53: Steve Woods And Staying Top Of Mind Without Being Annoying

cool all right everybody good afternoon this is john barrows make it happen monday hopefully everybody's having a fantastic day today and ready to kick off monday strong and also had a fantastic weekend i had a great weekend because my bruins and celtics won and they are uh pretty deep into the playoffs right now so i'm pretty happy about that but steve i want to introduce steve i'm really excited here to have steve on with us um steve is the cto at nudge and uh steve could you give the team a little bit of background or people who are listening a little bit of background here about where you're coming from and then what you're doing at nudge and what nudge is all about sure glad to thanks for thanks for having me john it's exciting to be here so uh my background uh been in the general revenue space for a while the first startup i did was a company called eloqua in the marketing automation space um really took marketing as part of that journey from sort of an arts and craft discipline in in sort of the late 90s early 2000s to the marketing automation driven mql funnel analytics data process um discipline that it is today and eloqua and a few other uh players in the marketing automation space were sort of the big foundational pillars there so i i learned a lot um in that in terms of how buyers think and the early stages of the journey nudge which um my some of my founding team um came over uh to uh help start nudge with me we're looking at the sales space and and see a similar opportunity in sales to really think okay what's what's the big picture of what's going on in sales right now and how can we play a small part in in a in a transition that might happen and one of the big pieces there which i know you and i have chatted a lot about is that relationships are absolutely core to getting deals done getting into new relationships growing the trust building those relationships staying in touch understanding what what web of relationships you and the team has but historically they've been very very hard to measure can't really measure them in in crm you'd have to sort of do a lot of fancy footwork there and the connection tools like linkedin don't give you the key piece which is how strong is the relationship with nudge we dove in and said okay let's let's measure the relationship and then through that help sales people build relationships and access them and help sales leaders measure and understand what their team is doing by by wrapping analytics around that that core piece which is the relationship i love it man and and actually from your perspective because i i think we're in a similar position in the sales tool world as we were in the marketing tool worlds kind of around the time eloquor got purchased right because you know there's typically hey we've there's a market and there's a whole bunch of players and then they elevate to maybe three four five and then there's the acquisition from from the big team where do you see us right now i mean i know we're going to be talking about you know staying in touch with people and how to engage in longer sales cycles and stay relevant but i'm just kind of curious on my own perspective like where do you see this this sales tool market right now as it matures are we are we at the beginning stages of it the middle kind of are we looking at the consolidation phase over the next year or two like what kind of what's your view on that right now yeah i'd say we're um in in an exploration phase i i think sales has sort of moved from this is something that i'm going to do intuitively as a salesperson and there's no measurement there's no tools there's nothing involved we're we're out of that phase there's a lot of tooling being explored the reason that what i that i don't say that we've moved out of the exploration phase is i don't think we've really landed on this is an approach that is going to stand the test of time right like if you look as an example we explored sort of this this kind of automation phase there just you know hammer out the did you get my email did you get my email just wanted to follow up and you know it worked for a bit and then kind of collapsed on itself because it kind of assumed that every buyer was a buyer who had never seen that type of tooling before right you know you send those works great the 138 thousandth time you send those not so good um so i think one two or three stuck on a rock thing right yeah zombies and skeletons and rocks it turns out people have seen those tricks before um so so i think you know great exploration and a lot of really good learnings from the teams that we built and the measurements we put in place with with exploring any of those tools i don't think that the space in general has said okay you want to run b2b sales this is a process approach and tech stack that is going to stand the test of time and will be as relevant in five years as it is today i don't think we're i think we're exploring i think there's a lot of great tools and great ideas that are coming together in unique ways um but i don't think it's quite landed on this is the answer do you think we'll get there like because i and i'm sorry the reason i ask is because i think marketing there's a certain playbook that you can play with marketing right and and you know i think they're moving towards account-based market you know those type of things are fine and there's there's kind of some standard things do you think that sales this that you know with where we are with all these different ai and and how fast things are evolving do you think we're ever going to get to that point where there is kind of a standard best practice approach that will last more than six months to a year i'm gonna go with yes and and i think that's probably a controversial answer but but i think if you if you come at it from a perspective of what observations about the market will remain true over the long term you can you can get there so what i mean by that is one of one of the big drivers of of all the dynamics that's going on in marketing and sales is the buyers are running their own process they get their own information they form their own opinions um we can assume that that will continue right throw that out there's assumption one buyers will run their own process to the utmost of their ability they don't they don't seek out sales people uh however the the point that is also true is good sellers should have a perspective advantage over buyers if you know the things that you're selling then it should be something where it's advantageous for me to talk to you and get a perspective and insights how my business which i might know best can be affected by your solution which you know best and we have a melt melt of the minds and come up with a perspective that i didn't as a buyer have before that there there should always be that knowledge advantage there so if you if you say okay for the long term sales is all about guiding buyers down a buying journey but that guiding can be something that we can really um rely on and invest in and double down on which is understand the journey and apply knowledge and perspective to say hey here's a here's a new way of thinking about it here's an idea here's where you might go next yeah it's interesting because i i say that all the time i i i fundamentally believe that our job in sales has changed so drastically from the day and i talked pre and post internet right uh like pre-internet it was absolutely 100 our job to educate on features functions speeds and feeds and that type of stuff because we were the only ones that had the information right so the buyer didn't even know that this was an option for them now everything's a google search away so and this kind of translates to our conversation here which is i firmly believe it's our job to not to pitch them on anything or try to sell them but it's to get them to think because my belief right now is i and i say this all the time if you are comfortable with where you are right now i don't care if you're what job you're in what role you have what industry you're in if you are comfortable with where you are i'm worried for you because there's going to be an app that comes out tomorrow there's going to be a technology that happens that either erases an industry or makes a job irrelevant or whatever and if we're not paying attention even if you're okay right now saying look status quo right now i'm good i got other things going on if i can nurture that like get you know throw something out there that gets you to pause for a second and go huh maybe and then nurture it the right way now all of a sudden when that does come up to the top up you're the one i'm re you know you're coming to me instead of me pushing on you right absolutely you've because what you've done there is you've you've taken an understanding of a rally you've gotten into someone's head and said i bet you this is kind of what you're feeling right now what you're observing and you've introduced something that wasn't there before here's a here's a new way of thinking about the world maybe not a good way maybe not a comfortable way here's a new way of thinking about the world and it's not a pitch it's not a hey buy my buy my widget it's a it's a pitch of an idea hey think about the world this way and that thrown out there value added allows that sort of nugget of building of trust you know when when that moment comes up where it's like huh that that john barrows guy was was right it was a little uncomfortable but he kind of made a point and it's good okay what else does you have to say what else is going on and how can we how can i surround myself with people that think ahead of where i am on this particular dimension and so we're talking effectively challenger sale right because that's a lot of what challenger sale is built on their their whole you know approach of lead with insights that type of thing but the thing i've always found a little bit challenging with challenger sale is that challenger sale tends to pull it all back to how i can help you do that right so it's like hey here's an interesting article let me share with you how we've helped our customers address that challenge right so that's the way i don't believe that we always have to tie it back to us i believe that we can share insights with people to get them to think that literally have almost nothing to do with us but really put us in the position and i guess my question for you is this is how do you do that in a in a genuine way without being the sales rep that's just obviously trying to share stuff that's you know i i get a lot of stuff that people share with me that's kind of like the duh factor it's like okay you know that's about as obvious as it gets there i see what you're trying to do you're trying to show value and that type of stuff but it almost comes across as disingenuous because it's so duh it's like the old school days of going into somebody's office and looking at their picture on their desk oh so you're a fisherman oh i fish too you know that type of shit and and so how do you do it in an authentic way that that really does show value because i always worry about you know sharing something with somebody and having you look at because it's almost it almost could be worse if you don't share at all right if i share something with you that's just so stupid or or shows my lack of intelligence around what your real interests are and i know that's a lot of what nudge is all about is really understanding what those people's footprint is and what they're trying to do but how do you do in a genuine way yeah no and i think you you have hit on a fascinating challenge which you know if i can if i can kind of come at that answer through this interesting combination of humanity and ai it opens up an interesting um area of dialogue which is to say that that the duh factor is is out there right there are a ton of facts about you know hey john you like sales let's talk about say like yeah you know i haven't moved our relationship forward i've moved it backwards i've moved up into the bucket as of kind of an idiot um so the the way to think about sort of splitting the effect of ai on the sales world and the tasks that we as humans still have remaining is around the duh factor so ai is phenomenally good at repetitive tasks looking into every single person and organization you're trying to sell to and saying here's a brief here's a brief on this person here's a brief on another person there here's a brief on um the company that you're selling to here are a lot of facts and potential insights you're the human you figure out what is going to connect if i say hey john you like sales i like sales too the ai wasn't wrong right and was wrong right but if i if i say hey john you're at the forefront of um of of research into what the next b2b sales environment is going to look like for the next five years and there's this really interesting study here that had a data point that's completely counterintuitive um it's just this niche niche paper i thought you might like that okay well maybe you would you know i can i can see that and i can put that together as a human and say this might work for this particular person i can get inside your head and i think that's what the best sales people are going to do they're going to take a broader brief and turn it into the so what that is going to match that human need for for that right level of uh depth and non-obviousness i like it yeah and i i mean i got a whole talk track around this i think we chatted about before and which is you know and i stole it from gary v and i'm actually it's funny because i'm developing a whole keynote speech around this for you know that half hour kickoff keynote and uh and i just did a presentation around it as well and the whole concept of context versus content right and and you know gary talks everybody talks about content is king content is king it's like fine if content is king then context is god and that to me is marketing versus sales right marketing is content sales is context and and that's where i believe ai is right and you've heard me say this where it's i believe ai is going to make good sales reps great great sales reps incredible and average sales reps are relevant yep right so so i'm going to talk i'm going to talk pre and post conversation here like so say there's i'm prospecting into you and then so how do i how do i engage with you at that level without being overly annoying and and disingenuous but then once we engage how do i you know kind of the main topic of here is how do you manage that complex deal cycle and staying engaged without being you know touching base and checking in so but let's talk about prior to okay um there's obviously the hey i'm calling you because this that trigger happened right you said holy crap i'm hiring a whole bunch of sales reps i need sales training right now and you know you tweeted about it or whatever and i picked up on that and said hey what's up we gotta talk right um but how do you know what's your approach on the prospecting side of layering in these kind of nuggets of information in and out of your calls and your emails and those type of things so say say somebody was prospecting to you okay and they were trying to sell you whatever it was um you know something again that wasn't top of mind for you but okay it might be something in the future you'd be looking at how would they engage with you at a level that you would see as valuable being the cto of you know of nudge right i mean a company who's on the radar for a lot of people you know fast growing your background probably dictates a lot of people are looking at you right now so i'm assuming you get prospected to a lot what is that prospecting effort that gets your attention these days that includes those sharing of insights like do you have an example recently of a rep that shared with you something that got you to pay attention and stop and think yeah yeah i think i mean to me that the key point really is that is that guiding right like you know you go back to you're taking the tour of the mayan ruins down in mexico and the guide's not the one that's pointing out the regular path right there's there's signage that points out the regular path go up here go up there the guide's the one that points out the tiny little rock and says hey you see that thing with the sun on it that's a little rock on the side here's a story around that here's here's why you know when you're here and you see and the sun happens here's something fascinatingly interesting like oh i would have walked right past that rock and and that to me is really where salespeople have to land you've got to work with the organization to say okay here's the main path here's what everyone's going to go down in terms of discovering the thing that is that we're doing but give us those moments there where we can identify that the buyer is at this phase of their journey and help us encapsulate the story around the tiny little rock help us when when they're at this point in their journey their mindset is going to be here their knowledge level is going to be there what is the one thing that i can just put in front of you and say hey john look at the tiny little rock you know you're going to want to think this this and this go ahead with the journey enjoy the journey it's great good to see you on the journey um i'll see you the next tiny little rock but for now look over to the side of the road and understand the history here and i think that you know when that comes down to the tangible um tangible reality that can be anything from you're in a trial and hey given your background you're probably going to want to go into settings and turn this thing on oh i didn't know there was a thing okay great i'll do that or um you know it looks like you've had some struggles in this area there's actually a really interesting webinar that looks at that area in in a lot of depth it's 15 minutes you might want to dive in on that it's it's navigating that path which is really two parts understand deeply where the person is on their path and be able to have those little nuggets that make them more successful and more enjoyable on that path so on so let's define path right because we talked earlier about how sometimes they're not even on the path right because they don't even know what they don't know and this is something for them other times they've kind of identified this as an issue and they're moving down that path in a pretty systematic way for their from their standpoint we interject so what about those so is that the path that you're talking about like the path to uh a solution for a problem or the path of their business the path to a solution for a problem so you know if you're in a business where nobody is engaging in the journey of understanding what it is that you do and how it might help you know you've got a product market fit problem right like okay well what do you solve for who right and if you solve something for somebody then the next step is understanding how many of those somebodies are aware on that journey and the journey is different for every business some of them it's a lot of you know reading and and sort of the literature-based journey where they're they're you know reading white papers on the theory behind what you do some of it it's very um trial based they're getting their feet wet in in sort of a kind of a one-person version and then a small version of the widget whatever it is you know the journey is unique per business but you you've got to assume that people are on that journey or you've got a product market fit challenge that you know i think most sales people would really struggle to to resolve um but if they're on the journey understand where they are and figure out how you can add value to that journey gotcha is there any way you can you know what are you what's your because i i get this question a lot from sales reps who at least position who at least think and i think this is a bad mentality to have um but a lot of times it's been beaten into them right they're a they're a like to have not a must have yeah you know how do you transition that from uh you know a like to the mint i think from a sales rep standpoint there's some things that we could talk about but how what are some tactical ways that you've been able to figure out or some suggestions that you can have based on what you've been doing these days of how you can get a rep to get somebody to cross that chasm to say you know what it's not just a like to have this is something i really should be considering it might not be a it you know i think uh i forget who talks about it but it's like there's water air there's air water food or something like that like air we all have to have or else we don't we die in a minute right water if you don't have it for a you know a couple of days you'll die in a couple of days food you can last four or five days without food right so so it might not be air but how do you make how do you make a uh food which is kind of like to have in some cases to a must have like water is there ways that you've been able to see reps as they nurture relationships be able to make that transition to a client yeah so i'd say there's there's sort of the the short way and the long way um the short way is really storytelling right and and you know you talk about this a lot like if if you want somebody to see things in a different emotional landscape which is what we're talking about right the the emotion of oh my god i've got to have that versus it's interesting it's kind of sure maybe later um that is storytelling that is understanding what emotional hooks are going to get you inside that person's head that is having them identify with the characters in the story and the story is probably going to be about customers that have had that pain so so that's the short way and that's you know that's a skill set and that's that's challenging but possible the the long way i'm reminded of sort of um and i hate to pick on millennials because we've all done that but you know you interact with anyone in a younger generation this has been true for every single generation so it's just that i happen to be of this age i'm not saying millennials are particularly unique in this capacity i'm sure my generation was too but you know you're you're giving advice from this perspective of having made the mistake before and saying you know don't go down the hallway don't no don't go down this is going to happen here's what's going to happen if you go don't go down the hall you went down the hallway yeah and this happened didn't it yeah it happened right some of those experiences of realizing that this thing is is important to you as water it's very difficult to see in advance until that great educator of experience taps you on the shoulder and says you need to consider this yeah and i think you know that comes down to short cycle versus long cycle in a sales deal are you going to have to put the don't go down the hallway queues in front of the person and have them make the mistake and then come back to you and say you know what you're you were totally right i'm sorry i should have listened okay great or can you tell a story and get them to say you know what you're right that hallway is a little darker looking than i would have thought good point i like it yeah it's funny because i'm so with morgan right i hired him and he's and he was an sdr and an sdr manager so he's never closed deals and what was funny is like and and i got him on a slow ramp right but i got to teach him how to close while going out and delivering whatever and he got a whole bunch of deals into his pipeline um because we went we wanted some short-term wins right so i had him talk to sdr managers because he could speak that language and and it was great he got these awesome conversations and i knew what was going to happen sdr managers are not power you know what i mean like they're not usually they're not the decision makers the ones who can have the budget those type of things so they always have to go ask for budget and usually they're 24 5 6 year old kids who don't have a lot of business experience presenting a business case to a vp of sales to say hey i need some money for this even though it wasn't in the budget and so he got a whole bunch of deals that were stuck in his pipeline and we analyzed him and the one common theme was and i told him earlier but i didn't really emphasize it enough i said power is the key if you don't get to power the likelihood of your deal you know someone is at least engaged with that person at some shape or form you know early on so that you have a tie to them right and sure as shit a bunch of his deals stuck in the pipeline and we looked at all of them and there was like yep there it is there it is it's not no power no power now the ones that did close power power power power so it's like that experience level to a certain degree and again with a kid i don't do you have kids i do they're they're only eight and six so i say so my daughter's seven and it's and it's that tough part about being a parent of being like oh don't do that because i know if you do that that versus you kind of have to experience that you know what i mean it it's like the whole touch the stove right do you let the kid touch the stove and burn their hand and hold say holy shit that thing's hot i'll never do that again or do you just tell them don't touch the stove because you'll burn your hand and it's yeah and i think that's sort of you know it's this interesting thing which is you're limited by language right like in your head you're like here this is clear as day i can look at what's going on in front of me i can see the patterns but then you have to articulate okay the power is key and don't touch the stove which they're not untrue right but they don't capture what's going on in your head and the emotions and the you know the feeling of the the finger on the on the element on the stove you can't put language and even when you go through the learnings you're like okay why did i miss that learning how would i articulate that like i would say don't touch the stove okay i don't want anything better right you're limited by the medium that we use which is language absolutely all right so we have a few minutes left i wanted to dive in a little bit more on the on the latter stages so now that we have somebody right and again i'm going to use morgan as an example here but this happens to all of us hey you know what this sounds great why don't you touch base in q3 because we got too many things going on right now how does that rep stay connected to that person top of mind with that person without touching base and checking in which is my two least favorite phrases and sales and also without being the you know the typical sales rep that calls up you told me to call you in three months it's now three months where you know what's going on and getting the uh you know what call me in another three months so so what can reps do to stay relevant and top of mind without being annoying in that stretch if they can't accelerate it sooner obviously yeah so so i'm going to do two things which is tease apart top of mind and relevance so that you've got to do both right you've got to remain relevant you've also got to remain top of mind i think a lot of people try and conflate those which is to say the only thing that we can talk about once we've had a conversation is the business at hand okay well now you're just kind of a boring one-dimensional um flack but you know so why not introduce some of the other topics you know the the the sports teams and the the hobbies and the family and things like that you know add more dimensionality to it and that's the world that we're in right you see people's accomplishments you see what they're doing you see you know what they're sharing in social media getting in there and cheering that and engaging on that and and being a fan of that keeps you top of mind it does not keep you relevant right it keeps you top of mind and through that you're able to um you're able to um be somebody that they're familiar with you're able to be somebody that they you know they they know they recognize your name um and then it gives you this opportunity to do the other side which is to remain relevant finding their journey their company's journey the industry's journey and mapping that back to what might be interesting for them finding those nuggets and saying hey i'm not i'm not trying to ask for a 30 minute meeting i'm trying to send you something that is interesting and the success metric is hey if you send it back and say cool that was interesting boom i've done my job i'm not gonna flip that around and be like oh you thought that was interesting why don't we get on the phone for 30 minutes no i'm okay with that i know that if i can keep that relationship alive when it is time you might come back to me yeah i love that and that's why you know so some tactical things for for people listening it's that's why i used to use funding for instance as a reason to reach out to you i don't use funding anymore because god help that person that's on that list that like once that hits crunch base it's eight million sales reps reach it all right so i got a bunch of money let me show you how to spend it right but what i do do is i use funding as a reason to let you know i'm paying attention so what i would do is say you guys got funding it's like hey steve saw you got some funding congrats hopefully that means something good for you personally and professionally yeah and that's it no let's talk about it no nothing like that or you know if i saw you were quoted or you got an award awards are another great thing hey congrats on that award i've been keeping myself updated on you hopefully things are going well yeah and you can sprinkle in like now is a good time for me like if somebody uh if somebody's trying to stay on my radar uh bruins and celtics are in the playoffs right and and they just had a great weekend so if you wanted to ping me today or even last night and be like hey john or saturday night hey john great win by the bruins great win by the celtics second round you know that type of stuff like it's a it's a point of like okay that kid paying attention no that's not a value add thing but that's a top of mind thing like because i like the way you put that you separated those right top of mind versus um what was the top of mind versus relevance relevance i love those okay and i would say i mean that the wonderful thing there is slam the door make it really abundantly obvious that you don't want the 30 minute meeting because as a buyer you're like oh crap this person's like they're really kind of angling for a meeting and if i reply it's a trap like if you're like hey awesome just want to you know i do not want a meeting with you i'm not asking that at all it's not not even implied awesome job yeah and that's it and then you might get a reply saying cool thanks man hope you're well my last question i just want to make sure that i'm i'm doing this right because this is the way i do this i stay relevant in two more minutes and then we'll get off um is um is i actually ask people in the qualification phase like where are they on certain things right so for instance like hey where are you on social selling and where are you on artificial intelligence and if you tell me oh yeah john social selling is top of my list artificial intelligence is top of my list what i go do is i go listen for artificial intelligence and social selling type articles like on feed me that type of stuff and then i track you in salesforce that says hey this you're steve cares about artificial intelligence and social selling and so when i read a cool article about that that i get some value out of i run that list and then i share it out with hey and i run a report that says hey who's in who's in my vp's of sales in my tier one industries that care about social selling and share that article is that something that you recommend and is that something obviously nudge can help out with absolutely on both of those yeah the this comes right back to our starting commentary around the duh factor right do that do the research but think who is this person and are they you know do they have a phd in ai and are you sending them an article that says this ai thing might be big 20 any points but but if you can if you can do the research do the relevance and use your humanity to apply the duh factor then that's a golden strategy and that's why i think the last comment i'll make is that's why where social selling flipped for me is when i started looking at it as educating myself first and then when i learned something that's when i shared it out that's that's where it started i became much more genuine with my approach absolutely with that see last words uh where can people find out more about you more about nudge and um and how can we stay on top of what you guys are doing these days because i know you're doing some really cool shit nudge.ai is the the place to go there's a free trial of premium product we can uh educate you anything further than that um connect with me on on all the social platforms and uh glad to join any conversations awesome no thanks for coming on steve i think we could probably extend this for another hour you and i but uh let's maybe do that for another day all right so thanks so much for coming on and thanks everybody for listening y'all have a great day and make it happen you you you you you you you Thank you.