How to Build a Predictable Pipeline, with Marylou Tyler [Episode 330]

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Joining me on this episode is Marylou Tyler. Marylou is the Founder and CEO of Strategic Pipeline, and coauthor of the classic sales book, Predictable Revenue, which she co-wrote with Aaron Ross. She is also the co-author of a brand new book, Predictable Prospecting: How to Radically Increase Your B2B Pipeline.

Among the many topics that Marylou and I discuss are Marylou’s journey from engineer to revenue expert, developing your Ideal Prospect Persona, the Disqualification Engine, and her new methodology you can use to predictably reach new prospects.

Key Takeaways

• How did Marylou learn the art of talking to a lead?
• What does Marylou mean by ‘immersion’ and ‘intraday calling’?
• How does Marylou find the right person to start a conversation with when calling a new prospect?
• Whether phone, email, text, or chat, you should use the communication channel that is most comfortable for you.
• When SDRs are more professional, what happens to the quality of the calls?
• How do you identify accounts with the highest velocity?
• Where should the ‘Disqualification Engine’ be?
• How does Marylou define the Ideal Prospect Persona?
• Which three stages of the pipeline involve the Ideal Prospect Persona?
• Sequences and cadences are new terms not found in Predictable Revenue, that are covered in the new book, Predictable Prospecting.

More About Marylou Tyler

What’s your most powerful sales attribute?

I’m pleasantly persistent.

Who is your sales role model?

Neil Rackham, author of Spin Selling.

What’s one book that every salesperson should read?

Getting to ‘Closed,’ by Stephan Schiffman.

What music is on your playlist right now?

Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Heart, Joan Jett, and one AC/DC song.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul 0:56

It’s time to accelerate! Hi, I’m your host, Andy Paul. Join me as I host conversations with the leading experts in sales, marketing, sales automation, sales process, leadership, management, training, coaching, any resource that I believe to help you accelerate the growth of your sales, your business and most importantly, you. 

Hello, and welcome to Accelerate. I am really excited to talk with my guest today. Joining me is Marylou Tyler. She’s the founder and CEO of Strategic Pipeline and co-author of the classic sales book, Predictable Revenue, which she co-wrote with Aaron Ross. And she’s the co-author of a brand new book called Predictable Prospecting: How to Radically Increase Your B2B Sales Pipeline. Marylou Tyler, welcome to Accelerate.

 

Marylou Tyler 1:44

Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

 

Andy Paul 1:49

So take a minute, fill out that bare bones introduction I gave of yourself. Maybe tell us how you got your start in sales and how you ended up where you are today.

 

Marylou Tyler 1:57

Well, the classic story is I’m an engineer by trade. And I was working for a very long time for firms in Silicon Valley who sold very disruptive technologies, usually telephony based, trying to get asynchronous communications into synchronous communications which you all enjoy now as digital.

 

Andy Paul 2:19

So can you give us an example of who you worked for?

 

Marylou Tyler 2:20

I worked for a little company called David Systems. 

 

Andy Paul

Oh, I remember David. 

 

Marylou Tyler

Yeah, their claim to fame was to take the old AT&T key sets that were 25 pairs of cable. They weighed seemingly 50 pounds for a phone. It wasn’t that heavy, but they had 25 pair cable going into the back of the phone. And they would take one pair of that cable and create an RS 232 Ethernet and digital voice channel over the one pair of wire. So we ended up, because we had buildings in Los Angeles that had asbestos, we were able to take an analog system and create a digital wonderworld out of it.

 

Andy Paul 3:00

Very cool. Yeah, I’d forgotten all about David. 

 

Marylou Tyler 3:02

Yeah. So I was involved as a systems engineer, because I kept getting pulled into the marketing sales area. Because I could discuss the needs of the clients and translate it for the programmers even though I’m trained as operating system programmer is what I did before at Xerox. So one day we came in to the office, and we were told that the seasoned sales reps were no longer and the systems engineers were now sales reps. 

 

Andy Paul

Cool, I love it.

 

Marylou Tyler

That’s how I got into sales.

 

Andy Paul 3:37

Bravo! I’ve done that for some clients in the past, that same move.

 

Marylou Tyler 3:42

Yeah. So I was faced with, as we talked before, I had no sales skills. I had sales process background because I’m a process expert. But I had no idea of how to apply my process knowledge to actually start conversations with people I didn’t know at the time and try to get them to move forward with me through the sales process.

 

Andy Paul 4:04

So how did you end up, then, teaming up with Aaron Ross to write Predictable Revenue?

 

Marylou Tyler 4:10

Well, what happened was I really started getting interested in this whole thing about how do we start conversations with people we don’t know. So I got very, very good at understanding how to use the telephone for that purpose. And I ended up having a large call center in the Los Angeles area that we generated appointments for the healthcare industry on an at risk basis. 

So I got quite a reputation of knowing how to do that using the phone. So I was doing some consulting in a firm up in Seattle that contacted me and said, hey, we heard about you at the telephony side of things. We want you to do this for this internet. And I sort of said, internet? Like, what do you mean?

 

Andy Paul 4:49

Or you said that’s never gonna last.

 

Marylou Tyler 4:51

And they said, well, we want you to do what you do on the phone for our email. We want to figure out how to do that with email, because we’re thinking that that’s going to be the next wave of communication for people who don’t know to start conversation. So being a good consultant I am, I scoured the internet looking for somebody out there that knew anything about complex sales, emails, leveraging technology. 

And I found a guy by the name of Brian Carroll, who wrote a book called Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, right up my alley. He was having a webinar and he had a gues. And his guest was Aaron Ross. When I heard Aaron talk about what he was working on with Salesforce, which at the time was a really dinky, tiny little company that we all thought Salesforce outsourced sales reps. That was their branding for us. 

But when I heard him talk, I realized that, wow, this is sounding like what I need to do. So I chased that man around for a very long time to try to get him to talk to me about how he implemented that, how the phone fits in. And we ended up, long story short, collaborating and produced Predictable Revenue in 2011.

 

Andy Paul 6:05

Which has sort of become like a Bible of sorts for SaaS companies in the valley.

 

Marylou Tyler 6:10

Yeah, it’s really been an eye opener. But as you know, and as we talked about, the SaaS companies are really focused on fast transactions. So the ability to leverage people, process and technology was paramount to them. So this process fit really nicely with the way they sell.

 

Andy Paul 6:30

Alright, so let me ask you a question. What are the premises? I mean, here we are only five years on from when you wrote the book. Are the premises still valid?

 

Marylou Tyler 6:39

There are some. The separation of roles, as we’ve talked before, because the fact that the different sales roles do have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the person, that concept I think is brilliant and still applies. Maybe we blend a little bit of inbound and outbound where in the book, it was strictly outbound only, inbound only. Sometimes that’s a little gray.

 

Andy Paul 7:07

Sure. Based on the organization, right.

 

Marylou Tyler 7:08

Right. But I think that’s a very important concept and also the concept of recognizing that there are stages in top of funnel. And even the Salesforce software isn’t written for stages at top of funnel. That’s another concept that’s invaluable, Because the Predictable Revenue Formula which is on page 42 of that book is the thesis for this new book that I wrote. And it’s based on how to get predictability in the pipeline, which is looking at those stages. It’s looking at the lag. It’s looking at the ideal customer size so the ideal account profiles are still valid. Things like that are still good to use in this day and age. 

But then there are some other things that we glossed over. Like it was an email only engine that definitely doesn’t work for all companies. The blending of the telephone is very important. There’s also immersion and intraday calling, which is a call center methodology that I still use with clients who are not fearful of the phone.

 

Andy Paul 8:12

So explain what you mean by the intraday calling.

 

Marylou Tyler 8:14

What we do is when we’re in a client and in a prospect, we look at the people that are either direct or indirect influencers of our target. And intraday calling means we’re calling in and around that bullseye to try to find the right person to start conversation. So you’re actually making not one phone call to the person, but you’re making multiple phone calls in and around, mapping in and around that particular targeted buyer.

 

Andy Paul 8:41

In an effort to establish contact with them?

 

Marylou Tyler 8:45

Yeah, establish contact, maybe verify that the person you think is the target is the right person. Because one of the things that makes me smile is when people say, we should know who the contacts are because we have all these tools.  But there’s so many different roles that do so many different things. I was working with a client that had 15 persona roles for marketing, a marketing person. Because people do different things within marketing. 

So we still use the phone to verify and validate that we found the right person. Some clients, we use this intraday calling technique. But you cannot be faint in heart in order to use the phone for that. And a lot of the newer clients and the newer companies, the SaaS companies, still rely on email way too heavily. 

 

Andy Paul 9:34

Because that’s sort of a generational thing though, right? 

 

Marylou Tyler

I think so, yeah. 

 

Andy Paul

We’ve got a generation of people that just didn’t grow up spending all the time on the phone like we did as teenagers and college students. So it’s text based communication.

 

Marylou Tyler 9:46

Exactly. But not all companies are set up that way. And so we need to meet our targeted buyer where he’s at and she’s at in her head. So having multiple ways of reaching them is of value. And Predictable Revenue didn’t really talk about that too much.

 

Andy Paul 10:06

Well, so your new book, Predictable Prospecting, like I said, I hesitate asking the question, but it’s why this topic. Because I think it’s the number one topic for new sales books in the past 12 months. Seems like everybody’s written a prospecting book. So I find it curious that on top of what we see happening in the Valley where there’s this introduction of this Predictable Revenue model, which is heavy on the prospecting. Almost as a reaction to it, it seems like there’s more books being written about prospecting. Maybe first of all, why is it that so many books are written about prospecting? Then talk about what motivated you to write yours and what’s different initially about yours.

 

Marylou Tyler 10:50

The why prospecting is that people are still finding it very difficult to engage. They’re not getting the number of conversations that are quality in nature that they want. So they want to be able to master the art and the science of getting people to have a conversation, whether it’s an initial conversation or it’s a follow up conversation because they filled out a form on your website. 

And so I still think prospecting and the fear factor of starting these conversations with people we don’t know will always be a topic that people are interested in. Because once they get to know you, and once you start building rapport, the mindset in your head is that, okay, it’s easier to get them to do what I want them to do. But until you get them to that first conversation, you’re navigating uncharted waters.

 

Andy Paul 11:44

Is part of the issue that the way that we specialize roles within the sales function, that we have our least experienced, least qualified people always in that frontline, having those initial conversations?

 

Marylou Tyler 12:02

That could be one thing. And when we’re talking about the book, the book really didn’t do a service there either. A lot of my newer clients, that role is more of a professional role. And it is someone who is more tenured.

 

Andy Paul 12:18

And so what you’re saying is the SDR role in some of the clients that you’re dealing with, it’s less this entry level, we’re gonna burn them out in 12 to 18 months role through incessant focus on the metrics to being a role, quality over quantity professional role.

 

Marylou Tyler 12:36

Correct. And it is a role that people may choose to stay in. I have some clients that the SDR role has been filled by the same person for years, years and years and years. They don’t have a desire to become an account executive or a field rep or an account manager.

 

Andy Paul 12:50

So how do they manage them differently to not burn them out?

 

Marylou Tyler 12:54

Because we’re leveraging the technology now and the process in order to be able to serve up more quality conversations for them. They’re not dialing for dollars like we used to do in the olden days.

 

Andy Paul 13:08

Or even today.

 

Marylou Tyler 13:09

Yeah, we’re basically leveraging our ability to write good content, our ability to have the right assets at the right time for the right person in place so that the SDR role is one of a consultant role where they’re taking that conversation further. 

 

Andy Paul

Before the handoff.

 

Marylou Tyler

Yes, before the handoff.

 

Andy Paul 13:32

So where’s that handoff take place now, let’s say, in those clients you’re talking about.

 

Marylou Tyler 13:38

We still are looking at qualification as the handoff point. How in depth the qualification is varies by client.

 

Andy Paul 13:47

But qualification to buy or qualification to get a demo?

 

Marylou Tyler13:53

It depends on the client, but some are more involved. People hate the word BANT but–

 

Andy Paul 14:01

Yeah, I believe that, too. I fall into that category.

 

Marylou Tyler 14:04

But if you’re thinking BANT, some clients are going to want authority and need, and then they’re done. That’s when it gets handed off. Some are going to want to have some understanding of whether there’s money, whether they can find money, whether they can get money, whether money’s not an option. They want to know some relative level of where the money is. And some are concerned about timing. Is this something six months out? Is this something three months out? Because all that is factored into the pipeline formulas.

 

Andy Paul 14:35

And do you see this as potentially a trend? It seems like, to me, when I talk to SaaS companies, CEOs, sales leaders, SDRs themselves, it seems like making that role more professional, having them extend a little further into the selling process sounds like the right route to follow both for the buyer as well as for the seller. Because then that first initial conversation perhaps with the vendor is more substantive.

 

Marylou Tyler 15:05

Well, it’s funny you say that. Because when I was in my days of searching as a consultant for some method of doing this, I was the SDR as a consultant for my client up in Seattle. So I am a highly paid professional who’s doing that role. So most of my clients are like me. Now I can’t speak for the small to medium businesses or even SaaS companies, because my specialty is more upmarket. 

In the upmarket accounts, what we’re talking about now is that role. Somewhere there’s a difference between the lower end guys. And I think some of that has to do with the way that Predictable Revenue laid out that map. It’s not the right way, it’s just a way.

 

Andy Paul 15:51

That’s fascinating. When you think about it, because I hadn’t really thought about that before, in that role, for instance, could you make the case that you get what you pay for?

 

Marylou Tyler 16:07

Yes.

 

Andy Paul 16:08

So that if you continue to, I don’t say bottom feed, but use it as an entry level position as opposed to you said, trying to professionalize it, you’re gonna be in the scenario where you churn through tons of names in order to dig up opportunities. And then you have a relatively modest close rate on a lot of those

 

Marylou Tyler 16:27

Right. And when we put process in, we’re looking for a 40% close rate. And I think the average is 20% close rate.

 

Andy Paul 16:37

20 to 23% in SaaS.

 

Marylou Tyler 16:39

Right, there you go. So by definition of the fact that we’re targeting accounts instead of casting the wide net, getting minnows and whales, we’re going after the whales. And we are training our SDRs as professionals who can take it to a point where the account executive’s going to accept that opportunity 90 to 95% of the time with no issue. Then we are talking a different type of person in that role. But they still need to have that habit.

 

Andy Paul 17:07

Yes! They’ve got to make calls or outreach, right

 

Marylou Tyler 17:08

They’re not going to be the–  I can only say when I was first getting into sales that the reps dressed impeccably. They wore Rolex watches. They had these beautiful suits, Italian shoes. That kind of rep, where you’re finessing the sale from opportunity to close. These guys may dress that part. But they are coming in, and I have a story about a friend who did this SDR role. 

She would put her coat on at 5:30PM. She would not leave the office until she got one more appointment. That is the kind of person I’m talking about. That’s 22 more appointments a month.

 

Andy Paul 17:48

A month, right. And this is– I don’t know if you know Mark Hunter?

 

Marylou Tyler 17:53

Yes, I’m actually going to interview him for my podcast in a couple of weeks.

 

Andy Paul 17:58

Oh, excellent. But he’s got a system called Five After Five. Make five calls after five o’clock. So, yeah, I love this idea. Part of the reason somebody that’s professionalized in this role is going to have less call reluctance is a greater conviction and the value that they can provide for the buyer. And to me, there’s always been that correlation. Call reluctance is based upon your anxiety and insecurity about the value you offer

 

Marylou Tyler 18:27

Yeah. So there’s a lot of discussion about that. There’s a lot of discussion about compensation there. And I think really, when you look at the end of the day, you’re going to want professionals in all those roles. Because starting conversations and getting– because we are targeting. So I keep reminding people, these are the accounts that we want. We went through all this work to try to figure out what these accounts look like, who these people are. We want every single one of them because we’re targeting them.

 

Andy Paul 18:54

You call this an ideal account profile, I suppose, the ideal clientrofile. And you have a couple criteria. One is you’re talking about target accounts with the fastest velocity and the highest lifetime value. So let’s start with the fastest velocity. So how are you judging that in advance when you’re targeting companies? First of all, define what the velocity is just so people understand. But then how do you identify that they have it

 

Marylou Tyler 19:20

Well, first of all, velocity for us is lag, reduction of lag. So I’m sure if you’ve looked at our talk to clients. The water gets muddy when you’re trying to ask them, well, how long did it take to go from this stage, to this stage, to this stage, to this stage and finally get to close? The days in funnel is really that velocity. We want people to close quickly, which means when you go back to that BANT process, if we’re hearing that the timing is out till initiatives for 2019 or 2018, they’re not going to be accounts we want to take time with right now. We want to put them into a nurture sequence. 

So we’re kind of like disqualification engines when we’re at top of funnel. Because we’re only going to put through those people with whom we’ve heard all the right things. It’s not even checking the boxes, we got the gist. And again, this is where seasoned rep comes in. Through our questioning, through our listening, we got the gist of whether or not their behavior is such that they’re gonna want to go those next steps with us. So we’re going to reduce the lag by virtue of the fact that we know, pretty much, that they’re going to be going through the pipeline a lot quicker. So that’s the first thing. 

 

Andy Paul 20:35

Sorry. I keep interrupting, but this triggered a thought. So by pipeline, you mean not just the top of funnel pipeline, but the entire pipeline to close

 

Marylou Tyler 20:43

We take the entire pipeline, yeah. I’m not an expert from an opportunity to close. But we do take the math from the entire pipeline in order to determine that. We also, as part of the ideal account profile and prospect personas, have a 15 step analysis that we go through to try to figure out who these accounts are, what they look like, and how we get more of them.

 

Andy Paul 21:11

So that’s a 15 step analysis on the account, not on the persona

 

Marylou Tyler 21:14

It can be both a people that we encounter through the pipeline and the account itself, yes, both. And we do external and internal audits in order to craft this ideal account profile.

 

Andy Paul 21:29

Okay, so audits of

 

Marylou Tyler 21:31

We talk to everyone in the company who touches the customer or the prospect. So again, I’m up market so that’s a lot of people. That’s product marketing, that’s product development, customer service, support, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The list goes on. And then we also look at external factors, whether it’s going to be industry information surveys that we’ve done, NPS scores, net promoter scores for the industries, things like that. 

We take all of that data, bring it all in, and then create an analysis of that, a qualitative and quantitative analysis to determine these are the right clients. These are the right accounts in this particular geography or this particular vertical, whatever it is that we’re going to now target for this outreach campaign for predictable prospecting.

 

Andy Paul 22:23

Okay. So within that, then we talked about the ideal prospect persona, which you describe in the book and the process for identifying that. So by definition – well, I wouldn’t say by definition –  but a lot of talk about consensual decision making these days and more stakeholders involved in the process. I heard today that CEB is upping their involvement factor from 5.2 people to 6.7 people. How do you accommodate that? Or do you even worry about that in your development of the personas

 

Marylou Tyler 22:59

Yes, we worry about that. But we worry about it from three stages of the pipeline, the cold stage, the working stage and the qualifying stage. So we look at people in and around those stages. We don’t worry about opportunity to close, which the CEB I’m sure is taking the entire pipeline into account. 

So our little guys, we’re looking at three maybe that are going to ebb and flow. And again, there’s the target, there’s the indirect and there’s the direct influencers. We want to find those people who on average are going to give us the time of day to have an initial conversation and follow up conversations to get them to opportunity.

 

Andy Paul 23:38

And do you prioritize within that direct influencers or indirect influencers initially when people have to prioritize, the SDRs, how they spend their time? How are you advocating that they prioritize in terms of which of those three

 

Marylou Tyler 23:51

If we’re doing an immersion intraday type calling, they’re calling all three of those people on the same day. So within their block time, they’re prioritized, which means they’re only maybe talking to 20 accounts in a two hour block time. But because they have five days a week to do that, they can conceivably hit all of their accounts that they’re going after in a week’s time.

 

Andy Paul 24:14

So this process you’ve laid out seems like an ultimate personification of account based sales development.

 

Marylou Tyler 24:24

It does, doesn’t it? It does, but it also works for–  I have a couple clients who are SaaS companies who are using the process. But I really am a stickler about multiple people in the account. Because I think that’s another issue and the difference between Predictable Revenue is that there was never really talk about the people. It was more about the account. 

And then now we’re talking about people within the account that can actually help you get in for that initial conversation or help you create the follow up conversations that you need in order to start working towards that opportunity. The other thing is I also love this topic about personas. Because the salespeople roll their eyes when I start talking about personas.

 

Andy Paul 25:13

I’m sure they do. I can hear it now

 

Marylou Tyler 25:15

And they say, our marketing department does that for us. And I say, no, they don’t. Let’s think about this. Begin with the end in mind. The marketing department is trying to get you a marketing qualified lead. You are trying to get to a sales qualified opportunity. Those are two different types of end results. Therefore, their personas are great for a baseline starting point. But you, sales, have to build on that. Because the pains that you’re going to encounter along the way plus the people you’re going to encounter along the way may be different.

 

Andy Paul 25:53

I would extend that to what you also talk about in the book about how to craft the right message is that you’re crafting a sales message, not a marketing message. Which is something that people have a hard time distinguishing. People think, well, if we perfectly align sales and marketing, then sales is never going to modify the marketing message. It’s like, oh yeah, they’re always going to. That’s always gonna happen

 

Marylou Tyler 26:16

We also have five levels of awareness we have to worry about. Because marketing theoretically is looking at awareness of some sort, because they filled out a form or some action was taken on behalf of the buyer. They’re either aware that the vendor is there, or they’re interested, or they’re evaluating. 

But we have three other levels we have to worry about, which is they’re unaware. Because we may be reaching out to clients who’ve never heard of us. They may be basically problem aware. It’s like going to the fridge at night, you open it up, you’re hungry. But you don’t know what you want. We have that level, too, we have to worry about. And then there’s the other level of you go to the fridge, you see the chocolate cake. It looks great, but you don’t really have an idea of who made the chocolate cake. 

 

Andy Paul 27:04

I’m not sure that would matter for most people.

 

Marylou Tyler 27:06

This is true. Although for me, if it’s a Duncan Hines chocolate cake, I’m very happy. But the basic difference here is that if I’m filling out a form on a website, chances are I’m going to know I’m filling a form on your website. So I know the vendor. But if we’re doing an outreach program to targeted accounts that we want to penetrate, they may not know us. So sales has got to own this prospect persona for sales. They have to, like you said, craft a message that involves more pain at different levels of awareness. Which means by definition that those personas have to be done by sales.

 

Andy Paul 27:45

So who within sales does those?

 

Marylou Tyler 27:47

Well in my world, it’s my people, the director of sales, the director of sales ops, and the SDR teams and the AEs. We all work together on creating and crafting.

 

Andy Paul 27:58

And do you outline a process for that in the book?

 

Marylou Tyler 28:01

Yes, there is a process in the book. And for those people who bought the book, I actually did a PowerPoint presentation of showing a completed prospect persona that’s graphically represented, including that bullseye that I was talking about, about the immersion calling of how to fill that out.

 

Andy Paul 28:22

Okay. Use that in the past tense. I just want to tell the audience, it’s still available for purchase. It just came out. Buy the book. Make sure you buy the book.

 

Marylou Tyler 28:31

Yes, if you buy the book and send– let me know that they did. I don’t need a receipt. But if they send word to me through the website, then I will give them the keys to the kingdom of the swag URL that has all the different stuff in there.

 

Andy Paul 28:48

All right. So one last point, then, on the book, and then we’ll move to the last segment of the show. You had mentioned that you are varying the methods of reach beyond what you talked about in Predictable Revenue. So explain what you mean by that. What’s in the cadence that you use?

 

Marylou Tyler 29:07

Well, I think just the fact that we have sequences, and we have cadences, and we have different types of sequences and different types of cadences depending on the company and their level of comfort in using the phone, none of that existed in Predictable Revenue. So those are all part of, and there are actual samples in the book, of the cadences that we use. 

We also have a lot about the tools that we’re using now. We go very in depth into this habit of the SDR. Because much of the success of a team depends on choosing the right person for the right for the role that they’re going to be working on. So we did a lot of work there as well.

 

Andy Paul 29:51

Okay, excellent. And so now we move to the last segment of the show where I’ve got some questions I ask all my guests. And the first one is a hypothetical scenario in which you, Marylou Tyler, this is probably like serving up a softball right across the plate for you, have been hired as VP of Sales by a company whose sales have stalled out. And the CEO and the board are anxious to get things turned around, back on track. So what two things would you do your first week on the job that could have the biggest impact?

 

Marylou Tyler 30:18

I would first get a status quo of where we’re at. And so I would utilize my method of collecting data from the various people within the organization to find out where we are today. So from the standpoint of analytics, what does today look like in this company? I would get a good handle on that. 

 

Andy Paul 30:39

Beyond just sales, everything?

 

Marylou Tyler 30:41

Yeah, pretty much everything. Because anywhere the prospect and client goes is where I want to focus my effort in understanding what status quo looks like. So that would be the first thing. 

And then the next thing I would do, once I got the lay of the land and the status quo, is I would then get an understanding of where we want to go. So predictively where we want to be and how long we want to be there. And then the third thing I would look at is realistically, given our team as to what we have in place, can we get there? How do we get there? And what do we need to give up or add in order to get to that goal?

 

Andy Paul 31:25

Okay. Great answer. And you even got the word predictive in there, too. The branding is consistent. I love that. All right. So now just some rapid fire questions. You can give me one word answers if you want or elaborate. So the first one is when you, Marylou Tyler, are out selling your services, what’s your most powerful sales attribute?

 

Marylou Tyler 31:49

I’m pleasantly persistent.

 

Andy Paul 31:52

I love that. Okay. Who’s your sales role model?

 

Marylou Tyler 31:57

Oh my gosh. SPIN Selling.

 

Andy Paul 32:00

Neil Rackham.

 

Marylou Tyler 32:00

Neil is like my– I love him.

 

Andy Paul 32:03

Got it. Okay. Besides your own books, what’s one book every sales professional should read?

 

Marylou Tyler 32:16

Well, I’m gonna go back to this. There’s two. Can I say two? There’s True Selling and there’s Getting to Closed. Stephan Schiffman.

 

Andy Paul 32:23

Stephan Schiffman, Getting to Closed. Okay, good choices. All right, so last question, perhaps the most difficult one for many guests is what music’s on your playlist these days?

 

Marylou Tyler 32:35

I’m stuck in the 80s, people. Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Heart, Joan Jett.

 

Andy Paul 32:41

Any AC/DC in there?

 

Marylou Tyler 32:42

I think one.

 

Andy Paul 32:46

One? Okay, yeah. AC/DC has been the favorite so far out of the hundreds of interviews we’ve done.

 

Marylou Tyler 32:53

Yeah, I’m definitely an 80s fan. My kids constantly tease me about that.

 

Andy Paul 32:59

Rolling their eyes, right? Okay, well, good. Well, Marylou, it was great to talk to you and great conversation. So tell folks how they can find out more about you and the book and get in contact with you.

 

Marylou Tyler 33:09

Sure. Yeah. The best way to get a hold of me is MarylouTyler.com is my website. The book actually is PredictableProspecting.com. So those are two ways you can pop in and download a free chapter from the book to see if it’s right for you. My Twitter handle is @MarylouTyler. My LinkedIn is Marylou Tyler. So pretty straightforward. 

 

Andy Paul

Marylou Tyler, and that’s spelled M-A-R-Y-L-O-U. Just in case people are wondering about Marylou. And thank you again for being on the show. 

 

Marylou Tyler

Thank you so much for it. I enjoyed myself.

 

Andy Paul 33:41

And remember, friends, make it a part of your day every day to deliberately learn something new to help you accelerate your success. And one easy way to do that is make this podcast, Accelerate, a part of your daily routine. 

Whether you’re listening on your commute, in the gym, or make it part of your morning sales meeting, that way you won’t miss any of my conversations with top business experts like my guest today, Marylou Tyler, who shared her expertise about how to accelerate the growth of your business. So thanks for joining me. Until next time, this is Andy Paul. Good selling, everyone. 

Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, and want to make sure you don’t miss any upcoming episodes, please subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or stitcher.com. For more information about today’s guest, visit my website at AndyPaul.com.