Episode 246: Barrett King – The Future of Sales: Navigating Partnerships and Planning for 2024

Barrett King  00:03

When I think about making it social, I think about being intentional around that ideology it’s looking for and seeking out the places that your potential customers exist now online during the conversation, add some value. And likely through that dialogue, you’re gonna find the other businesses as I described those partnerships that are already existing in this space, and feed the other engine, which is your growth mechanism around that too.

Intro  00:24

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!

Bob Woods  00:50

Barrett King, SaaS which is software as a service if you didn’t know it’s partnerships and go to market advisor joins us today in the social sales link virtual studios for this episode of making sales social. So the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel that is 2024 grows larger daily. With that you’re probably making sales goals for your team if you’re a manager. Or if you’re on the salesperson side, creating goals for yourself that I’m thinking might be larger than what your manager is expecting from you. Our guests today can help with just that. 

Barrett King has over 10 years of experience in both partnerships and go to market strategizing for SaaS companies, as well as cultivating new business opportunities, driving revenue growth, and establishing successful sales channels. And who doesn’t want all of that HubSpot is a company you may recognize. He worked for them in several positions for much of that 10 plus years. I’m a big HubSpot fan. 

So I’m definitely looking forward to hearing his thoughts on those areas. Today, we are going to be talking about both partnerships and your B2B sales efforts, whether you’re in the SaaS vertical or not, as well as getting into sales planning overall, for 2024. Especially timely looking at the calendar today, we’re also looking at how LinkedIn and social selling will be a big part of that. It’s a tall agenda. But I think we’re the two people who can handle it well. So with that, Welcome to Making Sales Social, Barrett.

Barrett King  02:22

Thank you so much. I think like you shared, we’re gonna get through this, we’re gonna learn a lot and have a good time. And I’m looking forward to it.

Bob Woods  02:28

Excellent. Excellent. Always, always happy to hear that. So our first traditional question always is What does making sales social mean to you. And I That’s especially important for us here, not only making sales social, but just so social sales link in general, as one of our tenants is using partnerships, and using networks to help everyone in that kind of group grow their respective businesses. So in that frame of mind. What is making sales social mean to you? 

Barrett King  03:02

For me, it’s simple. It’s joining the conversation. So if you think about the place that your prospects and your customers are already existing right now online, that’s the environment that you yourself want to take part in that conversation. Now, a majority of the time your partners or potential partners are already in that space. So there are the vendors, and the like companies that are working with those businesses, your target audience or customer potential set. And they’re already having the conversation that you should be a part of. 

And so when I think about making it social, I think about being intentional around that ideology, it’s looking for and seeking out the places that your potential customers exist now online during the conversation, add some value. And likely through that dialogue, you’re going to find the other businesses as I described those partnerships that are already existing in the space and feed the other engine, which is your growth mechanism around that too. So it’s kind of one two punch, very simply put out, join the conversation online, where your prospects and customers are already taking place. LinkedIn or otherwise, you’ll find that to be most useful. 

Bob Woods  04:00

Yeah, yeah, that’s yeah, that’s fantastic. I love that, especially because it bridges really well into the next question that I have for you, which is B2B sales. We are getting more and more into digital channels all of the time. It was definitely accelerated by the pandemic, but it was already, you know, most definitely moving in that way. Pandemic really made it go from zero to 100 with a full turbocharger behind it. 

And with that momentum, how do you see partnerships evolving in that specific landscape, especially when it comes to sea level buyers? I did some research on it as a desktop somewhere, I don’t remember exactly where it’s at. But recently, data still shows that sea level buyers still prefer phone outreach, which I think is interesting in and of itself. So Tell me how partnerships really, not only how they fit into it, but how we can take advantage of it.

Barrett King  05:08

So if you go back 10 or so maybe 15 years, and you look at the way, even maybe 20 years, you look at the way that buyers purchase their behavior was really simple. We, as a consumer based society were focused on less education, more expertise based buying process. So we would go to the brick and mortar store,  obviously, at some point go to the internet. And we would look for a sales oriented individual. 

So somebody who was going to sell us on the value and describe the value and articulate the reason that we should buy the product or service and invest in that outcome, then it evolved somewhere around the call it early 2000s, mid 2000s, internet starts to really accelerate at that point, obviously coming to its fruition in terms of becoming a place that people actually did business. And marketing starts to rise. 

Digital becomes this ideology of well, how do we educate our buyer differently? Because before that, it was billboards and radio, and it was places that are, as I sort of stated before, that our buyers existed, but it wasn’t online. Now. It’s online. So now we have to think about how to engage that buyer earlier? Well, that’s marketing. 

That’s demand gen. And that’s all the Inbound Marketing methodology stuff that came out of certainly HubSpot, and a bunch of other firms’ efforts to educate the buyer, when they’re asking questions. So now we’re not in this sales state where we’re already so early on that we’re reliant on someone to educate us, but we’re doing our own research. And that’s where the rise of digital marketing and the rise of inbound starts to take place. 

Bob Woods  06:25

Yeah.

Barrett King  06:26

Over the period of that five to seven years, you saw this education-based buying process become the norm. And so as consumers started to learn that education can be influenced, as we figure it out, we’ve all been through it, right? We look at that pair of shoes, and all of a sudden it follows us around the internet, as we realize that those things are happening. We start to distrust a little bit. That’s inherent right? If we’re being fed so much of an answer, we don’t question it as well, because we believe that the answer is being derived or it’s being driven towards us. 

So with all that being said, as that’s taking place, buyers are now going to the person or persons next to them and saying, “Well, what do you think I should do?” And there’s a very short period of time where customer-based referrals and customer base growth and this idea of flywheel creating momentum in your business became the norm, like three or four years, everyone was talking about you, they’re your greatest evangelist, and they’re gonna help you build your brand awareness and help you build your customer base. 

I think that’s where you started to see this continuation of social selling and a shift away from the norm of content-based consumer education towards more specifically this human humaneness-like person-to-person interaction around the buying process. And so now if I fast forward to the last couple of years, and really today, partnerships, and the reason that partnerships have become this sort of forefront of ideology, the reason every B2B SaaS leader is saying, “How do I bring partnerships into my business?” 

Is it folks like J McBain over Canalis, and others have put a stake in the ground and said, it’s very clear that you’re seeing the network effect take place that your customers and potential customers are looking to like companies and individuals that already have their trust, for guidance. And so when you think about the dynamic you described in terms of C suite, wanting to have a phone call still or wanting to have a real human touch in their outreach, that’s typically coming from businesses that they already trust. So it’s the vendors they’re already working with. It’s the individuals they’re already doing business with. 

Those people in those businesses are your partner opportunities. If you think about the way that you go and design and architect, you go to market tomorrow, it’s table stakes to have a sales team. We know that right? That’s like no one’s questioning that. it’s table stakes to have really good marketing and educational content, to drive certainly traffic and leads and such. But in order to give your customers a place to go to your potential customers, but now it’s becoming the norm to expect it building a near-bound motion, this idea of a network and partner opportunity is more important than ever.

Because your customers are already trusting those folks. And because your partners and potential partners own that trust. Now the C suite individual you’re describing who’s expecting a phone call for outreach is still not going to answer your phone call the first time but generally speaking, like we don’t typically see that. But if they know the person next to them that they already trust and do business with has said, “Yeah, Barrett over at HubSpot Barrett over at new breed, you know, this person over here,” I do business with them, or I’ve interacted with them and they’re on the kind of up and up if you will, then you’ve built a little bit of extra trust. 

And so you can borrow that trust from your partner, you can add value to it, and then deliver it back to them to deliver to this potential customer. So that C suite individual you’re describing now may pick up your phone call, because your partner already educated them in this buying process that you are someone they should spend time with because you can solve their problem or help them achieve their goal or whatever that is that you’re actually achieving for them. So it’s an interesting shift in the way that buyers went from sales educated to marketing informed to partner influenced now and the way they go to market. 

Bob Woods  09:41

That’s fascinating, especially because you do work LinkedIn and social selling a little bit into your answer there on thinking. One thing that we recommend people do is to have their LinkedIn recommendations, like really, really stoked with customer service. Stock not stoked whilst hopefully stocked with stoked customers and things like that, it’s probably the way to put it but also we do suggest that they get their partners recommending them within their LinkedIn profiles as well. 

And then obviously, you should be doing the same thing for your partners in their profiles. Because it gives people more of a sense of what you are to work like to work with, not only in that situation, but if these partners are working with you enough to recommend you, then maybe that social effect takes hold a little bit more there. I’m, I’m just wondering what you think about that? 

Barrett King  10:41

Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I think you when you look at the fundamentals of how human beings build trust, and how they, we write how we develop those interpersonal connections, I always like so here’s a good example. So you’re gonna go to your editor to know about your high school reunion? Well, that’s like a relatable thing, Right? So your high school reunion, however long ago that was, and you know, you’re going to either go by yourself, or you’re going to go with the class president, which one’s going to be better for you? 

Well, if you haven’t been to that environment, as you know, I haven’t heard my example here in like, 20 plus years, I might feel better having a class president more so because that individual knows everyone. So when you think about the current state of LinkedIn, in any social selling environment, the more you can build validation around trust by working with the individuals that are already present in that environment, the better you are. So like myself, I’m active, fairly active on LinkedIn. 

And a lot of that is because I like to learn from those that have been there and have a story to tell about it, they have a bit of a background, but have a context. But I’ve also learned that, you know, when I want to buy something, I want to work with a company, like you’re describing, but I look at their LinkedIn, I look at the C suite, I look at the sales leaders and CS leaders, and I see how their customers and their partners validated that they are somebody that is of good trust and have good standing and is going to actually add value. 

So to your point, I think it’s spot on to work under the assumption that, you know, when you walk into that room, if you’ve got somebody who is already comfortable in that environment, somebody who can help guide you through that experience, you’re going to be more successful, and those are your partners. And the only way to communicate that is through some form of validation. And LinkedIn is a great example of where you can actually achieve that.

Bob Woods  12:16

Yeah, definitely in that social. I mean, because you can just say, and, and we do this, we use this in a couple of different ways. So like, for example, someone says, “We need some references or something like that,” we tell people, as soon as they get their recommendation section stock with those recommendations, go ahead and just check our recommendations, if you want to reach out to someone, go ahead and do that, because you’ve already cleared that with them at a time that someone may be reaching out the same type of thing, except with partnerships going on there. 

And that there is social proof, and people willing to put themselves out there and saying, “This person is a good person,” go ahead and do business with them, I endorse them. So you know, it’s just another great way to use social in that partnership vein, and I just love partnerships. I was actually in other industries, before getting into this one I was involved in the whole BNI and all that type of thing. And while that’s a little bit different in that, you know, things are set up for you rather than you going out and really discovering people who, who you like to work with, that thought process of partnerships is still there. And I really enjoyed it.

Barrett King  13:35

I think ultimately partnerships are about people helping people like it sounds silly, and it feels like it should be plastered on like the side of a mug sitting on a desk. But you know, at the end of the day, I think when we recognize that partnerships are about making each other a little bit better write the Better Together stories expression, you hear a lot in the industry and in space. I think when you craft, your go to market strategy and your journey around working with firms and people that help you help your customers have a better experience, everybody wins. That should be a natural way of thinking. 

And as it’s evolved to your point, it becomes about helping other individuals first, as everyone talks about, “How do we sell more?” “How do we build more value together,” all of that starts with human-to-human interaction. And interestingly enough, actually, so my current role leading revenue at new breed revenue, they’re based out of Burlington, Vermont. I worked with them when I was at HubSpot, six years ago, five, six years ago, and their CEO Patrick videoscope, brilliant guy, and I just clicked. We got each other, we understood each other. 

We worked really closely together. When I was there, a partner manager then subsequently developed a relationship. And when you think about it, you know why I came here. I came here because I believe in him and I believe in this business opportunity, but it was all curated by our relationship. And so that’s the fascinating part is when you look at, you know, so many aspects of the professional and personal space right now. And you really distill it down. It’s absolutely about the human, you know, and the people that have that kind of humanity within it. And that’s how you can cultivate and develop a really successful business, go to market partnerships.

Bob Woods  14:59

Yeah, that’s so cool. I mean, once upon a time sales, sales and salesmanship and I am putting that in air quotes was what was all about just making the sale? And it’s not like that anymore. And you know, hopefully it’s actually taking some of the stigma away about sales as well that we all still encounter out there. “Oh God, this is just a salesperson, he just wants to close me like a garage door and all that stuff.” No, it’s not about that anymore. It’s about creating relationships so that everyone, even even in the sales process, and even after you close everyone truly once from it, and partnerships can definitely factor into that, I think and it’s just fantastic. 

So now let’s talk a little about putting partnerships into both traditional and novel B2C or B2B rather than B2C. Why not sales strategies? Um, I guess I had a real specific question behind this. But I think I want to broaden it a little bit in that. Some people are probably thinking, “Okay, how do I work all this into a sales strategy?” That’s definitely you know, culture and contract jet tech driven? I’ve got to get this stuff into my CRM and oh, you know, all that stuff. How does Part How can partnership work in two traditional minimal B2C or B2B, rather sales strategies?

Barrett King  16:31

I think it’s actually made to be more complex than it is. I believe, I mean, I get a question about this quite often. And usually, folks want to figure out how do I always start to build a partner program? How do I bring it into my existing go to market etc. I always try to keep it simple in the beginning, which is to go and ask your customers. And frankly, if you’re not talking to your customers, as a head of sales, sales manager, sales rep, CRO, and then certainly the same goes for CES and etc. 

If you’re not talking to your customers every week, I mean, at least every month, certainly, what I mean is like having five or seven or 10 conversations with customers, some that are happy, some that are less so getting a real temperature check. In those conversations, let’s assume that you’re doing your diligence there. If you’re having those conversations, I would actively work in, you know, a series of questions around who else are they working with? Who else are they getting value from, and you’ll quickly figure this out, they’re typically going to be three to five, five to seven, like companies that you’ll see a pattern with, it’s the easiest way to develop your early partnerships. 

There’s this integration Barrett, and it helps us to use your product more effectively. Or there’s this type of services company that helps us to do the thing that your platform does, or whatever that might be. Those are your early partnership opportunities. And so if you’re making those observations, and you’re thinking about what your customers are already engaged with, it should be a fairly seamless integration into your go to market in terms of then looking to those folks to build relationships around. How do we do this, the Better Together stuff? 

Or how do we do better together stories and develop a collective go to market that helps our customer? This is the other side of the coin, though, which is how do I think about increasing my own opportunity? It’s very meat-centric, but it’s true. And you see a lot of b2b leaders right now saying, “If I work with partnerships,” “I will sell more stuff,” right?“If I work in partnerships,” “I’ll have a stickier customer,” you have to make it about the partner themselves first, and recognizing like upstarts a great example, because early on, they worked with agencies like new breed where I work now to help their customers grow better by using the HubSpot software suite.

Because these agencies were delivering their services to the customer already. And now by using HubSpot, they got better value, better ROI, better utilization rate, all the things that make their business more effective, but also could deliver more value to the customer. And so combining those two was a logical step in terms of helping to cosell and CO service to support that customer. But there was this byproduct of that relationship. 

And this is the other part of integrating it into your strategy that it increased reach significantly. So if you think about the HubSpot partner program, when people ask about that, they typically say how do they sell so much? How do they service so much? And I always say there’s a third question, which is how do they gain so much reach and awareness? What HubSpot did really well. And Salesforce, I tried and didn’t succeed as well. And certainly Microsoft didn’t as well. Microsoft, sorry, is absolutely very special in this way. 

They enable these agencies to go to market with and for really on behalf of them of HubSpot and help them increase their reach. So if you look at companies like new breed, and otherwise, we were able to go and maximize our reach because we were a top partner of HubSpot. And we were marketing their software essentially on their behalf, right and then developing our services platform around that. And so if you’re not thinking about how do I sell further and sell faster, by increasing my reach, we talked about joining the conversation already right. 

Join the conversation online and be a part of where your prospects and customers are. But I would go a layer deeper and say the market as a whole benefits from you having partnerships that increase your reach and awareness. And so the marketers that listen to this, I expect they’re saying well we know that but if you’re a sales leader right now, and you’re not talking to your marketing team or on how your partnerships can increase your demand gen, right drive better leads more leads, like imagine being a sales leader. 

And in three months here, we kick off the year, saying, “We actually were able to devise a strategy that’s gonna help us to increase our top of the funnel opportunity and have better conversions.” And those conversions are into higher quality SQL status faster. All because you’re working with a go to market strategy that incorporates the partners, the other relationships or their businesses that our customers already want to work with. That’s the way I would integrate into my strategy this year.

Bob Woods  20:26

Nice. Nice, very nice. So that’s a great way to bridge into our next topic, which is 2024 for sales planning. If you have your own podcast outcomes, where partnerships and SaaS meet, you can catch them on the popular podcasting platforms, by the way.

Barrett King  20:44

Here you go. I love it. 

Bob Woods  20:46

Plug bug bug, let me share some overall key takeaways or lessons from your podcast that B2B sales pros and their managers can incorporate especially when it comes to leveraging partnerships for sales growth.

Barrett King  20:59

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s actually easier than most folks try and make it out to be. And maybe I’m oversimplifying it, because I’ve spent so much time having conversations like this at this point. But I, if I were to distill it down and really focus on brass tacks on matters, what the core learnings are, it really is about the Better Together story, the companies that have figured out how to work with partner organizations in some capacity. So again, partner has a term meaning like business, that helps your customer as well. 

So there’s like really simply put, when they figure out companies figure out that they can do that. And that it is about a collective outcome that benefits the customer. There’s this like triangle of value, right, me, plus another business plus our mutual softwares, or whatever it is, equals more value for the customer, when you’ve developed that value triangle, and the customer is winning, it’s a natural way to gain lift across the business, the companies that are failing right now, just to kind of provide a counterpoint in that sense. 

The ones that are failing are the ones that, you know, forget that this is a, you know, in some ways, a flywheel that really most importantly, that value moves around that grouping. And so they make it about themselves. I just want to increase my sales. So I want to find companies to sell my software. That’s fine. It’s a bit of an antiquated point of view on partnerships. There are companies that have reselling programs, and they work very well. 

But even those resellers now are looking for how does working with you increase my value to not just how do I sell more software and gain more margin and certainly make more money? But how does it help my customers do better? And it’s because this big shift took place in the last couple of years in terms of education, like I described. keeping it simple. In my strategy, what I would do is do all the things that I mentioned before in terms of looking for those, like companies, establishing those better together stories. 

But all the buzzwords aside, look for ways to make your customer more successful by working with other companies increases your demand increases your stickiness increases your ASP all of your metrics or KPIs that you are comped on and care about go up, when you focus on increasing customer value, and it comes from that dynamic. So from a planning perspective, that’s where I lean in.  

Bob Woods  22:54

Yeah, so speaking of planning just a little bit I just had a question come to mind. Should partnerships be made? From a company to company level? Or is it more of a rep-to-rep level?

Barrett King  23:10

The good question, no one’s asking that I would start off with understanding that you’ll likely establish foundational value first really, you’re like MVP use case, if you will, with a rep to rep or manager and a manager level. Frankly, in some of the best partnerships that I’ve been a part of and established myself always started with two people that said, “We can do this, let’s go do this.” And you build the use case that way kind of groundswell, if you will. 

I think at the same time, though, if we’re talking about from a planning perspective, this partnership should be one of your categories, you have marketing of sales, you have CS, and you should have partnerships as entirely owned, separate vertical, and component of your go to market strategy. people make the mistake of rolling into sales. And the problem with that is that partnerships take time and direction and intention. And so if you assume that sales is quickly moving, and kind of faster paced, in that sense, they can get left behind and partnerships can get pushed to the wayside. 

When you bring it in as a component of your greater strategy, one of your verticals or categories, then it benefits you to say let’s think about it from a business leader perspective, let’s go company to company and be much more intentional in terms of a top down approach. And so I think, to do it really well, you have to understand that the collective mission of your company, your north star, has to align with what that other company’s own north star can also step into, right? 

So when your vectors are aligned, right, you move in the same direction, and you ultimately have the same outcome that only works when you go top down in terms of the bigger strategy component of it, and then also push from the ground up for groundswell sake to build your early adopters and your your KPI based outcomes where you can point to for the rest of the team help increase adoption. So both ends of the spectrum, I guess is my answer.

Bob Woods  24:45

All right, great. So with that, let’s kind of shift gears a little head, specifically 2024. Now, what are the critical elements of sales planning? And we talked about this a little bit already so that partnerships can influence or are in hate in B2B in general and Samsung particular. 

Barrett King  25:03

Yeah, every time I have been a part of a cycle of planning, folks want to talk about how much water can we squeeze from the rock sort of thing? Right? This is the nature of the business. And yeah, and I think it’s, it’s being conscious that that rock has a finite amount of ability to flex. And right now with the way that the market has evolved in terms of how dynamic buyers are, how, in some industries, certainly fast paced, but in others, and I think holistically speaking, how much more scrutiny there is, in terms of every transaction. 

Just from a financial and simply just like time and energy prospective partnerships help you to alleviate some of those concerns, which means that you should be very conscious of how you plan capacity, and how you plan you know, sort of your, your top of the funnel as well. So both ends of that, that journey. So that mean is when you think about just mean this is super nitty gritty in the weeds, but like if I’m a sales leader, if I’m a let’s say, “I’m an ops professional,” right, I’m sitting there saying like, Alright, cool, how do I go and design? You know, my reps territories, right? I think about it. 

Now, in multidimensional, it used to be single dimension, they have this many customers that they can expand into. And they have this much territory size in terms of, you know, that new logo that we’ve got from zoominfo, or whatever, right? So from that we’re like, we’re good to go. Now you have this third dimension, so it’s not 2d anymore. It’s 3d, which is how much referral business? And how much lift can we get from our partner channel? And so let’s assume that you have that established right now, you should be and I expect that you are measuring the impact of each of those partners by size by ticker, whatever your core KPI metrics are. 

And I would bring that into my right sizing. So if I said like, for argument’s sake, I’m a rep at X software company, I’ve got 100 installed base customers, and we all know how to balance that it’s based off of account value, and you can look at the gap against whether it’s software or whatever, you’re gonna sell them, okay, fine, we’ve got to a book value now, opportunity value, you’re in two states, those states are worth X amount of potential revenue, great, we’ve got a number there. The third leg of that tripod is how many partners, you could do it a couple of ways, how many partners from a geo perspective operate in that area?

What’s the average number of leads, we see being referred to per rep across the company, you could go that route, you can just go simply from the demand perspective, and assume that we saw this much influx of opportunity from our partner community, regionally, globally, whatever your metric is there, and then expect some sort of metric growth against that 10-15, maybe 20%. And say, “Okay, we could distribute that percentage growth against each of our individual reps,” as potential upside,” 

Because we know that that again, the third leg of the tripod is going to create lift. And maybe we haven’t defined it fully yet. And most organizations have not to be transparent. But we can expect some sort of measurable increase in terms of lift, therefore, we’ll incorporate that as well. And I think it’s those three components in terms of your usual territory, and opportunity based balance that you do for every sales planning cycle in terms of opportunity. But I would layer in that part of the component too.

Bob Woods  27:53

Alright, so as it seems like one of the things that we’ve been talking about, it goes back to an old cliche, the only thing that’s constant is change. And that’s especially the theme in sales. So with that in mind, what skills and competencies should be prioritized in sales planning for 2024. 

Barrett King  28:15

Think so at the rep level, it’s interesting, because we used to say things like “You need to be good at Discovery,” “You need to be good at demonstrating value.” And I think those things are more evident than ever. But I mean, again, because we’re talking about partnerships, and I’m certainly biased in that sense, I think you have to look for and lean into like, so when I hire right now, for example, right? I want someone who can diagnose business problems and have high business acumen to prescribe good solutions. 

But I also, in part, need them to know how to work really effectively with others. And so if they are in my interview process, and they’re saying things like, Well, I have this good example story of how I work with a partner to close a deal, or I brought in a partner because it added strategic value, or if I’m thinking about core skills, attributes and training development across 24,25,26 like the next two, three years, very clearly, I think they need to be at its core in terms of bass, very good at at consultative, supportive diagnostic sales. 

Sure. I think you have a second component, which is how do I establish a working relationship with partners, so not just from a vendor perspective, but also from an integration and app partner perspective, as well. So tell good stories, have good examples, be able to do that work? The third piece is how do they use technology? One of the biggest opportunities right now in sales is that you can build a brand. I mean, in my show we just touched on it briefly. But my show that I started over a year ago now. I was still at HubSpot. 

I did it because I wanted to learn how to do my job better. But what I quickly realized is that it also allowed me and afforded me frankly, the opportunity to meet folks way outside my circle way outside my own current reach. I want to look for that, right? Like if I’m thinking about training and developing and building into 24 My plans of how to help my team win. It’s helped them build their own brand, and that’s going to certainly increase our reach at a B2B level in its own way, but it’s gonna make us more effective. We’re more in tune With the market, if we do that, as well, I think that’s one of the things you’re gonna see folks do more. 

Bob Woods  30:04

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, and, you know, just a real quick note about podcasts is, if your company lets you do them, do them, because, just me and Barrett would not normally be talking, I’ve talked to so many people and learned from them just by talking to them in this format. And you know, sometimes you do get partnership started because of that, or, you know, if not a formal partnership is like one of those, “Oh, I just talked to someone, I think I can get you two together.” Just an amazing way to do business. 

And a lot of people, I think, don’t think about that. So if he can start a pocket, there’s obviously a lot involved with starting a podcast, I’m not going to make it sound like you know, you just sit down and fire up a Zoom meeting and go. But there are other ways to do that type of thing when it comes to one of the things that we teach is just having interviews with people and just using snippets of those interviews in social shares, so that.

Barrett King  31:07

Exactly.

Bob Woods  30:08

People out there about what it is they do and about how they, you know, there’s just, there’s so much there, that it’s that it’s mind blowing. And we do have a new product around that now. But it’s, you know, talking with people, partnering with people, which is one of the reasons why when this whole opportunity came up, I really jumped on it, because I think it’s very, very important. So, before we wrap, I noticed something on your LinkedIn profile. It’s gonna get a little far afield, but I think especially during this holiday time.

It’s important to talk about just more life centered things because, you know, hopefully, we’re coming together with family, we’re taking a little time off to reconsider things, everybody’s making goals and everything for 2024. So you talk a little bit about your three “F” frameworks that I think are intriguing. Definitely a little bit more life focus. Let’s get into that a little bit more, because I found it fascinating.

Barrett King  32:05

Yeah, so I’ll kick off with what that means. So years ago, I spent time with this guy, Dan Tire. And if you’re listening to this, and you don’t know who Dan Tire is, go follow him, brilliant guy. incredibly caring, heart centric individual. And one of the things he did, we spent eight hours in a car together and another eight hours at a client we did a mutual count we were working on. And he shot out of a cannon. I mean, this guy is full of firecracker energy. And he’s just a really fun guy to be around. But he came in hot at 4:30am when I picked him up and said, “What’s your mantra?” 

Like, “I don’t have a mantra”  It’s 4:45 in the morning, What? “You need a mantra, Barrett”. And over the next four hours, I developed the mantra and to be clear. And the reason that that was important is it’s not just about goals, it becomes the foundation of how you think about and evaluate the way you spend your time, we all make a decision every day to do work that makes us money or brings us happiness, or hopefully both. And so for me, I developed the three F’s. It’s a little cheesy, but it works for me. 

And it’s family freedom and fulfillment, the ability to provide for and prioritize my family is number one, the ability to do good work, the way that I see fit, I don’t do well, when I’m putting a box I never have as human beings. That’s the freedom component here in terms of spending my time doing work, the way that I think is the best way to do so is trying things, failing, trying again, and learning. That’s all really important to me and fulfillment. I want to do things that matter if I’m going to professionally spend eight plus hours a day sometimes doing something, it better be to the betterment of something that I care about. 

And so for me, that’s about helping companies grow, I think, SMB mid market, and certainly lower enterprise companies could always use help. And I just like to go to the market, I like B2B. And so for me, it’s rewarding to do that kind of work. And so every time I make a decision, I’ve had this for the last couple years in the forefront of my mind. “How is this job,” “This opportunity, just with the way that I’m gonna spend my time influenced those three outcomes.” And it matters because I’ve had a lot of folks in the last couple years, I think through the pandemic, certainly as folks reevaluated you’re describing the kind of priorities and their goals and what they really spend their time on. 

So how do I know what kind of job I should do next? And I’m always like, wrong question backup. Before that. There’s three steps to that process. The first is to ask yourself, “What kind of work I want to do,” “What kind of job I want to have,” “What kind of work do I want to do?” Meaning what do I functionally want to do every day? For me, I like talking to people, I like business, I enjoy solving problems. I had this sort of short curated list I knew that would frame into it, that feeds into some of that decision making. The second piece is who do I want to do that work with? And so what I mean by that is what type of level of individual background what type of curated experience do I want to have? 

Do I want to be the smartest person in the room and make the most money? Do I want to not be the smartest and what I don’t make any money I make up for a knowledge gain. So the second piece is obviously what kind of people I want to be around and then the third is how do those first two decisions that I just made impact and influence the life I want to live around the work that I do? Because everyone talks about work life balance, and I’m going to swear here I call bullshit on that. Like I think it’s the assumption that that means everything is equal as wrong, I think it’s actually more accurate to say very specifically, it’s about work life blend, blend to being that it’s not perfect. 

Some days, I work too much. Some days, I wouldn’t work enough, perhaps. But at the end of the day, it shakes out to be I’m doing good work. And I’m able to enjoy my life around that, because of the decisions that I’ve made in those first two pieces, so that’s how I’ve framed out a lot of my own goal set and sort of mindset, if you will, around, you know, how I make decisions professionally. And personally, it’s helped me so far. 

Bob Woods  35:24

Nice, nice. Something that I’m definitely going to come back to, because I could use a little bit more of that. Not balanced necessarily, but you know, just just more, more conscientiously I think working that and the life of anyone can definitely help them stay sane if absolutely nothing else, I think exactly. Yeah, definitely. So if people want to learn more about you and your offerings, you have your podcast outcomes where partnerships and SaaS meet your company, again is?

Barrett King  35:59

New breed revenue. So newbreedrevenue.com, we are a primarily B2B agency that does you know, revenue growth, Reb ops, certainly demand gen, all of the things that help companies grow are very technology centric as well. 

Bob Woods  36:12

Very nice. 

Bob Woods  36:13

If you want to be in touch, I mean, I appreciate that the show is great. I love that you share that if you know if you’re into partnerships, certainly that’s all I talk about. It’s about conversations with operators, being there, doing the work, I have a story to tell about it. That’s my sort of go to statement there. You know, you’ve sort of joked, but it’s true. It’s on all popular platforms. And I appreciate that you’re welcome to come check it out. I’m a LinkedIn guy like I don’t. I have a buddy who years ago said to me, why aren’t you really active on social and I just pulled back from that stuff. 

Because I didn’t find it was adding value. I probably have an Instagram still on Facebook. I’m not active there. I’m certainly not on Twitter, also known as x. I have to say that apparently, as I write, also known as AKA, but I am on LinkedIn, like Come check me out on LinkedIn. I’m glad to connect with anybody. I have a rule, which is like, as long as you agree to pay it forward. I’ll spend a few minutes with anybody helping you answer questions. I’m always here and willing to have a chat. So I appreciate that.

Bob Woods  37:02

Nice, very, very, very nice way to think of that initial chat you that’s something that’s amazing. So, SaaS go to market and partnership expert Barrett King. We really, really appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule. And joining us on making sales social today. Really appreciate a lot of great insights today.

Barrett King  37:22

Thanks. It’s been great. I appreciate you having me on. And thanks for the chat. 

Bob Woods  37:26

And thank you for streaming this episode of Making Sales Social. So remember when you’re out and about this week or any week, be sure to make your sales social. 

Outro  37:36

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