The 17% Rule: Why Most Reps Miss Quota with Guy Rubin

All right, I never thought I'd say this, but I don't take notes on my sales calls anymore. And it's not because I'm getting lazy, it's because I'm using Otter.ai to take them for me. Otter.ai lets me invite an AI note-taker into all my sales calls, which not only transcribes them for me, but summarizes them, pulls out sales-specific insights, and syncs everything to my CRM. Oh, and it has an incredible AI chat feature that allows me to ask it any question I have about any meeting. Even if my note-taker wasn't in the meeting, I can simply upload any recorded conversation to Otter. The amount of time it personally saves me is absolutely ridiculous. And that's not even scratching the surface of what it can do for teams.

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And today's conversation is with Guy Rubin. He is the CEO of Ebsta, a revenue intelligence platform that guarantees to increase B2B sellers' quota attainment within six months. And they just got acquired too. So it was a really cool conversation. And as always, we started the conversation with his background and where he's going. And he started Ebsta self-funded. And I always find that very interesting, like not getting a bunch of VC backing and getting that pressure. So I dove into that a little bit and his entrepreneurial itch, where he got it from and how he realized he wasn't really set for corporate. Even though now he's acquired and he's going to play well with the acquisition company, but it aligned with his values and direction.

So that was really important. And then when you got into, you know, some of the data that they have, they put together a 2025 sales qualification report and also, you know, a couple of other ones that brought out some really interesting data because their platform sees a lot more than most organizations do and really honed in on qualification and the importance of qualification and how, what the best reps do. And some of the data was validating, but also stunning to see in real life, which is, you know, 70, I think it was 17% of your top performers produce 80 something percent. So there's Pareto's rule, like in like factual. And it got me to ask like, where, what does that leave the other 80% of the reps, especially now in the world of AI, that AI can do it a lot better than most of the reps can.

And, you know, I think we are proving right now that we are moving back to full cycle sales. I mean, this data shows it and what the best reps do, what the best organizations are doing. So we got into a lot of this and, and this kind of future discussion here of where we are evolving to with sales reps needing to be more product knowledge and relationship developers and everything else. But, um, this one should be an eyeopening one for you as far as, uh, where things are going right now. And I think where we as sales professionals have to elevate to and pretty undeniable in my opinion of what's going on right now, only the strong are going to survive and only the ones who know how to have business conversations who can be dynamic and agile enough and help customers buy and get out of the trying to sell you something mentality and who gives a shit about the features and functions of your stuff.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Sales these days has nothing to do with what you sell. It has everything to do with how you sell. And we got to level up right now because we've got to sell a lot better than we have been. So hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Guy Rubin, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? John, lovely to see you. Uh, it's been too long. Uh, doing very well. Thank you. Yeah, good. Where are you actually, where are you actually calling in from right now? Uh, so I'm in London at the moment. Um, we just got back from DC at the GTM event where I saw you. Um, and, uh, our next, our next long haul trip is, uh, is Dreamforce, uh, in October.

Uh, so you're going to that. This is, I think this is going to be the first year I skipped Dreamforce. So I've, I've been into it like, I think 12 years in a row outside of the COVID year. Um, and this is, I think this will be the first year in 12 or 13 years that I actually missed Dreamforce. So, uh, are you guys getting a booth or anything or are you just going to go work the floor? Um, but the, we've got, uh, planning just to work the floor, uh, but we, we've actually gone office, uh, one block from Moscone. So we're going to be hosting a happy hour and, uh, and a few, a few kind of customer meetings while we're there as well. There you go. Those are always my favorites like that going. I don't think, I think there's maybe only been about two or three years where I've actually gone to the conference itself.

Most years what I do is I get the most, I love where there's that offsite where people just go and plug in and, you know, hang out, grab drinks and a quiet. Environment. My favorite, those, you know, the W that's right there on the corner of Moscone, right? I sit there at, at a kind of high top table. I grabbed the waitress and I say, and I give her like $300 and I'm like, I'm just going to be here for a few hours here. And I just want you to keep bringing water and keep bringing chips and guac. And so all, you know, everybody I know just cycles through the W and they sit down for a few minutes. We have a conversation. Then somebody else comes. I have another conversation. So I get like 50 meetings done in the like three hours and get the most value of it and barely spend a dime.

So it's my favorite way of managing dream force. Yeah. I hear you. It can be carnage. I think they're expecting over 150,000 people. It's insane. Did they go up that high again? Cause I remember they were there at 2018. It was, it was 150. They had brought two cruise ships in because there weren't enough hotel rooms and it was absurd. I actually, after that, I swore it off. I was like, I'm never coming back to this cause this is misery. But then dream force kind of course corrected it and it was down to like 50 or 60,000, but it's back up to 150 again. I mean, that, that's what I was told, but we'll, you know, we'll have to wait and see until we get there. But yeah, that's, that's my understanding.

So it is carnage. Oh, then I'm glad I'm not going. Yeah. Sorry. So, um, but look, guy, let's, uh, we're going to get into a lot of, uh, you got a really cool report that just came out. Um, we're going to talk a lot about discovery right now and the importance of it, um, now more than ever. But before we do that, I always love to, you know, audience get to know you a little bit better, you know, more than what we can read on, on LinkedIn. So talk to us a little bit about your, your origin story. I know you're a huge, uh, Tottenham Spurs fan. I know, uh, you're big out in London, uh, and you split your time between the two. You got a wife and a couple of kids here, but. Talk to me a little bit about kind of growing up and where you caught the bug, if you will, like parents and, and, you know, the entrepreneurship bug.

Cause you started, uh, Ebsta fully, you know, without any funding on your own bootstrapping it. So we'll get to that, but I want to figure out where that itch came from. So, uh, talk to me a little bit about how you grew up. Well, um, I was never particularly academic. Um, so I left school quite early. Uh, my father insisted I go and get a real job. Um, and so I, I went through the, the journey of qualifying as an accountant, which, um, um, I hated, but at least I, I learned how to read a balance sheet. Um, uh, as soon as I qualified, I stepped away from that. And, uh, I always enjoyed technology. Um, and I, I got into, uh, an ecosystem around, uh, kind of, uh, recruitment tech. Uh, so that was, that, that really got me, uh, into the, into the space.

Uh, I ran a business called iProfile for seven years, um, in that space. Uh, I was involved with a couple of other businesses that had, uh, M&A, uh, in and around, uh, the recruitment tech space. And then, um, realized that I, I, I wasn't very good at being an employee, um, and, uh, and decided to go off on our own. And, and, and so I joined with a friend of mine at the time. And, um, we set up the business that became Evster. Um, and, and that was, that was what, 12 years ago now. Love it. Talk to me a little bit about when you realized that you weren't really cut out for corporate. Cause I think there's a, there's, there's, you know, I've had a couple of conversations recently about, you know, the difference between being an entrepreneur and being somebody who likes startups versus somebody who, you know, fits into the corporate culture.

And I was one who did not fit into the corporate culture, even though I didn't know it, you know, something just didn't feel right to me. And then I was, I thought I was an entrepreneur, but I wasn't cause I just joined a small business that my buddy started, who was the entrepreneur. And then I kind of went off on my own, i.e. becoming an entrepreneur. So I, you know, I think the audience of sales professionals always has kind of some type of entrepreneurial spirit, spirit to us. So walk us through kind of your journey of realizing like, this wasn't, this doesn't feel right. Like, was it something specific that you noticed that you didn't just enjoy about the corporate and having other people tell you what to do?

Or was it just more of an evolution for you? Well, I need to be a little bit careful because as you know, a month ago, um, we sold Ebster and Ebster has now been acquired by a company called forecasts, which, um, I'm absolutely enjoying being passed off. Yes, of course, of course. Yeah, but I'm talking early days, early 12 years ago guy, not today guy, 12 years ago guy. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, look, I think you get to a point in your sales career where you're earning really good money and, uh, you look forward and think, well, how am I going to continue on this trajectory? How am I going to continue my learning, my development and my earning potential? Because I think, you know, once you start earning good money as a salesperson, you've got a lot of pressure to maintain, um, and it can get increasingly difficult.

You try and sell larger and larger ticket items, um, and it can, uh, you've got a, that the number of places you can go to continue on that path diminishes. Um, and at the same time you get the itch because you, you think you've got a big ego because you're in sales. Um, and you think you can do everything better and easier than everybody else. So I suppose it was the combination of those two things where I felt that there was a big opportunity and I wanted to take control of my own destiny. I, I wasn't, uh, um, I, I enjoyed making the decisions. I want to be in charge and control a lot. Um, you know, and while that sounds attractive, uh, the buck always stops with you. Right. And, and, you know, we, at our peak, we had 65 people in the business.

Um, and that's, you know, that's 65 families that, that are eating every month because you're running payrolls. So, um, you know, every issue that comes in is your issue. Ultimately the buck stops with you. You know, we, we've had, um, over 50,000 companies use our platform over the years. And so, uh, understanding that the challenges and the, yeah, there's always, there's always a problem. There's always an emergency. There's always a, a, a co-read that you need to deal with, uh, trying to stay present through all of that, uh, is important. Um, and, and also getting one leadership team around you, uh, so that you don't have to make every decision. Uh, it's kind of, uh, some of the lessons I've learned over the years.

Yeah. I think that's the, the one thing I was not so good at was, uh, you know, making, not making every, or, or actually probably delegating too many decisions and, and kind of the accountability factor was probably my biggest falter of building a business was, um, the, the system and the structure in place to hold each other accountable, uh, as we grew, because as you know, you know, uh, growth and success hides a lot of warts. Uh, and then when the shit hits the fan, uh, you find out really where your processes fall and where your, your, your alliances fall as well. So that was my learning lesson in 2023. Um, so for context here, what, uh, what is Epsta? Talk to the audience about what is Epsta and then I want to back into why you started it.

Yeah. So, uh, we sit in this world we call revenue intelligence. Um, so our customers are all B2B organizations. Um, more often than not, we find businesses where they struggling to accurately forecast and perhaps only a small proportion of the sellers are consistently hit quota. So, uh, you, what you tend to find is, uh, you know, 15, 20% of the sellers are overachieving and then everybody else, you've got this kind of long tail of underperforming sellers. Um, and what we've got really good at is understanding what those top performers are doing every stage of the sales cycle and using that to prompt the B players, uh, so that they're able to replicate best practice and very quickly when everyone's doing things in a consistent way, you see an uplift.

Um, and, and a by-product of that is a more accurate forecast. So, um, we do all of that inside Salesforce and we've got a unique approach to unlocking the data that you've got sitting in silos like mailboxes, calendars, phone systems, CRM. Um, and, and then we have a services wrapper, uh, that actually supports the customer base to understand what they need to prioritize to get more of their sellers hit quota. And I, I personally meet with all of the C-suite of our customers every quarter, walk them through this kind of 50 page report we produce, we call revenue insights as in service. Um, and it's a great way of them kind of getting an audit of everything that's gone on in their business, uh, on the go-to-market side and understanding where the low hanging fruit is.

Uh, and more often than not, you know, the usual stuff that we see time and time again is things like, um, uh, not enough adherence to the, to the sales process. So the stages are not being, uh, adhered to correctly. There's the, the, the, the, the gates between the triggers, the triggers and gates between the stages are not as strong as they should be. Um, people are skipping stages, uh, wouldn't see a lot of issue with late stage close lost opportunities when actually the issue relates to early stage qualification. Um, and that actually prompted us to produce a report, uh, last month we call the qualification report, uh, where we've analyzed, uh, we've analyzed, uh, 650,000 opportunities and, and looking at how well or badly they've been qualified and the influence that has on win rates.

So I was going to ask a pre another question, but let me dive into that for a second. Cause I'm curious on the stages piece of this. Um, sales stages always crack me up because the client doesn't give a shit about the sales stages. It's the buy, it's the buying process, right? It, it, nobody cares about our sales process and I have, you know, traditional, obviously companies have certain stages. Like they have the discovery stage in their sales process, which I always laugh at. I'm like, Oh, okay. So that means you, you stop asking questions. It's a good job or the negotiation stage of the process. It's like, Oh, okay. So you think negotiation starts at the end. Great. I guarantee you using discounts.

So talk to me a little bit about, um, the value of having still sales stages, but how they now adapt to the buying cycle and how do you marry those two? And then how do you condition sales reps by, or uncondition them by, by creating a different type of sales stage model here? Because I just fundamentally don't believe in, okay, you're at this stage. And so therefore you have to move to this. Yes, there are criteria, exit criteria and all that other stuff, but you're now coming in and out. There's 15 different buyers. You're, you're slowing down, you're speeding up. Like, so how, how is a sales stage process relevant in today's market with the buyer having most of the power? Yeah, really good questions there, John.

So look, first of all, um, uh, the data backs up a lot of what you're saying, what, what we saw, we saw nearly 50% of businesses moved to a full sales, a full cycle sales, uh, motion, uh, where sellers now have at least some responsibility for top of funnel, a lead gen and continue to hold the customer after the deals are signed. Um, and if you ask me, I'm looking at the data for next year already. And, um, the early indicators are that we're seeing even more than 50% of businesses move to that model and which is a big departure, right? You know, we all grew up on, uh, on, on the Salesforce, uh, sales model where you've got these single purpose vehicles doing individual stages. Um, and, and the, the, the biggest problem that you picked up rightly so is that that might work for a sales process, but my goodness, it doesn't work for a buying process.

Um, and, and it just so happens that the buyers buy important in the sales, in, in the sales cycle. So, uh, so I buy into what you're saying and the data is showing that we're seeing more sellers own much more of that customer journey. Um, you know, uh, it kind of makes sense, right? You, you, you, you, you get to a point where you built enough, enough, uh, confidence and trust with the customer. They sign a contract. It seems crazy to, to then let that relationship go. So, so I buy into the points that you're making. I think the, the thing with, and I also smile at some of the points you made there earlier, um, you know, well, we're out of discovery. I'm no longer curious. You know, it's, it's, uh, uh, and funnily enough, one of the interesting data points we saw is that those top performers, that the, the solution or product they anticipate they're selling the customer in the early stages changes more often than not by the time we get to the end of the end of the sales process.

While the B players end up sticking to their guns and, and not really being agile enough to understand what class requirements are. I think the way we're seeing, so first of all, it's not unusual to find a business that's got too many stages, um, you know, like, like with qualification, right? The simpler, the better, um, you know, the, uh, so that's always a pushback. If you are seeing people that are skipping stages, you know, are, do you really need as many of those, as many stages as you've got? Um, I think, what are we seeing the data? There's a couple of things, uh, qualifying out early makes a difference and, and getting, uh, really ruthless about that. You know, the top performers are qualifying out, qualifying out over a third of their opportunities at those very early stages.

So, you know, being picky about who we spend our time with is really, really important. Um, and then thinking about the stage progression, more about the, the resources that you're going to pull in to the, to the business, right? So having a conversation with your buyer about the fact that, look, you know, our win rates are twice as high when we get the finance persona involved in building the business case rather than just presenting it back. For example, um, it's okay to say to the buyer, look, if you won't give me access to the finance persona, I can't go any further in this process right now, right? You know, I need to bring in solution engineers. I need to, I might need to bring in legal.

I might need to bring in all sorts of other resources. I only get access to those resources when, when I, when I can show my, my leader, my, my, my sales leader, um, that I've got excellent at buying, or I've got, I've got a multi-threaded with certain personas. And it's okay to push back and have those difficult conversations because you're able to very quickly qualify out deals where perhaps the right time to re-engage is in six months time. Uh, so I think there's a lot of value in having stages in place to make sure that we are, um, we are getting the right engagement with the right stakeholders. Um, and we're asking the right type of questions. I agree with you. Qualification doesn't even finish when the deal's signed, right?

We, we, we need to keep being curious. Um, but there are different types of questions we need to ask of different personas at different stages. Um, and I think giving the sellers some structure so that they know that, right, once you've got to this line in the sand, you can keep supporting that resource, but we're not allowed to go into the next stage or, or progress or bring in other resources to the project until we got commitments from the customer. So how does that marry with like the sales rep? Cause there's a nuance here, right? And it goes back to, and I'm going to relate this to discounting as an example, right? Some of, um, some sales reps maintain the power of discounting so that they are the ones in power of like negotiating with the client, right?

So instead of, Hey, I got to go talk to my boss about this, you know, let me work with you on this. And then there's others who use the boss as, Hey, you and I are on the same page here over like, I'm fighting for you. I got to go fight for my boss. So can you give me something to go help fight for my boss? So effectively what you're saying there is like that, that intermediary of like, Hey, help me help you. Like, I want to get to this next stage. And in order for me to do that, I need to get some information from you. So therefore I can share with my internal team here. So I guess the nuance of this I'm curious about is the power, if you will, of the sales professional and, and, and kind of giving up some of that power, you know, and using it as leverage versus using the power of themselves.

So the client sees them. So, you know what I'm talking about there, that, that kind of slight nuance of I have control and I can kind of get you what you need, Mr. and Mrs. Customer versus, Hey, I got to go get what you need. And I need some stuff from you to be able to do that. How does that from a psychological standpoint impact the perception to, from the client? Um, I suppose my, my gut feel on that is that the more complex the deal, um, uh, the more stakeholders you want involved on both sides. Um, and any excuse to get multi-threaded and to get your own C-suite involved in the sales process and get them touching, not just the C-suite at the customer or prospects, but also maybe the PE house that owns that business.

Um, you know, getting buy-in and really understanding, um, you know, I'm preaching to the converted, right? We're talking about value selling, right? And, and, and ultimately, um, when it comes down to price and negotiation, it really comes down to, the question is whether, have we proved enough value? Are we, are we selling to value? And, and too often we all see people jumping in to show people, you know, to show off the buttons and the features. Um, and, and, and in reality, they're almost irrelevant. Um, it was really fascinating. We were both at the GTM event last week and I don't know if you've got as, as, um, as kind of pitch weary as I did, but you know, every, every time you speak to someone, it's like, hi, how are you doing?

And, and, and what do you do? And, and you get this kind of, this elevator pitch and more often than not, they're so proud of their buttons and their features. And, and, and in reality, all I want to hear about is how can you positively influence my life, right? How can you have a big impact on my world? And I'll go and have a look at the buttons in meeting three or four. I will get there. Right. But, but for now, I really, I just need to understand, um, you know, the value you can deliver me and who else I know that you've delivered value to so that I get some confidence that it's worth us having this conversation. Yeah, it's funny. I did. So my whole presentation was, I called it anything but predictable.

And it was how I think, I personally think that the predictable revenue model broke sales. Um, and I think it did us all a disservice, quite frankly. And the segmentation of roles, um, took away the art of sales and over-scienced it in so many ways. And then, you know, kind of getting into the trade show about how none of these reps actually know how to sell anymore. They know, they don't know how to have a conversation. And I use the example of just go out to the trade booths right now, go out to those booths and, and, and see what type of conversations you get into versus how many pitches you get. And I, I gave the very simple, you know, tip and I always give this to reps. I was like, when somebody up comes up and asks, what do you guys do?

Don't jump into your stupid pitch. Nobody gives a shit, ask them or say something to the effect of, Hey, we do a lot of stuff. Let me ask you real quick. What kind of company do you work for? And what role are you in that company? And then just with that basic information, you can say, well, typically for people like you in companies like that, these are the problems we solve versus here's all the shit that we do. Just that simple, you know, thing alone will differentiate you over 95% of the sales professionals at these booths who are just pitching and they all sound exactly the same. You know, they all have AI now. It used to be platforms. It used to be cloud. It used to be e-commerce. Like it's literally the same pitch across the board.

And it's just, I, I'm, I'm, I'm very concerned now with something that you brought up, which I know is true. And I know it's been true is the 80, 20 rule is that 20% of your reps are driving 80% of your revenue. You've proved it out with the model here. And I'm curious from your person and what you're seeing, what does that mean for the other 80% of the reps here? Cause I believe with AI, I believe before AI that that 80% kind of, it was what it was. You know, we accepted mediocrity. We accepted average. We accepted the laggards. And it just was what it was. You know what I mean? But now with AI being able to do all of that far better than average reps ever could. You know, I told, I told reps, you know, if you don't want to think you're have a problem right now, go into chat GPT and pretend like you're a potential client.

You know, be like, Hey, you know, I'm a CEO, VP of sales, a 50 person sales team. I'm looking at the JB sales training. Tell me what I need to know. Right. And you will realize in five minutes, you get more value out of that. Then you did some 22 year old kid who's going to ask you dumb bant questions. And then an AE is going to drone through a piece of shit demo. So I guess with what you're saying and what you're seeing with the data, what happens to those 80% of those reps? Yeah, this is the, this is the next industrial revolution we're, we're experiencing. And, and you know, if you'd asked me three years ago, it was the, the narrative was very clear. We're going to help you get your B players up to a player standard or as close as we can.

Now the narrative is different. The narrative is if, if, if after their ramps, there's still B players, they shouldn't be in your organization. And, and, and, and actually filling up the A players diary back to back is really is, is where we're at now. And, and look, at least at the moment, AI is not very good at building relationships, running a sales cycle and closing your business or building trust with the customer. Um, but everything else the sellers are responsible for the AI does it a hundred times better, right? You know, um, we now have the ability to, when we onboard a customer, we're able to go through the last say 10,000 hours of sales goals in a day. And we go back through every opportunity that's closed one and lost who you think you might think that you lost that deal late stage.

And we're looking back at the qualification and scoring how good or badly we did. And we start to look at patents and you'll see certain sellers are really bad at a certain part of the med pick or whatever it might be. And they're the ones that are losing late stage. And that's like, that was all hidden in these silos in, in the core data, in the mailboxes and so on. And now we're able to unlock that information and, and make it, uh, and, and log every time they do a discovery call, how well they're qualified. And at the end of every call, they get a green thumbs up or a red thumbs down as to whether they've done enough to progress to the next stage. And we don't need to teach them more than that because they just want to get their red thumbs down to green thumbs up and therefore they'll teach themselves.

And, and the reality is that teaching sellers how to qualify correctly is a whole set of skills. Teaching them to record that information consistently in the system of record is a completely different set of skills. Um, and AI can pick that stuff up really quickly and can make the, our top performers have a lot more capacity to run faster. Um, but if you're asking me my prediction, I source, I've been looking at tech recently that allows the seller, the buyer to go through more and more of that sales process, even complex B2B sales processes without engaging with a seller. They can build a business case online through the website, not even your website. There are now aggregators that will go, okay, you're looking for a revenue intelligence platform.

There are five out there. Uh, give us these data points. We'll build you a business case. We'll tell you which one we think is right for you. And as a seller, you're not even involved in that conversation. Um, so, you know, I think we'll see more and more of the sales process being done online. I think buyers, uh, depending on what they're buying, more and more of the buyers want to do more of that sales process on their own. And I think leaning into community, leaning into networks, leaning into trusted partners is where the conversion rates are going to get really high because they're the ones that are your advocates, that they're your advocates, they're out there in the market, and they're the ones that are going to, that your customers are asking more and more, uh, as to who they should go and talk to, who they should go and work with.

Um, so yeah, I think, I think sales is going to be going through a massive transformation. Um, and like with all of these processes, you know, there'll be some winners and some losers. Yeah, I think more losers than winners, quite frankly. And so how about this on product knowledge, right? Cause I used to say that sales reps didn't need to be the product experts because they were more of the quarterbacks, right? Where they just bring the pieces in place. Um, I, I've now flipped my opinion on that. I now think that sales reps need to go pretty deep because if I can't, the days of, oh, I don't know, let me go figure that out for you are gone because I mean, obviously, and there's a lot of other, uh, deal killers here, but time is biggest killer.

So the more time you allow between interactions, the less likely a deal is to close. So if I have to tell you, oh guy, let me get back to you in about a week on that one. Cause I got to figure it out. I got to talk to my internal team. You've probably already lost them. So I guess how, which again, begs the question here, the value of the sales professional, because I look at it as if I'm a even curious and somewhat educated buyer and I can jump into chat GPT and I can say, Hey, I don't even need those aggregators. I can just use my own personalized GPT for crying out loud and say, Hey, here's our 12 to 20 more four month business plan. Um, we're looking at these solutions. Give me the top three vendors in these areas.

Right. And so I can do so much work on my own and, and this time faster than ever. Right. Before it used to be, and yeah, I know that stat everybody over uses by the time somebody comes to us, they're already 60 to 70% of the way through the sales process, blah, blah, blah. That was for inbound, right? Everybody used that for outbound, including, and I'm like, no, it's purely for inbounds. But now I'm actually, uh, aligning that without bound as well, because if you call me, like say I get a cold call from a sales rep and it's even remotely interesting to me, and there's a follow-up scheduled call in two or three days. I mean, literally five minutes before that phone call, I can jump into chat GPT and say, what do I need to know about this?

Does this align? Do I care? What questions should I ask? And when I get on the phone with that sales rep, if I am not getting value out of that conversation that I can't get out of chat GPT, I don't know what the point of that conversation is. So I'd rather talk to an engineer. I'd rather talk to a customer success person who isn't trying to sell me on anything, but is trying to help me buy. So how does that play with where we're going right now? Look, a couple of things. I think first of all, um, the buyer is always right. Um, and, and, and what we're finding is, and I saw, again, some really interesting tech where you can, you can request your meeting, you know, when you're on someone's website, maybe you're building a business case, maybe you're asking some intelligent AI questions and now you want to engage that the, the, the most innovative companies are then asking, well, who would you like to talk to?

Do you want to talk to a solution engineer? Do you want to talk to a salesperson? Maybe you want to talk to a customer, right? And, and maybe the customers are, are willing to give up, you know, half an hour a month by, and take a call every now and again. Um, and, and giving the customers, given the prospects, that opportunity to have those conversations, I think makes a lot of sense. And I think it's a differentiator. However, I also still, I'm a, I'm a student and an advocate of the sales profession. Um, and, and, and I absolutely believe that, that relationships still drive revenue. Um, and I think that, um, the things that we know well, we just assume other people find really easy. Um, and I think in reality, um, our buyers are, don't spend their lives buying our fit.

And I think we're experts at helping them to go through that exercise and not just to, not just to buy those licenses, but to achieve those outcomes. Um, and I think, uh, I still think there's a place for, for value selling. I still think there's a place, uh, for, uh, relationship, uh, uh, based, uh, you know, uh, engagements, um, and coming across as that professional that understands your ecosystem and your market. Uh, do you need to understand the gotchas, the ecosystem, the market, the, the, the, you know, what's going on? Absolutely. I still think we can do well with solution engineers that can help us push the buttons. Um, I'm, I'm, I think I actually quite like the idea that sellers are not is in the weeds with the buttons because I think they can get very lost in, instead of building that relationship and talking to them about value and, and, and, and the gotchas they need to be aware of and, and the timeline to return on investment and so on, they can get into pushing the buttons.

Isn't it great? This one flashes and, you know, and you've got this big red button here as well. It just doesn't matter. Right. And, and I think it's kind of below the sales resources kind of requirements. Um, you know, the more they know the better, but I think there's, there's an opportunity for them to be elevated by having that relationship and, and adding value. Yeah. One of the really interesting data points we looked at this year was the right-hand side of the bow tie. So it was the first time we'd really gone in deep on that. And we saw some great stats. So for example, um, I'm a big fan of QBRs. And if, if you do them right, I was going to say that, please tell me how you do them right.

Because most of them are just drone through data that nobody cares about. Well, here's the test. Okay. If the last two QBRs before your renewal are done at C level, you are seven times more likely to open up a cross sell upsell opportunity with a 45% win rate. Nice. If the last two QBRs are done below the C suite, you're four times more likely to churn the customer. Wow. That one's important. That's why it matters. Wow. Okay. Now let's talk about what the QBR needs to be, or more importantly, what it's not. Okay. The QBR is not an opportunity to talk about training or enablement or how the buttons are working or why something went down a month ago. Okay. The QBR should be a strategic session where you add value to the C suite, where you give them content that they can use at their board, where you're helping them to justify the business case or, or helping them to prove out why they need to go on a certain.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off.

Now let's get back to the conversation. Direction. Okay. And if you do that, they'll turn up at the next QBR. And if you don't, if it's tactical, you'll never see them again. Right. And it was so important to us that we, our platform's got all sorts of insights in it. I mean, a lot of insights, right? We can tell you what level of coverage each rep means to hit quota. We can tell you how well they're qualifying, how many days in stage. I mean, the, the, you know, how multi-threaded they are that you can imagine there's a lot of data. Our whole platform's delivered inside Salesforce and we sell to mid-market. So if you're turning over a hundred million and you're the C-suite, you probably don't even have a Salesforce login, right?

And so we're delivering all this value to the sellers and the managers, but the C-suite weren't getting the value from the platform. And so what we start, what we did was we, we took all of the insights in the platform and turned it into a beautifully presented PDF. And every quarter I would sit down and walk the C-suite through an audit, their whole go to market motion, highlighting all the things that have gone well and all the things that needed attention. And none of these insights were not already in our platform. Okay. And when I tell you, this has been a game changer for our business because suddenly I'm now having intelligent conversations about how they can achieve their outcomes. What are they looking for?

They want to grow faster. They want more of their seller's hit quota. They want a more accurate forecast. And I'm giving them a 50 page report every three months on how they can achieve that outcome. Every single quarter I turn up at that QBR, more of the C-suite are there. Okay. And all of a sudden I'm getting invited to do their kickoffs, right? Because I'm now a strategic subject matter expert that they want supporting them rather than just another supplier trying to talk to them about buying some more licenses. So get strategic in your QBRs. It's a huge opportunity to build that relationship with your customers. And this is where we as professionals should be able to level up because AI is taking away the BERT.

And that's, I think, the key of it. And that's also why I think from a business acumen standpoint, you know, I tell reps, I actually just posted it today with a podcast that I did previously where, you know, I think the number one skill that sales reps should focus on is business acumen. Like, forget about the techniques, forget about the, you know, all that stuff's fine and dandy. But if you can't have a business conversation about the outcomes that the client is looking to achieve and align with those priorities, you're not even going to get a chance to have the conversation at this point. Especially at the C-suite, especially at that executive level, right? Because to your point, you've got to learn how to speak the language of executive versus, you know, what most people are very comfortable with, which is kind of the people below the power line and people who aren't really engaged in making those decisions.

Absolutely. And, you know, get curious. What are the other seven projects they've got on right now? And what's the ROI on those? And who's asking for them? Because you might find out very quickly that this is exactly what they need, but in six months time. And if you stand up and say, look, those seven projects sound really powerful and important. My gut feel is this is something we should revisit in six months. You are going to get that callback, right? They're going to respect you. And you're that subject matter expert on whatever it is, that thing you're doing. And that they're going to want to engage with rather than some annoying salesman that wants to show how the buttons work. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I mean, you can literally watch the disengagement, you know, if you, if you watch calls on, you know, whatever your call recording software is, you can, you can, as, as an executive watching a sales rep to an executive, you could almost pinpoint the exact moment where the executive just checks out and says, this is not valuable to me. I'm no longer here. And they either genuinely just leave the conversation, depending on how many people are in it, or they mentally leave the conversation and start checking their emails or whatever it might be. And it's, that's why it's, it's very hard for me to watch call recordings of like my, when I had reps, it was very hard for me to watch. Cause I was like, Oh, Oh, there it is.

Uh, like, and I wanted to like, jump into the conversation, even though it was a recording and be like, ah, Oh God, stop. Like that's, you missed it. You just shut up. You're like, there was the hook, right? Um, just ask that question. That's all you needed to do. Just stop there and ask and just shut up. I've given you, they told you they want the next meeting, stop talking. Yes. Yeah. It's like, there's a beautiful, are you ever seen Moneyball? Uh, with the, right. There's the, remember that scene when he gets where he wants, he just hangs up on him. And, and Jonah's like, what the hell? He's like, when you get what you want, hang up, like stop talking. I believe that wholeheartedly. Um, so there's, there was a couple of stats that stood out to me on this report that I just can't imagine.

And I like, here's one 36% of deals, only 30%, 36% of deals have a qualification score and notes post discovery. So after a discovery call, they don't even take notes and put them in the system on, on legitimate opportunities. Look, to, if I'm going to try and defend the undefensible, um, please, you've got, you've got, you've got sellers moving from one meeting to the next and they are, and, and what you find is that the, perhaps the less, the, the less busy than the lower performers might spend lots of time making lots and lots of notes, but that doesn't mean that they've qualified the customer well enough. Um, and, and the problem with asking sellers to mark their own homework to effectively score their own qualification is you end up with wildly different results.

Okay. So, you know, you might, you might speak French fluently, but actually when it comes to writing essays in French, you might miss out the odd words. So you might consider yourself an intermediate French speaker, right? While I went to French, I went to a school where I had some French classes and I passed a, you know, a junior exam in French as a 16 year old. And I consider myself, you know, an intermediate French, the, the wildly different. And, and, and, and so allowing people to judge their own or score their own qualification is, is a challenge. And what, what AI is really good at is that consistency of pulling out the right information around the qualification and scoring it. And what we need to do as leaders is set some bars around that qualification scoring and, and the capturing of that information.

And so that the AI can tell us if we've, you know, where we could do better. Um, and, and the beautiful thing is if you've got a hundred sellers and they've had, you know, they've all run a dozen sales processes every month, you can go back a year and you've got thousands and thousands of examples where you can see patterns around serving sellers are really good at the med, but bad at the pick or, or, you know, good at identifying the economic buyer, but really bad at highlighting, you know, some sort of critical event that they need to work towards. So you can understand where they need training. Um, and again, it takes away all of the, what you want as a leadership team is a, is a system of record or a data source that everyone trusts that all of the outcomes, all of the data that we're digesting from it, everyone buys into.

And, and when a machine's maintaining it, you get to that point instead of spending your whole eyes argue, well, that data is not right anyway. I don't believe it. And therefore, you know, you're down a rabbit warrant and you're having the wrong conversation. Yeah. And I think that to me where AI, I think the biggest benefit moving forward, you know, a lot of people are chasing top of funnel stuff and I just think that's a fool's errand, you know, it's coaching. It's, it's frontline coaching because one of the things I said in my presentation at a pavilion was, you know, and I've said this before, it kind of ruffled a few feathers. It's like, I wish we would just stop trying to make managers coaches.

I just, I just wish we would stop. I I've seen people try for 30 years as a better being in this industry and managers are usually the top reps get promoted to be managers for no other reason than they're the top reps. They can't explain what they do. Then they're not giving, I mean, sales reps barely get trained. Managers get almost no training on how to be a manager. Forget about how to be a coach and then they don't get any time to coach. You know, I always laughed at the call recording stuff. It's like, oh, okay, great. Uh, I got, say I got 10 reps reporting to me. Uh, I got to listen to a call recording for all, like, and each rep has three to five calls minimum a week. And so I have to listen to those and then coach like that's a full-time job in and of itself.

And, and don't tell me that you can listen to it on 1.5 X because there's tonality. There's all these different things. And don't tell me you could just skip to the part where they talk about pricing because what they said at minute five probably dictated what is said at minute 25. So no, I have to listen to a 30 minute call and then do 15 minutes of coaching. So every single one of them is 45 minutes, which I just don't have the time to do. And plus when I give you that feedback, it's subjective by nature and you might not think I like you. So all of a sudden, no matter how direct and honest and helpful my feedback is, you might, because you don't think I like me, I like you as your boss, you'd be like, ah, you know, whatever, John doesn't like me.

And then you're going to go tell HR and now I'm in 15 meetings. So like that disaster just continues to happen. And I think the biggest benefit is collecting the data from the call objectively, and then spitting it back to the rep to your point of like a thumbs up and thumbs down. So how do you coach on that with, with the human versus the tech? So you're gathering all this information. You got great insights. You're giving reps like good. You did a good job. You did a bad job. Talked a little bit about self-correcting. Because of that. But where does like the actual coaching of what to do as it relates to success for your business, where does that come in? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there to unpack, right?

I think the very best businesses are at best coaching on deals. They're not coaching the team. They're not doing, you know, proper enablement has almost disappeared. And it's, it's a challenge, especially considering there's more and more people working remotely. You know, I don't know about you, John, but you know, if I hadn't had that, that opportunity to sit in an office for 10 years with other sellers, I would certainly not be the man I am today. So I think there's a, that's a real challenge. I think, look, from our perspective, we, we, we don't, it's all, for us, it's all about introducing consistency. You're running a sales team of 50 to 150 sellers. Maybe you've got a success team as well.

That's doing a similar go-to-market motion, looking after the customers. How do we introduce consistency? Because we're not always going to get it right. But if we, if we've got consistency, then, and we've got the data, we can run experiments and course correct really quickly. And we know if we can work out what good looks like, we've got a decent chance of replicating that. But, and so I think the answer to your question is that the data is, it's not hard, but there aren't any shortcuts. So step one, we need, we need good quality, consistent, maintained, up-to-date data that underpins everything. Okay. If you don't do that, and most businesses skip that stage, we find on average, nearly 70% of companies, active relationships of prospects and accounts, customers and prospects that they're talking to never make it into that system of record.

Okay. So if you don't even have everyone you're talking to in one place, let alone the activity and the engagement and the qualification. And if you, if you're not capturing everything in the consistent format, you're not even at the races. Okay. I mean, apart from having three or four sellers around the same table, there's just no way of coaching that. Okay. So step one, you need an engine in place that can fix the historical data and gives you confidence as a leadership team that the data is going to continue to be maintained without the sellers having to do any work. Once we've got the data, then we need to convert it into insights. Right. So we need to know how many go-to-market motions have we got, how many different products we're selling to different verticals, different geographies, and what does good look like?

Okay. So from our side, we've seen, we need at least 50 close one outcomes for us to be able to do that benchmarking. So we've got, we won 50 deals where we go back through all the historical traffic, all those call recordings, all that email activity and meetings that took place. And we go back and fix those 50 deals. So when you look in Salesforce, it might only have one contact and three emails associated to it. But then once we finished fixing it, it turns out that the buying committee was actually nine stakeholders and there were 250 interactions during five-stage sales process. Now, when we fix it not for one deal, the last thousand deals, we start to see patterns and you start to see what good practice looks like.

How many days should we spend in this stage before the win rate starts to drop? What happens when we get this particular persona versus that persona actively involved at different stages and it starts to become easy to see? Then as we start turning this into insights, what we found works really well is converting it all into pictures that an 11-year-old can understand. And I've got an 11-year-old, so I'm able to use it as a test. And if you can get it into a picture that everyone could buy into, and everyone believes the data that underpins it, now you can start having interesting conversations. Because that seller who's got a really big ego, lots of spiky hair, maybe a big tie, is telling you how they know everything and they know what they're doing.

You show, look, your win rate's 12%, but your peers are hitting a 38% win rate. And the only differences are they always engage the finance persona at stage two and they get an engagement of above 67%. So how about we do that at stage two moving forward, right? Now, all of a sudden, it was their idea, right? Because guess what? However big their ego is, they still want to win. And when you can show it to them in black and white, simple pictures that shows this is how you win, and at the same time take away all their admin burden and give them confidence that the data this stuff is relating to is correct and accurate, now they're interested. Now their ears are open. And for us, delivering those insights on the opportunity record back in Salesforce means we're going back, we're asking them to just to digest that where they're spending time anyway.

Nice. And I think the rinse repeat, right, of the constant evaluation of those indicators. Also because things change quite a bit now as well. Like, I mean, buying committees change, more people are involved. And I've never, personally, I've never seen sales change and move as fast as it is right now. And without a system of record maintaining and collecting all that information and constantly analyzing, it's kind of hard to make any real decisions moving forward, which is why I think that so many companies are in trouble right now because I thought, personally, that AI was going to solve kind of the garbage in, garbage out problem, right? Like, of all your bad data. I was figuring, oh, hey, I just go in there and make it nice and pretty and, you know, and now everything's going to be great.

And it's still garbage in, garbage out. So if you don't have the right inputs, it's still going to give you shitty data no matter what you do. And so getting that tight. And that's why I think cleaning things up first, cleaning up your stale stages, simplifying the process, making sure that you understand kind of the indicators here is step one because it's been so overcomplicated at this point that reps don't follow it or they skip stages or they sandbag because it's just not worth putting that information in there at this point. Yeah. And it's like going to the gym, right? It's not one and done. Unfortunately, you don't get your six pack the first time you go, right? It would be both. But incremental improvements achieve exponential results.

And as I say, going through this exercise, we've now done this with over 300 companies. And it's incredible to see how quickly you can see a change. And getting more sellers hit quota is within your control. But it's not hard, but there are no shortcuts. Yeah, I love it. All right, let's end on this one. The data that was, you know, I talk about this one a lot, but slippage is the silent killer. He says, deals slipping past two months, tank win rates by 113%. Is there any insights that you could bring from that outside of like, you know, I always say time kills all deals. That's why I do a simple give, get scorecard with my negotiation training. And one of the biggest gives I have on my scorecard is more time to make a decision.

And I'm a three strikes and you're out person. You want more time once? Okay, whatever. Everybody might need a little bit more time. You want more time twice or you skip a commit on the second time? We might have to start having a conversation about what's going on here. The third time I pretty much killed a deal because I know it's dead. So where are you on slippage, if you will, and how can reps kind of, A, pay attention to that slippage and realize how important it is and then what they can do to expedite or keep that engagement going so that it doesn't slip? Well, so first of all, not all deals are equal. Okay, so for example, on some of the larger enterprise deals, slippage doesn't have a negative impact on win rates.

Moreover, again, sometimes you find that certainly the larger, more complex deals, the seller might have overestimated or just worked on best, you know, best case scenario, it might just close by the stakes, right? And of course, things never work out quite that way. So every business is different and every business unit is different. And what I would say to those listening is you need to, you need to understand the impact of time on win rates for your business. And in particular, are there certain stages that people are getting stuck in? Because it might be that we can do more in that qualification stage, or we talked earlier about being stronger with the buyer and explaining to them, look, we, we just need, I need 15 minutes of your time and we need to map out what this process looks like and which stakeholders.

Now, normally when we get to this line in the sand, we need these stakeholders from your side involved. Who would that be from your side? You know, who holds budget? Who cares? Whose critical event are we actually working towards? That kind of thing. And I think spending that time early on and getting buy into a buying process with the, with the buyer is important. And, and again, having that honest relationship because, and keep, keep checking, give it, I'm a big fan of the takeaway, right? Yeah. Maybe now's not the right time. Should I just, I could close this off as lost if you like, and I'll be back in touch in three months. It's like, well, actually maybe that's the right thing to do. Or no, no, no, we really are committed to this.

We have to get it in and live by, you know, great. Okay. Now I know. So ask the right questions upfront. Try and get a commitment to a journey before you throw more resource at the project. And the A players are really good at it. They're really, really good at being, look, your, when they say your time is valuable, what they really mean is my time is valuable. And you've only got so many hours in the day to run sales. And if you, if this particular company doesn't want your help right now, go and help someone else because there's many people out there that do. So yeah, understand the influence of time on win rates for different motions, different stages, find out where you're slipping, find out where the gaps might be.

It might be that we just need a bit of collateral. Maybe you can simply getting asked about competitors and then it slows down. Well, can we get the backward cards ready? Or pricing is too complicated. Or we have find out where those, where that, where that's, where things are getting stuck and then find examples of how they're getting unstuck from, from the, from the A players. And there's also, and don't, don't underestimate the value of multi-threading on both sides. Getting the C-suite involved on your side is, is really, it should be table stakes at this point. The, what I'm seeing that the real innovative players are doing is marketing of following are starting to, to work a stage ahead of you.

So if we know that at the next stage, I need to get engaged with the CFO, the marketing team already warming them up. Right. And that they, these are things that we can do to work as a team, because exactly as you said earlier, we only have one go to market team. You can call it SDRs and marketing and sales and AEs and solution agents, but the customer doesn't care. No, I don't. That's why like I, I tell, you know, to simplify things, the number one indicator for me that a deal is moving through. And I have a chance here is whether they agree to a defined next step period. Like if the client agrees, you know, and I'd gong data about, you know, next steps and five times, you know, top reps and everything else.

But very simply put, it's okay, great. When do you want to schedule our next meeting so we can keep going? If they say yes to that, I feel really good about that deal. If they say no, oh, you know, why don't just follow up in a couple of weeks or in a month or whatever it is, like I said, the deal's pretty much probably dead. So it's that, that nuance of just those little small things of disqualifying, of getting that next step of, of, you know, being upfront with the process and aligned. Like it's, it's funny because none of this is rocket science. It's, it's a lot of it is just fundamentals and, and core fundamentals, which I started this conversation off. I think we've lost because we've over-scienced the process and now nobody knows how to actually engage, you know, with the fundamentals of sales, which I hope we get back to sometime here soon, man.

I hear you. I hear you. I want to pick up finally on one point you raised earlier, um, just talking about the landscape and what's changing over the next three years. Um, I'm getting a lot of questions as I'm sure you can imagine as to why we decided to sell the business and where we got to. And I think, um, when I look ahead, yeah, I'd like to think that at Epson, we're ahead of the game. You know, we, we, what we do around fixing data, the way we do our insights, uh, the benchmarks we produce, uh, I'd like to think we're ahead of the game at the moment. But when I look ahead at the market and what's coming, the, the reality is that the sales, the sales tech ecosystem is going to transform over the next three years, absolutely transform.

And that, that gives us, gives you a few options, right? You can either get niche, get big or get out. And, and I want to win. And, and when I looked at the market, I, what scared me was knowing was, was, was how we were going to win without doing something. Um, and, and that's really when we looked at whether it was the right thing to do was to raise or to, or to join a bigger organization. And, and I'm delighted to, to say we, we decided to join a full cast. Um, and it's, it, and, and what's great, they're doing a rollup in this whole space. So, uh, they, they come from territory planning and I didn't realize how much was involved in territory planning until I got into it. Uh, but even, and the way people run territories at the moment on spreadsheets is insane.

Um, so really fascinating to see that business case. And then on the other side, they do commission. So we sit kind of really nicely in the middle. Uh, so they, what they call plan, uh, perform and pay. Uh, so that's kind of a new, the new, the new world we live in and being part of a bigger team, some incredible leaders there, um, with, you know, a very clear vision of where the future is going and, and just feel like we can accelerate a whole lot faster by being part of that. Yeah. I think that's that, you know, the consolidation play right now is, is cause I, I, I keep looking at it. I, I, I cringe for point solution players right now because I'm just like, this is, you know, we always do this in, in history, right?

We kind of go point solution and then we go platform and then we go point solution, platform, point solution, platform. And right now the consolidation of point solutions, I just, I scratch my head and I wonder how now, especially with AI and how fast it is and how the bigger companies have the money and the tech to do it, how the Microsofts, the sales forces, you know, don't win because they can now, instead of cramming some acquisition in and trying to mash it together. Now they can just tell AI to make that feature, make that thing. And it'll be a hell of a lot closer to as good as the point solution is than it ever has been. So I think the acquisition player, the combination of power and coming with a more holistic solution is, is the way that most people are going to survive at this point.

So well done on the acquisition and good luck for the future, my friend. Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. Exciting times ahead and, and, you know, uh, excited to see how we all progress, but I agree with you. I think the cost of tech has gone through the floor, but the cost of go to market has gone through the ceiling. So, um, you know, you really have to be part of something bigger if you want to have an impact. Um, there's always exceptions to the rule, but, uh, I think in reality, um, that's where we landed and, and you're really excited about being part of something bigger. Love that, my friend. All right. Well, let's tie it up here, guy. Um, where can people find out more information over the EPSA, what you're doing about you, about the report and everything else?

Yeah. Um, you, uh, uh, anyone can follow me on LinkedIn. Um, if you mentioned the podcast or, or John by name, I'll certainly accept the invite. Um, I've got, uh, if people follow me, they'll, they'll get, uh, we send out updates every week on the latest insights and benchmarks. Um, so hopefully that content's useful to the community as well. Um, and then if there's a stage out there, I'm probably on it, uh, delivering content. That's my, that's my new role. So, uh, uh, you're going to see me out there a lot more and some, hopefully adding, adding value to, to our community. Well, awesome guy. Well, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate the conversation and enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks, John. Absolutely. And everybody, thank you so much for listening. And as always, like I said, at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, you make somebody smile today and you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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