The Power of Consultative Sales with Greg Harbor | GrowthPulse The B2B Sales Podcast Ep 18

Welcome to Growth Pulse, where curiosity fuels sales, leadership reigns supreme, and continuous learning is key. Buckle in as we host Greg Arbour, a seasoned sales leader with a fascinating journey from consulting to tech vendor at none other than SAP. Greg generously lets us in on his career trajectory, illustrating how he evolved professionally, the crucial lessons he picked up along the way, and his steadfast belief in the power of industry expertise and lifelong learning.

We're also getting an exclusive look into Greg's winning sales strategy. Hear how he turned a client's business problem into an amazing $4 million deal using just his understanding of leadership perspectives and business processes. Greg's insightful discussions about building trust, sparking curiosity, and the immense value of collaboration in the tech space will leave you with an enriched perspective. We then venture into the virtual workspace, offering much-needed advice to the young guns ready to make their mark in the sales field.

But that's not all; Greg leaves us with some timeless leadership principles that have stood the test of his 30-year career in tech. From leading by example and truly engaging with your team to the importance of fun in the process - Greg has it all covered. Tune in as he shares his unique insights and foundational principles that have propelled him to success. If you're looking to drive future pipelines and deliver predictable business outcomes, this episode is an absolute must-listen. So join us in this enlightening conversation brimming with invaluable insights and advice for all sales professionals.

Transcript

Dan Bartels: 0:00

Welcome to Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. You might be a salesperson. You could lead a sales team. Maybe run a business, or you're a battle tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you. Great salespeople are built, not born. We learn so much from the deals we win, and 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 everyone to another episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. I'm Dan Bartels, one of your hosts here with my co host, Simon Peterson. Mate, how are you buddy?

Simon Peterson: 1:20

Hey Dan, I'm really well. Got a good episode ready to come today. I'm really excited about it.

Dan Bartels: 1:26

Yeah, mate. We've got one of your, your, uh, your long term sort of colleagues and friends. Um, you know, Greg Harbour, mate. I'm really excited for him to join the show. Um, you know, I'll give a bit of a sort of background on Greg. I mean, look, you know, what he spent. Five years consulting or more than that with sort of Anderson Deloitte and Ceremon Strategy Consulting, a whole, a whole history with you at SAP, mate. You guys are some of the, some of these people who, you're thought whenever you had to leave the business, um, pre sales, value engineering, sales and leadership, uh, both here and, and in Singapore for SAP across HCM, strategic customers, intelligence spend. Stepped recently into, into Cap Jam. Mate, this is, this is a real coup for the show. I'm really pleased you brought him on Simon.

Simon Peterson: 2:12

And he's not a Excellent. And very nice to meet you.

Dan Bartels: 2:16

Welcome Greg. Welcome.

Greg Harbor: 2:18

Exactly. Uh, no, thank you very much. I appreciate the welcome.

Dan Bartels: 2:22

So Greg, have I, have I, have I very, have I represented your, your history and your, and your resume to, to, uh, to the right level of, uh, of accuracy?

Greg Harbor: 2:30

Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I think like most people's careers, right? Some of it is, is, is well thought through and planned and set with great ambition and, and lots of logic and, and, and structure. And others just happens. You go, hell, I didn't plan that, how did that happen? Uh, be careful what you wish for. And, uh, and, and, and that's kind of a little bit of, I think, you know, the reality of how my career has gone forward. But, but I've had a lot of fun. Absolutely mate. And I guess, um, you know, you, you started in, um, consulting, which I always think is probably the best grounding for a sales career that possibly is. You learn about, uh, companies, how they operate, how decisions are made. Tell me about how you got into consulting way back in the early days when you had lots of hair and a few less wrinkles. Yeah, thanks man. And so I really appreciate you pointing out the lack of hair yet again. But it's, uh,

Dan Bartels: 3:29

And I think, I think you've got the most share of everyone on the episode at the moment, mate. So it's all right.

Greg Harbor: 3:35

Exactly. But I look, I joined, um, good old Anderson consulting, which is dating myself, um, over in, in London and, and spent a bit of time with them in Chicago, uh, doing the whole, you know, uh, in induction that Anderson kind of puts people through and, you know, clearly dating myself cause we were, we were doing implementations of things like Lotus notes at the London stock exchange and, and, um, And it truly was a bit of a heyday of, of consulting, but it's I, I completely agree with you that, um, you know, one of the things that was sort of eternally drummed into you in all of those early years of my career, whereas I landed up with whether good luck or good fortune. I mean, I landed up working with people who were just obsessed around the value and outcome of whatever we were delivering for an end customer. And where we actually achieving that, where we delivering the outcomes that we set out achieve and where we making a difference. And I think that just really stuck with me all through my career. And, you know, and I think probably one of the core attributes of how I differentiated myself, you know, in a very crowded tech sales environment for many years.

Simon Peterson: 4:56

Absolutely. And I think, um, so you did, did the consulting gig for a while and you've obviously moved over to what I consider the exciting side of tech, um, on the vendor side. And, uh, you know, I think that's a, it's a great move. And I think that's, you know, where we first met in the early days of SAP down here in Australia. And, uh. You know, 17 years later, um, but I think, um, tell me about, um, you know, joining a software company, uh, like SAP for the first time, what were your early experiences, um, what was fun, what was different than, uh, your consulting days?

Greg Harbor: 5:28

Absolutely. top end firms, McKinsey's, Boo's, you know, and so the Deloitte boys, the, you know, the Accenture boys had all kind of gone their different ways. And one of the things I was a little bit. nervous about was one positive. I didn't really appreciated working in the big consulting organizations is that you were surrounded with thought leadership. You know, there were industry captains, you know, just having coffee next to you, you know, having lunch next to you. And I was, I always found it incredibly rewarding to You know, be curious about what these folk were doing. You know, the project they'd be working on on, you know, smart metering with, uh, you know, in the future where energy trading was going or whether that was in the mining and, you know, the whole, you know, idea of where pit to port would lead and what would happen. You know, there was a lot of thought leadership. And when I made the move to technology, one of the things I was concerned about was, would I lose that kind of that. Competitive edge that that depth in in industry and, you know, whether by good luck or or or lots of great planning, and I think it was a bit of a mix of both. I landed up at at S. A. P. And, you know, this in, in my, in, in my perspective of why a lot of customers have stayed with SAP, why SAP continues to be the juggernaut in the tech industry. It is, is because of its depth of industry skills, its depth of being able to lead and engage with customers around. You know, the business processes that inherently industry specific, um, that they need to orchestrate every single day to stay competitive. And, you know, so for me, for me, I very quickly found that I was amongst colleagues, that there were people that understood industry, understood what it meant to operate within these industries and how to be successful. So, so I was thrilled with that, but I went on a massive learning curve. Um, you know, I, I, I probably, dare I say it, I turned up with a little bit of attitude. I was like, And I'm a consulting guy, like I know a lot of stuff, right? And I've been working with all these amazing Australian companies and European companies and like, I know shit, right? I really am, you know, pretty switched on with all of this stuff. And, and then you move into kind of a vendor sales environment. And it's sort of like, Well that's cool, that got you the job. Now you just need to sell something here and we'll start to respect you here. It was a bit of a wake up call, right? So I found that pretty interesting.

Dan Bartels: 8:26

So did you find that transition, Greg, from Okay. We're selling knowledge or we've got, we've got, you know, those thought leaders you mentioned who are there to either, you know, work out what the knowledge or the insight should be, or bringing it to a customer. I mean, that's one transaction to an, to an organization, right. But, but when it transitions to, okay, now, and you know, we've all worked within some, some pretty large, you know, either German or North American organizations, et cetera. There are those, there are those leaders in there and that, that knowledge and that, that thought leadership, but it only transacts in a product transaction. So did you find that engagement to be really different, the way you were selling knowledge or the way you were selling insights or that thought leadership, did that really change from a product sale to a, to a knowledge sale or vice versa?

Simon Peterson: 9:15

Yeah look, it absolutely did and it was part of the initial brief I had coming into Um, you know, I, I, I joined SAP really through a bit of a, a networking event, uh, CXO networking event that I had always chosen to invest in. And I landed up meeting two people, a gentleman by the name of John Lombard. Uh, who today is CEO of one of NTT's organizations in this region and a lady by the name of Geraldine McBride who was at that time the Managing Director of SAP Australia and Geraldine had kind of, you know, Sat on the sideline and watched a bit of the consulting work I'd been doing in the marketplace. And she said, you, you see a lot of customers, you, you, you clearly involved in a lot of programs and pretty significant transformation programs. So what would your advice be to me as MD of Australia of SAP? You know, and I, I probably, you know, have a glass of wine, shared a bit too much of a, a very honest perspective on. S. A. P. Leaving themselves very exposed to, you know, big consulting houses and the value that they were driving for organizations. I was quite surprised to see how few of their sales organization truly understood the value they were delivering, and I thought that was a miss. And I thought it was a miss to capture more value on the SAP side, uh, perhaps deepen their relationships with the C suite and inside of a lot of organizations, um, and, and potentially create the path for an upsell. And this was long before SAP had a massive portfolio of cloud solutions that they were trying to sell as well. Right. So, so that's kind of how it happened. I think it was about. A week later, Geraldine called me up and said, I want you to come and join us. And she, she offered me a job to come in and, you know, change the culture. So you're exactly right, Dan. I mean, uh, you know, the, the, the view was that we needed to try and pivot and, and what SAP wanted to do was really move itself away from being a product by sales organization, uh, you know, with deep expertise in terms of the engineering of the products and the features and functions of product to something that was. Better kind of described and, and story told in the language of a customer.

Dan Bartels: 11:44

Yeah. I mean, I think that that customer language is so critically important, right? Because we, it's amazing how often I see, um, in, in different sales organizations, irrespective of their technology or not, get so focused on the thing that they're selling and they want to share this immense knowledge about the product of a solution they're selling and, you know, whether, whether it be, you know, thinking about the guy that runs my local gym and, you know, The wealth of knowledge he has, but all I care about is just getting fit and healthy. I don't really care about the ins and outs of it. Right. Um, and, and when a customer buys any of our technology products, all they care about is what it's going to change in their business, not, not, you know, how many calls is it using or what the code was used to written to write this compared to something else it's that, that they just expect is there. So as you kind of, as you built that function out inside SAP, well, how did you get them to behave differently? How did you get people at the ground level, whether it be an AE or a leader or, you know, a solution engineer to actually start to think differently about the customer?

Simon Peterson: 12:47

Yeah. Well look, a couple of things. I mean, initially, you know, it's Geraldine trying to embrace me inside of the organization. You know, I, my function,'cause it didn't exist. Um, my, my role was, was housed within the pre-sales area of the business. And, uh, we, we decided to call it value engineering. There was a, a gentleman that I had found through the SAP ecosystem called Shaki RI over in, uh, in Europe, uh, in, in North America. Um, you know, incredible guy and, you know, had a vision for how you'd, you know, from a methodology point of view, structure this approach to market. So, so I leaned on that method as a, as an approach to build out something that was scalable and repeatable, um, The rubber hit the road in terms of hard practice. My view of salespeople is that they're relatively simple people. And if you can demonstrate to a sales leader, to an account executive, how they can Sell bigger, sell faster, uh, with lower risk, uh, with greater access to more people, the minds that matter, you, you don't actually have to convince them for long, right? Um, I, I, I recall in the very early days, working with the New South Wales. Um, sales manager for for S. A. P. And and working with a customer and consumer products area. And we had an account executive who was who was trying to sell them a version of their warehouse. S. A. P. S. Latest version of the warehouse management product. And I remember sitting down with this AE and a co colleague at the time, a gentleman by the name of Murray Bush. He and I had both sat down together and we looked at what this guy was trying to sell. And he was so excited because he'd been off to one of SAP's technology events and come back full of knowledge about why our warehouse management product was so awesome. And You know, we, we talked about it in the context of the customer we're trying to sell to, and in our CRM systems, we had a 500k opportunity that was listed for Q4, and we were sitting in Q1, and we asked him who he was talking to, and it was everyone that was related to the warehouse operations inside of this client. And we landed up putting a picture together that was very much around the supply chain of this organization and contextually why an inefficient warehouse was really just symptomatic of a much broader problem that they had in their supply chain. And the AE was like, I don't know how to have this conversation. And we said, well, that's okay. Come with us. And we'll help you have the conversation, but it probably the people will end up talking to won't know a lot of the answers to the questions we want to explore. And that's exactly what happened with the more we really drove a really intelligent conversation around the business process execution and where the gaps were fundamentally in their supply chain. We landed up identifying a much bigger problem for the client. The net net of it was that in Q2 of the very same year, we sold a four million, uh, Australian dollar deal with direct access to, to the, the, uh, the director in charge of their supply chain function, uh, as well as replacing a whole series of other solutions that we landed up with. And I remember the, the New South Wales sales leader at the time coming to me and saying. Greg, I'm not entirely sure I understood what you did, but can you do it again?

Dan Bartels: 16:36

Hello. Yeah. Yeah. Deal. You brought it forward. Two quarters. Just, just keep doing that.

Simon Peterson: 16:41

keep doing that. And, and, and, you know, so it took a while, right? Yeah, precisely right. And so, you know, we did have to go on a journey and we had to scale it out. And, but a lot of it was lead by example and, and, you know, tickets to the SAP leadership. Because it did sound like a very foreign conversation. It did sound like a very different way to go and approach organizations. And we were disrupting what was an incredibly well oiled machine. I mean, that, when I joined the SAP organization, it was, you know, was arguably one of the strongest sales, software sales organizations in the industry. And so to come in and say, we're going to do things a little differently was quite bold. Right. And, you know, we knew we needed to do that through some very tangible examples and showcase what good looked like. And then we would take people on the journey with us, standing there with PowerPoint slides and a whole transformation methodology that was never going to work. Interesting, Greg,

Dan Bartels: 17:44

Tell me more about that. Yeah. I'm really interested about, about that little bit there. Sorry, Simon. But

Simon Peterson: 17:50

I was going to say the same.

Dan Bartels: 17:51

you know, you, you. Yeah, you know, so it's not about the slides. It's not about a transformation deck. But the thing that I heard you sharing that story just a moment ago was about how you accessed significantly higher leadership than what this particular salesperson was originally engaged at. You know, they were kind of siphoned into a, you know, a particular part of an organization. They were just talking to the warehouse team. And then you built out, um, a story around, and you did a whole bunch of research, I'm assuming as well before you talk to the customer, but a story around. Solving a much, much bigger, say, a business problem that you could see was there. How did you actually open the door to talk to the other people wider in the business? Because that's the thing that I think lots of sales people really struggle with. I've got my champion, I'm talking to my guy, Hey, if I ring, you know, three levels above him, it's going to piss my guy off. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to upset that person. So now I'm going to stuck behind, I'm going to be stuck behind this one individual who's got, you know, 25, 000, you know, 25. Sign off process, not 4 million sign off. Um, how did you open that up? Cause I think lots of people get stuck there.

Greg Harbor: 19:02

Yeah, look, it was, it was a couple of things. One is we were always very collaborative. Um, you know, in in every one of these early ventures, we didn't go around people. I always found if you If you broke trust with people that were sponsoring your activity inside of an organization, it was a surefire way to get yourself stonewalled, right? So one, we made sure that we were quite open and we were transparent with, with, with questioning and the conversations. And second thing is that we couched that in that, that, that additional discovery with clients. In, in this very nice space of genuine business curiosity and outcomes and saying, we can deliver the software to you. You're not buying software for software's sake. You're buying software because you want to have an impact on the business processes that you're involved in. And those. Business processes drive KPIs that your leadership are looking at every single day. The leadership that's looking at the performance of these processes are not single fold, they're multifold. So we've got a CFO, you might have a procurement leader, you might have a supply chain leader. They're all going to be looking at different KPIs and those are the lens through which they measure success and value. And. In order to give the person comfort what we were the way we would explain it was that we were looking to cover off those people to ensure that we had a really good sense of what those KPIs were and how we were going to positively impact on those KPIs. So they looked good that we were de risking the projects and the programs that we were looking to put in place, right? And then we would drive the conversation and they would often sponsor on the back of that approach. They would sponsor the conversations to go and talk to other individuals.

Simon Peterson: 21:05

Yeah, that's, um, that's incredible, Greg. I think, you know, key, what I got out of that is. A real focus on, , what are the business outcomes that each of the ladies you're talking to get measured on and a real genuine empathetic view about their day to day, how they run their business, what success looks like, et cetera. So you almost become part of their team in that conversation where you're myopically focused on how they measured, how they improve, what they do to get better, et cetera. And I love what you said. It's, it's not about the software. It's about what the software can do. Uh, to improve the business and the KPI. So that's, I mean, that's fundamental. I think anybody listening to this, , loud and clear, , one of the biggest problems I see, and I know this is one of your pet peeves, Dan, is you join an organization as a salesperson, the first thing they do is give you the first call deck, , and that typically is 50 slides on, why the software is great, and I think Greg, what you're saying is, it's probably the worst thing you could possibly do., to build trust and gain momentum in a sales cycle. Yeah. So do you, do you see,, Greg Harbor: Possibly completely right. And it's it's about how you tell those stories, Simon. And, uh, you know, I think one of the things and you'd relate to this because we worked together for so many years, I always considered myself a massive champion of authentic curiosity, and I'd always say to salespeople if you honestly, when you sit at night and you say, I'm honestly really not that interested in my client's business, then find a different territory because you can't fake authenticity and you go and sit with these individuals. You can't fake it. You've got to be genuinely interested in their business and what it is they're striving for and their ambition to grow their own organization. If you're genuinely curious about that and they're interested in that and you're leaning into that conversation, that translates. Most people that they will see that in the way that you're driving that conversation. then nine times out of 10, there's always an outlier, but nine times out of 10 people will respond quite positively to that. absolutely,

Dan Bartels: 23:12

And Greg, I think that, I think part of that is people, sales people too often become focused on their own number. Like it's real and you know, the number at the end of the month or the quarter or whatever their, their measurement cycle is., Getting to that number is the deliverable, whereas if they change the focus, and that's what I kind of heard from the stories you're sharing here, you change the focus to be, I am. I'm focused on my customer getting the outcomes that they should if they engage with us. If you focus on those things that the transactions occur, the deals grow, , your customer trusts you long term, all the things you want to do as great business people, which is get referrals and all those things come when you genuinely become. Curious at its core around your industry or in your segment or in your technology. You won't have the answers to all the questions. No one's expecting that of you. That's why we have networks and colleagues and people who work with us to try and grow that out. And even if, even if they don't know the answer, often your customers know that you don't have all the answers., and we might have to work this out on the journey, or maybe there isn't an answer to that question right now., but

Greg Harbor: 24:21

don't be afraid of it. You know, I mean, I think that. You know, one of, I've always said through to, to other sales leaders is one, one of the, one of the downsides of having such a great brand and, and a really structured talent acquisition process is we're hiring incredibly talented people. And the problem with a lot of very top talented individuals is they, you guys will relate to this. You have such high expectations of yourself. And when you've got really high expectations, you almost feel like you don't want to go out and talk to a client about stuff where you don't actually know the answer ahead of time. And I was saying, you know, the, the more confident sales people, the better sales people, Get comfortable being uncomfortable. They get comfortable in the knowledge that the one that definitely done their homework, but they're prepared to go out and explore areas with the client where they don't really know what the answer is going to be and where that might lead you. And frankly, in my, you know, 25, 30 years of experience in selling, I'd say that's, those have been the conversations. Nine times out of 10 that have led to the bigger deals, the way more interesting transactions and partnerships that we've established with other clients.

Dan Bartels: 25:37

Sometimes it's as simple as just. The question of, um, hey, listen, I don't know the answer to that, but how important is that to your business? And should we all spend some time working that out? When a customer says yes, all of a sudden, you know, it opens up Pandora's box, not Pandora's box, that's the wrong analogy, but like it opens up a treasure box of, of what might be inside with this customer.

Simon Peterson: 26:00

Greg, you've talked about. Yeah. Building trust and curiosity about your, your client. Look, we've worked together a long time. One of the, one of the traits I always loved about the way you operate is. It's, it's the team and the collaboration amongst your colleagues as well., I've, I've seen you develop some friendships over time, but when, when you guys sit down, you mentioned Murray, I just, all I think of when you talk about Murray Bush and Greg Harbour, I just think about people laughing in a room with a whiteboard, for hours and hours and hours on end. And, you know, you, you, you build these really interesting trusted internal relationships. You sit there with a whiteboard. But you're generally good mates and you'll, you'll go out, you know, with the team and have a couple of beers and always bouncing ideas of each other. How, how important is it to you to have a bunch of colleagues around you that, you know, are almost your best mates that you riff off, you're constantly challenging each other to get better and you just look like you're having a great time.

Greg Harbor: 27:00

It's critical. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't put a high enough mark on, on, on that requirement. Um, sales can be a very lonely job and whether you're in a direct quota carrying role yourself as an AE, whether you're managing a sales territory. And as, as you move further up in your sales career, as I've done to now managing a geography, that's off the planet, everywhere from Middle East to China, it can become increasingly lonely. And you've got to have some people that are not yes people that look at your title and get awed and feel like they need to tell you what you want to hear. You want to have people around you that can still be honest, that are, that are genuinely telling you What the customer is saying, you know, where are those listening posts that you've got, that have got the voice of customer deeply embedded inside of them so that you keep yourself real and grounded in terms of the way that you work. The second thing I think that's so important about that is. In the tech industry today, a lot of the problems we're solving are inherently very complicated solutions to solve. They're very easy stuff, a lot of these clients have got very smart people that are solving it themselves. So we are out there trying to solve some of the more complicated things. And most often, it requires a community of people to come together. The most successful AEs, I think, are the ones that are able to collaborate and harness the power of the organization. to really help solve the problems for clients. Moreover, then look how smart and amazing I am as an individual myself, right? And actually it's quite interesting because I believe having been on the client side, clients value that as well. They're looking for an account executive, a representative. If you think about the word, it's a representative into that organization. That means someone that will go and get stuff done. They'll find the right person. You don't expect they're going to know everything. But what you do expect is they're going to work their little tail off to go and find the right person within the organization who can come back and help. And I think that if you do that and you have fun, it's much more fun, you know, being successful together. There's too few organizations having fun, right? Um, you know, and I think it's something you've got to be, you've got to watch as a sales leader, right? If, if, if it's all about the quarter, it's all about the linearity, the only conversations we're having around the gaps. And particularly when discretionary spend macroeconomic geopolitical environments are like the environments we find ourselves in today, it's very easy to find yourself just having that conversation with your sales teams. And right now you need to speak to the heart of people. You need that intrinsic motivation that really inspires people to go and be pretty special every day. These are difficult jobs. We're asking people to go and solve difficult problems, but not a lot of free cash around. Right? So, so I would say that's, really important thing for us to focus on with the teams that we're playing with.

Simon Peterson: 30:06

Absolutely. So Greg, um, just thinking through. You know, you've talked about the team, you know, we, we grew up in this space, you know, 15, 20 years ago, we cut our teeth where you. You turned up to an office every single day and you were able to build relationships with your team. Obviously over the last three or four years, we're quite different, right? As you mentioned, times have changed. And now we're sitting here doing a podcast over, you know, a video stream right now. I, I struggle to see how younger boys and girls coming through being, wanting to be top salespeople. running their entire careers from a, you know, a Zoom screen or a team screen, et cetera. Um, what's your, what's your advice to sort of younger, younger people coming up, given what we've just said about the importance of collaboration and building real meaningful relationships with your colleagues? It's it, are we losing that? How, how do we keep Spark going as a, as a, as an industry?

Greg Harbor: 31:06

Now look, uh, Simon, it's a, it's an absolutely brilliant question. I'm You know, I do think we are losing it and I think we are, I think there are so many young folk in our organizations today, men and women, young boys and girls that are, that are so obsessed on balance and my rights to kind of work everywhere in this kind of free world and a virtual world. And some of the, you know, the lessons of working in a team environment are genuinely some of the best lessons that you learn to really, you know, create the bedrock and foundations of skills for your career going forward. And, you know, with all due respect to Zoom and to Microsoft Teams and other technologies on virtual collaboration, they're not the same. As that in person collaboration, if I was a young person right now, as I talked to my son about his role in tech sales, and I'm saying it doesn't matter whether you've got an open door policy at work where you can work five days a week at home, don't go into the office, go and spend three days. a week in the office. Go and plan your week out. Do the one day that you're there. Do all the admin and the stuff that you need to do while you're actually in the office. You know, make sure you have that opportunity to connect with others. It's those corridor conversations that are so enriching and you'll never know when you need to lean on some of those friendships and those relationships and when those anecdotes that you've heard over lunch and stuff start to become very useful. And that's when. Your role as a representative of the company to the client. You start to really impart some of that knowledge. Uh, the second thing is don't steer away from going to your clients. You know, I think we've lost some of the skill of actually walking the corridors. We always used to talk about pounding the corridors of our customers. You know, we'd pride ourselves. You'd see great salespeople who would say, well, you know, here's my card for this customer and here's my card for that customer. And it's because they virtually were, you know, they were there at least a day or two a week getting to know those clients. And a lot of the clients that we work for don't have. The same open policy to virtual working that we do in the tech industry as well. So I think you've got to mirror some of that, but you know, to me, it's critical. Irrespective of what your own company policy is, I would encourage particularly people in the early part of their career or people taking on a new role or a new sales territory or new industry sector that they're looking after. You know, I'd invest, I'd over invest in, in, in spending time in the office. Engaging with, with, with other people and finding, you know, better ways to balance it.

Dan Bartels: 33:55

So, Greg, if you're, if you're leading a, a small team now, um, so I think it's easy for us to say to an AE what you should do, right? But I think a lot of those. Uh, engagements and models of what, what, what good looks like. I kind of set for your leader, even if you've been around for a while, you join a new organization and how you turn up to the office and there's no one here. What am I driving? 25, 30 minutes to get to the, well it's been sitting on a, on a smelly train for me to get to the office and there's nobody there. So how do you, how do you think, uh, you know, a first line or second line leader should, should be focusing on building Those types of engagements. Like what are the types of things you recommend that they either build into their culture or their, their team or ask their business for? Like, how do you build that re engagement?

Greg Harbor: 34:43

Oh, Dan, I, you know, it sounds very cliche, but you, you've gotta be the change you want to see, you know, role, role model it. I, you know, in, in, and I'll, I'll take it to a little bit of a story. So, um, you know, in, in, in one of the last roles I did at SAP on on, I took on a role as the senior Vice President to run. All of their intelligence spend solutions. So, uh, Ariba and, and, uh, and, and, uh, field glass and all of SAP's assets that they'd acquired, that were all involved in procurement and how do we drive smart, intelligent procurement across the market, this is one of the areas of SAP, I'd not actually spent a huge amount of times. I didn't know a lot of those people. A lot of those folk had come through acquisitions. I didn't have a lot of relationships and I got appointed to that role literally as COVID hit. And I was in an Asia Pac responsibility, Asia Pac one. I didn't know a lot of these people either. A COO, a Chief of Staff, the whole sales organization. I've never met anyone. I've never met any of them. And as stuff started to open up, you know, we were stuck in a situation where people were working virtually all of the time. There were a couple of things that we did. One is, I made sure as a leader that our team calls. We had our videos on as much as we could, but they were, the team calls had enough space in them that we could get to know each other a little bit as well. So, you know, we actually did start off a little bit of a, an internal conversation where we had a lot of leaders of different parts of the area, the different customer success leader, COO, you know, myself. Various other leaders that were playing different leadership roles in our business actually coming and sharing their career story with, with other people in the organization made us kind of tangible, made us a bit more real as things then opened up. What I started to do with my immediate team is I said, I'm going to be in on a Tuesday. It's just as a first day. So I'm going to come in on a Tuesday. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass, train, do all the various bits and pieces, but I'm coming in and funny enough, nominating a single day, I found other people would turn up and that cascaded through the organization. You know, and that role modeling, I think, is, is a hugely impactful way to work and irrespective whether it's the questioning techniques that you want, whether it's getting people into the office, when you find top leaders role modeling the behavior. Lots of really good stuff changes. And if you continue to do it, so it's not just a one off. We came in for one big workshop, but you know, I'm consistently here each week. I'll make some time in the diary. I made sure that my, my, uh, my office had set aside 90 minutes every single time I was in the office just to connect with people. Um, so that People that were in the office could come and talk to me, ask me my advice, if I could help, I would, right? And, and I think that that was a really important thing to do. And, and I learned that trick from Gayle Kelly, actually, when, you know, she was running St. George Bank, and I was doing some consulting work for her, and she was trying to, Really re tweak the, you know, that St. George kind of bank, uh, the branch environment to be more of a sales environment. I remember running this project with them thinking about all the smart things we could do to turn these branches into a sales environment. And then one of the steering committee briefing meetings, Gayle turned around to me as a good, another good South African does. And she said, well, what do I do? I thought, shit, you know, I hadn't really thought that one through, the changes for everyone else. And she went, no, the change is for all of us and I've got to lead the change. So, and I said to her, like, I don't know. I must be honest. I haven't got the answer for that. I hadn't thought that through. And I was working with a guy called Nick Wilde and he thought I was mad for saying that I didn't know the answer. But what it led to is that Gayle then sat down and we spent some time and she figured out what she would do is she'd just call a couple of customers and thank them for being a customer of the bank. And that's all she would do. And she started to do two phone calls every single day, call a couple of customers, just say, thanks for, for being a customer. It was a bit of a laugh because she said it took her more time to convince him that it was in fact her that was calling, but, but it wasn't a prank call, but, but what was, what was really funny is that her leadership watched that and went, wow, if Gayle's got time to make two calls, why don't I, right? And that just trickled through the organization. And I think. You know, the score board shows what happened at St. George, they set themselves apart relative to a banking world at the time that was renowned for being very uncustomer centric, you they were, they were not terribly customer centric and St. George really set itself apart in that way. That wasn't the only thing, but I dare say it was one of the key triggers. There was that, that behavior and I learned that from her. And so, and I took that into my own business and it really worked.

Dan Bartels: 39:50

That's a really interesting insight, which is like, you know, cause you think so many organizations will look at that, , that need for change and the way they'll deal with it is I'm going to mandate something. I'm going to tell everyone they've got to be in three days a week. or I'm going to, Hey, if I'm, if I'm going to, I need your cut spend, I'm going to tell everyone I'm going to cut spend by 25%. In fact, um, Particular organization that I used to work for, I used to laugh quite regularly when we're, you know, you could, you could tell when we're going to make an acquisition coming up because all of a sudden the, uh, the CEO would say to everybody, uh, we've got to reduce T and E yet. Then you'd see a couple of days later, that particular CEO flying on the jet. Hold on. This is not living. This is not living

Greg Harbor: 40:32

Daniel 100%. You see it the time. You know, it's like do as I say, not as I do, right? And most of our sales teams are not idiots. They see that, right? And no one buys into that. If you're sending out something saying turn up three days a week, but you never ever see the leader right? If, you know, please watch every expense. And then, you know, you see them on Twitter flying, you know, first class all over the place and massive bottles of champagne. You've got to think about the optics, right?

Dan Bartels: 40:58

Absolutely. But I think that what you're sharing there is the, that the inside is. Don't mandate it. In fact, don't even tell everyone, tell anyone you're doing it. Have a plan, have an intention. You know, Gayle built the model of what she was going to do with intention. And she probably thought if people see me doing this, hey, I'm role modeling it for others. This is setting the standard and this is what, what it's, what's really important. And, you know, and then would probably measure my guesses. Hey, are we seeing more of my leaders going through this process? Are we actually seeing that change? And, but also allowing them to step into what change meant for their particular department or division or whatever it may be. But hey, listen, I'm actually exhibiting this change myself, but didn't mandate. Every executive needs to make two calls because now it becomes about measuring versus just what are we seeing as an output. I mean, that's a

Greg Harbor: 41:44

And, and I've got to say that, that, that time, you know, setting aside the time in the, while I was in the office was actually something that was really important to and I'd recommend it for any sales leader that's leading teams, you know, and, and that's something that, that was a lesson I learned from, from, from my EA, Deborah Ballard, who, who was amazing. And she said, you come in the office and, and you've got. back to back meetings. I literally had to book time to go to the loo, you know, and it was so intense and was all the right things to be doing in all very important meetings. You know, then you might as well just have been at home because no one ever got to talk to you. You didn't really collaborate and engage with anyone. It's actually setting aside 90 minutes where you truly could. Go and see the white of the eyes of people actually put your phone to the side and actually genuinely listen to your team and the things they were raising. I mean, you, you picked up some incredible wisdom in that, in that moment, you, you felt the temperature of your sales team in a much more authentic way than you did if you were reading it as an email or some, you know, survey outcome that HR would be sending you. And, and, and I, I think, you know, for me, that was. Very rich and very rewarding.

Simon Peterson: 43:02

it's fantastic., I've learned a few things on this, uh, on this podcast. It's been awesome. I think we're probably getting to, uh, the top of the hour and as, as we always do, Greg, um, it's been spectacular to chat to you, but mate, if you think back over that, you know, you, you, you did date yourself 30 odd year career. Um, you, you've learned a few things, mate, over the time, um, A lot's changed in tech over that time, the actual technology has, but there's some of the fundamentals, I think that you refer to are almost timeless. Um, as you reflect on that, are there any two or three pearls of wisdom that you'd like to share with us? Um, things that have really resonated, I think you've had some spectacular stories. You've been, um, you know, for me personally, the fact that you're aware enough to, to watch someone like Gayle Kelly. Do what she does and be a spectacular leader. And I think one of the greatest skills you can have is someone that observes greatness or say something that's fantastic and then goes, well, how do I apply that to my everyday? I can see that in yourself. Um, you've got a bunch of people on the list to do this podcast that have certainly enjoyed the stories, but any, any sort of pearls of wisdom, things that sort of strike you as fairly foundational for Greg as he's gone through that 30 year career. Mm

Greg Harbor: 44:27

Look, I think Simon, I mean, there's, there's so many things, but you know, at, at, at its absolute core is this obsession with your, your own clients and the curiosity around their own growth ambitions, you know, in the same way that you're passionate about the company you work for, um, well, hopefully you are, you know, the, the employees of your clients are equally passionate about their businesses. You know, they are thinking about how they pay the school fees or, you know, buy that property or whatever it is that they want to do with a commercial return from that engagement by their own organizations being successful. So I would say to any sales person, invest in that, invest in that and understand intimately what are the drivers of growth, what are the ambitions that your client has as an organization, then stand back from that and think. Why does my organization and the services and the products that we offer, what does it matter in the context of that client's ambition? And why does it matter today? And if we were really spectacular in the way that we drove a partnership and a relationship, what would that look like in three years? So don't, don't just have a, a one quarter view on Have a, have a longer term ambition, share with a customer. That when you're thinking about them, you're thinking about a longer term commitment and relationship, and I'm telling you that longer term relationship, that genuine interest and curiosity in how you help their organization be better, will be reciprocated in kind, in terms of the way that you work. The second thing is I would try and make, you know, big change comes through small tweaks. Um, you know, Paul Mitchell from the Human Enterprise taught me this through one of his L5 leadership programs, and it's always stuck with me, you know, that, that if you do something in a repeated way, many, many times over, and you just make it like a habit, build rituals and habits, you know, things really start to stick, right? So, you know, I think. When you're driving into these conversations with clients, thinking about the KPIs, thinking about understanding what the different motivations are from a CFO perspective, from a procurement perspective, an HR perspective, the CEO's perspective or the board's perspective. Everyone's got a different lens through which they're looking at performance and looking at success and growth. And, and you need to understand those perspectives. If you really want to be able to collaborate and relate with an organization, success will come through your ability to harness the power of your community. So build a network. Uh, engage with people across your organization and don't try and do it all alone and for hell, right? It's a lot more fun doing it with friends and friends that you can have for a lifetime And I think i'm talking about that here, right? The people that that will will see that genuine kind of that that genuine relationship. So so try and kind of You know, I think, you know, lean on, on friends. Don't, you know, be in such a rush to know the answer to every single problem that a client's trying, trying, trying to solve and be there as well. Equally for your colleagues to, you know, I don't think we practice enough. I think we've gotten out of a habit of. practicing how many times we go out to a client and we hadn't really role played or already thought through the questions that we're going to put to a client and why those questions are important in the context of their business, right? We often just fly out and we're waiting for some pre sales person to kind of have the demo ready or have the slides ready. And we're all trying to figure out how do we, how do we deliver 35 slides in the 20 minutes that's been allocated to us, right? You know, less is more, less is more, so,

Dan Bartels: 48:38

100 percent

Greg Harbor: 48:41

hone in on that, have some fun with some, some, some, some friends. And, and, and then, you know, the, you know, I think for, for the sales leadership, Yeah, you know, I, I genuinely would impart the strongest sales leaders I've ever worked with one are hard on the numbers, but soft on people embrace the human capital that we've got in our organizations to be successful. And I focus their, their, their, their attention equally on building a future pipeline, as well as delivering on a very predictable business outcome and result in the current quarter. Great sales leaders are watching the future pipeline and the dimensions of that pipeline and the quality of that pipeline as much as they are looking at their current quarter, their current week. As the linearity starts to drive us to nowadays, right? So, so, you know, for me, those would be some of the kind of the key lessons that, that I would lead. I mean, there's, I could go on and on and on, but, but these are some of the things that, that, that, that I would put out there. And, and, and last of all, you know, don't take yourself too seriously, right? You've got to have some fun and be a human being at the end of the day, because that's what people like to engage with.

Simon Peterson: 49:53

Hallelujah.

Dan Bartels: 49:54

Greg, that was amazing. Absolutely. Honestly, we, we, we asked that question at the end of each podcast, but I think that's the most comprehensive answer we've had from anybody in the year has we've done so far. I mean, that was exceptional. Greg, thank you so much for joining us. Um, you know, I know Simon was, was so excited when he, uh, when he shared that you were joining, you were joining the podcast. So I really appreciate your time and effort. Um, I know all of our listeners will, will just be blown away by, by the, uh, the stories and also the insights you've shared. Uh, you know, you've had a phenomenal career. So congratulations on that. I know you've got some exciting things coming up in that career. And, you know, no matter where, where you are. We end up over the next 10, 15 years, whatever you want to do. Um, but for everyone listening, thank you so much for joining myself, Simon and Greg today. Uh, if you're watching on YouTube, please click that subscribe button and the like down below. If you're watching or listening to it, sorry, on Apple or Spotify, click the plus sign so we can tell you when the next episode is coming up. So everyone, thank you so much for joining us. Greg, Simon, thank you again. Everyone have a great day.