(888) 815-0802The 5 Sales Myths, with Jake Dunlap [Episode 861]
Jake Dunlap is the CEO of Skaled. In this episode Jake and I discuss an article he posted on linkedin about 5 predominant myths in sales. You’ll really want to listen to this conversation because I think it’s safe to say that, well, I had a few issues with Jake’s myths. However, I really enjoyed sparring with Jake because this is the type of open discussion that needs to happen more frequently in sales. Because, quite honestly, B2B Sales is a mess. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed. And it’s only by engaging in these types of conversations that we’ll be able to start moving the ball forward.
Podcast Transcript
Jake Dunlap: Hey, it’s great to be here.
Andy Paul: New home, same me. Some people are probably wishing for a new meme, but yeah, I got the same name you’ve got a new home. You moved from New York city to Austin, Texas since the last time we spoke.
Jake Dunlap: Wow. It’s been that long. Yes, that is correct. It’s been almost two years now.
Andy Paul: Wow.
Jake Dunlap: And it’s it’s been great. We’re loving it. Okay.
Andy Paul: So why?
Jake Dunlap: For us, look as you’re scaling a business and we’re not a venture backed business. There’s easier places to do it then Soho. So I
Andy Paul: Oh, really?
Jake Dunlap: York. Yeah. I love New York and I was going back every three to four weeks. I had the best of both worlds. Until COVID hit.
Andy Paul: Yeah. It’s like me. That was doing bi-coastal. Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: So it’s kinda nice. So I still, I love New York. I don’t know. I’m trying to talk my wife that, Hey, if there’s some point, maybe we’ll. We’ll be back at some point, but no, Austin’s great. Amazing tech scene. Great culture. Just it’s an awesome place. And now I feel like everyone, the, not the New York and California people coming to Austin is just amazing. So I’m loving it.
Andy Paul: Yeah, until the traffic comes to a complete stop and the property prices catch up with that replay sales. Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: That’s all right.
Andy Paul: California people ruin that too. I think so.
Jake Dunlap: I think a
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: people are worried about that. Same thing here.
Andy Paul: I’m sure. There was the this was like in the early nineties, when there was outward migration from California to Oregon and there was this famous bumper sticker that had an Oregon is Don’t California-cate, Oregon.
Jake Dunlap: That’s seen him here.
Andy Paul: You have?
right. yeah.
Jake Dunlap: Oh yeah.
Andy Paul: Yeah. I think the last time I flew from San Diego to Austin. I talk to people on the polite that have were recent transfers to Austin. So yeah, it’s happening. But one of them was commuting. One didn’t move, one was commuting. So yeah, I wouldn’t wanna do that. So you talked about the pandemic as a question I’m asking them, I guess these days is what was the biggest lesson or what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned about yourself during the pandemic?
Jake Dunlap: that one of the big, one of the big, takeaways is maybe a lot of sales leaders had this, but I can speak for myself. I feel like. Sales has always been a culture where, it’s you gotta be in the office and the energy’s gotta, to be there. And we gotta be putting our thumb on these people.
And I, we were already about probably 50, 60% remote, so
Andy Paul: Hmm.
Jake Dunlap: but I think what I was able to observe and what I think, what I learned is that, people are pretty self-sufficient, if they have clear goals, they can go hit them. So I think the, just the. The mindset shift away from an office is necessary to maintain culture, to have fun, to be engaged, to do hard, amazing work is maybe a little untrue, and that are there.
There’s certainly benefits to face. And we’ve done a few small things here or there, but. I think I’ve just been amazed at the resiliency of others and that’s really reflected on me and being, how I think even about going forward and building my company.
Andy Paul: Yeah. Do I think there’s danger though that a lot of leaders are extrapolating to the long-term based on a very small sample size. And it’s one thing that when people are forced to work remotely, but I’ve been reading more and more stuff about this and surveys of CEOs, there’s a two-part thing.
I think it was wall street journal last week. Interviewing CEOs about this and a fairly broad consensus that, yeah, maybe not everybody’s coming back, but we are coming back. Yeah. 50%, 60% then was oftentimes the number of used. And I think that sounds about right.
Jake Dunlap: I do too. Look at what y’all, who did, it was Melissa, most mirror who Yahoo had went to a hundred percent remote call, I
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: And again, I could be misquoting
Andy Paul: Well, Roughly, and then she called them back. Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: Yeah. And she’s ah, this isn’t working. So we’ve already seen it, a big tech company that tried that to do it, and then realize Whoa, productivity, et cetera, actually slipped.
So I think that’s right. I think the new normal going to be some hybrid approach. Where in office for certain days for certain meetings you’re working from home when it makes sense. It’s less of a stigma. I think maybe that’s what it’s
Andy Paul: Yeah. I agree.
Jake Dunlap: the stigma.
From it. And the ability of if someone’s working from home, they’re actually, sipping a margarita at 10
Andy Paul: Playing golf. Yeah,
Jake Dunlap: pool. Yeah,
Andy Paul: yeah. Yeah. Morning drinking. That’s an idea. I’ve never thought about that. That could be a new habit to start.
Jake Dunlap: There
Andy Paul: Yeah. No, my new habit was eating all the things, my wife baked during shutdown.
Jake Dunlap: Alcohol sales are up 26% during COVID. I think more people are doing that.
Andy Paul: Yeah I may have to go to Betty Ford for my sourdough addiction, but –
Jake Dunlap: Yeah, that’s good.
Andy Paul: Yeah, I definitely gained the COVID 19. Anyway, I’m working on that. All right. You haven’t talked about something you’d posted, not that long ago on LinkedIn, about five sales myths. And I just want to run through those.
Cause I thought there was a lot of. Interesting fodder for discussion there. Do you remember that article?
Jake Dunlap: I do. For
Andy Paul: Okay. All Right. So your first myth was myth. That’s the myth is that sales isn’t a science. So let me ask you the question. Why do you think sales is a science?
Jake Dunlap: Yeah, it’s a great question. And I’ll tell us a little bit of story of how I arrived here. For me, I had done sales in college. Came out of sales, worked in professional sports for two and a half years in sales. I was very successful top one or two in both teams that I work for
Andy Paul: selling good tickets or
Jake Dunlap: and then moving up into sponsorships and big in big premium seat deals.
Andy Paul: teams.
Jake Dunlap: the Tampa Bay rays and by the way, this is not the T the current Tampa Bay rays. Okay. This is Oh three, four, five
Andy Paul: Okay. All right.
Jake Dunlap: are the worst in baseball.
Andy Paul: Right.
Jake Dunlap: then the Phoenix coyotes when Oh, five Oh six
Andy Paul: And you did this all remote from New York.
Jake Dunlap: I lived there
Andy Paul: You lived there?
Jake Dunlap: I grew up in Kansas City – Go Chiefs! – for those who don’t know. And then moved to Tampa, then Phoenix for five years, San Francisco for two and a half, and New York for six.
Andy Paul: Got it. Okay.
Jake Dunlap: a Kansas City person. what I realized, I went to career builder right.
In Phoenix. So I left, I got out of sports he was like, maybe think about something different. And I was in my training class, I was the second to last person. I hadn’t sold anything. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m Jake Dunlap. I’m God’s gift to sales. have I not sold anything?
I can’t believe this. And I went to my director and my director goes, dude, why aren’t you reading the script? And following the process, I’m like, Evan, I’m Jake Dunlap. an amazing seller. And he goes, dude, do you think we train a thousand people on this process? Because it doesn’t work. And it was like the, like a light bulb. Idn’t go off. It like exploded in my head. I’m like, not. He goes exactly. dude, just trust me that we’ve laid out this process in a way that is optimized and that you’re, you’ll be able to put your own spin on it, et cetera. And then I closed 60,000 in new business the next month. And it was like, Oh my gosh, wait. So is a right and a wrong way to move people. There’s a right way to start the meeting. There’s a right order of operations of questions. There’s a right way to talk about the product a way that’s, Issue than solution-based, there’s a right way to put together a proposal. And and if you couple that, that’s more of like the tactical like the steps in the process. couple that with the science of psychology, that the way that you phrase things, the subtleties of a pause. When I bring my voice down here, how you tend to lean in and whenever I talk loud or you tend to, so there’s not just a science in terms of the process that you move people through. There’s also the science of people. And sometimes we, it was I think too much and we think it’s all art and made up. It’s really not. These are all people are just executing psychological principles or they’re executing of a good discovery, just, what is that? An unconsciously competent?
Andy Paul: Yeah , so I look at the science a little bit differently, cause sure. We’ve got processes. We know that they work to a certain point, we know that if we do this, we get a certain
Jake Dunlap: That’s right.
Andy Paul: But, but, but the
Jake Dunlap: because I
Andy Paul: sure.
Jake Dunlap: the art the difference between a B and an a player. can build an army of B players they’re coachable. And that is the difference, but the who believe it’s pure art is bullshit. That it’s not that there aren’t there things that you’re doing, whether you realize or not, that are based on best practices that are based on nature that are based on other elements. So I just want to add that caveat because it is true. There is an art element for sure, but don’t get it twisted. The art, making it all art is BS. It’s just what separates the elite good.
Andy Paul: Yeah. Agree. It’s a mix. I’m not sure I know where that dividing line is quite frankly, because, we tend to, let’s say, take our data that we get from looking up our conversion rates and so on. And there’s so much missing context in the data that we draw an obvious lesson from it. But yeah.
In the case of your script, let’s say with that, you’re using. Sure, it worked a certain percentage of the time, but maybe a better one will work twice as much with better science.
Jake Dunlap: Absolutely.
Andy Paul: it’s. Yeah, there’s an assumption when we say science that somehow it’s optimized.
We’re one things we’re really missing in a true science say, and also the psychological behavioral economics and so on is. Yeah, those things work a part of the time, right? They’re not, when they did the studies of film while I was taking loss of version, being one is, yeah. It’s now in the process of being somewhat repudiated, new studies coming out that know loss aversion, actually, isn’t a thing. So we have to be careful about what we think is happening with the customers.
I wonder.
Jake Dunlap: And I think what you’re picking up on, it’s a really good point. Andy customer behavior is changing, that the must evolve. Yeah.
Andy Paul: Can we understand them better, than what we thought we knew before. So the science is evolving, whether people are changing or not that I would say the science is evolving. People don’t evolve that quickly. But at one time I started curious about the one thing that’s really missing and sales from a science standpoint is, we’ve never done wide-scale sort of controlled double blind studies of sales. Like we would do for new medications or something to show that, the efficacy of specific actions in certain circumstances, something, conducted with rigor because what we have that passes for research today, and sales has all self-reported behaviors, not observed behaviors. And we start passing those surveys off as science. I’m like that’s not science. That’s just somebody saying, this is what they do.
Jake Dunlap: Which we know that there’s issues with that too. Look, more artistic we make sales, the more job security and the more money we make sales has a perverse incentive to not be a science. has a perverse incentive to not be systematized. The second we admit that there’s a process. The second that we admit that there’s a standardized way, like gap accounting to actually do sales. That you’re right. But again, keep in mind. There’s, that’s the difference between a good accountant and a great accountant and we’re not. when I talk about the science of sales, I’m not talking about great accounts, I’m talking about good accounts.
They all follow gap. all follow the exact same accounting principles. In sales, we refuse to believe that this could possibly exist when in reality it does. And let me just walk you I’ll just walk you through it. Very plainly.
Here’s a sales process for B2B. And my friends. want you to really, I want you to hit pause after this, and then I want you to go really look through your last 10 deals, closed one closed loss.
And tell me if this isn’t exactly what happened. Step one. There’s two phases. Two ways you’d get in. One is through a decision-maker or higher level. One is below. I’ll start with the end user. You get somebody who’s somewhat interested. You go through, you do a high level discovery. Oh wow. Susan, this is interesting. That’s what then what do they do? They get more people on their team. you do a broader demo to that broader group. Then the goal is to then get a meeting with their boss to decide if there’s budget to be able to move forward. you get buy-in from the boss to do some type of proof of concept. And only if it’s successful, then we’ll move forward to something larger than you go back to the end user and you walk them through it. You run a very successful proof of concept over 30, 60 days, and you closed the deal. are you going through the decision maker? And after the first call, you say, Roger, next steps. I’m going to set up a meeting and a demo with your frontline people, make sure it’s something that they love. Then you do a demo with their team. Great. It’s something they love. Now you come back to Roger and you talk about budget and then you move forward into proof of concept and you set clear KPIs for success and you move forward. That is sales.
And literally almost every deal like an accordion. It’s a little bit longer, there’s more stakeholders if it’s enterprise and it’s shorter, if it’s, you could condense some of those steps as the end user and decision maker in a transactional sale is sales every time. It’s that pattern, right?
I’m talking about software sales and, but manufact that there’s this mutations for other versions of
Andy Paul: Okay.
Jake Dunlap: but that is, you can boil it down to that in almost every case. There’s just mutations of that original, like blueprint.
Andy Paul: But that’s a very sales centric way to look at it. Take the Gartner chart on the buyer
journey.
Jake Dunlap: buy.
Andy Paul: But look at the how’s that align though, with what does that Gartner put out in their buying journey study that came out two years ago that. Yeah. If you saw their, what they call their spaghetti diagram with very complex diagram of the buyer’s journey, but at its core, we’re four jobs that buyers accomplish problem identification. First,
second solution solution Solution exploration, which is identifying the alternatives for how they can three choosing a path to follow for selecting a vendor to follow that path with.
Jake Dunlap: It’s literally identical. You run a discovery is there is a here’s something next Number two. Okay. Here’s exactly how we’re going to be able to work with you or help you again, where you have the broader group of people that come together. Then maybe behind closed doors, they go and look at a few other vendors.
Then you move into some type of proof of concept, or if it’s a bigger product that you don’t have it, then there’s just more of that joint solutioning. And then they buy it’s the same. Just do you start at the top or you start at the bottom way. I need to get these people to love it and make sure that they see utility in it.
I need this person to understand the big, the bigger picture benefits. It’s identical.
Andy Paul: All right. Let’s move on to the second myth is that you have is that sales is all the myth is the sales is all about relationship building. So tell me what you mean by that.
Jake Dunlap: It’s the fact that because Pete you’re likable or that we’re pals, that we’re going to do business together. I think that there’s a, in challenger sale is really the first kind of bomb shell to drop on guess what the relationship build is not a top persona, but I think in enterprise sales in particular, I think there’s an overemphasis on being likable being cordial. And being, polite and, challenger sales is the first step, but I think as buyers become busier we’re more inundated with more information than ever now we’re moving digital, it’s about, and it gives, it’s always been that idea of a trusted advisor, but I feel like now more than anything is buyers are looking for people who can give them facts, help me to be smarter. That part is, has not changed. But it’s less about do I like and want to play golf with him as opposed to what’s the utility you can provide me and my business.
Andy Paul: Yeah. And certainly agree that the day of the lunches and golf and so on. That’s, but that to me is not, I know it’s what challenger was talking about, they’re talking about relationships, but that’s not really a relationship. My virtue of being, if you look at what’s just the definition of relationship as a sale, the way in which two or more people are connected. If you’re dealing with a prospect, you have a relationship with them. It’s about functional relationships or relationship of utility, but. Yeah.
People want to hear people talk about the relationship is what is the relationship? . If you’re selling to them, you’re in a relationship. You’re not friends, but why are we trying to tell people it’s not important because actually I’ll disagree with you on the likeability. I think. In absolute sense. Do you need to be likable? No, we’ve all know jerks have gotten orders, but I think it’s silly actually to tell people they shouldn’t try to be likable
Jake Dunlap: of , Of course.
Andy Paul: but that’s what’s coming across as a
that you need to be likable.
Jake Dunlap: they don’t buy because they’re likable
Andy Paul: Whoa. How do you know? How do you know? So let me ask you a question. Let me ask a question
Jake Dunlap: Yeah.
Andy Paul: on your last deal. That you won. What was your margin of victory? How much did you win by quantify it? How much did you win by
1%? 2%.
Jake Dunlap: Are you
Andy Paul: 10%?
Jake Dunlap: did compared to the competition?
Andy Paul: Yeah. If you won by the competition and even the competition was status quo, staying still, what was your margin of victory? But here’s the thing is every little thing adds up. You don’t have to be likable, but you know, I believe my experience over 40 plus years is that you can never know what’s going to make a difference. So everything is to, the serve aggregation of marginal gains theory, but every little thing is important. So if you have the opportunity to be likable, why wouldn’t you?
Jake Dunlap: Of course you should be. I think, look, I think there’s nitpick on the word. I think when we talk about sales and we talk about relationship building. Okay. Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about first. Okay. it comes to relationship building, I think most people, if I said, when I say that, what do you think of. don’t think of the relationship equals business impact. They think of the people that relylet’s be very clear, rely on likability talented, up being friendly and being cordial rely on it. That the role that, that part of the relationship the crux of the partnership. To your point, of course you want to be likable. Of course you want to do these other things, but it’s not why people do business with you. And the point is that it’s a myth think that if I would, over-index on a thought partner to a business, opposed to being a buddy to the decision maker. It’s not zero. It’s not zero one either way.
You’re
Andy Paul: Right, butBut I think there were long past the day where people thought that the relationship in B2B sales entailed the buddy. I think at least,
I think
Jake Dunlap: at big enterprise sales, man.
Andy Paul: Enterprise sales.
Jake Dunlap: Go to go talk to your average person. Who’s sitting behind a desk for the first time and struggling to know how to sell.
Andy Paul: I’ve sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stuff over my career for the first 25 years of my career.
golf once with her. I didn’t, I didn’t play golf once with a client.
Jake Dunlap: you
Andy Paul: That’s the people I knew as well. There were some companies that have my point is 20 years ago that started dying out.
I mean there, mate.
Jake Dunlap: not dead. Let’s put it that way.
Andy Paul: Yeah. I just want to give people context because I think that. Yeah. When people talk about this, the myth of the relationship is, and the reason I use like nitpick on it, but I think it’s not a nitpick. I think it’s really important. People understand is you have a human relationship with this person you’re selling to, or the people that you’re selling to it doesn’t mean they’re friends by any stretch of imagination.
But, ability to connect to the human level is still paramount in order to be a business advisor or to be a thought advisor to them and so on. If you don’t have that, if their perception of you as negative off the get-go, they’re not going to hear you.
Jake Dunlap: That’s well, I think you’re talking about the difference between relationship and trust. Do they have to trust?
Andy Paul: You need that connection to get trust isn’t trust or relationship.
Jake Dunlap: Depends on it depends. I could trust you. I’d like the same person that you might trust to do business with. Or you might trust the level of trust it takes to watch my kids versus for me to write you a verse for me to write you a check for $25,000 is night and day.
Andy Paul: Yep. Well, I use that example. I mean, That’s why I’m laughing because I use that example is yeah. Trust at a business level, but I’m not gonna haven’t babysit my kids. But I still have a relationship and I don’t want to get, go down the rabbit hole on this, but I think we just, I think words matter and I think people are confused.
Here’s how I feel. You have a connection with this person and this connection is for the purpose of helping them do what they need to do to make a purchase decision. And it requires a certain level of human interaction that includes it doesn’t hurt and helps you in aggregate.
To be likable, to be human, to have empathy, to build trust, which are all part of that connection. And that connection could be defined as a relationship, but let’s call it a connection because people seem to be so sensitive about this word relationship.
Jake Dunlap: Correct?
Andy Paul: Oh, good. We’re in violent agreement. Okay. Here we go.
Onto the next spot.
Jake Dunlap: think it’s the word relationship. I think if I can, the word relationship in the I’m using is if you think about a scale of zero to a hundred, it’s the over-reliance on a personal connection versus business partnership.
Andy Paul: And I think the people that took the lead in changing that starting, I call it 20 years ago, roughly, but. Where the buyers and yeah, if there’s a sales person still thinks to your point that’s how they’re going to succeed, then they’re not paying attention to the people they’re selling to.
Jake Dunlap: I agree.
Andy Paul: Alright myth three, you need an internal champion. So why is this a myth?
Jake Dunlap: Yeah. And again, I’m going to knowing where we went with relationship. going to go ahead. I’m
Andy Paul: No, don’t don’t don’t presume anything here to go ahead.
Jake Dunlap: I think I’m let me define it because you’re talking. Yeah, this is a it’s five word soundbite from LinkedIn, right?
Andy Paul: Right.
Jake Dunlap: it’s important to give some context. The point of this is reliance. think what I see observe is that there’s a lot of sales methodologies and processes that say, step two, who’s our champion in this what I’ve seen historically in my career. that when you have a true champion? Oh, it is awesome. But guess what? The times that you get that person who would literally it’s like once every few years, or,
Andy Paul: Right.
Jake Dunlap: take you through the process, they tear it up. What it is don’t rely on other people to do the job for you. And what I mean, and the most common part that this comes up, Andy is.
When you put together the plan you put together, the plans for partnership, and then you really, hand over the keys to some person versus you being multithreaded within that organization, to where you’ve got people who are advocates, don’t get me wrong. That’s good. You need advocates at each level and each
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: departments. that it’s champion is going to get the deal done for you and articulate the partnership is a fallacy. And instead of. The amount of sellers. I see that try to sell through this champion, versus knowing, look, it’s my job to get in front of these people versus hand over the keys to therefore, I need to build relationships throughout this at all levels versus expecting my champion to take me to these people. It’s the proactiveness that that I’m highlighting there.
Andy Paul: You said needed to build what throne.
Jake Dunlap: Relationships
Andy Paul: Okay.
Jake Dunlap: definition, not the common definition.
Andy Paul: Was giving you a
Jake Dunlap: I know.
Andy Paul: I agree with you a hundred percent on this one. It was funny. You had, you said reliance because that’s the way I’d written in my notes where I said yeah, a better way to phrase that is you can’t rely on there being an internet internal champion, nor should you, and absolutely right. ;;So you need, as you said, you need those acumen document. You need those skills that enable you to drive the decision for it.
Jake Dunlap: I’m not going to rest. I think that’s it. I’m not going to rest on the fact that I’ve got an okay thing here. I’m going to go out and make it happen. I’m going to go get those really. I’m not going to, just if I don’t get the relationship, I don’t, and again, I’m talking about larger
Andy Paul: yeah.
Jake Dunlap: deals and I feel like that’s where so many reps fall short.
Andy Paul: I think what they do with this idea, and I think this are started with the idea of of this research, more stakeholders being involved in decision, therefore yeah, there’s a mobilizer, but it’s R defeats this idea of an internal champion is that you still need to go find the person or the people who have the most at stake with the decision who care most about the outcome, be effected by the outcome.
And yeah, they may not have the. Power to be an internal champion, but they will be the advocate as you’re talking about. And you need advocates.
Jake Dunlap: 100%. Yep.
Andy Paul: No, I agree with you a hundred percent on that one. Okay. A myth for if it’s not directly generating leads and conversions, it’s not worth my time. So we’re gonna spend some time on this one.
Jake Dunlap: Do it.
Andy Paul: So tell us what you mean by that.
Jake Dunlap: I don’t know. I don’t know where it started. . Maybe predictable revenue and I love Aaron and I actually caught up last night and I’ve got it, I really feel like it was right until it wasn’t. And he, and obviously he’s written follow on books as well,
Andy Paul: sure.
Jake Dunlap: but what happened is what we started to we started to simplify sales too if you get X widgets equals Y whatever’s to Z whatever’s to X deals.
Andy Paul: Yeah,
Jake Dunlap: And
Andy Paul: just
Jake Dunlap: it was math because, and I think this is the variable. If you’re a marketer or sales leader, I really want you to pay attention to this. It was okay to look at it that way. When the activities, the first component, the very first thing a one-to-one not interaction, but when that correlated.
To a sale. What do I mean by that? When an activity, every email, every call, every inbound lead was someone who you were trying to set a meeting with
Andy Paul: Right,
Jake Dunlap: or came in expressing interest
Andy Paul: right.
Jake Dunlap: every activity. But guess what? Today we’re asking sales reps to post on LinkedIn. We’re asking sales reps to send videos.
We’re asking reps to do things that either can or can’t be tracked. And we’re compensating. So that’s problem one. And, but, before I go in, I’m going to go to the comp as the other part of this
Andy Paul: Sure. Sure.
Jake Dunlap: but that’s one and let’s sit and we can sit here and talk about this is that it used to be, it used to be like that, but now we’re the outbound efforts and I’ll talk about outbound in particular.
The same goes for inbound people that think of it again, go back to 2010. How many people were producing eBooks? Not as many. So guess what? When someone downloaded it, maybe they had a higher intent. Now every day, there’s 2 million blog posts published. How many eBooks? 10,000, 5,000. I don’t know. And so intent of humans has now changed so wildly that the one-to-one to one of activities, verse outcomes, as a predictor of sales is gone.
Andy Paul: Which is still the primary emo for
companies.
Jake Dunlap: Obviously I won’t mention the company, they were doing a blitz the end and they’re rewarding because, made, 700 activities. Yay, Susan. She wanted, she just wanted, she hated her job. She didn’t, finish second, and what about being what happened to being clever God it’s like so we’re pushing all of our clients to measure first outcome, which we call like a meaningful conversation or interaction and you can define it however you want. It could be. So in the process of booking a meeting, someone directs you to the right person. There’s a bunch of different ways. And really, it depends on your business, but start tracking that instead of the
Andy Paul: Absolutely.
Jake Dunlap: AZ. And then that two meeting set meetings ran, then you get back to that one-to-one and then the equation becomes smooth again. But I want to encourage teams to be creative
Andy Paul: Yes. You’re always going to say just a simple illustration I use to, for that, as someone said, always tell me, he’s making 50 calls a day. They’re being productive. Or if they make 55 increase their productivity. And I’m like if you had a factory that was building a widget and you built a hundred widgets an hour, but 50 of them had to be thrown away because they didn’t work as your productivity, a hundred widgets, an hour or 50. And it’s same with our leads. It’s you know, why are we measuring to your point? I think leads if they don’t have a productive outcome.
Jake Dunlap: Now that goes to the second part.
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: is compensation. Marketing is being compensated on MQL and SQL. So guess what that incentivizes Janet through if marketing’s main compensated by the way, this is not marketing’s fault, either sales. I, so by no means, am I saying that I do think that marketing and sales should best be tied to revenue. But marketing has been. So this goes back to my whole point. Marketing has been told, throw out brand, throw out a PR, out, all the things that made that, that were the other side of the coin. And it’s so funny. I tell this story too, because was a hardcore kind of like sales leader by the MQL
Andy Paul: Hmm.
Jake Dunlap: 2018 until like literally, and I tell him like, if April, 2018, heard this Jake, he like punch him in the face. He’d like to brand that’s the arts and crafts, but now look, I’ve done it. Yeah. For my business. We’re closing millions of dollars of organic LinkedIn ads spending zero. And I think B2B is boar Inc. Dude, and I’m, I think brand is ready for a comeback. And so that goes back to what you can’t measure does matter. think the answer is bothwe need to change marketing’s incentives to be aligned. We need to change SDR incentives to be aligned with sales. We need to change sales attitudes about if it’s not perfectly wrapped up in a bow, that’s your job create man, I used to, maybe you’re familiar with the term, create the need. Guess what if it was called information giving I’d slash your salary by 66%, and so we’ve got to have kind of a reckoning here like common sense. And getting these organizations between marketing sales, development, sales aligned around the common goal, which is revenue really treating these groups how to work together.
And that does start at the top. And it starts with compensation that if each group is compensated for just their one part of the widget, it’s the same reason. You have a friction between sales and customer success, sales person doesn’t care. They’re jamming the deal through. Somebody turns that it cares.
I got my commission. We’re trying to push our clients to where a rep gets, 80% of their commission on deal. Close 20% on power usage. I think every single sales organization that has a handoff model should use that. Like it will increase the quality of your deals. If you change that reps get compensated, a component of their commission when the person actually uses it.
Andy Paul: Yeah,
Potentially part of the reason this is happening is just, as you said, and I’ll put another spin on it, is that because they’re doing all these things that they shouldn’t be doing, but they can. Because the technology now enables us, we’ll make these calls. We’ll send these emails, we’ll do this, star mindless activity that you’re referring to earlier because we can, and then it drains us of the ability to do something that’s creative, because I think is that too many sales leaders operate from a position of fear. I know what my numbers are. I know what the metrics are. I can generate this. This is predictable for me, but they don’t think about how I could do it better. So instead they get protective what the position.
Jake Dunlap: There’s two parts there because when we can get into this always optimizing, which is a whole other kind of post like Cove, what COVID made us realize, but I want to go back to what I feel is happening in, and maybe you agree Is our windows is sales leaders, ish. We are continuing to look less and less at the mid and longterm. We’re more and more scared. as a sales leader, I was talking to the webinar yesterday. We talked to a marketing leader about this as 80, 20, 80% of my time is dedicated to the now the month quarter, 20% of my time is dedicated to the year and next year. if you aren’t doing that as a leader, then you’re always on the defense. I call it being on the defense, your block, as opposed to the offense. I want to show up to December and I’m executing the plan that we laid out and adjusted from September or from better yet July. And so I feel like leaders are, like you said, they feel that pressure and aren’t playing the long game.
They’re not, or even the mid game. realize, man, what if I did let my STRs connect with every single person they’re patching on LinkedIn? And then I had them comment and like on their posts before I sent an email. But I can’t track it.
Andy Paul: So I’m going to scourge that. What they do. They actively discouraged that tackling.
Jake Dunlap: Exactly.
Andy Paul: this, this is just
Jake Dunlap: sense,
Andy Paul: right.
Jake Dunlap: that’s smarter. There’s nobody you can tell me, like it’s not better for Andy to be like, Oh wait, who’s this person. Because guess what? Most people get zero comments on their posts. Cause there’s resharing, people’s posts. your SDR goes in comments, once one week, once the next week that person remembers your person, you can’t tell me that’s not better than a cold call saying like never heard of me.
Andy Paul: Absolutely well
Jake Dunlap: that’s
Andy Paul: placed.
Jake Dunlap: there, there are things that you can’t measure that matter. That is where that comes from.
Andy Paul: But a lot of that comes from sort of our digital marketing era. Yeah. I got telling me marketers I’ve talked to we can’t do that because I can’t measure it.
It’s like,
Jake Dunlap: Cause I get comped on NQL.
Andy Paul: yeah.
Jake Dunlap: Why do I care?
Andy Paul: Why do I care about brand?
Jake Dunlap: What exactly? Why do I
Andy Paul: right.
Jake Dunlap: brand? And it’s the same reason why marketing stopped helping sales like it used to and stop supporting growth and current customers. they don’t get compensated when a current customer upsells, they don’t get compensated when a deal gets put maybe they get a small,
Andy Paul: Hmm.
Jake Dunlap: Hey, so that activity of investing my sales enablement team of, creating more content, what’s the ROI of creating five variations of my case studies that are based on micro verticals.
That’s going to help my team increase their close rate in the, now in the longterm, it’s the right play. And it’s going to make you more money, but I’m under the gun today.
Andy Paul: And that to your point, precisely drives so much. Activity, quote, unquote, if you will, on the part of marketing is yet to be able to hit that number. All right, so last one. And unfortunately, hopefully I have enough time to fit this in is myth five organic social traffic is worthless. So you touched on this before, but let’s dive in this one because this is an important one as well.
Jake Dunlap: Yeah. Just look at B2B. My nine times I would say my guess is 90 plus percent of marketers posts on a Friday or for the month in advance. And they just. and they wonder why there’s no
Andy Paul: No engagement. Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: guess what, and by the way, it was when social media first came to Ryzen and it’s from my B2B friends, it was a waste of time.
LinkedIn, wasn’t a social platform where people went to for news or information, like there was a job space,
Andy Paul: Right.
Jake Dunlap: what? My friend’s lives changed. And
Andy Paul: Big time.
Jake Dunlap: changed in the last two or three years
Andy Paul: Absolutely.
Jake Dunlap: especially since 2018. So the last two years in particular, LinkedIn has become a content site.
You’re a B2B marketer, but because again, it goes back to what you can measure. Why do I like performance ads and ads? I measure it. I got X impressions to X clicks to X leads to X MQL to blah, blah, blah. how do I measure the value of a view or a like, or a comment, or I don’t know.
Andy Paul: To the day of measuring eyeballs. Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: Yeah. And there’s something to it, right? Of course. I’m not just advocating for,
Andy Paul: Yeah,
Jake Dunlap: do that. But I think there’s a couple issues with organic right now. One is most marketers have it just wrong. what I mean by that is that when you’re posting, I’m just going to focus on LinkedIn.
Most of my B2B community, I think that’s where you should be spending most of your time focus. I think there’s an
Andy Paul: three, a hundred percent.
Jake Dunlap: platforms, but I’ll just talk about LinkedIn one. The first thing is don’t look at LinkedIn and your page there as a lead generation or traffic generator.
It’s a massive mistake if you think that you’re going to drive traffic to your blogs, by posting it on LinkedIn, you had the biggest trick I can give you if you want to, I’m going to give you one thing and it’s the dumbest thing you want to triple your engagement on a post, the exact same thing, but put the link in the comments.
Why? Because LinkedIn algorithm hates you to send people off site
Andy Paul: Right.
Jake Dunlap: Why don’t you know that? Why
Andy Paul: Well,
Jake Dunlap: that.
Andy Paul: And that’s not new.
is several years old
Jake Dunlap: but how many posts? it makes no, because guess what? Guess what? You can’t do that.
The point is it’s not automated.
Andy Paul: right.
Jake Dunlap: like there are things and I’m telling like, look at what is LinkedIn? LinkedIn likes text only posts. I don’t know. It’s just what it likes. Hi marketers. This is great. Your content people can be creative and they can riff and they can rip apart part one of your eBooks and some commentary on it.
I am telling you, and I’ll just, this is the, these are the facts. Okay. 2018 may Jake Dunlap scaled. I, we released the most amazing ebook, in my opinion, on GDPR, we summarized if you’re a marketing or sales leader, here’s what you need to know. And, we released it on social. It does. Okay. I’m like, Oh my gosh.
If we were spinning, we’re putting out a blog post every week or two, why are we doing this? I said, you know what? This is not how consumers want to consume on LinkedIn. They want nuggets. They want little bite size.
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: what? For a year. We didn’t post one ebook or blog posts. And I started posting on LinkedIn every single day.
That year we generated probably close to 700,000 last year I made direct attribution to, I found you on LinkedIn. I think we did 1.5 million and we’re a small consulting firm. We closed two, eight, one six, figure one, almost six. It’s now a six figure deal. We close ones to six figure deals right in the last, what?
Probably like 10 months or so, because I’m going with the extreme use cases. Where the very first call is. I don’t even know what you do. I swear to God, I don’t even know what you do, I think we need help. That’s how it started. It wasn’t because I educated them on an ebook and all of our product set.
I’m adding value. That is the game you give, then you toss out a and guess what? Whenever now, whenever I ask for something, because I only do it one in eight or 10 posts. Guess what my response rate does. And so we’ve got to realize that social is about give, about come download, come click.
And therefore you build a brand equity that will generate real revenue that you can go back and attribute to that source. But I can’t tell you that one, LinkedIn post equals $1. know. That’s what I can’t tell you. Okay.
Andy Paul: But expanding this to B2B sellers is they need to be. Posting on LinkedIn.
Jake Dunlap: Oh,
Andy Paul: This is part of the brand building and, frustrates me no end when, to your point, you talk to VPs of sales, CRO CMOs, and they actively discouraged their sellers from doing it. Cause I think that’s a waste of time. And you look at the companies who are doing it well, and there’s this additive effect, not just to the individual, but to the company as well. And yeah, I’ll tell people, and this is, I wouldn’t hire an E right now, if they weren’t active on LinkedIn.
Jake Dunlap: Yeah. to your point, coupled with having the numbers to use to me, it’s going to be, it’s going to be table stakes. Think about this. If I was, I just told someone this, if I was an STR. would destroy everybody. I already know it. I would, and I wouldn’t, I, all I would do is cold calls and LinkedIn, I
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: comment, and then I would call you and say, Hey, Andy, look, you popped up in my feed.
A couple of times. I really, this things really resonated on that. Here’s what we’re doing here. Is it okay if I send you some details? If it makes sense we can set up time. Does that work? Boom. Human connection. With the comment you made connection with the comment human connection with a voice, going back to your point, the human is the own is the main thing left in sales, but again, I’m talking about, but then I saw something that was business value, et cetera. So I feel like. are, guess what? As an SDR, I had to give this advice and said, look, wake up early in the morning at 7:30 AM. Make all your fake ass cold calls. Sorry, any, you might have to bleep that and then just go and then just go do what you should actually be doing.
That’s what, that’s my advice to miss SDRs,
Andy Paul: Right.
Jake Dunlap: metrics your boss gives. Go do that in the morning. Bang, and then go do then just go put your common sense cap on and go to work.
Andy Paul: That’s great advice. Great advice.
Where you
the third one is fine.
Jake Dunlap: I want to thank you, man. Let me tell you real quick, cause I know we’re wrapping up.
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: to thank you for the conversation on the relationship I get on so many of these podcasts.
This is good. This stuff people need to hear because when people go out and pontificate and they can’t, you can’t have a dialogue about it, that’s a problem. And that’s a problem on LinkedIn right now is that it’s all a bunch of violent agreement enough. and
Andy Paul: Yeah.
Jake Dunlap: healthy because there’s people out there that are listening and because of the way that we went back and forth, they’re like, so relationships are good.
Cause I really liked the way that you defined it, and it okay, Oh, next time I’m going to put, I’m going to put a little tweak on the way that I describe it, but I really appreciated it. And I want you to know that it’s important that we talk about these things and we have discourse, the things we change and we get better.
Andy Paul: Oh, I agree. A hundred percent. And I appreciate the fact that you are so thoughtful about it. I follow you on LinkedIn. Yeah. There’s not many people was, you said people are pontificating without thinking about it. And you’ve actually put the time and effort clearly into thinking about it.
And that’s what we need. We need more voices like that in sales, because it’s going to change and let’s drive the change.
Jake Dunlap: I appreciate it,
Andy Paul: Jake been a pleasure and people want to contact you. How can they get ahold of you?
Jake Dunlap: LinkedIn then is as
Andy Paul: Yes,
Jake Dunlap: good
Andy Paul: I’m not. I didn’t have to say that, but
Jake Dunlap: in Jake
Andy Paul: yeah.
Jake Dunlap: on the first thing. The other thing is, look, we’ve invested a lot in YouTube, so just type in Jake Dunlap sales. And then look, if if there’s something that, that registered here, look at it, scaled, we are focused on helping organizations to optimize.
But again, if you’re interested in the content, go to YouTube, go to I put out that I know in my brain, it looks candidly 99% of people. You don’t even need a higher scale. Just go. If you can piece together, if you have a question that you can piece together the same solution.
But no, I appreciate it, Andy. And that’s where to find me.
Andy Paul: Great, Jake. Thank you so much.
Jake Dunlap: All right. Thank you.
