Episode 113: John Stopper – The Future of Sales is Social

Brynne Tillman  00:00

You know, selling is a team sport and buying is a team sport when it comes to enterprise sales. So it’s really about the connectivity and being social enough to… social intelligence. It’s really how you operate in these very complex, dynamic relationships. How you share information, how you do discovery, how you build relationships. The future of sales is social.

Bob Woods  00:29

Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast! Featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show.

Brynne Tillman  00:54

Hello and welcome to Making Sales Social. I’m Brynne Tillman, and I am so excited about this guest because he is someone that I’ve worked with for years now in quite a few different companies. Although he, you know, he’s brought me on to be a vendor of some companies. I learned from him every single time we chat. And I’m really excited to introduce him. Hi, John Stopper. Welcome to Making Sales Social.

John Stopper  01:22

Hello, Brynne. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Brynne Tillman  01:25

I am so excited for you to be here. Tell everyone…

John Stopper  01:29

and I learn from you every time we speak as well. 

Brynne Tillman  01:32

Isn’t that fun? It’s just fun. So tell everyone a little bit about you and Northstar.

John Stopper  01:38

So I’ve been in technology for way too long, a large part of it in sales. I’ve been a salesperson, a sales leader, a CEO. Ten years ago, I started my own company, Northstar8, and because I saw companies making the same mistakes over and over again, when it came to revenue generation. So I developed some systems, methodologies and tools to help companies with revenue growth strategies and that’s what I do.

Brynne Tillman  02:09

Yeah, and you do really, really well and I’m really excited to dive into that a little bit but before I go into some of our enterprise sales questions, we ask everyone on the show, what does making sales social mean to you?

John Stopper  02:22

You know, it’s, I have a front row seat. So I have a client and their help asked me to help them with actual deals for sales execution. So I am on four to five sales calls a day, from the initial discovery call to negotiating final contracts and you know, selling is a team sport and buying is a team sport when it comes to enterprise sales, right? So it’s really about the connectivity and socially, being social enough to… social intelligence. It’s really how you operate in these very complex dynamic relationships, how you share information, how you do discovery, how you build relationships. The future of sales is social. So I think, that’s what I think of, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  03:12

That’s great. I love that. So let’s talk enterprise sales. This is, in some ways, an underserved market because they’re treated in the sales process and training generally in the marketplace as transactional sales and it’s kind of broken, right? I’ve learned a lot of this from you. So talk about what’s wrong with the way generally enterprise sales are going to market?

John Stopper  03:40

Yeah, so let’s define in B2B sales, I break it into two parts, transactional sales and enterprise sales. The difference you could characterize by transactional sales is one or two decision makers, a single value prop, it’s usually more SMB, lower price points, you can publish your pricing on your website, and there’s a little negotiation here and there. 

Now, enterprise sales, you have multiple decision makers and influencers, each can have their own evaluation criteria, you have a very sophisticated buying process that becomes especially due to COVID and people have suddenly been working remote. Companies don’t know their own buying process anymore. So it’s being defined on the fly.

So a lot of sales methodologies in the marketplace, which are terrific, were developed a lot focused on transactional sales. And they are, you know, here’s a fixed plan, here’s a fixed process. When you take that to enterprise sales, it breaks down because it’s not about a fixed sales process, it’s about being able to navigate through all of the ever-changing and rapidly changing business conditions. 

I mean, just since January, Brynne, look at what our world has changed dramatically in the last three, four months. And the way you sold in January or December, it won’t work today. Budgets are tightening up, fierce competition from budget dollars. The buying processes were defined before getting reworked to greater scrutiny over spend. We’ve gone from an age of abundance where there was generally a lot of money available to invest, to an age of scarcity. So we got to, so that, a lot of the way people are selling today, it’s, those methodologies need to be revamped. You can’t sell the way you did over the last 10 years.

Brynne Tillman  05:44

So what do sales leaders need to think about around this new shift?

John Stopper  05:49

Yes, you know, the toughest job in all business is a sales leader today. There’s a trap that I’ve seen, and you and I have discussed this in that a lot of people are throwing tools at solving the problems

Brynne Tillman  06:04

Or attempting to solve the problems.

John Stopper  06:06

Yes. Right? And if you talk to a sales rep, today, they’re working with between eight and 12 different tools, and sales productivity hasn’t increased. Now the tools are terrific, but generally they’re siloed, they work independent of one another.

So you got reps say, “I need to do discovery.” So they go into LinkedIn, they go into Salesforce, they use Salesloft, they could use CrunchBase, they could use Zoom Info — there’s all kinds of new tools coming out. There’s a tool for everything but what they’re not doing — it’s like being a carpenter, you got your toolkit, but do you know how to use the tools? And when to use them? And in what order? And I don’t think sales leaders today are thinking about a cohesive technology strategy. How do I put all these together and train my people? And then they’re not training them. From what I can see, there’s not enough focus on training on how to sell and sales strategy. It’s all tool-based.

Brynne Tillman  07:07

Yeah, interesting, You know, one of the things that we talk a lot about just generally is how sales productivity tools are getting in the way of sales productivity. And so I think that’s exactly because there’s this tool stack that takes up so much time that salespeople aren’t able to really sell because they’re reporting and filling things out. And, yeah, I mean, even CRMs can get in the way of productivity if they’re not done well. So hearing that you’re seeing that, too, is, you know, telling.

John Stopper  07:39

Yes and here’s what I’m seeing a lot of these tools are 10, 20 years old, and even some of the newer ones are based on, you know, old. Now, there’s a new generation of tools I’m very excited about, which are AI-based tools and it’s called foundational AI. And here’s the simple explanation of it: tools today are data consumption devices, you gotta feed them information, or they give you a static data points. Foundational AI tools will anticipate a salesperson’s and sales leaders’ needs and they’ll be able to go out and say, “Oh, based on what you’re doing, what your product does, here’s opportunities that we see in the market” because they’re parsing LinkedIn, they’re parsing Google, they’re parsing newsfeeds.

Brynne Tillman  08:31

They’re finding triggers. (John: [unintelligible] exactly.) Okay, so they’re finding triggers out there and serving them to the sales reps and leaders, saying, “Based on what we know your prospects want, this one might be hot.”

John Stopper  08:45

True productivity, or one of your prospects just got a new CEO, wow, right? That’s going to change things. They’re going to come in and say, “Hey, we’re changing how we do business here,” most likely, or a guide, a new head of sales, or a new head of, CFO, whatever. Well, how does that impact my deal strategy?

Brynne Tillman  09:03

Yeah. And that’s a great way to look at this. One of these reasons I love Sales Navigator is you save accounts and leads and they feed you triggers that you can act upon but what I love about this is you know, I work with salespeople all the time. And when I start working with them, some of them are still cold calling just lists of people. And this is so much smarter. This is just a smarter way to work. It’s not throw a whole bunch of stuff on a wall and hope some of it sticks right? You’re actually having conversations with people that are having conversations about the challenge that you solve. So…

John Stopper  09:43

Yeah. And to go back to your question of a sales leader, you know, evaluating a salesperson’s productivity and performance not on quantitative aspects, like “how many calls did you do this week?” but you know, “what’s the quality of your engagement?”

Brynne Tillman  09:56

So changing those KPIs matter?

John Stopper  09:59

They do, yes. And most, a lot of sales leaders I see or attempt, you know, they’re doing that, sort of, but there’s still a lot of, “Hey, you didn’t make your number” and they go back and say, “Hey, you only made three sales calls.” I just spoke with a woman who is all upset. She’s at the bottom rung of, they post down sales, on… (Brynne: Sales leaders.)  … the leaderboard, and she’s at the bottom, and she’s all flipped out but she has three deals that are out, she’ll be triple the highest person at the end of the year. (Brynne: So they’re measuring the wrong things.) Yes. And as a salesperson, she’s upset, I don’t want it. I’m a high performer. I’m at the bottom, but she’ll kill it. It’s just she has big deals that…

Brynne Tillman  10:43

And she’s doing less activity from a volume standpoint and more focused activity and so they’re measuring the wrong things. I thought, yeah, I see. I see that often. Well, you know, the bottom line is, if this company is smart, they’re going to learn, you know, who’s doing the right activity, not just doing a lot of activity.

John Stopper  11:06

Yeah. I think they know, I don’t think they’re taken that board seriously. And they know, but the fact that it’s there, she sees it (Brynne: It’s demotivating though for someone) She’s you know, is a high performing sales person, your metric driven?

Brynne Tillman  11:21

Interesting. So one of the things that I hear from you often is that predicting pipeline deal, you know, sales reps will embellish, this will close in three months, because they want, you know, they want their pipeline to look good, because they’re looking at the wrong KPIs. The sales reps are reporting on those KPIs but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re not real deals and they’re not going to close and so, you know, your revenue, prediction, right? (John: Forecast.) Forecast! That’s the word I was searching for, and I couldn’t pull it out. There is off almost every quarter. So talk a little bit about that and what can sales leader start to do or think about to fix that?

John Stopper  12:11

Yeah, it’s, well, I’ll tell you the first, there’s four things you could do but the first thing that I look at on the forecast is what’s the value prop and in my compass selling methodology, I have what’s called the value chain. And there’s five different ones. And it’s funny, I just went through this exercise with a client. “If you’re selling efficiency, my offering is going to help you do your job faster, better, cheaper” is the least valuable value prop there is. And the deals, when they have all these deals that keep slipping, they forecast that the close, it doesn’t close. And when I drill into it, they’re all efficiency, value props, because the senior executive, the buyer, the CEO, or the CFO says, “Well, my hair’s on fire over here. And while this investment in this product will help this person do the job better, it’s not critical, it’s not mitigating risk to my business.”

So a sales leader needs to train and coach their people to go up the value chain. Don’t sell efficiency. So hey, my investing in my solution is going to help mitigate risk to your business or get you in a position to strategically grow your position or your business. So I evaluate the forecast accuracy based on the type of value. And I always defer deals, if it’s an efficiency play, even close it this month, or very low chance. And one of my favorite things is if I get a deal deferred, and I’m in efficiency play, my first thought is, somebody stole my money. Somebody who came in with a higher type of value prop, the CEO or the CFO looks around and goes, “I’ll take that money that was earmarked for that project, and put it in this more critical one.” That’s what they do.

Brynne Tillman  13:57

So what kind of discovery do you do to be able to identify that higher value proposition?

John Stopper  14:07

So first thing is, I coached people not to be single threaded, so you get a lead at a company, you get your champion, your sponsor, and all your work is right with that person. And they’re usually going to be your user. So they think about efficiency. And the way you get around that as you go broad you make you force yourself to meet with more people in the business. So you can meet with C level or other executives and say, Hey, tell me what’s going on in your business today. You know, What risks do you perceive? If you were to buy my offering? How would that materially change how your business functions and you

Brynne Tillman  14:42

let them answer it instead of you tell them, I love that?

John Stopper  14:46

Yeah, that’s one of my favorite questions. You know, you want to invest in my product, how will that materially change how your business operates? And if they can’t answer that, it’s like, well, we have to get there. Yeah, never gonna do things like I don’t know if it’ll help. But I can tell you, here’s problem I got over here. Oh, wow, I can help you with that. Let me tell you how I could tell you something you might not see.

Brynne Tillman  15:08

And that’s value in and of itself, right? And even if your solution doesn’t solve that you’re creating trust, you’re inspiring them to want to continue conversations with you, because you’re bringing value. So yes.

John Stopper  15:23

And you’re showing that you have an interest in their success because you’re looking beyond your own features and functions. You’re doing discovery around it, what are the real problems you have today? How are you solving those? What other investments are you making? Can I integrate with that?

Brynne Tillman  15:41

How often do you bring in case studies and testimonials into those conversations? Because you know, sometimes, when you just tell them that you can do it? They’re not always 100. They’re like, “Oh, well, you could tell me all day long.” When I bring in a case study or a case story, often that connects them better to “Oh, not only is she telling me that she could do this, she’s done it.” Do you find that to be an important part of the sales process?

John Stopper  16:13

It’s absolutely critical, great salespeople, high performers are great storytellers. And I don’t mean, you know, I’m not telling you stories, it’s like,

Brynne Tillman  16:23

it’s not at a once upon a time story.

John Stopper  16:25

Yes, It’s, you know, how I get my new customers and how I get meetings is, “Hey, I met with so and so who’s say I’m calling a CEO of a company or whatever position, I just met with so and so they’re in a peer, they’re in your industry. And I’d like to share some of the, you know, we’re helping them out. I’d like to share how, what I’m doing for them. And maybe there’s some insights I could provide for you.” And then when I’m in the sales process, I’m always saying, “oh, yeah, that problem this, this guy over here had that and I solved it.” For him. It’s critical. I don’t think I have a call where I’m not bringing in some story about other people experiencing similar problems and they solved it in a similar way.

Brynne Tillman  17:14

I love that. Yeah. You know, that’s something I’ve heard you say often. And so I’m, you know, the fact. So, if  sales people are selling solely based on, you know, “Here are my talking points,” and you never bridge their challenge to a challenge you solve somewhere else. It seems so much harder for them to see that high value.

John Stopper  17:39

Yeah, you know, Brynne, people are trying to just figure things out, if they see that someone else had already been down the path. It shortens your sales cycle dramatically. It takes away the stress of indecision. You know, people are afraid to make investments today, it could hurt their business if they do it incorrectly. So they’re searching for precedent, and safety and numbers.

Brynne Tillman  18:04

Yeah. Now, one of the things that you do for your clients is you go in and you’ll analyze their deals, and you talk a little bit of how to use zoom in and zoom out when really looking deeply in a deal. Can you share a little bit about what that looks like? As we wrap up this podcast? I think that’s a really powerful thing for sales leaders to think about.

John Stopper  18:26

Well, by zoom in, I mean, you need to be able to look at tactics, and what kind of tactics are you using as you sell? And you drill in to the specifics of a deal, and then zoom out is more of your strategy. So to me tactics are how you sell and strategy is the who, what, when, where and why. Who do we should we be selling to? Have we bridged to those people? What content do I associate with each different type of persona? When do I position it, I always try to plan five steps ahead. And they’re not sequential, or parallel. So I’m going to, right? So most people are sequential, they go, “Oh, I’m going to do this and then I’ll do this.” And then I’ll do this when once after each thing is complete, where I’m like, Man, I’m going to run five parallel activities. So I’m going to give you a demo, I’m going to give you a pricing proposal, I’m going to bridge to your CEO, I want to do additional discovery with your CFO, and I plan these five parallel — in some cases, it could be 10, and I’m executing them all at once. And that’s how you gain speed on your deal because you’re not single threaded and doing one after the other.

Brynne Tillman  19:48

Interesting. So I’m going to ask one last question because it reminded me of something that a strategy that you employ and teach because you had said okay, I’m going to connect with CFO now if I’m not a finance person, I’m a salesperson, I know my product, I know the solution, what’s a good way for my company and I to connect with that CFO, or the CTO, or the, you know, the technical (crosstalk)?

John Stopper  20:15

I work with all different kinds of companies, all different types of products, and all different types of personas and it’s really about being curious. It’s asking a tough, you know, what’s your day look like? What are some of the obstacles you have? I don’t have to be a finance person. It’s more, what type of tools are you using today? Boy, if that’s a problem, how’s it impacting your overall business? And what’s it look? What would your ideal state look like if we could solve that problem? How would that change materially change what you do and what goes on in your company?

Brynne Tillman  20:53

So what I’m hearing is, you’re using the same methodology, but each of them have a each of the buyers or the influencers, you’re solving a different need based on how your solution impacts them in their role.

John Stopper  21:09

Yes, I break it into four types of personas as sea level cares about strategic growth, they care about innovation, they care about risk to their business, a user cares about making my life faster, better, cheaper, right? A manager with the budget cares about ROI, and total cost of ownership and then operators, they are procurement, legal, I’d care about protecting the business. So when you get you categorize a persona, and you ask different questions mapped to that type of person.

Brynne Tillman  21:47

That’s brilliant. And that is a great place for us to begin to wrap this up. I love that. So tell everyone how they could get a hold of you.

John Stopper  21:59

Go to our website, northstar8.com, North Star number eight.com, you could send me an email at [email protected] and happy to help anyone out. He’s also on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn. And Brynne has been very instrumental in me being better at that. And I’m always willing, no obligation, I’m always willing to help somebody, a sales leader or sales rep with a strategic deal, and he won’t want to do a little workout. Happy to help.

Brynne Tillman  22:35

what a very generous offer. Make sure you guys if you have something that’s being held up that feels stalled that John’s great at it kind of figuring out why that is and what to do. So thank you so much for being here. I am beyond grateful that you shared your insights with me and with the audience and I’m also beyond grateful to have you as part of my inner circle of beautiful, sales brains. 

John Stopper  23:05

Yes and you’re and you’re a great Brynne. You’re one of my you know, you’re a coach, mentor, and someone I enjoy working with. So thank you.

Brynne Tillman  23:15

Well thank you very much. All right, let’s make sure you connect with John. Go to northstar8.com If you’re a sales leader with large teams or even individual sales people, he has solutions for everyone. So until next time, when you’re out and about make sure you are making your sales social.

Bob Woods  23:33

Thanks for watching, and join us again for more special guest instructors bringing you marketing sales, training and social selling strategy that will set you apart. Hit the subscribe button below to get the latest episodes from the Making Sales Social podcast. Give this video a thumbs up and comment down below on what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website social sales link.com For more information