209: David Cancel On Conversational Marketing And Sales

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James, Say What Sales Buckley, and this is a very special episode of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, Jon Barrows. Big thanks to our partners, Sales Loft, Gong, Proposify, Vidyard, and Rise. You guys rock our world. Today, we welcome David Cancel, CEO and founder of Drift, and David has spent a lifetime as an avid learner and found a way to understand not just sales, but human decision-making and why things work. Jon and David are going to go deep into the ebbs and flows of being in sales today, the short-term versus the long-term, and the cyclical world that we all live, buy, and sell in. Join us today at ondemand.jbarrows.com to gain access to world-class sales training.

Also, be sure and check out Morgan J. Ingram's One Up Formula, a podcast that's aimed at people who are looking to level up their life both personally and professionally. Find it now at morganjingram.com. Let's pass it to David and Jon to talk about the future of our industry. Good afternoon, everybody. This is Jon Barrows. Make it happen Monday. Hopefully, you had a fantastic weekend. I am here for the last week in Aruba, so I tried to soak up as much as I could, and I obviously burnt myself because I got two shades, red and white. But needless to say, I am extremely excited. I know I always say I'm excited for my podcast guests, but this one's going to take the cake here because I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.

Dave Cancel, how are you, my friend? CEO over at Drift. I'm doing well, man. Thanks for having me. I'm sorry this is your last week in Aruba, but come back to the cold with the rest of us. I was in Florida, and I did a JV baldhead move. Look at that. I got burned. See, that's what, man, don't do it. Like every year, I do it. Like every time I go on a vacation, I start with like 100 suntan lotion because I'm just pale pasty white, right? And then I move down to 70, then 50, then 30, and then 15. And then right before, like one day, I'm like, you know what? I'm not, I'm just not tan enough, right? So I sit outside for like an hour without anything on and just burst into flames. And then it all peels off and I go back to being white again.

So that's awesome. So, uh, DC, um, yeah, I mean, I don't even want to go into your background because people don't know you at this point. Like go Google it, right? Like you got way too much stuff out there right now. I want to dive in because I've been really curious, um, to have you on here to talk about the future and what's happening. And, um, I wanted to start with, um, the, you had made a comment one time about the matrix. First of all, I'm kind of curious. You, you went into copyright, right? Like you went old school copyright to figure out how, like you, you became like a student of that. First of all, talk to me about that. Why? And then I'm going to transition that to what I'm, why I'm asking that question.

So like when we started drift, one of the things that I did, you know, and it's funny now I say it kind of, it worked because now people consider me a marketer and they said like, Oh, you're a marketer. I'm like, I'm, I was an engineer. I was going to say that you're an engineer, a product guy, right? Yeah. Product guy. I'm not a marketer, but I taught, you know, I wanted to teach myself about marketing and starting drift because I thought we were in a different phase in this transition, right? Especially in SAS and the stuff that we do. And, um, and so I wanted to study it. So I went back to the basics and said, like, first I need to understand, like, how do people make decisions? So I studied human decision-making that led me to biases that led me to, all right.

So like, how did people used to back in the day before digital, anything, when you were building a relationship or when you're trying to attract the customer, how did they do that? And I started to study old, like 1940s, fifties, like copywriting, like madman era kind of stuff. Like, how did they do it? Especially older stuff than that, because it fascinated me. Like imagine trying to sell someone in the back of a magazine and back, back of a book and then in a little blurb like this, and then someone mailing you a check for a product they've never seen before from a person they'd never known. And like, and they, and they would do that. And so like, what were the words that they were using? What were the techniques?

And that led to then some of the stuff that we all know, like, you know, the old school sales letters that led to all that stuff. But it all came from first understanding how do people make decisions? Why do they make it? What are the biases that influence those decisions? Good and bad. And then how do you, uh, how do you do it from an execution standpoint from copywriting? And when you said, when you dove into that, you all of a sudden, once you learned it, it was like the matrix, you all of a sudden understood, right? How it talked to me a little bit about that, like that, that understanding of like when it like, when the light bulb caught up, what are some of those things that you now understand that you didn't understand before?

Sure. So like when I started to study it and especially the human decision-making and the biases and the things that trigger us, right? Some people call them social triggers and whatever. Then it was a matrix moment for me because all of a sudden I could look at things, whether it was an advertisement, a product page or something like that, and be like, when they really worked, I could say, these are all the reasons it worked. Look, it's right there. And what would be funny about it is sometimes the person executing it, whether it was the sales person or the marketer or someone didn't actually know why it worked, right? Like they had technique, they had gut, they had something, they had like charisma.

It was somewhere in there, but there were real reasons why this thing worked. And because they didn't know why it worked, they would be hit and miss when they did other things, like if they could do it again. And I always use, I use this internally at Drift, kind of use the product, Amazon product page as the way to teach this because everyone in the world has seen that page. Everyone watching this at least has seen that page and executed on that page. And I would say like, if you look at this page, like if you were a designer, if I gave this to the designer, say, redesign this page, they would take away every reason where the page works because they would say, this page is ugly. It's got a million different things.

It's distracting. It's whatever. But when you look at it, you see that there are key elements in there that trigger different kinds of people. Like I may be a person that makes decisions from a social standpoint, which is not true, but I could be someone who makes it from like an analytical standpoint. I can make it because of, you know, emotional, right? Like all these kinds of things are triggered on this page, not once, not twice, but multiple times. And it creates this thing that, uh, Charlie Munger, who I listened to, I read a lot of his stuff was the business partner of Warren Buffett says, when you have multiple cognitive biases working, he calls it the Lollapalooza effect. There's so many things working that cause you to act in a certain way.

So I'm fascinated because you're a lifelong learner, right? Oh yeah. I mean, your, your podcast, I mean, your podcast is seeking wisdom. Did I hear right? This is a six star certified podcast, my industry, the universe is only six star podcast. Shit. How do you, how do you get to that point, man? Is it like, I will get into existence. I was going to say, I am impressed, um, cause I was listening to a few episodes, but you know, one of the things about your lifelong learning, about your analytics and, and you make decisions differently, right? Um, I want to start way out and this'll be why I asked this question, the matrix. I love it. Where are you on Elon Musk's, uh, theory that we live in the matrix?

I'm, and I'm, I'm actually, I'm, I'm half joking, but I'm not. Like, where are you on that train? Because I want to back into where it's going to affect us, but where are you on that? It's plausible. That's a plausible theory, right? Uh, you know, we see it all the time, whether we call it coincidence and things that happen that don't make any sense. You know, we explain the way some things happen from a technology standpoint that we see, whether it's like, Oh, I was just talking about this. And now all I see is, you know, shoes or, you know, like, uh, bald head cream or something like that, you know? Like, uh, but in reality, it's not how technology works, but like, but, but how that technology works, I should say, or things that happen in our normal lives that you can't explain.

And I think the, the more time, more experience that you have, you see how small things really are and how interconnected everything is. Right. And so like, the more you see that, the more you're like, wait, this doesn't make, this doesn't make sense. This could be, you know, in his words, a simulation, right? We might be part of a simulation and who knows what, who knows if that's true or not. I don't know. Yeah, I don't either, but I've been thinking more and more about it just because, you know, as you start to think about like virtual reality and all this artificial intelligence and, you know, you put these pieces together and you're like, you know what, like, I mean, there, there is a real possibility that we're living in a simulation.

I mean, and whether this virus, right. Somebody just dropped a virus and it said, Hey, let's see what happens here. Totally. And it's actually connected to where you started with asking me about, you know, how I got into copywriting and stuff like that. The more that you got into, you go into like a human decision-making and then cognitive biases and incentives and all this kind of stuff, the more that you see like, whoa, are we just all players in some kind of game, which, you know, goes into this because like, there is a clear way that this stuff is working. And, uh, and most of us are on, you know, don't know, or even if we do know we, it's hard to control ourselves, uh, when, when you're presented with certain, you know, biases that trigger you.

Yeah. I mean, you, you, we think we have free will, right. But one of the, like, I saw this one study one time that I thought was fascinating. They took three people from a marketing standpoint, they took three people and they drove them around New York city, right. Just drove them around New York city. And then they came back and they asked them to like do a commercial for this dogs, you know, funeral parlor, right. That type of thing. And literally they all came up with something extremely similar, even though they were all three different people. And when they showed it, they actually then brought out a picture of what they all thought that they like. So the, the, the test group said, Hey, here's what we think you were going to draw.

And it was literally on point. And all these people had different, but they had seen all these different things. And it was so creepy how, how similar all of their drawings were for this promotion thing that was guaranteed that, that they already knew they were going to draw basically. It's amazing because that is what happens. It's why I talk so much about, you know, you are the average of five people that you're around. And it's like, you know, the, one of the flaws that we have and in our decision-making is that we always think that we can pick out the good stuff and ignore the bad stuff. It's not true. It's exactly in that example that you gave us, which is like, we absorb everything subconsciously, even if we think, no, I'm not listening to that.

I wasn't looking at it. You know, I was focused on this thing. You are observing and absorbing your environment. And so like, because of that, you have to be really careful who you put yourself around, what you listen to, you know, and because all of that affects your perspective. Which is, I mean, it's going to take me a little off track from where I wanted to go with this, but it's kind of where my theory of, or what I'm talking to sales reps about these days is that we actually need to become more like marketers because it's a, it's a, it's an impression game these days. It's no longer, let me direct call you and sell you this thing. It's I tweet, I retweet, I comment, I send an email, I leave a voicemail, I send you something in the mail, whatever it is.

And all these little things, all these little impressions build up to a level of familiarity. So when I am ready to make that decision, you're the one that I reach out to. Is that, do you see that evolution of where sales needs to go to? You have described 100% to the T our initial, and it still is, but it was really our initial approach to marketing and sales at Drift. 100%. And that was the playbook. And I called that playbook inception, right? I called that, that was the inception playbook, right? It was like, by the time you have an ask, by the time you reach out, you've incepted them in so many different ways, you know, and this is easy through social and through, you know, creating content the way that you do like that.

You know, you walk in as the expert, you walk in as someone that's there to help them versus you trying to sell them. And it's like, it's the, it's, you have to invert that whole model. You know, it's like, you know, I would always ask, like, and I still do like a sales rep, like, you know, like if you have a prospect, you have a company, you have a target list of people, companies that you want to go after, even if you don't know anyone and they haven't contacted you, you should share that. And we should start building a relationship with those people. And I would go out and connect with a lot of those people and start talking to them and just like with no agenda, right? So by the time that person comes in, it's already warm, you know, but what they would do naturally, which is the wrong way of doing it is like, they would get them all the way to, through the, through the qualification stage, then say, Hey, can you, can you meet someone there?

And it's like, it's too late already. They're already like too late. Like we could have incepted them for one, the whole thing up, made it easier for you. If we actually spend time before building the relationship. So how do you balance that with short-term let's talk, you know, the sales side of the house. Cause I mean, you're, you're, you got VC. I mean, I've heard you talking to like, you know, once you have money, you know, you get a ton of it. If you don't have money, nobody gives it to you. Right. So you've had, you've had that pressure of go, go, go, go, go hyper growth. Go. So how do you, from a sales standpoint, cause that's my fear. I think we are in such a short-term VC's pushing for every dollar as fast as they can get it.

We're such a short-term society right now that, that I think reps inherently know, like, you know, let's just talk basics, like brand building, my personal brand and all those other things like reps get it. Like, okay, that's great. But I still have to hit my numbers. So how do you balance that, uh, like, cause what you just described there is a long-term play, right. And it takes a while to kind of get that engine going, but once that engine goes, it's starting to really produce a lot of results. But on that upstick, especially for a younger kid, how do you balance the need for short-term results with the, with the right way of, of making impressions and planting the seeds? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, I start by, and I feel that, right.

I totally feel that, but I think, you know, every, you get what you put out, right. So like that is, you know, we're talking about, we're talking about, you know, Elon Musk and simulations and all this kind of stuff already. It's like, but part of that to me is that you, you put out, you, you know, Newton's law is like, you know, you, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So whatever you put out there, you're going to get back somehow, either good or bad. Right. So you've got to put out energy out there. And some people call this like manifesting or whatever, but like. You have to actually go out and help the more that you help, the more that you build relationships, um, the more you plan seeds for later.

Right. So like, you know, if you think about this from, um, from a farming standpoint, you, you know, it's all about seed. It's not about need. It's not like I need, you know, I didn't put any time in, I didn't plant any seeds, but like, I need, you know, I need a whole farm of blueberries. Did you plant any blueberries now? So why do you deserve blueberries? You have to start planning them. And what a farmer does is put things into rotation. They may plant some stuff. Now they may have some stuff they need to cultivate right now and actually get to market and sell, but they're always planting. They're always staggering stuff. And you have to think about this, like a layered cake and not think about it.

Like I put a hundred percent of my energy into what I need to do today, which is to close the sale. And I put zero into building relationships. You always have to be trying to like, at least balance that out a lot, a little bit. You will always be out of balance. So don't ever expect perfect balance, but you have to ebb and flow, which is a natural pattern of the universe. You have to ebb and flow. You have to like, sometimes you're going to, I'm going to put it all in on building relationships. That's going to pay off long-term today. It's only about short-term stuff. So you've got to stagger yourself. And so people want a simple formula. And the only formula I know is like you ebb and flow and you're equal, you know, yin and yang.

And so you got to like spend time actually planting as well. Those will cultivate. And as you know, because you've been in this for, for some time, just like me, you will see all of these people. Again, this industry and this thing that we do is so small. You'll see them all again, you'll see them off the opposite end of the table. You'll see them 10 years from now, five years from now, next week, you might not see them, but you know, someone that works with them. Like it is so small. I always tell people early in their career, not to make, to really think about that. Like, and how you leave an impression, you will see them. I guarantee you, you know, just wait long enough. You will see those people again.

I've, I've, I've fortunately, unfortunately, sometimes, uh, met that, right. I'm a big believer in what goes around, comes around, you know, I'd, it's just no matter what I've, I've experienced it too many times in my life to ignore it, right. Where you treat somebody like shit one day and might not happen that next day, might not happen that next year, but eventually it comes back around to you. So, um, so let's start with kind of the real guardrail for me, um, because I used to freak out about artificial intelligence and I'm like, oh my God, I'm watching them write emails better than, you know, I could write. And I'm like, holy smokes, right. Um, but I've, I've come down off of that a little bit.

Um, my question for you is when do you, this is my ultimate fear. When do bots start buying from bots? Not in our lifetimes. You don't think so? No, I don't think so. I think, uh, I think there's, you don't think there's enough artificial intelligence right now for an artificial intelligence to scrape the company's entire infrastructure, find out where the gaps are and where the things are, and then put out an RFP to the top 10 who are on G2 crowd, take those RFP and make the decision. You don't think that, you don't think the technology is there right now? I think the technology is there. I think it's been there to do that. But I think we have a thing called humans and humans have selfish incentives and humans have their own incentives.

And so like, um, and because of that, you know, organizations, as we know, especially the bigger that they get or the older that they get become more set in their ways, more harder to change. And so like, I think theoretically, it's almost like, you know, when people ask me, like in starting a company, like, aren't you afraid of like XYZ mega company doing this? And ABC company doing that. And they could just copy this and do this thing. And it's like, yeah, for sure, theoretically, they could do it. Technically they could do it, but you know what? They have a set of incentives inside. That means like they will have to kill what the golden goose that they have today in order to do that. And almost no company in the world can do that.

And the few that have had done it like Netflix, when they moved from DVD to streaming, like they're legendary, that doesn't happen. And so like, is the technology there? Yeah. But like, are companies willing to make massive changes like that? No. You know, it's going to take some big shift in the world outside of the companies to make it happen. Like one of the things that we've been talking about as an industry for 12 years, 15 years, you know, as long as I can remember is the need for companies to become fully digitally transformed, right? Digital transformation we talked about for 15 years. You know what? It never really happened in the enterprise fully until the pandemic caused it to happen in March of 2019, right?

That's 2020, sorry, 2020. That's when it happened. It took this external thing that forced all these enterprises in the world to finally be like, they have to sell 100% digitally that day, right? And for 15 years, they had been moving and moving and doing things and slowly and whatever. So I think it's going to take some big, big external event to happen for something like that to come along, at least in our lifetimes. Yeah. It's like, it's almost like now there's, you know, BC is now before COVID, right? Like sales and everything else is before COVID. I haven't heard that. Right? Like I just, it's to me, cause I really do think that, that, I mean, I've heard you say this, it's, it's accelerated things by like 10 years, right?

Things that were taking, you know, time to transition all of a sudden overnight, kids woke up and realized I can't now meet with somebody. I can't now go out to dinner with somebody. I, you know what I mean? I have to actually figure out this world and a lot of people are struggling, but a lot of people have thrived because of it. Yeah. And I, and I, you know, it's all of us, it's including me who, you know, we're a, you know, new company. And, you know, I thought to myself, there's no way in the world that I'm going to be able to hire a C-level person without meeting that person, without that, you know, person being physically present. We did that multiple times last year. I didn't think that was possible.

COVID and the pandemic forced me to do that. And now totally transform my thinking the same way every enterprise company I talked to would say, I'm never going to sell a million dollar deal, a $500,000 deal, a $20 million deal, whatever million dollar deal without getting on a plane, from meeting people, without having a buying committee with blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what? A hundred percent of those companies across the world, they're doing that today. A hundred percent overnight. They had to do it. And that was like, it is possible, but we had these misconceptions, these ceilings. I have them too. We all have them. I mean, I had the same, I was fighting the same ceiling with training, right?

Cause everybody wanted the onsite in person full day. And I kept saying like, there's a remote version here that's more efficient and that, no, no, no, we really want that. And all of a sudden overnight, thankfully we had already been structured to do it. But I mean, to me, it's a, it's a better learning environment. So instead of me dumping for a day on you, I got like two, you know, three, two hour snippets, that type of thing. And it's, it's a different type of learning. And I actually think it's a better, and for me, I'm psyched cause I'm not on an airplane. Cause you're in Aruba. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's, that buckles back to Aruba. Yeah, it does. It does. So, so you've talked a lot about like pretty much everything is a commodity at this point, right?

And, and service is really the experience is what all companies need to focus on. So what, from a sales standpoint, cause here's my theory. Okay. I think that marketing is just going to get better. Artificial intelligence is just going to get better. We're going to do more of this inbound stuff and educating people and sales reps are going to need to become more like customer success where they are the, they, they know the product and they guide the person through asking questions without having to close them, without having to stuff it down their throat. So, so do you see a shift in the sales profession right now towards more of a customer service or where do you think that, that sales actually fits into this equation?

I mean, I think that's a great question. I'm trying to figure it out myself, but I think, you know, I think all businesses appear to be moving on. Most businesses appear to be moving towards at least the ones that I deal with towards a reoccurring model of some sort, right? When you see everything from, you know, a treadmill or an exercise bike moving in there, physical things in our house, they're all moving to the subscription-based approach. And once that happens, that means that lion's share, as we all know, the lion's share of revenue happens after someone becomes the customer, not before. So that, that right there changes the whole nature of sales, right? Like the whole economics change the way, the whole way that you need to think.

And I think we're in the, like the first inning of that. We haven't figured out like, what, what does it actually mean for the future of sales? And you know, every single model that there is out there of like, do we have an account management? Do they own the thing that the salesperson do? When do we hand off? Does it, when the success come in, do they get comp, blah, blah, blah, blah. We could talk about that. No one has, no one really has a clear model for how this works yet. We just know for sure, most of the revenues over here, not just at the beginning. So I think the whole nature of sales has to shift to own that. We just made a big shift internally where our CRO just took on the success part of the equation too, and we'll have a CCO reporting to him.

And he's going to own both of them on their global field operations. We know other companies that are doing that too, and he's going to own both halves. And you know, his biggest concern in doing it, and one of the drivers is he wants to make sure that we are good and really solid at the expansion part of selling, not just the initial part, but the expansion part, which today lives outside of his domain right before this change. So I think it's all changing. And I think, but the thing that's not going to change is like, you can't have, if you have humans involved before this bot apocalypse that you mentioned happens, then you can't have a sale. You can't have a reoccurring sale until you have a conversation.

So we have to figure out how do we get to the conversation as quickly as possible? Because you cannot, you will not sell anything until you have a conversation. That's the basis. And then how do you continue to build that relationship through all these different signals by giving to this customer, this prospect over the lifetime versus all up at front, all up front and doing it over a lifetime. It's exactly almost like how you described the change in your training business, which is like before it was all up front. That doesn't actually work that well. What works well is a little bit over time so that you can be along that whole person's learning path and that whole person's kind of life cycle within that role or within that company.

So what can't be automated? Because I, so I, I, I love the, nothing happens until a conversation, but I also understand that you don't even need AI. You just need machine learning and a tree to help me make a decision. Right. I mean, again, the, the, it's a comfort factor that there's a human being there, but, and I don't think we're, you know, in the customer support in those areas, you still get a little frustrated when it kind of kicks you back something that might not be. So that pisses you off. And that's why I love how you guys came out with, we're, we're a bot. We're not a human. We're not trying to pretend like we're human. We're a fucking bot here, you know, like, so give us a little break here, which I think was a fundamental necessary shift on that.

Um, but logically I could, I could sit here and say, I need this software. Um, I, I think I need this software. Walk me through how I should be thinking about this decision. Check these boxes. Okay. Well, based on those needs, you should be looking at these three solutions. Okay. Then based on that, and then here's my gap. And then, oh, by the way, here's my tech stack. How does that fit in? And here's your answer. Right. So that's already there. The machine, you know, the, the, the knowledge is there to be. To be able to do that and feed up the right information at the right time. So where does the human come into this equation as we evolve there? And, and, and I'm, I'm asking that because I want to know what sales reps should be thinking about so they can evolve to fit this inevitable model.

I think, you know, the way we think about the world is that look, there are transactional purposes and we all buy those every day, right? You shop on Amazon, you, everything you buy with a credit card and you just go and you don't talk to a person. Like there's all of those. And there's going to be more and more of those that we consume in our, digitally in our lives. And then there's this whole other category, which is where we actually focus, which are highly considered goods, right? Highly considered purchases. And in those, like there, I believe there's always going to be, no matter how many FAQs and auto suggestions and walk you down kind of a filter mechanism, like a, and even an external one, like a rating side, like a G2 crowd or one of those kinds of things.

Like there will always be questions because there are humans on the other end. And there's usually multiple humans. If the, if the check size is big enough, right? The dollar size is big enough and they have a lot of, um, insecurity is probably the wrong word, but they have a lot of, uh, anxiety about the purchase and they have questions and stuff like that. Like if you even look at something and I mentioned it before, like Peloton that sells treadmills and bikes, it's that simple as can be, right? It's the treadmill to bike. You can go in a store, you can view it. Someone, you know, has it like, but half of the purchases that people make of those things involve them going on Peloton site and having a live conversation, not an FAQ bot, but a live conversation with someone to calm them through that anxiety, to build that relationship so that they're ready to buy.

Will that go down over time? Maybe, but I think with something that's that expensive, that significant for people, I think there will always be room for that consultative approach and people need that comfort, right? That they get from someone. So I think for, from, I think about in our world in sales, it's just like that. It's like, we're selling expensive stuff and not one person, but usually multiple people, uh, multiple people means they have lots of different anxieties, lots of different tension. And so like, there are going to be questions that come up. So how do we help? How do we make sure that we can help them through making that decision? And, uh, and that's where sales comes in, uh, in that whole journey of really like help them.

You know, I've said along for years of like helping is the new selling. And like, how do we help them? Can you imagine bots selling to bots? I think what David is submitting is that the human aspect of sales isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but we're talking about change. And when Netflix went from DVDs in the mail to streaming, that big shift set a tone for all the advancements that we're still seeing today. I want to hear from you. Do you have a big win last week that you'd like to share? Send me your stories at jamesatjbarrows.com to be highlighted on next week's show. This week, we're giving a shout out to Matt Ditcher at Bullhorn. After attending a public JBSales webinar, Matt won the annual subscription to JBSales On Demand.

Now he's going to be using the lessons to create a healthy pipeline full of qualified leads that have a higher close rate. Way to be, Matt. Thanks for all your support. All over the world, thousands of sales professionals are changing their sales results with JBSales On Demand. Our very own Meg Hulsinger now has a new course titled Driving Results for Customer Success. If you're working in customer success, this is the course for you. Learn to uncover new opportunities in existing accounts, build value with each and every client, drive results with great questioning, with true care for your customer success. Sign up today at ondemand.jbarrows.com to get access to Meg's new course today. Let's give it back to David and John because this is a really interesting conversation.

So I think I'd see where we're going, but I'm going to challenge that with Tesla. I bought a Tesla Model X 100% online. I felt like I'm like, holy shit, I'm dropping this much money. Like I got to talk to somebody, right? So I did. I reached out to a sales rep there. And I'm like, okay, so what do you want? You know, and I could hear him clicking. And I'm like, wait a minute, are you just on the Tesla website right now? Like walking me through the exact thing that I'm looking at right now? He's like, yeah. I go, so what value do you add to this equation? I literally, I didn't mean to be a jerk, but I was just like, so let me ask you, what value do you bring to this equation right now? He's like, not really, not much.

He's like, all the, you know, if you want, it's right there. Here's your options. It's one or two. It's you want this or that. He's like, there's no real. I was like, okay, thanks for your time. Click. And I just went and bought it online. So I bought a hundred some odd thousand dollar car. Yeah. And I felt like I wanted to your point. I'm like, I have this anxiety of this. Holy shit. I got to go. I got to go talk to somebody about this. Right. But then when I got off the phone with that sales rep, I'm like, why? I just wasted my time with a sales rep. Like what? Like, so with a, with a purchase like that, right. Do you think, do you think it's just more of a, just because I'm in this world and I understand this world and there's a whole group of people that are not in this world and are going to always be uncomfortable with that type of a scenario?

No, I think it's the opposite. I think even though you're in this world and you know, all of this, you still had that feeling. You still want to talk to someone. You just so happened to talk to someone who did a lousy job and failed you in that thing. Right. He could have done an amazing job and said, like, I know three people that are just like you. They're right. They live around the corner from you. You should go see their car. How can I help you? You want to come in? You know, he could have done an amazing job. And you being the expert still had a need in here and a human need, right. And he failed you. And that was a bad experience. That's how I view it. It's just like, look what, even in that scenario, there was the need and there was the option, but someone did a poor implementation on that.

And so, but I do think, you know, we will buy more and more without having to go through that whole approach, just as things become more commoditized, right. You, you know, you know, lots of people with Teslas before you made that, that purchase. And so, you know, what the product is, you're familiar with it. Most of what businesses are buying, that's where we focus. Like they, that's harder, right. Because their businesses are more customized. They don't know someone exactly like them. They may have heard of, you know, reviews for a certain thing, but that might be for a smaller business or a different type of business. It's just a more complicated thing than even buying a super expensive, nice car like that.

Do you think that communities could replace that need? So, so let's, let's talk about like, I, there's a Tesla, I'm not part of it, but like, there's a Tesla community, right. Where you can jump on Facebook and you can ask questions to users, right. Who are like, no, no, no, don't get that. It was a waste of money. You know, get this and whatever. Do you think I could, that, that my desire for the human interaction component of purchasing could be addressed by something other than the sales professional at the company? I think so. I think for a portion of the audience, for sure. I still think there will be people that need help because I think that's fundamentally what it is. But some people might get help through peers, right.

It's like peer support, peer help, peer whatever. And, and it really comes down to like how complicated it is. The product that you're buying, right. How much configuration is there? How much customization do you have to do? Like they used to be Tesla's used to have a lot more configuration options, a lot more things. And what you see, if you keep looking at their website and how they sell things is like, they're reducing, reducing, reducing, reducing, reducing the number of options that you have for customization. So like, if you look at their product detail page right now for an X or an S or whatever other car that they make compared to six months ago, compared to a year ago, compared to three years ago, radically different used to be, used to be able to like mix and match lots of things.

They're removing that that's helping them lower the, lower the need for humans to get involved in the selling process. But on the flip side, there's a whole nother category of stuff like in the worlds that we work in and people listening to this, where they sell highly complicated things, where the number of options aren't being reduced to actually be expanding. There's way more options. There's not less options. There's way more options. So they're doing the opposite in my mind to what Tesla's been able to do. So where does, where do you see, um, let's talk about sales back to sales, right? The, the outbound sales motion, uh, fitting in. And, and, and I ask because of, of who you are and what you've built, right?

I mean, you've built, I mean, you went from HubSpot, you know, drift. So, you know, at first it was fill out the forms. It was inbound marketing. We got leads. Fantastic. We don't have to make cold calls anymore, but even though HubSpot still does. Um, and then, and then, okay, cool. But now it's conversational marketing, right? Bring people in, educate them, help them, that type of stuff. Where, where does the outbound, yeah. Where's the outbound sales rep fit into this equation? What do they think? They still exist. What do they fit, right? Do they, do they, do they fit under marketing, right? And is it, is it an extension of marketing or is this still a sales role? Because my theory is that, that sales reps, SDRs, BDRs are going to shift drastically under marketing and operations because of all the automation and all the tools and all this other stuff, like the cadence tools and all that other stuff.

And it's going to be about like reading your digital footprint and then using the content that my company provides to put the pieces together and then, you know, engage with you the way that you want to engage with, right? Yeah. But to me, that's more of a marketing function, right? And you had said one of your predictions going, uh, you know, into 2021 is that CMOs are going to be more and more tied to revenue, like, like direct tied to revenue. So with that, does, does sales, does the outbound sales motion still fall under sales? And is it still the, the, the entree level into, or do you think it's going to morph under marketing and kind of be part of that engine? I think in the perfect model, I think it will move towards marketing because then the way we think about marketing is not just the activities today, but we think about that as the learn phase of the relationship, that's the learning, right?

And, you know, in my way of thinking now, you know, the learning phase is not just, you know, the prospect stage, you know, which outbound would fall under. But it's also the customer stage, right? How does the customer learn? It's also the employee stage. How does the employee learn, right? Like I think internal marketing is like one of the biggest things that will emerge. It's like, especially now in a digital kind of remote world, like how do you mobilize the people on your team? How do you make them even aware? You know, you get to scale, like, you know, some of us might be in a small company or smaller companies, but you have a thousand, 10,000, 15, how do you mobilize 15,000 people? Like on any of the product changes, any of the things that you're doing, or even any of the internal policies that are changing, you have to get really good at internal marketing.

So I think that's going to be a big place. But so learn is like the marketing function and sales to me is the buy function. So it's like, how do we learn? How do we buy? How do we support, right? Like those are like the areas of the business. And I think different parts in a, you know, again, if we had a clean slate, like it's going to be hard for some businesses, but like, but a clean slate, we'd move everything that's learn related under, under this thing called marketing. Everything under buying, under selling, under the sales organization, everything under supporting into this kind of services organization. So with that, do you see a difference? I mean, so I try not to engage with trolls, right?

But there's this one, right? Yeah, me too. Every once in a while, I'm like, and then every time I do, I regret it immediately. But, but there's, there's a couple, and I think from your, I think your perspective is going to be valuable on this for me personally, because I have a marketing background, right? You're, you're a product guy with marketing and sales understanding, right? Do you see a difference? Like cold call unwanted interruption, right? For me, like, like I'm the sales guy, right? I'm cold calling you. I'm cold emailing you. You didn't ask for that, right? So I am kind of intruding on you now the marketer says that's horrible, right? And I look at it and I say, what is the difference between that and me opening up my phone and scrolling through and having an ad pop up that I didn't want or driving down the highway and seeing a billboard that I didn't ask to be there.

That's interrupting my view. That's interrupting myself. I didn't ask for this. So do you see a, a difference in the outbound? I'm going after you DC because I'm cold calling you or I'm emailing you versus I'm going to follow your digital footprint and I'm going to serve you up stuff that you didn't ask for. Like, is there a fundamental difference in that? Or is, are we all talking the same language? They're the same. I think they're all the same. I think the, you know, from the buyer standpoint, the only, the only difference would be, and it can happen both on the marketing side and sales side is like how personal of a channel, like, do I feel like offended because it's so sacred, uh, my cell phone channel that you're in there.

Right. It's just like, how did you get my unlisted number? That would be an example. Like, I think that's personal, but like a marketer could do that too, by, you know, like a robo marketing campaign. So I don't think it's marketing or sales. It's just like, it's, it's, it's both the same thing. It's unwanted stuff. Um, there's ways to make it work. There's ways to make them. We all know there's great examples of outbound marketing and outbound selling, but like, um, but it's, it's rare. Right. And the more personal channel, the more offended the buyer is going to be in that, in that scenario. Thank you. Cause that, that was my whole, cause I, you know, with my marketing background and I, you know, look, I love marketing.

I love sales. I lean more on sales, but I don't see, that's why I say like, I think sales reps, it would be great if sales reps had insight into marketing and, and thought more like marketers in this world because it's the same shit, whether I cold call you, I tweet you, I put an ad in front of your face. It's the impression world that we go back to. That is, I am just trying to make a positive impression. Now, a lot of those are negative impressions, unfortunately, because they're just spammy. They're, they're not personalized in any way, but I, I just, I see this, this happening quite a bit. And I, and that's really where I think, you know, I wanted to ask you, like, what do you think sales reps, you know, I train techniques and all this other stuff, which is great, but it, but it's more like, I feel like it's more of a stopgap solution.

I'm giving these kids some tools, some techniques to, to elevate the profession, hopefully do it the right way, at least in my opinion. Um, but if, if you're a sales rep out there, what do you, what should you start paying attention to and educating yourself on right now? I would say it's exactly the same thing that I think marketers should, but they don't. And I think because they don't both end up doing things that miss, misused kind of the channels, right. That caused some of the output that you mentioned, which is like, look, the, at the basis, and this is what I think they should study. Everyone should study what we talked about. How do you make decisions as a human? How do you influence those decisions?

What are the traps that we all fall into good and bad in those things? And those are easy to read about human decision-making, social psychology, uh, cognitive biases, stuff like that. I talk about all that stuff all the time because you have to understand not even to control and manage yourself. Why the hell am I making decisions? Like, why do I keep making these decisions? Why do I make decisions that are good for me? Why do I make decisions that are bad for me? What influences me? Right. And so like, and that's the book to start with, which is called influence. Um, that is my favorite, it's literally my favorite book. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Um, so like, that's the book. You should only read one book.

You only have to read one book. That's it. But like, you really have to understand that part. And the, the problem that I see with marketers and often I would go speak in front of marketers, you know, uh, and I would say, how many of you have read that book? And I would lift up this book in Flint and, uh, almost nobody would raise their hand. And I'm like, then you don't understand what marketing is because this is marketing. You think marketing is techniques, tactics, channels, this, that figure, uh, things, configuring things and whatever that's not marketing, right? Like that's, that's like being a technician, same thing for a sales rep, logging calls all day and like blindly going through a process that someone told you that you had to do without understanding what you're doing or why you're doing it or how you're communicating to someone is not selling.

That's not selling. That's just like being, you are a robot. Yeah. Right. You are a robot. Yeah. It's just like marketers are just like, I know how to use Google AdWords and Facebook and who cares? Like that's, that doesn't matter. That's not marketing. You have to understand this decision-making part, read influence, really understand that the study that become a student of that game. Then you can see like, Oh, all these tools and tech things like these are ways that you can communicate. These are communication paths that you can use and some are better and some are worse, but it doesn't really matter. Tomorrow there'll be a whole new set of communication ways to communicate with people that we can't even imagine today.

But what will never change is how do we make decisions? Why do we make the decisions that we do? That part will never change no matter how much technologies or bots are here. And I think that the psychology, that's why I'm not, I don't read sales books because I'm just like, whatever, you know, that technique, that tip's going to come around, you know, whenever, you know, it'll work, it might not work. But the psychology of why people do things like neurolinguistic programming and, you know, those types of things. Like I am fascinated by that type of stuff. That's what I would study if I was a young rep. That is going to be a young rep, a young marketer, an old rep, an old marketer. Like study that.

That will never go away. That will be timeless. No matter what you do in life, that will serve you. Learning tricks and tips and copying templates and like whatever, like that might give you a little edge today, but that's not going to last. That's, those are empty calories. Yeah. So, I mean, I, I've walked through, I don't know if you've heard me say this, but if people listen to my podcast, they'll hear it. You know, I call it the give a shit factor, right? Like Morgan, he came to me and he comes like when he came on board, right? He was running cadences and we were, you know, doing good. And we came up with personas and triggers and he, you know, he got pretty good results. And then it kind of gets to the level of, okay, look for the triggers, make the connection.

Oh, you went through a merger and acquisition. Oh, this is what we do. Right. So let me put those two together. Hey, that's better than my templates. Right. Great. But he plateaued. And he came to me and he goes, John, I don't understand. Like, I feel like I'm doing all the right stuff, but my results just aren't there. And I said, Morgan, it's not going to change until something does. And he goes, what? I go, until you start giving a shit. And he goes, what? I go, look, I know you give a shit about your job. I know you give a shit, but until you start actually genuinely caring about the person that's on the other end of that number or the other end of that email and really truly try to put yourself in their position and understand what they're going through and understand, you know, put real empathy, not just, I hope you and your family are doing well, but like truly think about what that person goes through.

You're not going to, it's not going to change. And then all of a sudden he started, he, it was almost like the matrix, the matrix hit and it was like, there it is. All right. Now you can make that connection. Right. That's exactly, that's another way of saying the same thing, right? You have to understand the person at the other end. You have to understand why they would give a shit, what would influence them, how they would make a decision, understand that. And then, then you can keep growing along with them, right? Because you understand the why you understand why this matters to this person. But most people that are in sales or in marketing don't understand the why they haven't stopped for five minutes to understand it.

They just go, go, go, uh, you know, just do a bunch of activity and hope the activity works out on the other end. And I, and I don't want to put it all on those people. Cause I think that's what I was going to say that they're been told to do that from the top down. And I go back up to the VCs, down to the management, down to, you know what I mean? Beating them over the head saying, make 50 dials, send out a thousand cadences. Okay. You know what I mean? And they don't even have a chance to think for crying out loud. And I beg leadership out there. Yeah. One thing I would always talk about in marketing is like, which is the same in sales is like, look, by, by the time someone's defined the 50 sequences and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like that doesn't work anymore because all that arbitrage has gone away because like it did work at some point, I'm sure.

But by now, by the time you've codified it and you trained a hundred people on it, it's changed. It's more right. It's, it doesn't work anymore because you know what thousands of people on the other end have already heard it. It's done. It's the same thing with marketing. It's like marketing, you know, when we started drift, all I would focus on is like, how do we focus on channels that are either, uh, too small for marketers to care. About or too hard for marketers to measure. And the reason we would do that is because those are the only channels that have arbitrage them. If it's perfectly measurable, perfectly scalable, like all the arbitrage is gone, all the opportunities gone because everyone has moved and is doing exactly the same thing.

You can't stand out anymore. Blue ocean. Right. So, um, I'm going to, I'm going to finish up with one, uh, is very selfish on my part. Um, do you think, so you talk a lot about empowering the buyers, right? So I, you know, we've, you've talked a lot about how we've, we've taught a lot of people how to sell to people, but now you flipped it over its head and it's like, no, we're, we're helping people buy. Right. Do you think there's an intersection here of helping sellers sell and helping buyers buy? And the reason I asked this question is because for us, I've, I've, I've always believed that we are, I'm a little ahead of where I thought we were going to be, but in this whole concept of just in time, right.

Just in time learning instead of some idiot like me standing in for an hour or two, even, even, you know, sitting for an hour on a video like this, and then having you try to remember it for, you know, five days later when you're about to have that call with that client, I've always felt like that the, I'm going to be sitting in a CRM or whatever it is. And I know you think those are dying too. And I agree with you, but like, I'm about to make a call to DC, right. And all of a sudden all your information comes up in front of me and a little, you know, bubble pops up and says, Hey John, before you call DC, make sure you do X, Y, Z. Right. And then in line, I'm actually, and it's like, Hey, we'll make sure you ask him this question, that type of stuff.

Do you think that that is, is, is, is, is coming? Is coming? You said? Yes. A hundred percent. The only reason we exist as a company is to do that because I don't think you can change the buying part and make it better for the buyer until you change the selling part. Because, because of exactly what we're talking about, because whether it's a seller or marketer, it doesn't actually matter because until you can help these people on the other side, inside the building until you help them, they're going to be forced to misuse tools today. And no matter what you give them, they're going to provide a crappy experience for the buyer. It doesn't matter if it's conversations versus emails versus what I've called, they're going to provide it.

Why? Because they don't have the right tools. They don't have that, those bubbles. They don't have the context. They don't have any of that. Is it tips and techniques or is it, is it, okay. So the context, that's what I'm kind of getting at, right? Like, is it John, you know, where are they? Like when was the last time we talked to them? This is, I think what this person needs, you know, like, uh, all of those things. It's, it's, to me, it's reproducing the best. And I always go back to this model. What's the best, if you were to think the best, amazing in-person buying experience possible, you know, like as a first-time buyer, as a returning buyer, it would be like, you know, like our idea of like the neighborhood, you know, restaurant that you go to and they're like, Hey, John's back.

This is his favorite table. You know what? We've been out of stock of blah, blah, blah, your favorite dish, but you know, the chef's going to make it for you today. That's the amazing experience. Why? Not because of the restaurant, not because of even what you're eating there. Which matters, the quality matters, but because they remembered you, they had, there was a relationship there, right. And they showed you that they cared about the relationship. And as the more that we can get smarter and we can provide tools for sales, uh, to be able to have, and those real relationships, they're real with people without the tools getting in the way, which is what happens today and the techniques getting in the way and the tips and tricks getting in the way, uh, the better that the experience for the buyer is going to be, the more that they're going to buy and the faster that they're going to buy.

Yeah. And that's the, that's where I'm stuck. Right. It's because I, it's like, if we, let's break it down to like basic scripts, right? Like scripts are good to get somebody started and then they need to make them, you know, their own. Right. And so like, it's the same thing with tips. It's like, I give tips, but it's like, you get to that consciously incompetent, the unconsciously competent section. Right. But you know, the tips were like what question to ask and those types of things, right. Or how to guide somebody through a conversation, right. Those are all the way I look at it as, as starter packs, right? Like I'm giving you some, some, some nuggets of information to ask that question that you probably wouldn't ask.

Cause you're not fluid enough yet to have a business conversation with somebody, to be real with somebody. So where is, how do you, how do you expedite somebody's journey to unconscious competence in a conversation? You know, we're trying to figure this out as rough, you know, like how do we, how do we, when someone's having a conversation in one of our tools, that that's what we focus on, but it can be in anything. Like, how do you provide the right context for them without it just being more fields to look at more data to look at. And, and you know, for us, it's really trying to understand language and past conversations and events that have happened. I'm really trying to bubble up, you know, just the right context, the right one, two, three kind of sets of insights or facts or something like that to let you pick up where you left off in the conversation.

I don't think we've cracked it yet. You know, we're, we're in the beginning part of that journey, but like, that's what we're trying to figure out. Like, how do you reduce it down? But I always start with, you got to model something. And so I always go back to, again, let's go back to the restaurant example. Let's go back to something that we can all agree on. What's the best in-person experience? And then start there and try to work from there to reproduce that versus starting the way that we usually do, which is like, what is the box of Legos that we have right now of CRM and this tool and that tool and sequences and blah, blah, blah. And how do we fix every one of these little things? No, I think you need to invert.

What's the best experience period that you could ever have? Okay. How do we reproduce that one little step at a time? That's what we're trying to do. I love that. Like, start with what the, what do you want the experience to be? Yeah. It's almost starting with the Y, starting backwards. Start from, you know, start backwards. Start like, what is the best experience possible? And, and I always go to like a real world example, not our, not B2B, not this, not sales, not whatever. Just the restaurant example, the bar example, the, you know, whatever, insert, you know, name a place, but experience that, that is universal, that almost everyone that you're talking to on your team or your company can understand and be like, immediately, I know what that is.

I feel it this really. All right. Let's reproduce that. How will we do that? Step one, step two, step three, and then see what tools, techniques, tricks, blah, blah, blah, systems we need to be able to do that and which ones we don't. So start that way. Because I think we're starting with like all this weight on us of like, we have all these tools, systems, integrations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do we make it all work? That's almost an impossible thing to, in my opinion, to make work, because it's just a mess. Start with the experience. That's why I, that's why I think like, start with the buyer, start with the end thing first and start and think about it in a way that you can identify kind of to your point that you can identify that person's why and how it's going to feel for them.

And then figure out what do we need to get there. I love that. Yeah. I think that, uh, cause you, you, I, I know you are, uh, you, you love just flipping things over, right? However, however anybody else is doing it, let me do the exact opposite and see what happens there. Right. So I love it. I'm not going to, it's because I'm a, I'm not, I can't bet on me being smarter or more, uh, working harder than people because I'm not smarter and I'm lazier than they are. So I've got to start the other way around. There you go. Love it. Uh, last question. Why didn't you become an accountant? Yeah. My mom's dream was for me to become an accountant and I failed her in life. Uh, I took accounting classes and, uh, in college and I even interned at a CPA firm.

And the summer I interned at a CPA firm, I was done immediately. Bored out of my mind. Not good at following rules. Yeah. You and me, uh, you know, as I dug a little bit more into your background, you know, you had said that both your parents, uh, work for themselves and it's not as glamorous as it sounds, right? Same thing on my parent, my end, my, both my parents worked for themselves. They were consultants and, you know, it wasn't pretty, but, but I didn't, I didn't realize it at the time I did, they didn't call it entrepreneurship. They didn't call it any of that stuff. It was just that, okay, mom was working out of the house. So, okay. But I grew up with that and I always had that itch and I didn't know why.

And I was in corporate and I was like, nope, this, nope. That was your brain though. You had that brain. Yeah. And so that shaped your world. And like, I always say, like, I didn't ever use the word entrepreneur until more than halfway into my career so far. Like entrepreneur, when I grew up meant like you were a loser, like that you couldn't get a job. Like it was, it was for us in the East coast. It was all those weirdos out on the West coast who were just whack jobs, right? Yeah. This wasn't some cool thing. Right. And so that's recent thing. That's very recent. Now everybody wants to be an entrepreneur or a YouTube star or the other, right? Do you see? Awesome. Well, this was a great conversation.

What, uh, just before we go, what, um, what do you want people to know? Uh, check out Drift, check out me on any channel, you can sell on any, on any channel, Instagram, LinkedIn, uh, Twitter, blah, blah, blah, all those kinds of things. And I have a email newsletter, sign up for that or text me, whatever, whatever way you want to contact me, that's fine. And, uh, check out Drift. Thank you, John, for having me. Always a pleasure. And look, uh, make sure you get that Seeking Wisdom podcast too. Cause, uh, that thing is, uh, the six stars I am in all my friends. So keep up the great work. Let's leave six stars for John's podcast. Go in Apple, iTunes, or wherever you're listening to this podcast, leave a six star rating.

Let's make his the second versus only a six star podcast. I love it. Awesome. DC. Well, look, thank you so much. Yeah. You too. And everybody listening, as I always say, look, uh, go home, make somebody smile today. Uh, cause even if you had a bad day, if you make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that these days. So thank you all very much. I mean, no matter how bad your shitty day is, if you go and just make somebody else smile, you had a great day. Right. So that goes back to that whole, what goes around comes around. Right. Absolutely. Well, thank you, man. Thank you. Cheers. John's explanation of his buying experience with Tesla says a lot about where we're headed.

People want to talk to other people when they're wanting to spend money, especially big money. I think David's standpoint on the need for help and how community plays into our customer experience is pretty pungent as well. So much value was dropped in this conversation for daily sales tips, techniques, sales content, and perspective. Follow JB sales on the gram at JB sales training, all one word and engage with us there. We've been having a blast with the front lines and all the leaders that are looking to connect with us, invest in yourself and design your own business. outbound engine to win week after week and month after month. We don't know everything, but we know sales. Answers for you exist at ondemand.jbarrows.com.

Subscribe today and level up. We'll see you next week, everyone, for another stellar sales conversation that will help you sell better. Thank you.