The Art of Building Personal Connections in Sales with Guy Collison | GrowthPulse The B2B Sales Podcast Ep16

Ready to step your sales game up a notch? Join us as we sit down with the seasoned sales expert, Guy Collison. With a hefty resume boasting names like Salesforce,  Oracle, and Macquarie Bank, ,Guy shares the secret sauce to building resilience, establishing trust, and creating strong personal connections in the sales industry. With anecdotes from his time dealing with the big four banks, industry super funds, and sprawling retail chains, this episode is a deep-dive into the riveting world of sales.

Guy's journey is a testament to the importance of networking and reputation. Hear him recount his early days in the banking industry, a chance meeting, and a little bit of liquid courage that propelled his career in the tech industry. Discover how his experiences at Salesforce fine-tuned his knack for building relationships. Gain insight on the psychology of resilience and learn how to navigate the never-ending sales cycle. Who said deals couldn't be forecasted? With Guy's wisdom at your fingertips, learn to steer the sales cycle like a pro!

But that's not all. We tackle the fascinating topic of cultural differences in business. From German to Chinese banks, Guy's global experiences shed light on the nuances of spotting decision-makers and understanding body language. But wait, there's more! We round off our chat with a serious note on mental health and career shifts, especially during an economic downturn. This episode isn't just a walk through Guy's sales career; it's a treasure trove of invaluable lessons. If you're in the sales industry or even just curious, buckle up for a transformative journey.

Transcript

Guy Collison: 0:00

Success is basically the capacity to survive failure, and when you survive failure you understand all of those things. That's the way you build resilience, but then you become a better person and that's what leads to success. In the moment you build out that contact base and you start connecting with people with power. I mean these people are moving up the ranks or at least they're highly influential in a big organization for a reason, and it's actually quite enlightening to listen to their lifestyle. There's someone a CIO or a CSO or a CEO of a big bank or something.

Guy Collison: 0:31

I guess a lot of salespeople use that analogy about spinning flights, and it is very true, because the more plates you spin, the higher the risk of you actually dropping the ball. But if you're spinning all of those flights and the deals are dropping, then it doesn't really matter what the quarter is what and you talk about run rates and also talking about big deals. The consistency is the thing that's actually really good and I guess from a sales management perspective it helps with linearity. So that way your sales manager is not actually tapping you on the shoulder to say, hey, what's going on with this quarter or this month?

Daniel Bartels: 1:02

Welcome to Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. You might be a salesperson. You could lead a sales team. Maybe you're in a business or you're a battle-tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you.

Daniel Bartels: 1:16

Great salespeople are built, not born. We learn so much from the deals we win, but we learn even more from the deals we lose. In each episode, we bring you some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders and experts in sales tech to share their best lessons from both their wins and their losses. Before we start, please check out the screen of your phone or laptop and, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you've clicked subscribe and press that like button down below. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to follow so we can let you know when we publish each new episode. If you liked the episode, drop us a comment with any questions about the show. We'd love to get to know our audience. Great businesses always feature world-class salespeople and the best salespeople are always learning, so let's jump in. Welcome back to another episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. I'm Dan Bartels, one of your co-hosts. I'm here with Simon Peterson, mate, how about our?

Simon Peterson: 2:20

new intro. Oh, it's awesome. It's a fantastic new intro. Delighted to be innovating on the start of it again. Good cartoons, good message. Can't wait.

Daniel Bartels: 2:30

Yeah, it's cool. I think it's where we're refining a messaging, we're refining how we're going to market, which is cool, so similar to what we do in our roles all the time. So I think that's a nice little evolution of what we're doing. Mate, we've got a great guest coming on today. He's a good friend of both you and I. We've known him for quite a while Guy Collison. Mate, welcome to the show.

Guy Collison: 2:55

Thank you so much for having me.

Daniel Bartels: 2:58

Mate. I want to make sure everyone gets a good idea of your background, mate. You have done an absolute heap of stuff in your career. If I run through the plethora of companies you've worked for, you're a bit of a journeyman in sales really. You've worked in finance. You've been at Macquarie Bank, you've been at Salesforce, oracle, docusign, vizio, nowat Veeam with Simon, which is great to see, mate. That's an absolute resume of gold-plated resume of companies in technology in particular, but you've also worked with some amazing customers as well. I know a number of the financial services companies, but do you want to give us a couple of top-line brands you've worked with over time? Sure thing, thank you for that.

Guy Collison: 3:52

I love that word, journeyman too, by the way, it's a much better way of saying that I'm tenure on old. You're still in here, mate.

Simon Peterson: 4:00

It's a yeah, both of us are in here, won't be long.

Guy Collison: 4:06

But yeah, so I love all the customers I work with. I mean they can be challenging and they can be rewarding at the same time. But I think it's about being able to work with these organizations and seeing them go through that journey. And yeah, so I have to say I guess, from top-line view, I've worked with the big four banks, including Macquarie Bank. So I've been a customer of Macquarie as well as an employee at Macquarie Bank.

Guy Collison: 4:34

So that's a very interesting journey right there, especially when you see something from the inside and then you're trying to be on the outside looking in. And I guess I've also worked with the industry super funds. So I guess working through a lot of the technology, not just as each single super fund but across the board as an industry standard, especially when organizations or an industry alone is trying to go, say, like a cloud journey, so when they were in their infancy right through to where they are right now. I've also worked with a lot of other logos outside of financial services. So while I was at Oracle, I worked with a number of retail and consumer companies, supply chain companies, so everything from David Jones, myers right through to Coles and the West Farmers Group.

Daniel Bartels: 5:24

Yeah, well, that's a wide and varied list of customers, right, and all with different challenges. I mean one of the things that I think is really interesting when you look at an industry sector, people will look for how you're in financial services or you're in retail, so therefore you know how all those organizations work. But my experience has been one bank doesn't operate the same as the next bank. They might be trying to address a similar market space or a market problem, but internally they are so different. I mean, is that the type of thing you experience as well?

Guy Collison: 5:57

Definitely.

Guy Collison: 5:58

I have to say you can't really cookie cutter anything, even for use cases.

Guy Collison: 6:02

But well, we'll put it this way when I was working in an industry that's kind of a challenger industry, like, say, cloud, and then I started selling back into the banks, the point of view that I had wasn't about this is how we can replicate, or this is what other banks are doing. My first talk truck was always well, you know what you guys are looking to get into cloud, but this is what retail industry is doing, or this is what this company in this other sector is doing. Some of these use cases are the things that could resonate here. But how about we talk about how we build out those use cases specific to what you are trying to build? And if I am not going to go into too much detail with each of the banks, but let's just say we were talking about financial markets trading one person's asset class or one person's trading style is completely different to the person sitting next to him, let alone to what the other banks are doing. So it's very, very complex.

Simon Peterson: 6:54

Absolutely so, guy. You've spent a long time selling software into financial services, retail consumer goods, et cetera. How do you you know you've obviously grown over that period of time, I guess, when you left the banking industry itself and decided to jump into software, what motivated you to take the leap from, I guess, inside the banking sector to selling to the banking sector? What was the driver for you to get into software sales?

Guy Collison: 7:24

I'd like to say a lot of it was logical or at least tactical, but a lot of it actually had to do with luck. I mean, I got into banking because I was in very low-level tech. In fact I was so low-level it was to the point where I was working with a lot of the guys who were box-moving back in the days so that's a very old term that us oldies would remember when I used to sell desktops into computers and what have you. So I couldn't even get into those companies because I didn't have the experience, and so I used to sell the services of decommissioning that hardware and through six degrees of separation, building a contact base, building a reputation. That's when you have your ecosystem of people you trust. And from there, that's when they look at you and say, okay, maybe you've got the opportunity now or the background to move into something into that space.

Guy Collison: 8:13

And, funny enough, me moving from tech into financial services. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but it was born out of a drinking game and I met a few big swinging traders back in the day who I kind of called out in a pub and ended up winning a drinking game and they put their money where their mouth is. And that's how I got my first job in the bank and or at least my first foot in the door. Yeah, so, to cut a long story short, they gave me that opportunity in order to kind of prove myself, because I said to them look, I think I can do this, had an entry level job, moved into the trading, into foreign exchange of all things, and through there, because working for the bank and capital markets, you're kind of looking at the enterprise sector and every day is a different use case. So I could be dealing with BHP bills and whether exposure is like they're exporting anything and everything with their foreign exchange exposure coming in. Or I could be looking at XYZ importer who's importing widgets from China, and so we're looking at their exposure of US dollars, chinese yuan and so forth. And so I had to pick up really quickly what are those use cases, what are the ways that people operate?

Guy Collison: 9:30

And my network base increased exponentially that way and it was through six degrees of separation where a lot of the people that I worked with on the trading floor were working with the tech guys the Reuters, the Bloomberg's.

Guy Collison: 9:42

That's how I moved into kind of the tech side of things and that's how I started off at Reuters, because a lot of the people that I worked with in the banks were in that sector. Now this is where it gets really interesting, because a lot of people that I work with in tech now were also in that space. Simon, you and I know a few of those people who were very much the pioneers in the Salesforce ecosystem and it was just off chance that I met these people through again six degrees of separation or work events, or even a dream force. And yeah, next thing, you know pretty much, there's opportunities that came up in Salesforce and that's how Simon, you and I first met and I guess the rest is history. That's kind of the trajectory. So I guess, to cut a long story short, it's all about that network based building and up building a reputation with your sales history, and that is basically what I used in order to get to my next career move.

Daniel Bartels: 10:37

Yeah, man, I think that, of all the things that, when we've worked together, I would call you out for having a real skill in is building those networks.

Daniel Bartels: 10:48

And I know, when we were both AEs together at Salesforce, one of the things that I could see in the deals and the engagements you had and I think there was one of the deals where I remember you being just based at the customer I can't remember which one it was, but for an extended period of time it was like we haven't seen Guy in like nine months, but apparently he's working over it, whichever bank you're trying to do some work with. Oh, okay, that deal popped out which is great For so many salespeople, but businesspeople as well understanding how to build those really tight networks. Or, especially when you don't have them, you're given a new territory and hey, he's in your account. How do I build those relationships and how do you approach it? I mean, I know you've got a music background as well as your sales background, but do you lean on different skills and different part of your life and your personality? How do you go about it?

Guy Collison: 11:45

That's a really good question. No one's ever asked me that. I think you have to have a really inquisitive mind. I mean, sales, we know what we need to do and we know how we approach it. But there is a little bit of a dark art or a soft skill that we really need to adopt here. And to your point, I guess that company that you mentioned before.

Guy Collison: 12:08

I was pretty much nine months in there. I mean, I literally had a desk that they set aside for me, so I was pretty much one day, two days a week with the customer and that didn't come out of pure coincidence, it was about developing that trust. But in order to develop trust or develop that network base really quickly, I didn't realize what I was doing until I started at Salesforce and I saw that Simon Sinek Golden Circle video. That blew my mind, because I'm not sure whether we need to kind of go into detail about the Golden Circle, but when I saw that two minute clip about the way he described Apple and how Apple kind of wants the world to see themselves, that's how I used my methodology and how I have conversations with people, because I love listening to people's stories, listening to their MIs, what they do in life and why they do what they do, and I didn't even realize.

Guy Collison: 13:00

That's also a really good way to get into someone's pain points and understanding their personal drivers. But for me that's just a natural conversation and as soon as you have that connection with someone and it's not about hey, I want to solve your problem. It's like hey, I really want to know about you, but I want to listen to your story. What are those things that drive you? And let's see if something resonates. And I think that's probably the best way to build rapport quickly. And it doesn't mean that you're going to be doing business with that person, but chances are you'll leave a better impression with someone knowing what their drivers are or the things that actually get them up in the morning.

Daniel Bartels: 13:33

Yeah, I think it's one of those pieces that salespeople get, or anyone in business gets concerned about when am I being too personal or when am I prying into someone's personal life, and so then we default back to quickly. Let me tell you all about the services that I'm offering and what my product is, and this is the reason why we're here. And what they miss is that there's always a it doesn't matter how senior that person's job title is on the other side of the table or on the other side of the phone or whatever. They're just a human. They've got dogs at home and kids that are annoying them, and a partner that today likes them, tomorrow doesn't, and they're going through all the same things that you are. And I think it's actually getting that human connection with people and saying, hey, look, it's telling about your life and people.

Daniel Bartels: 14:23

When my experience as a salesperson is people love to talk about their life. They love to talk about their job and what's good and what their winds have been, hey, this has been a real challenge and sometimes you can't help in any of those things, and then in that story you'll find that kernel, that seed, that will turn into something you can actually do business with. But if you're not willing to actually learn and open that story, it becomes a really inorganic engagement with this customer and they're the ones that go to you, they're the ones that disappear, right? I mean, simon, you've I've seen you so many times had these really personable relationships with customers. I mean, how do you approach it?

Simon Peterson: 15:08

It's an interesting one and, to Guy's point, it's kind of one of those innate things. I mean in general. I think two things there. I'm not a particularly extroverted person I think, guy, you probably wouldn't class yourself as being overly extroverted but I think a genuine curiosity to get to know someone. And I'm not thinking in those conversations what I'm trying to sell to that customer or that executive. I'm genuinely curious about having a conversation, striking up a relationship and have a good life with them and just really get to know who they are as a person.

Simon Peterson: 15:44

And I think, Dan, as you mentioned, they're human beings.

Simon Peterson: 15:47

They've got all the same things going on, the good, the bad and everything in between. And it's like when you turn up at a party and you don't know too many people, you look at a couple of people and you say, look, I'd really like to get to know that person. I think in a business context it's subtly different, but just a genuine curiosity to have a conversation with somebody and see where the conversation goes. A little bit like this podcast, right, we don't sit down and script where the conversation's going to go, but we bounce off answers of each other and we understand that to get someone engaged in a sales cycle you don't lead with. Here's my widget. You need it because of these pain points. You start that conversation just wanting to know who they are and what makes them tick and, personally, where are they going, where are they at? And I think if you connect with someone genuinely, we build that trust and then over time you get the right to understand how you can help their company improve what they do.

Guy Collison: 16:48

I think to add to that the other thing about having an inquisitive nature. I mean the moment you build out that contact base and you start connecting with people with power, I mean these people are moving up the ranks or at least they're highly influential in a big organization for a reason and it's actually quite enlightening to listen to their life story as someone, a CIO or a CEO of a big bank or something. I mean you only get half an hour of their time if you're lucky. And the moment that you get an understanding of what they do, their career trajectory, I mean it's amazing that story. And if you get down to their personal life story, how they, I guess, evolved in their career, I mean that's mind blowing for me. I mean that's nothing quite like seeing or listening to someone's story, especially when someone is of a high caliber like that.

Daniel Bartels: 17:37

Yeah, and they want to tell it. And that's the other thing. I think people don't realize that people want to tell the story and they want to help you out like they're. You know, the executives you're trying to sell to individuals. They want to buy from you. They want to. They know that they're going to get their job done by engaging with other parties, other organizations, other executives. It's not by themselves.

Daniel Bartels: 18:03

So, okay, here's my set of plans. Can you help me? You can't, not a problem, but I'm going to keep you in my back pocket for at some point where I might need you and it may not be even being this role. I mean the number of engagements I've had where you know it's actually one or two roles on from the person that I dealt with. You know when I first dealt with them where you get a phone call and it's all of a sudden, hey, listen, are you still doing that thing or oh, no, I'm in a different role now. Oh, actually, hold on, tell me a little bit more about that, because we built that level of trust early on, the fact that they can actually open up and have those proper conversations. I think that's been so important in my career. I want to move on.

Daniel Bartels: 18:44

We talked about a couple of topics we're going to talk about today and you know for those we're all in Australia and you know Sydney and Melbourne have just gone through. Well, australia has just gone through grand finals series here for our football right. So it's now finally combined into one weekend versus two, which is interesting. And in North America you've just kicked into the NFL season and I was just I was reminded as I was watching the grand finals over the weekend, that you know sales is not a season Like, it's an, it's a never ending season.

Daniel Bartels: 19:15

Right, and you know there's a real, there's a real art to you know, running, whatever your quota period is, whether it's a month, a quarter, a half a year and hey, at the end of that season, you're one, you're lost, you succeeded, you've hit your number, you've got your bonus, you're going to president's club or whatever you're doing. And then on Monday, there's no, there's no mad Monday in sales Give back to zero. And I think I think it's a really hard thing to do with right. And you know we said you're a bit of a journeyman mate. You've been through this cycle. I don't know if you can count how many, how many end of end of months. You've probably done mate, but you know how, like. How do you approach that? Because I think there's a real psychology part of, like, the resilience you've got to build as a salesperson. How do you approach that sort of that never ending season?

Guy Collison: 20:08

Oh, mate, that's. It is the, the multimillion dollar question, isn't it? I mean, there's a few different ways that I've approached it and every every year is different and every year I have to do a bit of soul searching. But if I can talk about it, maybe on two ends of the spectrum one where it really does pan it to the ego I think the best thing that anyone can do is actually close and hit your number in the first quarter, because you're an absolute rock star for the rest of the year, yeah, so that's. That's happened a couple of times and there's nothing quite like that feeling because you're, you're, the moment you hit your number, you're, you're just like two inches taller and you just feel like a million dollars and you have this like the strut in your walk and there's just something about that feeling being able to have your number for the year. But, to your point, if you, yeah, you smash your number and it's towards the end of the financial year and then it just resets back to zero, I mean that's also kind of debilitating and it really does have an impact to your, to your own mental health, because it's like, hang on, I'll just hit my number and I'll just it's two days of celebrating and the next day is like great, we're back to zero again and where's the next dollar coming in.

Guy Collison: 21:15

But I guess the best way to deal with that is it's all about that continuous flow, and I guess a lot of salespeople use that analogy about spinning plates, and it is very true, because the more plates you spin, the higher the risk of you actually, I guess, dropping the ball. But if you're spinning all of those plates and the deals are dropping, then it doesn't really matter what the quarter is and you talk about run rates and also talking about big deals. The consistency is the thing that's actually really good and I guess from a sales management perspective, it helps with linearity. So that way your sales manager is not actually tapping you on the shoulders of, hey, what's going on with this quarter or this month. But I guess the best way to look at it is linearity is really important for yourself as well, and most salespeople fundamentally miss out on that skill. The only reason why I picked up on it is because I moved into leadership and actually understood why linearity was so important on the way that we do forecasting. So I kind of put that soft skill back into the way that I manage my time and I guess, if we want to kind of circle back to your point about it's being end of football season here and the NFL season, a lot of these things actually have an impact to the way that you plan your day to day and also the way that you close your business and even when you're running a sales cycle. I mean, if I can huck back to the days of Salesforce where I think correct me if I'm wrong the end of financial year was 30th or end of January, is that right?

Guy Collison: 22:37

Yeah, end of January, so end of AFL season is probably one of the hardest things for salespeople here in Melbourne because you basically have one quarter to finish the end of the year and you're not really having a full quarter. So, coming out of AFL season you've got spring racing carnival here. So this is around November. So a week it's a complete right off because Tuesday is a public holiday. People take the day off on Wednesday or Monday and most people are hungover on the Wednesday. So that week's a right off, you can't get meetings. And then December you're leading up to Christmas. There's a lot of public holidays and being end of quarter in January, half the people in Melbourne basically take half of January off and then you've got Australia Day. You've got which is the national holiday it's.

Guy Collison: 23:22

It becomes quite difficult for you to plan those days and I think the best way to look at it is you look at the business days and you kind of have to anticipate what your customers are going to be doing, because they will be taking time off. They will be taking those those days off here and there because everyone has to have fun, they have to recharge. So I, the way I plan those quarters, is it's not 20 business days, 20 business days, 20 business days. It's like you know what. There's 10 business days there, 10, 10. And this is what I got to do. I got to break it down to what I need to do on a day to day basis based on that.

Guy Collison: 23:54

Every other day that I know is a right off, that's my admin day and and that's probably the best way to approach it, and also from a sales stage perspective, this has been a rule, rule of mind, ever since I started at Salesforce spring racing carnival. So the day that it was, it's Melbourne Cup. So the Monday before Melbourne Cup, if none of my sales stages are at a certain level. I am not going to forecast any of that for this financial year. So it has to get to a certain level that I could actually gain momentum. And if it's not at that point, where, say, I'm at a mutual close plan, or I'm at that point where I know that I could get the right stakeholders and procurement in order to get this thing signed off by January. It seems like a long runway, but it's not so. That's my litmus test. So as soon as I know it's at that level, then I got okay, this is forecastable. If it's not, then it's next year. And yeah, and detachment as well is probably the hardest thing to do there.

Simon Peterson: 24:48

Yeah. So it sounds to me, guy, like you need to go around the sun a few times to learn those lessons In terms of you know those dates are coming up. You've done it so many times. You've got one eye planning in the future and you're trying to get all your deals to a point where they're closeable, knowing that you know your customers are going to take time off.

Simon Peterson: 25:10

But you also mentioned the importance of looking through to next year, right? So sales, there's no off season. I think the AFL and the NRL boys and girls are probably got a couple of weeks of downtime and they, you know they'll probably come back in early January and start training and get ready for the next season. But you know, I guess in sales, the funny thing that happens after the last day of a fiscal year is the first day of the next fiscal year and there's really no you know no off season. So it's an interesting one. So how do you sort of, as you, you know we're sitting in October right now, a lot of businesses have a end of December fiscal year, some have end of January fiscal year close, especially those of us working for multinationals. You know, you're in a role right now where you're selling. You've got a path to the end of December. Tell us a little bit about what you think about.

Guy Collison: 26:09

You know, january, february, march at this point of the year, I'm already thinking about that from about June the previous year and maybe even so at the start of the year, because I guess it's not so much with mid market companies but the moment you get to the high end of mid market. So any organization that's got more than, say, 500 seats and above, they're already planning their technology roadmap for five years. And I think the best way to answer this question is going back to what we're talking about. When we're, say, in front of a CIO or even someone who understands what the technology roadmap for the company is, they're not looking three months in advance, they're looking five years ahead. And the best way to look at your sales cycle is to kind of be in line with what they're trying to do over the next three to five years. So, with that in mind, to answer your question, Simon, I think it's the way I look at my sales cycle and I know what my roadmap is. I know that I'm not just going to be selling them one thing. I want to sell them a couple of things based on what they're looking to build over the next three to five years and what I think will drop.

Guy Collison: 27:09

This financial year is only just the start of it because that's only building out to what January, February, March, all the way through to whatever is happening next year. So I guess to highlight that, the thing that I mentioned earlier about, I guess, closing hitting a number in the first quarter, that's exactly what's happened for a few of my deals where I started off with a couple of small little run rate deals coming towards spring racing kind of. I knew, hang on something, there's got to be something big here. My sales management manager and my entire potting knew that something was coming, but there was always the pressure to try and bring that forward. I thought no, this isn't going to happen. But I knew that they were going to sign around April because they were trying to get things signed off for their end of financial year, which is June. So that was the timeline.

Guy Collison: 27:56

And because we agreed on the mutual close plan or the mutual success plan on how we signed this off with procurement board sign off, the timelines were pretty much agreed and we held each other accountable for that. So not just on my side and my management, but also with the leadership team, with the customer that I was selling to, and that's really important because the moment we hit gates in each of those joint execution plans or mutual close plans, we knew exactly what needed to happen on both sides in order to ensure that this was going to get signed off by that day. And so when that first deal was signed in this financial year and then we were trying to close for April, everything pretty much worked like clockwork. But the moment things were starting to go pear shaped let's just say legal took a little bit too long we knew exactly where we needed to be in order to help hold people accountable, to bring it back in line to the timelines. And so that's where the larger deal which hit my number in first quarter.

Guy Collison: 28:55

I already knew I was going to hit that deal pretty much from the time I came back from Christmas holidays. So it's I mean up. It may sound a little bit cocky to say that, but it's more of a case of Trust and knowing the people around you are going to execute the way they do, because we've built enough trust with the people around us to build, I guess, the the timelines in the roadmap and we hold each other accountable. So I think that's that's really important. The weather you actually address sales, because when we're talking about multi-million dollar deals, Trust is really important.

Daniel Bartels: 29:29

Sure is the thing that jumps out to me, guy, about what you're talking about is systems, and I think as salespeople we don't. We don't give ourselves enough credit or enough importance for the systems and the concepts we build within the way that we do business. I mean, you mentioned linearity before. You talked about mutual close plans and these are some of the things that I know as I came through my career. You know I'd have, I'd have sales leaders talk to me about it and they go. Really do I need to worry about those things? Come on, that's just Customers. I'm going to hear that and but as you kind of go through your career and that's, and you, you experience being a leader in your and you understand what's important for a business, I mean, so those who don't have linearity is around.

Daniel Bartels: 30:16

If you're doing bigger deals can get pretty lumpy. So I'm waiting for weeks and months for this big deal to drop this huge risk. So how do you start to look at your revenue stream being being more linear and flat line and you've got constant trickle of deals closing. It's a really important feature of business. But then that mutual close plan function, I mean I remember the first time someone took me through that and I was like how's a customer doesn't want to, doesn't want to see this from me? And the more I've used a plan with a customer, you talk put whatever prefix you want in front of it to make it land nicely, the better the deals are and the clearer they are. I mean Simon, and I've got a great story of someone who used one very, very poorly out of the very first meeting Putting put a mutual close plan in front of a customer customer and Simon went. I'm not quite sure this guy's right for me. I'll never forget that.

Daniel Bartels: 31:18

But it was. It was all about the prefix, because if the prefix had been, hey, this is our demo plan, hey, this is which which is just leading into the new mutual close plan, the customer would have been fine. The customer went. I think I think we're all jump a few steps here, champ, we're not on the same page. There's no trust here. I think those systems are so crucially important for kind of how we build them and I, you know, I want to, you know, you've, you've, I've seen you use a mutual close plan before and and you know it's become a feature of how I operate and I've got some other systems that I've added to what I do. How do you approach a mutual close plan? What do you think about?

Guy Collison: 32:01

That's a really good question because I think when we look at a mutual close plan or whatever terminology we use, mind you, that's actually really important to because, to your point, you don't want to go to a customer and say, here's a mutual close plan. The terminology that we use close, isn't it? Yeah, exactly, even the terminology alone is actually quite powerful if you actually spit ball the idea with your, with your sponsor, and so we've used terminology, everything from mutual close plan, joint execution plan, mutual success plan All of these things are great. And when you agree on it, that that becomes a working document with you and your and your customer, and the moment that you actually have that working document together, it's powerful because you can almost share, share the idea, the timeline that you can use and build that Gantt chart. So I think none of my mutual close plans have been identical. They've all been very different and the approach has always been collaborative. And I think that's really important with this, where I know in certain sales methodology you kind of build it out with your team and you go here, you go and please agree to this. It doesn't fly, and the more senior the people, the more they'll come to you and say who's this mother?

Guy Collison: 33:14

But the the approach, though, is also really important, because, to your point before about, I guess, this kind of methodology, there's no right or 100% right methodology with these things.

Guy Collison: 33:27

So if you take sandly, you take the challenger method, the way that I've approached everything in my sales cycle, I'll take little bits of this and that and turn that into my own little kind of approach, because you almost have to make a Call how you do this approach based on the people that you're selling to their, their buying cycle or even how they operate internally.

Guy Collison: 33:46

So if you're dealing with, say, one bank or someone in supply chain, they've got different formalities and different approaches and different ways that they communicate internally. So the last thing that you want is you Challenge their notion, like, say, with a challenger sale when someone doesn't like to be challenged, and then in certain aspects, like, say, you're dealing with bank who loves to be challenged because they love ideas, then you you kind of have to gauge that and Understand what their MO are and MO's are, in order to kind of mold your approach to their, their way of thinking. And I think it's really important, and the only way to do that is come comes back to trust again. So if you don't have that trust and you don't understand who you're dealing with, then a lot of those little idiosyncrasies and intricacies you can't actually execute on since I joined sales force 12 years ago now, 30 years ago now that that core value in a sales process of starting with trust, it's, it's.

Daniel Bartels: 34:44

I think it's one of the most important features of a good sales career, and if organizations build that as their fundamental value, then, hey customer, we don't trust, you don't do business, hey customer. These are really important pieces of what we want to do. How do we establish trust first and then all these things so easily flow from what you're gonna do. Hey internal stakeholder that I'm working with inside my own business, we haven't got trust. You know that's gonna blow up. You know I mean some and you've worked in so many different organizations, but you know you've also had a huge part of your career in in SAP against German organization and I mean they probably take a little bit of a flavor towards trust. Is that, is that something that happens?

Simon Peterson: 35:34

No, I don't see it as fundamentally different. To be honest with you, I think look, I spent many years there.

Daniel Bartels: 35:40

This is flavor, not not different.

Simon Peterson: 35:43

Okay, yeah, Different flavor, I guess, yeah, look at some. You know, culturally, organizations are different. American companies are different to European companies in general the way they run themselves, the way they motivate themselves, etc. At the end of the day doesn't matter whether you're a, you know, a big German software company or a big American software company. You need to get on the same page as your prospect and If you don't do that, you're not gonna be successful, and I think American companies will tackle it from a slightly different angle than the European ones. But I think you know, over the 30 odd years I've been doing it, they're becoming more similar.

Simon Peterson: 36:19

I think internally, cultures are quite different, but I think we've learned enough over the last sort of 30 years of Technology change what a customers need, what journeys are they going on. You know, when I started my career, it was about it certainly wasn't digital transformation. It was about integrated business processes and having a finance system that wasn't sitting on a mainframe and three tier client server. Architecture was, you know, something that was exciting and new and you know we've morphed that into. You know, all the way through to cloud, and some organizations are now saying, yeah, cloud is great for some of my applications, but other applications. I need to have more control and ownership over when it sits and you know I want it on premise, which you know I didn't anticipate that trend coming.

Simon Peterson: 37:04

But fundamentally, what is it that your customer is trying to achieve and how do I engineer my path and my relationship with my customer such that I'm serving their mission and goals In a way that is going to make them successful? And, by definition, my methodology needs to to align with that. So you know they are all different. Yeah, I've worked for a few, but honestly they are. They're converging very much.

Simon Peterson: 37:34

And I think what's interesting is if you go from one company to the next and I mean I've recently started a new role most of the language and most of the Ways we do things they're subtly different but they're very, very similar. Yeah, we go classic right forecasting. You know I've done forecasting in many different organizations and I talk about best case. That's fundamentally something that sales people get. It doesn't matter whether I'm at Veeam or SAP or sales force or anything in between. It means very, very similar things. But I think in all of those organizations you have sales people that Follow a methodology and it becomes painful for the poor customer to walk through and hear some of the terminology that's thrown at them and I think, as you get more mature and more experienced, you, you follow the method, but you nuance the message is probably the best way describing it.

Daniel Bartels: 38:31

You know, one of the things that I've experienced in the last couple of months doing some work with With a number of different organizations have been doing some sort of private consulting is the piece that it's really missing a lot of sales processes is a good understanding of discovery and I'm really surprised by it organizations jumping into this and of lots of different sizes. You know, selling from enterprise all the way through to SMB. I've got you in a meeting. We got here because you have a. You're in the space that I'm in. Quickly let me tell you about my product and and it just it's this willingness to understand.

Daniel Bartels: 39:09

Stop like, don't Just start that process of understanding where they're at and be transparent about it and and be really comfortable saying this, and I can sit here and Waste your time on a 30-minute pitch and hope it, the mud sticks to the wall. That's an absolute waste of your time and mine. And the best way we go about this is I understand about what's going on. This is I understand about where you're at, what you're trying to achieve in your business, what you know, what you've been tasked, what your KPIs are this year and what they're gonna be look like next year, because it's always more than a one-year cycle and then I can work out if I can help you and if that's what the conversation want to have, hey, talk about the football, right, I mean guy like you.

Daniel Bartels: 39:55

Again I go back to some of the things I've seen you do really well. I hear a bit of a master of discovery and it's part of that relationship piece. How do you know when you walk in you've got this brand, you've this net new opportunity? How do you approach the discovery Conversation to really open up that, get the that, the onion onion to out sort of unpeel and peel back the layers? How do you approach discovery?

Guy Collison: 40:15

Oh, mate, that is a great question. I have to say, the one thing that is really important is you got to get the formalities right. Whoever you're meeting with, you got to understand what they do, their ammo even to the way that they do meetings, and also you got to take even things like the cultural things at a consideration. The reason why I'm excited about this question is because some of the things you're saying is Reminding me of some of the things that I've absolutely screwed up on and I had to learn from these mistakes. So here's two really good examples. They're very cultural in respect and I learned really quick after the fact, and that's how I became quite successful with working with these particular organizations. So one was a German Bank I Was working for I think it was Reuters at that time so did do quite a bit of traveling. I was literally in the UK working with the German Bank I won't mention which one, but we had no one briefed me about how Germans, and let's just say Dutch, operate.

Guy Collison: 41:16

Now, if we go to a boardroom, we can like have casual conversation, blah, blah, blah. Over there there's this whole thing about if you're not early, you're late. So we were there pretty much like four or five minutes, ready to go. We're sitting in the boardroom, they're all sitting down there, and I made the mistake of just starting the conversation. Okay, we're all here, let's, let's stop. Um, just, I just started a conversation and the person who was facilitating the meeting being very, very German Highlight of the fact he goes Well, no, it's not 10 o'clock yet, we'll wait until 10 o'clock and we'll start the meeting. And so we literally sat there for four minutes in silence until and it was very, very awkward, but everyone on my side looked at me and went he's a rookie, he doesn't understand. Yeah, so, yeah. So that was a very humbling experience and I learned really quick exactly what I needed to in order to build that report, because the moment that I screwed up there I was already on the back foot and I couldn't build that rapport.

Guy Collison: 42:15

And it took me a little bit longer in order to build that report with that customer and on the flip side of that it's with a Chinese bank, and this was over in Shanghai and of all places I didn't realize boardrooms over there were all like circular, and so you can almost kind of pinpoint who the decision makers are in other organizations because they've got the titles. But in certain organizations, certain cultures, especially with Chinese companies, they have that round table. You don't know who the decision maker is and sometimes it's not the person who you think it is. And so in a round table you have to learn really quick the body language and who who that kind of turns is. When you ask a question, say I'm asking Simon a question, I Didn't pick up on this until after the fact. So let's just say I asked Simon this question, simon would look at this one person and then Another person would answer and then another person would answer. And so as soon as you Pick up on who actually answers that question, that person's the decision maker or that person is the influencer.

Guy Collison: 43:15

And you have to learn really quick in order how to do to, I guess, work with that kind of cultural aspect too. And again, it's a learning experience. No one brief me on it and there's nothing really out there where you can actually learn some of these kind of business Cultural acumen, because it evolves over time as well. So I mean those are kind of extreme examples, but I guess that the point of those two stories is you really have to kind of learn along the way and it comes with experience in order for you to kind of build that trust immediately, and Some of those little idiosyncrasies you, if you screw up, learn from it, and it makes for a nice story, especially in a podcast like this.

Daniel Bartels: 43:56

Mate, I had a similar one years ago where I worked with Nikon cameras and I didn't understand when the Japanese leadership came over. The leader wouldn't sit at the border. I'd say if it was a big take, meeting the most important person didn't. And I don't know if this is a particularly Japanese thing or it was just the way this cooperated. He wouldn't sit at the boardroom table, his team would and he would sit behind and it was only on certain items that they would defer. And I was like why? I just couldn't understand what was going on.

Daniel Bartels: 44:31

And then I worked out kind of two or three meetings in. I'm like, oh my gosh, he's the most important guy in this room, he's too important that sitting at this table is beneath him. And I was like, oh my gosh. Now again, I have no content. I haven't done an enormous amount of work with Japanese people. I don't know if that's standard, but it was like just this was a hot. No, we had tea ceremonies and everything. It was amazing, right, but it was. He wasn't sitting at the table, he wasn't part of the conversation.

Simon Peterson: 44:59

I remember, you know, I was in Germany, living there for probably years in the early 2000s, and I was working in a mostly Canadian team sitting in Germany and my job at the time was teaching salespeople how to do value selling and we ran these workshops, et cetera, and as a result, we had people flowing in from all over Europe and you know, we had the Dutch, the Germans, the French, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and the nuances between each of them was pretty fundamental to getting the best out of them. Now I'm internally teaching this. I'm talking to, you know, enterprise AEs from France, from Germany, from, you know, all over Europe, and they're all subtly different the way they do things. And you know I screwed up very similar to you guys. You know I didn't understand the nuances there and somebody gave me a book which I've never forgotten.

Simon Peterson: 45:51

It was called Kiss, bow or Shake Hands and I don't know whether it's still in print, but oh my goodness, it went through every country in the world, how business culture worked, the nuances of how you deal with different backgrounds of people, et cetera. I loved it. It was a really fascinating book and it was partially due to the content because it was incredibly well researched. But what it brought to me was a similar lesson you got, guy, was everybody's different Companies have different cultures as well as nationalities.

Simon Peterson: 46:22

So you know, I think in Australia you think about big retail, is Woolworth's culture the same as Coles' culture? Not necessarily Is National Australia banks the same as Konworth Bank. And you know, I think there's probably an interesting piece of work there someone to do the corporate equivalent of Kiss Bow Shake Hands. You know how to insurance companies act versus how to banks act versus how to retailers, but a good sales guy picks up on those cues and learns from them. And you know the theme of our podcast, dan you learn a hell of a lot from your mistakes. You don't learn as much from your successes.

Daniel Bartels: 47:02

Yeah, I mean even just that. I mean, I recall just the minor one of business cards and Japanese. You know two hands. You hand the business card across and you accept the other one and it's, and that and where's like, where's the cultural piece that come from? That's about offering gifts to each other. You're trading at the start of the conversation. It's a really important cultural piece and if you walk up and stick your hand out like it's just, it's just not what they expect and it's not how and it's not seen as disrespectful, it's just you're not one of us, you don't understand us. So now you know.

Daniel Bartels: 47:38

Back to the question about discovery. I'm not going to open up, I'm not going to tell you what it is, because you're not one of us yet. So so we started this, this conversation we're talking about, you know, the concept of the ever, ever, ever running season, right, and I think there's another lesson out of our, out of our sports colleagues, to learn, and I've always described this, as you know. You want to see reps who have got themselves out of the comfort zone. They've actually pushed beyond what is easy to do, and part of that and I know this has happened multiple times in my career has been made redundant and that can happen for a multitude of reasons, right, and it was one of the things that I want to kind of put out there, and I know Simon and I and recruiting people have talked about the fact that we actually like recruiting people who'd be made redundant, like they've tried hard enough. Where they've tripped, you know, they've tripped on the shoelaces and picked themselves up and gone again. That's a big part of sales. But it can happen because you've got the wrong territory. It can happen because you stepped into an enterprise role from mid market before you were ready for it. Okay, great, you tried and you failed. Awesome, you've learned what? What are you not going to do again?

Daniel Bartels: 48:43

It can happen because, hey, coming out of a pandemic, free money meant that the market, the interest rates, have gone up and all of a sudden, everyone globally is trying to work out how do they become profitable, like all of these things can change, why organizations last week had 1000 salespeople, now they've got 500 and you're on the wrong side of the list, right? So that's the first thing I want to, as we kind of step into this conversation, put out there for salespeople. It's not about you but, guy, I think everyone on this call has been made redundant at some point in time, even recently. How do you I'm going to know you've had a pretty, you know, tumultuous experience in the last couple of years. Having had that experience a couple of times, which is pretty awful, how do you, like you, have that conversation like how do you deal with it next? Like how do you do with the person? But then what do you do with the in your career?

Guy Collison: 49:35

Wow that's. I have to say that's a very meta question If I'm thinking about the the actual circumstances here, because I think the best way to address this is you got to prioritize yourself first. I mean, your mental health is probably the most important thing that you really need to prioritize. I know that's a little bit of a given, but it's very, very important in the way that you address things, because the nuances in the way that your body language kind of emanates across the people that you speak to across that period of time, it really does have an impact. So, I mean, I got made redundant twice in the span of six months and I didn't realize it had an impact on my own mental health because I thought, great, you know, I'm going to take a step back, take some time off, enjoy my life for a few months, learn and, mind you, I did enjoy that time because I did a lot of cooking at home, put on a couple of extra kilos and I did a little bit of soul searching and I.

Guy Collison: 50:36

But on the flip side of that, I had a lot of challenges because it was basically during this whole economic downturn with tech where everyone was basically losing their jobs, so I think 25% of the marketplace. I don't know, I'm making up numbers here, but put it this way every job that I was applying for there was anywhere between 200 to 400 people applying for the same job, and I didn't learn that fact until maybe a month or so after I've applied for so many roles. And the more roles I applied for, the more it really impacted not just my mental health and my ego, because I thought, my God, I feel very worthless in the marketplace, these jobs that people were knocking on my door saying we need you, we are, and I'm turning down now. I couldn't even get past the screening, screening phase and it made me realize that I should have taken my own advice on the way that I actually approach customers. Because, put it this way, think about the technology adoption kind of curve, where you've got the innovators, you've got the early adopters and, I guess, all the way back to laggards. Now we want to invest our time with people in organizations that we sell to, who are the innovators, the early adopters, because they're the ones who kind of go on a journey with you. They understand the story, they understand exactly where the innovation and the trajectory is going to be for the company that you want to kind of invest in, but in your own personal development, you need to be in that space too.

Guy Collison: 52:04

And what I found was when I was applying for all of these jobs, I wasn't anywhere near that innovator space. I was applying for jobs, I was the laggard, and I didn't have that realization until I received so many rejections and I thought, oh my God, what do I need to do here? So this is where I think the critical juncture is. That helped me with what I was trying to do. I took a step back. I looked at the industry and I looked at where does everything need to be, where do I want to be in which organization? And so I started targeting companies where I thought this is where the next big thing is going to be.

Guy Collison: 52:39

And so I guess, if I can add a little bit of a talk truck to this, if we look at tech in the cloud space, application space a lot of organizations invested a lot of money during the pandemic and, dare I say, there's a little bit of overinvestment in that space. And because people overinvest, that means they're not going to be spending much on the application space. They want to be able to kind of come out of the pandemic, spend more money on optimization, and optimization is really important because this is kind of where the next five to 10 years is going to be. It's not application space, it's down one below, it's in the data layer, and the data layer is really important because you've got organizations out there who are trying to ingest right through to processing and even getting outputs Everything from Gen AI. I know that's a bit of a buzz word. Everyone wants to jump on that but the consumption of data in order to get the best outcomes for their customers, their customers customers is growing exponentially.

Guy Collison: 53:37

We're not talking about terabytes, we're talking about multiple petabytes, and I was looking at the companies that were basically in that data space who are the market leaders and what are the kind of risks in organizations in if they are going to go through this journey of developing their data strategy? And I thought, hang on, security is a thing. Back up and recovery, which is where I'm in, is another big space, and also the transformation of that data surfacing across the applications is where a lot of organizations are putting their focus in, and so this is where I started targeting customers, because then I flipped my own narrative around. I wanted to be the early adopter, or I also wanted to be the innovator, saying this is where I want to be, this is where I want to be telling my story to the customers and actually be that market leader. And that's kind of where everything kind of shifted and where it really helped me out.

Guy Collison: 54:32

And it just so happened that I found an amazing company now to work with, and I guess the thing that really helped me out there was the fact that my mindset changed, but also the mental health also changed. I had a lot more motivation, a lot more ability to kind of get up in the morning and say, hey, this is exactly what I want to do. I knew exactly the things that I had to do on the day-to-day basis in order to get to achieve success. Go back two or three months ago, when I was in that lagging stage. I'm like, oh man, emails, rejection, rejection, rejection. What am I doing wrong? And so it's a small little shift in that mindset.

Guy Collison: 55:11

But the other thing that also helped me shift is you have people around you who are in a similar position, who you can kind of almost spitball ideas or almost have a therapy, kind of a session about where you are in your redundancy journey, if I can call it that, and I think that's probably the best thing that ever happened to me was actually have people around me. So, simon, you've been one of those people that's helped me. Yeah, if it wasn't for that, I probably would be still stuck in this same closed loop of kind of feeling sorry for myself going. My worth in the marketplace is not that good. So, yeah, just wanted to thank you for that, but also it's helped me out a lot with my journey.

Simon Peterson: 55:50

It's an interesting journey, mate, because we've all been through it. I take out of that. There's one thing I learned. I mean I was made redundant a bit over a year ago and I'm very, very similar journey to you. You know depth of depression, da, da, da, da da. I was ashamed, to be honest with you. That was one of the emotions I was feeling, because every job I'd had in my career I was poached from the last one and suddenly I found myself I didn't have a path to the next. You know, mortgage payments are still being asked of, interest rates are going up. You know my daughter's school fees, yada, yada, yada.

Simon Peterson: 56:25

And I went and actually saw someone, went and saw a psychologist and talked to him about you know how I was feeling, etc. And it wasn't so much going to the psychologist what I realized. It was about actually being honest and talking to those around you that you trust about what you're actually experiencing. I feel worthless, I don't know what to do, I'm struggling and, honestly, getting those words out of my mouth change the entire narrative in my brain and then I became positive.

Simon Peterson: 56:58

And then I just suddenly went Well, a, I'm not useless. B I've done this for a while. I'm probably okay and, to your point, guy, what I really want to go do, I don't want to just go work in what I've just done. This is an opportunity to pivot and do something a little bit different, and I think for me personally, the most important thing was having an honest conversation about how I felt with the people around me that I trusted, and I think you know one of the failings of you, know that being being a bloke is a chronic inability to be honest with those around you about how you're actually feeling and that, my goodness, if there's one piece of advice I can give, be really honest about how you're feeling to those around you that you work with, and it's amazing them leaning in. Not everybody gives you perfect advice, but verbalizing the way you're feeling changes everything. It was just an incredible journey for me.

Guy Collison: 57:51

All right. I absolutely second that. I did not realize I was not okay until we had these conversations, because I spent all that time thinking, yeah, I'm perfectly fine, and I didn't even realize the small little things that were. I mean, if you look at a scale of zero to 10, as to where your mental state is, a 10 is kind of when you're really bad I was usually kind of hovering between a zero and a one. Small little things like, say, I may be a dropped, dropped a glass, glass breaks, I'm like that's fine, but I was starting to get a little bit short and it was impacting the people around me, especially my family, and I was oblivious to it and it was only until I verbalized it and we had this conversation. Right the moment you verbalize it and you realize, hang on, I'm actually not okay, and you start working, working around the conversations with the people around you, that's when you think, okay, now this is the therapy, this is the thing that I need, because it became real, it became something that I could address.

Simon Peterson: 58:43

Yep, absolutely.

Daniel Bartels: 58:45

Yeah, mate, you know the other thing. That's just the way you've just described that. That experience we've all been through, right, and I know so many people who be listening sort of have been through this. One will go through it.

Daniel Bartels: 58:55

So sometime in the future, job ads are an RFP and like, as a salesperson, we'll see in a RFP you go, oh really, oh no, this just it's the worst engagement, it's the worst way to try and find it, find a customer. So you don't do it like, you don't chase RFPs. Yet when you're applying to a job ad, it's an RFP. So if that's the only way, and look what the win rate of RFPs is like single digits, if you're lucky, right, what are we applying to RFPs for?

Daniel Bartels: 59:33

What do you do? You go out, you build relationships with people, you do some discovery, you work out whether I've got a product that you can fit. You sell them a product. Just, you're the product, right, yep, and just what you said. Then I could just actually react, doing the whole piece, because I've always said when you're, if you can't sell yourself as a salesperson, like, don't hire them. If that person can't walk in and run you through a sales cycle about themselves, don't hire them. They can't sell your stuff, but do the whole thing like, treat the whole thing like a sales cycle. Build your territory, work out what your target customers are, work out what product you want to. You know what you're going to go and sell and go and sell it. Mate, you've actually, you've really given me a, you know, a light bulb moment there in terms of how to look at that, that whole process of what you know what your next career step should look like. Yeah, wow, that's, I'm blown away. You've waited to write at the end to give me, give me a zing.

Guy Collison: 1:00:28

Thanks, mate. Actually I want to leave you guys with one thing, because this phrase or this quote that my father gave me, it never really resonated until now, and he kind of paraphrased it from Churchill, but it was a Churchill quote. And if you think about success, it's not about the to Simon's point, it's not about, I guess, learning from your successes, learning from your mistakes. But my father used to say to me that success is basically the capacity to survive failure, and when you survive failure you understand all of those things. That's the way you build resilience, but then you become a better person and that's what leads to success.

Daniel Bartels: 1:01:06

Mate, we normally end that. We normally end each podcast asking for a great piece of advice, and I didn't even have to ask the question and you gave it. So, mate, look, we're at the top of the hour. We're going to want to wrap it up there. Guy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This has been a fantastic conversation. We've walked through your life in a whole bunch of different areas. We've looked at the concept of the ongoing season, what it's like to be made redundant, discovery processes, mate. We've really covered the whole gamut of the sales process. So, mate, thank you so much for coming on For all of our listeners.

Daniel Bartels: 1:01:44

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