(888) 815-0802Fintech Redefined: Mission-Driven Sales, with Tal Riesenfeld [Episode 1150]
Tune in to our latest episode where we welcome Sunbit co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Tal Riesenfeld. Dive into Sunbit’s distinctive ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) model, tailored for essential services such as car repairs and dental treatments. Explore how Sunbit’s sales strategy, centered on human behavior, empathy and customer focus, is reshaping the financial sector. We’ll discuss the significant role of sellers in providing solutions that truly make a difference for customers.
Podcast Transcript:
0:08-0:23
Speaker
Welcome back everybody to this week’s Sales Strategy and Enablement podcast. I’m Alastair Woolcock CSRO, joined here by Howard Brown, CEO & Founder of Revenue.io, pioneer and recognized authority in AI, revenue science, and all-around good guy. So Howard, great to be with you today.
0:24-0:45
Speaker
Thank you, Alastair, good to be here. We are excited to have with us Tal Riesenfeld. Tal is the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Sunbit. Now, this is an amazing space when we think about it in terms of the BNPL – The ‘buy now pay later’ space.
0:46-1:02
Speaker
You know, we have companies like Affirm, many of you have heard of that so anybody that’s bought on Amazon over the Christmas season, you’ve probably seen the ads pop up on the ecomm side around buy now pay later from from Amazon power by Affirm, but Tal you and your company, I love the mission behind it.
1:03-1:37
Speaker
You know, you’re really focused on, what I’ll call is, the real world of ‘buy now pay later’. You’re helping people buy cars. You’re helping them fix critical dental issues. Like you’re giving them the financial means to actually accomplish something meaningful in their life in what I’ll call the brick and mortar side of it. And Tal we would love to explore with you today, you know, the impact of that mission-driven sales and how you’ve approached building a fantastic company. Welcome.
1:38-2:27
Speaker
Thank you for having me. Well, listen as I said, it’s a dynamic space, right, when you think of fintech. We think of the in the acronym BNPL which is buy now pay later. You know, it’s exploding right, absolutely. People need more creative financing systems and and Tal, you know, you really took this on and have built a ordinary sales organization that, you know, they don’t just understand the economics but the culture, the experience, the sales experience that goes with that and in an age where sellers are dealing with a boatload of technology. I relentlessly push for results. What’s different? What are you guys doing that is working so well given your growth now?
2:28-3:09
Speaker
Fantastic. So I’ll start by saying and you nailed it, you know, Affirm buy now pay later online is popular. It’s working. I don’t know if you saw the stock recently. They’re doing extremely well in the holiday season, which is great. We took a bit of a different approach when we started the company eight years ago. We looked at the online space and it was already starting to be crowded with Affirm far enough after beating a lot of players. But fundamentally what they were doing, which is offering a better way to pay, a better way to split purchase, it made a lot of sense, but we took it to the brick and mortar. So we took it to car dealerships who are fixing your car and to dentists, you know. What happens when you get hit by a thousand two hundred dollars of a root canal?
3:10-4:09
Speaker
And that’s something that you need to get done and you weren’t planning on and for a lot of Americans, that’s a lot of money right, so that very – to split that purchase of the payments – so we went down the route of brick and mortar of non-discretionary, and I’d lie if I say we planned it that way. But what happened is once you help people, you help both kind of the retailers and the customers with, you know, things they need that creates a mission-driven organization and a mission-driven sales. Because you know once the seller now goes into the dental office, I have a product that’s gonna help you mister that just make more money. But as important, make your customer, allow him to get the treatment he or she needs That’s the angle we took, we took the path less taken when we went to the brick and mortar which as you guys understand that requires selling and training and lots of face-to-face activity, but they’ve been very successful there and growing very quickly there.
4:10-4:38
Speaker
Tal, and Howard, as I reflect on what Tal just said there, this concept of mission driven sales, you know, I’m really privileged today because both you and Tal are multiple company co-founders, right? Tal’s done a couple, you’ve done a couple before. And I think both are at this journey, I’m going to project on you both here of doing more than just, hey, let’s create a good company and exit, but actually, let’s have a meaning behind it.
4:39-5:13
Speaker
And I think of Revenue.io and the purpose is to elevate and improve the basics of human communication always. And we’ve done so much around that. But I won’t lie to you both when I was at Gartner, every CEO told me they had a mission, every CEO told me they had a purpose. And yet when you went and talked to the rank and file, they’re like, yeah, well, yeah, they can seldom even quote what that mission and purpose is. Like Howard, like Tal, how do you approach mission and purpose and sales? How do we bring that back to sales? What have you done?
5:14-6:05
Speaker
Look, I think that everybody hopefully has their sense of their own purpose and mission and values, both as an individual within their family and then hopefully that extends out to their company. For me, as you know, my background is in clinical psychology. It’s in helping people with very difficult, challenging relationship problems, personal problems. For me, it’s always about how I can be helpful. When I think about sales and I think about the challenges that every salesperson is confronted with on a daily basis, which there is a stigma that’s attached to sales.
6:06-6:47
Speaker
It’s in a lot of people’s eyes. It’s a pushy perfection that’s all about money and it’s all about me, me, me. That that is both unfair and untrue in a lot of cases, not in all cases, but in a lot of cases. However, given the transformation of what sales is and what it used to be, I don’t think everybody’s up to speed on how the profession has changed. And quite frankly, the profession has changed, not driven in most part by the sales profession, but by consumers.
6:48-7:11
Speaker
Consumers for the most part aren’t really interested in the pushing of sales. They’re more interested in salespeople being helpers. They’re more interested in salespeople helping them reach their goals, helping them educate them on how to solve problems, how to achieve bigger and better things for their organization or self.
7:12-7:47
Speaker
That requires not only for the business world to understand that change, it requires each individual sales rep because I think in many ways sales reps have internalized the stigma of nobody wants to talk to us, we’re annoying, we’re too pushy. It’s almost like this stigma of being an attorney or the stigma of being that dentist. Right? It’s going to be painful and everything else. When in fact salespeople, a lot of them actually do want to help.
7:48-8:23
Speaker
And if you’re not in the profession to help people, go find another profession because this profession today is all about helping. People can find all the information they want online, right? For the most part, but it gets to a part where they want a doctor or a human being that can actually help them make that pertinent decision. That’s what sales is about. That’s what sales should be about. That’s why our mission at Revenue .io is all about helping deliver a better customer experience and deliver a better buying experience and seller experience.
8:24-9:12
Speaker
So that’s probably a long -winded answer, but certainly why the mission and why it’s so important to align with that if you’re going to work for a company. I can’t hard if I can jump in. I heard you, you know, one of the things you said about sellers making money and commission, which is true, but I always view that as sellers want to be successful. And the commission check is a symptom of saying, Hey, Howard, you did a good job this month and you’re making money.
But at the bottom, you know, if you look down deep in, sellers want to be successful. And if you’re selling a good product, if you’re proud of that product, you know, if you’re adding value to your buyers, then the paycheck is, yeah, it’s a nice to have and, you know, we pay the electricity bills, but I think sellers are less attached to commission paycheck.
9:13-9:57
Speaker
People think it’s just a way for them to get a good job on the shoulder. That’s the way I look at it. And look, even in how you said it, nobody should feel guilty about making money. Let’s face it, you could build the best product or service in the world, and if nobody buys it, you’re going nowhere. Your organization is not going to grow and you will go out of business. So it requires people, salespeople, to help articulate the message, to help connect the buyers and their needs and the problems they have to what it is you’re offering. So you should make a good living by doing sales because without sales, nothing happens.
9:58-10:32
Speaker
It is the lifeblood of the organization. So there should be no guilt in making a very good paycheck for being very successful because guess what’s happening? Your customer hopefully will be successful with your product and your company will be successful because they are getting value and they are getting compensated as well. You know, it’s, it’s, I think you’re both absolutely bang on when you think of the mission and the purpose behind the seller. Right. They, I love this idea of be the chief helper and if they’re not wired that way, you shouldn’t be in it.
10:33-11:08
Speaker
It’s, Tal, to your point – yes, compensation is the symptom. Like that’s just what you get out of it. There’s nothing, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing disingenuous with that. But I, I do want to just press harder on it. Tal, how have you really connected that mission of helping people? Right. Like it’s, it’s great to say, yes, I’m going to help people when they need, they need to buy a car, which in many people’s case, your transportation opens up and a whole not a world of economic advantages, simply being able to go further than five miles.
11:09-11:44
Speaker
Right. Like it’s a real thing to a large portion of the population. But beyond the lip service of, yes, there’s the need. What, what does it actually mean? Like you, you’ve built a fairly sizable sales org now. If we wanted your sellers on here, what would they say beyond the lip service of, I want to say they’re behind the purpose. How, how, how are they connecting? Yeah. So first of all, again, it does start with the mission and the vision. And, you know, we started the company because we believe people deserve to make the most out of their money. And just by saying that and meaning that, that’s where you start.
11:45-12:03
Speaker
And, you know, and I always say for every user, you know, that through the process, they understand that some some of the things that just you see the products we’re selling, we’re helping, we’re not selling Gucci bags, we’re not selling peloton, we’re not selling t-shirts, we’re helping you fix your car, helping you, you know, with your health care.
12:04-12:35
Speaker
But I always say, with that said and done, there’s always a point, I see it in every new seller that at a certain point, even though they heard all that I said, and they get it and they signed up, there’s that day where they call call and they come back and they say, you know what happened today? I went to the dentist and I sold this product and they thanked me and the associate thanked me and the doctor. There’s that point. I always say there’s the seller before and after. And the after is where you suddenly believe that, you know, this is a product I’m actually helping the office and I’m actually helping the end customer.
12:36-13:10
Speaker
So I live what you said, you know, you need to feel it. And there’s the seller before and after and before the seller is joining a company that’s growing and has a cool product and so on so forth. And then there’s the after where the seller can go back to his or her partner and say, Hey, I just got a call from the customer. I just got a call from one of my prospects telling me that two customers that were not able to pay for their root canal just, you know, they were in pain and we solved the problem. So at the end of the day, it comes down to they need to, doesn’t matter what I say, they need to feel it by themselves.But once you do, you’ve got a different seller.
13:11-13:43
Speaker
I think that’s an extraordinary insight and Howard, you work with a lot of enterprises around the world and they are big teams. I’m going to say the quantification of impact is what a seller needs to connect with. They need to feel that regardless of what it is software or it could be medical services, it could be pharmaceutical distribution, it could be a wealth manager. Even in the wealth management space, you think, you know, they are in essence in a sales type environment.
13:44-14:15
Speaker
Do they connect with what they just did to help somebody where somebody passed away? Are they helped to the successful transfer of assets to someone and do they connect viscerally with the outcome they are creating? And that’s such an infusion of culture and in sales and frankly most professional if you can connect at that level. But we tend to fall short. I’m not sure we get to Tal’s point where we get that after the sale, energy and connectivity.
14:16-14:54
Speaker
But what have you seen in that space? Look, I think that in today’s business environments and especially in subscription businesses, we know that just acquiring a customer is not enough. Right. The cost of acquisition for a customer is extremely high. And because of that, the way the model typically works is you need to retain that customer over a series of several years. And as a seller, you are promising to deliver value of whatever product or service that you are delivering.
14:55-15:33
Speaker
If you are not delivering that service, if you’re not helping that customer achieve their goals, then that customer is going to go away. And so everybody talks about sales being so great. Well, sales is great, but there is a cost of sale and that cost of sale for a lot of businesses is the entire first year of that subscription revenue. So the core, the key is really to retain that customer and the way to retain that customer is making sure you deliver that value. So salespeople today not only have to sell, they have to sell to the right customer.
15:34-16:05
Speaker
They have to line that customer to the value that they’re going to deliver. And they need to make sure that their organization continues to deliver value to that customer and future customer. So it’s not a transactional sale necessarily. It’s about delivering value, delivering a vision, helping whoever you’re selling to imagine a better version of themselves. Right. I’m working on things I am more passionate about. I’m not wasting my time on manual tasks.
16:06-16:45
Speaker
I’m doing things that will help my team. That is what’s going to resonate. So if we’re not selling things that add value that will continue to add value, you’re probably not, it’s probably not going to work out for the business anyway. And how do I, the way we solve that structurally, I’m going to go back to compensation for a second in our company because of the type of product we sell. 50% of the commission the seller makes for the business signing and launching the program, good job. But the other 50% is dependent on how effective they are in using the product. So if I sold the product to you and you’re not using it, you’re not happy. I’m not happy either and hopefully I learned from that.
16:46-17:10
Speaker
But on the other hand, if you’re utilizing the product, you’re at the right prospect if I sold it correctly, because we all know that how you sell impacts, you know, there’s one thing about getting the piece of paper signed. There’s another thing when the prospect understands the process they need to go to that how they implement it and so on and so forth. That’s where the sellers make the commission. So we also tied that not just in theory, but the paycheck at the end of the day.
17:11-17:39
Speaker
And listen, sellers that sell less deals, but with more utilizations make more money than sellers that sell, you know, a lot of deals with low utilization. So we try to really embed it, not just in the theory but also in the paycheck out. I love that. I love that. It’s funny that you keep bringing up the dentist because I was literally at the dentist just before this meeting because I had chipped my tooth. And when you’re up there at the payment area, there’s literally a brochure about how you can finance the dentist.
17:40-18:18
Speaker
So I was staring at that thing not 45 minutes before this conversation. It’s funny and we can talk about that for sure because one of the things that we disrupted that industry, that piece of favor that for sure, I don’t know what the company was, but your father had the same brochure sitting there and one of the things that we came with technology that disrupted that for sure and so you don’t get a brochure with some bit, it’s a digital process, it takes 30 seconds and we can talk about the benefits.But that’s one of the things that we tried to do, not just bringing a good product, it’s great, but if you can bring a disruptive product, then that’s a whole run.
18:19-19:08
Speaker
Tal, I want to piggyback off one thing you said on the compensation there that I think is important for our audience. Compensation is all about behavior. Sales is all about behavior. Values all have a behavior behind them. But in comp designing, you think about that. People often want to, well, they’re trying to motivate to drive more. But behavior is equally as important on that as well. And I’ll give you an extreme example, like you, where you’ve now focused on both the sale and then the utilization. Microsoft had to go through that. Microsoft had a model for many years that paid their global AEs all on, hey, get people on to Azure, get them onto the cloud, get them using it. Just get more seats, right?
19:09-19:38
Speaker
And then they suddenly found, well, hold on, nobody’s using this. And then what do you think happened? Every time a renewal came along, I was like, well, I’m not using anything. Why am I paying for this? And they’re like, this is a big problem. So then they situated their apps around, hey, a bunch of your compensation is going to be now tied to not just the amount of seats you sell. But actually, whether or not people are using the products, long behold, they’re suddenly getting people using product all over the place.
19:39-20:26
Speaker
But it was, it was sometimes there is this forcing function with compensation to try the behavior we want. And I think that’s okay. Don’t think of it purely as the mechanism of how do I get to an accelerator? It is, you know, how do I drive the behavior I want with my customers and make sure my reps line up to that? And what I love about focusing on the post side with the front end when it comes to compensation and behavior. Is you’re now aligning up the benefit to the customer. Because at the end of the day, if I bought something, I probably wanted to use it and help me use it. Right? I don’t just go buy a piano to sit. I would actually be able to play my piano.
20:27-20:57
Speaker
I know. I’ll say one thing as you were talking, hit me. I take that to the experience. I told one of my managers two weeks ago, if he needs to go around and ask his team to do something, multiple times, and something’s wrong with the comp model. Something’s broken. If I need to ask you to do something and ask you again and you’re not doing it, I’ve set up the comp model incorrectly because in a perfect world, the things that I need to ask you to do, the compensation model is built to support that.
20:58-21:40
Speaker
So whenever, and again, I always tell sales managers, if you’re running after your sellers, if you’re sending them, if you’re repeating the same conversation again and again, again, maybe in the next quarter, you need to re -evaluate your comp plan and make it a minor tweak where at this point, you’re not asking, but the seller understands why he or she needs to do that and how that impacts them. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s a perfect segue to this thought for you both. When you think of seller experience, I’m the starboard customer experience. Okay. Imagine in a world today, going and buying a product from anywhere.
21:41-22:28
Speaker
And imagine if you had to interface with six, seven, eight different tools to actually buy that product. Would you? That’s a bad experience. It was a terrible experience. I need to click on more than two, three things, I’m out. Absolutely, it’s terrible. It’s terrible. And we all know that. That’s hardly new. For the past decade, we’ve been relentlessly focusing on making customer experiences as easy as humanly possible in B2C and B2B and B2B2C. But why is it we’re perfectly okay with the seller experience involving what is today 7.4 tools on average and being absolutely impossible for them? Like the average seller actually spends about 30% of their time actually selling.
22:29-23:21
Speaker
We’re asking them to be mission driven, yet we’re asking them to use a plethora of technology and we’re doing nothing to improve the seller experience. And how do you expect a seller to expose the values that you both eloquently put at the beginning of this call? If we’re not solving for that seller experience. Well, I think you’re teeing me up, right? I mean, obviously that’s my, that’s the story, right? That’s what we built. We, the idea of asking a seller to deal with a buyer or deliver great support or a customer experience day after day, after hour after hour, where they can’t get the answers they need, the information they need to reliably help whoever they’re dealing with.
23:22-24:05
Speaker
You want it to high pressure, high stakes, high stress job, right? So imagine calling your support agent or your sales rep or your service rep or whatever and you’re complaining, you’re unhappy, you haven’t got what you need. And that rep needs to look through a bunch of different tools. They don’t have the answers they need. They may not have been trained the right way to use the tool. And you’re expecting that person to put on a smile and stay positive and deliver a great customer experience. And it’s a horrible worker experience. And guess what happens? If I’m miserable all day long because I’m talking to people that I’m not being able to help, they’re not gonna have a good customer experience.
24:06-24:40
Speaker
Everybody wants to talk about customer experience. Think about your employees. If your employees aren’t getting an experience from the technology that’s there to help them, not to frustrate them, not to confuse them, not to have them hunting and packing for what they need, but having that information readily available to deal with any situation so that they can meet that buyer or customer’s need. You are not helping, you are hurting and your customer experience is nothing but talk.
24:41-25:20
Speaker
I think that technology, the way I look, I manage five sales organizations. I want the seller to sell. I want to spend as much time and selling and building the relationship. That’s why they made the big dollars for selling. And the more time you could put them at bat, where everything before and everything after happens automatically. I know we’re not there yet. The more you go back to cap to the cap goes down because now they’re selling more. That’s what they want to do. You hire these people because they’re good at personal interaction. They’re good at solving problems. They’re good face to face. They might not be great at data input and follow up.
25:21-25:55
Speaker
So the more you go back to cap to the cap, and you don’t want to do that. Those are, those are not higher order things. Those are things that we build AI for now. Those are things that we build great systems for salespeople. They’re great helpers. They’re great conversationalists. They’re great at building relationships. They’re great at help solving problems. Empower them to do that. It’s better hiring five more, take the 10 that you have and make them 20%, 30%, 50% more efficient. But, and you’re paying less than the next 10 sellers or you’re making hiring mistakes, you know, you got to keep them active.
25:56-26:31
Speaker
You got ran up. You got all of it. It’s a big waste of time. Just use what you have, make them better, make them more successful. And they’ll tell their buddies and you’ll get more inbound, great salespeople than you can imagine. Give your best sellers as many at -bats as you can. That’s our job. Gentlemen, I got to stop us there because we are nearly out of time, but what a great way to wrap up this episode. I think you encapsulated the seller experience perfectly there. We always like to finish off with a little bit of fun trivia here.
26:32-27:27
Speaker
And so, I’m going to cue into some sales question for you here, specific to the B2C world, given that somebody has really been a pioneer in digitizing what we talked about in terms of the buy now, pay later space, but on the where brick and mortar hits the road here. So here’s the question that I’m going to give you four choices as an answer. What percentage improvement in sales conversion rates can personalization achieve in a retail setting? What percentage of sales conversion rates can personalization achieve in a retail setting? So what’s the change? Is it A) 5% B) 10% C) 20% D) 30%?
27:28-28:02
Speaker
I’ll go for the big number and I’ll tell you why. So you could have tricked me and said 40% and I’d raise my hand. If at the end of the day, we think about the retail experience, the customers in there, they’re coming to get something. They walked into the store, they, you know, and at this point, you know, they know what store they’re walking in, right? So you’re supplying something in the range of what they need. And now the name of the game is, you know, can the customer find what he or she needs? You know, do they trust the seller? They trust the store. So I think personalization is very powerful. So I’ll say 30%.
28:03-28:44
Speaker
You are so close and I agree with everything you said. It’s actually 20, just over 20% on that, but nonetheless, 20 to 30% is an extraordinary gain in terms of that retail experience. And that is why firms like Nike and others in retail settings now offer enhanced digital experiences when you walk in this door, hyper-digitize all of those things. It continues to take off. And I think, look, Tal, what you and the team are doing with Summit, are you’re bringing that just personal touch and frankly, empathetic touch to people in need, just helping them get that extra mile and maybe have a wonderful smile this holiday season.
28:45-28:57
Speaker
Thank you for building what you’re building. Thank you for doing what you’re doing. It’s an awesome job. Thank you guys, I appreciate the time. Thank you for our audience. Thank you as always for listening in.
28:58-29:20
Speaker
Please remember to like and subscribe. Also use the call and phone number to send your questions into Howard and I and we will do our best to get with you on a new trip. Thanks so much.
