"AI Will Just Help You Suck Quicker" A Sales Expert's Warning

Sean Weisbrot: Alan Versteeg is the Global Chief Revenue Officer of Growth Matters. He's located in Johannesburg, South Africa, and you may see in this video some issues with the video or audio. So in that case, please bear with us because sometimes the internet is not completely stable. So I wanted to talk with Alan because of his experience with sales and building sales teams and training sales teams. In this interview, we talk about LinkedIn using open ai, um, AI in the sales process where it belongs, where it doesn't belong. How do you build value with a prospect? How do you disseminate culture into your sales team so that as a founder, when your team is growing, you have the ability to make sure that they're going to continue to talk to prospects the way you did so that the, um, value is established and therefore, uh, the conversion rate will remain, um, high, if not continue to grow higher. And, uh, how to hire salespeople based on their values, not, uh, a, a set of, of scripts that they should use and a lot more. So I know you're gonna like this interview with Alan. I know I did. So thank you for sticking with us. This is episode 175, as we've crossed, crossed our three year mark. I look forward to bringing you many, many more interviews. So recently LinkedIn decided that they were going to infuse OpenAI features into, I'm assuming it's LinkedIn sales Navigator. I'm curious what you think about it. I'll wait to hear what you have to say and then I'll say what I think. Yeah,

Alan Versteeg: I, I think with, and we can go to a broader conversation on AI later, or generative language, you know, intelligent language, but I think the risk here is that what we tending to see, and I'm gonna go to the end of the game. We are down scaling the professionalism of sales. Right, and I get that AI is a great assistant, but it should be assistant artificial intelligence. And what I tend to see, Sean, is that what's going to happen is we're gonna see more laziness and more ineffectiveness and more canned messages and more of the same. So now what happens is now I'm gonna create a message a lot quicker, so I'm gonna send out more of them. And effectively the way I like to see it is, look you, you suck. Now you can suck quick in front of more people, but the reality is when you think about LinkedIn, it's about connections and all you connecting with people. And the way you connect with people is not through a connection. You connect by creating value. So if your intent is create value and you're leveraging ai, I think it's a wonderful tool that you can leverage in LinkedIn. The reality is though, for most people who struggle to even in a minute explain their value proposition, is they're going to use the tool. To try and sound like they care about the customer as opposed to leading from a value of actually caring about it. And I think that's my key thing on anything, ai, when your value system as a sales professional is to sell with noble purpose, you can leverage these tools to your benefits. If your intent is to be lazy and just see if you can get more over the line, then these tools are gonna damage the reputation of sales professionals in the market. That's, that's my 10 cents on that, Sean.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay, so I'll, I'll share real quickly my experience. I, I had a free trial for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, so I figured I would spend a month and try it out. I also have Phantom Buster. Uh, so I, I used LinkedIn Sales Navigator to create some searches based on a type of person that I wanted to reach out to, for example, uh, exit strategists, companies that are helping other companies prepare to sell their business. The reason being is the service that I've launched is to help companies cut their costs, right? Partic, particularly companies that are grossing at least $5 million a year. Because their budget is high enough that I could save them at least a few hundred thousand dollars a year. Therefore, what I can earn is significantly enough to, to consider actually spending time on it. So I thought LinkedIn would be a great way to do it. I also considered email and all of these things, but in the end, I decided to go with LinkedIn because it's a lot simpler than setting up a CRM and setting up email automations and stuff that I've kind of have figured out how to do. But it took me a very long time to figure out, and it takes a lot of energy to actually set up. So that let me just, uh, use Phantom Buster to take the search, uh, results and export them to A CSV so that I can actually start to think about who from this list do I wanna actually communicate with. And luckily, uh, it included the LinkedIn URLs and all that. Now, as you said earlier, it's very easy to use AI to craft messages and things like that, but I thought. I wanna build human relationships with these people because I don't think AI is going to get the job done for something like this. And I had 5,000 people on that list, and if I were to send, uh, you know, cold emails to 5,000 strangers and they were all interested, or even a thousand of them or, or 500 of them were interested in having a call with me, there's no way I could serve all of those calls. Now again, these are, are, are referrals, not potential clients, right. My experience told me that when you're doing a consulting service, that the best kind of, uh, way to build your clientele is to, uh, convince people that already serve that clientele, to refer you to them because they're essentially transferring, uh, the trust that the client has in them over to you. And so I decided to, to try to build relationships with these exit strategists. So. Um, I decided to manually DM or, or, you know, request, uh, a connection on LinkedIn with these people and then send them all dms. Now the message is canned, but it's a custom message based on my understanding. So basically what I said to them was, Hey, first name I. Um, you know, thanks for reaching out or thanks for connecting. I appreciate it. I'm curious, do you currently help your clients do a deep dive on their finances and do cost cutting for them in order to increase the valuation that they're gonna get when they exit? I. Because some of them may, some of them may not. Some of them are financial, um, professionals, some are not financial professionals. Uh, some of them, you know, so they, there's differences in all of them, but I don't know what those are gonna be until I talk to them. And so by asking a question, I am getting them to share something with me to kind of break down the barrier. And I had some people completely ignore the message. Fair enough. That's gonna happen. I had some people. Say, yes, I do that. Um, you know, I'm not, look, you know, we've got a team. We don't need your help. Alright, fine. I had, uh, one or two people already 'cause I've only messaged like a hundred people or so. So it's like something I've just started. Um, one of them said, I'm not, I'm not looking for anything right now or like, I'm not interested. And I responded. I'm, I'm not selling you anything. She was like, oh, I'm sorry. That's just my response to people that send me messages. And then she like reviewed what I said and then we started to talk. Um, and then I one person go, wow, I'm so glad you asked me a question about my process instead of trying to sell me something. And I was like, I'm here to try to help you, help your clients. Why would I, and I'm not selling you anything. I wanna get to know you. Right? So, so my, my desire is to build human relationships, and I'm seeing that my process. Even though it's slow and doesn't scale well is what needs to be done in order to build kind of a referral network. Obviously when you're trying to sell marketing services or whatever it is, these kinds of things that these agency providers have, then they're gonna wanna go far and wide and, and they're just assuming that most people aren't gonna respond. But I wanna build a few relationships with a few, you know, with a few people who are going to bring me clientele. So what I've seen is, um. You know, AI is not going to be useful for me. Could I employ it more in like the automation of, oh, this person sent me a message, tell Zapier to add them to my CRM. Right? So there's things like that that I could do, but I've chosen to not do any of that for now because it doesn't make sense. So basically my, my understanding of open AI features on LinkedIn is it's gonna make things worse than they already are. I think it'll be easier for people to one click generate messages that are completely useless and people will just continue to. Not trust strangers on LinkedIn.

Alan Versteeg: I think that's a key thing. And if, as I said, if you think about the idea of social networking and social, its mechanisms by which we connect, um, and what I like about what you've been sharing, and I'm, I'm, I'm personally glad you didn't build a zap behind it. Not because there's anything nefarious about it, but now the reality is, I think that we are forgetting is that when you're prospecting, when you're outbound, that effectively what you're trying to do is you're trying to treat the client upfront like your client. Not like a prospect or a suspect or a number or a data point. So I love the approach you took where you lead with a question because question shows curiosity, question says where you at and questions normally allow people to quickly filter relevance so immediately for you. You also don't want 195 people either saying yes or no or going down conversations. You don't only go down, you pre-qualify them in a way by adding daily look. Is this something you do? Sure. No, it's not something we do and we really struggle with it. Well, great. Let's have a conversation. What I loved in the story you shared as well though, is the instinct for people to go, Hey, look, I'm not interested. Hey, look, it's not happening. Um, I'm, I'm also starting to see some really good automated responses when people connect, like, Hey, um, I've got no context about why you want to connect n and a. If it is value, then do this, this, or this. Um, and so I know you are a real person, do this, right? So we're starting to see that, you know, it's almost like the technology is now starting to play against itself and going, how do we make this work? But it's not that the technology in itself is flawed, it is mechanisms to support us. It can, might, might help you take that question and articulate it in a way that is clearer to understand that your intent is better and it can improve and enhance good intentions. The risk is. Because it's so easy to do, I think it's gonna have, it can easily have a negative effect. And I'll give an example of where we've, we've seen this before, we've seen this before with the advent of online calendars. The ability now to hijack time in someone's day is so easy. The ability to, you know, set up a meeting for an hour is so easy. So we just do it. And the technology's intent is to make us more productive, but it makes it counter count. It makes us unproductive because now it's so easy to set up a meeting. So we just set up a meeting. We don't think about an agenda. We don't think about what we talk about. We don't clarify. You know, what we need to do. So when you take that piece of technology, I don't think it's the technology that's flawed, I think it could really help us, but I unfortunately, it's gonna scale up the amount of noise and the amount of, you know, crap that people are being sent via different social networks and, and further undermine the sales profession.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. That's why I keep my events, uh, hidden on my Calendly. So when I have someone come to me that wants to be a guest, whether it's them messaging me directly or it's their PR agent, uh, I'll look at their bio first like I did for you. And if I'm interested, I'll say, here's a calendar link for me to do an intro call. That intro call is 30 minutes. It used to be 60. I cut it down to 30 because if I can't figure out within 30 minutes, if I want to have a an hour interview with someone, then. Then I'm not supposed to interview that person.

Alan Versteeg: You're probably knowing the first seven minutes anyway. The, the next 23 minutes is to be polite,

Sean Weisbrot: right? I, well, so interestingly enough, what I've learned from sales is that the podcast is actually one of the best ways for me to create a sales pipeline because a lot of the guests are ideal clients because they're running seven and eight figure businesses. So by doing the intro call, like by, by doing the podcast, I'm creating free value. And by doing the intro call, I'm qualifier by, by looking at their bio, I'm pre-qualifying that there's someone I wanna talk to, whether I'm gonna pitch them the service or pitch them or, you know, referring me to their clients, or, um, just do a podcast with them. I'm pre-qualifying them by saying, look, you have to go through this. And then by doing the intro call, we can share kind of personality and see if we're a good fit to even do the podcast. And if it's someone that I wanna do the podcast with, they're also gonna be someone that I'd be willing to work with. And then doing the interview, we get to talk a lot more. You get to hear my story. You get to see the value and the way that I think, so that when the podcast is over, there's potentially a chance to do another call where we can talk about working together. So I decide which guests I want to pitch the service to, or, uh, pitch partnership to, or not pitch anything to. So. It's, it's an inherent sales process without the guests realizing it's a sales process because I'm not selling anything until after. I'm not potentially selling anything until after talking with them multiple times over, you know, a period of time, whether that's a few weeks, a month, whatever. Um, so it's, it's slow, but that's how people like to do business. Like, oh yeah, I've gotten used to this person. I've spent time talking with them.

Alan Versteeg: It, it's in the time you're talking and I'm, I'm just reflecting on our journey, but in the time you're talking, people are either experiencing value or they're not. So one of the big perceptions or misperceptions I see with sales professionals is they think that value is only when the product or service is delivered. The reality is you, you are either adding or detracting value from the. The get go. So even though their process is, as you say, slower, it's probably quicker than most sales processes, but the reason it moves forward is you get permission to move forward because you created a value you didn't detract from value. When we sending canned messages that detract from value, when we have an accelerated approach that detracts value, when we do that, then we don't get the outcome, and then we're hoping. For that one in a hundred that might be relevant. With this approach, you don't have to go as wide. You can go quite narrow. You can get quite focused. You can be quite myopic in who you want on your show, who you partner with, as you've said. But the reality is, across both parties, there's value. You know, if your guest is going, I don't need value from that call, they might say, I'm not keen for the podcast, or vice versa. And the reality is once we've established a foundation of value, the sale just becomes the next mechanism of value transfer. It's never the first mechanism of value transfer. You know, it's often the lost mechanism of value transfer and salespeople miss that. They're hoping that the customers will get value when they use buy or, or, or experience their product service offering. The reality is they're assessing value in every single conversation and in the engagement. Um, and that's why I think, Sean, as you're saying, is that when you get to that later part of the sales process, you've actually accelerated the rest of the, of the journey. The vet has already been established upfront, and that's why it's about proactive outreach, not spammed, mass outreach.

Sean Weisbrot: Mm. Yeah. The, I, I think you said something really interesting, which is the salesperson's, just thinking about getting them to close and then have, and, and have them. Feel the value in the service, where I think when you have the founder of the company who's doing the sales, and even if there's another person on the team that's providing the service, the founder of the company is able to express value externally of the sale or the service itself so that the client or the prospect can see. This person is passionate about this thing. They believe in this thing. They know that this thing can help me. And if they didn't think that we wouldn't be talking. Now, there's some people that are less ethical who try to push a product or a service, even if it's not completely valuable for them. Um, but I, I think when you, as a founder, remove yourself from the sales process. If you don't disseminate that, that culture of providing value to a prospect, your sales team may struggle to hit the same kind of conversion rates that you could.

Alan Versteeg: I mean, it's the founder's dilemma and I mean it's, it's in part the reason we exist as growth matters. The reality is at a sales management level, we're asking conversations that have nothing to do with value creation. We're asking number based conversations. We're asking database conversations. We are having, uh, uh, outcome based conversations. We are not asking the lead factor conversations, you know, what specifically in the client's business do you think will change because they're working with us. Um, what specific value do you think they got from your initial call? Um, what do you think it was in our key white paper that they really stood out for them. We're not asking these questions. So when we work with laws, you, you, you can't scale a global organization without a Salesforce. But you've spoken so true to the challenge, which is. Why does an entrepreneur or a founder not need sales training? It's because they have conviction. Conviction. There are clarity of their value. They have conviction of their value. That gives them confidence, and that confidence gives them competence. With sales, we think we can train the competence and they'll be there. Competence is the the end game. It's the ability to do something because there's some underlying things. And the underlying thing is the clarity of the conviction and then the confidence. But when our conversations have nothing to do with the value we create for the market we serve, then how do you expect anything else? But for salespeople to operate under the pressure of a quarterly number of a ratio of a, um, of these things, and I, and for me it's an, and it's not an or. Yes. And we've gotta look at the number, but when you step back and even speak to the founders, they go. Geez, I see what I've done wrong here. I'm going, yeah. Well this is not a production line. This is humans speaking to humans. Let's also measure the value we are creating otherwise the founder can't scale. Now, I've love that you've shared this shortly. So often I say is that it's not a sales training challenge. Often it's about understanding the clarity of our value and baking that in. To how we operate as a business, and you've done it as a founder, you've done it instinctively, Sean. You've baked it into your process of, you know, guests and who you look out. Now you reach out and what you do and the questions you are asking on LinkedIn when you're connecting, you know, these are things that are, when I say instinctive to you, that are instinctive because your baseline of conviction, of your value proposition and clarity, the value proposition. Expresses itself that way. So when someone comes back in you and says, no, I'm not interested in services, and you go, well, I wasn't sending you, sir. Wasn't you sending services? They go, oh gosh, okay, that's a bit, bit of a breath of fresh air, because I thought that's what you would do. And of course you are, but you know that you have to protect them from the noise. You have to protect them from their own ignorance. You have value to add to them, but you're fighting in a, in a, in an ocean of noise. So what you do as a founder is you find that that way to bring your gym forward, and even in my business as a founder, that's been the challenge. But even, even though we teach this, but now we've done that, we found the right, who's that live by that system? We measure by that system because we all know the basics. You cannot but get rewarded if you create value for others. That's, that's the starting point. But we lose that when we get to a data-driven business and not a data and people driven business.

Sean Weisbrot: Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are. I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story. And what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and. No commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like, if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show now. Hmm. Yeah, it makes sense. I, I think there is definitely a huge danger for that. Um, and to be fair, it, it's not instinctive for me. I spent years testing different things I. Luckily I have a background in psychology, so I can take a step back at times and go, okay, why did that not work? Whereas some people who may have a marketing background may be looking at numbers and go, okay, the numbers say it didn't work. I need to change something where I can go, okay, that didn't work as a human, how can I say it differently? How can I do it differently? So, for example, I'm working with a company now that's launching a, a headhunting firm that's meant to target AI talent only, and. I'm teaching the founder about, you know, the sales process. We're going through the sales process. We literally did this yesterday, which is, it's just the 2nd of November when we're recording, and I had never thought of this before, but it came to me as I was working with him yesterday, which was we are trained to handle objections. At the end of a call, what I decided to try with him was, let's go through. So I, I have this like, uh, logical phase, right? Where you ask them logic based questions and then you get into emotional questions about how it would feel if this thing didn't change in your business. Why are you wanting to do this? Why are we the right people? Why do you feel we're the right people? Right? So go from a logic to emotion, back to logic, where in that third section of logic, the goal is. Is there anything that I haven't asked or is there anything that you haven't asked? Is there anything that you feel like is preventing you from understanding or, or wanting to work with me as a, as a provider? Right. So get through the, is there are, are there any objections to working with me specifically? Is it me and my business? Is there anything there? And if there isn't, then start to talk about the, the details of the process that you're gonna provide, the service you're going to provide the product to provide, what's the cost of it, what's the timeline to deliver onboarding, those kinds of details. And when you're done with that, go back and go and, and try to understand, is there anything that I didn't cover that you wanna know more about? Is there anything that you know. Is, is going to make it harder for you to make a decision to work with us potentially. So in essence, you're, you're splitting the handling of objections between me and my business and the service. I, and I'm curious to see how that works, because I've never tried it before. Um, I'm curious to know if you have any experience or any thoughts on that, but I think that that will make it easier for any sales person to be able to discern where they're lacking in their ability to, to convince the person or, you know, to, to work with resident.

Alan Versteeg: So, so, one, I'm, I'm interested to see what it comes back, 'cause I, I know that it's gonna be positive and I'll give you my view on this. So. You know, if you take your psychology background. So at that point of decision making, there's this internal fight between the sacrifice for change and the cost of doing nothing. Right. So even when we built a strong, logical case for change, there's still a sacrifice for change, right? And what most organizations then do is they say, well, you know, push forward and if there's objections handle them. What I, what I know works better. Not, not my, not my view. It's, you know, scientifically known in psychology, is you want to run what I call empathetic objection prevention. Meaning if I'm about to partner with you. The better you could read my mind, the more I trust you. So if I said to you and I said, you know, looking here, Sean, what I find in my experience with dealing with people in your role at this point is often some of their key concerns, kinda some of the key barriers they have that hold them from moving forward are normally this or this or this. Is that something you might be grappling with? So, very similar to what you said, Sean, but I'll lead with the insight because I'm the Sherpa, I'm the trusted advisor. I'm the guide. So why would I wait for them to trip over that? Or why would I wait for 'em to say it? Because not everyone is extra. Even, even with your great question is gonna say, well, Sean, it's you and I don't, I don't like the fact that you came your head to the right and no one's gonna say what they're always thinking, but when you put it forward to them, and they said. It's interesting. I actually wasn't, I wasn't thinking about that, but that probably is one of, now what some people say is, oh, you've just created an objection. And I'm going, no, no, no. That's gonna stop them from buying somewhere down the line. Now at least we can address it. And they say, oh, you know, that's been my major concern, so. Well, thank you for sharing. You know, the way we've helped customers with that in the past is. And now I'm just guiding because that's it. And Sean, you know this, it's, it's these two things. It's as if, if common sense was common practice, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have the struggles we had in the world, right? If theory gave us enough to act, we wouldn't have the challenges. The challenge is an internal psychological dialogue. There's a comfort zone, there's a homeostasis. There's a, a, something I'm giving up in lieu of the upside. And unless we agree, that's something we're giving up. And so many organizations go prevent the, uh, I mean, objection handling. Don't handle it. Initiate it. Be empathetic and say, look, what I found in my experience is these are the three things that stop people from acting. Is that what you're dealing with? Or is there something else in my tenure way? And sometimes they go, no, I actually think I'm good. I think I'm comfortable. Some will go. You are actually right. One of the biggest challenges I face is how am I gonna sell this internally? It's one of the biggest things I have about how it influences internally. It says, it's interesting you say that. It's not just you. That's 80% of my bias. How we help them with that is, and now we're just adding value. Adding value. So I love that you're experimenting with it. So your background, psychology, mine's engineering. So a lot of minds also around, you know, there's gotta be cause and effect. What's the cause and effect? But I'd argue that your approach one is, is solid. And obviously your years of testing, of giving you the, giving you your instinct. Um, but objection prevention shows high empathy, which means instead of hoping they don't object, bring it out and say a little bit concerned about something. Good salespeople will read that in their queues. But even if you're not great at reading Qs yet, ask the question. What I've found in my experience with customers at this point, some of the key barriers to moving forward have been this, although some of the ones you might be dealing with, and it's not canned. It's, it's, it's it's sincere, noble purpose that I want to help them address the, the, the resistance to change.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. One of the things I was telling him yesterday was like, yes, let's create a script and we're, I'm gonna run mock calls with him where I'm going to present myself as specific avatars or a specific prospect so he can get used to it. But I want him to be able to not need a script at all. I want him to be able to do what I'm doing right now with you, which like. Literally, before we started recording, I said, okay, what's our topic? AI and sales. And then I said, oh, by the way, I read something about LinkedIn yesterday and we're just having this completely fluid thing and I have nothing prepared. I have no page on the screen I'm looking at. And, and that's how any good salesperson is going to be. The goal is to basically interview the person that they're working with, or that, that their prospect is, you know, potentially going to work with them and, and get them to answer these questions in a way that you're building this rapport without making them feel like any part of what you do is can they wanna feel like it's natural, like when you're on a date, when you're on a first date, you don't wanna ask the same person the same questions every time. Because they're gonna go, oh, you must have asked a million women that question.

Alan Versteeg: Yeah. You, you've read the Idiot's book to dating.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, I haven't, but I, I, I mean, if that's a real book, then wow. But, um, no, I, I've. I have long understood that, you know, sales and dating or, or business and dating are, um, very, very similar.

Alan Versteeg: Yeah. And, and it, it speaks to, it speaks to the intention again. Right? So when you're dating, you have an intention for relationship and unless you're on a, you know, you have some, you know, short term goal in mind. I won't go further than that, but generally your relationship is trying to move that forward. But as you were saying to him about the script, it's so important. Is the way I like to look at this is the metaphor of a chef, right? You've got ingredients, you have a recipe, and then you have the chef and the same, the same ingredients, and the same recipe presents something different through different chefs. So when you are learning the first thing, you have to understand the ingredients of value. What is the actual value that we deliver? So as you, as you're coaching this person, they're very clear, probably as a founder, the actual value they bring. So the ingredients have to be rich first. The script is your initial recipe. It's. When you're a little bit struggling, where to take the conversation, here's a guideline. This is just your guardrails in terms of your conversation. But what eventually happens with any chef, they've got the ingredients and they forget the recipe. They did a little bit of this and a pinch of that, and they add, this becomes very natural to them, and that's a natural sales conversation. But what often happens is not that the script is flaw to that scripting is bad. It's a good starting point to navigate conversation. But if you don't have the raw ingredients, you can't do it. The reason you and I can be, you know, let's call it unprepared for a conversation, is 'cause we have the ingredients within us and we make up the recipe as we go. And that's where scripting helps. As long as the ingredients are solid value, the script helps as a starting point. But it shouldn't be, you know, only script because as you said, people want something that feels natural, um, and is natural. And when my intent is right and my value strong, my ingredients are strong. I will learn that recipe and improve it as we go.

Sean Weisbrot: Can't argue with anything you just said. Yeah, I think that's a, a really good analogy, and I just wish there were more people who are able to think of marketing and sales in terms of the human side rather than the numbers side. Um, although I, it, it took me, I. Ha forcing myself to learn more about the numbers and the conversion rates and these kinds of things to then take a step back and go, yes, those things are important, but the people are, are more important in a way, as you said, um, being able to combine data and people, how do you get companies to, to kind of change the way they think so that they can combine those two? And make them as important as the other. I,

Alan Versteeg: I, I think that's so important. And, and I love your curiosity for data. I, I share the same curiosity for data, but it's the curiosity of what the data's telling me. It's not that the data's the truth. So when you look at a conversion ratio, you're not going, our conversion ratio's wrong. We need to improve it. You're going, our conversion ratio is wrong. What's the root cause of that? What do we need to change in our behavior? And, you know, I'm gonna give you a guess, a profound piece of advice. I say tongue in cheek, but never in the history of mankind. Has a human behavior changed? When you change a field in an Excel spreadsheet. Right. So the reality is the data is data points. It's data sets, it's evidence. And as we get machine learning and AI and, and big data, all of these things add more insights. But the idea is not to drown. The information is to find the insight. And the insight is what can we go do more of, less of start doing, stop doing, that's gonna shift the behavior. To do that. The number one thing I have to new organization, Sean, to change this, is I have to change the sales management conversation. The data is an input to the improvement. The data. Talking about the data doesn't change the data. You know, Alan, you, you temp, you're 90% of your target. You need to be a hundred percent of your target. I believe in you. Go make it happen, changes. Nothing. I've gotta coach Ellen on what those mechanisms are and, and if you don't change the sales manager conversation. You don't change the sales conversation, so then you can't but expect the salesperson to be pressured, pushy, um, um, what, what I call clinically correct. So they're the perfect pitch, the perfect story, but they're not making their own meal and the buyer reads it. I mean, we all know when we're on a canned call. Right. And generally what, ironically it's, 'cause it doesn't start with a question, it doesn't start with a simple question. You know, like with ours, it's, I've recently working with people like you in industries like yours who've been trying to achieve this, but struggling to because of this. Is that something that's relevant to you? No, it's not relevant to me. Okay, great. Thank you for your time. It's not relevant to you. If it's relevant, those things would've triggered and you, you said, well, that's not actually my problem. All my problems, this, or whatever it may be. But why? I mean, there's this new concept. It's ironic, Sean. It's called human to human selling. I'm like, who's been asleep at the wheel? This is what selling is, right? And this is not just selling. I mean, in your world, exit strategies, you're selling the value of the business. A new venture capitalist, you're selling the value of the business, uh, removing costs from a business. Sean, you're selling the trade off you're making by removing the cost. We're always selling, but what we don't realize is that we, we are doing it because we understand the intent and the purpose. Why then, when we're trying to take it to market, do we can it and try and scale it like a production line? Because the way you sell short, the way I sell is gonna be different. We often have the same ingredients. We have intent, we have the right value we wanna deliver, and then we start to adapt our recipe for what works for me, right? But what we've tried to do in specific, in large global organizations, if we have a sales process, it's predictable results. And in reality, we remove the human element. The sales process is a guardrail of stages. It's the recipe. It's not you. I mean, I don't know about you, Sean, but you follow the recipe. Exactly right. It doesn't look like the picture in the book or the, or the, or the picture on the blog. Right. Because there's something unique that person brings to it, and that's what sales is. It's a human to human interaction that can be improved through data can be improved through technology can be improved to those insights when we don't make the data the master. And that's, that's a metric to improve. 'cause the only reason we should measure anything is to change it. We shouldn't measure something to talk about it because it doesn't change it. It's just a measure. Okay, great. What do we do about it? And I think that's where your curiosity to the data and your psychological background have come together so well, where you're doing these things, what I call instinctively, well, because you've seen the data, you've done the trial and error, and you've asked the right questions, which is what is the human factor in this? Let's figure that out. And that's the shift. Whenever we are selling, let's just remember that other person is a human. With their own noise in their head and their own challenges and their own imposter syndrome and their their own mother-in-law, that drives them mad and it's, we're humans. That's what makes such an amazing career to be in sales.

Sean Weisbrot: So what are some questions that are your go-to? When you're talking with people, 'cause I know I have some, but, uh, I'm curious to see if there's anything I, I haven't thought of.

Alan Versteeg: Yeah, look, I think it, it, it depends where you are in their, in, in their buying process. I mean, obviously it depends. I mean, I find one of the strongest ones that really opens up a conversation. Alright, great. You've shared with me some of your problems. You've shared with me some of what you're doing. What I'd really like to understand is what do would you expect to change in your business as a result of partnering with us? Let's say I'll use my business. They go, oh, no, no. We definitely want to, you know, get our sales managers developed. I said, no, but that's what you're buying. I need to understand what are you hoping will go up or down or in or out, sustain or improve as a result of the partnership. Because if we can understand what success looks like, we can figure out how we get there. And that opens up such a wonderful conversation because many times they knew that going into it, but then they got social supply orientated. They're now talking about the product that we sell or the service that we offer. They forget the reason. So the power of that question. So as a partner to you, as an exit organization, what specifically in your, in your customer's business do you think will change as a result of them working with us? You know, we just need some more help around that. But that's what you're buying. What is it exactly? You wanting to go up or down or in or out? It's such a wonderful conversation opener, because we don't ask these things, right? Oh no. I wanna go to gym. I wanna sign a gym membership. Okay. What is specifically hoping will change as a result of you joining? Well, you know, I just, I just wanna get healthier. Okay. Well, what does healthy mean to you? Well, you know, it's gonna lose weight. 'cause obviously being overweight is not healthy. Oh, that's part of it. But you know, the scale is the fifth most important thing you should look at. There's four other things. What do you think your blood pressure is currently? Oh, no, I don't really know. Okay. And do you think Jim could help in that? And you can see where I'm going with this. It's real noble intense. I'm not a spin doctor. It's because I want to know what you're actually trying to move and I want to educate you on what should move. So Sean, you think about some of your clients, they don't know what moves because your expertise in knowing how to cut those costs in a, in a way that doesn't, um. Derail the business growth is a skill, but they don't know how to look for. So when you say, well, do you think it'd be important for this to go, oh yeah, no, that's a good thing. And that's where we start to move from demonstrate to educate. So that's a great go to question. What specifically in your business will change? I teach sales managers to always ask that question and salespeople say, oh no, that great conversation. Perfect. What specifically, their business is gonna change as a result of them working with us. And salespeople will normally go to products or service, they're gonna buy this. No. Okay. That's what they're buying. What are they hoping will change? That, that's one of my definite go-tos in terms of a, a wonderful conversation opener.

Sean Weisbrot: So you aim to, to teach them something on the call to demonstrate the value of working with you?

Alan Versteeg: Well, you need to, because if you're not demonstrating value in the call, then you're, um, I'm gonna use this loosely, but then you're selling. And what I mean by that is you're trying to get to the sale, not become the sale, the outcome of creating value in the conversation. See, because the sale is a byproduct of the value you create in the conversations. And if you think about what you do, you bring people on podcasts, you give 'em a voice, you share insights. There's a bunch of your experience that you're sharing long before they buy your services, right? So by understanding what they're trying to change, I wanna bring insights into that. I wanna bring value into that. I want them to think, this is the guy I should be speaking to. And they can't do that when I'm just going, okay, great. So you're gonna buy a service. Wonderful. I wanna ask 'em what they're actually trying to get out of it. And that's a noble question. I'm interested in the impact you're looking for, not just the product you wanna buy.

Sean Weisbrot: Is there anything I haven't asked you so far that you feel like we should touch upon?

Alan Versteeg: Um, I don't think there's any you've asked me, but it's things, something that's, you know, as within anything, our lives as we read books and we, at certain points, you read the LinkedIn article yesterday as it feeds the conversation. I think what's important for everyone in a sales world or in a persuasion world to understand is that people analyze your values, not your behaviors. What I mean by that is values, trump value. When you sell with noble purpose, when you are really curious, when you can create new solutions, when you tactfully challenge back, you know, it's not customers always, right? Because then what value do you bring? I hear that you say that, Sean, but I found something different in my experience. That's, that's, that's your purpose because you come from this place and there's a wonderful book called Selling with Noble Purpose. Um, Lisa Earl McCloud, I think it is, but she's got the data. 'cause I know you, you like me, like data. The evidence that the top performing earners in sales in the world sell with noble purpose. You can't predict their personalities. You can't predict them by sales process. You can't predict them by methodology. What you can see is aligned values. That's the difference. So if you, if you're in any role and you say, but I'm not really a salesperson, well forget about their title, because Hollywood doesn't do a great job of portraying us as professionals. What I am is I'm a value creator because I sell with noble purpose. And that difference when you realize that your values or your differentiator will take, and I see this a lot in your world, Sean, with founders who kind of have almost fearful of the sales world, yet they built this business. It's because when they were out there talking, they didn't have the gift of the gab. And by the way, the only difference between extroverts and introverts in sales success is nor point nor 3%. So let's just debunk that myth. There's no difference in whether you have the gift to the gab or whether you silent, but what it is, it's a value system. And as long as you got that, man, you can take your ideas, you can take your business in the world, you can take it to venture capitalists. You can do what you do. That's available to anyone when the value system is strong. And that's why I say to people, don't focus on the gimmicks. Focus on the essence and the essence of those values. So that's something I like to share. Not really a, a, uh, question, but I think it's a valuable insight for people to kind of remove that identity of cells as this manipulative world and actually look at the data. And it's that the top performers is a value system of serving that leads us to sell success.

Sean Weisbrot: So basically don't look for someone's ability to talk, look for, for their values when you're hiring someone that you may have to train. So it, it's better to hire someone who may have no sales experience if they have the values for it, because you can always teach them about how to provide the value, how to hone that value

Alan Versteeg: without a doubt. And they will instinctively, as you have, through trial and error, learn through that process because your, in your growth mindset, your curiosity and your intention drive it. 'cause when you're trying to create value for a customer, you're gonna learn. Because, you know, Sean, you, you, you don't get to a point where I am a sales professional and I'm done. The reason I always say sales professional is professionals practice, lawyers, practice, doctors, practice, salespeople, practice. We never arrive. We're always practicing. So it's that, it's exactly that. Those values, they'll actually accelerate their growth. But what we think is, we think we can take a performer, we can, can a methodology, and we can make everyone that person, and they're still with all this. History of data. No evidence that we move the bell curve on sales. When we only train. Methodology methodologies are tweak to a good values system.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the most important thing you've learned in life so far?

Alan Versteeg: There is something called the Serena Tree Prayer that says, grant me the courage to change the things I can, the ability to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference. And there's two things in that. One, I think the wisdom to know the difference is the lifelong learning, right? The biggest learning I had to learn, it's actually a book by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, is you Grow by Who Not How? By finding people that you can put into their highest and best use, you can grow because the how the right who's will find, and I believe that with such certainty, nine sales, it's the right who's the right value system, they'll figure out their how and that that for me has been a massive LE lesson in how we now scale because. Often you're caught up in your own head and ugh, you know, if I want it done properly, let me do it myself. And as a founder myself, how do I 10 x my business? And then what I do is I create people and I try to over-manage the process, and I micromanage and I do contradictory. Everything I've just shared with you, by the way on this, on this podcast is I focus on the process and the numbers and the data. I don't go, wait a minute, let me get the right who, let me give them autonomy, purpose, and reason. Let me give them some guardrails. And then, you know what? Let me trust that's gonna happen because the fact that I think that I can control outcomes. He's outside of my circle of influence. I can control what happens today. I can't, you know, I couldn't predict that my marriage was gonna end. I couldn't predict that, you know, whatever happens in your life, you can't predict these things. So I had to learn that it's the wisdom of knowing the difference that is the lifelong lesson, because we can sometimes hold on too long.