The Hidden Advantage of Tactfully Handling Difficult People with Alex Sobol, Part 2

[00:00:00] Alex: And I always say, I don't wanna tell you how to do your job. I said, just with me. You're not gonna get very far. If you think asking me questions about what are the things that keep me up at night? What are the big objectives I'm trying to hit financially? Like all these stupid p and l questions that an entry level tech salesperson doesn't even know what they're talking about.
I think it's people are doing this dance and like a lot of them are doing it right. A lot of them are doing it.
[00:00:22] Mike: My name's Mike Lander and you are listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast, where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations, and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders.
Ground leaders and procurement leaders, please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released.
Alex, welcome back to part two of Higgle, the B2B Sales Good podcast with Alex Sobel. Alex, great to see you again.
[00:00:51] Alex: What's going on, Mike? Nice to see you again.
[00:00:53] Mike: Uh, really good. So. For people listening, obviously I'll ask Alex to introduce himself, but if you wanna know what his favorite song is and why you better listen to part one because he's not repeating it in part two.
So, Alex, for the new listeners, who are you? What do you do?
[00:01:08] Alex: So yeah, and thanks for having me again, Mike. My name is Alex Sobel. I'm one of the two co-founders of a organization called the Millennium Alliance. Global headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, uh, European operation based outta London.
Essentially, we're a premier invitation only community for North America and Europe's leading C-suite executives. Essentially, we've become one of the more faster growing platforms for C-Suite engagement globally. Now, 12 and a half years later, we're evolved into an international multimedia company that provides access to the enterprise technology community through a combination of digital properties and high impact in-person events for businesses of all sizes.
Looking to reach that audience in a nutshell, that's pretty much who we are.
[00:01:50] Mike: Brilliant. And again, this bit wasn't definitely rehearsed, Alex, but I have to say you are a really, really just. Decent. Interesting. Nice person to talk to.
[00:01:58] Alex: Oh, thank you.
[00:01:59] Mike: That makes it just so much easier.
[00:02:00] Alex: I appreciate that. I think I think the same of you, Mike.
That's why we seem to have a good flow.
[00:02:04] Mike: Yeah, exactly. 'cause the questions and the canal responses seem to just flow and we jumped down some rabbit holes. So for the listeners, part one, Alex kindly talked about. Kind of the millennium origin story, where they came from, what they learned, what were some of the success factors?
One thing we touched on in part one, and definitely go back and listen if you have missed, it was about actually how do you recruit people, particularly salespeople and about how do you spot the right kind of people. And in part two we're gonna talk about the kind of the approach, the secret sauce a bit more, biggest things that people need to understand about selling.
So part two, Alex is about B2B, C-suite sales. What's working and why? Just give us some context. What's happened to B2B selling in the last five years and is the old model dead? And by the old model, I mean, kind of like there was this big thing about cold outreach at scale. It wasn't personalized. AI came along.
Now it's mass personalization at scale, mass outbound, uh, automation. Has that world changed? Is it dead? What's changed in B2B selling?
[00:03:07] Alex: I think the main thing comes down. 'cause you know, I think about this a lot. I think. Companies are just hiring the wrong people. A lot of organizations, I'll give you an example, right?
My wife worked at LinkedIn for a decade, right? And phenomenal culture, phenomenal people, and obviously phenomenal products. There's not a B2B organization in the world that can operate effectively without LinkedIn, in my opinion. I think that's pretty much a fact, and at least when she was applying to work there, they very much were very focused on how good the resume looked, how good the university was ranked.
A lot of kids from Ivy League colleges in the States, duke University Chicago type people. And my wife went to a decent school. She went to a good school, she went to Indiana University and she had a tough time getting a job there and fast forward her getting the job there from her persistence. And she was the top seller every single year in her department for 10 years straight.
Wow. I noticed that a lot of the people that they hired, they just weren't the right type of people to be selling a technology platform. I think I use that as an example because I think a lot of these companies, they're just hiring. They're falling into this trap of hiring the wrong types of people. Not that there's anything wrong with those people, they're just wrong for those type of roles.
You need in today's age different than it was 15 or so years ago. In selling in general, you got, I think the baseline is two things. You have to have a good work ethic. You have to be someone intelligent. So I understand the desire to want to hire from prestigious schools because you will get someone who's intelligent.
What I think they're missing is they might get the work ethic right piece, they might get the intelligent piece right, but they're missing the piece that separates mediocre or sub average salespeople from the great salespeople, which are all the things that we talked about in episode one, that makes salespeople, certain salespeople special, which is tenacity, being able to handle rejection, never taking anything personal, being able to deal with difficult people, not approaching things in a way because you're, you know, someone that you're talking to has a certain type of title.
Not getting concerned because someone's getting annoyed with you a little bit. I think in the technology selling world especially, and again, we don't, we're starting to sell technology, but it's not core to who we are Historically. The technology salespeople I see, and I've seen thousands of them, they look the part, they dress the part, they present really well, but they're missing things that are causing for them not to be as successful at their companies as they can be, which is why.
You see a lot of them move around from time to time
[00:05:25] Mike: now. Then let's dig into Alex again, completely unprepared. It's always the best. It's really hard and none of this for the listeners makes these kinds of salespeople bad. So don't think this is a judgment thing, it's a fit thing. The problem with interviewing salespeople is, well, if they didn't present well then they on the whole will be bad salespeople in the first place.
So you've got a problem, which is most salespeople will show up well and interview well and that I've done their research. 'cause it's kind of part of selling. So the problem now is like, well, how do you distinguish, how do you find the people that will be a great fit for your company? A great fit with your clients and prospects.
What is it that you do beyond the, yes, they've hit target or they've exceeded quota and they understand the broad ICP that you're targeting? And by all means, repeat what was in part one. Say something different. How do you, how does anyone go? Yeah, that's all kind of table stakes. I expect that. Now, let's find out if you really are right for us.
In your experience, what is that thing that for Millennium makes it the right fit?
[00:06:30] Alex: Well, I think baseline, putting someone through a rigorous interview process is a good thing because at the foundational level, it will test their endurance and it will test to see how many people liked them. Part of anything in life is, in my opinion, but especially in selling, people buy from people they like.
Right? They may not like you initially because you're very persistent and you're annoying, but they grow to like and respect you. So in regards to the interview process, if you get to me, which is usually round four or sometimes round three, even if it's for 15 or 20 minutes, the two or three people that you spoke to previously liked you enough that they thought it was worthy for the founder of the company to have a talk with you.
Every now and then I'll send someone a message. Surprise, that person got to me. Because the type, the types of people that we have at Millennium now understand as they spent more time with us over the years, what we're looking for. And they're that type of person. They're kind of looking for people that have similar traits to themselves.
So I think just going through a rigorous interview process by itself is a good stress test. And then, you know, when I talk to them, I'm curious to know why they made the decisions that they did. I'm curious if they say anything that is sort of unorthodox to say on an interview. I'll give you an example.
You may think differently in this. I'm actually curious what you think. I interviewed someone. This happened a few times over the last couple years. And I like to talk to people about their families and see what they say. One of the reasons I do the interviews is not just because I think it's good for the business.
I actually genuinely, and everybody knows this about me inside Millennium and friends of mine, I like to talk to people I've never met. I actually thoroughly enjoy it. My wife gets annoyed when we go on vacation because I like to talk to, I like to know where everyone's from and I like to talk to them.
And person said to me, it was a young guy. And he made it to point where I talked to him on the interview when I was talking to him about his family. He, he made a point to tell me how much his mother was his best friend.
[00:08:08] Mike: Okay.
[00:08:09] Alex: And I think that's great that his mother's his best friend. But it was a big piece of the interview for him that he wakes up every morning and all he thinks about is his mother and he wants to give back to her.
And they have such a unique bond. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm not judging that, but I thought that was a weird thing to go very heavy into in an interview press. That just like hit me in the gut that there's something odd about that. Not odd that it was mentioned somewhat, but the depth that someone went into.
So, you know, I'm going down a rabbit hole here, but it's just, I guess I'm getting a feel for a couple of things. I'm trying to get a feel. One, is the person likable? Does the person have a good work ethic? What other people thought of them do? I think they're the type of people that someone would want to get a beer.
And how they kind of check the boxes of, do you think they'll be good in difficult situations? Do you think they'll be able to handle rejection? Do you think they'll go back to a prospect multiple times that's rejected them? Do you think they have any ego? Do you think they care what necessarily people think about them in the setting that we have?
But I also am trying to assess that they've got a lot of baggage. There's no easy way to write the formula, but by the time you get to me and then we converse on someone, we're all kind of looking for the same things. And if we're all in agreement that we think they're a good fit, they usually work out.
And if any of us are on the fence, we usually pass because we wanna feel really good about who we bring on.
[00:09:21] Mike: Exactly. That's not me and Alex judging anyone. That's just about making sure that they're the right fit. And that's, I think that's good for the candidate and good for the company because bluntly, joining a company and then finding out within three months that actually you're a bad fit.
That's bad for everyone. No one wins in that situation at all. It's
[00:09:39] Alex: draining, it's rain.
[00:09:40] Mike: It's really draining, and I think that's one of the reasons that you have a four or five or six part process. Some candidates complain. It's too long-winded, but it's done for a reason. And actually if it's a five part process on one person out, the five says no.
Well, you have to take that really seriously. 'cause that person just may not be right for this business.
[00:09:59] Alex: You know what I think about it also, it's not just right for them, but it's not right for the people at the company.
[00:10:03] Mike: Exactly.
[00:10:03] Alex: You bring in someone who's not a good fit and they're a tough personality, for example.
It's got a knock on effect for everybody else. And the truth is, I'm not just saying this to say it's really not fair.
[00:10:11] Mike: Yeah.
[00:10:11] Alex: When you put someone in a department or on a pod with someone and they're not easy to work with, they're difficult or they're not getting it and they're draining resources, it's a negative effect for everybody.
It has nothing to do with money and paying someone that's not gonna work out. It really is the time, the energy, and the knock on effect it has for the people around them.
[00:10:28] Mike: Definitely. So in terms of what works in B2B these days, just go back and kinda like just headline. What do you think works? You talk to C-Suite executives all the time from, you know, large, medium sized companies all the time.
What do you think has changed in the way that they want to buy and be sold to as customers?
[00:10:47] Alex: Well, I'll talk about things I see from salespeople, from technology companies that I find interesting. I think they all think they're playing a different game than each other. Right. When I go to events of ours, I don't get to go to too many of them anymore, but when I go to events of ours and I talk to companies, they all make it a point, the sales team, not all, but majority of to say, yeah, we take a different approach than everybody here.
We're not really selling to these people, we're just getting to know them, educating them on the market, and they think there's some unicorn, but they're mostly all taking that approach.
[00:11:17] Mike: Yeah,
[00:11:18] Alex: and I think what people in the selling world, I guess in the technology space, which is. You know, an exciting space, and there's so many companies and there's so many people trying to get into it, and I'm speaking as an observer of it, like a front row seat to it.
I think they just gotta be more cognizant of what's working against them, right? There are things they cannot control that are already putting them in a tough position, right?
[00:11:38] Mike: Like for example, what they be.
[00:11:40] Alex: So, the ebbs and flows of the economy, right? The fact that the people that are trying to target.
Don't stay in their roles for that long of periods of time. You know, the C-Suite community, it's rare that you see a CIO that's been there for five years. It's almost rare to see it's not that common to see people there for three years. So this dance that people play about being very delicate with their approach, especially after someone has shown some interest, you've gotta capitalize on that and.
On the surface, a lot of people products look the same. And the time that you get with people, you gotta spend explaining why you wholeheartedly think it will benefit them. I think two mistakes people make, Mike, the first one is, again, not realizing what's working against you. That's out of your control.
And one big thing is that people move around a lot and by the time you get somewhere very far, we get in a far stage with someone, they could be gone. And you're kind of in a very tough position. So taking your time or taking your time egregiously is not a good thing to do. And the other thing is, is that I think what a lot of people get in these type of conversations with the C-suite or with anybody, they're asking them like an abundance of unnecessary questions.
Right?
[00:12:46] Mike: Exactly.
[00:12:47] Alex: And that feels a lot of the time, like maybe I'm very fortunate because what we do I know is beneficial for the masses. If you are selling a technology product and it's an IT security product, and you think it's beneficial for most companies in every industry, you should go in not avoiding questions, but spending more time than you are explaining why and using certain selling skills for people to understand why they should be really considering you.
When I get on a call with a, you know, we have a really cool sales tech stack inside Millennium, I'll take a demo. I like to take them and the sales person gets on the call and they wanna spend the first 30 minutes with me. I only have 30 minutes and they wanna spend 30 minutes with me asking me questions because that's how they were trained.
[00:13:27] Mike: 'cause they were trained that you have to do discovery. They're right. You have to do discovery, but they're following a script. Yeah. They've kind of missed the point. Really.
[00:13:35] Alex: I don't care about the script so much, but I say to people sometimes, guys, listen, you're not gonna get me for another 30 minute call.
[00:13:40] Mike: Right? Correct. You have one shot. The fact that you took the call, Alex, that surely most salespeople would go. The fact that the founder took a call for 30 minutes means we're way past. Hi, who are you? Let me explain where I'm from. You know Alex, you look like a nice guy, blah. I'm an ex procurement director, I can kind of tune into this.
I'm like, the fact you've got my time means I've already done my homework. So let's get to the chase really quickly to see if there's anything here or not.
[00:14:09] Alex: Yeah. I always tell people respectfully like, I'm interested in what you guys have to say,
[00:14:12] Mike: or else I wouldn't be here
[00:14:13] Alex: a hundred percent. And I always say, I don't wanna tell you how to do your job.
I said, just with me, you're not gonna get very far. If you think asking me questions about what are the things that keep me up at night? What are the big objectives I'm trying to hit? Financially, like all these stupid p and l questions that an entry-level tech salesperson doesn't even know what they're talking about.
I think it's people are doing this dance and like a lot of them are doing it right. A lot of them are doing it
[00:14:35] Mike: because they lack experience and they lack emotional intelligence.
[00:14:38] Alex: Yeah. It's just like, you know what? I also think it is Mike different than the uk. I'll give you guys credit, right? I think you guys care less about what people think than they do in the states.
I grew up in an environment, I'll give you an example. When I was graduating college all in 2007, so a year before the big global financial crisis, this sums it up really well. I remember two outta the eight of us got jobs in sales and the other six predominantly got jobs in like big banks, you know, 'cause that looked good.
That felt good. And I remember just people in America, I don't know if it's like this as much now because technology sales is kind of elevated selling in terms of prestige. But just like this notion that you're gonna have to ring people up and cold call and prospect, there's like a, a lot of people think that's beneath them type feeling.
And I think what happens is that when people get into a sales role, because they essentially didn't necessarily want to do it, but they didn't have any other options and they got a shot to be a seller, when they get to the job and they get any type of friction from a prospect or they get told that, yo, like, you know, leave me alone or.
They're getting made to feel uncomfortable. They let the uncomfortableness dictate how they continue to do their job. So I think it's a combination of a lot of things, but I think that people are afraid to like be the type of forcefulness they need to be to get to where they need to go. And you know what's interesting is that a lot of these people, they're doing the same things over and over again.
They're getting the same results and they're not changing their behavior. How I learned this was on the job training. I saw that the approach that I was taking initially, because it made me feel better as a person, not as salesy. It wasn't working.
[00:16:08] Mike: Yeah. But you kept repeating it and you're like, uh, hang on a minute.
[00:16:13] Alex: I don't live in that world. I live in the world that I don't care how it makes me feel. If I'm trying to hit an objective, I'm gonna hit it. Yeah. And I think there just needs to be more of that kind of thinking.
[00:16:20] Mike: Exactly. And again, take that real example. They get you on a call for half an hour. There's been some kind of precursor, either you, one of your teams, someone has had an email exchange somewhere with the vendor, and you've gone through some basic stuff in order to say, yes, this is worth a call.
And so again, just interested in your view. I was taught discovery. I've done lots of discovery calls, I've helped people with discovery, blah blah. But the key thing I'll be going is like, Alex, what's on your mind? We've got half an hour. What's the key thing that we need to talk about on this call for the next kind of 30 minutes that's gonna make you want to go?
Yep. Let's do something. Next steps or no, let's kinda like it's not gonna work for us. I'd speak into the moment. There's something on your mind, but I'm not a mind reader. Well, I'd ask you a
[00:17:00] Alex: hundred percent. A hundred percent. And the thing I wanna be clear about for your audience is. Definitely ask questions.
[00:17:05] Mike: Yeah.
[00:17:05] Alex: But don't ask questions where the answers irrelevant to what we're talking about. Correct. Pointless. Yeah. Like ask me questions, like I'll be on a demo with someone and, and they'll be like, they'll say, Hey, I'm just curious, like, what did you see that you liked about this that you thought was good?
And that's a great question to me because I'm like, well, listen, like I'm not really tech savvy. And this is what, how I thought initially it could be good. Like can you show me like am I on the right track or what
[00:17:26] Mike: does it do that, am I right? Am I wrong? Does it do that thing that I think, yeah, exactly.
[00:17:30] Alex: When someone starts asking me questions that they got from chat GBT, I'm just like, this is such a waste of time.
[00:17:36] Mike: So let's follow that thread. Yo, blah, blah, blah. It's because, so I said to you, well, what's of major interest? And you go, well, that thing that I think your platform does, that's kind of interesting to us.
'cause it kind of solves this problem. And I'd go, fine. Okay, let me, let me show you that for me, a natural follow up question would be, well, what's the value of that? So I've proven that we can do that. How valuable is that? I don't mean give me a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. Whatever it is. But how valuable is it?
And why haven't you managed to solve that problem before? They're reasonable questions, aren't they? As a follow on?
[00:18:05] Alex: Yeah. I guess it's the way that you phrase it, right? Like there are questions that people will ask, like our guys, I mean, we have a huge sales team in the US and Europe. I mean, it's, it's gotta be over, it's gotta be 75 to a hundred people now.
And the one thing that we always talk about is that, what are they called? They're called, um, the type of questions where like the answer's obvious,
[00:18:25] Mike: right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:26] Alex: So we try not to, like in a situation like this with a product demo, like, Hey, this is actually what it does. Would that be valuable to you?
Makes sense In my business. Right. If I know the company's trying to sell to the enterprise, asking them how valuable would it be to be able to access these people, like there's a way to frame it where the person doesn't think you're just trying to fill time and be and be corny. It depends on the sale.
The value question is, is the sale. In the situation I'm giving you with the demo, like yeah, like he doesn't, the person doesn't know a lot about me. I said what I was interested about the product he's showing me or she's showing me other pieces about the product. Understanding if I think those pieces are valuable, that's an appropriate question.
So sometimes questions are appropriate or not appropriate depending on the situation.
[00:19:06] Mike: And this is because a lot of people would've been taught, for example, spin selling.
[00:19:10] Alex: Oh, oh,
[00:19:12] Mike: I thought you might say that. So why don't you like spin as a methodology?
[00:19:17] Alex: It's. Even though a lot of situations feel the same, they're usually not.
[00:19:21] Mike: Right.
[00:19:21] Alex: I have sound like if people think that you are trying to use a sales tactic on them
[00:19:27] Mike: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Alex: You're doomed.
[00:19:27] Mike: Yeah. You'll,
[00:19:28] Alex: they'll run a mile. Even if you're, even if like, I'll give you an example. Even if you're reading a script. Yeah. Which I have no problem with scripts or outlines. The goal is to not have people not think you're reading a script.
[00:19:37] Mike: Exactly.
[00:19:38] Alex: Even if you are trying to spin sell, the objective is. For them not to think that you're spin selling. Yeah. Like the cat's out of the bag on spin selling. So if you think spin selling is what's gonna get people to work with you, like people have been through this. If spin selling had just cut, it was a new idea a month ago and not a lot of people have been exposed to it, then yeah, you can try something that a lot of people haven't experienced with us when we talk to people, they're experiencing something they're not experiencing from any other type of conversation with someone that eventually is trying to sell them something.
So I think the experience. Of being different. We stay away from doing things that are what most traditional organizations do, spend selling, being right at the top of that list.
[00:20:15] Mike: Interesting. Very interesting. So what's the three biggest things any kind of enterprise CRO sales director should focus on to drive sales growth in this market?
So on the supply side, they've got big targets, big challenges. Big numbers to hit, especially if you're in the SaaS market, which is really challenging right now with kinda SAS apocalypse as they called it, and valuations. What are the three big things you think enterprise CROs from maybe tech and other companies should focus on?
[00:20:42] Alex: Well, don't spend enormous amount of time with your marketing department trying to get old school lead sourcing tr tactics. Like getting bogged down in the details of how are my email campaigns, how are my Salesforce cadences, how are my webinar strategy? How many trade shows are we going to? You gotta meet people where they are, right?
So if you're able to define the, the people you need to meet to get things in motion, right? You can do all of that. And I'm not saying not to do that, but one, don't expect a lot from it because the stats prove out from very prominent businesses that track this type of stuff and, and explore this type of stuff.
Investigate these things that less and less are. Legacy lead generation tactics, like you know, all the traditional digital things people do to try to get access, even the trade show stuff. I just think that you gotta try to meet people where you are, regardless of who your audience is.
[00:21:28] Mike: And by meet them as in in person, have a face-to-face.
The quicker you can get to a face-to-face, the better.
[00:21:34] Alex: You gotta get access to them as best as you possibly can. Now, most of the enterprise. Community is trying to get to the C level or like C level minus one persona. So again, like I said to you previously, right, you gotta deal with things that are outta your control.
One being that these people move around a lot. So when you get in with someone, you gotta stay with them because if you give it enough time, you're gonna end up probably losing out that they're gonna go somewhere else and they're gonna get promoted or go to a different role. The second thing that you gotta realize is that a lot of these tactics that you use, the email cadences.
The lead generation stuff,
[00:22:05] Mike: the sequencing,
[00:22:06] Alex: right?
[00:22:06] Mike: Nurturing, all that kind of stuff.
[00:22:08] Alex: I mean, you should do it because you may get some benefit from it at some point, but you can't just rely on that being the main thing that you do because most of these people at the levels that the enterprise are trying to sell to, they don't even look at their own inboxes.
Exactly. Right. Their assistance, their assistants are weeding through their emails and looking to delete people like you. That's why if you're gonna do that stuff, you gotta figure out ways to try to catch your attention. So I would say the first thing CROs should not do. Is not get so bogged down in the things that they can't control, like how much output they're getting from their marketing stack.
Right. I think also the next thing they have to do is they gotta make sure that they're looking for the right people throughout the interview process. I wouldn't just every book by its cover. Right. I know it's easy. 'cause even when people come across my desk and they went to University of Pennsylvania, which is one of probably the top 10 schools in the world.
You know, it's, it's easy to get excited to talk to someone because you know, to have done well at a school like that, you had to have worked hard. You have to be intelligent and there's a lot of good attributes, but you gotta be really careful about who you bring on board. And third, I would say, especially in an earlier to mid-stage company.
As a CRO, you gotta be in the trenches with your guys. If you're just spreadsheet focused, accountability focused in terms of data, and you're not getting into conversations, giving advice, getting on calls with people, meeting people in face-to-face with them, then you're giving up a huge opportunity and you're setting up yourself more to fail.
[00:23:24] Mike: Exactly right.
[00:23:25] Alex: Need people who wanna go to war with you.
[00:23:27] Mike: I do a negotiation skills training program for clients. Um, with salespeople, and I did one recently, and part of the negotiation skills training program is everyone gets a one-on-one with me, so they get a one-on-one negotiation session to coach them around deals.
And what's interesting is I've now had, you know, ten one hour sessions with the sales team. When I go and see the sales director, I've got all of this huge amounts of very granular data about what problems they're facing. I can aggregate that, anonymize it so that no one's you know, pointed out and say, there are some really big things here that we need to get our arms around that will fix conversion rates or AOVs, or whatever it might be.
My view is, well, all of the sales directors should be doing that anyway day to day. If you're not talking and coaching your team members, you'll never get the granular data and without the granular data, you'll make assumptions. At the aggregate level, which are normally a mistake.
[00:24:21] Alex: You know what I find as well?
The data's great, but what's also great is, is that how can you be a don be seen as a domain expert in what you're teaching if you're actually not doing it.
[00:24:29] Mike: Yeah,
[00:24:30] Alex: like
[00:24:31] Mike: exactly
[00:24:32] Alex: like everybody knows at Millennium that if I do a training, it's like, yo, he's been through it. We watch him still. Like, I don't get the chance to sell much anymore, but I still make a point to sell some each year, and so does Rob because it keeps us fresh and it keeps us.
Able to have street credit.
[00:24:46] Mike: Exactly
[00:24:46] Alex: right. And we're not telling people to do things that we don't do. I think that goes a long way. You know what's interesting about negotiation? Right? Back when, another time I had gone back to my university, university of Delaware, I, I went to a negotiation class,
[00:24:58] Mike: right?
[00:24:58] Alex: I happen to think I'm a very good negotiator and one of the things I did to start the class, it was like 75 to a hundred kids.
We took, I had someone come to the big board and on the whiteboard they wrote out, I said, what do you guys think are the do's and don'ts of negotiation? And it was kind of funny to see what they thought as college kids. And I said to them, I said, whether in your personal or your professional life, most people you're gonna negotiate with more than 50% are not gonna be honest with you because they're trying to get a better deal.
And they kind of looked at me and they couldn't believe it. I was like, it really doesn't matter what you are selling most of the time, the people that are gonna buy from you, they're gonna say mostly what they need to say to get a better deal. And one thing that I find really interesting in selling is.
I've had to work many years back in the early parts of Millennium when I was way more in the trenches than I am now, unfortunately, where it was obvious that a person wanted to work with us. And then asked for a discount, and then the person's knee jerk reaction was to say yes. And we would have the call recorded.
And I would say at this point of the call, before they asked for money off, I would say, do you think this person's gonna work with you? They're like, yeah, they're in. Why?
[00:26:03] Mike: Why would you give them a discount? Why would you do that? '
[00:26:07] Alex: cause salespeople, why would you do. Salespeople are obsessed with, so obsessed with the victory that they miss.
The little things like so many people negotiating anything, they don't realize that how you negotiate, like you could wanna work with me, right? You could be like, I like Alex, I like the product, I gotta do this. And then you could say to me, I'm gonna ask him for a discount. 'cause one is I may need one and it may help me, but I wanna see what he says.
'cause why not? You don't ask. You don't get. How I handle that
[00:26:34] Mike: exactly is really important.
[00:26:36] Alex: It may make you be like, that was strange. I'm actually not gonna work with this guy.
[00:26:40] Mike: Or it may make you go, I absolutely want to work with Alex.
[00:26:44] Alex: Yep.
[00:26:44] Mike: Because he understood we can trade things, but we're not discounting a premium product.
[00:26:49] Alex: Yeah.
You
[00:26:49] Mike: want it, we'll discount you are in. Yeah.
[00:26:51] Alex: We'll, we'll discount on situations. Like we're not opposed to discounting every now and then, but salespeople are so obsessed with getting the, the win that they don't realize that. Higher price deals, like it's better for the long-term relationship to stay strong and defend what you've pitched as value.
Like, you know, back in the day, I remember at my old company, someone was on the phone. The person at the end of a call said, yeah, this is too much money. And the person said, yeah, I probably could do this for like 50% off.
[00:27:16] Mike: Wow.
[00:27:19] Alex: I wanna literally run through the wall.
[00:27:21] Mike: Yeah.
[00:27:21] Alex: I wanted to take the guy's head and squeeze it.
I think salespeople oftentimes are so obsessed with just getting the logo that they actually don't realize they're blowing out a lot of their own deals because of the way they handle negotiating.
[00:27:31] Mike: We, we could have an entirely separate episode about negotiation. My word, whenever I train people rightly or, and I'm cautious, Alex, 'cause you've got a hundred salespeople.
So of all the people I meet, you absolutely know what negotiation's about because you've got a hundred salespeople who are successful. But I've got a mantra, which I said to salespeople, which is stop discounting and start trading. And I say that because as a buyer, if you offer me it's a hundred grand and I say, ah, no, I can't do a hundred grand.
We're at the end of the sales cycle and I'm like, look, I've talked to your competitors, I reckon. Yeah, the market price for this is probably about 70, and your particular offering is below market. So I'll take 60 and I'm done. If the sales salesperson says can't do 60, but I could do 75. Two things happen in my mind.
First thing, you were basically scamming me. You overpriced it in the first place, and secondly, you've gone to 75, you'll get to 55, maybe 60, a hundred
[00:28:25] Alex: percent. So
[00:28:25] Mike: it's like it has completely the opposite effect that salespeople think it has. It's the really, really, really worst thing you can do. In my view.
[00:28:34] Alex: It's rampant too.
[00:28:35] Mike: Yeah.
[00:28:36] Alex: It's, it's commonplace. It's commonplace. And you gotta work. You know, I live by this quote, right? The chief objective education is not to learn things, but to unlearn things. One of the reasons why we do hire experienced sellers, but we like people with not a ton of experience, is because they don't have any bad habits.
[00:28:52] Mike: Yeah, exactly.
[00:28:53] Alex: And sit people. I see this with my five and seven year olds. I gotta remind them of the same thing a million times. It's the same thing with salespeople because. It's your gut versus your head. Your gut is what makes you feel good or bad. Your head kind of tells you don't necessarily, like, it may feel good to not push back when someone's trying to ask for a discount, but if you know it's the right thing to do, you always, you know, you kind of think with your head.
But listen, we have about 27 figure clients a year, right? We have 20 companies that spend over a million dollars a year with us, and I've walked through examples where someone is spending over a million dollars with us, and because they're at that scale, they do get perks. There is. Discounts based on scale.
And then at the very end, I was in a situation where a client of mine for a long time was like, Alex, I know you've given us the traditional discounts based on the volume we're taking, but I need another X off. And I knew that was the conversation coming. So I took that video call in a room where there were 20 salespeople around me, but they couldn't see them, the client.
And before I got on the call, I said to them, the video, I said, let's map out what we know.
[00:29:50] Mike: Yeah.
[00:29:50] Alex: Right. And basically I got them to see without me telling them that, well, they've worked with us for years. They've already gone through some of the discounting already. I know they wanna work with me again. And I said, one is I'm not discounting anymore 'cause I've already been generous enough with the, with the scaled discounts.
And two is even if I wasn't generous, I don't have to. And one person was like, but what if you piss them off? It's over a million dollars. It's $1.4 million deal at $1.6 million deal. I said, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen if I'm professional. And I got on the call and just like I predicted on video, the person was gonna like, was like.
I can sign this today if you give me another 25% off. Yeah, that's it. Just said respectfully and we still got the deal. And the reason I did that is because a lot of these guys are working on smaller size deals than million dollar plus deals. And I said it doesn't matter the price of what you're selling.
You have to know what you're working with and what you're not working with. And when you have them bought in, the leverage flips
[00:30:42] Mike: and you have to know the value. Of what you offer Alex. Hundred percent. You should come back if you would at some point at your convenience, and we'll have a separate episode on sales negotiation.
[00:30:52] Alex: I would love that.
[00:30:53] Mike: I will book that in with you afterwards. Definitely. I would love that. So we're at the end of episode two. There might be an episode three listeners coming up. Yep. One of the big takeaways here, Alex, just gimme a couple of things. Two or three big things that a listener would go, okay, I could try that tomorrow.
[00:31:07] Alex: So one thing I would say generally, especially for younger people is that when you're growing up and you're going to university. Or you're studying, there are options you can have that can give you a direct career path, right? You could study accountant and be an accountant. You could study nursing law.
But what a lot of people do is they study stuff and it doesn't give them an exact career path. And if you go down that road, the best thing that you could do is try to become a great seller, because whether you stay in sales or not, whether it's in your personal or professional life, becoming the best salesperson you can be, as Mark Cuban likes to say something like this, it's something that'll be with you forever.
So I would argue even if you're gonna go study accounting, you're gonna have to deal with clients. So having some sales experience before that is good, but especially for the young people that are not having a direct outcome from direct things that they've done, which most people done. That's what I did.
Most Fortune 500 CEOs have done, they studied history. You know, they weren't gonna be a historian. The best thing that you could do is become the best seller you could be. And in order to see if you've got the type of personality to become the best seller you could be put yourself in situations or jobs that most people wouldn't do because they think it's kind of beneath them and the reason they think it's kind of beneath them because they deal with a lot of challenge and difficult people and asking people for things.
And those are the type of jobs you should try to stress test. I think that one thing for salespeople in general is you gotta be really aware that if you're doing things that aren't working, no matter how good they feel, no matter how much they may make you feel better about a given situation, if something's not working, you gotta change and you should focus on what works, not what makes you feel good.
And I guess the final piece would be is that selling, especially at the technology level, can be really a rewarding career. Selling in general could be a really rewarding career if you find the right company and the right culture. And it could be financially rewarding as well, but you gotta know yourself and you gotta make sure you work for a company that's doing things for the right reasons and has your best interest at heart.
And you may not find that in the first couple things that you do. But even then, so it doesn't mean you should give up because working in difficult environments can make you tough. But long term, you should seek that company that has got the right intentions for you, and it might take a couple companies and surviving at those companies to figure out what those are.
[00:33:12] Mike: Alex, it's been a real pleasure, a real, real pleasure. Thanks ever so much for joining me. Where can people find out more about you?
[00:33:17] Alex: So I'm not that much seen on social media. I don't do much posting or anything like that. The best things for Millennium Mill, MILL dash a l.com, mill dash all. And our LinkedIn page got everything that we do all the time, internal and external stuff.
So either of those two places would be the best places to find us.
[00:33:34] Mike: Brilliant. Alex, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you.
[00:33:35] Alex: Thanks, Mike, appreciate it.
[00:33:37] Mike: Thanks for listening to Higgle the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host Mike Lander. Please subscribe so that you'll catch all the next episodes.