Group Therapy with Christina Brady, Adam Jay, and Dale Zwizinski

Full episode transcript

Alper Yurder:  So welcome to Sales Therapy. Today in the therapy chair, I have three amazing guests. They need no introduction, which means I need a minute to introduce them. Christina Brady, ex Groupon, Glassdoor and Sales Assembly revenue leader, Tern co-founder, and she's the host of the Taking the Lead podcast. Adam Jay and Dale Zwizinski, the guys with the bromance, who are the co-founders of Revenue Reimagined who both have incredible sales careers and are linked in top voices. We had the pleasure of featuring them on Flora Sales Almanac 2023 with 100 top LinkedIn revenue voices. And today we'll discuss one of the top gems from the ebook, returning to buyer centric sales and helping over selling after that mouthful intro. Welcome to sales therapy, everybody. How are you feeling today?

Dale Zwizinski:  Thank you for having us.

Adam Jay:  Thanks for having us. I need therapy, so this is good.

Christina Brady:  Yeah, I'm feeling so good. Yeah, we're gonna.

Dale Zwizinski:  We need some sales therapy, that's for sure. Ed and I definitely need it.

Christina Brady:  Yeah, yeah, I'm just along for the ride as I'm learning. I'm just kind of crashing into this and that's my favorite way to be is just busting in the room like the Kool-Aid man. So let's do it.

Alper Yurder:  Good. Where's everybody today? Where are you dialing in from, Christina?

Christina Brady:   Dialing in from Chicago where it's a balmy 38 and raining.

Alper Yurder:  Oh, wonderful. You guys, Adam Dale.

Dale Zwizinski:  Sure. I'm out of Bradenton, Florida, just south of Tampa. So over on the West Coast, which is the best coast.

Adam Jay:  He says that because I'm in West Palm Beach, Florida. But I will agree with him. The West Coast is the better coast. I will give him.

Alper Yurder: At the end of the day, you both get your share of sunshine. Okay.

Christina Brady: of Florida. Got it. You guys are arguing over which coast of Florida is the better one? Okay. You agree. You agree. I just, you know, I hear the West coast. I think California, you meant, you meant Florida, just for the listeners to stay with it.

Dale Zwizinski: Yes. Yeah, we weren't talking like Tupac, Biggie, like we weren't going down that path, but...

Adam Jay: I mean, we're not arguing, we're agreeing.

Adam Jay: California. Yeah.

Dale Zwizinski: Yeah.

Alper Yurder: Set that's good, Christina, help me out. Set this set the record straight. Perfect. So as you can already guess from the first one minute, this will be fun. I am trying to manage these three podcast gurus and influencers and Oscar winners and me, the guy who started two months ago, but let's see how it'll go. So if I may, a bit of housekeeping for everybody.

Christina Brady: Yeah, I got you, man.

Alper Yurder: I might need to chime in at times and I think the best way to do it initially will be me giving the word to somebody and then I think you guys will just take it forward from there and whatever. This is an intro for the listeners, basically. If at any point they struggle to follow the show. So let's start. Any good therapy starts with childhood and growing up because I love understanding how that experience shaped the people that we are at work today how we behave with others, our peers, our leaders, et cetera, or our teens. Christina, do you wanna go first on your one minute of telling us about your younger years? Where did you grow up? How was that experience for you? Et cetera, et cetera.

Christina Brady: Yeah, I grew up, I always say I grew up half in Chicago, half in New York. New York is secretly just one of my favorite cities in the entire world. And I grew up in a musical artistic family. So my dad was a world renowned opera singer. My mom was the pianist of the Chicago Symphony. And that's why they lived in Chicago and New York respectively. So I grew up in both. And I grew up an artist myself playing instruments and painting and dancing. And I even went to school.

Alper Yurder: Oh no!

Christina Brady: for film and theater acting and singing. And I would say that the biggest and like kind of longest run that I had in anything theater related was I was an improv performer at Second City and Improv Olympic and I did stand up comedy for like a decade before I grew up and you know, maybe I don't know if I'm actually, I'm grown up, but like grew up enough to be like, perhaps I should make an income that allows me to live. And so now I just bring the comedy of things that happen around me. into life, but I mentioned that because I think especially in the work that I do, the work that we do, you know, we're customer facing, we're people facing, you have to think on your feet and you have to look at everything like a dialogue where there's control and you don't know where it's going to go, but I firmly believe that studying the arts and theater and especially improv, any salesperson, leader, take an improv course that's going to make you instantly better at what you do. So I'm a former artist slash a somewhat funny person turned tech executive. And here I am, been bouncing around B2B SaaS for about 16 years now, so that's me.

Alper Yurder: I love that. And the artist now in the family, it lives through your son because we see those beautiful crafts that he made behind you.

Christina Brady: look at this, look at, yeah, he's five. This, he's five, these are some of his favorite pieces that I must highlight and every now and then he'll have a new one and he's like, mommy, this has to go behind you for the camera. I say, okay, baby, let me put it up here. So these are his favorites.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, well, clearly he has the eye. Guys, Adam Dale, may I ask you to just leave because I just want to continue. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I am so sorry. I was trying to come to your vibes. So let's go with Adam. Adam, how was the growing up experience for you?

Adam Jay: a shit show. Um, so true story. Um, the therapy did start but it shapes who I am, right? So both my parents were addicts. My dad was in sales. He sold everything from what you would think an addict would sell, right? So think timeshares, think telemarketing rooms. So I had a really bad impression of sales growing up like it was such a dirty word. And I said for a long time, like I'm never gonna be in sales.

Christina Brady: The therapy just started. Go ahead, Adam.

Adam Jay: So did a bunch of things. I did not do comedy. I was a radio DJ for about five years. So I did an afternoon drive in Las Vegas. I absolutely loved it until I realized that all you get out of that is like some publicity and people think you're cool, but you make no money unless you have a syndicated morning show. Kind of like podcasting, right? And I was dating someone who was in pharmaceutical sales and she worked what we affectionately call T2T, Tuesday through Thursday, 10-2-2, and thought, this is great. I could work four hours a day, four days a week and make great money. And what I realized quickly is pharmaceutical sales are not sales. You're a glorified caterer. No offense to the farmer reps out there, but you're like dropping off food and saying, please sign here and you're leaving.

Adam Jay: And I got the bug to do something real and I started like.

Alper Yurder: Great. We already offended a group of people on the show. Great. Was it? Six minutes. Wonderful. Sometimes it comes even earlier.

Adam Jay: Yeah, sorry. All right, so that I'm doing good. It wasn't earlier. Um, and got into real sales, got into, got into healthcare sales, B2B tech. Um, and all of those experiences, you know, have shaped me into the revenue leader that I try to be today. Um, I'm still trying to teach Dale to actually do things the right way. It's very hard. Um, but yeah, that's kind of where we are. And I have an artist in my family too.

Adam Jay: It is, but we have a little artist here also. He's 12 years old and there's some stuff in the office from him.

Alper Yurder: I don't think it's the painting behind you though, is it?

Adam Jay: Um, no, that's, no, that's a wedding picture. Not yet, one day.

Alper Yurder: OK, not yet, not yet. Yeah, get them there fast. Get them there first. So Dale, others. I think I want to hear your childhood story, but now I want to hear the love story between you two guys even more. So let's hear both.

Dale Zwizinski: Yeah. Um, I'll give you a quick rundown. So I actually grew up as a soccer player, played soccer for a long period of time, uh, went to university and became a coder. Actually I was coding for a long period of time. Um, then went out into the work world and got to travel all over the world doing implementation work, which is kind of fun. Um, but realize I wanted to, I don't know, figure out what this thing called sales was. Because a lot of the customers were unhappy that the salespeople just wanted to commission. Like I literally went into a, uh, implementation in New York city in 99 for all those younger, for all those older people on the call that are listening, uh, the dot com, like the 1999, like we're going to blow the world up. Cause 2000 is coming. Um, and the customer was like, I never want to see my F in salesperson is F in office ever again. And she was like, done. Because all he wants is his commission. I thought to myself, there's gotta be a better way to sell than what we're doing. And so, transition the sales at that point and then realize actually, it's not really the salespeople that are the challenge. It's really the leaders that are the challenge because everything's coming down from the leadership on, hey, you gotta get this amount of numbers. So it's just like this churning thing. And so I kind of aim my focus into the leadership world of sales because I thought There's got to be a better way. Sales, like we talk about the sales professional. However, like where, where are we practicing? What are we doing to make the profession better? And so, yeah, I kind of wanted to get through the, that making more of a professional as I came up through sports, we were always practicing getting better. And that doesn't really happen in sales a lot. The top 2% of salespeople are like super professionals. And so how do we, how do we change that, um, that story?

Alper Yurder: How do we get more people to be there at the top? That's wonderful. Leadership is something that you all three talk about. You talk about being a better salesperson, complexity in sales, being buyer-centric, help not sell. These are all common things that I hear from you and read from you with great joy all the time. And we'll dive into those. But before we get into that, I'm also curious about…. Okay, so you grew up, you became the salesperson that you are, and then you had a journey towards leadership, which I guess had some highs and some lows. So I'm curious about, again, starting with Christina, to hear a little bit that story of leadership, a decade, the highs and lows, the adrenaline, the moments where you say like, f it, it's enough. Any of those you want to share with our audience today?

Christina Brady: Yeah, I mean, even that last piece, I've learned that good enough is good enough. And the biggest thing to always remind myself is that the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing. And that's really difficult when you have a lot of different priorities. My first foray into SAS leadership, because I was the GM of a puppy store for a while in college. And we're not going to talk about that in this therapy session, even though we could.

Alper Yurder: Oh yeah, I have to bring you back soon. Like, I have so many millions of questions that I'm not able to ask because of time right now, but yeah, please go ahead.

Christina Brady: I've seen things you couldn't even dream of by doing that job. But like I said, that'll be the teaser. Yeah, yeah. So my first foray into being a leader at a SaaS company was when I was at Groupon. And I remember I was on an East Coast team. I was performing really, really well. And I knew that I wanted to go into leadership. It was just kind of something that I identified really, really early. I sought after mentors, but I was also young.

Alper Yurder: Hmm. Yeah, that'll be the teaser.

Christina Brady: and really inexperienced. And a lot of times when you're young and you're inexperienced, but you have your sights set high, you feel like you have to lean on your ego and you can't do anything wrong, right? I can't not have the answer to something. I can't not be the best at this. I can't say, I don't know. If I say, I don't know, I don't belong in a leadership seat. 16 years later, I'm sitting here saying, I say, I don't know all the time. Almost every single day I say, I don't know. And your job as a leader is not to know everything, it's to make sure that everything gets done the right way. And there's a very, very big difference between those two things. And early in my leadership career, I hadn't picked up on that. And so some of the mistakes that I made when I was first promoted was this, I have to know the answer. And if I don't have the answer, I'm going to, I'm going to pretend I know the answer or I'm going to deflect or I'm going to make excuses or I'm going to get really intense and I'm going to get really unemotional about things. And I remember some of the initial feedback that I got because I am, I'm a, I'm a direct communicator. I've learned how to be more of a velvet hammer versus an iron hammer. But I used to hear all the time when I first became a leader that I was unapproachable. And folks were afraid to tell me when something wasn't working well and that I wasn't open to hearing other ideas and thoughts. I got feedback all the time that I wasn't asking for help enough. And to provide some context to that, my first leadership role, I was promoted on the existing team that I was on, which was a team of 36 reps across 10 different territories. And there were three managers on that team. The other two managers were laid off. I was promoted and I was having to manage 36 people as a frontline manager for the first time as somebody in my mid-20s. It didn't go well. I was not a great leader, but I learned a lot through failure and realizing that as a leader, your job is to impact people's lives and be a positive force for them. And I wasn't doing that and I wasn't living by that. And so it took a couple years of me really studying who I wanna be, how I wanna show up and who I wanna be in folks' lives and really doing the work to become the leader that I wanted to be. And I don't think you're ever quite done, but certainly mistakes early on, big time.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, leaders is such a word that I see very generously used these days. And I was very uncomfortable with using that word, especially to define myself. Like good to go on LinkedIn and say sales leader, whatever. I mean, after I guess you get used to things because you have to. The last two years, I've been more comfortable with it. But what is leadership for you, Dale and then Adam? And does that have anything like commonalities with what Christina describes?

Dale Zwizinski: Good, Adam, you like to talk. You like to lead. Go for it.

Adam Jay: He's. I think Christina said a lot of it, right? Like I, too, am a very direct communicator, and I was often told and Dale's going to have some smart ass comment, but was often told that I am unapproachable, that I have just this aura that's like I can't ask the question. I still work very hard on that. For me, I thought leadership was literally

Alper Yurder: Go Adam, we support you. We're behind you, go!

Christina Brady: Here for you.

Adam Jay: you're the best rep, right? Like if you're the best rep, you would be the best leader. All you have to do is clone six, eight, 12, however many of you. And that's so far from the truth. When you start to clone yourself, instead of making people better at what they are and what their skillset is, is when you fail. But I remember, and I've told this story before, like,

Alper Yurder: But cloning them is easy, Adam. Cloning them is easy. Just clone them, you know? Like, what's the alternative? Okay.

Adam Jay: Oh, yeah, very. If that was the case, I'd have Dale's hair. But in that mindset of thinking, you know, I just have to be the best rep. And of course, I'll be the leader. I remember I, you know, applied for the role to be the leader, the manager, and I didn't get it. And I couldn't understand why. No one told me. No one coached me, probably because my leader sucked. I then applied for the role again and didn't get it. And I finally had who I believe is the best leader I've ever worked for sit me down. And she's like, do you want to know why you're not getting this role? Of course I do. She said, because being a leader isn't just about being the best seller. Sure. You have the number you're the number one rep, but your problem is you're an asshole. She's like, no one wants to work with you. You don't share your secrets with anyone. You think you're better than everyone else. And that is not a leader. And I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. I could tell you where we were sitting, what I was wearing. And it fundamentally shaped how I look at management and leadership and how I try to coach leaders of my job. Christina, you said it, my job is to make you better. It's to get the most out of you. It's to make things happen, not necessarily be the one that does everything. And it's okay to not know. It's okay to tell someone, hey, I'm not sure. But my job is to give you everything I can to make you the best person you can be. And now I try so hard to not be the asshole. Shut up, Dale.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, but it's so difficult. From that personality where you're doing really well, you have all the praise and then you suddenly need to be selfless. You need to be thinking about others. You need to be a carer. And yesterday I was talking about this with Javier Estrada, who was the ex-CRO of Hopin and now CRO of Virif. And he was saying, it's easy, just, you know, stop asking for praise and make others shine. And that's it. I don't know. Does it come as intuitively to you, those concepts, Dale? They don't to me.

Adam Jay: Yeah.

Dale Zwizinski: Yeah, I think as you get older and you go through this process, back to what Christina was saying, like, you almost need to get vulnerable. Like, like when you're younger, like you have this thing that you have to do things in a certain way to get to where you want to go. And I think that the challenge with that is you're missing blind spots. Like I think the younger me would be like, I could take that on. I could do that. Like, I don't need anybody's help. You know, as I grew up in the ring, so I went from coding like a sales engineer to sales. And then I was like, well, I don't need a sales engineer. I used to be a great sales engineer. Like, so you just believe that you can do it all. And what you learn as a leader is you actually have to be vulnerable. You have to show empathy and drive into more EQ than IQ and make sure that like when the things are going really well it's the team that's executing on that process. When things are being challenged, like you gotta take that responsibility. Like you're leading that team. And I always, because I played sports, I kind of always flip it back into the sports analogy, like that's what a good coach is on those teams, the best players on those teams are practicing and executing. So I think the self-awareness and vulnerability to a, to a level, like you can't be too vulnerable. Like you can't have, you know, that part of it, but you have to show that you can have the vulnerability to execute and make decisions. I think the other thing I think a lot of young leaders don't do a really good job of is making informed decisions. They make gut decisions. So they're doing a lot of gut versus like, what's the data telling me? How do I integrate the data with my gut to make better informed decisions?

Alper Yurder: And why do you think they're doing that? Is that because they don't have the data, or what is it?

Dale Zwizinski: Most people don't have the data or they like it, they don't want to go get the data. Like getting the data is work and like filtering through the data is a lot of work. So whether it's salespeople, leaders, coaching, people that coach, there's three attributes that you must have. You have to work hard and grind. Like you can't teach that. Like either you're doing it or you're not doing it. Like you, determination only goes so far. Then integrity, like in the sales world, like, good.

Alper Yurder:  Like curiosity, you can't teach that. If you're not... Sorry, I was saying something out of curiosity. Like if you're not curious enough, I can only do so much pushing you as a younger person. You have to be, you have to have an appetite. You have to be willing to learn. Anyway, sorry I caught you there. Go ahead.

Dale Zwizinski: Exactly.

Dale Zwizinski: Yeah, no. And then selling with integrity, like whatever you're selling, if you can't deliver what you're selling, like it doesn't matter what you're selling. And the last one is coachability, both being coachable and being able to coach. And so those are the three attributes I always look for in any type of person in the go to market space.

Alper Yurder: Okay. Well, before we get a bit more real and start talking about, you know, what you observe in, in the world of sales today, like more practical tips, et cetera. There's one question that I want to ask you, and this is something we discussed yesterday with Javi, who was born in Madrid and he moved to the U S and we both, we both were ex consultants turned salespeople, then sales leader, blah, blah. And when I did that transition. There was a bit of stigma around the word sales. And I got that, I think from a few of you today, like, you know, that sales guy, salesperson, I guess everybody thinks about that car dealership or whatever, like the pushy type. And he told me, you know what, in the U S they don't have that as much as we do in Europe. I don't know. And does anybody want to comment on that? Like how is the sales job seen today versus maybe before? Is it still, is there some stigma? What do people think of it? Christina, let's start with you again.

Christina Brady: Yeah, you know, it depends. I think the bad sales folks with no process and commission breadth have ruined it for a lot of people. There's so many jobs where you're a salesperson and you're not a salesperson. Like your doctor is a salesperson. Your server at a restaurant is a salesperson. The retail worker is a salesperson. Like you're consistently selling because that's how we interact with each other. But oftentimes when you wear the title and you call it out and you're like, I'm a salesperson. The problem is on a psychological level, when you think someone's trying to sell you something, you immediately question their intent, right? And it's really hard to get down to the root of trust when you start something, yes, by, you just wanna sell it to me regardless, right? Like, so you don't actually care, it might not be the best product, your job is to sell it to me. And these are the things that are happening in the room regardless.

Alper Yurder: Yeah. You get defensive.

Christina Brady: And the thing that we'll tell folks is to get over that, we'll just build a great relationship. Well, it's not that easy. You don't have time to sit and build an amazing relationship with somebody before you can sell them something. And so sales is difficult because I do think that salespeople are still very much seen as this kind of distrusting, in it for yourself type of thing. And here's the bit of reality to that. Everybody who is selling something isn't it to make money. None of us are volunteers, right? And so you've got to find this ideal.

Adam Jay: Thank you.

Christina Brady: balance of I'm here to help you and do the right thing and have high integrity. But yes, I am also here to sell you something. And so let's call out that elephant in the room and move forward because you are also like we're all also consumers, all of us are salespeople. We are all also consumers. Somebody has to sell us something. So I'm big on calling out the elephant in the room. Yeah. You know, like we're all playing the same role at different points in time. So I also believe if you're a salesperson, treat other salespeople respectfully. Like nothing drives me crazier than when a VP of sales slams down the phone on one of my sales reps and I go, what are you doing? Like this is how you want your people to be treated. Right. So that's the other thing you talked about empathy, Dale. And I'm very, very big on being empathetic when you are selling and being sold to…

Alper Yurder: shift to helping over selling the new ABC of closing. We're going to talk about all those things today. So let's make a move towards today. Let's talk about the topic of today, which is the spire centric shift. I think a lot of those bad habits, especially in the SaaS sales or tech sales were kind of pushed up down by the VC money flushing into the moon, growth at all costs sell, eight demos a day. So how do you build relations? How do you be human in that kind of situation? It's impossible. And you phrase it so well, Adam, you say the new ABC of selling, it's not always closing, but there's a new trend. Do you wanna talk about that move towards buyer-centric sales and that shift?

Adam Jay: Yes, the days of what you're talking about are done. You can't just call 100 people and email 500 people and have this endless pitch slap approach. You have to always be connecting and you have to do it purposefully. You have to do it strategically. And you have to realize that unless you're in a very transactional SMB sale, like sales is a long game. Um, and it goes to kind of what you said before, Albert and what Christina was saying, like I think sales has a dirty word because people don't want to get on the phone and be told what to do and how to buy. People have no problem being consulted. People have no problem being persuaded. People have no problem with having their needs met and their problems solved and value added. What people have a problem with is, Hey, Christina, I see you're the CEO at a self startup. And as the CEO, you must be struggling with this. So please take my demo. You don't know shit about me. Like nothing, zero. But if you're purposefully connecting with people and really seeking to understand their problems and you're going two or three layers deep, and I love your sign back there. I have a sign back here that says, tell me more. And trying to understand the objective of your prospect is, you're gonna see that sales isn't a dirty word and you're gonna start creating these genuine connections with people who trust you, who value your input and who wanna work with you.

Alper Yurder: But in high value sales, the complex selling world, the enterprise sales, whatever, or high intense sales, it's always that the long game, the long sales cycle, the relationship building, that's always there. So was this kind of bad behavior triggered in a more high velocity transactional environment, or is it something that has been plaguing all around? Maybe let's go with Dale.

Dale Zwizinski:  Ah, Adam wanted to talk. So I love that he came to me because Adam wanted to talk and I love it. Adam doesn't like to breathe, he just likes to talk. So all is good.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, please, please go, go ahead.

Adam Jay: I was gonna offend a whole group of people. Ha ha ha.

Christina Brady: took that real deliberate breath in. Ah!

Alper Yurder: Should I just stop giving the word to people and let like see you guys fight over the word?

Dale Zwizinski: No, I think you have to give us some direction because if not, Adam will take up the whole time. So, you know, the whole world of it, we've always been centric. We've always been business centric and consumer centric in the sale. The problem is it's only like the top 5% of salespeople. And once again, going back to leadership, like it's how are the leaders being compensated? How are they pushing?

Adam Jay: No.

Alper Yurder: Okay.

Adam Jay: Jesus.

Christina Brady: I hate when you guys fight.

Dale Zwizinski: quality over quantity, then the sales rep's gonna do quality over quantity. If the leader's like, we have to do 400 dials and we have to touch all these people and we have to use AI and all these cadences to like hit people three or 400 times, you know by the way, like your message sucks because like if you got this message Mr. Sales Leader, like would you open it? And like 90% of the time they're like, no I wouldn't open it. I was like, well why are you sending it off to everybody else? So I don't like it. Once again, I don't blame the salespeople. There's a portion of it they have to take responsibility for, but there's something on the leadership and it could go up. Like, maybe it's not the sales leader. Maybe it's the CEO pushing on the sales leader. Once again, the sales leader should tell the CEO, like, if this is what you want, this is not the way we do sales. Like we do sales in a long play game. We go through the process. Then you can go up. Is it the investors? Oh, the investors are saying they need this number of these leads. Like. They run the formulas on their spreadsheets because they don't really understand going to market and they're like, well, if we do foreign to calls and it just doesn't work that way anymore. The challenge really is that sales change every three months. People don't realize how fast things are actually changing in our market. It used to be five years, two years, one year, now it's like three months. And it's like, as a sales leader, you not only need to coach and learn, coach and execute, you have to learn what's happening in the market figure out what trends are gonna be reality and like start hedging your bet on it. So my wife's an interior designer and she was always ahead of trends. Like she would always see a trend like a year and a half before it would happen. And she'd go and we would start, like she'd say, watch, it's gonna be reality. And then a year and a half later, like people in the stores will be marketing it, the colors, the schemes, like. That's what sales leaders need to change their minds, et cetera, and find out what's going around the corner year and a half from now.

Alper Yurder: like you both have some good stuff to add there Adam and Christina so please do.

Christina Brady: Yeah, you see me nodding. You see my face light up. I was like, ooh, ooh.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You see both, I see both of you are going with ideas.

Christina Brady: chomping at the bit to chime in. This topic to me is so dear to my heart because I feel like the root of so many of the mistakes that are made on the sales front is really to me, it's the front of funnel these days. I feel like sales reps have gotten really good once there's a relationship and you've kind of gotten past that demo stage of really doing consultative sales, relationship building, radical candor, like whatever it may be. It's the front of the funnel where folks can't break through because it's really difficult when you don't know somebody and you have to prospect to know what the hell you're supposed to say to them. And like, that's where a lot of reps struggle because we hear like what Adam said and he's right. You can't just pitch slap somebody and say, hey, I saw this cool post on LinkedIn that you had and that looked really, really neat. I see that you're a CEO of a startup. I can help you, right? 10 years ago, we would have told people to do that. But now I'm feeling there's a lot of analysis paralysis for account executives front of funnel to be like, I actually don't know how to reach out to people. Like, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to start building a relationship. I don't know how to stand out because every time I figure out the right way to do it, somebody else says, well, now that's the wrong way to do it. And so I do think spending time talking about the fact that what we're saying in this episode isn't easy to do. Breaking through, getting in my inbox and getting a response from me is very, very difficult. And so much of it is not your fault. So much buyer activity. In fact, I think the sales rep, the current stat, is the sales rep involved in 9% of the buying decision. 9%, right? So I do think that we have to evolve. One, we have to show more empathy for the salesperson and how difficult it is to break through. It's so hard and let's not beat it up.

Alper Yurder:  Okay, well our research showed 85% of selling happens internally and if this 9% is true every passing day it's getting worse and worse because the buyers are buying in a new way. I mean it's just the world is changing you know, nobody is the bad guy here. Adam you must have a lot to add to both there.

Christina Brady: That's right.

Adam Jay: For once I don't but I think that you know Yeah, I mean

Alper Yurder: Oh, okay. I'll move on then. Good.

Christina Brady: He's gonna go anyway though.

Dale Zwizinski: But he was so happy that Christina said he was right, so.

Adam Jay: I mean, I might have recorded it and it might be my ringtone now whenever Dale calls me as Christina saying, Adam was right, Adam was right, Adam was right. Anytime Dale says I'm wrong, I'm just going to play it. Adam was right. No, there's nothing to add. These two handled it greatly. I mean, Christina handled it greatly, Dale.

Alper Yurder: Okay. The one thing that I don't, I agree with a lot of that, but the one thing that I don't, maybe we can elaborate on that. I don't want to say I disagree, but I don't think, yeah, I think I will be a little bit gentle with you, Cristina. I don't want to, but I will. And yes, the top of the funnel is very difficult, but still people are losing winnable deals, still sales reps are falling into the traps of, you know, not multithreading enough.

Christina Brady: Oh, you can push back. Do it.

Alper Yurder:  All of a sudden there's what, who, who they, who they, who they thought. Yeah, actually true. Yes. But then after the demo, they thought the champion was never the champion in the first place. So they figured that out like two months down the line.

Christina Brady: front to funnel. Which is a mistake at the front of the funnel.

Alper Yurder: Do you mean like qualification? They didn't do the right qualification. Okay. Let's talk, let's talk about those missteps a little bit. Like what missteps do you observe which keep occurring?

Christina Brady: Yeah. I am telling you and like Adam and Dale, I think I also have a really good perspective on this. But what you're talking about is absolutely true. Folks are losing winnable deals rarely in my experience. And I'm one voice in this. Rarely is it because they've done everything right early on and there's a faux paw in the end. There's a huge yellow light that you missed. There's a giant objection that you didn't overcome. There was something that they said and you brushed past that because you were hoping to sell your way out of that objection instead of stopping and saying, I just heard something that's kind of concerning, can we pause? There's so many mistakes made early on in the sales process and if you think they don't come back to bite you, they absolutely do. Pipeline fiction to me is all created stage one through stage three. It is rarely beyond that. And so the more sales reps can hone in on the right process early on at the front of the funnel, the better chances they have of closing it. I've rarely been outside of a company going bankrupt, outside of an M&A, outside of multiple champions being laid off, I call these AOGs, acts of God, right? Like these are things we cannot help. That happens. But most of the time you go back and you go, oh crap, I missed that in discovery, or oh shoot, I didn't ask that question. It's always the front of the funnel where the honing needs to happen. And then you see it show up later at the end of the funnel.

Alper Yurder: Do you see people, like you advise others, obviously like Adam Dale, what you said about leadership there was very strong to say that, you know, hey dude, it actually starts with you, this behavior starts with you, you know, and maybe even before you, because people are looking for activity, volume, and then they tell you, oh, actually it's quality that matters, which is really difficult to navigate. But do you see leaders who are able to navigate this well? And what are they doing well? So all these issues that we say are happening less and less, I guess.

Dale Zwizinski: at them.

Adam Jay: That's what Dale says when he doesn't have an answer to a question. Dale, please. No, I'm, I'm good. Go ahead.

Alper Yurder: Okay, good. That's good.

Dale Zwizinski: I want to give you a little bit of airtime. I have plenty to say on this topic. Um, I, so Christina's right. Everything happens in the front of the funnel. Even things that are close. Even things that close may be wrong. Like you, you may have customers, but they may not be right. And by the way, it's not even a sales pop funnel. It could potentially be the marketing top of the funnel. Like is your ICP right? Like, look at like people that are churning on the back end of the funnel could be the wrong ICP coming in. Now you're.

Adam Jay: That, that, that.

Dale Zwizinski: Now once that is broken, then you're asking the wrong questions, the wrong people. And then you, you know, you're talking about, you don't get enough of the buying community, but like, did you have the right ICP? And I think too many of the sales, so too many to go to market organizations, like write an ICP, like on day one. And they're like two years later, they're using the same ICP and it's like, no, like you have to review it. I would say like every six months, like at least touch it, understand like, what are people buying? Why are they buying? and like to bring customer success into the fold. Like too many people are like pushing it off on the backside. But if you get customer success to say, these people really love the product, here's what they like about the product, push that back to marketing. Okay, we got the right ICP, we can ask the right questions. These are like, so it becomes actually very systematic. So the people that do this well, don't look at things in isolation. Like they don't look at things at the top of the funnel. They don't look at things at the bottom of the funnel. They don't look at things as churn. They look at it as a continuum. And so, too many silos happen, the leaders that do it really well are talking to marketing, are talking to CS, and are stitching the common thread across all the silos.

Alper Yurder:  I love it. I love it, especially in terms of that silo and looking at it as a continuum. Um, I don't know if you've, if you've had the chance to see Reed or, um, being a lecturer or whatever, um, winning by design, you know, Yako's bow tie model about the all bounds, you know, go to market strategy. That's something that Alex Soli and I were discussing, um, last time. All bound. I hear, I, there you go. Excellent. Um, are there, are there any others?

Dale Zwizinski: Hmm? Yeah.

Christina Brady: Yes.

Alper Yurder:  Not new, but like, yeah, kind of new and emerging trends or best practices that you observe you want to share with folks listening today. You should consider this. You should read about this. If you're not doing it now is the time to check it out. Like Christina, are there any of those you want to recommend people check out?

Christina Brady:  One of the things that Dale made me think about is this idea of attribution, where I have heard executive teams sit at a table and argue about, is it attributed to marketing? Is it, was it BDR or was it AE? And I'm here to say, throw that in the garbage, because at the end of the day, your ultimate goal should be that every single customer that is interacting with a salesperson is warm in some way, shape or form. So burning the midnight oil, figuring out, was it marketing, was it sales? How are we finding customers and how are we getting in front of them absolutely everywhere? And let's stop arguing about who gets credit. And instead your goal should be that 100% of the customers are influenced by your brand before your sales rep touches them, right? So it's like, there's just different ways to talk about how we can go to market that make more sense than what in my opinion creates a lot of infighting and goes to market teams.

Alper Yurder:  Yeah, yeah. And also it's just not linear anymore, unfortunately. Adam, do you want to add on that? Yeah.

Christina Brady: It's not. That's right.

Adam Jay: Yeah, this attribution fight is such horseshit of, you know, oh, marketing source, this sales source that like everyone sourced it and everyone touched it. It's all attribution, not attribution. We need to stop focusing on that. Listen, don't get me wrong. You need to know what campaigns are bringing in warm leads and where you're spending your money. Like I'm all for that. I'm all for understanding that. But to say that like, oh, marketing gets the credit for that, like.

Christina Brady: Yes.

Adam Jay: It doesn't matter who gets the credit for it. Everyone gets the credit. We're trying to drive revenue and grow a business. So I agree 100%.

Christina Brady: Yeah, yeah, just because you tripped over a cord in front of my booth at an event and we shook hands does not mean that that's a marketing attribute. Right, you know, so it's like that. And I mean, the kinds of arguments that I've had where it's like, well, a BDR seven years ago did send them an email and we saw that they clicked on it, but then they went to an event and they came to our event. Then they signed up for a webinar, but you cold called them and they answered, where do we attribute that? And I'm like, why are we doing this right now? Are we being punked? It's wild.

Adam Jay: That's my lead.

Alper Yurder: Okay. Well, at the risk of being devil's advocate, some of the listeners might be going, okay, great, you know it all. You know it all. You figured it out. Great. It's not, it's all, it's, it's no, not just you, the whole, the whole of you. I'll be the bad cop now. Okay. It's all attribution, but still I have a marketing person. I have a CMO. I have a CRO who needs to be rewarded for this, that. I agree with all of the above, but.

Christina Brady: You're pushing back on me today. As you should.

Alper Yurder: How do we get to a better place? What do we measure for whom? Any practical, real range of revenue.

Dale Zwizinski:  We all measure revenue. Like we measure revenue, we measure revenue across the organization and we forget about like, we forget about, Oh, you need these numbers of leads. Like the metrics are broken. Like we were talking about, sales are changing so quickly. Like we're trying to fit an old model into the new way of selling like it. Okay. We're going to make 400 calls. That's not going to lead to what you think it's going to lead to. It's like when Google ads first came out.

Christina Brady: That's right.

Dale Zwizinski: or email first came out, like that was the best channel to connect with anybody. Like that's just not the way it is anymore. So like, I don't think it's a right or a wrong question. It's a pivot question. And how do you pivot to make sure that we're all getting compounded on revenue across the organization. And maybe it's even beyond revenue. Maybe it's GDR, like growth or net retention revenue. Like maybe we're doing NRR and not revenue. Like revenue is great. Like we can get revenue in, but how about happy customers that are gonna go give you huge compliments on your product and rave about your product so that sales is easier and marketing is easier? Like, where's that? Like we're talking about the top of the funnel, but the bottom of the funnel is probably the most important place where no one pays attention.

Adam Jay: Yeah, it's when you're building comp plans. Sorry. When, when, when you're building comp plans, if you just go one layer down, like the problem is marketing. Shut up, Dale. Marketing has always been compensated based on the number of leads. Sales has been compensated on a number of deals. Closed customer success has been compensated on expansion marketing. Sure. Number of leads is important. How much turns into revenue? Compensate them on how much turns into revenue sales. Sure. Leads are important. How many of them activate and use the product? Customers say sure, getting people expanded is important. How about net revenue retention? If you go one layer deeper on everyone's compensation plan and tie everyone's objectives to some form of revenue, you stop this bullshit. Well, I have to get credit for the lead because that's how I get metric. And if I don't get credit for the lead, I don't get paid. Guess what? The lead doesn't matter if they don't convert to revenue. Sorry.

Dale Zwizinski:  And the revenue doesn't matter if they don't, if they don't renew or expand. So like.

Christina Brady:  Yeah, if it's not your ICP, you're gonna throw your product roadmap off. That's not great.

Dale Zwizinski: Guess what? Like the unit economics on a SaaS deal, you're not making profit in the first 12 months. So like if they're not renewing or expanding, you're still losing money in most cases. I know the people will be like, no, we can make profit in six months. Okay, fine. Like whatever, but like 90% of the SaaS world, like you're not making money until like year two.

Alper Yurder: OK. So the experts where I was trying to be the bad cop, they didn't just show that they had their finger on the problem, but they gave you a solution too. There you go. OK, so let's move into the final section of the conversation, which I feel like, yeah, I need one every month now. Let's put you on the therapist chair a little bit and I'll go with a few rapid fire questions from our audience.

Christina Brady: 100%.

Alper Yurder: Generally what I do here is when I have these one-on-ones, obviously I ask the question and the person answers. But you know, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna throw the question out there and whoever wants to pick, please feel free to go, if you don't mind. Okay, so first one comes, how do you talk to customers in their own language and not come across as detached and just too salesy?

Adam Jay: To me on this one, it's you got to be that expert, right? You have to do your research. You have to understand the problem. You have to understand the industry. This comes back to discovery and training and not thinking that you could just pop in and have a conversation with a CMO if you're selling sales tech. Like you have to really do the work. And I think that's the problem, Christina, that you were alluding to before with like just no personalization. Like you got to do the work and truly show you know my problem. And that starts with discovery and asking questions.

Christina Brady: Yeah. You know what you made me think of, Adam, is I try to think of what is the root of where trust is broken and where people come off too salesy. And if you think about there's, there's a psychological process that everybody goes through whenever they buy or make any decision, literally. And it's the same always. Do I have an issue? Should I solve it? Should I solve it now? And then, and only then, should I solve it with you? That's when you're ready to shop. I have an issue that I want to solve right now. Time to shop. And the problem is where you come across too salesy, if we break down what that really means, it's you've identified that somebody might have a problem, you approach them assuming that they do have a problem and then present them immediately with a solution. And you think you're being helpful, but you're actually punching them right in the psychology of going against how people buy. So too salesy means I'm not willing to go through those steps to uncover that. I don't wanna take the time, the patients or the care. That's how that intent is interpreted. So at the end of the day, if you remember how people want to buy and you're willing to get them to that point, and if you're also okay with the answer being, no, I don't have a problem that I want to solve right now, that could be the answer, and that's okay. But taking the time to actually show that you care enough to get there, that removes the element of too salesy.

Alper Yurder:  Wow, is there anything to add there? Yeah. I want to add a little bit of something from my, my past history of trying to overcome this problem is I think when you are, again, it's an issue of seller centric versus buyer centric in my mind, if you're just thinking about your sales organization, you are the SDR, you are the AE, you generate the lead, you close blah, blah. Why not create functions in an all bound manner whereby we're thinking in terms of industry terms or.

Dale Zwizinski: Punch him in the face. I like that.

Christina Brady: Punch him right in there. Right in there.

Alper Yurder:  Practice terms, you know be in the shoes of the buyer if you have an HR tech solution be in the shoes of the HR leader Who's trying to sell something and create your organization based on that? So your seller is actually a practice lead is a consultant is somebody who is like, you know getting the best reference from one client and You know carrying the best example to the other client So it's not that they're just reading some case study because rev ops created for them or sales enable or whatever but it's actually genuinely their everyday life that is in the shoes of the buyer trying to solve that problem. So they were talking the same language. It's more human. That would be my two cents to that. Sorry, I felt a bit too passionate about it. Excellent. Exactly. So next question comes next time, I think I should have this like talk shows where, you know, James from Idaho, we don't have that yet, but let's go. What?

Christina Brady:  I love it. It explodes out of you. I love it. Can it be James from Idaho every time? Can James just be a serial? He's like, I got questions. These people have answers.

Alper Yurder:  Yeah, that. That first.

Dale Zwizinski:  James and Jane, James from Idaho and Jane from Kentucky. Missouri.

Christina Brady:  Yeah.

Alper Yurder: Yeah, well, let's not get into the names, guys. It's not going to be an Alper from Idaho. You know, I'm thinking of changing my name to Albert. So let's not go there. What's your secret to building long lasting client relationships? That's a bit vague and touchy, but I think it's still real. It's the essence of what we're trying to do.

Christina Brady: Missouri.

Dale Zwizinski: Give a shit.

Christina Brady: Do what you say you're gonna do. It's actually very easy. Yeah, what Dale said, give a shit. Do what you say you're gonna do. Trust, yeah.

Adam Jay: Yeah, trust all the same.

Alper Yurder: Excellent. Love it. Exactly. That was easy. OK. This one is going to be a little bit more challenging. How do you unstick a stalled deal? A deal is stalled. How do you unstick it?

Christina Brady: Boom, answered. I know we're like boom, three quarts. Next question.

Alper Yurder: Mmm, that's a good one. Yeah.

Christina Brady: Well, there's not one answer to that. There's not. Yeah, there's not one answer to that. The reality is if you don't know why the deal is stuck, you're done. So that's the first question you ask. It's stuck. I don't know why. It's over. If you don't know why that deal is stuck and what's going on, you've missed something in the process that would allow you to understand why the deal isn't moving forward. So it's sort of an anti-answer. But

Adam Jay: Why is it stock? Right, why is it stock?

Christina Brady: You want to be able in the sales process to get ahead of issues like that, right? So it's like, what do I have to uncover to be in the know and drive? By the time you get there where it's stuck and you don't know, the best thing you can do in that moment, and it sounds really simplistic, is say, it feels like we're stuck. What do we do? Go to your prospect and say that, right? Like that's the only option. There's no trickery.

Alper Yurder: Love that. Unless it's an AOG, in your words, Christina, again, you did something possibly wrong in the front of the funnel. Yeah. And say that. How do you, God, though, you know, again, when you're so junior in your career, like, how do you tell your client, why is the stock? Come on, let's go with it. That's also difficult to view. Yeah.

Christina Brady: Plus it's an A.O.G. That person got fired. That's right. It feels stuck. It feels stuck. Am I misreading that? Right? Have we hit an impasse? What can I do to help? Am I interpreting this correctly? And then you do everything you can to understand your buyer's buying process to not wind up there again. And it will happen, by the way. The best salespeople in the world don't close every deal. It happens.

Alper Yurder: All that. All that. One more, if you're up for it. What is a tool that is such an integral part of your process that you'll never stop using and why? Probably like a tech tool, sales tool, whatever they mean. You can share whatever you want. Yeah, Flola, obviously. Yeah, fine.

Adam Jay: Mm-hmm. That's a good one. Right now I'm in love with Aligned. I think that it's made a massive impact in the way that we communicate with customers by setting expectations from day one and having all communication in one place and being able to really understand the buying committee when they start inviting other people to the room that you didn't even know existed. So that's my current favorite.

Alper Yurder: Fantastic.

Dale Zwizinski: And I'll go, I'll go off tech. So not really tech, but I'm really loving being able to, uh, collaborate with Sendoso and send stuff to people. Once again, getting into the place of how you change the trajectory of a conversation, build relationships, like find out what they really like, send them a personalized letter and gift from Sendoso and, uh, watch the leads come flowing through.

Christina Brady: Get in. The leads come flowing through.

Dale Zwizinski:  I had to get Flo as well as in that whole conversation.

Alper Yurder: Well, Adam already shared one of our biggest competitors, so you're free to do whatever you want, Dale.

Dale Zwizinski: Good job, Adam. Good job.

Alper Yurder: That's good. They... No, that's perfectly fine. I mean, we're in the same game, educating the same population, so why not?

Adam Jay: We can edit it out. Edit it out!

Adam Jay: Listen, we're willing to change.

Christina Brady: Yeah. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of anything that is going to provide insights into the sales process because it's so hard to dig into. So your gongs, your courses, your zoom infos, things like that, where you're getting knowledge so that you can get a little bit ahead of that, anything to make a cold prospect warmer. So there's, there's clay for that. There's zoom info. There's Apollo. There's all kinds.

Alper Yurder:  Christina, how about you? What's yours?

Alper Yurder:  Yeah, you're left in the dark. Both the buyer and seller are left in the dark a lot in the sales process. So, you know, somehow the insights that we try to bake into Flowla is all about that, like who's checking out this deal, what's happening. Again, you're used to using Align, but in that space, when I look at my sales career, you know, the worst ghosting moments were those where I felt like I did everything right by the book. I did the right things, but the deal is still stuck and I don't know. I have no idea, you know.

Christina Brady: That's right.

Alper Yurder:  So then you need a bit of help, although you might. Maybe you did some mistakes, but you still need some. You still need some help. Okay. That's great. Last one for everybody. And there's going to be a cheesy one. So are you ready? Is sales and art or science the ultimate question? Good. And the ultimate answer. Christina hates this question. Tell me Christina, why do you hate that question?

Dale Zwizinski: Both.

Christina Brady:  Cause it, well, cause it is both. You can't, you know, like it's, that's like saying is, is buying a logical or an emotional decision. It's both. Gotta have both. Actually, I love the question. I just went, oh, it's both. I wish I had an answer. I like being polarizing, you know?

Alper Yurder:  It's both. It's both.

Adam Jay: Yeah, it's both.

Alper Yurder: Wonderful.

Alper Yurder: Yeah. You have all the yeah, you have a lot of those both questions in the world of sales, I think. Well, guys, that was great.

Christina Brady: It's true.

Dale Zwizinski: I think the better question is what's more important, art or science? And I think many people go towards the science, the art side of it, because they want to go with their gut. They want to say, I believe I feel versus going through the data, kind of what Christina was saying earlier. Like in the front of the funnel, like the data is they don't have a budget, but you're like, yeah, I didn't really hear that they didn't have a budget. I just heard that they really liked my technology. So like. You don't go with the science, you go with like, oh, they like my, so you only hear what you want to hear is called selective hearing in the sales world. Um, happy years. And so I think like, to me, the data is more important than the, sorry, the science is more important than the art, but you gotta blend. It's like a 55-45 or something. Like it's not, it's not like that far off.

Alper Yurder: Yeah. I guess what people mean by art I'm imagining is more intuition. I guess that's a better way. Good. Yeah. And, and a lot of times we're, we're trying to take out that intuition that, you know, I guess, um, the guessing element and try to make it a bit more predictable. Like what Noah said, giving more visibility data helps you, um, predict the future more, I hope. Okay.

Dale Zwizinski: Got, yeah, got like what the feeling of it is versus science is like the data side.

Alper Yurder: Excellent. So we're coming to the end of the show. Any closing remarks before we do our outro?

Dale Zwizinski: Great therapy session. Thank you.

Christina Brady: like a warm bath.

Alper Yurder:  Come on, be serious.

Adam Jay: I'm not going to put my foot in my mouth again, so I got nothing.

Alper Yurder: Oh, good. Okay. No, seriously, this was a great joy. Great conversation. What I love is what I learned from you guys. You inspire me. Also, one thing that I realize is all three of you, thankfully, spend a lot of time sharing smart, interesting insights because now on LinkedIn, there's so much. How do I say it in a nice way? Dumb shit? Garbage? Yeah, exactly.

Dale Zwizinski: Garbage.

Adam Jay: Garbage, bullshit, noise.

Alper Yurder: Exactly. And in the middle of that, I think all three of you inspired me every day with what you share. So I guess a lot of people will agree to that.

Dale Zwizinski: Echo Chamber.

Dale Zwizinski: Thank you.

Alper Yurder:  Excellent. Now, my dear friends, our time is over and I need to cut us on the clock, just like any good therapist. That's a wrap on this episode of Sales Therapy. This was actually our first group therapy, which was an interesting experiment that I really enjoyed having with my guests. If you enjoy the show, subscribe to us on YouTube and on your favorite podcast platform. Otherwise, see you in the next episode. Bye.

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