our internal focus to in a focus on, who are we here to serve?

Damon Pistulka 10:33
Yeah, yep. So when you look at B to B sales, what do you think most companies are missing?

Humza Adam 10:47
I would say it wouldn’t. From my perspective, we go back to the triangle, yeah. What I what I often see missing, is that sometimes, if they have a strategy. The strategy is not well thought out. Okay, it’s not an effective strategy for what they’re trying to accomplish. In other cases, it is their systems and processes are basically not designed for with a connection to the strategy and in terms of what are we trying to accomplish here in terms of the customer experience in all phases of the sales cycle, right? And that includes the pre purchase experience, that includes the marketing activities. What is the marketing experience that the customer is going to have, the prospects going to have, right? Once they start engaging, once we engage with them, right? What is the sales experience look like? Right? Is there congruence between how we’re positioning ourselves in the market and how they’re being interacted with, and the messaging that they’re receiving throughout, right? And then, what is the purchase experience like? Right? How easy are we making it for them to buy? Right? You know, there’s an old saying that I like that says people hate to be sold, but they love to buy, right? And often times, with sales people, they are trying to sell, sell, sell, right. They’re not thinking about what is the customer’s perspective on this, and where is the buyer in their journey, right? So typically, in d to be organizations, you will have the sales people. They have their their sales funnel and their CRM the pipeline. These are the stages, and they’re focused on, okay, how do we get this prospect from this stage to this stage? Move them from this day to this day. How do we push them through right, as fast as possible? And you know, in my mind, while your your your sales process is important, right, what’s even more important than that is the customer’s journey, right? So you need to think about, where is the customer in their journey, right? Have they achieved problem, problem recognition? Right? Are they dissatisfied with their situation to an extent that they recognize there’s a problem and want to go and start figuring out how to solve that problem, right? And then moving on to seeking out and doing the research on okay, how can I solve this problem? This is where all the marketing activities come in, where you need to be visible in a variety of different places with the right types of messaging relevant to the customer, given where they’re at. And oftentimes you want to be educating the customer the right way, right and then moving on to the next step in their journey is typically alright. They come up with a short list of potential vendors that could help them with their problem, and they basically will, in some cases, issue an RFP or a bidding process to to basically evaluate between the short list of options that they put together, right and there’s different information that they would need in that phase. And you have to look at it from their perspective, as opposed to from our perspective as the manufacturer, yeah, or the creator of the product or service, right? What are what? What are they looking to accomplish here? And why are we best suited to help them accomplish that, right? And then helping them in terms of moving to the next step? And so. Collecting, hopefully you, you and your company is the best choice, right, and then working with them through the implementation, through the purchase, through the implementation, making it a great experience all around so that, that you know, in my mind, what you the way you want all, like everybody in the company, be thinking about sales is like sales is such everybody’s job. It’s not just the people in sales, sales job, right? Because at the end of the day, we all need to help that customer buy a solution that that solves their problem, right? Yeah, and make sure they’re well supported in that and are having a great experience with us. Because the whole point of sales and marketing is not just to get the sales right. It’s not just about sales. It’s more importantly about getting life long or lifetime customers right. Yes, long live customers that that that’s really, you know, the way we want to be thinking about sales, right? It’s, it’s not about getting those dollars in the end, right? The cash is good. That’s great, right? But what’s, what’s even more important is to focus on the human element and the people that we are serving, right and making sure that we’re giving them the value that they deserve, right and, and, and once we once we start thinking of that way, then we start looking at ways to keep adding value, because the longer the relationship we have with them, the greater the value that we are providing to them. And that pays dividends in many different ways. Right? So, it pays dividends in terms of the repurchases, the continuation of the contract. There’s then there it creates opportunities for cross selling, for upselling, maybe even for creating whole new product line to solve new, new and interesting problems that come up for them and and at the end of the day, right? Let’s not forget about wonderful things like referrals, yeah, so you know, you can get this, this amazing flywheel effect by having this type of long term view and focus on on building those relationships with the right types of customers, and having that long term view that everybody in the company shares. It’s not just something that you know, senior management is thinking, it’s something that everybody is thinking about, how can we give our clients the best experience so they don’t think about going anywhere else because they feel what we we fit them like a glove, like we know exactly what they need, and we’re anticipating what their future needs are, and we’re always providing insights and value in every interaction that we have with them, right? And unfortunately, this is not something that most people naturally are thinking about, right? They’re thinking about, Okay, gotta make the Gotta make numbers by by the end of the quarter, right? What do you need to do? Right? Let’s push us through. Let’s see if we can incentivize them at a discount, right? And it’s that kind of short term thinking that I think really muddies the waters a lot, and it doesn’t lead to that, you know, great, well nurtured long term relationship that we’d all love to be able to have.

Damon Pistulka 18:40
Yeah? Yeah. Well, I tell you, you made a great point about these long term customers, lifelong customers, as you said, because it does give you so many other opportunities for, as you said, cross selling, up, selling new product lines, new types of business that you can do with them. And I can’t, can’t tell you how many people that I’ve seen do that and turn, you know, it could be a million dollar customer into a multi, 10s of millions of dollar customer over time, if you, if you do those things right, and you’re growing with them, and can be very, very good. So one of the things that I’m seeing in the in the marketplace now, and B to B sales. And just curious is the role of marketing and in sales, and B to B sales, do you think that overall, that in manufacturing, where I where I work, an awful lot grew up in it, really, marketing is still somewhat of a foreign concept. People think they need to do marketing got most don’t do much at all and still are relying on on people in the field with the relationships they’re building by knocking on doors, doing the doing the things. They do. But do you think that marketing, either digitally or otherwise, is taking a bigger role in the sales process because of people now the change of buyers, they want to be able to research more. They want to get farther down the buying process. Do you think that that’s beginning to affect the B to B sales process a lot more?

Humza Adam 20:19
Yeah, totally, because you know now with with information available at your fingertips, right, people are finding it easier and easier to find as much information as they can to get down that that their buyers journey to the point where they figured out exactly what they think they want, right, without interacting with a salesperson. Right? They’re already, with some stats say, over 60% of the way through their buying decision, right, without having even contacted a real life human being, right? And so from my point of view, it’s even in manufacturing, where relationships have traditionally been very important, and I think will continue to be very important. Yes, you can’t just rely on relationships anymore, right? You have to be able to provide value right. And a big way, or a big component of providing that value is going to be through the marketing activities that you do right and you, what you want to be able to do is you want to be able to lead with insights. You want to be able to share your distinctive point of view, share your differentiation. Because, you know, for for most manufacturers, there aren’t the only ones in their industry. There are time, there’s tons of competition, right? And as money gets tighter, right? We, as you know, Damon, we’re no longer in the zurp era, right? Money is no longer free, like it used to be, right? Yeah, you know, interest rates are are higher, and who knows where they where they’ll be going in the future, but maybe unlikely that we’ll have zerp for a long time to come, or zero rate. Interest rate scenario for a long time to come. And so what that means is that buying decisions are now there’s a lot more consideration being given to that, right? Because where am I going to get as a business leader there? They have to be thinking, Where am I going to get the best return on my money, right? In some cases, might even be better just to park it in the bank than let’s get on on some new initiative, right? Yeah. And again, you have to be thinking about, how are they looking at at this as a as an opportunity? However, are they looking at deploying their critical cash and and they’re not just going to be, you know, wanting to deploy just because they have a great relationship with you, you have to really be able to show them that they they’re going to be getting a great return with a great company, and they’re going to be served very, very well. You want to reduce the risk, which is obviously a big concern, reduce the risk of them having doing business with you, which again, goes back to taking away the friction and making it easy for them to buy and giving them the confidence they need to feel and believe that you are the best solution for them to get them to where they want to go. So in summary, I would say absolutely, companies that are not doing marketing right now will find themselves behind the eight ball, right? We are in a global economy, right? And, you know, we you have to be able to compete, and you have to be able to get in there and demonstrate your value and marketing, I think, would be kind of the first line of being able to penetrate through all the noise. You want to be able to to have your marketing assets, kind of getting to your potential customers and starting to build that awareness, build that interest, and ideally, build that desire for them and want to work with you, and then getting The sales, the sales part of your your revenue machine in place so that you’re you’re building those relationships, while you’re also educating the the customers, and you’re helping them go through their their their customer journey, successfully, right? And this is a. Big thing you want them to be able to ultimately make a successful purchase, right? And the reason I say that is because there’s a stat, I believe it was from Gartner that said that 57% of B to B purchase decisions end up with no decision, right? Wow, if you just think about that, there’s a huge opportunity there, right? For companies who are going to be able to help the customer successfully navigate which is it? No, it’s a challenging environment out there. There’s there’s lots of competition, there’s lots of things going on, lots of opportunities to deploy what cash they have, yeah, and, and, and then there’s multiple stakeholders involved, right? So how do you help them navigate all of that in what, what I call a VUCA world, right? A world where we have lots of volatility, lots of uncertainty, right, where lots of complexity, lots of ambiguity, and it’s only getting more so, right? So, how do you help them navigate that? And we really need to be thinking about it from their perspective, and saying, okay, but you know, how are they looking at the world? How can we bring them some insights to help shape their perspective in a way that’s going to help them, not just now, but also in terms of what’s coming down the pipe? How can we help them see around those blind corners? And to be able to do that, you need to, obviously, be able to get out in front of them, even before you have that relationship with them.

Damon Pistulka 26:44
Yeah, yeah. And when you think about it, then you talked about this earlier, is the value adding marketing, educating your customers to really show yourself in the light of being an authority, know what you’re talking about, been there before, be the one that could really help them if they’re in this situation, kind of thing. How does that when you in, you’re in a company, and you’re working with them and they’re implementing effective marketing, how does that really change the sales process and effectivity, and the whole nine yards on the sales the sales piece, if the marketing is done well,

Humza Adam 27:30
it has a tremendous impact, right? Because if marketing is is done, what they need to do, and they’re doing it really well, then what’s happening is that now the buyer is coming in to the interaction of the salesperson, already with well informed with and having an understanding of what you your company is all about, how you are positioned in the market versus the competitors, right, and what value you provide right, and so that the buyer is much further along in their in their journey, and with an understanding, with a deeper understanding, of you and your your business, and the problems that you solve, Right, which, when that happens, then it makes the job of sales so much easier, right? Because now the buyer is very engaged, very engrossed in the whole process, and really believes that your company seems to be amongst everything all the other ones out there, your company seems to be the only one that really, truly understands what they need and understands their situation, right? And when, when the salesperson gets involved, then you know that they basically can see that your your your salesperson has a very deep understanding. So it’s not just marketing is doing all the, you know, all the legwork, right? Sales also has to come in. There needs to be constant interaction between sales and marketing, right in terms of communication and alignment, and this is a big challenge, I see, is that there’s often not that great alignment between sales and marketing, but in a well functioning organization, you have really good alignment. And so coming in, when sales is coming in, in making contact, they already know what, what kind of content has, has this particular prospect been consuming, right? What white papers have they downloaded? What case studies have they have they viewed? What webinars have they attended? Right? And so now the salesperson has a very good understanding of what information this prospect. Has been exposed to, right? Yeah, and they, you don’t need to beat around the bush, right? You can already have you ask some really good targeted questions to see exactly where they’re at in terms of their buyer’s journey, and then meet them where they’re at and take them from there.

Damon Pistulka 30:17
Yeah, that’s a great point, because when we when we talk about sales systems, I think that’s that’s one of the things that really can set you apart if you’re using the right system, because you just described a situation that I think is probably foreign to many B to B sales people. By being able to see, I’m going to go meet with Hamza. And I know that Hamza downloaded these three case studies, or viewed those case studies, downloaded this and, you know, responded to this survey, or whatever it was, because most people that B to B sales in marketing aren’t tied in like that. And we might have a CRM over here, running, downloading stuff, people are interacting. And when the leads somehow trigger something to meet with a salesperson, they get a meeting set up, and that’s it. Yeah. But what you said in the way you explained that that knowledge that they could have ahead of that, when you put that together with a talented, beaded salesperson that’s going into those meetings. You You are light years ahead because you know how educated they are, and you’ve heard or seen some of the questions they’ve been asking or the things that they’ve been trying to learn more about, and you can help them much faster.

Humza Adam 31:41
100% Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Damon Pistulka 31:46
So as you You brought up a good, good topic or a little segue in this conversation, and that’s sales and marketing alignment. What do you think are some of the key pieces in you know, either assessing your sales and marketing alignment, first of all, let’s talk about that, and then how you keep them aligned over time?

Humza Adam 32:12
Yeah, that’s a great question. Damon, so the way you want to assess the sales and marketing is, you know, think about what, what happens when, let, let’s say, when you look at the KPIs right? Think about what are the KPIs that you’re having marketing, that you’re marketing people are being held responsible for, right? Versus what are the KPIs that the sales people are being held responsible for, right? And what happens when it what has been happening when, say, the quotas have been missed, what has been happening when the revenue targets have been missed? Right? If you have this going on where you have marketing pointing at sales and saying, Well, you know, these folks in sales, they don’t know we’ve been giving them great leads, but they don’t know how to close them, right? It’s not our fault. We’ve done our part, right? And sales goes well, you know, it was marketing has been giving us really crappy leads. And you know, what are we going to do? Right? You give us these kinds of leads, these are not qualified. Yeah, wrong. You know, the wrong industry. Or you know they’re not they don’t meet our you know, they don’t meet our requirements as a sales accepted lead, and that’s all they give us. And so marketing is just, you know, it’s because of marketing we’re not meeting that.

Damon Pistulka 33:51
Yeah, yeah. And so

Humza Adam 33:53
what you want to do is, really, you want to have alignment between sales and marketing in terms of, okay, what are our goals? You know, who are we going after? What does that look like? What does the ideal customer profile look like? Let’s agree on that. Let’s agree on who we’re going to be going after. Let’s agree on what types of information assets we’re going to produce to go after that like you want to have marketing and sales, you know, having periodic meetings where they’re talking about, what are the what types of campaigns are we going to be running, right? And who are we targeting for these kinds of campaigns, right? What is the type of content we’re producing for this? Right? And there needs to be constant dialog where sales is like, you know, this is what we’re hearing from prospects, right? Yeah, I think would be helpful if you produce they, for instance, this checklist, this type of checklist. I think it really helpful, right? So you’re having this, this constant dialog and and marketing is also assessing, okay, how, when they’re producing these MQ. What we call marketing qualified leads, what’s going on with those leads? How many of those leads turn into what we call sales qualified, you know, sales accepted leads, and then SQL or sales qualified leads, right? And really assessing the, you know, the changes in terms of what happens to a lead over time, and trying to figure out, okay, what what sources are producing the best leads, what type of content of these leads consuming, right? And which of these leads turn out to be our best customers, right? And how can we get more of those right? Yeah, there’s constant integration, there’s constant communication, yeah, right, and it’s working like a well oiled machine. That’s the way, you know, in an ideal world, that’s way every organization would be working. But most really don’t work that way.

Damon Pistulka 35:52
Yeah, that you bring up a bunch of great points in there. First of all, I think that most, if people haven’t done a lot of B to B marketing, you know, they don’t understand it’s a lot of trial and error, even if you know your ideal client. Well, yes, but when you have that alignment between your sales and your marketing people, and there is that feedback loop, and there is that, first of all, I’m amazed at how many B to B marketers go out and market without talking to the sales people. First at all, it’s like we need to, okay, we know our buyer, we’re going to do this. And then we don’t, even, as marketers, they don’t go and say, Okay, what are your most asked? What are your most frequent questions? What are your biggest pain points that you hear people talking about, you know, just some of the simple things, because that at least gets you down the road that far with what they’re seeing in the field. But then that constant feedback that you talked about, I think it really can when you get the teams working together, because you made a great point. What happens when a target is missed and the fingers are pointing at each other? In this we don’t have the alignment, because everyone should feel the same sense of urgency to hit our targets. It’s either we, we Yes, we could have, maybe not, had the right, the right, the best qualified leads going to sales. Maybe we didn’t have enough. Maybe we had way too many qualified leads and we didn’t have a good sales process. It all comes together, that when the sales and marketing works together, the customer has a better experience. They’re educated at a higher level and makes a more, more informed choice, which really, in the end, like you said, people don’t want to be sold to, but they do like to buy. So if they make a good, informed choice, people will buy, will feel good about buying from you, and that that missed interaction. There is a key point I think that a lot of B to B companies Miss 100%

Humza Adam 38:07
Yeah. Well said. Damon, yeah. Cool. So

Damon Pistulka 38:12
you talk a lot about buyer psychology in in what you what you write, what you know, you’ve got some background in that. Talk about that just a little bit, because it’s something I don’t think people spend enough time on in B to B is really understanding that,

Humza Adam 38:36
yeah, that’s, that’s a great point. Damon, so I’ve always been fascinated with human behavior, and what drives human behavior, to the extent that, not only did I, you know, do a lot of research on the psychological, psychological aspects of human behavior, I went to the level of learning the cognitive aspects, which is to say, how do our brains actually work? Right? Yeah, I’ve been really, totally fascinated with with the brain for very, very long time now. And you know, essentially, what it comes down to is that, and this is something that in B to B, most people don’t even think about it because they don’t think it’s relevant. But at the end of the day, the reality is that we are all emotional beings, right? We all, you know, make decisions on the basis of how we feel about things, right? And people might say, Well, that makes sense for B to C, right? You know, walk in the store, you see something you like, you know, and packaging looks pretty you buy it, right? Well, even in B to B, decisions, right? The emotional aspect plays a huge role, right? Most people think, well. You know, yep, people are making it, you know, it’s a B to B decision. So therefore, you know, there’s a lot of money involved with buying a sophisticated type of solution. So there’s a lot of, you know, critical thinking and all that while that does happen, right? You can’t ignore the emotional aspects at play here, right? And what do I mean by the emotional aspects at play? Right? What I mean is, is that think about the person that you’re selling or the people that you’re selling to, right? What are their interests? Because they we all have our own interests, right, not just in terms of the business, but our own personal interest, right? And that’s based on how we emotionally feel about what’s important to us, right? And if, if we as sales and marketing people are not tapping into that, right, then we’re totally missing the boat, right? And and you know, when you think about it, when somebody is is going to evaluate you or your company, a lot is going to come down to as well, not just the information that you provide, but how do they feel about you. How do they feel about your company? Right? You can make all the fancy claims you want about how great your solution is, or it can reduce operating expenses by 30% you know, it can increase revenue by 200% right? You can make all those fancy claims, right? But how much of that they believe, or what they believe is going to depend on, you know, not only the level of the credibility that they perceive in you, okay, which also has a an emotional component to it, right? Yeah. But overall, how do they feel about you? How do they feel about your company? Have they been burned by, you know, a company, but by, for instance, even your company before, right? Have they had a negative experience for their company, which, you know that’s going to leave a bad taste in their mouth? Yeah, so, how are you going to overcome that, right? Have they been burned before with other companies buying, you know, similar big, complex solutions that were, you know, proclaimed to do all these great things, yeah, when they bought it, it was like nobody ended up using it, it, it turned out not to do what they said it could do right? So, so people are wary of being burned, right? And so we have to understand that. We have to understand that from a human emotional level, right? That’s where the rubber meets. The world is when we’re interacting with these, these people, it’s the human to human interaction. You know, just as an aside, that’s why I call my my business H factor solutions, because it comes down to the human factor. Yes, it’s a human element that plays a huge role in terms of our performance in sales and marketing, as well as in terms of our interactions with with buyers, even in B to B companies, because at the end of the day, we are all emotional beings, right? Some of us might be better at using our logical faculties, but the emotional element is always going to play a role. And so what I what I say was, when I train sales people, is to say, you gotta remember, right? Well, you know, speeds and feeds and all of that return on investment, that’s all well and good, right? Yeah, but what you really want to be doing is you want to sell to the heart, not just to the head, right? You gotta sell to the heart, not just to the head, right? Yep,

Damon Pistulka 43:37
sell to the heart, not just the head, yeah, that’s that’s a great point, because it is emotional. It doesn’t matter. You know, you can be buying a consumer product. I guess it may be a little bit more emotional, but I can tell you that from watching it happen, people can go out and buy a million dollar piece of equipment, and there’s a lot of emotion in which one they buy, because you have three different choices on something, and it’s like, oh, that just, you know, it comes down to that in the end, exactly,

Humza Adam 44:08
exactly. And people underestimate the need for that people have for psychological safety, right? Because if they feel like, you know, what if I, you know what, if I you spend this much on this thing, and it goes south, right? Then, you know, how am I going to look in terms of in front of my course, right? Yeah, I’m going to look in terms of who I report to. And, you know, ultimately, my job could be on the line, right? And, as salespeople, you know, we need to be able to tune into that and understand that there’s that level of emotionality that goes into it, and while for a buyer. So this is the other critical perspective that a lot of salespeople lack. Is. That you as a salesperson might be selling these things every day, like you’re involved. Yes, you’ve priced hundreds of these, right? But for the buyer, if they’re buying your, your your widget for the for the first time, right? Or it’s been, you know, 1015, years since they last bought, right? This is not a decision they make every day. Mm, hmm, so it’s all new to them, right? And you know you have to understand that it can be a very anxiety type of experience for them, because they don’t know what you know. Yeah, they’re not sure how well it’s going to work out. They’re not sure if they’re making the right decision, right? And your job really needs to be to give them that comfort, that confidence, right? And in some cases, take them by the hand and show them it’s it’s gotta be a we’re going to get there. We’re going to get through this right? We’re going to get it done. We’re going to get you to the Promised Land.

Damon Pistulka 46:05
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great that’s a great point in it, because a lot of these people that are doing buying, especially in some of the technical industries like manufacturing, even if you’re an engineer and you’re buying something and you’re specifying and buying, you still have selection, you know, different choices. Or if you’re a buyer, that’s even, I think, a little more stressful sometimes, because they don’t have the technical understanding of where does this go? What are the key things that I get a piece of paper or an electronic file that says, I want you to go buy a million of these, and it might cost 10 million to do it, and they don’t have any technical understanding. So they’re trying to select, who do I get that from? How do I get I mean, you put yourself in that buyer’s shoes and that buyer’s position that could make the difference between them having a job six months from then or not? Exactly. Yeah, good stuff. Well. Hamza, it has been awesome talking to you today and and really getting to learn from you about critical B to B sales, systems and processes. So if someone wants to talk to you, wants to reach out and and discuss their sales or just what you’re doing. What’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Humza Adam 47:22
The best way to reach out to me is through LinkedIn. Just connect with me. On LinkedIn, you can follow me. Connect with me. That’s Hamza Adam, h, u, M, Z, a lesson 80 AM, reach out. I’m always happy. Happy to connect.

Damon Pistulka 47:38
Awesome, awesome. Well, I just want to thank you for being here today. And again, we had humza Adam here today. We’re talking about critical B to B sales, sales systems and processes. Hums has been in the sales coaching and sales industry for a long time with H factor solutions, and he’s on LinkedIn, as he said, reach out to him to have a chat and see, see if he could be a right solution to help you to improve your sales. Now, I always like to say this, we love the listeners out there. I see we’ve got people listening. If you got into this late, go back to the beginning and listen to humza from the beginning. He dropped a lot of gold nuggets early on, and we were talking about marketing, the interaction with sales. We’re talking about the human factor and the emotional factors in sales, and some of the critical points as a B to B Company you’re going to look at in your sales process. So Hamza, thanks for being here today,

Humza Adam 48:36
and thank you. Damon, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Awesome,

Damon Pistulka 48:41
awesome. Well, we’re going to wrap up now. Humza, hang out. We’ll finish up offline. Sounds

Humza Adam 48:46
good? You?