00:00 you

00:06 Okay, today guys, I have James Ski from Sales Confidence on. Myself and James have been doing a bit of chatting over the past couple of weeks. He was on one of our webinars there last week. Sales Confidence is an organization that I've come across over the past couple of years, really when I was working in a role, which looked after an SDR team. And I actually came across it from the SDR awards you were running there, I think it was last year. And one of the SDRs that was working for me at the time actually got nominated and won an award.

00:35 So it was interesting. It was the first time I came across it. It actually rang clear to me. It was a great thing to see that there was an organization out there that was joining up and basically a large sales network across the globe. We were mainly focused in the UK back then, but it was good to see from an SDR perspective that they were getting recognized, right? SDRs are, it's a tougher job as it comes, I think, with very little respect shown towards that particular team and a lot of juniors that are working very long hours and...

01:04 basically seeing their career really in the SDR world as a stepping stone towards sales. And it's very hard to gain a bit of guidance from others that have gone through it. So it was great to see sales confidence come into fruition from that. James, just could you give us a bit of the history behind sales confidence and why you set it open and where you guys are at today? Yeah, it's funny time actually. It's almost three years since the...

01:32 first sales confidence logo was created on 99 designs. So it's a bit of a memory. It's still the same logo, you know, three years on. So I'm pretty proud of the sales confidence logo. But back then, you know, my dream was I have always been an out and out sales professional. And I've always felt that I deserved more recognition, acknowledgement and respect for the profession.

02:01 that is being in sales. But I didn't feel it was getting the same recognition. And also I felt because of buyers being unimpressed or unhappy with the salesperson's approach, I felt we needed to do a better job to promote the professionalism. And not just at the IC level or the sales leader level, but right at the beginning of the career. Because if you can set the right habits,

02:29 behaviors and thoughts right at the beginning at the SDR stage, you're going to create a better buyer experience because you're going to have better sales professionals. So really I wanted to bring together sales people at each stage of their career from the SDR, IC right up to the sales leader and really help them with yes performance because you need to deliver against your number in sales but also take into consideration

02:59 what's going on in their mind and their overall wellbeing. I'm a big believer in sustainable performance. And you highlighted that the SDR role is right at the sharp edge in the trenches, getting rejected day in, day out, getting moaned at, getting complained at. It's a pretty horrible job, but you need to go through it to develop and go through your career, but you need assistance while you're there. So the motivation came from, I wanted...

03:27 something like this when I started in my career, it didn't exist. And then I realized to do something at scale, and we could replicate this and do events. And now we do it online. So like Leadfeeder, we can reach anyone around the world. Then with other young salespeople, listen to maybe even SDRs or people that have just come into AE roles, what would you recommend or is there any tips that you can give maybe three to five tips that you could give people right now that are looking to get past?

03:55 the current situation, but also just in sales and my SDR roles in general. Yeah. So there's a, you know, there's a couple of things that I'd summarize. Um, one is priorities. You need to, um, set your priority. And what I do, it's so simple, but I don't see it happen enough. And I've worked with hundreds of salespeople and naturally we have thousands of our network is it's a simple ABC, you know,

04:21 You need to focus on the top 20% of your A accounts in your target territory that you're going to go the extra mile, they're going to get the extra email, they're going to get more cadences, more calls, more voicemails. And you need to start every day on what I call your A game. So, you know, I don't go through my emails systematically. I look at my top 20 accounts or my A list, and then I do a search by them and I take...

04:49 advantage of calling them first or responding to their emails first. So you have to prioritize and do your primary activity, your A activities first. In the beginning, you use your gut. Often you're like, well, if I get this right, this is the right size of company and the right industry that's going to lead to the biggest upside. But over time, you start to apply a bit of a science and you understand what type of target accounts are A's and that's really important. So focus on your A game. Understanding.

05:18 when to qualify out for me is the most underrated skill. Everybody in their frameworks, methodologies, coaching, training, teaches you to qualify in with this criteria, whatever it is, and as many that we all use. The key for me is to qualify out. I like to assist the prospect. I like them to tell me or me tell them that we're not a right solution for them. I don't want to waste their time.

05:48 I don't want to waste my time. And there are statistically, statistically, most of our pipelines, we only close 30, at best 40% of our pipeline. So therefore, statistically, 60 to 70% of your pipelines, statistically will never close. It doesn't matter if it's qualified, it doesn't matter if it's in the pipeline at 50%, it will never close. So...

06:15 As sales professionals, we're spending too much time with opportunities that are never going to close. So qualify out and find a reason for them to say no sooner because then you can focus on more pipeline that you bring into the pipeline. So that would be my second. So the first one was just on that. I'm sorry to interrupt you there. Do you have any process that you go through for qualifying things out or is it a good or

06:41 Or how would you go about doing it? We know, as you mentioned, there's a number of tools out there, like stamp or band or whatever, you know, to qualify in. But are you using it? Are you using something to help qualify out or is it just questioning? Honestly, often it's an honest question. So you, you know, you would have gone through bands or whatever it is, and you would have ticked loads of boxes that basically says, you are a qualified opportunity, you are qualified.

07:08 to buy from our organization at some point on this timeline. Sometimes you just need to make the call, and this should happen once a week, actually. You should go through your pipeline once a week, call through and just say it. Just pick up the phone and say, listen, I've been thinking about it this week. There's a couple of things I've got question marks. You know, you've never got all the information and just dig out the things you're still missing and just say, look, I've, realistically, John or Sarah or whoever,

07:37 I've been thinking about this. Is it fair to say that maybe this is too soon and then pause and then let them see how they respond and if they respond and agree with you, well, there you go. You've saved yourself some time, but often they're telling us they hold on a minute. No, no, no, listen, James. Um, no, we are serious. It's just, you know, we're still expecting that proposal from you. We still need that. Basically it's a test of commitment.

08:06 And you just do that by questioning and picking up the phone and having that conversation. That's a really great tip, James. Thanks for that, mate. Sorry, I interrupted you. You were on a roll. You were going on to point three. No, that's fine. It's a valid point. Sometimes I forget I hadn't been so close to the cold face. I actually have been getting back on the cold face recently, setting up my own meetings, which is fun. And one thing I've taken away from that is sense of urgency.

08:34 In SAS, because of inbound leads, I think people are very lazy about how they book their next call, their second call, their third call, or even their first call. You know, they wait till tomorrow, Friday, next week, next Tuesday. I don't mess around. If I get a sniff that you're interested, I'll speak to you today. In fact, I will speak to you now. You know, I get off a message and someone responds and says, yeah, I'm happy to speak to you.

09:00 I will respond in real time and say, well, as you're happy, I'm just at my desk. Why didn't I give you a call right away? Nine times, nine times out of 10, they go, yeah, okay. Because they want to get it out of the way. And then you've got them at peak attention. And then, you know, I still like the, the kind of Ada framework, you know, attention, interest, desire, action, or I've seen it also as attention and interest, desire, and relationship action, you know, so you've got to develop the desire and the relationship with rapport.

09:30 But the quicker you respond, the buyer loves that. The prospect loves that. So sense of urgency in taking action is a major differentiator for driving pipeline. 100%. I think even my experience with running SDR teams before was always trying to work on conversion rates. And conversion rates started all the way from the top from inbound leads. But then if we take it one further step down the phone after a meeting's booked, how do you get that completed?

09:58 How do you actually make sure that the meeting is getting completed? And that urgency factor was something you need to really need to beat into people. Like if people are reaching out and you manage to book a meeting or you manage to get them on the phone, you manage to get that connect and get them somewhat like committed to a meeting, don't be putting that meeting off till next month. You know, and so many people do it. I do it all the time. I cancel it. Like if, if an SDR puts a meeting in my calendar, I'm on doubt I'm canceling. Like I won't even remember what that meeting was about. Yeah. That's a super valid point.

10:29 So I guess you want number four. So this would be advice for anyone in any position in sales, and especially right now, is learn to manage up in your organization. So right now, targets, in some cases, have been dropped. Your ability to hit your targets has been reduced. You need to be able to manage up and communicate to your manager.

10:57 or the sales VP or the executives or even the board, if you're a CRO and be very transparent with managing expectations. No one, especially in sales, like surprises. No one wants to hear at the end of the quarter, the end of the month, that something's not going to happen because you thought it might. So that's really important. It's also important to give your senior, whoever that is, a heads up when you

11:26 You've had to go back to the beginning. So like a simple thing, like, look, I've had to clean out 50% of my pipeline this week. We'll just tell them, don't let them figure it out in a forecast meeting. Like, hold on, why are you not forecasting? Always, always be forthcoming. Your leaders and the people above you will really appreciate it. I don't see the point of salespeople hiding, and then BSing their way through meetings and review meetings and pipeline meetings.

11:55 You basically end up looking like a mug and it's so unhelpful. And if you begin, if you create a reputation of that, it weakens any of your promotional opportunity internally. Absolutely, is that the boy who cried wolf? You want nobody, nobody would believe any of your pipeline in the future, for sure. Absolutely. And actually, that would lead on to, I guess one of my last points is around forecasting. Now,

12:23 I came from a world actually originally in recruitment where, you know, if I promised a consultant a placement, so you know, a candidate found a job, and therefore we were getting paid that that was happening. You know, I did not mess around. It was boiler room attitude that you would get your wrists severely slapped if you made a mistake in your forecast. And I've seen a lot.

12:51 a lot in SaaS over the last 10 years of really poor forecasting. You know, week after week, something keeps dropping into the next week, keeps dropping into the next week. And as sales managers, you kind you kind of accept it. You know, the forecast, you know, often it's graded based on expectations. If it's a stretch, if it's a commit. But believe me, make sure your forecast is accurate.

13:21 and that you have a reputation of forecasting accurately. Because again, managing up, but it's embarrassing. I used to laugh, so in my early career, when I was an IC, I used to find it amusing, because I could just point out the people that forecast yet again was flimsical, and it's not helpful for you, it's not helpful for them. You commit something in your forecast, make God damn well sure you're gonna close it.

13:51 That's great advice, mate. That was really great advice. Thank you so much for that, James. It's been really interesting. And there's plenty of really good tips there for people to take away. Before we finish up, I've been looking on LinkedIn. I've seen you're fairly active. You're promoting a new book that you're going to be releasing soon. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Oh, well, yeah, sure. That's quite a personal one. But I guess, while I've been able to have a reasonably successful career in the software industry,

14:20 You know, have now the good fortune of building this business in difficult times, making difficult decisions. I'm also diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So that's a mood disorder, which means you have kind of high highs and low lows. And the book that should be ready, I think we're going to be releasing it with the publishers in September, is called Winning with Bipolar, which is kind of a juxtaposition because you don't always win, particularly with a mental illness diagnosis.

14:49 I've won at times because of what it's taught me having this diagnosis, but I've also lost. And I think right now there's an increase in anxiety, depression, a sense of loss with people, and especially in the software industry and especially in sales, because, you know, our worlds have been turned upside down. So I hope that the book will tell a story about someone that's been over to overcome those challenges of having a mental health diagnosis, but also give people

15:19 and some belief and confidence that actually there's always a way out, however bad it is. And however you feel like it's dark, there's always a way out. And, you know, that's what I hope to, I guess, share in the book later in the year. That's a great story. And it's also a great, you know, piece of experience from your side to bring into what you're running there at Sales Confidence and, you know, keeping an eye on people's mental health, especially in that role, as you mentioned, which

15:45 for younger guys as well, the industry or being in SaaS sales or tech sales can be really overwhelming at an early age. And I think your experience there will be massively helpful to those guys. So it's really great to see and congratulations on the book as well, mate. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for bringing it up. I appreciate that. Thanks. Okay. Well, look, James, thank you so much for this. It's been super interesting and some great takeaways and I look forward to speaking to you again soon, mate. Good man. Thanks very much.