What Needs to Change in Aligning Marketing and Sales Teams with Joe Fontana

[00:00:00] Joe: Anybody who's used an automation tool will eventually, if you're looking at what it's sending, see a note and be like, wow, this is all wrong. I come from an error and people tell me I'm a relic of a bygone error all the time. But in my error, I had to do that research. I had to come correct. I had to know what a buying side looked like because there was no intent engine that would tell me that.
[00:00:23] Mike: My name's Mike Lander, and you are listening to Higle, the B2B Sales Club podcast. Where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations, and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders, brand leaders, and procurement leaders, please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released.
Joe, thanks ever so much for joining me on higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast. Great to have you.
[00:00:51] Joe: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:52] Mike: So basically for the audience, who are you, what do you do, and your favorite song and why?
[00:00:59] Joe: Okay, that's a good question. Favorite song and why? I'm Joe Fontana. I have been building sales teams since the nineties, helping sellers of all shapes and sizes from SDRs to CEOs.
My favorite song is Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.
[00:01:16] Mike: Oh, great song.
[00:01:17] Joe: Great song. And Lucy's my favorite song is because it's, it goes back to my wife. My why is my 16-year-old boy, my world orbits around him.
[00:01:26] Mike: Yep.
[00:01:26] Joe: As a baby, he could memorize. Any song. Wow. One of the first that he memorized was Lucy in the Sky with diamonds,
[00:01:34] Mike: huh.
[00:01:34] Joe: And we would sing it nonstop with all sorts of sound effects. I've whistled it, I've done through the entire song for him, and it just, every time I hear it, it brings me back to road trips with my boy as we're working on Who's Ringo and who's John? Who's Paul?
[00:01:52] Mike: So songs, whenever I ask people on the show and I've, it's now my kind of like, it's the opening quest.
A bit of an icebreaker, a bit of fun, but 99 times outta a hundred, not even nine outta 10, there's an emotional connection. Music has an ability to connect as emotionally with some happy or sad or frustrating time in life.
[00:02:08] Joe: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.
[00:02:10] Mike: So let's get into the questions, Joe.
[00:02:12] Joe: Okay.
[00:02:12] Mike: So
[00:02:13] Joe: hopefully I got the right answers.
[00:02:14] Mike: Well, you'll have brought your own answers. The key thing with this show is there is no right or wrong answer. There's just Joe's and Mike's experience, and that's part of the fun
[00:02:23] Joe: fire away.
[00:02:24] Mike: So let's start with sales and marketing alignment. So why is it so challenging to get sales and marketing aligned, and what do we do about it?
First of all, is there a problem?
[00:02:33] Joe: There's always a problem with sales. Well. In certain organizations? Yes. Yeah. I would say yes. Yes.
[00:02:38] Mike: Right. So why is there a problem? Why do sales and marketing often have an alignment problem?
[00:02:43] Joe: Because they never look at each other as symbiotic members of the same organism.
That's the way I've always defined it to organizations. In some good organizations, they see themselves as colleagues and peers that have a common goal. In a lot of organizations, they are seen as enemies as you have to work with them. It's required instead of the necessity of working with them. That always drives the results that you're looking for.
'cause when they are aligned and marketing knows what sales thinks and vice versa, and what makes them think. And they're aligned on their ICP and what works and what doesn't. They're sharing all the things and they're doing all the things. There's nothing more deadlier.
[00:03:24] Mike: Exactly. So one of the things I've always thought about, I've talked to a lot of people about this on the show, as you can imagine, it's a very hot topic given I've talked to a lot of sales leaders like yourself, is bluntly incentives and metrics.
Let's start with metrics. If sales have got a quota, which clearly they always have there in sales, so sales hold the quota and, but marketing don't hold that quota. So therefore, immediately you've got some kind of misalignment. Oh yeah. 'cause marketing don't have to hit quotas. Sales do. So how do you align interests where metrics and incentives, sales bonuses aren't aligned?
What do you do?
[00:04:00] Joe: Really, it all comes down to communication. Ideally, you hope that that communication is starting at the top, at the C-suite, or at least with the senior leaders, both on the sales and the marketing side, because yes, marketing does not carry a quota, but marketing still has its own KPIs, its own metrics, its own definition of success.
That needs to be in alignment with what drives marketing is the key to the engine.
[00:04:25] Mike: Yeah,
[00:04:25] Joe: you can have the most beautiful Ferrari. Polished up, gassed up, ready to rock and roll, and I just handed you the key to an Audi.
[00:04:33] Mike: Right?
[00:04:33] Joe: And that's where that disconnect is. Yeah. There's no structural dependency other than I need the leads that you're giving me.
If you're not gonna give 'em to me, I need to go out and figure out how to get them for myself.
[00:04:42] Mike: And by the way, Joe, this is both way. So anyone listening, this isn't about marketing, not being aligned with sales.
[00:04:48] Joe: This is walking into a marketing's office and saying, exactly, this is what I want. It's about Exactly.
Sales and marketing coming to the same table. Appreciating the fact that at the end of the day. One goal immediately and directly feeds the results of the next. If marketing can't drive the awareness, there's nobody to drive to consideration and then to a decision. Yeah. And those are just facts.
[00:05:12] Mike: Exactly.
[00:05:12] Joe: Now sales needs to go then and put more of an effort on driving awareness or speed kicking into consideration, which drives its own series of issues. There's something inherently broken.
[00:05:25] Mike: Yeah. So in B2B selling, for example, so I've had quite a lot of marketers on the show. Obviously a lot of salespeople on the show and there's obviously, there's another disconnect, which is this, what might be called madness of sales, have got monthly quotas to hit and quarterly quotas to hit.
It's all very short term, and if you miss your quota several times on the run, then obviously you're out. Marketing have to build brand awareness. To your point, the brand is really critical. So they invest in brand development and they have to run obviously tactical campaigns to drive M qls. And again, you've got a disconnect because how much do they invest in brand and how much do they invest in m qls?
And some people are now saying, but brand is performance. So if without brand, there is no performance marketing. So how do you square that circle? This isn't like a, Joe's got all the answers, but it's a discussion. It's like you've got this short term versus medium long term tension.
[00:06:20] Joe: I mean, that's a tale as old as time.
Sellers are always gonna want those leads. They're gonna want Exactly. Yesterday, which is why I feel. SDR teams driven by marketing are so important because I feel like they can bridge that gap.
[00:06:33] Mike: So talk about SDR teams. Joe, this is a great topic. Talk about SDR teams in 2026.
[00:06:39] Joe: So SDR teams in 2026.
[00:06:42] Mike: Just explain for people in the audience.
Not everyone will know what an SDR is. An
SDR
[00:06:46] Joe: is a sales development rep, or they call them BDRs, which is a business development rep. They are frontline entry level sellers, typically driven with having to drive meetings for account executives, which you've seen lately is a drive for that function to be owned by marketing and I couldn't agree more.
Because it not only helps that rep with their growth in the organization, but provides a more resourceful tool for both marketing and sales because they see what's working. They see what's the tools that this individual has been given to go out and spark awareness. Or drive a further strengthening of awareness to get these people to actually consider the, uh, the product to at least start those entry level first stage conversations of discovery for both ends.
So what they find, the data that they uncover, the trends, all of that stuff is invaluable. The fact that it is in marketing's hands, if you have a smart marketing team that is aligned with these sellers, ah, makes you think
[00:07:52] Mike: So I'm kind of like, I haven't thought about SDRs reporting into marketing, but now you've mentioned it.
If we follow a thread, see if this makes sense. So I spoke to a guy the other week and we were talking about maybe the name changes maybe from being a sales development rep. These are connection development reps. Their job isn't necessarily to find out, have you got a problem that we can solve and let me get salesperson talk to you.
But their job is. Do you know who we are as an organization? We work in your sector. We cannot solve these kind of problems. We've got some thought leadership. Would it be helpful to share that
[00:08:25] Joe: Smart SDR teams are doing that already, right? 'cause they realize they're coming into, I know my ICP, I know this, this person is a fit.
They're obviously responsive because all I've been doing is targeting them on the pain, on the challenge and the issue itself. Smart as. Prs are barely mentioning the name of their company or how the company is there for a solve more than I'd love to just learn.
[00:08:47] Mike: Yeah. What are your problems? We see similar problems.
I was taught something years ago, which I still use today, which is the what we find. If I said to you, I know what your problem is, Joe, you would rightly probably say. It's gonna be a short conversation, Mike, 'cause I don't walk in your shoes. But if I said, Joe, you know, typically what I find is people like you in your situation, in your sector, typically there's about five big issues that they kinda like normally face.
These are the five. Do any of those kind of resonate? Are they kind of relevant to you?
[00:09:17] Joe: Exactly. And if so, how so? Yeah, I tell young sellers all the time come from that place of wanting to learn. There's nothing that an older engineer, as an example, would wanna do. Then pass on knowledge, I think, to the next generation.
If that generation comes in properly and comes incorrect, puts the sales hat down, comes in humble and has those conversations. I instruct people to do that hundreds of times a day. It worked 20 years ago. It still works today even though they're calling. What's old is new.
[00:09:46] Mike: So let's go into what people see as being cold calling.
Does the phone still work, Joe?
[00:09:51] Joe: They do if they're part of a concerted effort. If they're part of a structured cadence effort. I know everybody's looking for the latest and greatest answers, but it's not a matter of. It's a matter of what you do and how you do it. So are phones successful? Yes. By themselves?
No. Is LinkedIn successful? Yes. By itself? No. Same thing with emails. For example, I was dealing with a young rep the other day who's getting a dozen meetings a month out of LinkedIn, but doesn't email and doesn't call
[00:10:18] Mike: right
[00:10:18] Joe: now. Why not use build a strategy around your LinkedIn? Emails. I'm gonna send those individuals as well.
Here's some telephone calls I'm gonna make. You're still gonna get your 12, but because you added those two other components in there, let's say you reached out to a hundred people to get those 12. Now there's another nine to 18 that might pick up a call or they hear your voicemail. Mike know you're busy.
Shot in email came from joe@linkydink.com. If it resonates with you, love to chat. Might be I insane. Shot your dm. Tell me what you think would really just love to learn from you. Gimme a call. Now that same 12 meetings that he's getting on a monthly basis are now 30.
[00:10:58] Mike: Yeah.
[00:10:58] Joe: All he did was add just another component.
The messaging didn't change. The styling didn't change. None of the steps that they took to ensure that that person was the right person changed more than I'm gonna touch them in different places.
[00:11:10] Mike: So lemme ask you a different question again. The beauty of this recording for people that are listening is I pick a couple of topics with the guest and then we go off pieced.
As everyone knows, that listens, it's the off piece is where the fun is. Yeah. So if you took a hundred salespeople that are. They're just, they're account execs. They kinda like, you know, maybe five years in. And you took those a hundred salespeople, how good would they be at driving net new business on their own without any support?
IE, in the old days you were given the yellow pages a hundred copier. Salespeople were given yellow pages. Go out and sell copiers. How good were a hundred salespeople be at generating their own leads? Without any support
[00:11:51] Joe: today, I think a good percentage would be very poor at it.
[00:11:54] Mike: And why is that, Joe?
[00:11:55] Joe: Because there's a reliance and a crutch on technology. There is a generation of sellers that take everything they receive from tech and AI as dogma, or accurate enough, good enough. And sales is a game of millimeters. You can't be good enough and miss the mark with a prospect. You're an SDR, you're, you know, first time in ae for example, you are the face of that brand to the person you're engaging with.
So if you're getting all the little things wrong in this market, in this era of sales where the buyer has all the power.
[00:12:31] Mike: Yep.
[00:12:31] Joe: Where's the value in you? 'cause the value as the seller today is I bring clarity, I bring credibility, and there is a level of trust that I won't get you fired. So when you Ms.
Little things about how to properly research or know that your automation and the messaging and the people it's targeting and all that stuff is not on point, you're doomed.
[00:12:52] Mike: Yeah, exactly.
[00:12:52] Joe: So I, I actually posted about this a few weeks back, came into an organization, saw a reliance on technology, noticed that the underlying skillset had never been developed.
So I removed all the technology and all the automation
[00:13:07] Mike: right
[00:13:07] Joe: before you get the privilege to blast 500 people a note. Show me the research that results in this note. It's not just a note. It is, I have done my homework. If you know, you know, I have driven down, I know this pain I have starting to develop some type of sense of credibility.
If you don't know how to research, you're done. Exactly. Now, a lot of organizations can get away with it because they have that strong marketing alignment that we spoke to earlier, and they can say, Joe, here are the 20 orgs your sales team should target. Here's why. Here's why we're targeting them here.
We're working with them. If they're alignment, then it's, Hey, marketer, I'd like to target these 30 companies. Well, they told us to target these 30 companies. Let's, let's figure out who we should target together, what good targeting looks like. Who are the people that we're targeting and why we're targeting them?
Why would they reply? What are different ways we can get them to engage while your sales team is working with them? All the collateral, all that other fun stuff. Some organizations, because there's that disconnect, don't get access to it or the story that the marketers are telling isn't accurate or the engines that they're feeding for the sellers to go out and execute.
If there's something being missed, any, everybody's used an automation tool. Anybody who's used an automation tool will eventually, if you're looking at what it's sending, see a note and be like, wow, this is all wrong.
[00:14:33] Mike: Exactly. '
[00:14:35] Joe: cause they had on what Right. Looks like. Exactly. I come from an era and people tell me I'm a relic of a bygone era all the time, but in my era, I had to do that research.
I had to come correct. I had to know what a buying side looked like because there was no intent engine that would tell me that
[00:14:51] Mike: Exactly. So I wrote about this on LinkedIn I think this week, I can't remember, which was about basically imagine if you are a buyer, if you're a salesperson and you are doing outbounds and you're trying to generate leads, and that's a perfectly good thing to do.
Imagine you are a buyer or a prospect and you receive the thing you're about to send. How would you react?
[00:15:11] Joe: I tell sellers that all the time. Look what you've just, here's your message. This is the work I've done, Joe. This is something I have with SDRs, AEs, all the way up to CROs and CEOs and founders.
Here's what I sent, and I always tell the joke, and it's only a joke, and it's only funny because it's true that I have seen books of the Bible. That are shorter than the message you just shared with me. If you read the message you're sending, that is the ultimate barometer. If you've done your homework, if you're living in the shoes of your prospect.
I know that's a cliche, but it's truly what separates the pros from the pretenders because they've done the homework. They know that personalization is more than Mike. You got glasses. I got glasses too. Exactly. Wow. Who knew we should get together? Opportunity should have a drink. And walk through, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So you can hear all about me and all the things I do and how I this and me that now, but I'd love to learn why you can't get onto the bowl at 4:00 AM to solve that.
[00:16:13] Mike: Exactly.
[00:16:14] Joe: Again. So will they survive without the tech? Yes. So long as they have. The training and the knowledge, they, they, they know, Hey, okay, my computer broke today.
My system is down. I can still make a hundred calls. I know what I have to sound like. I know what I have to do here. I know the pain the bill has, or whatever the case may be, and they're doing what they need to do. The end of the day, the phone still rains supreme, especially in a world where everybody is afraid to use it.
I was talking to somebody the other day. Waiting for a guy to sign the contract. Waiting, waiting, waiting. I pinged him twice. I DMed him three times. Have you called him?
[00:16:54] Mike: Have you called him? Well,
[00:16:56] Joe: no, let's call him. Hey, bill, curious if you see my emails, what emails from about the side, the deal that I had just sent you.
No, I didn't see that
[00:17:06] Mike: exactly.
[00:17:06] Joe: Oh my God. Here they're in spam.
[00:17:08] Mike: Yeah. And even worse now, Joe, talking about spam, you may not even see it in your desktop client email spam because the server has already taken it out, so you may never even see it.
[00:17:19] Joe: DocuSign, uh, anything with an attachment, a link from a company they don't appreciate and that's.
It goodbye into the ether, but you call a guy, oh wait, let me look for it. There it is. Yeah, this does resonate. I see you have a accounting link here. I'll get back to you.
[00:17:35] Mike: Right.
[00:17:35] Joe: Oh my God is in my calendar two days later. It's little things like that and
[00:17:39] Mike: Exactly.
[00:17:39] Joe: It's funny because at the end of the day, it's the same fear that sellers have had since the beginning of telephone sales, which is picking up the call, picking up the phone, and calling a total stranger.
But the kids today, they don't realize how good they got it. My day, you made a hundred dials, 90 people picked up. Of those 90 people, 75 of them would tell you very descriptively and grossly how horrible a person you were. The different ways in which you could have sex with family members. They didn't chip at your resilience.
Every phone call was a sledgehammer to the face of how much you sucked.
[00:18:16] Mike: Yep.
[00:18:16] Joe: Then you had to be ready for the 15 people that did wanna have a conversation with you. Of which seven would be just as deadly as the 75 ahead, you know, before them, because now you're talking product and you didn't do your research.
And, and instead of, but because instead of if you're stuttering, you're mumbling, you realize as you're reading off the script, but then you still have those seven good calls. Now today, same a hundred people, 90 of them do not pick up the phone. 80 of them mark you with spam of the 10 that do five, think you're somebody else.
Because you're using the same area code, you're cloning it to look like it's his wife. So if you do talk to them, they're pissed because you just embarrassed them. But you're gonna have three good conversations. So you ready to have three conversations? I mean, that's the way you deal fear then, or deal with it now.
Like can you just have the stomach to make a hundred calls or nobody's gonna pick up and they think that they've got it tough. I would love for my magic DeLorean to drive a seller to 1995 where he is got a stack of index cards. He's gotta make 500 dials in that day off of those same index cards. So it's not like he was done with them and got a fresh stack.
He called them even after they told him to F off. He still called them back another day and got eviscerated on the call. All day long you'd work with three or four guys in the same pit, and then one day, one guy's not there anymore. And it wasn't because he sucked, he just got tired of being told that he sucked.
[00:19:43] Mike: Do you think lead gen works without any calling? Do you see a situation in B2B selling whereby you don't have to pick up the phone until you've exchanged 20 emails and you've been on LinkedIn and commented and blah, blah, blah, and
[00:19:56] Joe: I think at some point a conversation is required. Can it be done? Yes. Are people doing it?
Yes. So far as prospecting goes, but I don't think you can email your way to a six or seven figure deal.
[00:20:08] Mike: No, I don't either. Absolutely not.
[00:20:10] Joe: Absolutely not. Get on the phone and in this market, I think anything over 15, 20,000 like you can do. Absolutely. Email exchanges for my five grand chip. That's okay. You know, like, okay, put that on the corporate card.
I spent less on cupcakes. But when you're talking,
[00:20:24] Mike: you've gotta have a discovery call. You've got to get to a discovery call.
[00:20:27] Joe: Yeah. It's always needed. You have to, and it's funny that in this era, the SDRs, they all wanna be account executives, but they think that they can LinkedIn or social media, their way into being an ae.
The way 10 is an SDR, 'cause there are SDRs. I saw it myself when I got on the LinkedIn bandwagon about seven years ago. From purely a posting and business development perspective. 'cause prior to that it was just a place where I stored my connections. But I had an SDR team. I inherited, never picked up the phone, it was covered in dust.
I used to write in dust all the time, like pick me up or WTF. Phone was covered in Post-Its, but she hit her number every day. She was the top performing rep. She had the highest meeting, set up rates, the highest attendee rates, and she was like, yeah, this is what I do on LinkedIn. I see that they're here and I make some comments and then I come to their dms and I share something.
That's right and you know it's qualified. Far more than these guys on the phone for 30 seconds. Hey, do you have this problem? Can we talk on Tuesday? Sure. Yeah. Thank you. I'll send you an email now. Bye. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing about this individual. She never wanted to be an ae, so she didn't care about the conversation.
She's like, I like this role. I like what I do. I'm waiting for an opening in marketing. So I actually test some things that I create and I share them with marketing. So she was preparing for her next role and she knew it. But there are reps today that wanna be AEs. They wanna be SDR managers that do not know how to have basic conversations with people like the one we had when we first met.
And I know this because anybody who connects with me instantly gets a note of, I want to know the people in my network. I wanna have a conversation. You can't pitch me, I can't pitch you if you're down for it, here's my calendar link. And SDRs galore come in and sellers come in and CROs come in. And even in this day and age.
They don't know how to just not talk
[00:22:23] Mike: because we met via Freya. So Freya Ward Freya said, talk to Joe. Joe's brilliant. He might be a great guest.
[00:22:29] Joe: And we had a conversation. Do you know how many times people like, I think you should talk to my friend, and I wish I would ask Y and then I could see this guy, you know, couldn't spell it if he handed him the I and hinted at the t.
[00:22:40] Mike: So we're heading towards the end of the show, Joe, let me just cover something. Let's go back to basics with kind of Joe and Mike, how to prospect without it hurting. So how's the modern buyer and seller changed in the last 20 years on, what's the implication? So give me like an A, B, C guide, Joe's Guide to Prospecting in 2026.
For B2B sellers that are just, they're doing their job, they're trying to get to quota. It's really tough. The world's changed, but they don't know why really the world has changed or where it's changed from. They just need some help. What's the kind of the A, b, C basics of prospecting?
[00:23:13] Joe: A, B, C BS of prospecting?
Know your prospect. Know the pain,
[00:23:17] Mike: so know your ICP
[00:23:18] Joe: have
[00:23:18] Mike: an ICP for
[00:23:19] Joe: God's sake, and you icp. You have to know why will this guy give me more than six seconds? Why would they stay on the phone with me? So what's the why you need to know it as well as you know, your own. Why I come into the office? Because, okay.
Why would I take your call? Why would I look at this email? Why would I check this dm? Especially in a world of 500 other people selling the same exact thing you do. Maybe that's a wild exaggeration, but five, assume every day those prospects you're pinging are looking at five other emails just about that problem.
Say nothing of the other problems they have and tools that they need that you don't even come close to solving for. Know that
[00:23:58] Mike: before you start doing anything,
[00:24:00] Joe: what are we solving for? What is the pain? Hear the story from their perspective. What works today, and you see it on LinkedIn, you see it on social media, is authenticity.
You need to bend the knee and have conversations about them. Dale Carnegie said it best. I don't think enough people have ever read how to win friends and influence people, but you need to be interested rather than interesting.
[00:24:22] Mike: Exactly. Right.
[00:24:23] Joe: The only thing definitely
[00:24:24] Mike: your
[00:24:24] Joe: prospect wants to hear from you about you is this guy will not get me fired because, and be ready to answer that question.
[00:24:33] Mike: Be curious. Ask them questions.
[00:24:35] Joe: Be curious.
[00:24:36] Mike: Have a point of view. When they ask you a question, have a point of view about their kind of problems, situation that they're in. And why people do get fired like them. People get fired like you because blah, blah, blah.
[00:24:46] Joe: Yeah. People get fired because, and it wasn't because a feature or benefit didn't deliver more than it was because
Yeah.
[00:24:54] Joe: There was a disconnect.
[00:24:55] Mike: Yeah.
[00:24:55] Joe: It was a lack of communication
[00:24:57] Mike: or you didn't understand the risks that you were taking. Let me explain what the risks are.
[00:25:01] Joe: Yeah.
[00:25:01] Mike: In solving the problem you're trying to solve and why. Just picking a, a tech stack. Is a very risky solution if you don't understand the change management implications.
Really, Mike, what do you mean?
[00:25:13] Joe: Well, if you have a sales tech stack, you have sales leaders today that don't know the underlying skill that the tool is solving for,
[00:25:19] Mike: right?
[00:25:19] Joe: Or don't appreciate the impact of the tool. Today, you hear a lot about parallel dialers. Well, I could press one button, and 18 people are getting called at the same time.
And if somebody picks up, that's the one that comes in. Yeah. It sounds nice on paper until it's Hello? Hello? Hello?
[00:25:37] Mike: Yeah,
[00:25:37] Joe: exactly. Oh, hi or hello, I'm done.
[00:25:42] Mike: Yes.
[00:25:43] Joe: So there another effect on your brand people. Think of the fact prospectors today, you are the face of your brand, but people also buy from you because of you.
[00:25:53] Mike: Yeah.
[00:25:54] Joe: But it's not because you're charming. Certainly not because you're telling jokes. It's not because you're debonair. It's because you brought clarity to their challenge and you regret
[00:26:02] Mike: and remember. We know now, again, lots of research around this. 85% of the buyer's journey is done without you.
[00:26:09] Joe: Yeah.
When they come to you, homework is done, t's are crossed, i's are dotted, far different. When I got started in sale where I had 90% of the knowledge, I controlled the dialogue. I commanded the call. You needed me prospecting today. AEs today failed to appreciate that. A, you're never gonna be the priority in your prospect's mind that your prospect is to you.
And B, they don't need you.
[00:26:34] Mike: Exactly.
[00:26:35] Joe: They don't need you for data. They don't need you for research. They don't need you for testimonials and reviews. They need you to not get them fired.
[00:26:43] Mike: Yeah. And they need your human judgment.
[00:26:45] Joe: Yes. That comes with not getting them fired. Trust you. Because, hey, we discussed this one day.
Joe mentioned we can't do this. So when the onboarding call comes and some guy who's just getting into the tool today is like, Hey, does it do this? It doesn't. Joe squared this away a week ago. Go read your memos.
[00:27:02] Mike: Yes,
[00:27:04] Joe: we had three staff meetings back out. We're not getting into it again. It all comes from, and this is what I tell sellers today, know your prospect, know your pain, know how you're not gonna get them fired and come with a desire to learn.
Especially young kids today, there are two ages where you can have conversations based on knowledge and people will immediately, maybe not immediately, they won't have as many defenses up when you're really young, going to the really old. By really old VPs, SVPs as considered old by a kid who's just getting started today.
This is his first job. Hey, Mr. VP of this senior engineer of that, I would love to learn from you. I'm just getting started in this field. I'm helping a company with smart. I would just love to learn. I get suckered by it every day by SDRs and young kids. Hey, I heard you've been selling since the Stone Age.
Could we Ya a dab a do it this afternoon and you talk to me how it was to sell collars to dinosaurs. The other side is when you're older and reach out to the young and want to share knowledge with them, they typically do that. So take advantage of it. You need to live in the world of what happens if everything is taken from me one day, how do I still get to have these conversations?
[00:28:12] Mike: Yeah,
[00:28:13] Joe: I know that's true outta the stone age, but it's true. It's my story and I'm sticking to it. My
[00:28:19] Mike: What's your parting comment, Joe? So if people listening, not for me, 'cause I'm irrelevant, I'm merely here to like facilitate the conversation. What's your parting comment to people that are selling out there now?
[00:28:28] Joe: Be smarter than your technology.
[00:28:30] Mike: Good. That'll do.
[00:28:31] Joe: Yeah, that'll definitely do this for a reason. So be smarter than your technology. Know what it's doing for you and why, so you can catch it when it's doing it wrong. We're wrong every day. We've discussed you. You don't need me to show you. It will go wrong every day and on the days it doesn't.
Thank the sales gods, but for the most part. Especially the more tools you have, there are more opportunities for things not to sync, not to integrate, not to capture the data, not to pull the data over, not to transfer, not to share. Know what you are using and why, so that if you need to turn it off, you know how to turn it off.
You know why you're turning it off, and you can live in a world where it's never been on in the first place.
[00:29:09] Mike: Brilliant Joe Fontana. It's been fantastic. Knew it would be. Where can people find out more about you, Joe,
[00:29:14] Joe: that's a great question. I'm on LinkedIn, Ted Lasso of sales. People are always welcome to ping me.
I'm always happy to help sellers of any shape and size. This has been a lot of fun, Mike. Appreciate you having me on.
[00:29:23] Mike: It's been a real pleasure, Joe. It's been a real pleasure. I will speak to you again very soon. Thanks, Joe. Thanks for listening to higgle the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host, Mike Lander.
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