Why Most Sales Conversations Fail at the Executive Level with Kevin Cope & Ben Cook

Most salespeople understand their product.

Far fewer understand the business realities their customers are dealing with.

In this episode, Kevin Cope and Ben Cook discuss their new book, Business Acumen for Sales Success, and the patterns they’ve seen after working with sales organizations for more than two decades.

The problem usually isn’t effort or product knowledge.

It’s that too many sales conversations fail to connect to what executives actually care about.

In this conversation, they break down:

• Why sales methodologies often stop short of teaching true business understanding
• The biggest reasons deals stall in executive conversations
• How top salespeople think differently than average performers
• How to quickly understand a customer’s business before a meeting
• Why the five business drivers create more relevant sales conversations
• How business acumen shifts sellers from vendor to trusted business partner
• Why every customer conversation should sound different

This episode is not about replacing your sales methodology.

It’s about making it more relevant, more strategic, and more connected to what matters most to your customer.

If you want to lead stronger executive conversations and sell at a higher level, this episode will change the way you prepare and think about sales.

To learn more visit: acumenlearning.com or check out our books Seeing The Big Picture & Business Acumen for Sales Success

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome everyone. I've uh been really looking forward to this conversation. I'm joined today with Kevin Cope, the founder of Acumen Learning, as well as Ben Cook, the president of Acumen Learning, to discuss a little bit about their new book, Business Acumen for Sales Success. And Kevin, I think you actually have a copy with you. So we can show it. Yeah, there we go. We can actually show it. It's real. So today we want to talk not just not just about the book, but talk about why it exists and why now. So my understanding, and this is something Kevin and Ben, I want to talk to you about, my understanding is that this book didn't start as just a publishing idea. It started more as a pattern that you kept seeing uh working with our clients, and the same gaps kept showing up again and again in sales conversations, especially at a high level. So that as everyone knows, there's a lot of sales books out there, but this one feels different. And I want to unpack some of the reasons why. So, Kevin, um, Acumen Learning has worked with organizations for over 20 years, many of the larger publicly traded organizations, 34 of the Fortune 50. So, why did now feel like the moment to write a sales-focused book?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah, yeah, great question. And maybe if I back up a bit, you mentioned um, you know, our beginnings, uh, actually 2002. So this is our 24th year of business. And after starting the book, uh, the business, we actually, you know, perfected our content, which is business acumen, which is helping people really understand how a company makes money and then allowing them to make good business decisions. So we went 10 years in delivering that content before we uh authored our first book, uh, Seeing the Big Picture. And fortunately, that became a number one Wall Street Journal in a New York Times bestselling book. And so um that helped propel our business. And again, we'd been delivering the content, kind of perfected it, created a book around it. The content was originally targeted for general audiences, you know, uh, mid-level managers, leaders, et cetera. It's really expanded to executives and also frontline folks. Well, we've also found that an audience that really has become prevalent for us is sales audiences. And so we've been delivering this content for sales organizations. Wait, Ben, I gotta say it's you know, more like 10 to 15 years at least, probably even from the beginnings. But there seems to be even more of a focus in the last few years. And so, given that high demand, we thought, well, it's time to write a book about business acumen for sales success. So um, thus, thus the new book uh came into being.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Would you term this as a new sales methodology, or is it more can it can it marry with whatever sales methodology people are currently using?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Yeah, I don't think that one um it isn't really. There's some great methodologies that really guide and shape uh the sales conversations that are out there, which we think are fantastic. Each one of those gives this really encouragement in their approach that says, understand the customer. And that's about the extent with which make sure you understand the customer strategies and priorities, but they really largely leave it there. What our real vision here is what does that really mean? Um, how does it change and adapt based on the different customers that we have and the industries that we sell to? And so this really overlays with really that broader swath of sales methodology, but then gives a much deeper kind of fluency and usability to how do I digest very quickly? What are the strategies, priorities, economics, business realities of the customers, so that those methodologies that can be employed are are much deeper in its uh uh relevance, really, for the customers that you're selling to, better sitting typically on the other side of the table, you're selling it across the table, how to be much more relevant. You're really understanding these things, it gives them a lot uh deeper partnership uh opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

So, Ben, another question is is I know you probably as much as anyone at Acumen Learning for the last 20 years, you've worked really closely with a lot of sales teams. When deals stall, what do you see breaking down most often in those conversations?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Well, there's several, um, but I've got two main things that it feels like are are really thematic across um deals that stall. One is the customer cares about things that you don't know they care about, or you care about things they absolutely do not care about, or not relevant at this point, they don't fit with the business's kind of stage that they're in or the priorities they're dealing with. And so you really tend to be speaking different languages. You're dealing with an organization on the other side of the table who is in um larger, more mature business, the margins look pretty good. And you think, well, that's a good, that's a good situation. Well, the reality is they need to be driving market share. If they're struggling with that, then the real thing that keeps them up at night is how do I expand, grow, innovate, speed to market with new solutions. And if your product or solution doesn't start to really plug into that story, they really don't care what the speeds and feeds or the realities are for the solution that you're trying to bring. That's just not what keeps them up at night. And so you start to get a sense of the first thing that fails is you don't understand what are the pressures, business realities they're dealing with. Um, and you certainly haven't been able to plug into your product and solution to that. That's one. The second thing is that the the person that you're interacting with also has their own set of priorities, constraints, challenges, who they report to, and what does you know, that set of KPIs that they're dealing with? How does that fit into what you bring to the table? If you don't really understand their motivations, their problems, their challenges, it stalls pretty quickly. They're gonna allocate capital somewhere else are the things that really keep them up at night.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

What kind of training do people typically get around this, around understanding their customers' business? Let's say they're they're not working with Vacum and Learning. So what what what kind of you know what kind of training do they get? And why is that, I guess, why is that a gap?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

It's a good question. For the most part, right, with your early in your sales uh career, typically pretty good at the product and solution, pretty good at knowing how to build relationships with the other side of the table, then start to build you know competencies around how do I solution and uh negotiate. What virtually none of them actually really cover is if you pulled the financials and the public and trended kind of available information of the customer you're going into, within three minutes, you tell me how they're doing. Tell me their challenges, what is likely the next 12 to 18 months look like for them, and what do you think their most and highest priority is. When we go in and we start to really roll up our sleeves with real customers of theirs, and they get to actually look at this, this is typically the first time they've been able to make real meaning from that data because they haven't been trained there. Solution, product, and maybe profiles of who I sell to and how I position is largely where the training is happening. Got it. It makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

So uh, so Kevin, let me let me ask you a tough question. If you had to summarize kind of the core idea of this book, I won't say in one sentence, but if you had to summarize the core idea, what what would it be? What's kind of the the big takeaway you'd hope people would have if they read this book?

SPEAKER_02 7:58

You know, for me, it's that when people have business acumen and really understand the business of their client, their challenges, um, their opportunities, their objectives, that allows you as a salesperson then to shift your focus from being on my product and what it can do to, well, here's how we can help you solve your business challenges. So for me, that's kind of in a nutshell what it is. It really shifts the focus from me and my product and service to how can I help you, you know, achieve business results.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah. So it seems maybe uh deceptively simple, but but maybe kind of reframes how sellers should think about their role. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Yeah, you know, the concept isn't rocket science. Yeah, but the mind shift uh it can be uh a challenge for some. Because I think people, you know, Ben was describing, first of all, they need to understand their product, their differentiation. I think salespeople can become pretty adept at that. They're pretty comfortable in that space. Um, it's a space they know really well. And as soon as it kind of gets outside of that to, well, tell me about your business and challenges, I think the fear factor goes up quite a bit because what if I have no idea what they're talking about? What if I have no idea about how my product can help them grow revenues and reduce costs? Um, and so I think that the concept is easy, but shifting, you know, one's mindset um, you know, is important to take place and in some cases can take a little nudgy.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Sure. Um, and so the book is anchored around the five business drivers, which is uh the core of kind of acumen learning's uh training for the last 20 plus years. So maybe for someone, maybe especially in sales that might be listening or hearing this for the first time, what are those five business drivers? Um, and again, we you we could literally go for days on each of them, but maybe just for someone And we do. Yeah, I know we do, and it's awesome. But maybe just that for a high-level overview of someone in sales was listening to this or a sales leader say, Oh, this is exactly what my sales team needs. This is what my this is what they need on the team. Um, so you know, help me understand how like how can they better understand business acumen? Like maybe talk about those the core drivers.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah. Well, if you will, um kind of picture a diamond shape, you know, like this. Um, the top point and the first driver is cash. Um, if you move down to the second point on the right-hand side is profit, and then the bottom point of that diamond is assets. So cash, profit, and assets. Now, the reason we know those three uh business drivers are important. Any organization, whether you're publicly traded or privately held, is they simply reflect the three financial statements that companies use to manage their business, to report the results, to calculate taxes. Those three statements are the statement of cash flows, thus cash, the profit and loss statement, therefore profit, and then the balance sheet, which lists assets, liabilities, and net assets. So that's why cash profit and assets are critical to any organization. Matter of fact, if you know, if it's a publicly traded client, listen to their earnings call. And you'll hear the CEO and the CFO talking about cash performance, um, talking about their profitability, their profit margins. Uh, they'll also talk about their financial strength. Um, you know, uh how much debt do we have? Um, you know, what's our debt coverage, um, et cetera. And so that's why cash profit and assets are inherently important to businesses, to executives, and likely uh a senior person sitting across the table from you. Um the fourth business driver is growth. So if you're looking at that uh left point on the diamond. And and growth for most companies usually refers to revenue growth, sales growth, synonymous, and profit growth. Um so growth, especially for publicly traded companies, becomes a huge driver because if a company is growing and it's growing profitably, that will drive the value of the business. Even most privately held companies recognize the importance of growing profitably and sustainably over time is important because that allows you to invest more back in the business, allows you to give your employees a cost of living increases, it shows your value in the industry, signals to customers that you've got a viable product that's creating a benefit in the marketplace. So that's the first four drivers cash, profit, assets, and growth. And right in the middle of that diamond is people. And people refers to employees as well as customers. So if you look at it holistically, when employees are understanding and even meeting, anticipating the needs of customers, that drives cash, profit, assets, and growth. And with that framework, then they can go assess their clients' performance around those five business drivers. And then that gives them a sense of what where are their gaps, you know, where's the client struggling? What are their objectives? You know, what's the executive talking about most important for the organization to accomplish this next year? Then that allows them with that understanding, that framework, to position um the product and service that they have to help them meet business needs, but also to drive business results based on what's most important to that client.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Have you ever had moments where people have had like an aha or it's like, oh, I actually can understand my customer better? I can actually go to the meeting armed with something real that could actually help that person. I'm just, you know, over your years of experience teaching, what what's what are those reactions like as sellers actually dive into this and understand it and apply it to the customers they're selling to?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

One of the things that ends up being very helpful if we build off of that five-driver model, um uh is that if you think about these five, it's kind of like for your customers, these five plates and these five sticks. And so you have to say the CEO, CFO, the executive team, or thinking about all five, and you're that spinning of the plate, right? You spin the uh stick, you spin the plate. And oftentimes, if you're listening through the lens of the customer of yours and you see uh MA, product launches, you know, consolidation, expansion into geographies, all that kind of language, you can see, in essence, in your mind's eye, the CEO and CFO spinning up the growth plate. The challenge with that, and this is what business acumen developing gets certainly from a from a sales perspective, is in the spinning up the growth plate. For most people are like, well, that's great, that's awesome. But the reality is when you look down and you look at the profit plate typically or the cash plate, it starts to be wobbling, right? They use the cash to make the acquisition. Now you've got a bunch of other costs that they're incorrect uh uh incorporating from the acquisition. And so now the profit and the cash plate starts to wobble. So where do you think they're gonna go next? So now it's an adjustment from the growth story to now to be able to pivot as a salesperson, not to have been supporting the growth story for them, which you likely have been doing, to now shift your solution and priority and kind of positioning to now I realize their costs are going up, their profitability is under some can uh some constraint, and likely the executives are now trying to spin up the profit plate and the cash plate. The challenge with the real hyper focus there, if it's absent of other things, they look then at the people plate, a culture plate or a quality plate, and that starts to wobble. And so these salespeople thinking about these five drivers in its dynamism, in its constantly shifting in different ways based on the strategies and the and the bets that your customer's making, allows you then to shift how you position your solution from a this enables your ability to grow and expand from my products and solutions to how it drives efficiency, standardization, speed to market, which can also drive then cost down and margins up. And so it's being very attentive to which plates are being attended to and which function that I'm in front of cares about which plate and why. And then, and then the real art is how do you ensure that your articulation of your product and solution speaks very directly then to what is that plate that is likely wobbling? So now you're relevant, much more kind of on top of what they care about right now. And so it's this constant assessment of the shifting landscape that your customer's dealing with, also understanding your customer's customer or your customer's competitor, you get a sense of their landscape. So many times, the last point I'll make here. So many times salespeople go in one because they think they understand their customer well, and they have these rules of thumb that says, boy, profits are up. That's good. Well, profits are up, but sales are way down, their cash is down, and their liquidity is down, and it's looking like there's some inefficiencies there. Now the challenge is what does that tell me and how should I adjust? Most people in sales, you know, did go to school in corporate finance or corporate strategy and get geeked up about that. We help get it very simply to understand those metrics and the trends and what that gives you this intuitive muscle to, as you go in, do a quick look, as Kevin was describing, a quick latest executive letter, uh, letter to shareholders transcript, get a quick look at the financials, not that you have to be a master there, but you've got some things to look for. We help shape and give you the guidance on what to look for and what that means and how that might shape your value statements that you give. But now it's a it's selling from a business mindedness rather than just a product-mindedness, or I'm building a relationship with customer-mindedness, and that builds much deeper relevance, much deeper kind of uh deal size, much higher hit rate because you're really a business partner with them, not just a vendor.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Would you say that? I mean, you've you've worked with some of the greatest companies in the world and their sales teams, and probably have seen a lot of rock star salespeople. Is that do you think that's kind of the main differentiator between a strong seller versus just average?

SPEAKER_00 17:58

It really is interesting, right? Those that are the top performers, um, they see themselves as business people first and happen to have a mechanism with which to enable a deeper, broader partnership that is solving business problems. That's how they define themselves. My part of the solution is a mechanism with those problems get solved on the other side of the table. But they, boy, they they don't come off as wanting to pitch something, sell something. They're very consultative, they understand the business realities, um, the pressures, the competitive landscape that the customer is dealing with. They they understand that stuff. And once that is understood, and what keeps you up at night, for example, from a from the other side of the table is kind of answer, you know, um, then the solution gets curated based on what they now know and hear. But if you come in thinking you know what solution they best want, the problem is you get you get really embarrassed, unfortunately, in some of these meetings, or get uh the meeting ends pretty quickly because you really haven't seen me as a business uh enabler for you. It's just someone who's looking for uh selling a product and see if I can do that by the end of the quarter. And so they come off much deeper, business credible, much more strategic. The products and solutions are just the pull once you really deeply understood that.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Going back to this book, um, business acumen for sales success, there's a lot of sales books out there. Um, I looked at some stats the other day of how many are coming out every year, not just business books, but sales books specifically. What makes this book different compared to everything else that's that's out out there on the market?

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Yeah, I'll I'll take a stab at that and then Ben can correct me. But I think the vast majority of sales books are really about methodology. And there's a lot of good stuff out there. I mean, really world-class, you know, sales, uh curriculum, sales approaches, etc. And so we're not trying to take that away uh from anybody. Matter of fact, we're trying we're not trying to give you a whole new system. We're trying to take whatever system you use, whatever sales training you have, whatever methodology you have, and um to uh it really give that a boost to really kind of supercharge it from the standpoint, and and Ben mentioned this earlier, most sales methodologies sort of skip over the idea of, well, understand your client's business. They just, you know, as Ben said, most methodology assumes you have that. We've experienced huge gaps in that, not just in the sales organization, but throughout all the organization, uh, which surprised us at first. We really thought that our business acumen content would really be good for frontline kind of folks, because most everybody understood it, but the gap is huge. It's even surprisingly big. You can go into VP level, senior VP level uh in well-known organizations. And while people are really good at their role and their function, they know it well, they're really expertise, they really kind of miss this big picture sense of how their company makes money. You know, what are the most important measures we're focused on and how they can be, you know, improved? What can I do in my role to even improve those? There's a big gap in that. And so with salespeople, it's the same thing. Again, really good at selling, uh, really good at positioning product, et cetera. But the gap is um that really important understanding of how my client's business is performing. What keeps them up at night? Um, what are they uh you know wrestling with? What are the key objectives they're trying to accomplish this next year? And without that understanding, again, you're just you're you're self focused around your product and service. With business acumen and a business acumen understanding of your client, you really shift to boy, um, you know, here's you and I. We're business partners trying to figure out how to help you solve your business challenges. Here's how I think we can help. Here's how I think our product and service could help you. know improve your cost savings and you know inventory for example. And so I think that's the big shift that takes place. And again, we're not trying to replace the great methodology out there, the great books that are out there. We think we're just bringing something that can really partner with, support, and really enhance the methodology people are currently using.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Well one thing I'd add to that, I love, love the way Kevin had framed that is the same time, a real guiding principle for us in this book was how do we make it really accessible but really usable? We actually wrote it with the mindset of it having a bit of a field guide, field manual, right, in the flow of work kind of design for it. And so not only those five drivers are going to be a part of it, but we've got these additional then tools and resources for then to reflect very specifically on my next meeting or the customer I'm you know interacting with. And so there are tools there that quickly give you access to any number of 20, 25 different industries. How do they tend to think about these five differently? What do their metrics tend to look like in this industry versus this one as a quick sense of the business environment you're going into to interact with. The same time gives you a good sense of how different functions or stakeholders are going to be interacting with, how do they tend to think differently around these five drivers given the function they're in and what do they typically motivated or incentive by? If you've got 10 minutes to prep for your next customer call, this field guide book is really a way to think through through these multiple lenses what's in the mind of the person on the other side of the table. How is that shaped by the industry they're in, the company's strategies and priorities and the economic trends they're dealing with. It doesn't take an MBA to be able to do something like that within 15 minutes to understand your customer and we see it every day. So that's where we really feel like this is one of those other areas of real differentiation very usable, very applicable to the customer really in the flow of work.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Let's say a sales leader was listening to this so someone that either managed a sales team or an entire sales organization. If they picked this book up, how how could they use it?

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Steven, I'd suggest three things. You know, first um take the book and and encourage your team to read it and then have discussions around it my sense is um take about 10 to 15 minutes in your regular sales meeting staff meeting and just take a concept and speak to a concept. And so don't try and plan two or three hours you know let's sit down and really dive into the book. I usually find that if you can get 10 to 15 minutes in a staff meeting to talk about a key idea. For example, why is growth so important to a business? Why is it so important to the clients that we sell into so that'd be step number one have some good discussion around the book. I'd do it bite-sized pieces.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

The second as a sales leader I would use the content in my coaching and uh you know call plan reviews with my uh sales folks so for example if they're sitting down and reviewing a you know client plan call plan pose the question so how's that company doing uh you know uh financially how's their business performing are their revenues growing is their profitability growing um what kind of big challenges are this they describing you know in their current business right now so in that coaching environment start uh asking a few business questions um regarding the salesperson's client that they're currently focused on so that would be a second thing and then third you you mentioned this um you know we've we've been delivering this content for uh 24 years to every industry you can imagine every client uh every level within an organization every role every function um and significantly in the sales function and we'd love to help out if it's something that resonates with you uh we provide very customized either in-person uh self-paced or uh virtual training so we'd love to have a conversation with you around that that's great um so kind of wrapping up here I have um I have two two kind of final questions what's one thing you hope changes because this book exists and then the second one is what's one mistake sales team should stop making immediately yeah go ahead Ben well one of the things I really want them to do coming out of this resource and be able to use it is every conversation you have with a customer should sound and feel different than the one you had prior.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

It's positioned differently because it's a different buyer it's a different company it's a different industry it's a different stage of business the way you approach the questions the insights the value statements that you're giving has to be adapted right this is not quantum mechanics but it takes intention and some thought around it and a set of really simple tools which is what we what we're trying to offer. So every conversation have it really intentionally framed to be most relevant to the function and to the company and to the industry and to their strategies. And now you really can start to speak from a business's uh financial and a strategic a set of priorities um but if if you found an approach that works and you've been writing it for a while and it seems to work we invite you to start to kind of um start to employ some of this stuff as a deeper and broader way to bring some of that relevance. If you're new to the sales story this is a great starting place to have a set of framing and a mental model those five drivers you can ask a question and any one of those five to start the conversation with your customer just choose one. What are your growth strategies over the next 12 months it looks like you're doing this and that it looks like you're spending a lot more in research and development means you've got a lot more kind of products to the market over the next few years. Where are those growth vectors that you're really excited about? So then that then starts to shape where you can kind of play into that story. So every conversation be curated be it unique make sure it's deeply relevant in this situation that's going to be different for every every conversation.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah thanks Ben um yeah so let me respond to those two and let me start off by um sharing an experience from just today uh I was uh on a uh sales call with one of our sales team and about 10 minutes before the meeting I looked the client up I went to the CEO prepared march from the last earnings call and within about three minutes of reading I got really clear that revenue growth is a top priority and they did well this last year. Profit growth is a another huge priority and they did really well this last year around those two things. I also got a sense of two or three other key measures they're looking at and then a couple of strategies. So when I got on the phone with this client um you know when it was appropriate after our pleasantries and hello I said boy congratulations on a great quarter. You guys really did well and I was really excited to hear your CEO talk about you know your performance and immediately the mindset of the conversation and the tenor of the conversation was different. It wasn't about hey wanted to touch base with you again about that business acumen training you were considering. It was more about boy congratulations on a great quarter and really noting how this is important your CEO. And so that sends a whole different message than me getting on ready to talk about how our product and service can help them. It really shifted it more from a um I, you know, I'm paying attention, I'm prepping, I'm seeing what your company is doing well and that puts me in a better position to be able to advocate for what we're doing in that I've got a context for how I think we can help their business. So first thing in essence that I hope happens differently on a call is that people are taking, you know, sales folks are taking some time to understand the client's business. And the second thing what I hope people stop doing is coming in with so much comfort around their product and service that they are completely disconnected about helping the customer solve their challenges. I'm so geeked up about you know how exciting our product is and what it can do and you know I can talk about it for days, but shifting that, stopping that focus on me and more on um you know your business and here's how we can support you. Again, that's where a trusted business advisor comes in somebody who is kind of able to you know here's you and I looking at a challenge you have um out there and how can we solve that together versus hey I got what you need you know or you're ready to buy so anyway I hopefully that adequately answers your two really good questions Stephen absolutely no this is this has been great uh Kevin and Ben thank you both for your time we're really excited about this book.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

For those listening or watching um we have links below um this video or audio where we link to the book Business Acumen for Sales Success as well as other tools and resources related to the book. And again just to emphasize if if this conversation or anything we said today resonated with you and you feel like this is hey this is something my sales team needs or the salespeople within my company need, please reach out to us because we'd love to help you. It's truly something we're passionate about at Acumen Learning and we're really excited for the launch of this book. So thanks everyone for spending time with us and thank you again uh Ben and Kevin.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

Thank you Steven