business growth

Developing A Strong Sales Mindset With Matt Heinz

Mark Cox sits down with Matt Heinz to dive into the concept of developing a strong sales mindset. Mark, the founder of In The Funnel Sales Coaching, discusses his insights on how shifting the way you think about sales can transform your approach and results. From overcoming call reluctance to offering true value in every interaction, this episode will challenge and inspire sales professionals at all levels. Whether you're a seasoned salesperson or just starting, tune in to discover how a positive sales mindset can make all the difference.

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Developing A Strong Sales Mindset With Matt Heinz

Welcome To Sales Pipeline Radio

Before we get started we got a special offer for you as a reader of the show. We have launched the next generation of our In The Funnel Sales Academy. The leading online training platform and B2B sales community that helps companies optimize their sales and generate ongoing predictable revenue growth. We are offering 50% off your first month for any of our subscription plans. Go to SellingWell.com/podcast and then use the promo code PODCAST. We are looking forward to working with you.

A lot of us noticed his natural tension in most organizations between sales and marketing. Sales are saying, “I don't get enough leads,” and marketing is going, “You would know what to do with the lead if it bit you on the nose.” There's always been a little bit of this competitive tension and I'm starting to wonder if maybe we helped build or emphasize that competitive tension because up to this point we have done about 100 episodes and we have never had a core marketing expert on the show. That all changes now.

We have got Matt Heinz from Heinz Marketing. Matt has deep expertise in the marketing field but all very strong on the sales front. He runs the Sales Pipeline Radio podcast. We have been on that podcast, but we have this great conversation with Matt talking about that interplay between sales and marketing and that relationship and collaboration that's so critical for success.

Matt is one of those common-sense experts in my view just understanding coming to the table and understanding that it's one organization. Regardless of whether it's a sales or a marketing KPI, the most important KPIs are business KPIs. Everybody is part of the team to make sure those things move in the right direction.

Matt has been doing this for a long time with a wonderful career at Microsoft before starting on his own. He's helped dozens of organizations and written multiple books on these topics, a real thought leader in this space. I learned a lot from this discussion with Matt. I think you are going to as well and enjoy it as well. If you do, please like and subscribe to the show because that's exactly how we get great guests like Matt when we have lots of folks who like, subscribe, and download. Tell your friends. If you ever hear anything in one of these episodes that you think we can improve on, let me know. We love constructive criticism and I respond to every idea that we get from you to improve the show. Here's Matt Heinz.

My name is Matt Heinz. I am your host. I’m very excited to have you here. We have a great guest and a great topic now. I think you are going to enjoy it but first just want to thank everyone for joining if you are in the middle of your work day and work week. Thank you for joining us on LinkedIn. If you want to be part of the show you can make a comment. You can ask a question. A rebuttal or rant. You can troll us. You can do whatever you want.

If we see that we can reference it. We can bring it up. If it's a question to comment we can recognize you on the show as well, so thank you so much for doing that. Thank you so much for downloading and subscribing to every episode of the Sales Pipeline Radio is always available past, present, and future at SalesPipelineRadio.com. I’m very excited to have our guest. He is the Founder of In The Funnel Sales Coaching and the author of the new book Learn to Love Selling Mark Cox. Mark, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me. I was excited.

I was as well. I don't know if we intended to do a home exchange. I was super excited to have you join here and I have known you for a long time. I followed you and your content. When I saw your new book coming out, I knew we had to get you on the show. For those that don't know yet, maybe do a little bit of an intro of you and where and how you focus.

I am the President and Founder of a company called In The Funnel Sales Coaching. We help sales leaders, salespeople, BDRs and SDRs dramatically improve performance through sales training that impacts behavior. Prior to that, I spent most of my career running large sales organizations and outsourcing our technology companies. Two other passions in life in addition to family. I'm a music fanatic. I love all types of music and I'm still a terrible drummer after all these years and I'm also a hockey fanatic. For many years, I have been loving the Toronto Maple Leafs which will prove to your audience that I obviously can't be that bright.

You are persistent and resilient if nothing else. I'm in Seattle for year three of the Kraken and it's been fun to watch Seattle become lean in with the team. The Kraken did a great job in the community as well. If we have time we might get into a little bit of hockey because I am on the learning curve. I love to watch but if it's much more technical than people realize.

Let's talk first about this new book Learn to Love Selling. You can get it at InTheFunnel.com. You can find it on Amazon. You have been doing this for quite a while. You have had your consulting firm for several years. You have been doing sales and business for a while. Why this topic? What about this topic and this angle was important to you?

The topic and then the title. The content of the book is this comprehensive playbook of thinking about everything you need to do to convert your core business capability into revenue. The model works at the leader level, CEO level, and salesperson level managing their territories. The reason I call it Learn to Love Selling. There are a lot of people in the profession having a pretty tough time and that tough time comes from two things.

First of all, the core understanding of what sales truly is. There are a lot of folks out there who still believe it's the 40-year-old stereotype pitching, cajoling, doing demos, and that type of stuff. That's all gone. What selling is just helping somebody achieve a meaningful business outcome in a way that's beneficial to them and you? It's about helping, not pitching. These two things that I think dramatically improve somebody's Joy of doing this job, and I need to know what to do. First, in my mindset, I need to understand, “What am I doing here? Why am I adding value to the universe?” I'm helping people. I'm making deposits in the universe. I'm not asking for withdrawals.

If you were selling in a way where you are interrupting someone's time asking them to make it 100% ask not having anything to give in response. No wonder people have called reluctance. No wonder people don't want to get on the phone. There are a lot of reasons for it but in part, I don’t think people feel good about what they are delivering and what they are doing. Conversely, if you can figure out what is the value you provide to someone. Not just getting them to sign the deal and to buy something from you, but what do you have a value for them where this interruption becomes irresistible so to speak?

The first one is this spiral of doom. If you think you are just pitching and cajoling, you don't like what you do. The second thing you have to do in order to do that is that people put up a veneer. Salespeople put up a veneer and put on a sales face. I can't be my true authentic self. They like what they do even less and it's draining and exhausting. Rather than looking at it saying, “How do I prepare myself,” so that when I am reaching out I have real insight, value, knowledge, and best practice that I can give to someone. If that's my intent for every call in every discussion, don't worry about the outcome. I'm not just trying to create a qualified sales opportunity. If I start by trying to add value and help, the outcomes will come our way.

If you’re just pitching, it’s no wonder you don’t like what you do. Shift your mindset and focus on adding value.

Why Do People Struggle With Prospecting?

When you get a lead that says, “I want to learn more about you.” That's a pretty easy phone call. When I am prospecting, that is a lot harder. What are some approaches that you found work well? You cover some of this in the book and your training and workshops. What are some approaches that can help people feel better about prospecting, and feel good about the value of providing? Can you learn to love prospecting, Mark?

That's our third book. The second one is Learn to Love Leading for sales leaders and then Learn to Love Prospecting. First of all, again, let's start with this mindset. If people go into their job and what they do every day and they just think this is It's a Grind you are never going to enjoy it. You have got to have a bit of a big picture. For those doing prospecting, you should realize you are doing the most important part of the sales cycle. Every company out there wants more new opportunities and you create them.

When you get good at this or if you can figure out strategically how to get good at this, you are going to be of huge value to future companies, which means your value increases. The way I'd like to look at how to do this and let's make it easy for the folks. What would you or I do? Let's say you are a president of a company. We are reaching out to another president of the company to talk.

The two things we do if we reach out, first of all, there's no chance. We are reaching out to anybody by doing research. We would know the person we are reaching out to the company. We have a point of Interest. We have a reason for the call. You and I have okay business acumen and industry acumen, so we are doing that work.

The second thing is we probably have a pretty good answer when the other person on the other end of the phone says, “Who are you guys? What do you do?” We probably thought about our value proposition message. We have those two things. An articulate value proposition and I can explain what's in there. We do research and have that point of interest prior to every call. We are going to have dramatically better outcomes. It helps us break through that wall that everybody feels like if you interrupt somebody in the middle of the day, you have 7 to 15 seconds to break through the wall to get an authentic conversation out of them.

You have 7-15 seconds to break through the wall during a call. Research, prepare, and articulate your value.

Objections To Traditional Sales Methods

I’m talking with Mark Cox. He's the Founder of In The Funnel Sales Coaching and the author of Learn to love Selling. There's your approach to prospecting and then there's the objections to doing it and some of them are email is dead. No one responds to their email. You can't use the phone anymore. People aren't at the office. There are barely any office lines. They are working from home. Are these excuses? Are these truths?

There's a little bit of truth in any comment out there but depending upon who you have got on your show, you are going to have somebody saying, “The phone is dead. You got to do social selling.” Somebody else is going to say, “Social selling is dead. You got to do the telephone.” Somebody else is going to say, “Email is a way to go.”

I believe if I'm trying to build the pipeline, I think the answer is in either or it's an app. I will make a couple of observations people should digest. You and I are old enough to remember a day when one of the biggest expenses we had was our actual cell phone because we would just get so many voicemails on a given day. We would fill our voicemail. That's all gone now. Nobody leaves me a voicemail. It’s so easy to stand out prospecting. If you are intelligent and can leave a decent voicemail.

The second thing is as much as we say 40% or 50% of all the emails going back and forth are spam. It still does work in certain circumstances. I'm a big believer in doing the research and making a personal stop with the generic just pitch. If you show in the email, you know who I am. That might trigger a little more. There are some great social selling strategies out there and you wrote a book on social selling not that long ago that had some very good ones in there. If we want to get the attention and interest of somebody, we have to use every channel available to us, but we have to be good at those channels. It's not a volume or pure automation thing. We have to leverage our intelligence to personalize and humanize the reach out.

It’s not about cold calls or warm calls. It’s about offering value when you reach out. That's what turns prospects into clients.

I'm here to say the second biggest source of pipeline for us has been the telephone. Calling people leaving voicemails. It's following up from there, but it's that campaign that has been successful. Now it's not necessarily cold calling. It's a warm calling. These are people who know me. They are not necessarily current clients or even past clients but people that I know from various whatevers but you will leverage that and you have something of value to share.

I still have call reluctance. It's still hard for me to schedule and protect the time. I need to do my prospecting but I have learned to enjoy it because I believe that I have something valuable to share and contribute when I do that. I want to go back to May of 2013. You have a long successful career in selling and in May of 2013 at least according to LinkedIn, that's when you started In The Funnel Sales Coaching. What's your origin story? A lot of people reading this are people who are very successful in their careers. People think, “It’s interesting if I could take my expertise and do my own thing.” That is a very scary thing. You and I both know that firsthand, but how did that get started and why did you do it?

The Origin Story Of “In The Funnel”

At the time I was on a break. I had been leading large sales organizations in different outsourcing and technology companies and had decided I wanted to pull back a little bit on my travel so I stepped away from something. For being in that role it was probably going to take me a year to find the next large US technology company that wanted to sell into the Canadian marketplace, likely into big Canadian banks and I want to run one of those. While I was engaging in a search campaign a few smaller organizations came to me and they told me, “We are not hiring you. We can't afford or attract someone like you but will you help us?”

Before I knew what was happening, I was working with three of them. Two tech companies and then one financial services business. I was doing this while I was in this search campaign, and I was interviewing with a large US tech company wanting to change its leadership in Canada. They are called PureFacts, and I was working with one of these companies. I told the team. “I have got an interview,” and this was the 5th or 6th interview.

The Canadian operations were two doors down from them here in downtown Toronto. I leave the PureFacts offices and walk two doors down. Go into this interview and there are 5 or 6 people around this table. As I was going through the interviews, I was already starting to think, “When I take over this organization. That person is gone and this person isn't going to make it.” I’m thinking about the whole go-to-market.

I was asking them a lot of questions about what was working and what wasn't working, and then it just hit me right in the middle of this interview. I was in that room for 3 hours, but about 90 minutes in it I would rather go back and help PureFacts than run this thing. I played nice for the rest of the interview. I went downstairs instead of going back to my smaller technology company. They are large now, but then. I made a right instead of a left, went to a coffee shop and then just called my wife Donna. I said, “I don't think I'm going to work for anybody anymore. I think I can build a business out of doing what I'm doing here,” and that was the origin story. It was super fun.

Thank you for sharing that. We were talking about my origin story in the earlier episode. I will leave it at that so people will check out the Selling Well Podcast in a little bit when our episode comes out. I remember being very excited and terrified and assuming that we were off. I'm coming up several years from when I headed out with a laptop and a bus pass. I can name countless reasons why it's 100% been worth it. At some point, we should do a session on just the entrepreneurial journey.

I know a lot of people that I think would be very successful doing it and it is a scary thing if you haven’t jumped off that cliff without a safety net and tried to do it but for those of us that have done it and have at least spoken for myself. I made a lot of mistakes a long way and can help others figure out what that path is with a little higher likelihood of launched velocity. That'd be great. I'm going to wrap up here on your LinkedIn profile underneath your name it says, “Learning never exhausts the mind.” We were talking about this in the past episode. What are some of the places you go to to continue to learn about sales and go-to-market?

Learning Never Exhausts The Mind

One of the places is running my podcast. The Selling Well, we have these smart great guests like you. When we do that, we do the research on the guest. We are trying to read their books and understand their blogs and some of their white papers. We are digesting content to stay current and that's not just for sales but for leadership, coaching, mindset, and all of those kinds of good things.

The second place frankly is we still have our subscription to Harvard Business Review. I still love getting the magazine in the mail and reading through it. It will trigger me to go online and look at other topics that they are speaking about. There's a handful of podcasts including yours Sales Pipeline Radio that we enjoy. We have got those built into our habits. I listen to podcasts while driving in and out of work and I love to do my reading first thing in the morning because I'm drinking coffee and I am so happy when I'm drinking coffee. I'm also pretty happy in the morning.

Same question, different topic. Learning never exhausts the mind. We talked about hockey beginning. I have watched a lot of Kraken hockey over the last couple of years and just continue to learn about this sport that on the surface looks like they are just pedaling around a piece of rubber trying to get into a net but is way more complicated than that and is way more interesting. The strategy and all the tactics and the approaches teams have. Where are some of the places for folks like me who are emerging hockey fans, maybe this is a question. Where are some of your favorite podcasts and other places to read about hockey?

To be honest with you, I don't listen to a lot of podcasts on hockey. I'm a fanatic. I watch a lot of hockey and I still play a lot of hockey. I'm a goalie, so I will still go to training to try and get better even though I think my chance of making the NHL came in when it's all over now. A great friend of mine loves a podcast called Spittin Chiclets. It's the most popular hockey podcast out there. The reason it's called Spittin Chiclets is because in the old days when there was no mask and cage. If you get a puck in the mouth you are spinning your teeth out because they are going to come out and they call them chiclets. “I lost the chiclet on that one.” That's why hockey players look like me.

It’s not the first time I have heard about that podcast. I'm going to have to check it out now, but before people check out Spittin Chiclets, I want them to buy a copy of Learn to love Selling where else can people learn more about you and continue to learn from you and read from you?

The easiest place is LinkedIn. Please check me out and connect with me. It's Mark Andrew Cox on LinkedIn and the company name is In The Funnel. You can go to InThefunnel.com and we love to hear from you on our show and everybody will know about our episode with Matt Heinz. That's The Selling Well podcast wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple or Spotify, that's where you can hear about us.

Check that out and find the book on Amazon. Check out InThefunnel.com for the Selling Well podcasts and more content from Mark Cox. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me, Matt. What a pleasure.

Thank you, everyone, for reading and for being part of this. We will see you in another episode. Until then. Take care. We will see you soon.

 

Important Links



Building Lasting Success Through Strategic Accounts With Lisa Magnuson

To achieve sustainable growth and customer loyalty, strategic account management is indispensable. In this episode, Mark Cox dives deep into the world of strategic account management with returning guest Lisa Magnuson, author of The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly. Lisa reflects on her LinkedIn Learning journey, where her courses on strategic sales have gained considerable popularity. Together, they explore the nuances of strategic account management, emphasizing the importance of trust and credibility, proper resource allocation, and the impact of well-defined account programs. Tune in to gain practical tips and actionable steps to elevate your sales game.

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Building Lasting Success Through Strategic Accounts With Lisa Magnuson



Introduction

Team, we've got a great show for you in this episode because we've got one of our favorites back for a second appearance while talking about one of our favorite topics. You'll recall Lisa Magnuson, she was on the show prior and we talked about The Top Sales Leader Playbook: How To Win 5x Deals Repeatedly. That's 1 of Lisa's 2 books, but it spoke of doing mega deals and some of you know, I have deep experience doing mega deals. I spent four years of my life focused only on mega deals and did a few hundred-million-dollar deals and then it did a billion-dollar deal.

I love this topic. It's interesting and Lisa's book is extremely well-written and very helpful in terms of strategies, processes and tools for doing large deals. Since the last time we chatted with her, Lisa has also been doing some amazing work with LinkedIn training. She's got five courses on LinkedIn right now. 

Now, she's had 55,000 people take the courses. We go through all of the courses she's gone on LinkedIn and we talked a little bit about one specifically avoiding prospects stalls and stops. That's an interesting topic for everybody. The other important topic is strategic account management. Many of us have a small number of clients who drive a huge portion of our revenue, whether they are a salesperson in a territory or an SVP of sales or CRO running the business.

Sometimes, that Pareto Principle is in existence. A topic we don't cover on the show is strategic account management and that's the focus of this conversation with Lisa. She's got great insights when we spend a little bit of time talking about the people, the process and the programs associated with strategic account management. I always enjoy my conversations with Lisa Magnuson. I'm sure you will, too. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. Thank you for doing that. It's how we get great guests like Lisa. Here's Lisa Magnuson.

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Lisa, welcome back to the show.

Thank you.

LinkedIn Learning

I always like asking, “What have you been up to?” Since I spend much time on LinkedIn, I know some of the things you've been up to. Fifty-five thousand people have been through some of your LinkedIn training. What a number. Tell us a little bit about that.

I started my LinkedIn Learning Instructor journey years ago and my consulting practice has always been very targeted and select clients only. My clients have stayed with me for a long time. I've got good loyalty and a good return client rate for those who take a break when they come back. The LinkedIn Learning thing was the go big. I have five courses on the platform. They're all in the strategic sales area. They've been popular, I’m pleased. I got the initial go ahead for my sixth course. I'm starting to work on that now. It takes about seven months to produce a course with LinkedIn Learning. 

In a nutshell, we're going to go over those courses in a second here because I think, team, these are things we should all be checking out, but why does it take so long to get a course up and running on LinkedIn? 

LinkedIn Learning is extraordinarily particular about its instructors. Every course has its own contract. Just because you have five courses on the platform doesn't mean you have six courses on the platform. You've met every topic with every instructor. You have to be a subject matter expert and a recognized leader not just in your field but also specific to the course. 

They have a huge library and they're constantly looking to make sure it's current and viable. As I said, I have initial approval on my sixth course, to getting final approval is going to take 30 days. I'll have to do an extensive table of contents and extensive learning objectives. When you hear a table of contents, this is not a whip-it-out-in-one-day version. It'll be back and forth and then go ahead. There's a whole scriptwriting process and many revision cycles for the scripts. 

You work with your production manager. You have a whole team. It goes from the business manager to the production manager. There are the mumble sessions, then the table read sessions, and then it goes on and on, just like a Hollywood movie. You get to their international production facility. I go to Carpinteria, California. They only have three in the world. Full production, “Lights, camera, action.” It's amazing. 

First of all, let's think of that for a second, team. Think of the work that goes into one of these courses and then, in a second, I'm going to run through the topics that we've got here. When there's that much work, expertise, and experience that goes into the process, this is where you're getting a high return for your time invested in going through the course. 

Team, check these courses out. The five are Winning Over Execs, Sales Presentations with an AI Boost, Winning Plays for Big Contracts. We're going to talk about in a second why Lisa is an expert in that space. It's also something close to my heart. The third one is How To Effectively Engage Executives. By the way, who among us doesn't need help in that area at some point in time? 

Everyone, including me. 

Yes, always. Pre-call Prep for Live and Virtual Deals. When preparation meets opportunity, great things happen. Very important. Here's one that I think everyone who is reading this, whenever you read it, has deals that have stalled, including me. Avoid Prospect Stalls and Stops. Those are the five courses that Lisa's got on LinkedIn. All 55,000 other people have already been through and checked out these courses.

Team, those of you who are regular readers, you'll remember that we had such a great conversation with Lisa the first time, probably a couple of years back, when we were talking about the Top Sales Leader Playbook because Lisa has a background in-depth in terms of big deal management and winning big deals. Many of you know that for 4 or 5 years of my career, I only did mega deals. 

The first time I heard that term was from you, “Mega deals.” I love that. You've got some great success stories. 

Strategic Account Management

I had some great success stories and then I had one non-success story. Frankly, losing that last mega deal completely changed the company I was in. We're all trying to learn and get better, but I picked up many great tips from your book, Lisa. This episode’s topic is interesting and close to my heart, somewhere where I want to continue to learn and develop because we're going to be talking about strategic account management as an area of focus. 

You were good enough to read my book, learned to love selling, and then you provided a wonderful testimonial. Thank you for that. One of the things I think is missing in that book is we did not touch on the topic of strategic account management. It is a super important and broad topic. There can be multiple books on strategic account management. Let's talk about that, Lisa, let's define it. How would you define typical account management versus strategic account management? 

That is such a good question. I'm interested in and how you would define it as well, but many companies have an account management program and it's a slightly different organization, maybe managed by somebody different than the sales organization. Once an account comes in and rises to the top as a top-tier account, the account management organization takes over and they take care of that customer. 

Strategic Account Management: The TOP Sales Leader Playbook: How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly.

They make sure that the customer is happy. They might have lots of resources like customer success and people who help them do that, but the difference is that companies fall short if they don't have that strategic account management. That looks a little different than an account management program. That difference is also between losing one of your top tier accounts, one of those mega accounts, which is heartbreaking for companies retaining and growing with them. 

In many of the organizations, particularly, I'd say mid-size organizations, the Pareto Principle is at play in some way, shape, or form, not quite the 80-20, but a small number of accounts make up a huge amount of revenue. When you start to think of that, Lisa, strategic account management, are we thinking that these are existing accounts that have the highest spending accounts, or are these existing accounts that have the most upside potential or perhaps a combination of both? 

When I engage with companies on key account programs or strategic account management, that kind of thing. We usually start with scoring; maybe they already have accounts, and they certainly know who their biggest accounts are. Those are the accounts that get talked about and have extra resources. I usually encourage them to re-score those accounts with a balanced scorecard to your point that includes existing revenue, potential growth opportunities, and other things like cultural alignment. 

There's a strategic element, like, “Is that account in a strategic geography or is it in a strategic industry for the company?” There are other factors. The team that sits on the key account side, “Is there depth to that team?” “Can your company match that depth? If there's not, is there the possibility to build that depth together?” I think there's much more to look at than existing revenue or even revenue potential.

I love that, and because we work with large enterprises and mid-tier organizations that see themselves as entrepreneurs, I find entrepreneurs in these mid-size organizations, 300 people or below, are much better at identifying a right fit customer. They don't waste their time on the wrong fit, even if it's got huge potential or it's a large spending client. 

They can't waste time and resources trying to manage a relationship with Walmart, the way Walmart would squeeze a vendor until there's nothing left. They get much more specific about where they spend their time and how they're productive. I find large enterprise has a little less flexibility that way, where they say, “We've got to live with it.” “We've got to deal with it.” I think it's a mistake because I think it chokes out those organizations too. 

Yes, “All businesses is a good business,” thought process. The thing with the smaller companies, the entrepreneurial companies, they are good about fit. I completely agree with you there and they can land some great accounts. I worked with a company last year and they fit that profile exactly and they had some huge accounts like aerospace-type industry accounts. 

Yet, with small companies, they don't have that many resources. The CEO is taxed, and the few resources that they have are taxed. What can happen is they don't align themselves properly and put the right priority on those accounts. They get them, and then they can't have that strategic account management that we're talking about, which is required to retain and grow them. They can end up losing those accounts if they don't step up and put at least a microprogram in place. 

Let's talk about that a little bit, Lisa. A macro program. Let's say we are one of those companies and our revenue came from a hundred different clients last year and we've identified 10 to 15 of them that are significant. They're the right fit, they've got a lot of upside potential, and they spend significantly with us we want to continue to build and enhance. What do we do? We probably don't have lots of people in it, and most organizations are not doing anything. How do we think about, A) The strategy for the account, and then B) Tactically, the team that might be assigned to supporting that account? 

There are three prongs to a good strategic account program. It's people, process, structure, and programs. For those 10 accounts in your example, it can't be 50 of the 100. I've worked with companies where we started with the top ten, which is a logical place, and we whittled that down to five. If you take the people part of the equation, every account has to have a focused executive.

Every account in that top, whatever that top tier is for the company, has to have a focused executive who is accountable for the account. The accountability doesn't 100% fall on the account manager and it doesn't also 100% fall on whatever the salesperson is called, the executive, the national account manager, or whatever the sales equivalent. 

Every account in that top tier must have a focused executive who is accountable for it.

It falls on the three of them, with 100% accountability from the focus executive, the account management person, and the salesperson. Then, there are more resources as well. Even in a smaller company, that level of accountability and ownership has to be established. You look at the process. What are the touchpoints? What are the tactical touchpoints? What are the strategic touch points?

Some of the strategic touch points are engaging that executive on the account side. Maybe it's not one person. Maybe it's a group of people. Those kinds of things need to be mapped out. Strategy needs to be mapped out, as you alluded to. There have to be programs like entertainment, social programs, or business programs.

An example of a business program would be like a multi-year strategy map that you collaborate with that account on. I was in a meeting with one of my clients yesterday doing that work map. What are their priorities? What makes sense for us to work on together, and how do we map that out over time? Not everything's now. 

That's an example of a program. Some of the other things that would fall in the program area, I worked with one of my small clients this year on this. There is a time when you're engaging around the impact that you're delivering. Easy to say that you see that all the time in articles or blogs. I say that in my LinkedIn learning training a lot, but what does that mean? 

It means making sure that the people you're working with, all of them, the executive, the resources, and the day-to-day people, understand not what you're doing but the impact of what you're doing. It's a program to get that done. It's not words. There has to be a vehicle. Anyway, even in a small situation, they're not going to be as extensive, but those elements have to be in place. Sorry, that was a lot.

Make sure everyone you work with understands not only what you're doing but also the impact of your work.

No, that's awesome. I think there are a couple of great things to unpack. I want to touch on the impact, and then I want to go to this idea of reciprocity. The impact. I came off an interview with Timothy Hughes, who wrote a great book called Social Selling. He's in the UK. He’s somebody who I'll introduce you to, by the way, you should know him and he should know you.

You talk about impact, and he talked about at some point when he was selling large enterprise software for Oracle. They worked with a company in the UK called Marks and Spencer. Marks and Spencer does, amongst other things, but the bread and butter used to be undergarments and underwear for men and women. 

They got to a point with one of the top retailers in the UK where any business case within Marks and Spencer's enterprise, software, or services got translated into, “How many more units of undergarments are we going to sell because of this initiative?” That's the only language they understood. 

If it didn't do that, because that was such their bread and butter, the project wouldn't make the priority list. This impact in terms of how we are helping that organization achieve their specific desired business outcome in KPIs that they understand. Not the ones we speak to that they don't care about, but the ones they understand. 

You make that point in your book, Learn to Love Selling. You weren't talking about necessarily strategic accounts, but that point is interwoven in many of your chapters. In my mind, you said, speak. You have to test that you can speak it. Can the executive speak it? This means the executive has a third of the responsibility or 100% of responsibility shared with two other people. Can the account manager speak it? Can the salesperson speak it? 

Where's it written down and how does it get delivered? That's where the rubber meets the road. It's harder than people think. That's why it's not written down very often, but it has to be because maybe it's an executive summary. Maybe it's a part of a high-level review. However, that gets delivered, and it has to be written down. It has to get delivered and then that tends to travel once it's written. 

One of my clients that I worked with on one of their key accounts, this exact thing, that’s an impact summary. They delivered that. They had never done it before that way. They delivered it, and their client said, “We can't even tell you how much you've helped us by doing this because we were going to have to do this internally. Going through all the recommendations and all the things that you do for us and have given us. Now, we don't have to. You gave it to us. They can't get better than that. 

They can't get better than that. I love the term much. I'm jotting this stuff down as we're going through the interview. If you're watching this on YouTube. You're going to see it. We're going to start using that for all of our sales training. When we do the training, oftentimes, it's our language. We're going to speak to KPI six months from now, nine months ago. It's going to be, “We're going to have a quarterly checkpoint on the impact summary of the investment you made in the training.” “Unless you get a 50X return, we're not hitting the mark.” Let's think about this impact summary and agree to the impact summary. 

Think too, Mark, how that will travel. You have a client, and you're doing this training, and you add that. Think about how that document travels with your client. That goes from the people in the training to those who pay for the training to those who care about the training and want it to happen but don't necessarily pay for it. On and on and on. That's why it has to go from the “Think” to the “Speak” to the “Documented.” Now, I started my career at Xerox, a document company. I love things that are documents. 

By the way, nobody provided better sales training than Xerox back in the day. You and I talked about this the last time. I listened to our last interview. Nobody provided back in the day. The issue is no one picked up on that. The largest technology companies now didn't keep investing in large-scale formal onboarding programs, or else you'd see the Salesforce University that's seen as a mark of credibility, but it doesn't exist, with all due respect to Salesforce.

Lisa, here's another thing. Some of my reference points a little while back. At one point in time, I was a large-scale account manager, not a big deal person. I'd managed the largest bank relationship a top ten bank in the world had with a vendor. They had it with my company. I was the point person on it. They spent a little more than $100 million a year with us. It was a business service.

One of the things that was important when we were working with their team in this strategic account management program was reciprocity. This idea of sitting down with them saying, “We've got a program to do all of these things with you, but we need reciprocity.” If we're going to be bringing a senior executive in once a quarter to sit down to review a meeting where we do an impact summary and talk about future projects, we need the commitment on your side that you've also got an executive committing to enhancing this relationship. When the teams work together once a quarter, those executives remove barriers in the meeting. 

If we've got 4 or 5 projects going on and some are hitting barriers, both sides commit to having people in a room where they can make decisions and remove barriers to keep everybody productive. What are your thoughts on that? Tell me a little bit about the strategy around trying to earn reciprocity from the client in terms of their commitment to the relationship. 

That's a genius point. I believe that the conversation happens when you're assessing your top-tier accounts. We talked about that culture. I think it starts then. That's internal. “Is this account going to be in our top tier or whatever strategic accounts, national accounts, global accounts, or named accounts?” I think it starts there internally. 

I think it quickly spreads externally to test the waters and to talk about the value because they do not need to commit to signing up. When you're talking about building a rolling collaborative roadmap together, they're all in on that. If you do it correctly, I've been part of organizations many times over the years that did such a great job of this. 

The effectiveness of a strategic account program starts internally and quickly spreads externally.

The customer, or the key account, has even more ownership of some of these deliverables. Even you have a roadmap, an impact summary, or some of these things. They're using that as part of how they're selling their programs internally. They're using those documents in front of their stakeholders and maybe the board. They are including those things in their performance reviews. 

Even an executive can tout the things that are occurring. There's not one simple answer. It starts at the beginning and is an ongoing conversation and reinforcement. When the team understands that the things that you're doing with your key account are valuable, they want to participate. “Can we add this person to this collaborative planning meeting?” “Yes.” 

First of all, I think it's a great point to think about. That's how somebody gets qualified. On the front end, saying, “We can't have a strategic account management pro program for 40 accounts, but we can do 5 to 7.” Maybe that's where the conversation starts to say, “We would like to put you into this program, but here are the parameters. We think there's a lot more opportunity where we can help you.” 

“We know any of our help has got to be predicated on achieving desired business outcomes that you care about in your terms, but to do this is the type of commitment we're looking for from you. Is this something you want to participate in?” or, “Do we still have other work to do where we're earning the right to work with you at this level?” I like the idea of having that conversation. I will call out a couple of times where I've set up some social events with a senior executive and sat down with them. 

We have some form of business relationship with the company and maybe we're doing sales training for their BDRs or SDRs, but they'll sit down and they'll say, “We heard you did this quarterly sales kickoff program for one of our competitors or other companies. Why aren't you doing it for us?” They are a little disappointed and angry. They're calling me out on it saying, “How did we not know about this? It's your responsibility to make sure that we do know.” 

That is it. You have touched on how a company knows when it needs to start thinking this way. Putting a key account program into place. A little more formal than just, “We have some big accounts.” If a customer says to you, “We didn't know you did that.” There's a red flag and a signal that you are not ingrained with them in the way that you need to be. Other signals are more severe. They go out to bid for your share or they constantly seem to be engaging in conversations with other people who do what you do. 

For example, in the roadmap conversation, part of it is they become aware of everything you could do for them. Not that you're going to do everything, but it's everything you could do over time. It stumps me when companies don't go down this path. Sure, it takes a little bit of work and it takes some. It takes a big commitment from the top of the company and sales organization if those are two different things, but the rewards are big. 

Maybe you're right. I remember a second one, the instances this has happened to me. By the way, they're not saying, “This is unfortunate, we didn't know.” They're saying, “Mark, it's your responsibility to get in front of me and make sure I do know.” In one instance, there was somebody. She'd seen something on LinkedIn where somebody else posted something about a training event we had with their organization on a certain topic. 

She was not happy and said, “My expectation is we get these first.” It was a little embarrassing for me at the time, but it was certainly a good wake-up call. I think where it gets to a little bit is what you're looking for at that strategic account level, which is earning the right to be this partner. If you have that trust and credibility, then when you're thinking of maybe bringing potential new offerings to the market.

You might sit down with the individuals or the team and say, “We have an idea. It's not fully baked yet. Our belief is we could be driving this outcome for you. Is this meaningful for you? If so, are you interested in doing a little due diligence with us so we can further define what the actual impact would be to your organization?” That's where it feels like it goes from even strategic account management to strategic partnership.

It does go there and it can go there very quickly. Even if, in your scenario, they said, “That's not something for us, but we would be happy to be a sounding board.” They're helping you and you're helping them by seeing what's possible. It's all good. It's good for the supplier of services or products and for their top customers. Both will be better having engaged in something like what we're talking about, a strategic accounts program or a key accounts program. 


Engaging in a strategic or key accounts program benefits both the supplier and their top customers.

Amazing and gang, I'm going to call it out again. If you haven't picked up and read The Top Sales Leader Playbook, How to Win 5X Deals Repeatedly, Lisa Magnuson, this was Best Seller, gang. I've read this once, if not twice. By the way, I'm flipping through a hard copy on YouTube. I can still see all my highlights because I was taking many notes and learning. 

Avoiding Prospect Stalls And Stops

There's one topic, Lisa, given the fact that this interview will last forever. The timing will be great. It's going to get released with about four months left in the calendar year. We're going to have a lot of people reading this where they're going to say, “I'm in the homestretch on my year. I've got to figure out how in the next 60 days I position myself so I can bring home the deals to hit quota or destroy quota.” 

I got it because it piqued my interest and I'm interested. Avoid Prospects Stalls and Stops. When we start to think about it, any quick tips or thoughts? I know we've got a full LinkedIn course, and everybody's going to participate in it. By the way, this is a good time of year, team, to go through that exact training course for sure. This one's relevant. What are a couple of thoughts or ideas to make sure our deals that were in play don't stall or stop? 

There are a couple of go-to things. One is a topic that you talk about a lot in your new book. That is, “Don't rush through the qualified process.” It's funny. I'm about ready to publish an article, “Should the qualifying stage go the way of Pluto.” Meaning the planet. It's going to be a funny little piece. My point there and in my online course is that qualifying is less of a distinct stage and more of a continuum. 

There are things you have to qualify for when you're talking about business development and the interest stage. Some things need to be solidified during development before you get to propose. All of those things that have to occur don't all occur at one time, or your prospect feels pummeled. It's not appropriate. That's why it's more of a continuum, but you can't skip any of those. 

If you want to avoid a stall or a stop, you cannot skip those things. They come back to haunt you later, period. The other thing is every meeting. This goes back to my other course on pre-call prep which has been my mantra for a lot of years. If you don't plan out your next steps and gain commitment during the meeting, do not wait until the end. 

In the middle, they have to be agreed to, and maybe at the end, you will work out the details. If you leave any call without that, stall and maybe stop, but stall for sure. Those are the two things. You can't skip those essential qualified elements and you have to get commitment for that next step. The next step has to be something they're doing, not something you're doing. Sending them information is fine, but it's not a meaningful next step to get the advancement that you need. Was that too long? 

No, it wasn't. I'm letting it soak in, but I don't think I've ever heard this idea of when you're trying to create your call planner for that next meeting with the client and you're talking about the structure of it, everybody's got the desired outcome of closing for next steps. I don't think I've ever heard the idea, which is so powerful, saying to structure the meeting so that the next steps come in 20 minutes or 30 minutes, not 45 minutes in which two of the three people in the meeting already got up and left because they have to travel to their next meeting or they need a coffee before their next meeting. 

You're always hustling and and trying to jam things in all send an email that no one's ever going to read out of their 250 emails every day. I love this idea of taking that pause in the middle saying, “We've got a few more things to cover.” It's fairly clear at this point that part of figuring out if there is value that we can add here. 

We're pretty clear, but why don't we determine how you make that decision, whether there's value we can add? To do that, we need discovery. Can we agree that we're going to get together again with a couple of people on your team to walk through a couple of things in more detail? I think in our next meeting after that, we need to be able to quantify the potential impact for you. Calm, doing no rush. 

Your explanation of summarizing and restating is impressive. 

Thank you. My wife doesn't feel that way, Lisa. 

Of course, she doesn't because she can't. The way you do it. 

We've seen rolling eyes at our house sometimes when I go on my soapbox and not everybody at our place feels that way, but I'm glad you do. 

You can't escape, that’s why. After you've restated and summarized it, it's like, “I got nothing.” 

No, but that's the key point, team. That's such a key thing. It is setting up that structure so that in the middle of the meeting, we agree and think about the next steps, or at least prime them for the next step so that we can ask in five or ten minutes before you're rushing, before you're jumping off a call, or before they cut it short. That's huge. 

Those are my Avoid Stalls and Stops. There's a lot more, but those are the two big ones. 

Team, do yourself a favor. LinkedIn is available to everybody. Get into these courses. By the time you read this, maybe the end of August 2023, we've got lots of time left to A) Make sure the deals were in play or have been installed. B) There may be deals you took a look at last year that stalled a bit or earlier in the year that seemed to be lagging. 

You're going to pull tips from Lisa's courses, where you could potentially go back to those triggers and then get a deal that you could close still this year. One of my favorite tactics is always sending a note to somebody on a Monday or Tuesday. It doesn't have to be a whole deep explanation. I'm going to write, “Lisa, I was thinking about you in the top line on the weekend. I'm wondering if I can get 20 minutes on your calendar this week.” All it is, surprisingly, a lot of people say, “Let's have a conversation. I wonder what you're up to.” 

Especially if you've already established value and they know it'll be a valuable conversation. One of the things that people think is valuable is conversations that have outcomes. The whole thing of driving the conversation so it has an outcome and it gets agreed too early. That's what prospects want too. Everybody needs to be as productive as possible in the space that they've allocated for whatever you're talking about. 

Final Thoughts

Lisa, we're going to talk again and we could talk for hours. First of all, I want to say thank you very much for the wonderful testimonial for our book, Learn to Love Selling. We're appreciative of getting that kind of testimonial from someone like you. Thank you for that. Thank you for joining on this episode. A lot of people are going to want to learn more about mega deals, and doing the 5X deals. They want to learn more about online courses through LinkedIn. Team, the links to those things are always going to be in the show notes. You can find the links to these things, but Lisa, how do people learn more about you and find their way to these resources? 

Everything is either on my LinkedIn profile or on my website, which is TopLineSales.com. I know the link will be there, but there are links to my courses there. There are links to my podcast, including our prior episode and other stuff. There are some free downloads. It's a good place to visit. I refreshed it. It's all current.

Team, I read lots of sales books, and the ones that I love end up being people who are on the show. That's how we choose the people for the show. I read the book, I love it and then I reach out to people and they're gracious enough to join. The Top Sales Leader Playbook: How To Win 5X Deals Repeatedly. I love this book. Pick up this book. There's no chance you're going to read this book and not be able to pick up some tips, strategies, and approaches that you can apply to your business and your territory. 

Whether you're a CEO, a CRO, or an SVP of sales, very relevant stuff that applies at the enterprise and mid-size company levels. Thank you again to Lisa Magnuson for joining us on this episode and to the team. Thank you for reading. As you know, we run this show because we want to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. 

We want to run a show where you can grab ideas, strategies, or tools that you can apply to your business and your industry. If you found this episode helpful, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast, and thank you for doing so. If you have ideas on how we can make this even more valuable to you, please let us know. 

We're growth-oriented. We love constructive criticism, and you can send your ideas to MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. We respond to every email we get. If anybody gives us an idea, we're going to give you a response. That is my personal email too. I'm the one responding. Thank you for your ideas. We'll see everybody next time and thank you very much for joining.





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