Troy Sandidge is an award-winning marketing strategist, the host of the iDigress podcast, and the author of Strategize Up: The Simplified Blueprint to Scaling Your Business.

In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Troy explains the power of leveraging strategy to win more business and build a bigger life.

You'll learn:

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Featured on this episode:

Host - Will Barron

Founder of Salesman.org

Guest - Troy Sandidge

Award-Winning Marketing Strategist

Resources:

Troy on LinkedIn
The iDigress Podcast
Findtroy.com
Book: Strategize Up: The Simplified Blueprint to Scaling Your Business

Transcript

Will Barron:

Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're getting into the importance of using strategy in business in today's episode. Today's guest is Troy Sandidge. He's an award-winning marketing strategist, also known as the Strategy Hacker. He's the host of the iDigress podcast and is the author of Strategize Up. You can find out more about Troy over at findtroy.com. And with that, Troy, welcome to the show.

Troy Sandidge:

Thank you for having me. I've been dying to get on this show. So it's here. It's happening. It's real.

Will Barron:

Good. I'm glad to have you on, mate. I appreciate the energy, the excitement, and I want to get into strategy. Now, over at sales.org in our training programme, I think me and you are on the same wavelength for a lot of this. We call what you might call strategy, frameworks and systems.

Why All Salespeople Need a Well-Structured Sales Strategy · [00:50]

Will Barron:

So I want to get some definitions of this in a second, but just to lay it up for the audience, to add a bit of context here, in a world where, and this is my experience in sales 10 years ago, in a world where most sales people wake up each morning and they just are a blank slate, they pick up the phone, their laptop, they start to do whatever in that moment, it might possibly at some point, lead to a sale getting closed in the future.

Will Barron:

Why should they consider implementing a step-by-step strategy to reach sales success, rather than doing what most sales people do each day, which is just winging it?

Troy Sandidge:

Let me just make it very clear for you. When you're just winging it, executing, you don't put the finger out and just say, “At what direction should I go, I want to get to my destination?” You take your phone, plug in the coordinates of where you want to go and it automatically always reroutes you to get you to your destination.

Troy Sandidge:

So you can either execute and hope for the best, or you can put your coordinates and your strategy is always evolving, helping you, is literally your GPS to get to your destination.

Troy Sandidge:

So I don't know what sales person, frankly, what business person wouldn't choose to use a GPS to get them to their customers, to get them to the bag, to get them to their conversion rate, all the different things, the KPIs that they want, instead of just hoping for the best by just jumping and predicating on when and algorithm and faith to get you there.

Salespeople Know They Need a Strategy But They Just Don’t Follow One · [02:18]

Will Barron:

That is obvious, right, Troy? We're not preaching something that is ambiguous or is backwards here. In my experience, so sales people know this, but they don't do it. Is that similar of your experience dealing with, in the world of marketing and business consulting as well?

Troy Sandidge:

100%. I think many times people think strategy slows them down. Strategy is part of the execution process. You need a game plan. You need to build the game plan to know how you're going to win the game.

Troy Sandidge:

And I think we have to understand that instead of just gunghoing it and jumping into sales calls, getting the lead numbers up and our conversion rate is really awful, honestly, our open rate is even worse. Let's analyse and figure out who our target audience is. That's part of the work.

“The sales people that are most successful, the businesses that are killing it in the industry or that are killing it in the game are the ones that take strategy as part of the execution process, instead of just executing and hope for the best, and then want to apply strategy after the fact. We need to let strategy be the lead in.” – Troy Sandidge · [03:01]

Troy Sandidge:

And so the sales people that are most successful, the businesses that are killing it in the industry or that are killing it in the game are the ones that take strategy as part of the execution process, instead of just executing hope for the best, and then want to apply strategy after the fact. We need to let strategy be the lead in.

Why Aren’t Salespeople Implementing and Doubling Down on Strategy? · [03:30]

Will Barron:

Troy, for sales people who listen to this now and go, “Okay, right. I know this, this makes sense.” Whose fault is it that this isn't implemented? Is this sales leadership for just going, “Oh, well, I've been given a quota as a sales manager. I've just split it evenly between our sales reps.”

Will Barron:

And I've just gone, “Okay, well, you probably need to make 300 calls a month. That's what we're going to pay you against and then a commission when you close a deal on top of that.” Is it their fault or is this something that sales people need to take responsibility for themselves, and perhaps develop a strategy, develop that intellectual property that travels with them from job to job, from a career in sales to a career in leadership and beyond as well?

Troy Sandidge:

I think it's both. I do think I will lean more 60/40, 60 being the sales lead, the sales manager, the executive staff or team member over the sales, as 60%. But I do think if you've been in sales for a minute, or this is where your livelihood is, this is where your bread and butter is, it's on you too a little bit as well.

Troy Sandidge:

And I'll look at it like this, if you're the lead and you have a sales department, sales team, it's to your best benefit to prepare them. I get it, we've got to get the numbers every month, every quarter, I get it. The pressure is unbearing, even more so now than it's ever been as this pandemic has progressed.

Troy Sandidge:

And digital marketing and digital strategy in sales is such a high-octane situation and everyone's desensitised the conversations in outbound. I get it. However, what if just by chance, instead of having them cranked out another 10 more calls, 10 more outbound for the day, you take that one hour and strategize the week, strategize the month.

Troy Sandidge:

What are we seeing? What are we hearing? And let's just put that against the line, seeing if our open rates go up, if our conversions go up. I don't know what sales person wouldn't want their numbers to be more of a higher quality. Yes, the volume's always going to be there. It's always going to be there.

Troy Sandidge:

But if we can just do a little bit more that can help us increase it by even 1%, that's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on the banking of the year and then the grand scheme of things. And that's where I hope sales leaders think about it, but lastly, for sales people to think about that too.

Troy Sandidge:

It's up to you to have a strategy that works for you to make your numbers better and make your experience better, because we don't talk about that enough with the mental psyche and everything else when it comes to sales professionals. You've got to find that mix that works for you to be at your best at all times.

Will Barron:

How much of the strategy that you teach, you can sort on, you're writing books on it, comes down to strategy to help people implement a strategy? So whether that's productivity or getting people over things like the fear of rejection, if it's a sales person specifically, helping people have, I don't know, healthy self-esteem, whatever it is so that they can put the strategy into place.

The Link Between Sales Success and Implementing an Effective Sales Strategy · [05:55]

Will Barron:

How much of success comes from those strategies versus a step-by-step strategy to increase outbound cadence uptake and email open rates and things like that?

Troy Sandidge:

I think it's more so internal. And the reason why I lean more internal, it's very simply, let's say you got 100 more sales calls end of every week, let's say you got way more outbound every month, every quarter, let's just say whatever number you've been chasing and trying to get to, let's say you get it.

Troy Sandidge:

Now, let's say you get it and you get the same result, the exact same flat-lining percentage opens, conversions, conversation, sales, the whole shebang. You probably feel pretty bad. I've been chasing this number and I got it, and the result was still the same.

Troy Sandidge:

And the reason a lot of that is the case, is that who's going to turn down more sales? But do they have the mental capacity, the fortitude and the tech savvy is all the things they need to maintain that level of capacity? In most cases they don't. They've been chasing a ghost for so long, they didn't realise, “I don't have the capacity that if I acquire this, I can't maintain it.”

Troy Sandidge:

And so I focus less on, anybody in the market who's been in the market, they can make the numbers look better. Anybody can. There can be a spike in the data at any point in time, but not too many teach you and educate you on how to build sustainable strategies.

“Salespeople of any profession, no matter the industry, need to have sustainable systems so they can maintain that high performance capacity for a long stretch of time. Otherwise, they're going to get burned out.” – Troy Sandidge · [07:59]

Troy Sandidge:

And sales people of any profession, no matter your industry, you need to have sustainable systems, so you can maintain the capacity for a long stretch of time. Otherwise, you're going to get burned out.

Troy Sandidge:

You're not going to be ready when you're in the fourth quarter, I'm a big NBA guy, so when you're in the fourth quarter and you've got to take that final shot, and this is for all the [marbles 00:08:08], you flop the ball because you didn't have the capacity to handle it because you were burnt out this whole time.

“Tactics are always going to change. The ‘how’ is always going to change, but where I am now and where I want to be, doesn't.” – Troy Sandidge · [08:25]

Troy Sandidge:

And so it's just conserving your energy. And I think it really fortifies on your mental capacity. And then from there, the tactics and everything else come in, because tactics are always going to change. The how is always going to change, just like your GPS. Traffic, slow, everything is going to change, but where I am now and where I want to be, does it.

Troy Sandidge:

So as long as you have a strategy that keeps you going, “Oh, this is going down, I'm pivoting, I'm switching, I'm pivoting, I'm switching.” And that's how I wish to work in the grand scheme of things.

The 20-Mile March in Sales · [09:00]

Will Barron:

Are you familiar with this idea of The 20 Mile March from Jim Collins' books?

Troy Sandidge:

I'm not sure. Please familiarise myself.

Will Barron:

I talk about this all the time. Some of the regular audience will know this. “Will, why are you banging on about this dumb book again?” But he talks about this idea of The 20 Mile March of the companies who go from good to great. They go to work every day and they march 20 miles.

Will Barron:

If the weather is shitty, they walk 20 miles. If the weather is great and they could do 60 miles, they do 20 miles. And they plod on for years and years upon decades, upon decades, constantly ploughing forward.

Will Barron:

Companies who have spits and spats of success, who have peaks and troughs of success will go, “Oh, today's great. The weather's fantastic. The wind's behind us. We'll do 120 miles,” and they crash the next three or four days.

Will Barron:

And tell me if you agree with this, but I feel like sales is similar of, you need to know your numbers, know what you need to achieve each day to reach your end goal, your target, hit your numbers, and then maybe do a couple more calls if you've got the energy. But maybe not, maybe just get with The 20 Mile March and be ready to do the same thing tomorrow, because tomorrow you might not feel like it, but tomorrow might be the opportunity.

Will Barron:

Tomorrow there might be the opportunity to close the biggest deal that you've ever done. Unless you show up, it can't happen. Can it?

“I think success is boring. Sure, there's moments of sexiness in there, but if you want really clear success, it's boring because you're doing the fundamentals all the time.” – Troy Sandidge · [10:08]

Troy Sandidge:

I agree with that, 100%. I think success is boring. Sure, there's moments of sexiness in there, but if you want really clear success, it's boring because you're doing the fundamentals all the time.

Troy Sandidge:

That's it. I'd rather be more consistent and know that I can always hit, like you said, that 20 miles than like, I'm always chasing 60 and I stop at five. And the numbers are just all crazy. I'd rather have consistency over everything and have that more sustainable process and formulas to make it work.

Will Barron:

So in your book, it seems like there are different categories of strategy and different elements that make up strategies. And you mentioned one there, that needs to be sustainable. You also talk about it being simple and scalable. Now, they both fit with what we teach in our training programme or Selling Made Simple Academy.

Will Barron:

And our motto or our slogan is, making selling simple, because I've found, and I'm sure this resonates with you yourself, because we seem to have a similar philosophy of a lot of this Troy, that complexity just kills stuff.

Troy Explains Why Simple Sales Strategies Always Yield the Best Results · [11:07]

Will Barron:

Doesn't matter how good your process is, if it's complex and there's 27 steps, most people get to four and then they just go back to winging it every day. Can you tell us maybe some examples of strategies or how this gets implemented of something that was made simpler, something that can be scalable and then the sustainability of the elements of it as well?

Troy Sandidge:

Oh, we're a million percent in the line. I mean, I would say, most businesses die by the way of the three Cs; complexity, confusions and complications. No one can replicate the success because they don't even know what's going on.

Troy Sandidge:

The process and steps are too complicated, so people who are onboarded, can't fulfil everything and then your audience doesn't know what's going on, so they are too reluctant to trust you. Therefore, they don't want to convert, therefore, they're not exchanging and giving you money for whatever the product or service or solution that you offer.

Troy Sandidge:

And then, ooh, things fall down. So I really think that we do got to make things simple. Like I said, the success, simplicity is a straight line and the more efficient you are, sometimes we've got to understand that efficiency doesn't mean you're taking on more than you can chew and you're still winning.

“We've got to understand that efficiency doesn't mean you're taking on more than you can chew and still be winning. Sometimes efficiency is just one task for the day and being the best at that task, and then repeat, repeat, repeat.” – Troy Sandidge · [12:16]

Troy Sandidge:

Sometimes efficiency is just one task for the day and being the best at that task, and then repeat and then repeat. Like I said, major success is boring. I don't want to get a high in the process. I want to get a high in that we're getting those numbers, we're winning, we're winning, we're winning.

Troy Sandidge:

And it's really understanding that. Now again, strategy for a lot of people, seems boring. Strategy seems like, “I don't want to do that work.” You know how you get an instruction manual for something and you're like, “I'm too macho to read the instructions.”

Will Barron:

Of course.

Troy Sandidge:

“I'm just going to figure it out and wing it.”

Will Barron:

Because we're blokes, we're not going to read it.

Troy Sandidge:

And you've spent all this extra time trying to figure something out and then you have too much pride to go back to the instruction manuals, and it tells you right there where it is.

Will Barron:

There's always one screw left at the end of whatever you're trying to build anyway. And you're like, “Oh, well, this is probably going to last about 15 minutes before it falls apart.”

Troy Sandidge:

So I think in the same way, like I said, strategy is part of your GPS system and you need it. I also want to say it like this, and I know you align with this too, we have to repeat ourselves. We have to get it in our minds, what we're seeing, what we're doing, what's working, what's not working, the fundamentals, all those different things.

Troy Sandidge:

So it may seem, listeners, that we're repeating ourselves, but we're trying to really take the time to emphasise what you need to implement within yourself and your process, and your business and your strategy, and your profession in order to get the results that you seek.

Troy Sandidge:

It's funny, and I know you understand this too, there's been so many times I'll have a client call or a customer or a brand come to me and they just want the magic peel, “Just give me the sauce.”

Troy Sandidge:

And all I'm doing the whole time is asking them a series of questions. “Troy, all you did was ask me all these questions.” Well, unless I know all the details and the information, we can't build you a framework. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what you see. I don't know what your customers see. We need as many vantage points as we can to then create the map, create the GPS, to get us to where we want to be.

Troy Sandidge:

And it's amazing how we still in the 21st century in 2022, choose to just run straight through the fire without understanding the full complexity of what's going on first in the situation, evaluating the situation, and then taking action.

Troy Sandidge:

That small pause could be the difference between getting zero and five million, 10 million, a 100 million additional dollars in this calendar year or even this quarter, however big or small your company is. Apply the ratio to you.

Troy Sandidge:

Do you mean to tell me you're going to risk not taking the additional extra 30 minutes or hour or a day or a week to process things first and then take action, just because you've got the eagerness to just want to go?

Troy Sandidge:

You don't always have to rush into things. If they're going to buy, they're going to buy because you've done the work and you know what their pain points are, and you're going to provide the solutions to those pain points to earn their trust, to get the bag. It's that simple. So we ain't in the rushing game. Let's come with our best foot forward so we can win.

Will Barron:

Let's see if we can get practical here. I'm not trying to put you on the spot here as a B2B sales expert and tell us the tips and tricks and hacks and steps here. But I think we can lead into your expertise here, Troy.

Is it Possible to Develop Our Own Strategy or Do We Need to Bring In Third Party Expertise? · [15:48]

Will Barron:

Where would we start if we were listening to this podcast right now? Me and you, we're sat in the car, we're listening the podcast and we're like, “Oh, that Troy and Will, I think they might be onto something. That Will bloke talks a lot of crap usually, but this one, this is something I want to pay attention to.”

Will Barron:

What would be the starting point to… Or let me ask, we'll go to the starting point, developing your own strategy in a second. Is it possible to develop your own strategy or do you need to bring in third-party expertise and people looking from the outside into a business scenario to be able to help build strategy? Is it possible to do it on your own, or do you need someone to help with this?

Troy Sandidge:

I personally feel in my time in 10 years of things, I think you can build it on your own first. I think you need to have an alignment of what works for you. And then as things progress, you can apply the technology systems, you can apply all the different subsets of things that align with your sales team, with your marketing team and collaboration, communication, your business organisation, and then outreach, outbound, all that stuff comes after the fact.

Troy Sandidge:

But if you don't have the core nucleus of how you want to attack sales, how you want to acquire sales and have that ironed out, bringing in a third-party person is just going to burn more time, take longer to evaluate, which is causing you money, and you're not making a profit from certain things. So I think you can start out by building it yourself.

Troy Sandidge:

And you're like, “Well, Troy, what do you mean? Where do I go from?” And I know I talk in a lot of concepts because I feel most people lack the depth of concepts. They always want to do it in tactics, they're galore. Software's galore, technology is galore. Best practises by top voices is galore.

Troy Sandidge:

But the fundamentals are lacking. The core concepts are lacking, so that's where my comfortability speaks into for many people who are listening. So I always apply first, let's apply the DART-marking methodology, where you sit on the DART and find the stuff out and then simply you be direct, be authentic, be resourceful and tactical.

Troy Sandidge:

What positions you to be your most direct self? Is that email? Is that live video? Is it that, now honestly in-person is stolen right now, but you can still emulate that same connectivity if you know how to expound your language on LinkedIn and outbound reach and different things like that.

Troy Sandidge:

How are you your most authentic self? What makes you your most authentic self? Is that email, is that blogs, is that video? And then how are you being resourceful? I think the sales people are the most resourceful people that I know because they're going to find a way to get the bag.

Troy Sandidge:

They're going to find a way to get those numbers. But in many cases, that resourcefulness expands on maintaining the ability of getting successful and then being tactical of which things you're going to apply to maintain that success.

Troy Sandidge:

And so yes, the core thing of that DART; direct, authentic, resourceful and tactical is a concept, but through that concept, you can build a strategy built on your own personal persona of how well you do outbound, what your digital platforms are, choice, what's your outbound reach of choice?

Troy Sandidge:

And now that you've lined that out, now I can get a third-party person to build me a funnel or help me figure out how to hustle my CRM or how to use this, or how to use that in tangent with my strengths, knowing my weaknesses, my opportunities and my threats.

Troy Sandidge:

It sounds silly, this is sales one-on-one, this is marketing one-on-one, but I always lean on the fundamentals first and then expound out going at it, because ain't no gimmick going to help you if you don't know the fundamentals.

The First Step to Using Strategy to Win More Sales · [19:10]

Will Barron:

Do we, and I don't want to contradict you here, and you might double down on your response there. Do we as sales people, and this is different perhaps if you're a founder of a startup or you're a small business owner who's also doing sales, but let's lean into this idea that there's an enterprise sales person listening to this.

Will Barron:

Is step one, “I'm really good at writing copy. I've got lots of influence over email, so I should do email?” Or should we look at the marketplace and go, “Well, my buyers would prefer to be communicated with on this platform in this way, even though I suck at doing in-person meetings,” or whatever it is.

Will Barron:

The answer is obviously it depends, but should we, if we need a starting point to build a process here, should it be on what the market wants or should we really just lean into our strengths?

Troy Sandidge:

I think it leans into what the market does want, but you have to learn how to convert your strength to match that marketplace. I know it feels like I contradicted myself, so let me clean that up a little bit.

Troy Sandidge:

So the marketplace is going to point blank tell you, “This is what we want. For us to give you the bag, you've got to come this way. This is what we are used to seeing in this moment, in this season,” apply whatever dates and ranges and timelines that you want.

Troy Sandidge:

So me as a sales person, me as the company looking at this, well, our strength is in writing. We are not live-video people. None of us are. We panic, we freak out. Well, if we know that point A is, we're really good at writing. And to get to the bag, point B is, we've got to do live video, how do we take what we do best which is writing, and convert that into a situation so we can get to point B, a live video, being that medium to get to the bag?

Troy Sandidge:

And to me, it's just figuring out how do I connect the two? So if you are someone who wants to go live, there's a thing called social audio, baby. It gives you the same implications, you ain't got to worry about your makeup and you ain't got to worry about none of this other stuff.

Troy Sandidge:

And coming in having conversations in bulk, shoot, you can put everybody that you had on your timeline for the week, and in one conversation start asking as many questions you want, your position as thought leader, everyone's like, “Okay, yeah. I would've asked that too.”

Troy Sandidge:

And maybe by that, you're getting more conversions and doing less work, so now you're just scheduling bulk of social audio conversations in private settings or public settings and retooling that as marketing of sales funnels to get more conversations through the door.

Troy Sandidge:

Well, and the way that you did that, you're reading off things that you wrote. You're asking questions you already had pre-written. Nobody knows, because your delivery is just reading the very concise thing and leaning in the strength that you're always trying to do.

Troy Sandidge:

So obviously that's one example. You can retool that for whoever it makes sense, but I definitely think the marketplace tells you the how, that's why I said tactics are always changing. But if you have your concepts down to the fundamentals, our strength is writing, we're trying to get to live video, we just got to build a bridge to get there.

Troy Sandidge:

That's easier for me to work at, or bring a third-party person to help me after the fact because I know that information than to go at it blind, leading on my best strength and not getting anywhere.

Will Barron:

Dude, that is so smart, and you've doubled down on it towards the end of your answer there of, a lot of sales people will go, “Okay, I'll go on Reddit, I'll go on LinkedIn. I see that videos on LinkedIn messages are hot right this second and so I'm going to spend the next three weeks spamming them to the whole of my audience and pissing everyone off.”

Will Barron:

And then they move on to the next thing. And then the next thing they're going from hack to tactic, to tip, to trick. From a lot of the time, people who don't actually sell anything, they sold like 20 years ago, wrote to bucking out, they speak on stage and BS about it, right?

Will Barron:

People should hold me accountable as well. So people see my live sales calls, we post it on YouTube, they're all over the place. So you should take advice and tips and tricks and hacks and tactics. You should think about the source that some of these are coming from because a lot of them are not statistically significant to the data that people are throwing out there that you should do X and Y.

Will Barron:

But what you said was, when you lean into your strengths, it discourages you from jumping around because you're going to have an expertise in one, two, three, especially that lead generation.

Will Barron:

People are either going to be really good at writing copy, they're going to be really charismatic and able to do live video and be able to be quick-witted like you are yourself, Troy. You're very quick-witted and intelligent, so I can throw questions at you and you can bounce back and look great on video.

Will Barron:

Some people might just be great at outbound sales calls because they don't give a shit, and they're happy to be rejected all day, every day until they get the right person at the right place, at the right time, and then they can strike up a conversation.

Why Leaning Into Your Strengths is All You Need to Succeed in Sales · [23:43]

Will Barron:

When we lean into our strengths, which is what you're saying here, it almost eliminates 50 other different options and simplifies the whole process, right?

Troy Sandidge:

I agree. And you hear the thing all the time, quality over quantity. I know that's like, “Oh, I'm triggered, what's going on?” It's the greatest debate ever. And I still think quality matters, but here's how I spin it. And I'm sure it has already been talked about on the show, is that how the content, how your process, how the pitch can be easily converted to fit whatever medium my client, my target audience, my ideal customer is.

Troy Sandidge:

And if that same context, that same piece of content, that same strategy can fit like water in whatever mould it's in, if it absorbs and fits the cup, it fits the shape, no matter what it is, it fits to its shape, that's higher quality to me because now I can consistently get more volume out of it, that a higher chance of getting the conversions that I want.

Troy Sandidge:

And yeah, I know marketers, we get a bad rep sometimes and sales people do and there's a whole dance of right and left arm, cousins, brothers, sisters, it's a whole mess between us. I don't know why we're still debating here because we need both to get the bag.

Troy Sandidge:

We need both to work in harmony, to make it work. One is not better than the other. If you're on one side, you may disagree with me, but I do think there's some harmony there. And part of that is understanding the dynamic of how you approach your process and your content. Quality can be converted to fit different things.

“If you can take one piece of content and distribute it a hundred different ways, that's a very valuable piece of content.” – Troy Sandidge · [25:20]

Troy Sandidge:

I think Ross Simmons says it all the time that it matters how much distribution one piece of content can do, one process can do. If you can take one piece of content and distribute a hundred different ways, that's a very valuable piece of content.

Troy Sandidge:

And even though it may take an additional hour or additional week to make, that's saving you time to get more numbers to have more conversations. And so that's just how I see it sometimes in that dynamic when it comes to strategy as well, implementation, is finding that balance.

Troy Sandidge:

Yes, we want the highest amount of volume, but if we're still hitting the same numbers and missing all the time, we've got to reel it back in. I'd rather have a slight shorter volume in the interim and get my numbers up a little bit more, and then go.

Troy Sandidge:

But obviously on the other side, I'm not trying to double down and flip myself out of my conversation. You do got to test, you do got to understand the marketplace, but you still got to go to your assurance and figure that out accordingly. How do I connect the two?

Will Barron:

Yeah. I'll go on the record, and this idea from, I had Greg Mckeown offer of Effortless on the podcast. He tried to explain this to me in real time. I just didn't understand it. It was a terrible interview. He was looking at me like I was a right idiot.

Will Barron:

I was like, “I read the book. I'm really trying to understand what you're saying here, Greg,” but it wasn't sinking in. But we talked afterwards and he summed it up with just a few words and he said, “Do less, but better.”

Will Barron:

And I feel like sales is moving towards that because now 10 years ago, there wasn't a tool to automate, allow a sales person to hit a 1,000 people a week with calls, emails, and just generic spam. Marketers have been able to do it for a while who have marketing technology, but sales people haven't had access to do it.

Will Barron:

Five years ago, sales people start getting access to these tools, they just ruin it for themselves, myself included. Just spam the marketplace. And it works at first, and then obviously with the noise, everyone just starts ignoring it. You can see a spammy sales email that hasn't been customised.

Efficiency 101: Do Less But Better · [27:20]

Will Barron:

The person's name is in a slightly different font. And then halfway down the email, there's a weird line break where you've tried to insert things. You can see all this stuff from a mile away. But if you try and do less, but better, and tell me if I'm wrong here, Troy, but I think this is what you're saying of rather than scale, get the percentages, get the numbers, get the effectiveness up before you try and scale it.

Will Barron:

That in a noisy market has got to be more effective from a time, energy and cost perspective as we move forward from 2022 into the post COVID world where as you said, at the top of the show, we're not really able to knock on doors anymore. And so booking those Zoom calls via intelligent outreach is going to be way more effective than trying to book Zoom calls by just begging and spamming people.

Troy Sandidge:

Oh, I agree. And I'll echo this too. I've been saying this recently, sales, marketing, different teams in present by the industry, you need to embrace community more. Community's going to give you access to more referrals, they're going to open, they're going to make those leads more warm because it's not coming directly from you.

Troy Sandidge:

It's coming to you in tangent with somebody else. And I think what we're seeing is that even though you may be a sales person, you can have your own community of people. We're not talking about a rolodex of just people who may buy from you. I'm talking about people who can evangelise and be an advocate for you.

Troy Sandidge:

I always have to say this in a conversation, relationship status of BAY. You've got buyers, you've got advocates, and you've got elevators. The elevators are those that just promote you, connect with you on social or other means. They're just there. They're cheerleaders, they're fans, all those things.

Troy Sandidge:

Those advocates, they may not want to buy from you yet, but they got access and power to open doors and says, “Jess, Hey, this person, I didn't need them right now, but you may need them blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” then obviously the buyers.

Troy Sandidge:

And I think we're now in a situation where we're less focused on just buyers. I have your attention for 10 minutes. I'm going to know in probably the first two and a half minutes, maybe a gut check too, that you're probably a buyer, not a buyer for me.

Troy Sandidge:

If I know that I'm switching right into an advocate conversation, “Can you become an advocate for me?” And if that's all else fails, everyone could be an elevator. That's just as simple as, “Subscribe to my email newsletter. Join this, join that, be a part of my thing.”

Troy Sandidge:

So I think applying the relationship status of BAY; buyers, advocates, and elevators is a simple way to start harvesting and growing your community, which you can do that in tangent with every sales call that you do, and the hope is that you're winning by volume of it, getting more people to be advocates, to get more money down the road for you too.

Will Barron:

So tell me if right here, it's almost like we're trying to build a snowball effect of, we start just if we're cold-calling, cold-emailing, whatever it is. But then every three or four of those people go out and email us, we create content, we connect with them on LinkedIn. Then they're going to introduce us to someone and then this rapidly compounds. Is that what we're aiming for?

Troy Sandidge:

A 100%.

How to Build and Get the Most Out of Your Community · [30:13]

Will Barron:

That's one thing to say and I appreciate it. How does a sales person, and you alluded to it there of, you know on a call whether someone has the budget, authority, time, need, all this kind of stuff. So we can pivot our calls perhaps and invite people to issue content on a call.

Will Barron:

That'd be one way of doing it. Are there any other ways, or is there any way we can systematise that process? The reason I ask Troy is, everyone knows it's obvious that we should be doing that, but then doing it day in, day out when we've got another call in another hour, and then the boss is looking over our shoulder, because we've not done as many spammy emails as he wants us to do this month.

Will Barron:

How do we make something like a referral process like that happen? How do we systemize it? How would you advise someone to implement it, so it happens organically rather than being something that you've got to remember and you're not sticking post-it notes on your monitor to ask for all this stuff to make sure it happens?

Troy Sandidge:

I can't say who the company is, but I was tasked to help a marketing task force to help them simplify this kind of strategy for them. And so the mindset was, we were coming into conversations with these three goals.

Troy Sandidge:

If they're going to be a buyer, they're going to check-mark also being an advocate and elevator, almost guaranteed. If they're not a buyer, there's a chance they could be an advocate and an elevator guaranteed. If they're not going to be an advocate, they will always be an elevator.

Troy Sandidge:

And so the conversation is less about yes, you've got to see if they're a good fit for the product or service, whether you're SAS, tech, whatever the industry may be, for the product or offering, of course, because you want the buyer. But if they're not a buyer, we'll jump right into this next conversation.

Troy Sandidge:

And so we've integrated in our CRM system, how that looks like, where it makes sense for it to happen. And then we just say, “Hey, you just get practising .” A lot of it's just reps.

Troy Sandidge:

You're just retooling to, instead of spending those last two minutes of a conversation, really trying to figure out why they said no, instead of just letting it be, because clearly we've spent the first eight minutes and it ain't going nowhere and saying, “Can I now instead shift ever so slightly, and maybe I'll win you later?”

Troy Sandidge:

Instead of just, “Hey, I'm going to email you and put you in our funnel,” and it's just very cold and whatever, let's put them in a different category to see if we can really evangelise them and help get them to help us close more deals and more sales.

Troy Sandidge:

And so it does seem very simple. There is a lot of logic to it. How do I implement it in my own CRM system? And I can't tell you all the specific of the technology and stuff involved, but it can be done. And then it has been done. And truth be told, maybe your competitors are doing it too.

“At the end of the day, your community is just going to help you get more by doing less, but being more efficient at the same time.” – Troy Sandidge · [32:54]

Troy Sandidge:

So it's just something to think about because at the core, at the end of the day, community is just going to help you get more, doing less, but being more efficient at the same.

Will Barron:

I'm trying not to plug the training product, but a lot of what you're saying is our methodologies. The audience knows it exists. They don't need an advertisement for it. But to get in the training programme, because this is a mentorship with myself and another two lads involved in it as well.

Will Barron:

We don't just let sign up. You have to do a call with myself or one of the team. Now after the call, there's a bunch of different options. And that puts people on a nurturing email series after the fact. So people sign up for the call, straight in the product, everyone's rocking and rolling, and they're happy.

Will Barron:

Sometimes people go, “Okay, that's great, but my boss in the organisation, I'm going to see if I can get them to pay for it rather than me pay for it.”

Will Barron:

So we click a button in HubSpot CRM, they get a nurturing email list with a one-pager that they can forward to their boss, a PDF of what's in the training programme and the benefits of it for the organisation, as opposed to the individual, and then gets a series of emails just to keep on top of them and keep top of mind after the fact.

Will Barron:

If they just don't have the cash and it's not a good fit, whatever it is, there's a different series of emails because six months from now, they might be a good fit. And at the end of all of these sequences, it's, “Hey, is there anyone else that you think would be a good fit for the product?”

Will Barron:

And when people sign up for the training product as well, we have a referral scheme within the product so people can refer their colleagues and we get so much attention and traffic from just that one click at the end of a phone call to a series of emails that I didn't even write.

Will Barron:

We paid a copywriter to help out with some of it. I just give them a Microsoft word document with a bunch of talking points, and they did the work for us. We get so much revenue and attention and traffic from one click of systematising this.

Will Barron:

For us little Salesman org is a tiny play lab company, there's no revenue really, right? And so for large organisations, even small businesses and small business owners who are doing five to 10 million in revenue a year, plus, they should be doing this, shouldn't they? If we could work it out, surely they should be doing it as well.

Troy Explains Why Sometimes Systematizing a Process is All You Need to Get the Most Out of the Marketplace · [34:58]

Troy Sandidge:

A 100%. I think we shouldn't just react when changes shift in the marketplace. We should be proactive and just do what we can to maintain our power, our stability, and our anchor in the marketplace and just saying, “No, we're good. I don't have to change. It's working right now.”

Troy Sandidge:

Yeah, but what if it doesn't work tomorrow? What if you start losing ground in the next month? What if quarter one is great, but quarter three is like, “Mm, it ain't what it needs to be?”

Troy Sandidge:

And so we just always should have at least a good amount of our time being aware of understanding the marketplace and how do we make sure that we're maintaining that level within the marketplace. And I agree with that a 100%.

Will Barron:

Sure. And I guess a side note, I like the psychology of this. I've never thought about this before with our own process, but it makes sense of when I jump on a call or one of the team jumps on a call to, and it's a sales call, if people want to get signed up, they have to go through us and we qualify them, make sure they're a good fit and make sure that we can help them before we take anyone's cash.

Will Barron:

But it's a sales call. We'll influence people to get signed up if they're a good fit and we want to work with them. This is how I've just described, and you went through it previous Troy, if people could implement that, it means that it's very difficult to get rejected in that scenario. It's very difficult to have a bad sales call.

Will Barron:

If the worst case scenario, someone isn't qualified, they're not a good fit, but you're still going to send them content or help them out and ask the questions and then build that relationship over time.

Will Barron:

I bet if people thought about their sales calls that way, and they can think about it that way with just a tiny bit of automation or just a few notes in your calendar to follow up in a certain way, rather than just ghost the prospect, because they've not got the budget right now in this quarter to get a deal done, it re-frames the whole sales conversation into a place and a position where sales people are going to be more excited to do them.

Why You Need to Get Past the Pass or Fail Mindset in Sales · [36:45]

Will Barron:

Because you're not just going to get the phone slammed down on your face and your prospects are going to be more at the end of the call, excited about potentially working with you in the future, because you've not just got your pitch in a traditional sales scenario and just trying to ram it down there and then again, [inaudible 00:37:00] pivot, not a good fit. Do you feel there's something to that, the kind of psychology of some of this?

Troy Sandidge:

Oh, I agree. I mean, let's take it like this. You go in any course whatsoever, sure, and this may be a slightly different approach, but I speak in analogies all the time to help people who may not understand that the core concepts of things is pass or fail.

Troy Sandidge:

A lot of times we'll come into a sales call, we've got to get the bag, we've got to get the yes, we've got to get the confirmation or we don't, and this was a waste of my time. Versus, every time that I spend with someone, I win something. I either win the contract.

Troy Sandidge:

I win to go to the next round in the conversation or I win a new advocate who's going to open the door for places I can't get in, or my team couldn't get in before just off their recommendation because I switched the conversation and identified, this is no longer a buyer, where do I shift on next into the conversation?

Troy Sandidge:

And if by the end, maybe they appreciate the way that I approach it, now they're back in the conversation as a buyer. Instead of going pass or fail, I just want to go at grade level. Obviously I want to get the A, but C is passing too.

Troy Sandidge:

And if I'm getting a D, at least I'm aware of, here's some things I need to modify. Maybe it's anomaly, maybe it's the specific industry, maybe it's the certain title or certain person I was talking to, but why? Versus just pass or fail, I get the bag or I don't, I get the seller or I don't, that takes the pressure off of psychologically too.

Troy Sandidge:

Because like you said, we're coming into the conversation now. We don't lose. And now I don't know, what situation being a sales person where you don't feel like you don't take an out? You feel like you're always taking an out, but if I can come into a situation where okay, that I didn't get the sale, but it's not like I can't get a sale through this conversation, through this connection. That's a different mindset.

Troy Sandidge:

And I think that's very beneficial when we're dealing with building community instead of just going at it gun to hole, like a sharp shooter here, trying to win all by yourself. Let me evangelise and get you to join my team.

Troy Sandidge:

If I can have 10 calls that they told me no, that they're not a direct buyer, but they, over the span of the year, can each person give me 10 new buyers, I think that's a win too. It's a longer game. It's not an immediate gratification, but in a long grand scheme of things, we go back to the whole calendar year, the numbers look really good.

Will Barron:

Yeah. And some of this is a sales leadership issue of quarterly targets and the goals resetting and goal post changing. But some of that will change. And we see that in the marketplace change over time as a lot more products move to subscriptions.

Will Barron:

So just getting those numbers done, that's not as important as a good customer success and keeping people on those subscriptions and retaining them for longer periods of time. So we're slowly, slowly dragging sales out of the dark ages and following in your marketing footsteps, Troy.

Parting Thoughts · [39:52]

Will Barron:

With that mate, we've covered a lot of ground here. I appreciate you, appreciate you coming on the show. Tell us where we can find out more about you, tell us about the podcast and where we can find that, and then the book as well.

Troy Sandidge:

Just like Will, I'm also on the HubSpot Podcast Network. iDigress all in one word, I know I got all weird with the spelling. iDigress.fm. I talk on concepts, I talk about marketing strategy growth, a little bit of sales, but I come from the perspective of, I want bring access to people who are in SMBs or are emerging brands who don't have the time or the team to know all the acronyms, to know the depth of marketing and growth in sales and business.

Troy Sandidge:

And so I try to make things as simple as possible in that range. So if this lands in some way, shape or form, when you want to activate your mindset, you want to amplify your marketing and you want to achieve more profitability and very core simple concepts, my podcast would be really good for you.

Troy Sandidge:

It's also why I wrote the book, Strategize Up as well, to help people really make it simple, make it practical, and make it sustainable in their business growth.

Will Barron:

Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to all of that in the show of this episode over at salesman.org and with that, Troy, I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.

Troy Sandidge:

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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