Vince Beese: Red Zone Selling and the Enterprise Edge

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.

So I'm super excited to be partnering with them to give you an exclusive offer to get Otter.ai for sales today for free. Go to otter.ai, that's O-T-T-E-R dot A-I forward slash JBSales to get your free offer and start saving time and selling more effectively today. I think there is a natural-born instinct to want to close. Like, my job at the end of the day is either to close this deal one way or another, right? That's it. It's not to make a new friend. It's not to create another opportunity or get another meeting scheduled. At the end of the day, I have something that they need. Let me help them make that decision. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us.

And today's guest is Vince Basie. He is a fractional CRO and the author of Red Zone Selling, which is what we got into in this conversation. He helps early-stage startups and fast-growing sales organizations streamline their GTM motion to increase win rates by focusing on the plays that actually move the ball. From building scalable sales foundation to driving deal momentum, Vince equips teams who qualify faster, sell smarter, and finish strong. So this was a fun one. This is if you like sales, you're going to like this one, especially enterprise sales, by the way. There's a lot of admittance in this conversation of why I am not an enterprise seller and why, A, I don't have the patience or the skills to.

But he really focuses on this because this is where his sweet spot is. And so we go through his backgrounds and how he got to it. It's funny. We both went to the University of Maryland. He graduated a few years before me, but there's some commonalities here with him getting into broadcasting and me getting into sports marketing. And then both of us realizing, woof, don't want to do this. And then finding our way into sales. And, you know, I had a whole list of questions that I was going to flow through his background and his history and each one of his jobs. But in the prep for this, we just started talking about how the art of sales, we both believe, is kind of lost and how we've way over-processed it, way over-scienced it.

And for me, you know, if you've listened to me for a while now, you know, look, I always say that I think sales should be more of a science than an art. But man, if we swung that pendulum too far and I think the art, the essence of sales is really lacking these days from what I'm seeing. And so we dove into that right out of the gate. And, you know, about what he thought the difference between, you know, the elite sellers and everybody else. And it comes down to closing. It comes down to, do you, you know, do you enjoy that? Do you enjoy friction? Do you hunt for it or do you avoid it? And the best sales reps hunt for it. We talked about, you know, a lot of things I was trying to deal with or, you know, understand about my own process to make sure that I got a different perspective.

For instance, you know, I disqualify a lot as opposed to qualify. Like once you're qualified and you kind of fit the mold, if you will, I start asking questions to disqualify you because my theory is you're going to figure that out eventually. So I might as well figure it out up front. So I validated that with him in his perspective on that. He talks a lot about how we are so fixated on the top of the funnel. And that's a, gives us like false confidence with a big pipeline, right? Where we really should just be focusing on the ones that matter. And then, you know, talking about that foundation that I think we've gotten away from and how do we get back to it as a sales organization? That was an interesting perspective and then obviously his red zone selling.

So he's got these yellow zone, green zone, red zone, and some frameworks that anybody can use to apply pretty easily to move the deals through the stages or get out of them all together. And so really interesting conversation, all about sales all the time. So if you're an enterprise seller, you want to get better, even if you're kind of mid-market or SMB, you know, and you want to move upstream eventually in your career, you're going to like this conversation. So hopefully you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Vince, Beezy, what's going on, my friend? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. Hey, John. How you doing? It's been a bit. Yeah, it has. It has. It's when you reached out with the new book, which we're going to get into here, I was very eager to take a look at it and get you on here to see what you're seeing out there because as we were prepping for this, we were talking about the lost art of sales.

And I think that's a lot behind this book, right? Yeah. And by the way, the key for me of writing a book was don't read other books. That's a good one. Yeah. Well, that's kind of, for me, it's always been, I mean, you know, like I wrote my daughter, that children's book. Right. And that was kind of my answer when people were like, because everybody's like, when are you going to write a book? I'm like, what the am I going to write? Like, I don't know. Like, I don't like reading books. You know what I'm? So I'd kind of be a hypocrite if I wrote one. You told me that. You're like, I'm not going to read it. You can send it to me. I'm like, give me the clip notes. Like, good, right? But I do believe that, you know, you don't want to, to your point, like, you don't want to be clouded by everybody else's judgment or perception.

It's like, I just want my original thought to be here. And it is what it is. Right. So it's a labor of love in a lot of ways. Awesome. Well, Vince, to get the audience a little bit more familiar with you, as you know, we always try to do the origin stories here about where you grew up, where you grew up, but kind of what caught the bug, if you will, parents, like, you know, those types of things that I can't read on LinkedIn. So give us a little perspective of where you're coming from. Born and raised in New Jersey. Yep. Jersey's short. We'll get there. Huge Giants fan, huge Mets fan, was a huge Rangers fan, but I moved to the Carolina. So now I'm a Carolina Hurricanes fan, which they've been solid for the last bunch of years.

Went to the University of Maryland. We've got that in common. Went for broadcasting, John. I wanted to be in broadcasting. I specifically wanted to be a sports broadcaster, and I thought I had it nailed when I was at Maryland. I internshiped at the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C. for a gentleman named James Brown. You might know him on the NFL show. I was his intern for a year. Oh, my God, man. I'm in sport. I'm going to dominate this industry. Long story short is I realized, like, I might need to move to, like, Jackson, Mississippi or something, and I'm like, I ain't getting breaking into New York or whatever. And so I had some minor success in broadcasting. I was a metro traffic reporter in Washington, D.C.

I was the best job I ever had was a radio disc jockey on a modern rock radio station. That was really cool. But, like, those things were cool, but they didn't pay well, and your longevity wasn't very long. So, like most sales leaders and salespeople, I stumbled into sales. I answered an ad for an ad that said, like, are you sports-minded? Are you this and that? I'm like, yeah, that's me, man. It was for selling advertising in a magazine. And so, John, I went into it with, like, I didn't give a shit because I needed some money. They paid a little bit of money. And because I think my attitude was, like, I'm not doing this long, I didn't take it serious, but I actually listened and watched by making small changes, by called calling, by the way, we didn't have email and all that.

I'm an old guy. Picking up the yellow pages. Like, I recognized, like, wow, this selling thing is just really, like, starting a conversation, finding out what their needs are, and then, if it makes sense, talk about how the magazine can help them grow their audience. And I was like, this isn't that hard. And I started having success closing deals. I said, well, maybe this sales thing is a thing for me. And that's really kind of the catalyst for me is, like, I didn't want to do it, never really thought about it, and it just kind of happened. So let's talk about that as it relates to natural-born sales professionals. Like, what's your take on natural-born, like, abilities, if you will? Because there are always a natural-born sales rep.

And I think a lot of people conflate that with just being good to talk, you know, whatever. What's your perspective on that? I think, like, an elite athlete, I think there's some truth in that. I think there's some people that are just naturally better at and more comfortable and authentic in their own skin to sell to other human beings. But I think the distinction for me is, and natural is, we don't talk about this enough. Is this person a closer or not a closer? There's, people can start conversations. People can ask the right questions. That doesn't make you a closer. So it's just like a home run hitter. You can't be a singles hitter and turn into a home run hitter. You can't be, either are going to be an excel at closing, or you're probably going to be average or below average.

And that's the thing we'll maybe jump into later on win rights. It's like, I think there is a natural-born instinct to want to close. Like, my job at the end of the day is either to close this deal one way or another, right? That's it. It's not to make a new friend. It's not to create another opportunity or get another meeting scheduled. At the end of the day, I have something that they need. Let me help them make that decision. 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 I'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. We're jumping ahead a little bit on where my talk track went, but I'm curious here. So with all the training on like, if you really look at the distinction of like real true sales reps who can close versus kind of everybody else who just manages a process to a certain degree, you know, there's, there's training on closing techniques and, and, you know, and all of a sudden get a bunch of, you know, getting to yes from a negotiation standpoint, we get all these little yeses.

So, I mean, just like a home runner, you know, a singles hitter can't really be a home runner hitter if they don't have the muscle, you know what I mean? Like David Ortiz, he was a huge specimen. He could crush it. Whereas, you know, Ichiro, you know, he was a tiny little guy. Like he hit some home runs, but he wasn't like, he was never, but Ichiro was still an all-star at baseball. So like, how, how can somebody who might have the skills to, to follow the process, to understand, to be curious, like some of those things that are hard to teach, how do they become that, that closer, if you will, if that's not something that, because, and one more piece of context here, we were just talking before this, Jeff Hoffman, he's my mentor, right?

He fucking loves the clothes. Like he legitimately gets off when he just knows the exact, like ask that question right in front of a group of people and feels that person go, holy shit, I can't believe you just asked that. And then they say, yes, shit. Yeah, Jeff, you're right. Like he lights up like a Christmas tree when that happens. I don't. I love clothes. I like closing because of the outcome, but to me, it's a logical progression to get there, but I don't get jazzed up about like fucking saying something to get somebody to go ding. You know what I mean? So where is that for you? I think it's this and it can't be taught. Yeah. I'm talking about a real top-notch elite closer. You have to embrace friction, right?

You have to just want it. You want to get to some uncomfortable position. So that means you're not afraid to ask the questions that are probably going to get the nose and stuff you don't like. And that also means you're probably, if you do that, that friction and getting to an uncomfortable position, you're going to be very proactive in getting to objections faster because you're not afraid at the end of the day of hearing no, no means, ah, now I have an opening to start selling. I know where their position is. Now I can anchor to the no, where if I don't know, or maybe, or whatever, that's all bullshit. Tell me, no, tell me to go fuck off. I'm cool with that. Let's go. But you're right. Your friend, Jeff, like you have to have that passion about it.

It doesn't mean you can't close deals. If you don't, don't get me wrong. You'd still be very good at it. But the guys that are elite guys or gals, right? Or they love friction and that fear. And that's for me, like, I don't mind friction at all because I, you know, I think it's from Boston East coast. Like, yeah, just tell me, no, I don't give a shit. Like, like, let me move on. And that's why we were talking again, right before we kicked this off with, you know, the pipeline, everybody focused on top of funnel, top of funnel, top of funnel, but nobody focused on this. And to a certain degree, I agree with the top of funnel because it just gives you more at-bats. But for me, it puts me in a position where I want your business.

I don't need it. So therefore, I don't give a shit whether you close or not, right? I'm genuinely trying to make sure that we both win here and we both move forward here. So I don't give a shit about the friction because my pipeline's big enough for me to not fucking care. Right. But on the other hand, but so I, but I don't get jazzed up about that close. So help, you know, like, where are you on, on pipeline development and wanting friction versus putting yourself in a position where the clothes, I don't want to say doesn't matter, but if the client says no, because it's not a good fit and you lose, it's like, okay, whatever. I'm onto the next one. Well, let's distinguish here. Let's talk about enterprise specifically.

So we stay in that same vernacular. I think sometimes too much of a top of the funnel pipeline is a crutch. You're an enterprise seller. I've got 12 deals to work, so I'm not sweating it. And I think, honestly, you need to feel pressure every day and you have to be able to handle the pressure. And it's one of the things we'll get to. And I talk about in the book is the mentality of being in sales. Like it's not an easy job and there's a tremendous amount of pressure. And if I feel as a salesperson, I have a really strong top. I think I have a strong top of the funnel. That means I'm ready thinking that, boy, I know I can convert these 12, maybe eight of them into opportunities and I can take eight.

You know what I mean? They start doing some mental math. When I think about 12 at the top, I think that there's probably one good one. That's all I really care about. If I can get that one good one to close at a half million dollars, million dollars, that's what I want. So I think, again, what you have to start with to increase your win rate is your acceptance. We're too accepting of something that's a lead to an opportunity. And that's the big fundamental change. And I get why it happens. If you're a seller and you're not hitting your number today, which is a pretty scary environment we're in right now, you're going to make up some stuff. But it's up to the sales leader to say, I understand, team, what's going on, right?

I don't want you to make up opportunities. Here's our fit criteria. And I only want deals that are this fit criteria. So I think, again, it goes to like, you know, the elite closers just want to win the winnable, right? They're not stupid. I'm not going to chase something that's bad. I'm going to try to win the winnable. And what does that look like where I am? Right. So let me unpack this a little bit with this fit criteria thing, and I'm going to dumb it down to Bant. Okay. And I know we're talking enterprise, but a lot of the reason I hate Bant, the reason I hate Medic, the reason I hate a lot of these qualification criteria shit is because when followed too strictly, they disqualify far more than they would ever qualify.

Like for me, as an example, I don't give a shit about any of Bant other than need. If like there is a genuine need in this situation, you might not see it yet, but if there's a genuine need, then I should be able to uncover budget. I should be able to get to authority. I should be able to expedite a timeline as a reasonable sales rep here. So when you talk about fit criteria, how strict, I guess, or what does that framework look like so that it's not too disqualifying? Even at enterprise, John, where I was leading teams, I make it very simple, common sense. Do they have a pain that we can solve in a timeframe that we care about? If they do, that's an opportunity. If they don't hold off onto it.

And the most important thing is, I'll add to that, is there urgency to solve that problem? Yeah, we got this big pain, but we can't get to it till mid-26. Well, there's no urgency for solving this pain. What is that? That's not real pain. So you as a seller either need to help them understand what the pain is tied to urgency, something I call value selling, meaning it's either about time when they want to close, the value they see into it, or the ROI. So time, I got to get this done by end of the year. Value, I'm anchoring to it. We got a big implementation that it has to get done that's tied to this other thing. So I need to get done. And ROI, I'm just going to be saving money or making money.

If you anchor to one of those things and tie it to your fit, you're now controlling the deal, right? But you can't artificially make those things up. Those three things are based on the buyer's need tied to the value and the urgency they equate to that, right? Do you think anybody believes ROI anymore? Um, that's a fair question. Um, and the reason I ask as you think about it is there's, you know, I don't, you, I don't know if you've read jolt effect, right? Challenger sale, challenger customer jolt effect and how it's not indecision anymore. It's no decision. It's the risk factor and all this other stuff. And my contention right now is that people sell this ROI, right? Cost of inaction, I think is real, right?

That's challenger sale. But, but cost of no action, right? The fear factor. I think that people don't believe like ROI anymore because it's a, it's a promise for future results, right? Like, Hey, if you do this today, then sometime in the future, you're going to get an ROI to this. But because things are moving so fast, AI is basically changing the game daily. That is kind of hard for me. I don't know about you, man. I can't look six months out and have any type of confidence at all that I know what this world is going to look like in six months. So, so how do we address ROI in this? I think it's got to be reframed and I call it, and I talk about this, uh, it's about the business case called ROI for the shortened version of it.

But if you're not an enterprise helping your buyer figure out what the business case is so they can bring it up, as we know, to the people that have to approve and sign and all that stuff, and you're relying on them to build what the business case is tied to saving some money, increasing productivity, whatever it is that they believe in that this will do, then you're missing a huge opportunity to distinguish yourself and shorten the sales cycle. So again, yes, ROI, I think most sub buyers be like, whatever, what are you going to tell me? It's 10X, 20X. It's the same thing as we see someone on LinkedIn that says 10X your pipe. Come on, man. Like, like Grant Cardone. Yay. Douche. So I think you're right.

I think it's fair for sellers not to, not to call it ROI, but talk about, Hey, have you put together a business case? Do you need help? Because I've got this formula based on your business that I think we could start with and build from there. But it comes back to like, we talked about where it's like closing and selling. It's like the art of selling is missing, right? Like that's not in a medic or med pick. It's like reading the situation in front of you and understanding what their needs and what's important to them. Yes. Important to follow process every day, but you got a man. You got to be able to think. Patrick Mahomes calls a play. All of a sudden, two linebackers are coming at him. Do you think he gives a shit that the one wide receiver was running a long route?

No, he's looking for the slant. He wants to throw behind them, right? But he doesn't, he happens instinctively because he practiced enough and he knew what plan B was going into that play. And that tied to what we're talking about of being able to have the conversation with somebody. And I know if I say the ROI word to this guy, John, he's going to say, bullshit. This guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. And it could be industry related. Like if you're selling to an industry that's saturated by people like me and I'm throwing out terms like that, guess what? You're just like everybody else. So two questions, two part question on this one. One is with the, you know, you say that people focus and I agree with you that their pipelines are too fat in a lot of ways because there's not real deals in there.

I have this approach of disqualifying, like once you're kind of quote unquote, look like a duck, smell like a duck, you know what I mean? Like, all right, you're, you're kind of in that there's a need and I can help. My approach then is I start asking you questions to effectively disqualify you to find out all the reasons you should not be doing business with me because my philosophy is you're going to figure those out eventually. So I might as well bring them up in the first place. Now, Jeff, and I'm going to bring up Jeff, the artist, right? I'm more of the scientist. He's the artist. He's like, fuck that man. That is not my job. He's like, my job is like, you're going down the path and I'm trying to lead you down that path.

And my job is not to get in your way. So I'm going to, I'm going to kind of bring you down there and well, who am I to bring up stuff that why you shouldn't do business with me? That's your problem. If you can't figure that out. Right. So there's that line of like, oh man, but I understand his point. But for me, it's always serviced me to just be like, okay, let's talk about why you shouldn't do this. Like, why wouldn't you just do this internally? Why wouldn't you do this? Because those are all the questions that they're asking behind closed doors anyway. So where are you on qualifying versus I'm right in between you and Jeff and my favorite question to ask early in the process. Hey, John, we've talked about this now.

I think you see the value of what we provide, but I'm curious, what does it cost you or the company by doing nothing if we don't solve this problem? And if they don't have an answer for that, guess what? There ain't no urgency. So I really let them get themselves off to it and then pivot on. How do they respond to that? Oh, I don't know. It's a great question. Help them figure it out. Now we're getting back to the business case. Wouldn't it, wouldn't you say that would cost you hiring three more people? Well, I guess you're right. You know what I mean? Like, but I like your approach to be honest, if I was leaning one way or another, I like that let's disqualify because here's the other reason why that's very valuable.

People don't like to be told no, meaning I don't know if I want to work with you yet. Can I use one example? We were in a huge pitch off years ago selling to Yahoo. This is when Yahoo was the shiz. Think of 2005-ish, six-ish. And they had set us because they wanted very custom needs for what we were doing. And quite frankly, we didn't have the chops to do it. And so they, they'd said something and I just stopped the meeting. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I said, we collectively as a team here today, our executive team, our sales team, we haven't decided yet whether we want to move forward with you yet. They, they didn't know what, this is Yahoo and Silicon Valley and San Jose. Dude, you had to look at their faces when I said, it's like, you're telling us that you haven't to get, we understand.

And I said, because with all due respect, we understand your requirements. We understand how demanding you're going to be. We understand the, the constraints you're going to put on our business. You might actually hurt our business. So we came here to figure out if we should partner with you, if we can partner with you. And they said, can you give us five minutes? We all left the conference room. We went outside and I was like, what are they going to say? I said, I know what they're going to say. They're going to say, we found our partner. And they didn't say it in that meeting, but they did choose us because we were the only ones that said we would do what they told us to do. But that goes back to what we talked about.

Fear, no fear. Like, I don't give a shit. We're probably not going to win this anyway. It's like a long shot. Or to your point, we're going to get buried if we do. And so that's even worse if we did, than if we lose it. And in honest, we had conversations and the executive team level about the deal. We really did. I wasn't making it up. It wasn't a con. It wasn't a let's test them. We really talked about if this was, if we could even take this business. Yeah, it was fun. That was, that was fun to say that when you, well, well, it is, well, it's, it's such a reverse psychology, right? It's like, that's why I always say, look, I, I, I do want your business. My always, when I do that and I pull back, I'm like, look, I want your business if it's right for both of us, but I don't need your business.

So with the bullies and the big companies trying to pick on little vendors and all this other stuff, it's like, you can be you. I remember Pandora called me up a while. This was a while back when I was like crushing it. Salesforce is my biggest client and I'm, you know, murdering it. Right. And, um, Pandora was really big. Like when it, when it probably 2017 ish, 16. And, uh, they called me up. They're like, Hey, you know, and it was an assistant and, and she said, Hey, you know, we'd like you to bid on this training that we have. And I'm like, sure. Great. Tell me, like, love to talk to some of the executives, understand what the needs are. And she's like, well, no, no, no. The first meeting is out in Sanford, out in Oakland at our office.

And that's where you'll learn about the requirements and everything else. And I said, so let me just make sure I'm clear. You want me to fly to Oakland. I live in Boston, by the way. You want me to fly to Oakland on my own dime, take two, three days out of my schedule to go meet, not even knowing that what you need is something I can help with. And, um, and then after that, like I get to, and she's like, yeah, I go, okay, well, I'm going to respectfully decline the offer. And she goes, excuse me. And she literally said, um, we're Pandora. And I said, uh, yeah, I'm John Barrows. I'm like, I don't, I don't know what to tell you. I'm like, I don't give a shit. There's no fucking chance. I'm like that.

I'm like, I know you work for a big organization. That money that you're talking about comes directly out of my personal pocket. So you're asking me to spend about $2,000 and three days of my time that I could probably make 50 grand doing for a hope that what you need is what I have to offer. I go, I thank you very much. But I go, look, I'll be in California on this date. If, if we can make something like that, right. And sure as shit. I got an email saying, if you're going to be in town for that date, like let's have this conversation and all this other stuff. So anyways, but it's like that odd, it's almost like dating, right? It's like, you go up and you're desperate for the significant other.

You're, you're confident in your abilities, right? It's also having confidence in what you do. And, and, and honestly, it's mutual respect that you did that. You know what I mean? Like, it wasn't just about you and saving money. You're like, you're not, I'm not, you know, it's, it's. Yeah. I didn't want to waste their time either. Like why waste time with a guy like me where I walk in the door and five minutes in, I'm You know, the 20th thing, she went back to somebody, right? She's like, you're not going to believe. And they said, really? You did? Yeah. And you're like, wow, that's pretty cool. I like that. I respect that. Yeah. That's what they said. Right. Totally. You didn't capitulate. Nope.

Which we see too much of that today, but we won't go there. Talk to me about solution selling versus hypothesis selling. So this is a, the big shift that I'm seeing. I mean, should we solution sell you more, John? And people told me that's not a thing anymore. Well, let's yeah. The book of the month club. I mean, people, they have their, whatever the, your favorite new method. Right. But, you know, so I grew up Xerox, you know, they invented solution selling back in the seventies and eighties and, you know, theory, you know, for everybody listening, it's obviously just asking before product pitching or after product, it was just ask me some questions and then deliver a solution based on my needs.

Now we've moved into this, this world of, you know, a lot of people. And I talk about it too. And I suggest in some ways doing this, but hypothesis selling. So instead of me walking in and saying, Hey Vince, tell me about your problems. Tell me about your priorities. Help me. What keeps you up at night? All that bullshit. I walk in and I'm like, Hey Vince, you know what? I'm dealing with a lot of executives like you in this space. And walking into the end of this year and early next year, some of the things that are in their top of their head are X, Y, and Z. And based on what my research is, I'm throwing your 10K in the annual report. My hunch is that you're having issues here, here, and here.

Am I on the right path? Like, so coming in with a hypothesis and anchoring on something for them to expand on versus open ended question. Let's see where this goes. Like, where are you? Can't you do both? Yep. Can't you do both? Yep. Can't you have a hypothesis and solution cell? Well, I guess it comes. The question is, is, is chicken and the egg, right? Which comes first? Do you, do you do solution selling and then come up with your hypothesis? Or do you leave with a hypothesis? If I'm selling industry or vertical wise, I think the hypothesis works really well. Here's what we're, John, here's what we're seeing in your industry, X, Y, and Z. I assume you're seeing something similar, am I correct?

Yes, we are. So I think you can anchor to that if you have industry or vertical expertise and you see repeat stuff. Matter of fact, then you're positioning yourself as the expert. That makes a lot of sense. And then once you figure out what they agree to, then you start the solution cell. But it comes down to what you said in the beginning, right? Like, isn't everything just about what's their need? What do they need? Like, come on, man. We're overcomplicating sales again. People are only going to buy it and more so today than ever before, something that they need feels it's going to bring them value, right? Because what is it? What's the right number? 70, 80% of buyers are so better informed on your product, you're offering your solution, your competitors, all the blah, blah, blah, right?

And it's true, right? All they got to do is go to ChatTBT and tell me about John Burrows and how he's different than other folks that do what John does, right? 100%. That's why I tell reps, if you don't think you're in trouble, do that exact thing. Pretend like you're a potential customer of your product and go in and say, you know, I'm a CEO. I'm a VP of sales of a 50-person sales team, 20 SDRs, 30 AEs. I'm looking at the JV sales training for prospecting. Tell me what I need to know. How does he compare against the other three vendors on G2? And when you realize in a five-minute conversation, you get more value than some dipshit kid that's going to ask you bank questions and then reschedule a meeting three weeks later for their AE to ask you the same stupid questions and then wait another two weeks for the SE to come in and have the conversation.

You realize how much trouble we're in. I think to go back to your question, one more point I'd make on that. If you're selling a solution that's not a well-known solution, like maybe you're the first to sell what you're selling, I think you have to lead with a hypothesis, right? You have to paint this picture of you may not realize it, but here's the problem that you have and here's what it could lead to today, tomorrow, the next day, right? So standing on the soapbox and kind of preaching, right? It's an aspirational sale, it's called. So if you're selling an aspirational sale, I think you have to lead that way. How can you sell a solution where they don't even see the problem yet, right? So let's talk about the book.

A, why'd you write it? Like writing a book is a pain in the ass across the board. You usually don't make any money doing it. So it's usually a labor of love. Why did you decide to write this book? And then let's talk about what's in the book. I always need to be doing something or I'm bothering people typically in my house. So I had to do that. I had this idea for Red Zone selling about eight years. And I talked about this framework at a couple of different presentations. And I've kind of used this framework for most of my career in one way or another. And so fast forward to February this past year, I was speaking to a coach I was using at the time. And I just came out of business that wasn't successful last year.

And again, I needed something to do. And I said, hey, I've got this idea for this book. And I said, you got to be honest with me. I know I'm paying you money, but I don't want you to tell me what I want to hear. And I said it and there was silence. And I'm like, oh, shit, he's going to give you. Oh, let me think about it. He said, I think it's brilliant. I think you should do it. I have a self-publisher you can use. I said, no, no, you got to give me more than that. And he went into it. He said, one, it's a framework. It's not a methodology. It's not a process. It sits on top of that. It's independent. It's not theory. It's practical. He said, two, your analogy to sports and specifically football, people that sell typically love sports.

They love to compete. It's more than sports, right? So once I kind of got that initial like, okay, that gives me a little confidence. I started putting together the outline to this thing. And quite frankly, what made me pull the trigger on it, I found a self-publisher that gave me a framework to be able to put my thoughts down, to really give it the solid outline, as you know, to write the book. It's not, you don't write chapter after chapter two. You have to get the framework. And I have to be honest with you, the most surprising thing when I was writing the book was like how easy that was, how easy that came to me. I was like, whoa, this is bizarre. I was sitting on my porch and I'm like flying through the, you had to do nine chapters and three subtopics for each chapter.

And not only was that, I started, oh, this would be a cool story to tell about. Uh, Tom Brady on this scene. And this would be a cool story to tell about, about, um, um, this player and that player and to, to match up to the chapters. They're like, holy shit, this is pretty cool. But also John, for me, I want a calling card. And the other important thing for me is like, I want a legacy, man. Like, you know, I think I've done a lot of great things and led a lot of great teams and had a lot of success, but like, this is my baby now. You know what I mean? Like red zone. I want to be my brand, right? Like they may not remember my name, but I hope this eventually becomes something that people remember.

Like that was, that guy thought of it in a practical way that I think most sellers will get and find some use in. And that's why I wrote it for it. It's for the people that aspire to be the 1%. That's who it's for. Nice. So let's talk through the framework, right? Is that too much selling, by the way? What's that? Was that too much selling? No, not at all. No, I, no. Hey, look, I, I say for me, you know, I do this 10, 60, 30 thing where it's 10%. Like when somebody asked me, John, you know, who, you know, you can train all these people. You train us all in the same shit. How can we differentiate? And my answer is always 10, 60, 30. I go 10% of you in this room are going to take what I tell you and execute at the highest level because that's the type of people you are.

60% of you in this room are going to do something different because it's easy and it makes sense. And 30% of you ain't going to do shit different. So the question isn't how many people can I train? The question is what percentage you want to be in. And where you say you're up for that top 10%, like that top 1%, I'm actually for the upper end of the middle 60%. The 10% to me is always going to be the 10%. Like you're always going to get value out of anything that you, and you're always going to want to get better. I don't even know if I would put myself in the top one, 2% type of sales reps. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a practitioner. I'm a scientist, but I'm not the Jeff Hoffmans of the world. I'm not that guy.

Right. On the other hand, the bottom 30% piss off. Like I don't give a shit about the bottom 30%. And the reason is, is because they don't care either. Yeah, they don't. Right. The, the, the one I have a little bit of empathy for is the middle. There's the bottom part of that 60%. The ones who are just the B players and just want to do their job and just show up. Unfortunately with AI right now, I think they're irrelevant and they just don't know it yet. Like that's the sad part, but it's that top end of that 60% for me that I'm like, if you care, if you, if you care, you don't have to be great, but if you give a shit, I'll give you everything I got to get you to this next level where you, then you can go for the 1% thing, but I'm not going to care if you don't.

So going back to 1%, no, it goes back to knowing your audience, right? Like that's who you want to speak to enterprise. I'm also not enterprise for the most part. Like I, I swung and failed hard with the enterprise approach. I'm more of a mid market kid. Like I, you know, not a ton of volume. I can't do SMB because that's just, that's, I don't understand what sales in SMB isn't really a thing. I think I'm sorry to offend anybody who's in that, but, um, well, it's a lot more transactional. It's a lot more. All right, cool. Let's go, go, go, go, go. So the top of the funnel does matter at those levels. So I don't think you're pitching at all because you are who you're focusing on. And those are the people who hopefully listen.

And I think it's coming through. I'm passionate about it, right? You can't write a book unless you're really passionate about that. Well, actually you can write a book. You just go to chat GPT and you say, you know, John borrows this, write a book that John would write and they'll literally write a book for you for real. I know that's, that's actually the story. Cause I was like, what am I going to write? Cause you know, a real book now, no, well, not that my, you know, my children's book isn't a real book, but, um, I was like, ah, what am I going to write? And what I realized was when I started the process of writing, what I would think would be frameworks and these types of things. That's like round when chat GPT came out and I'm like, this is going to be irrelevant before I put it out there.

Like before I'm even done with it. So what I'm actually going to write my book, it's, it's called, um, I think the title is going to be my sales story and everything I've learned along the way. And it's literally just going to be story after story, after story, up stories, right? Because, because that's something chat GPT can't take away from me. Like it doesn't know all those stories, they're mine. Right. So that's, that's the thing that nobody can go into chat GP and say, tell me all the stories that John had throughout his entire life and how they apply to sales. Like that's the story. And that was, was, was important to me to make sure I sprinkled in there. Is that like, they didn't just want plays and situations.

Of course they did. It's very valuable, but I talk about like, I truly ran into this and here's what we did and here's what the result was. And like, it's, and that was, that was the fun part about it is it's kind of like going back, you know, looking back at my past and my history and picking out the good stuff and the bad stuff that happened. And this is what, when you write, it forces all these things that come out, as you know, and it's a good, whether you want to publish your book or not. Like I encourage everybody to put their thoughts down on the old paper, whether it's typing or writing, because it's like, man, it's so liberating. It's holy shit. And it's different than speaking into a dictation app, right?

Because it forces you to think about what you're writing as opposed to just throwing up and, and, and writing quote unquote. Um, so I think that the art of writing like, no, that's dumb, scratch, scratch, scratch, right? No, that didn't make any sense. That doesn't tie to this, right? Those, the, all that wires your brain in a certain way too. So, um, let's talk about the framework, right? So you get red zone. It's funny, you know, you went to U Maryland and I did too. And we have a very similar, um, arc because I, I didn't go for broadcasting, but I was an assistant sports marketing director. And so I would set up for the games at bird stadium. I'd break them down. I was the one up in the, in the booth, like, you know, when Keith booth, you know, had that, well, I put his name up in lights and all that stuff.

And I started the red zone. So I, I wrote, I, I drew a picture of the terp with this cape on and the red zone. And it was all about this. And it was the student section and stuff. So talk to me about, I mean, we all know, most people know, obviously what the red zone is in, in football. It's that end that's the last 20 yards right there. Right. So what, but you have this yellow zone, green zone, red zone. So walk us through that framework a little bit. Yeah. So I break the football field down. If you're looking at a football peak to give you a visual out there, you've got the yellow zone, which think about it's probably from your defending goal line going to like the 40. Then you've got the green zone, which is the middle section of the field.

And then we all know what the red zone is. It's where you strike. And by the way, as I started going through this zones and what, what plays you run in these different zones, there's a couple of NFL stats that really came out at me. That was really in parallel to the sales. Did you know over the last 12, 13 years in the NFL, 74% of touchdowns are scored in the red zone, 74%. Now, if you think of that enterprise sales, about 80% of great ears are, are closed in your late last stage. Right. So there's a lot of parallels with why in football, the quarterback tries to move the football down the field as close to the goal line as possible because he wants to increase their team's chances of scoring a touchdown.

It's the same thing in sales. Why we're doing the things necessary to get the decision all the way down the path and making sure we're checking and, and, and calling the right plays in the right situation. And that's what it really is about. It's like, it's not just having a process and following the process. It's being situationally aware. All right. Like, for example, it always comes back in football and, and, and sports in general and sales of you got to get the basics right first deal. People always ask me like, they want a silver bullet. I'm like, there's no silver bullets, dude. I'll give you an example. When we were at customer, we are, our, our close rate was shrinking and our top of pipe shrinking.

So I knew we weren't getting more opportunities. So what do we need to do? We need to increase our probability of closing the deals that we have. So we did some funnel analysis and one of the things we found out is we were losing more than we should have late, late stage deals. We eventually pinpointed it to, because we weren't bringing the IT leader in the process in early, they were getting involved in the deal late. They didn't plan for it. So therefore they didn't feel involved. They can plan for it. They've killed the deal. So, you know, we did. We're so brilliant. We pulled in it early in the discovery calls and invited them to the, to the, the party. And guess what happened? And we went from 21% to 43%.

That's a small little thing, but it's a, it, that's what happens in sales. What I want people to know out there, it's like, you don't need to do big things. You don't need to change your process, your methodology or any of that. You just need to make fine little changes and be honest with where you're challenged. Right. And that's what I, if you ask me the question, like, what do you want people to take away from? So if you, like when you do a sale training, if someone walks away with one or two nuggets that like, is just like, wow, I could do that today. That's what I want. Cause I want the level of effort. The hard thing in training sometimes is if the salesperson feels at the level of effort for me to implement, what I was just told is too hard.

They're not going to do it. And these are common sense type things that gives you the ability to say, if I'm in this situation, I need to recognize what's happening. And the play could be this, or maybe it makes you think about a different play that you might want to have. So that's what it is. It's just like, think about it. Again, I use the Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady, right? Cause it also is mental toughness is like, be aware of where you are and call the right play at that time and be ready to audible. Well, that's where like Bill Belichick, so Patriots fan here, loud and proud. We're coming back this year. We were terrible the past few years, but whatever. Take what the defense gives you.

Right. But yes. And what, you know, his whole thing, uh, Belichick was do your job and that it was literally that simple. It's like, like just follow the process. And one of the most beautiful examples of that was, um, a gray, like he was, he was a running back and I forget what his name was, but his last name was gray. It was just rookie running back. Right. And he comes in the game and he scores like five touchdowns running touchdowns. And he was like top of the like shit. Right. Literally, literally made sports, the cover of sports illustrated that week. Like it was like, Whoa, Holy shit. Right. Five touchdowns. Right. And he was, he was 15 minutes late to practice on Monday or on, on Tuesday, when they came back to practice, Belichick benched his ass, went and got blunt from where, you know, from the Pittsburgh Steelers put blunt in the next game and blunt scored four touchdowns in the same system.

And he basically, and he, and that kid never played again. He just did his job, man. The kid, the kid never, he was like, you're, you're not special. Okay. It's the system. And if you play the system, it tends to work. And I go back to that being, it really is that. So I guess my question for you is like the little things matter. Right. And, and so you can make these little tweaks, but I believe we've gotten so far away from fundamentals. That I think most organizations don't have a foundation to tweak because they're, they're, they're, they're tweaking on a house of cards and that those cards aren't making the difference. So how do you suggest organizations right now kind of take a step back and go, is our foundation sound?

And, and cause that like, to me, if you think of the analogy of a house, right? It's like, well, fuck, do I got to rip this whole thing down to build a new foundation here? How do you look at people who are kind of in that, that shitty yellow zone, if you will, that they're not making any progress. They're basically treading water and it's because they built a house of cards. I agree. I think it's time to evaluate that and be honest about it. I think the biggest challenge we have as sellers today is who I forgot you were talking about. Somebody's talking about the indecision. I think more deals are stalling now. You can, I think you can get deals started and you can have conversations, but it's the stalling.

And I agree, I agree with you. I think it's all the foundations and it starts with first, what we talked about early, the top of the podcast of like, what does fit look like at our company? So what is your sales playbook needs to be something that's easy for a sales person to digest. There's a sales playbook for the sellers. Do you know what I'm saying? Like there's a sales playbook that your CRO has, but then there's a sales. Playbook a la red zone. That's for the sellers to be able to sell. So literally from this framework, I could craft an entire sales process for somebody that's just around the, the foundation of fundamentals. I'm not a genius. I haven't rediscovered what sales is, but I know it works and what doesn't.

And it hasn't changed over 500 years. Do you know what I'm saying? Like starts with, okay, who is this person and do they need this thing? And then what do we need to do to make it work for us and follow on the path? And to me, again, the biggest challenge for sellers out there is that, yeah, Vince, whatever, but my deals are slowing down. They're stalling. I'm getting ghosted. I'm getting this. Okay. So what, why aren't we inter, why aren't we including, um, you know, injecting, you know, pre, um, you know, uh, objection handling, like instead of waiting for it to happen, if it's stalling, stop acting like my next step is this. It's like, no, your next step is nothing. You have nothing. It's gone.

So now you got to start from scratch. What would you do if you'd start from scratch? And I think that's the problem. It's gotten too scientific to your point before too much medic or your process. It's like, that's cool, but my deal stall. So guess what? Sending the reminder email or top of the, you know, whatever it is. No. How about a text to saying, is everything okay? It'd start from zero again, right? Because you, you already lost it. And what I say in enterprise sales, you probably lose your deal three or four times in enterprise sales before you win it. And what I mean that you might get ghosted for a month, you lost it. What are you going to do to gain back? Right? So I think, yes, foundation needs to be looked at.

I think simplifying your playbook for the sellers is very important. Again, is it digestible to them? Will they follow it? Do they believe in it? Right? Yeah. And I, I mean, look, I'm a keep it simple, stupid guy that I always have been like, you make it too complicated for me. This is why, like, you know, I'll do respect to Miller Hyman and shit. But as soon as I saw Miller Hyman, I was like, nope, never going to fucking do this. Like, there's just no way I'm going to fill out this blue sheet for every account that I have. Like, it's just not going to happen. Sorry. Like, I'm sure it gives me great insights and it helps me frame my whole process around this, but I don't have the patience. Nine out of 10 people won't do it either, unless it was an absolute requirement.

Well, that's carrot stick. Right? So I find that the stick is the forced methodology. The carrot is, is like, okay, well, what's in it for me? Like if I do this and that's why, like, I've always gravitated towards my training is started very tactical. It was like, just do this, do this to your point of like, get that one nugget. Cause if I can get that one nugget, that kid to be like, Ooh, that worked. It opens up their eyes to maybe be open to some other stuff. Let me ask you a question. You're really good at, at, um, communicating to salespeople, right? You're authentic. They like you, they respond to you. When you were speaking to a sales leader or rev ops leader about coming in and do some training, how often do you get involved with actual sellers at that company?

How often are they involved? And, uh, should we bring John in or what kind of training do we need? Is that ever, is that ever, is that ever part of your process with their rare, rare that they offer it? Uh, I usually say, let me talk to a couple of reps before we get started here. Cause I need to hear from them what they're dealing with. And usually I like to try to talk to the top reps to see, because a, I need their buy-in so that they don't sit in the back of the room and check out because they know that most training sucks, but, um, you know, I don't do extensive, uh, like one-on-ones and meetings and, you know, cause I'm not enterprise. So my deals aren't three, five, you know, a million dollars to justify that, but I'll take two, three calls with some top, you know, leaders and there's a whole form I have them fill out.

But yeah, it's important for me to, you know, well, here's an example. Like when we do the, you know, there's two frameworks that I use, one for prospecting and one for negotiations and we do the prep so that I have a baseline to compare it to. I used to just have the managers do that so I could get their perspective. Now I'm like, no, no, no. I want your rep to give me that baseline structure of what they would put in there so that I can see from their perspective, what great, what they think great looks like, especially your top reps. So I can now, you know, get their buy-in and, and use that as a comparison. Yeah. And that's where I'm trying to get at. Like it, this book is written for the seller though.

I, if I'm trying to do a workshop or, or, or put together plays for the team, you know, you need to go where those, how are you going to get paid? Right. But where I'm looking for the cred, where I want people to say like, shit, this book is, is good. It's useful. I want to say, I want top sellers to say like, and I, and I, you know, when you're a book, you don't know the scariest thing is, Oh, I asked for a lot of feedback from people, man. And like, is it coming? Knock on wood. I mean, I know it's the day is coming when someone's going to say, whatever it is. But there was one person, John, that reached out to me. I gave him the PDF early on and it was a Saturday. I remember it. He sent me back this long, thoughtful email about what he really loved about the book.

And I'm like, almost in tears. I'm like, Holy shit. Cause I didn't know. I, you know, I've, I've read it so many times. I'm like, I don't even know what to make of it anymore. It was at that point. And it's going to, this is a one, one of those one percenters, uh, ICs and he, he got it. And I was like, okay, that's a, that's all I needed to make sure. I was going to say to me, that makes all the hard work, all the travel for me when I used to do it, you know, those types of things worth it. When that one kid can unsolicited hits you back and say, Holy shit, man, like you changed my entire perspective. Like that's what happened to your training. And then after training, you're getting hit by people.

You're like, this is why I do it. And I get paid. Yep. And, and that's like, and again, going back to the one percenters, I remember sitting in the class with Jeff Hoffman, like it was a public workshop. And I remember I was King shit. You know, I was, we were the fastest growing company in Massachusetts. I was kicking the ever living shit out of all my competition. And, and I didn't, and I wasn't really that good. I just had a really strong work ethic. You know what I mean? Like I just, I, I worked harder than everybody else. And so I, but I thought my shit didn't stink. And then I sat there and I watched Jeff and I was like, I'm like, Oh, you felt small. Didn't you? Oh, I, I felt so insignificant as far as my skills.

Cause I saw what sales greatness looked like. And I was like, okay, I, I have, and the light bulb went off for me. I'll tell you though, there's not a day that goes by. I'm being completely honest that I don't feel like I don't know shit. And isn't it funny? Like, you know, I'm older than you and someone's younger than whatever it is. I don't care what age it is and how much success you have. If you don't feel that, then there's something wrong with you, you know? And I know people worry about that. Like they're afraid to write something or do something because they don't know. Like I'm, nobody knows anything. We're all experimenting, right? That's the big farce about adult, right? When you're a kid, you're like, Oh man, these adults got it figured out.

And then when you become an adult, you're like, wait a minute. Fucking nobody has a clue what they're doing. They don't have the answers you think you do. I'm sure you have the same thing. Like you've met executives of huge organizations and stuff like that. And after you get it, like you probably intimidated when you walk in the room, you're like, this person's like multi-billionaire and holy shit, they must know. And then you meet them in like 10 minutes into the conversation. You're like, wait a minute. Emperor has no clothes, right? Yeah. Like you're not that smart. You're not, you, you got, you were fortunate. You were driven, you, you know, and you did some really good things, but you're not some immense, a genius here that got you to this level.

Like I, I could be you. And I think that's the thing I always try to get kids. Like, you know, when you're talking to an executive, realize that when you're at the grocery store, do yourself a favor, just turn around and look in line. Cause I almost guarantee that mother, that father, who's got two or three kids hanging all over them and all disheveled and they're trying to get their credit. But I almost guarantee that's a, that's an executive somewhere. You know what I mean? That, that you're scared to talk to. So. And that's a good lesson for people. I think out of everything we talked about is quite frankly, is like, you're an expert in what you do, man. Believe it, learn it, continue to learn the craft.

And, and the other thing to me is like, like I started off with, I didn't, I didn't pick a career in sales. I think sales picked me, uh, but I learned to love it. And I, I, I think sales is like choosing golf as a sport. You can play golf until the day you die just about. So if you're going to choose a career, it's a career you literally could, could do until the day you're can't do anything anymore. And there's not a lot of occupations. You can say that, and there's ageism in, in, in, um, in the workplace. But again, if you're a closer or you're a great sales leader, nobody cares your 85 years. Well, yeah, I mean, or 23, if you're can prove it. Right. So that's the beautiful thing is that it's ages.

And that's the other analogy to golf. There is that I always tell people like sales is like golf, like you can always get better golf. You can't shoot a zero. They'll never master it. Right. You can always try, but you'll never always that tweak. There's always that thing. There's always the one good hit that keeps you. Right. Exactly. And it's that one big deal that you get, you focus it right on all that shit. So the great, the timely question that you asked and you're like, ah, shit, that was awesome. You know, exactly. Awesome. Well, I think we could, you know, talk sales all day long on this one, Vince, but, uh, let's give people some insights on where they can find the book, where they can find more about you, what you're doing these days.

Cause again, I think, you know, for me, my audience is that they always want to get better. Right. And you know, there is the enterprise sellers out there. They're, they're looking at things right now, freaking the fuck out based on what's happening with AI and everything else. So this is a, hopefully something that'll give them those few nuggets to get to that next level. So where can people find out more info? If you find me, please connect on LinkedIn, Vince Speezy on LinkedIn. I'm, I think I'm the only Vince Speezy on LinkedIn. So there's not going to be any trouble with that. And then red zone selling comes out on Amazon. I think by the time your folks listen to this, which is August 12th.

So you can get the Kindle version and the paperback version. Um, and then there's red zone selling.co as well. That's C O not C O M. So gotcha everybody else, uh, who's listening. We're going to put in the show notes, but last name B E E S E, even though it sounds like a BZ, right? Sounds like Reese. A lot of people will say Reese. Yeah. It's a BZ easy, easy, easy, like BZ, easy, like Sunday morning. All right, my friends. Well, thank you very much for the conversation. I really enjoyed it. And I hope it was awesome. John enjoyed it. Thank you. Absolutely. Everybody. Hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I didn't like. I always say it all the end, all these podcasts, go out there and make some smile today.

Cause no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile, 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. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day, just like you go to jaybarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today.

Let's all level up and make this happen together. Thank you.