Learn to turn your sales from a Roller Coaster into smooth sailing | GrowthPulse Podcast Ep1

Welcome to the first episode of the GrowthPulse Podcast.

As longtime colleagues, collaborators, sales leaders & SAAS software experts Dan Bartels & Simon Peterson have created GrowthPulse. We have come together to bring to you some of the world's leading sales people, sales leaders, experts in Sales technology &  thought leaders in the best sales methodologies & techniques. Our goal is to share with you some of the lessons and coaching we have experienced during our careers to help you excel in your sales career.

GrowthPulse is target audience is anyone who wants to become a better sales person or who needs to lead their sales people to be better each and every day.

In this first episode, Dan & Simon take a moment to introduce themselves and share what they hope that everyone will gain from join them on the journey.

SUMMARY

What makes a successful tech business in this market. 3:14
People’s perceptions of their realities are changing. 5:51
Simon's thoughts on the podcast and how he plans to use it. 9:28
Selling software is hard, it’s like a roller coaster. 15:33
Sales is one of the few careers where you fail more than you win. 17:50
Dan’s background in software business. 22:14
Dan’s background in sales and marketing. 24:32
What is a business problem? - 28:49

Transcript

Daniel Bartels: 0:11

Welcome to the GrowthPulse podcast, where we take a deep dive in the world of business to business sales. Your hosts, Daniel Bartels and Simon Peterson. Talk to some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders, experts in sales technology, and thought leaders in today's best sales skills and techniques. From the GrowthPulse team, please welcome your hosts, Daniel Bartels and Simon Peterson. Hey, Simon. Hey, Dan, how are ya? Happy Monday. I am excited for our first podcast. Yeah, me too.

Simon Peterson: 0:52

Lots of lots of conversations and planning. Finally, it's, it's going?

Daniel Bartels: 0:58

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've talked about this for such a long time. And it's nice to actually have a little bit of time and a bit of breathing space to, to jump in and actually put out put our conversations into action.

Simon Peterson: 1:14

Yeah, we've had, what, six, seven years of chatting about all things sales, and it's nice to finally get it out there and share it. Let's see what people say. Yeah, it's interesting. Having a bit of time, I think, you know, we both looked around, there's not a heck of a lot of people chatting about this in the Australian context. And I think, lots of American insights. And I think people in this country and New Zealand as well, will certainly be interested in a little bit of the local flavour. It's no, there's a lot of things that are similar to selling wherever you are in the world. But there's a lot of unique things about the context in the market, we will book and I think that's certainly something that people find interesting.

Daniel Bartels: 2:04

Yeah, for sure, I think it's one of the things that you and I talked about, for a long time, in working for an Australian working in an Australian context, typically, for North Americans or overseas overseas firms, which is very common, particularly for work in tech, or even biotech are the bits and pieces now is, you know, we often have to do so much more with less, we often have to be a master of so many more skills, and you know, have less resources than what our colleagues have overseas. And that's a, that's a factor of our, the size of our businesses and the size of our markets, and, you know, rate of growth and all those sorts of things. But I think it's an interesting piece for people either coming into sales, or trying to sort of ramp their career up or get to the next stage, or really just just beat them down to be more successful, like how do you? How do you be a master of so many different areas, where typically, I think overseas, you can really focus on just one particular sector or one particular skills, you know, just being an approach rep or just be strategic? I think the key for salespeople and sales leaders in in, in our side of the world is you'd have to be a master of all these different areas.

Simon Peterson: 3:12

I think you do. And I think, you know, we've we've worked for American businesses where, for example, the marketing function sits squarely in headquarters. And I think both you and I have certainly had to be field marketers, events, planners, all sorts of things. And I think it certainly gives the average Australian sales person, business leader sales leader, a lot broader experience in terms of what makes a successful sales team, what makes a successful tech business in this market, you do tend to have to touch on a lot of things. And I think the other the other interesting pieces, as you mentioned, the size of our market, it's obviously an order of magnitude smaller than the US, for example. But working in a small market means you know, everybody, you know, I think, working in the industry for almost 30 years that the number of people you know, in different tech spaces outside of tech and marketing, etc. You can't afford to put a foot wrong. Like, because everybody knows you. But the flip side is you can certainly lean on your network incredibly well. You always know somebody that knows somebody in a prospect, for example.

Daniel Bartels: 4:33

Absolutely. I think I think you're right. I mean, networking becomes so critically important for not only your success, so you know, you can get a roll on so much faster. But I mean, you're, you know, the impact of your failures or your inability to focus on the outcomes of others around you, is found out really quickly. You know, you and I've experienced that where you know, we have to So we've generated a company really quickly by focusing on relationships, and how do we build credibility, and ensuring that those around us are succeeding as well. Because we've seen the impact of, you know, partners, whether it be other software companies or delivery partners, dropping the ball. And, you know, as a result of that, you know, the rumour mill runs rife. And, and, you know, I'm always reminded, and I think I've said to you, 100 times, Australia is a big country town. And I think the world, you know, really, business world is a big country town as well, I mean, I'm never surprised how close someone is actually to, to my LinkedIn profile in terms of, you know, only they're only really one or two connections away. And your reputation does always precede you both good and bad.

Simon Peterson: 5:51

And upset, and not all of it is valid, but you gotta look after it. Right? Represent, hey, people's

Daniel Bartels: 5:58

cars settle. Yeah, people's perceptions of their realities, right. And sometimes you don't like that, and we want their perception to be different. But that's the, that's the patriotic change. And I think in sales, I mean, that's, that's the piece in sales that we go to, to edit for people on a regular on a regular basis, what their perception is of either what problem we can solve, or what their problem is, and what needs to be solved. I mean, that really is what our what our roles are. So I'm gonna ask you, obviously, we spend a lot of time though, oh, go?

Simon Peterson: 6:29

Go? No, it's gonna say, you know, it's quite interesting, obviously, working in an Australian subsidiary of American or European companies, it's, you know, the other really, really important thing is to look beyond our shores, I think, working with American software company, they're a lot of people dotted around the world that absolutely love to lean in and help the Australian business or the satellite business of a global company. And I think, in our experience, very early days, with financial force as an example, we identified those key players in the US and the UK, that absolutely love to lean in and help us and that was a huge help to our growth, and you'd get visits from various executives or thought leaders. And I think that made a big difference to us as well. So you know, that tapping in network in Australia and New Zealand is critical, but understanding who around the globe understands the market or wants to understand the market lens and helps us it's, it's great.

Daniel Bartels: 7:40

I think to that point, it's not just even the network inside the business you're in. At the moment, it's who was the network of people you've worked with before? Who are you finding either out of the last event you went to or you know, the colleagues of your colleagues, I think that building that network is something that's critical. And I know you and I talked about this, as the, as we're developing the concept for this podcast, and these conversations, that succeeding in in long term sales is like, you have to get the individual sale, right. And so many of the sort of the sales gurus and people coaching out there, we're focused on a particular singular skill, and all that stuff's so necessary, but to but to succeed in the long term, in business, to business sales, in particular, there are so many other skills you've got to get right. It's more than just being good at the game, so to speak, you know, it really is about how do you manage a territory? And how do you manage a territory plan? And how do you you know, how do you focus on the right accounts at the right time? How do you deal with the forecast, like all these things roll into what does a great salesperson salesperson do and a sales leader do?

Simon Peterson: 8:59

Yeah, and it evolves over time. I think what was the good forecast, approach 1218 months ago, may not necessarily be the right one to you continually looking to evolve and improve the way you do it.

Daniel Bartels: 9:12

Yeah, absolutely. So I know, we've talked a lot about sort of how we got here, but you know, what are you hoping that both we and our listeners and people who join the join the podcast as guests will get out of this experience? What do you think someone?

Unknown: 9:26

Um, well, from my perspective, there are a couple

Daniel Bartels: 9:26

Yeah, similar to you. I mean, throughout my sales of things I think, first and foremost. For me, it's it's a great opportunity to talk about the last 30 years I've had in career, you know, I've had a sort of a wide and varied sales the industry and reflect on what I've learned, you know, I've had career, I've done a number of different things and really all sorts of different bosses and leaders, some that I would love to emulate someone that I would do pretty much anything found my, my, my home in business, the business not to emulate and how I can bring those sorts of experiences technology sales in particular. But I think the thing over my in context to help us with some i Thank you. Got a generation of sales leaders that are probably a good 10-15 years younger than I am. And we've got salespeople early in their careers. And I think the ability to give back have a good conversation about what's worked. For me personally, what hasn't worked, what I've learned over that, but I'm really excited to talk a little bit about that. I think the other piece for me is my own journey continuing to learn, I think some of the people that we've spoken to, that we will get, as guests on the podcast, are gonna give amazing insights. And you know, I continue to learn and grow and understand and get better at what I do just by chatting to people that have done things before. And that doesn't necessarily mean I'm talking to people older than me. I think we'll have some conversations with some wonderful people that are sort of late 30s, early 40s, late 20s, that have figured things out that I just haven't done yet. And so I'm looking forward to learning from that perspective. And I guess the last piece is, I think people listening to this podcast may be inspired and motivated to do things differently, make a difference. And I think, for us, the ability to coach, mentor and help organisation and self individuals, off the back of some of these conversations is going to be fantastic. Read, so I'm really looking forward to so then yourself, obviously, you're a big part of this podcast as well. What are your thoughts? What are you hoping to get out of it? journey that's been really enjoyable, has been talking to people about how you solve problems, and how do you, you know, get out of your own way, sometimes in a deal. It's so easy to look at the roadblocks, or the challenges are the reasons why you can't succeed. And some of the best times that I've had is where I've had yourself and a number of other colleagues. Download, John is going to join the podcast shortly and think, Donald, I think she'll do the same. We've sat in rooms with whiteboards and people who've been able to joke at me and a whiteboard, but just writing up all the problems, and how are we going to resolve them? And how do we solve them? And I think it's that self reflective part of, hey, you know, what do I need to do to succeed? What do I need to do to learn? To your point? How can I lean on somebody else's knowledge to make myself just that 1% better tomorrow than what it is today? How can I refocus even what I'm doing today? On back on the customer? And sometimes it's that colleague of yours, if that other person that says, hey, you're you're more focused on closing your deal than solving a problem for your customer? Is? Is that what's going to get you there. And to your point, it's having those consistent conversations. And the piece that doesn't, that has really struck me with a sort of chord, but it's a it's made me recognise, as we've given ourselves all this flexibility over the last couple of years, whether it's been intended or, or driven to us through COVID that we spend so much more time working from home, or working without colleagues, where you would grab a coffee and room have a chat and, and learn all these things organically. And I think I see you and I've talked about, I would hate to be someone joining a sales business today or early in my sales career and not be able to have these these watercooler conversations. And I think this podcast can provide a lot of that sort of knowledge to people to really think about what their own craft is. You know, I think that's motivating them to get back to the office. Well, whether it's back to the office, or whether it's like, how do you learn and I think all these things about how we're going to learn is changing. You know, I heard a stat the other day that apparently there were more during the two years of COVID lockdowns, there were more online education are just across the board education generated in that two year period than then had ever been created previously. So doubled and doubled in in terms of total content created doesn't mean it's been consumed and created. Yeah, absolutely. So of course, it's driven because we're all working from home and but how do people start to have conversations about learning because I know I've learned so much more through conversation that I have through doing a course or You know, filling out form, etc. So I think that there's some of the things that, that drive me to kind of have these conversations. And same as you I mean, how do I talk to a whole bunch of leaders to just understand what they're doing? Wide my hand or own horizons? Like, that's that's a huge opportunity as well. Up down sideways, different industries, I think all those things are relevant. You know, I'm, I'm never surprised where I can make where I can learn lessons in terms of what is good sales or good customer focus look like?

Simon Peterson: 15:33

Yep. Yep. And I think it's going to be fascinating, some of the guests we're going to have on the podcast, because we're gonna get a lot of really interesting and different views on things. And, you know, I think it's important that people listening to this stuff, just get get the down and Simon perspective. Yeah, we've got a bunch of experience, I think, but between between us about 50 years, which is a very scary statistic,

Daniel Bartels: 15:57

disconcerting.

Simon Peterson: 16:01

It is it is, there's a reason why I'm wearing a hat for this first podcast, there's not a whole lot going on until

Daniel Bartels: 16:08

we should get hats made up, perhaps so we can cover it up. But I'm balding. And

Simon Peterson: 16:15

I'm already already. Yeah, I think. But I think the look, the other thing is, it needs to be entertaining, people need to have a good laugh at themselves a good laugh. As always say, selling software is hard. Yes, you get rewarded for it. But it's a bumpy ride. It's like a roller coaster. And, you know, it's hard work. So you've got to have some fun along the way. And if you're not enjoying yourself, you're probably in the wrong role, or you're probably going about slightly the wrong way. I think there is nothing better as a salesperson, when you close out that really big deal. you nail it, but you do it from the perspective of you become incredibly close to your prospect you become possibly not family with them. But the next step out from that, because you you're really helping them in their business achieve something and to be honest with you, there is nothing better than that. And as we both know, as a salesperson, when you close that deal, you know, all the internal accolades happen, because you've delivered on what you've said to the business that you work for. But the real journey is just about to start for your customer, and you sell some software, then they need to go go ahead and implement and realise all of the benefits that you've been talking to them about, and that journey has just begun. So there's nothing like that, that time when you're ready to really make a difference for a prospect.

Daniel Bartels: 17:50

Yeah, I think I agree that that context, and sales are one of the few careers where you fail more than you win. And it's like, maybe you compare it, I like to compare it to sports people, right? But I mean, if you're, if you're a sports person who loses more often than you, then you win, then often, you don't make the top grade. But no, I mean, sounds it sounds, it's probably the only career if you think about most other careers, if you if you're a doctor, and your patients coming in and dying, and they leave, like you don't last very long, right? You know, if you only if you're, if you're a builder, and if I build the houses, but most of the houses that I build fall down, you don't survive. Whereas if you're a salesperson, the reality is, most of the engagements that you have, don't get to a successful sale. And either you qualify out, they qualify out, but I mean, that's kind of part of the way that this works. And it means that the winds are so much sweeter. But it's also why Yeah, we're a good a good colleague of ours. She used to say all the time, you know, hey, I'm happy for my heavy for my colleagues to take a 50% cut or put 50% of their, their, their compound risk. If not, I mean, there are lots of lots of sales industries out there where it's 100% of your of your compensation is basically at risk on a on a constant basis. But that's also absolutely life changing money. And, and personally, I think it's a life changing experience actually being a salesperson long term. So yeah, so Simon,

Unknown: 19:28

absolutely. I think don't. So I was gonna say, you know, it's, you don't win all the time as you as you quite rightly sat down and I think, you know, it's listening to people that are doing it, to make those as you said, 1% improvements. You know, most deals you go into, as you walk in the door, you've got about a 30% chance of winning that piece of business. There might be three, you've got two other competitors. Look, looking for that same piece of business. So the more you can do to focus on how you get slightly better improve your odds 1%, 1%, 1%, you turn that one and three win rate into wanting to win right into, you start to get a lot better. And then that makes a massive, massive difference.

Daniel Bartels: 20:20

Yeah, it does. And I think Simon, you know, it's actually heard a guy called Jeremy miner, who I've been watching a whole lot recently as a great sales trainer, and he's had a phenomenal sales career. One of the things I heard him say the other day, is sales is not a numbers game. And I think it's a really interesting point of view. Yes, there's the 30% win rates and all that, you know, the more you add that up, but the way you pick that up is not just by doing more, the way you eek that up is by is by learning more and being more successful, and being more skillful at what it is you do. You know, I know, that was one of the one of the the pieces that that we surprised our colleagues at financial force around when we were there at you know, we were we were achieving two or 3x, at some stages, the win rate of our global colleagues. And they just kept saying, How are you doing this? And it was the effort we were putting into our team around. How do you how do you win more? How do you focus on the right conversations to have and the right the right, internally and externally? What's next in the deal? How do you plan better for that? How do you prepare better for that session? How do you work better with your colleagues? How do you worked better with your, with your coaches at the customer or you know, find the find the right pathway to to close this particular deal so that the customers are thankful for you taking them through this process at the end? And I think that content, it's not a numbers game, it's a skills game, and the best sales from you see that you're in awe of their skill?

Simon Peterson: 21:52

Yeah, there's a lot of psychology in it as well.

Daniel Bartels: 21:55

Absolutely. So, you know, I know for this in this initial podcast, we wanted to just give everyone a brief background of who we are as well. So Simon, looking give us the 10 cent tour is kind of your your background. And we've and what brought you to today, yeah.

Unknown: 22:12

Okay, well, thanks, Dan. Look, I've been in a software business for about 30 years, which is really, really scary. I, I left, I left high school and did a computer science degree at New South Wales uni, which was interesting. That was back in the early 90s. And I remember turning up to university one day, and someone showed me a web browser. So that's as far back as I go. I did a lot of programming, in that computer science degree. And then happily, this is really interesting how a career kind of pans out you, you finish university or whatever you're doing to study after school. And I remember my dad came to me and said, Look, I'd like you to stop painting houses, I think you should probably use that computer science degree of yours. I found an ad in the paper for a job, they want to hire some graduates, I went, Okay, I'll go do that. And that was when I joined SCP as a as a graduate, I started as a programmer, and very quickly realised that there was always going to be a slightly better programmer sitting next to me. So I jumped into the world of consulting and spent a good 10 years implementing SAP at some of Australia's largest businesses. I loved it. Funnily enough, on the theme of learning and understanding your craft, I was surrounded by some really awesome people that taught me all about accounting and cost accounting and project management. And that's what I consulted in for 10 years. I loved it. I then lived and worked overseas, I was in Canada and Germany and had a wonderful time over there. I guess the focus of that was all around Value Engineering and value selling. So that's really when I got my first sort of taste around. What's the problem you're trying to solve? How valuable is it to the client, you're trying to pitch your solution. I had a wonderful time when my son was actually born in Canada, we then moved to Germany. I ended up over my period of SAP spending about 19 years there, which was longer than I think most people would contemplate a career at a company but it was just such an awesome place to work, learn so much. I had a great time. In the back end of my time at SAP was in operations in the sales operations business in Australia in New Zealand for about four or five years. And that gave me an enormous understanding of the mechanics of how you build a sales team, the mechanics of how you set territories and quotas, and I'm almost ashamed to say I got very, very good at Excel spreadsheets and You know, learn a lot about numbers and roll them up and build a business plan. So that was fun. But then it was an interesting time, actually, I really needed to get into the SAAS space, I think, on premise software was doing well. But I really felt the market was moving more towards SAAS. So I had an enormous opportunity to go and work at Salesforce, which is obviously where we met. And I then spent, you know, three and a half years working at Salesforce. I'm sure there'll be another podcast, talk about some of those experiences. But yeah, it was an incredible, an incredible journey, learning how to sell so far as a service, learning how to work in an American company, after so long working at a German or a European company, very, very different. I think as we jump into some of the topics later on, the difference in leadership style, from your typical American company, to a typical European company is very, very different. And as an employee of both you really got to learn the subtleties of when to stick your head above the parapet when not to and really understand that they're fundamentally different psyches, they ran a software company. And then, and then I moved into financial force. Had a great time there, I always describe my first day at financial forces a very interesting one. I had a sales person and a consulting person, probably about to hit Get to blows on my first day, that was a really interesting cultural experience, to be honest. And then knowing you came into financial force. And over the next six or so years, we grew that business enormously and learned a hell of a lot. And I'm sure there's some stuff we can talk about that down the track. So that's my background, a lot of a lot of consulting, a lot of operations, a lot of sales leadership, learned to work in an American company or learn to work in a German company. And more recently, working on the data backup recovery side of SAS software was fascinating as well. And just really interesting. So as I jump into whatever comes next, I think reflecting on what I've experienced over that 30 year period is going to be good fun and good fodder for a podcast. I think that's me, that's where I come from. So Dan, how about yourself, man? Yeah, so

Daniel Bartels: 27:31

look, I've spent my entire working career in sales. And I don't think it was part of the original plan, but it's kind of where I landed. So I started in sales when in school. So the very first thing I sold was mobile phones. Of all things I got sick in year 12 And actually split my years for over two years. And so I was sort of half available for half the time. And you know, worked in a number of different mobile phone agencies over time and I made good money and in a time when you actually made good money selling mobile. It's been a bit of time working for a marketing agency, sort of running teams for them to really learn the other side of what to go to market and, and the way that you bring leads in. That was interesting. So sort of worked, worked in was on the Clemenger agencies, and then stepped down to retail channel sales. So I spent a couple of years I ran some sales things for Nikon cameras, and then for Hasbro toys in Australia as well, and then took a bit of a sidestep. So while I was at Nikon & Hasbro I'd completed my MBA, and my dad and I, both my father and I, both MBAs from Macquarie, and he's a solicitor and they've been able to give me throws me a brief and says, This isn't a legal problem. It's a business problem. What do you think this is, and we actually ended up buying off one of his one of his clients, we bought the assets of a appliance company about to go into receivership. And we turned that into a national kitchen laundry appliance repair company. And we then on the on the back of that we built out their their retail business, they're their sales business and their parts business. But that's kind of where I stumbled into SAS, really quickly had to work out how to how to run this agency. They were ahead sort of 150 odd, independent contractors around the country. I had a contact centre, I had high velocity of transactions and I had to bootstrap. We didn't have VC funding or anything fancy that we sort of see people get these days, despite trying, I had to bootstrap this person and really learn how to sort of run a technology projects, the technology infrastructure as the the founder. I mean, look, my title said CEO that that I'm not quite sure that's what I was for anyway. And that sort of you know, I ended up doing A lot of sort of customer reference, a couple of videos things for Salesforce. And you know one of the one of the leaders there, a guy called Tony Armfield joked to me one day said, Look, you know more about this than half my sales guys do want you working for me. I said, Well, when I sell my company, that's what we'll do. And couple years later, I got some advice, when we I was never my long term lifelong dream from an appliance repair company, we were going to sell the company, I fired myself putting a manager and took a role at Salesforce. And sort of, that's what started my SAAS career. So I spent sort of five years at Salesforce worked through their, their marketing products that became the marketing cloud, then worked with you in the core business, to their core CRM business for everybody out there. And then came across and joined your financial force and moved across there. So you know, we spent five years of financial force and I led the sales team there, which was, which was amazing. Probably the best part of my, my working career today. And from there, stepped across into a regional leadership role. So run another software company in the, in the company called conga in the revenue operations space. And sort of now looking for the next step in terms of, of where do I go to from here, but you know, I've had a career in career in sales of all types of sales and, you know, selling individual service contracts for someone needing with a broken dishwasher handle, and how do I get that resolved, selling multimillion dollar contracts, you know, long term to some really complex organisations, to selling high velocity sales software, with my original sort of engagement at Salesforce, we're sort of month on month contracts, because that's what the marketing agencies demanded. So it's a real real mix of, of what do you focus on? What do you do, but everything has been around, if it doesn't provide a solution to you or the customer's customer? It's just not happening. And then I think the one thing that I've that I've really focused on over time is, if this is not going to be commercially viable, or just if it doesn't produce outcomes for both parties, this is not going to happen. And let's not waste our time.

Simon Peterson: 32:22

100% 100% that's a theme we'll touch on quite a lot. Yeah. What's the problem you're trying to solve? And is it mutually beneficial for us to work together?

Daniel Bartels: 32:32

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I'm gonna think that's a reasonable intro to everybody about sort of what the podcast is going to be who we are. You know, I know we've, we've got some exciting interviews coming up, both with each other, but also with a number of guests who have got lined up, so maybe we can wrap it up there. And I look forward to chit chat to you and everybody else again soon.

Simon Peterson: 32:58

Me too. Absolutely. Thanks, Dan.

Daniel Bartels: 33:01

All right. Thanks, Simon.