Encore: Design Thinking with Ashley Welch

so I'm here with Ashley it's good to see you talk to me first of all the reason I wanted to interview you is because design thinking is I'm very interested in and I know that Somersault does that so first of all give a little background of what's up who you are what Somersault is and then we'll get into it so we're talking to me to me that give me a little all right so I'm the co-founder of Somersault innovation with Justin Jones Somersault innovation is a boutique consultancy that is we're teachers and coaches of design thinking I'll tell you about and we're taking also one of the unique things we're doing is taking the tools from design thinking and sticking into the sales environment okay to enhance revenue generation all right cool so now the premise of this is what is design thinking because I because I I think I have a good handle on it but I but I I know I don't so forgive me what is design thinking and then let's talk about how design thinking applies to sales okay so design thinking is I think of it as three things it's a process it's a set of tools that you use in that process and then it's a set of mindsets okay and the mindsets first of all our empathy curiosity customer centricity okay and agility okay and those sort of span those are underpinnings of anything you're doing in design you're always thinking that way so what design thinking is is a process that starts with the customer and what is the customer desire yeah and then think about what's feasible or reasonable for your company or how are you going to make the most amount of money for your company okay first start with what is the customer desire yeah derive some insights about unmet needs and motivations about your customer and then take that as your inspiration for what you create so let's talk about real world examples of design thinking then we'll talk about sales so like Apple yes so give us give me some examples like that I would you know my iPhone your Apple mouse okay was created in a design thinking process okay so in so what we do all the time companies all over the place do is like oh I've got a great idea John Barrow's gonna love this I'm gonna make this thing and he's gonna love it and maybe you do and maybe you don't sure a design thinker would say okay well hold on a second let's just watch John work at his computer okay and see what he does and how does he interact with his computer and then let's watch a few other interesting groups and we're gonna start to see that one of their interests or their unmet needs is XYZ you're looking for patterns and themes about what's interesting and then from there you see what Apple did is say like well hold on a second there's something interesting here what if we created this to support how John works and make it more efficient so instead of like Microsoft forcing me to use the trackball and in format this it's hey like I'd rather just kind of scroll my way yeah and I'm watching you and you're kind of doing that and I'm picking this up from a number of people and then I build whatever I create based on what I understand is desirable for my customer got it so now how do we from a sales so I'm going to talk about what you currently are focusing on because I can totally understand like like a field enterprise sales rep experiencing something so let's talk about that okay but then I want to talk about what you're focusing on what you're focusing on because I can totally understand like like a field enterprise sales rep experiencing something so let's talk about that okay but then I want to talk about also like the people that I usually deal with which I like the inside sales which is how they can use it so talk to me about kind of the the I'm going after a huge account yeah CVS okay you know let's use CVS okay so what we're doing in sales is we're saying if I think about design thinking is like a scratch kitchen of all these ingredients we're saying what can we involve from this scratch kitchen what ingredients can we throw on to field reps that are going to transform how they sell we're not saying use a whole design thinking process we're saying what can we borrow from that that you can use so the biggest thing we borrow from design thinking is this understanding of understand who your customer is and who your customers customer is and figure out what they care about so let's say CVS it's your account so many times what sales rep do is they get online they look they look at the 10k they look at the 10k they look at Lincoln they do all their due diligence they do all their due diligence they read all the analyst reports and what we're saying is like that's good do your due diligence you can't skip that step but now I want you particularly CVS that's easy we want you to go right go to CVS be a customer be what we call fly on the wall and just watch how customers engage talk to somebody who works there and start to think about like just be curious about them okay and their business and forget about what you're selling I always say leave your sales force backpack at home with all your wares like forget about it it's like as Justin would say they don't give a hot damn about your cloud services so just be curious so just be curious and from that curiosity you can start to pick up interesting insights about what's meaningful what perhaps they're missing what customers are saying I mean at the end of the day CVS cares what their customers are saying so if you can deliver something interesting about what customers are saying it's going to change the nature of the conversation which is the only thing we're looking to do right now okay so does it does it start though with you know we talk a lot we talk about all this at this conference you know account based marketing account based selling and all of that starts with that ideal customer profile yeah right so it's like first of all how do you identify like CVS is a good company because sometimes I can see like some reps being like I got shit to sell CVS you know I don't know I don't care how empathetic I am with them I got nothing to offer them so what's the process you walk people through do you walk into companies that tend to would you help them identify what that ideal customer profile looks like and then what to look for no okay so we don't we are sort of company or account agnostic okay cool so it could be B2B it could be B2C all we're saying is at the end of the day you need to be creative and curious okay and start to think about the ecosystems of customers that surround your target and figure out try to get as close as you can to figure out what they care about and value and and we give you a slew of things the way that you don't know what they do okay cool like okay so we say like okay so we say and this is again borrowing from design we're saying look for support we are sort of company or account agnostic they are sort of company or account agnostic so it could be B2B it could be B2B it could be B2C all we're saying is at the end of the day you need to be creative and curious and start to think about the ecosystems of customers that surround your target and figure out try to get as close as you can to figure out what they care about and value and we give you a slew of things to look for like okay so we say and this is again borrowing from design we're saying look for surprises so when you see something that surprises you like I'll give you an example in a minute actually if you see something surprises you instead of just like oh and keep going like double down like tell me more about that like why did you do that I wouldn't have done that tell me more look for hacks and workarounds what are people doing to get around the system because it doesn't work for them we're very creative right we do things all the time and that's a clear clue to an unmet need people see like this guy went into the sports center and he was talking to the sales guy there who worked there was a store and he saw that he had all these stickies on his computer and that's how he was keeping track of leads okay so that's that's a hack right so that's interesting so tell me more about that why do you do that why don't you use the system you don't have a system or your system doesn't work all right so you look for hacks or work brands and then you look for what do people value like everybody would see like there's let's say you're going to CVS and the aisle with the snacks that are chocolate covered blueberries are all missing because everybody's buying them out like that's interesting people some there's something there that people value again double down to find out more about that okay cool so now talk to me about how so that's I could totally see Bank of America is my account CVS is my account a major account sales rep at Salesforce or any one of these companies makes total sense yeah um help me understand how the 23 year old kid who does because I train what you talked about which is do your homework 10k look for the triggers look for the information look at their websites and and that is kind of way better than just blasting out a 10 foot email but how would you how would a rep look for empathetic you know like look for empathy at scale or be empathetic yeah like to your better way to put it is is be empathetic at scale yeah okay right so these bdrs they're making 90 calls a day so how the hell are they doing this yes um so one thing we talk about is just this flip in your mindset flip in your mindset of being customer centric versus me centric right one guy said to us the other day wait a second this is like sell by design meaning sell by designing for your customer versus selfish by design okay right like it's not about me it's about them okay um so look for things that are about them versus that that they care about and that are sort of um I was thinking like it's a little closer to them than an analyst report like um customer sat reviews for example or get on glass door whatever what are all the employees saying yeah yeah yeah yeah so one um so my first thing is just change your mindset that just might change some of the actions of what you're looking for to you may decide that like I want to I want to go deeper I want to go deeper on a few accounts because I'm interested or it feels easier and the rest I'm just going to continue to do my thing so this one woman bdr we worked with had six flags yep so she downloaded the loyalty um app and then also got on instagram and started playing around with like well where's the best ride coming out right now and realized that there was this huge fan base of six flag people and that then this new ride came out and these fans didn't know so that's interesting information so she just needed that took you know not too long and so then she was able to contact them and say hey did you know xyz nice nice that's just meaningful yep a way to engage somebody that's different yeah and that's like so I think because that to me is always scary people talk about account based marketing and I'm telling them like people say oh everybody no you don't have to do account based marketing if you're smb yeah you know what I mean like it's just not feasible to come up with a strategy about 5,000 accounts in your territory so to your point of tearing things up yeah um you know focusing on a certain subset of them and actually giving a shit yeah as opposed to just blasting out whatever so I think that's probably my takeaway which kind of ties to what I train reps on is structure yeah right of saying okay let's just pick a few yeah yeah yeah because what happens is my experience is is that that mindset shift translates that's right you know you start to translate into the other ones yeah and then you start to see a much more right you know I always say I talk about a sales rep uh I call it catching your sales group it's when it's like sales is hard for a while you didn't and all of a sudden one day it kind of just clicks and and and and that day it's when you stop pitching your solutions and you start having conversations about your solutions you start caring more about the client's needs than you do about your commission checks and when that happens that's when your commission says that's right so design thinking is the same thing right it's like once you start stop thinking about I gotta hit my quota that's right and it's so hard for a rep to do that because I think we're getting pushed into this we're still in this world of getting you know monthly quarterly things but it's so funny how once you genuinely make that switch about how things like for me negotiations is is so much easier now for me because when I because I always talk about the number one thing that you can do to help with negotiations is prospect yeah big fat pipeline yeah right and and so now I turn down more business than I bring on yeah and it's weird I called you know closing technique is a walkaway close yeah the psychology behind a walkaway close is bananas yeah like I'm sorry I don't have time for you yeah it's like you know what you're not a good fit for us and as soon as that happens and you're genuine about it you're like look no I appreciate it yeah we're not a good fit here the client's like wait a minute they almost like force you to do business with them it's like a weird psychic it's the same thing it sounds like it's the same thing with design thinking right whereas like when you make that shift now all of a sudden it's like your eyes open and just like you see the world a whole different way I love this guy said to me he said wait a second you're teaching me to fall in love with my customer not the other way around like instead of trying to make them love me if I put myself in their shoes and really really empathize and fall in love with them then that gen that connection is genuine and I really do want to help you absolutely well that you know and that's really ultimately to me what sales is like true sales is helping people yeah like if you're I will say this to the day I die like if you're in sales just to make a buck yeah fuck out of sales like you're the one who's given us all a bad name right um you're we're here to to make the connections like you have a problem I have a solution that makes a difference and I'm and I'm putting these together because I want to help and if you're not doing it for that reason you shouldn't be in sales that's right absolutely very cool awesome well this was a great conversation yeah thank you so much of course it's always great seeing you thanks cool thanks that was cool