33: Phill Keene from Costello

happy monday everybody this is john barrows with j barrows consulting and i am very happy to be here with my good friend phil kane phil how's it going man what's going on barrows it has been too long you've been busy though man you got morgan j ingram i gotta use my hand morgan j ingram as part of the crew now so that's exciting yeah man i'm fired up about that i think morgan and i are going to be able to do some cool shit together i um you know for i mean you know morgan real well from the real sales talk stuff that you've been doing but uh yeah it's going to try to take things to a whole different level here in 2018 see what happens and and you got some new stuff here too man you're over at costello so you made that switch talk to me a little bit about costello because i we haven't caught up in a little bit so tell me what this is so i joined the company back actually in july we kept it quiet for a few months uh but the company itself is a deal management solution and it's exciting because it's a lot of what we're going to talk about today it's how do i manage gaps and deals how do i see some of the things that might be roadblocks and overcome those and we want to give you a way that you can do that as a salesperson and i'm passionate about sales john we've we've had more than a few conversations about sales i geek out about it i'm into it um so that that was part of it i wanted to talk about sales all the time uh and secondarily like we want to guide you through conversations and get you to to actually follow the actual process and the methodology that you put in place and make sure you get the right information while you're on calls and do the right right behaviors and then we want to analyze that data so we want to find out what's working and how to make it scalable and make it repeatable so those are all things in the sales process and the sales world that i don't think we do really well yet it was exciting it's kind of a unique take on on doing that so over the three or four times that i saw the product finally they asked like hey come join the team uh it was like a no-brainer for me it's something i'm passionate about like talking sales i'm selling sales software to sales people doing sales things like it can't be better than that it's like selling crack to crack heads right and being a crackhead so like that for me that's the exact same thing i had when i started at my the first uh training company basho right because historically i had been in like an engineering company and i was selling it services and i was like one sales guy within 50 engineers and i felt like i was talking chinese while everybody else was talking english right and uh and then all of a sudden i got to basho and like the cto was talking sales and i just was like oh my god i'm like wait a minute like this these are my people i i sell to these people i work with these people all day long i can have conversations and everybody gets it like this is a brilliant fit so i'm psyched to it's like to see you on board where some some place you can uh some really kind of take it to the next level with your passion there yeah i appreciate it i'm excited so it's good technology yeah exactly so so we're going to talk today um you know we're coming to the end of the year it's it's you know we got about a month and a half i don't know how many selling days left not even about 20 of them or so and the the goal today is to give people some tips and ideas on their their pipeline specifically and what deals currently are in their pipeline and what to do to figure out where they can focus their efforts uh on the real deals and and kind of put the deals that aren't really real in the bucket that they should be in so we're not wasting too much of our time so some tactics around that type of stuff but i want to back up based on what you're doing over at costello because i'm a big believer in process but i think a lot of people just roll their eyes when it comes to process yeah um where it's like okay i gotta follow these steps let me just do what i do because i'm a sales rep here let's talk about why process why having any process is is a good thing and and what you know depending on the organization that's out there who's talking and who's listening right now you know what what they should be doing from a baseline standpoint from a process so let's talk about first of all why process is important yeah absolutely so i mean think about process john you and i are communicators we like to talk we like to talk sales we like to just get into it and and i i feel that if i can just use my words i can probably get somebody to be convinced about the thing that i'm telling about as long as they're they're reasonably minded enough to be open to a dialogue but salespeople don't historically do well is the process side of things and that's actually what it usually has to happen to get a deal done it's it's why why should i take this step what would be the next thing that has to happen i mean who else is involved in this deal why would they be involved why do they care i mean those are things that you need to understand from a process side of things and when i say self-process it's not just stages inside of the opportunity it is why things move forward what's the reason to exit the stage to go to the next stage and then applying the methodology on top of that so i mean you talk about guru ganesh all the time amazing sandler guy like we're a sandler shop as well i mean there's there's a process to using the sales methodology and getting people to understand why you're doing the things you're doing i mean those are the type of people that that win in sales it's it's funny and you pull us a lone wolf away from his manager and you have a real conversation with them yep they have a process like they they actually write down eight things like the reason why you have a kickstarter to build this book is because you have things that you jump on every single call to get on understand it like so it's it's that idea that everybody that's really good at sales has a process or knows they're weak at it and they overcome that by putting a process in place and find a way to follow that process let me ask you something because this has always been something that that i've been curious about uh just other people's opinions is you know we talk about the science and the art of sales right and i'm a big believer that sales should be more science than art right because the science lays the foundation for the art to allow us to have a better conversation i do believe though there are some artists okay out there that are just the pure holy shit that guy just knows or that woman just knows exactly what question to ask and when i do think that's maybe you know five percent of our population and if you go you know those uh you know that quadrant like unconsciously incompetent consciously incompetent consciously competent and then unconsciously incompetent and that kind of stages you go through to get to the expert level help me understand like do you even those unconsciously competent ones the ones that are like the michael jordans that just oh my crap right do they still have a process absolutely okay and i think they i think they consciously have it so uh you know jim brown as well so jim brown and i had the conversation around the dummy curve have you ever heard the dummy curve so the idea is that you start out like really early in your career like you ask stupid questions because you're the still a dummy like you can say things like why does it work that way and you generally are just curious and then somewhere along the way become an expert and you're at the bottom of that dummy curve and you're like you're trying to be the smartest guy in the room you're trying to say things that make you feel smart right to realize you're not getting the information you need and you get back to the stage where you were at the beginning where you're still asking questions like john why does that matter to you yeah and you're doing it for a reason and i think there's something along the way where those good lone wolf sales guys like there's a lot of hardship that happens uh i always say it's it's 3 000 phone calls and phone calls just appear dial out right before you figure out how to get past that dummy curve and there's a right period like there's probably you probably have tens of thousands of hours of speaking one-to-one about sales where now you're in the place like now you're just genuinely curious you like talking about sales but you're picking things back up like that happens along the way i think for most most top performers well and i and i actually think that you hit on something there which i think is is super important which is you have to have the process in order to be able to get to that point right because i i think you nailed it with you know sometimes you just like when you first start you just first of all you ask questions because you don't you don't you legitimately don't know and then you start asking questions because you're told to ask questions so you start going through the route bad crap or whatever right and you're like oh what do you do for this and what do you do for that and then you realize you get very basic information from basic questions but then when you when you become genuinely curious is when i i call it catching your sales group that's when things start to take off when you're when you're genuinely curious you're not just asking the question ask the question but you're asking because you really want to know or you really help want to help understand why they need that or why they have to have it by a certain date so you can you can be able to position your solution a lot more effectively right yeah yeah and i just i mean just to just to add on to that it's like how can reps i guess and it comes back to the process but but how can you almost expedite that and i and i say that in context of when i was so you know the why you why you're now the basho email that everybody talks about that i used to be really focused on training it was like at first you blasted out template emails and that didn't work i then took this training and i'm like oh shit do research on somebody be you know pretty thoughtful and oh my god look at these and all i was doing was looking for like connections oh you open up a new office this is what we do for clients open up new offices but then when i really started to see the client and say oh i've seen that before or oh man i know we can help with that and started to really be genuine my approach that's when the response rates can you expedite that so i yeah i mean to a certain extent right i think there's things you can do i think so i use the acronyms with with them it's w-i-i-f-m which is what's in it for me and i think if you go back to that level and when i say what's in it for you john it's not that i can i can make your pipeline move faster or yada yada yada or i can save you time or save you money it's no john you want to get promoted in the next 12 months yeah how do you get that done it or or it can be the opposite is if you don't hit this today or you don't make your number next month what's what happens right in a very very emotional level it's if you become attached to the the ability to fix whatever the problem is i'm selling and outside that buyers don't know how to buy so one of the techniques we use here at costello is we just tell you how it actually works and if it fits your timeline great right we know that people typically buy from costello in 32 days and they go through the process where they bring in an additional stakeholder so it's not just their ass in the line yeah the second thing they do is that we want to show them the product after that the fourth thing we do is we put a proposal in your hands and we have we have a discussion about that proposal and we schedule all four of those things are you are you able to do that in the next 32 days if not tell me why not and then you'll usually get that it'll all reverse backwards where they're like i can't do it because i just bought salesforce and we're in the process of implementing and this this and this is happening or hey we don't have budget it's locked up until january great let's have this conversation in january yep got it so i mean that's that's part of like you got to back walk them through it let them walk you through their process and i'm going to kind of dive in a little bit here because you said you're a big sailor shop right yeah okay so i'm a i'm a big sailor fan too uh reverse questioning pain funnel that type of stuff i'm going to sidebar here and ask you because you're such a big sailor guy how do you do the how do you do the pain funnel without being super cheesy and when i say that it's like when you bring me when when a typical and this is a perfect example and i'm and again put this in context here you how long have you how long you've been working with sailor or known sailor take the sailor training uh so about two years of actually using it like actually like actually knowing about sandler and training against it so really i would actually say since i've joined costello where really we put a heavy focus on how do you have conversations why do i ask the questions i ask and then go from there okay so here's a perfect example sailor pain funnel hey what's hey phil what's what's your big challenge coming well we're not we're about to we're come we're not going to hit our targets this year okay so what does that mean for the business all right well that means that if we don't hit our targets as a business then we're not going to be able to get that second round of funding i'm not going to be able to hire next year and our projections go okay well so that what does that mean for you personally phil like oh well that means i'm going to get fired like how do you do that in a way that isn't super cheeseball and and really does genuinely get to the to the information that you're looking for because that's what i think sailor is a perfect example of like the upfront contract for instance if you roll into the upfront contract pretty smooth then i think it's a fantastic thing to do whereas a lot of reps they take the upfront contract and they're like okay mr customer if we achieve one two and three today would you feel comfortable in moving forward to the next step with our presentation and it's like dude stop trying to be the cheeseball sales guy here can you have a conversation so how do you smooth those out and let's use sandler as a perfect example there because i love their content but i think the way it applied sometimes is like oh so it takes practice right i think that's some of it like you got to practice like so i mean we role play almost every single day myself included when i get on a phone call like i'm i practice and and it doesn't sound rehearsed because now i've done it and i've heard so many times yeah uh my favorite quote i said this before on multiple different podcasts is actually comes from magic johnson which is professionals practice in private what that means is like he took 50 000 jump shots on the practice floor before he walked into the staple center and actually took a shot on the floor like there's a difference like he walked in prepared and ready to go every single time so from a sales perspective i practice all the time so that's part of it and then in in the context of like an upfront contract there's times where i've doubted it where you're having the where you're you feel like i'm forcing you you feel like i'm interrogating you and a lot of it comes in here it's in your in your mental side of things like you feel it you know it's going to become that so if you if you're asking in a genuine curious way where you actually listen to what they're saying and ask questions about why that actually happens the way it happens yeah you're going to get into that layer of five the five whys right the five layers deep yeah and it's it's funny so i've actually sold to a local company here and and last week i found out that uh that it was funny at the end of the conversation he's like it felt like an invitation only when we have this conversation nice it is because i only want good customers let's have that conversation like this is why spot on then the second thing is like it's like it felt like a psychology session and that's the way it should feel right and i think some of it's how you phrase things so when i say something i know what i want the outcome to potentially be but i'm looking for the answer and i'm going to be curious when you give me that answer i'm never going to answer you answer your question until i know why you're asking that question there's a there's an answer behind the answer and i think that's that's truly the pain funnel when you think about it it's you want to know the answer the two layers the five layers behind the answer that they actually gave you yeah and a couple of things on that which is one is and here's nuggets and tips right layering questions because that's how effectively the pain funnel is is layering questions so stuff like i've actually had to put layering questions into my vocabulary because i'm a little bit too quick to answer sometimes like when somebody asks me a question i'll immediately my gut instinct is to just uh like here's your answer to that and a lot of times obviously that's either a not the right answer or that's not really the question that they were asking right right so i've actually put layering questions like could you help me understand that could you give me a little more context around that could you explain to me how and that tends to be that pain funnel type scenario without being cheesy about it right and if you don't go that far like and this is something to a fault of myself from the dozens of years of experience i have in sales is it's always intellectual conversation i love to have the intellectual conversation yeah the problem is is it's not enough to make you do anything right right until i get you farther than that intellectual conversation into an emotional state which is the sandler like to the place where you get why it matters to you like it's the what's in it for me like if i can get you to understand that that's what it matters and that's that's self-promotion it is getting yourself that the next rung on the ladder or whatever the thing is like we need you to understand why this matters to you well you know what's interesting too is that uh so i still believe that people buy on emotion and they back it up with facts right um different buyers buy for different reasons whatever but it's amazing to me how training and you you hit on it earlier as far as you know when we were doing a prep for this call you know how frustrating is it to have a training and then have no reinforcement and and we all know what happens when that happens right it's like an event and you know three months later i come back and it's like nobody ever took the training so that's why management involvement process and coaching is all critical to the success of this training but i will say it amazes me how often what i do personally with when i come on site and work with a client nine times out of not nine times i'd say six times out of ten it's for that emotional i want i just want my reps to feel like we've invested in them i want my reps to get that you know kick in the ass that motivational piece that comes with on-site training and it's and it's amazing because i'm like look you can get my stuff for like pennies on the dollar online if you want it right you don't have to bring me on site to do this full day one day on site thing and cost and all that other stuff you can get the exact same stuff online they're like you know what john that's great but i just i i gotta give my team a little bit of a kick in the ass here and so a lot of times yes you know they buy it for the conversion ratios and the increase in productivity and you know deal size and all that other stuff but one of the huge reasons they buy my training and me on site training is emotion yeah so absolutely and it's something it's it's interesting so i've never been a big believer in scripts yeah i don't i don't think scripts are good because it gets you to a place where you feel robotic totally i do love the idea uh so i had the whole idea of vision of good so i'm going to have you do something now i'm going to role play the shit out of it until you understand what perfect looks like if you run so costello actually guide you through the call flow and you can kind of bounce around inside of the calls and i make them run a costello every single time i make them bounce around the call and i give them the the objection they know are going to pop up practice one using the tool but also at the same time they practice what a good conversation looks like yeah and then if you know what a good outcome should look like you can ultimately hopefully get that conversation to that point that's hard to do so it's that repetitive practice over and over and over again and truly sales good sales people it's all about pattern recognition totally when something happens how do i overcome that when this happens how do i do it again yep and that practice you know i talk a lot about so you know you brought up morgan before one of the things that you know and i i kind of always rail on like i i make fun of demos all the time i'm like every demo is exactly the same rep pulls up and says hey thanks for your time this is still a good time and you know i got about a 30-minute demo here and blah blah blah and then they drone through it and then they ask oh you have any questions they pause intermittently and say does that make sense all the way through and i and i rail on that i'm like because i i don't need a sales rep to do that i can have a marketing department do that but what i've put the caveat there is look understanding like because i make fun of you know go through it just like you were bad for a boot camp right like yeah you had for a boot camp fine it's actually really important to get badged for it in boot camp exactly the way it should be presented right i literally want morgan for instance when doing this training i want him to memorize the slide deck i want him to go from slide to slide to slide to slide so i can quote unquote certify him if you will because i i got to be confident that he can stand up there and go through the entire presentation but my goal for him is very soon thereafter make it your own right and that's what that's why you like i'm right on board with you as far as scripts i can't stand scripts what i love though is structure correct is like here's the structure of a good call here's the structure of a good presentation here's the points where you have to hit but here's now you can play within that now go make it your own and if you can't make it your own you're no different than marketing you're no different than a robot going through the motions here well i think it goes back to earlier we talked about sales people without process right without a process you miss the things that actually matter in a call without understanding what it actually takes at the end of this call to move you forward you're going to miss those things and not having structure in a call you're going to ultimately just have a conversation that doesn't matter that you all of a sudden have this deal that pushes three times before you actually get it done or ultimately never closes and that's that's part of the get just know what you want at the end of the call and and this is a similar thing is i want to put you back in the level of normal so hey typically this happens normally this happens obviously this world works this way like make them average and normal and most people are going to say okay to whatever you're telling them because they don't know how to buy they you might buy a technology three times in your career at an organization coach them through what typically happens you've now probably sold hundreds of deals typically this happens is that the right way to think about this totally and that's funny we actually have one more there there was a guy that i was speaking to is a vp of sales of a pretty high growth sas company and one that i greatly admire and it's interesting because he even said he's like if they don't ask the legal question in the first call they just think it's not going to happen and then three months later guess what happens at the end of the quarter it pushes because we didn't go to legal right there's a process to doing it ask it on the first question totally yeah and be proactive about it when you see those indicators right which i think is going to get into the next part of our conversation which is helping understand you know that process okay fine but now i'm where i am with this deal um what do i do about it and and coming up here on the end of the year what deal should i should i focus on right so if you've if you've had a process at least any type of process there should be some deals sitting in the pipeline right now that are the either commits or the ones that are at stage five or whatever stage you're at um the problem that i find with most reps is they kind of spend the equal amount of time on every deal right because every deal is important every day like this is what it's going to so but in my experience not every deal is important and the likelihood of all of them closing is obviously not very high at all so what are some things that you do at costello now to help your reps figure out outside of following the process and coaching them through that what are some of the things that as you're looking at the pipeline right now in december you coach the reps on how to understand which deals are real and what do i need to do and where should i be focusing yeah so i think part of it is we have to be proactive in the deals that we're looking at so i proactively look at everything inside the pipeline to understand do you have the things it takes to win a deal which is do you have a compelling event do you have a path to signature do you know what it looks like uh from the economic decision side of things is there legal in the process so we look at those type of triggers and we we one we drink our own champagne so we actually look at costello and and see these things in a dashboard for us and then actually we walk through the process so the questions i'll look at a deal and the questions even about the deals that i'm working i'll ask and say what's the next step on this deal and then backing that up is there a date on the calendar already for that next step like if you have a next step that doesn't have a firm date it's really not a next step yeah no so i think that that's some of it understand what the next step actually looks like and if you don't have a next step the second question i follow up out with is have i actually been in contact with this deal for the last two weeks yeah because if well because time kills all deals right i mean if i so we go through you've you've heard you know the give get scorecard and how you know you line up all your gives you line up all your gets and you prioritize them in a certain way so somebody asked for five i'm asking for five in return that type of thing and one of my biggest gives biggest gives heaviest gives is more time to make a decision and and by the way you don't have to ask for more time to make a decision if you flake on a committed next step for me like and and you didn't even ask but it pushes past that's automatically more time to make a decision right and so to your point because at the end of the day you know the closer you get to a deal closing everybody knows the closer you get to a deal closing the faster the interactions go right it's like you're going back and forth on legal you're going back and forth on timeline so the interactions are the frequency is a lot is a lot more whereas the longer the the communication goes between you know points it the less likely it is to close so what could you recommend as an example say a rep is sitting with a deal in their pipeline they haven't talked to him in two weeks um and there's no real they've said yeah we're going to do this by the end of the year so this is a forecast review thing here hey phil you know you're you're doing a forecast review oh no i got this one it's definitely going to happen but you know and you're like okay so what's the next step well they're going to get back to me in the next couple of weeks here with with their sign you know they gave me a verbal um but i don't have it on the calendar they said by the end of next week well you know this thanksgiving so they're probably going to miss this week so it's probably next week is when we're going to reconnect here how what what should i do as a rep like what would you coach me on as a manager yeah so i think if you look at it it's let's actually document out what we know what the path to close actually looks like or path the signature looks like yeah so what what in the process has to happen for them to sign off okay and that's something if you can't answer that question you actually don't know the answer to how they're actually going to get there so it's going to keep pushing because you're not you don't know how to speak their language and how to get to that signature that's the first thing we really push back on okay and then i'll follow up with the question like why do they want to buy this quarter so if they're going to buy this quarter you said they're going to buy by the end of the quarter what's the actual reason what's the compelling event for them to act like those are things if you don't really answer those questions there's a real high likelihood it's going to push to the next quarter like here's a question i make sure that everybody asks throughout the sales process it's a scary one but it's necessary which is what happens if so what happens either a if you don't make this decision or what happens if it doesn't happen by that date yeah absolutely because if you get the you know unfortunately a lot of times as well you know whatever we just say you know it is what it is we keep using our existing solution or whatever it is then you know you got a lot of work to do there but if you get the holy shit if we don't do this then we're not going to be able to hit this metric and we're not going to be able to launch this campaign or whatever it is by this date well now you got something to work with because i said the number one problem with closing for instance is we're always trying to close on our timeline not theirs correct and if you're closing on your timeline then pretty much the only thing you have to do is offer discounts to get that deal in but if i'm closing on your timeline then i can push then i can challenge your sales stuff and say hey you know what you said you wanted by the end of the year well it takes usually two weeks to go through legal it takes about a week to do onboarding and it takes about so we need to actually get that deal signed next week is that is that are you going to be able to commit to that and if not what happens if we don't have that signed by that date and then i would document the shit out of that and make sure they are crystal clear on those expectations so at the end of the year when they come panicking i can say look you know this is what happened here yeah so so i would actually use that i would have that conversation i think a lot of sales people are afraid to have that conversation so if you haven't had it you need to go have it yep what i actually do and i look in their calendars i actually pick the phone up and call them so if it's been two weeks since we've talked and i don't have a firm date for our next step i there's a trick i use that i actually figured out when they can actually potentially be available okay so if you go to your calendar and find the last time that you actually spoke to them typically that spot on their calendar is open oh nice all right or if they put an inbound lead form in at one time typically at that time is when they actually do work so if it's sunday night at 10 p.m and they put a lead form in they usually at sunday night at 10 p.m they're working so i schedule an email to go out at sunday at 10 p.m nice i'm going to call you in the morning here's what we're going to talk about and you actually map out what your process the three things you're going to discuss in that call so then when you get in the call you're not floundering of hey john i just want to know like kind of where the deals are like i know you're not going to buy yet but like where are we at like i know you're going to buy me the other quarter like that's a bullshit conversation so how do we actually have it there's here's the agenda today i want to understand what my process is to get this done for you it's not for me right how do i get this done for you and how do i do it in your timeline because it sounds like i'm pushing and i don't want to do this in my time i want to make sure that you're ready for you to buy yep where we're at what are the roadblocks what can i do to help you internally those are what you should be having well i think and also you can even pre i even preempt it look i don't want to be the annoying sales rep here you guys know as well as i do what happens the end of the year at the end of the year if it smells like a fish and it looks like a fish that thing's getting caught right and and i'm going to push for that thing to get caught so i just want to be crystal clear on expectations right here because i don't want to be the annoying sales rep calling you up every you know every day here come the end of the quarter to try to hit my number um i want to make sure it's on your timeline not mine so can we work through this right now yeah have the actual dialogue have a real conversation i agree and and there's one more thing that i'll throw out there which i would recommend everybody do right now and and phil let me know how you guys implement this or back me up on this which is if you haven't talked to somebody in a couple weeks and you know you make a phone call and you can't get them on i highly recommend we summarize the conversation and where we are up until that point some people call it a closed plan i don't think you have to be as formal with it what i usually do is hey we've been working together for a while right now it's coming up on the end of the year you know i just want to kind of circle back and kind of reset expectation where i just kind of want to outline where i see things at this point could you do me a favor and email me back to let me know if it's all accurate if i missed anything and in there i put like five or six bullet points like your current situation is this your timeline is this your priorities are this the next steps are this and blah blah could you email me back just to make sure that this is accurate and if i missed anything absolutely and i think what that does it gives you the ability if a deal starts moving it dies yeah it's like a shark in the water when it starts moving it dies and that could be forward progress or negative progress negative progress isn't always a bad thing getting them to push back and say hey we're just not ready yet here's why it's a better answer than i'm just going to go dark on you and never have a conversation with you so how do you keep it moving get it moving get it swimming and then from there you can keep moving it along yeah momentum's a bitch right either way yeah and we actually run so we actually have a process we do agile sales at costello and part of it we put in our tool so in our dashboard we actually have a movement tracker so each week we look at every deal anything that doesn't have movement we don't look at those deals and then outside of that there's four options that you can have up and out so it's either i move this deal forward or i move it out to the next quarter or i move it to a later date it's i check in so i have a check-in but then we very specifically talk about what that check-in is which is what you and i just discussed we're going to talk about what the path to signature looks like and how do i overcome xyz that's a very specific thing we're going to go do and here's my tactic to actually go do that because it might not phone might not be appropriate there right the other thing we do is let's just add another stakeholder let's go figure out how to get a second person in the conversation so you might have told me hey the process there we have to actually talk to that sales ops person before we do anything get anything done i might actually just email you say hey john i'm going to reach out to your sales ops guys i know that's part of the process to keep this moving along any hesitation with me doing that for you and then i add that other other stakeholder or we close the file let's call a spade a spade this deal is not going to get done let's close it yeah let's stop talking let's stop putting the 20 percenter in that gets pushed month over month over month because you know i always say that the the worst sin in sales isn't it isn't to lose a deal right it's to take a long time to lose it so getting it in and out as quickly as possible and focusing i think the other factor here is i we have to we even though you and i talked about the emotional component of sales and why people buy i do believe that the best thing you can do for your forecast is take as much emotion out of your forecast as possible i actually take when i was doing it when i was a vp of sales and i had sales reps report to me i i used to take the words feel and think out of the vocabulary when it came to forecast reviews i didn't give a shit what you thought about the deal and i didn't give a shit what you felt about the deal until we identified the objective criteria of what we had and ideally it was documented so that's why i go back to that summary email and why it's so important because and i'll the final tip here and then we get a roll here but one of the things that that summary email of summarizing i do it after every call but if you're trying to play catch up it's a good thing to use to play catch up if the client doesn't respond to that i'd be nervous about the deal because again you're not putting anything in that in that email that they didn't say you're putting everything that they said in their priorities and their timelines and those type and maybe even leaving some gaps to be like hey one of the things i didn't understand or didn't figure it out is this could you help me understand that if a client responds to that i'd feel real damn good about that deal and that interaction with that client if they don't respond to it i'd be very nervous about that deal i think people are always afraid to do the things that they internally feel they should be doing because they're afraid to lose the deal but frankly you're not going to win the deal anyway so go back to the place where like it's okay to maybe cause some friction like friction creates dialogue and dialogue hopefully gets things to move forward don't be afraid to take the approach to be a little bit more aggressive like and i'm not saying you have to be an asshole i'm just saying just be direct right be direct like say the things you need to say get it on the table because that's a real dialogue that that person has bought things before and i guarantee a lot of it they've gone through the process the reason why they're ducking you and hiding you is because the other sales people wouldn't do that for them yeah so i think that's be direct and have this conversation when they're tough and i don't want to add one more layer to that because i don't want people to come away from this conversation being like call up everybody and be like you're going to close this month or what like don't be the douchey sales rep doing this again do it in their best interest if you have it in their best interest hey you had told me your priorities were this you told me your timeline was this based on that are we still like what's the path to closure here and are we going to be able to get this done by the end of the year if not i totally understand i just want to know where to focus my efforts here and i don't want to be that annoying sales rep that keeps pushing on you when you're really not ready yeah start with start the phrase and help me understand right john we did these few things here's where our conversation was help me understand what i need to do for you to help you out yeah so perfect man well any uh parting words of wisdom here for uh for the public here to try to get out there and close these deals or anything that uh you'd love to impart some wisdom on last before we get out of here man there's probably so many things you talked about here uh let's let's make it happen it's monday it's q4 let's go make it happen i'm gonna steal your phrase because i love it love it let's go out and make it happen if you guys need me get in touch with me i'll go have a conversation with anybody it's just look me up on linkedin it's phil keen p-h-i-l-l two l's keen k-e-e-n-e look me up on linkedin i'll have a conversation let's chat or you can shoot me an email on costello it's just phil at and costello.com perfect and i definitely recommend everybody go check out check out phil specifically but also costello because i do think they're doing some cool shit over there and i do believe in what you guys are doing from a process standpoint so phil i appreciate you coming on uh appreciate everybody listening in today again uh check out phil online and um yeah everybody let's make it happen and good luck closing out the year strong all right everybody all right have a good one thanks phil thank you later bud so you