Episode 266: Andy Morehouse – Building Trust and Driving Engagement in the Digital Sales Era: Insights from Talewind CEO
Andy Morehouse joins us on this episode to discuss the intricacies of buyer engagement, sales, and the problems he helps solve. During our conversation, we explored why it can be difficult to close deals even after starting conversations with potential clients and how changes in buyer behavior have impacted sales success. With insights into the preferences of buyers and the changing roles of sales and marketing leaders, we look at strategies to engage modern buyers effectively. Discover how Andy’s company, Talewind, leverages AI to bridge the engagement gap in sales. This is a conversation you don’t want to miss!
Andy Morehouse is an experienced executive with a strong background in sales and marketing. He has helped numerous small businesses grow and succeed and has also played a key role in the success of a software company, where he spent 13 years as one of the first employees. During his time there, Andy was responsible for building the company’s sales and marketing efforts and worked closely with the founders to develop and execute the company’s strategic vision. Today, he is the CEO of Talewind, a sales proposal and content automation platform designed to improve the buyer experience and bring accuracy, consistency, and speed to every deal.
Learn more about Andy by visiting his website. You can also follow and connect with him on LinkedIn.
View Transcript
Andrew Morehouse 0:03
Sales has always been a very social exercise, whether we’re talking about traditional in person networking, face to face or communities or digital spaces and social media, but I think it really at its heart making sales social is about making human connections.
Intro 00:18
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 0:43
Welcome back to making sales social. I’m excited about my next guest, Andy Morehouse. Andy is the CEO of Talewind, the sales proposal and content automation platform designed to bring accuracy, consistency, speed and a better buyer experience to every single deal. I saw Talewind at sales 3.0. And I was absolutely blown away. So I asked Andy to join us today on making sales social. Welcome, Andy.
Andrew Morehouse 1:16
Thanks, Brynne. And thanks for having me on today.
Brynne Tillman 1:18
Oh, I’m so excited to talk about the problem that you solve. But before I jump deep into that, the first question we ask every one of our guests is, What does making sales social mean to you?
Andrew Morehouse 1:30
It’s a great question. I think of the word trust when I hear that. I mean, obviously, we all think of social selling these days. But I think sales has always been a very social exercise, whether we’re talking about traditional in-person networking, face-to-face or communities, or digital spaces and social media.
But I think it really, at its heart, making sales social, I would say, is about making human connections. I think it was Zig Ziglar who famously said that people will listen to you if they like you, but they will buy from you if they trust you. So, how do we build that social fabric of trust? And I think one of the best ways that I know for myself, and I’ve seen we’ve been doing that lately, is LinkedIn.
For me, it’s kind of in a lot of ways to replace some of the traditional face-to-face. But that’s been a place to build trust and still make meaningful connections. So that LinkedIn has been a great community for myself. That’s what I’m seeing. But obviously, I think we’ve seen this massive trend toward buyers’ preferences for digital spaces when evaluating purchase decisions or even building these kinds of relationships. So, it’s less face-to-face and more digital and remote interactions.
Brynne Tillman 2:40
Oh, I love that. And I’m actually going to talk to you a little bit about the changes that you’re seeing. But I have a question that came out of our conversation a few weeks back. What I see is there are so many people that struggle to get to “Hello,” right? Then, once they get to Hello, they typically struggle at let’s shake hands and close the deal. And everything in between seems to go fine, Right?
If I get to Hello, it’s hard to get to Hello. And now I’m interested. I want to see what you’re doing with see what you’re doing. And even some clients that I work with, they get a verbal and it’s still is in closing. And so when we were talking, what you do really closes that gap significantly. So, I want to talk about the challenge of why people struggle to close.
Andrew Morehouse 3:30
Yeah, well, I think a lot of it is that lack of engagement. So, we make a connection; we want to get to the end of that runway when people are making a commitment to our product or service. But there’s not enough of the blocking and tackling or the engagement that’s taking place in between. And so I think a lot of this comes down to how buying behavior has changed. And I think how we’re struggling as sellers to meet buyers where they are certainly can get into that too if you want to talk about that.
Brynne Tillman 4:03
Yeah, I would love to get into that. I just my quick little follow up on this is, right, that engagement part, we see nods, we think they’re into it, we think they’re excited. And there’s no way to measure any of that. There’s no way to follow any of them while there is but to in the typical world. We’re not measuring following watching all of that happen. But let’s talk about the importance of buyer engagement.
Andrew Morehouse 4:26
Yeah, well, I think we’ve seen it change quite a bit over the past decade – obviously, with a COVID pandemic, it really accelerated this – but what we’ve seen as a trend for quite a while now of buyers moving more and more towards peer groups and their own research and online engagement rather than our traditional sales interactions.
I think Gartner has some research showing that more than 50% of B2B buyers say that the buyer experience and today’s digital experience they’re having is actually more important to them and making their decision to buy than the price or even the perceived quality of the product that they’re getting. McKinsey said it this way they said, over 70% of buyers would prefer a digital or remote environment.
When making a buying decision, and about one in four, want to make a buying decision without ever talking to a seller. That’s kind of amazing for us as sellers. I mean, think about that. That means that nearly one out of four of every single one of our buyers are going to do their research, look into competitors, look into our products, and make a decision about what they’re gonna buy without ever even talking to us.
And so I think that this, you know, creates a significant challenge. And well, how do we stay engaged with them, you know, like you said, we get it, we maybe get a verbal, but then it just kind of dies on the vine, and we don’t know where it went. And I think a lot of it can be traced to some of this change in culture and buying behavior that we’ve seen. So one more thing I would say is that, despite this fact, the fact that we have less face to face time with buyers, what we’re seeing is an increase in the size of the buying committee.
I don’t know if you’ve seen Brynne, this research, but Gartner put this out. And now there’s an average of seven people involved in every B2B buying decision. Well, a lot of times we don’t know who they are, and we’ve never met them. And so this creates a challenge. How do we learn who that group is and engage with them in a meaningful way? So that’s a couple things that I point out. And I think sellers are starting to adapt.
We’re seeing some social technologies that are getting to this problem like digital sales rooms, you look at some of the enablement tools like high spot and seismic or you look at some of the video prospecting tools like loom or video card. And I think there’s still a long way to go, though, for us to really meet buyers where they are and increase that engagement. So on the seller side, one thing I would point out is telling we did a survey.
A year ago, we asked this question around this engagement. And we asked fortune 1000 sales leaders about this list kind of engagement piece. And I was surprised to hear that more than 1/3 of fortune 1000 sales leaders said that they felt embarrassed by the content they were putting in front of buyers, over 40% of them said that they felt their competitors’ sales content was more engaging than their own.
And for over 40% said they’ve lost deals because it took too long to respond to buyers, where they were. And so this is key. So this is where this is why we started telling for us, it’s improving the accuracy, consistency and speed of sales, content and digital engagement, and ultimately creating a better digital buying experience. And that’s, I’d say the kind of the two drivers of what we’re trying to do at Talewind with our proposal platform.
Brynne Tillman 7:49
I’m just going to talk a little bit of what excited me when I saw this because I think this is great. And you know, generally across the board, it is the sales, leadership, and marketing leadership’s responsibility to provide the right templates, the right, you know, the right content for our salespeople to use. But, you know, even in my company, it all lives in a Google Drive under different folders, and I gotta grab it from here. And I’m like, “Oh, this one is PDF.” So the word doc for this one and right and so um, you know.
I’m the CEO, and it could take me an hour and a half to put together a custom or tailored program that you’re what you figured out to do in 10 minutes can be done. And consistent and branded, and all those things. But even better, and I’m this is just my thought. And this is, and we’ll get down to why this is so important. I can see who’s looking at this right. Like I can see if my buyer forwarded this to someone else to see. So walk so use it since seven. I had 6.8 People in the buying decision. I think what’s the statistic is, I don’t know.
Andrew Morehouse 9:04
You’re exactly right. I rounded up. Yeah, no, I just 6.8 is exactly right.
Brynne Tillman 9:12
I mean. I love stats, too. But let’s talk about how important, whether it’s your product or not, it is to be able to track who’s looking at our content and our proposals. Why is that critical to the buying process?
Andrew Morehouse 9:27
Yeah, well, on that particular point, I think what’s happening now is that there’s a lot of people that can say “Yes,” but only one person needs to say “No.” And when you have a larger group of buyers, right, and so if we don’t have an opportunity to build that trust with everybody on that team, we’re in trouble. So we need to use technology that can get us in front of everybody. So I think digital sales rooms are a good way to accomplish this because we can start to track everybody that’s looking at our content and engage with us.
In my former role in sales, we used to send everything over email attachments, I’m sure all of us have had experience doing that. You send a brochure, you send a white paper, you send your proposal, all as attachments and emails. And, you know, we don’t know who opened it, who looked at it, if they ever did. So one of the benefits, I think, of digital sales rooms is that we can start to track the engagement, and who’s looking at it, some of the tools are anonymous, some other ones are better, where you can get tracking down to individuals and who they are.
Which I think is really important, you know, if the executive sponsor looks at it, and you’re seeing for the first time, “Oh, look, this is the executive sponsor.” And now I know who they are. Now I know they exist, they’re involved in the decision, you might want to reach out and say, “Hey, I noticed you just took a look at my proposal. Want to introduce myself? We’d love to answer any questions you might have.” And so now you’re engaging with someone that otherwise you wouldn’t have even known was involved in the conversation.
So I think that’s important. And then to touch on what you said about why this is so important. I think of a Steve Martin quote that he once said, the actor comedian, he one time said, “Be so good. They can’t ignore you.” And it was in response to an interview with Charlie Rose in 2007. He was being interviewed for his book Born standing up about a stand up comedian career. And a lot of people when Steve Martin came on the scene, it looked like he just exploded on the scene.
But he said in his book and reality, he spent 10 years developing material as a relatively unknown comedian for more years, refining it, practicing it. And then for him, it only took over that overnight success took him 15 years. And so when Charlie Rose asked, “What advice would you have for an aspiring entertainer or actor?” He said, “Be so good, they can’t ignore you.” And what he meant was, there’s no shortcut to success, you know, you’ve got to work really hard at getting so good at showing up at one thing that nobody can ignore you.
And that really struck me. So I think, particularly in this age, when we’ve got this one shot, to kind of make an impression with our buyers. And a lot of times it’s in that digital space. How are we showing up? Right? Are we showing up so good that they can’t ignore us? Are we showing good, so good that it just kind of puts the rest of our competitors out to pasture. And I have a personal story for how I did this? A few years back when we started using some of the tools that we’re doing now Talewind, and I closed a very large deal with a fortune 100 company.
And I asked in a win, interview, win last interview, which you should all be doing that if you’re not doing that, whether you win or lose, always ask why. So you can learn and improve. But we want to ask, “Why did we win?” And she said, “It was your sales process.” That’s the reason that you won. And that was intriguing to me, because normally I will hear an answer about how good our product is or how good our team is, or our service. This is the first time I ever heard your sales process and, you know, told us we should buy from you. And when I asked her what that meant.
She said, “Well, we’ve been going at this for six months, you’ve sent us a couple of videos, you sent us a brochure, a presentation deck, a proposal,” she said “I looked over every piece of content that you sent, and there’s not a single typo in anything. “She said “You also sent it over the same day that it was requested and you branded it and designed it for organization.” She said “What you did with the quality of all of the sales content that you put in front of us was head and shoulders better than your competitors.
And it showed how much more you cared about our business.” But what she said after that is what really floored me. She said that “Experience with you and your sales team told us everything we needed to know about the kind of experience we were going to have with the rest of your company.” Right? So that hit me like a ton of bricks. And I think as sellers, a lot of times we think right? Yeah, of course, we’re making a first impression with who we’re selling to about our products and our services.
What we don’t always understand is that no, it’s not just that they’re making judgments about our culture, about our integrity, about the quality of our work, about our responsiveness and not just as us as sellers, but our entire company. So how are we facilitating that engagement, that experience when we’re selling in the social spaces like we were talking about?
Brynne Tillman 14:31
That’s a mic drop moment, right there. I mean, that really, that’s transformative when you start thinking about this right that the buyer’s journey leads to what their experience is going to be when they’re your client. And you got to nail it. So oh, how much I love that. And I think that is a great place to ask my last question, Which is, Andrew, based on everything we talked about today. What did they not ask you that I should have?
Andrew Morehouse 15:03
Well, I guess selfishly, I would say I’d love to kind of share what we’re doing at Talewind too
Brynne Tillman 15:13
Okay, that’s great. So then I guess it’s my second to last question. Okay. Because I’ll end with that. Perfect. What questions should I have asked you about digital sales, digital experience buyer experience?
Andrew Morehouse 15:28
Well, I think you know, I think it’s a hot topic right now. And one that I’ve been really diving into is how we’re using AI technology to also assist in this. I will plug another organization that I found called Sybil.
Brynne Tillman 15:47
I love Sybil. They were at the table next to you. They were so tired them. I use them. They’re magic.
Andrew Morehouse 15:50
Yeah, I see your note taker right now. I think it’s Sybil.
Brynne Tillman 15:53
Yeah that’s Sybil.
Andrew Morehouse 15:50
I think it’s that simple. I’m using it right now. And it’s magic, I mean, but about it. There’s a lot of and what Sybil does is basically it records and transcribes your meetings. And then we’ll create call summaries and action steps for and we do it for everything. So our ops client meetings we did for that we do it for our sales calls. And then we even take some of that and share it back to our clients.
I mean, it’s amazing. It’s such a time saver, and it’s very accurate. But I love how some of these AI technologies are increasing our efficiency as we work. And I think that as we embed some of that into how we’re engaging buyers, again, it’s going to help us with accuracy and speed. And so that’s one thing that I think is of particular interest to me right now.
Brynne Tillman 16:39
I love it. I love it. Yeah, it’s so fun. Yeah, I have not seen anything like Sybil. I’m so excited. And I’m glad you’re using it too. So talk a little bit about Talewind. First of all the name is fabulous.
Andrew Morehouse 16:57
Thank you.
Brynne Tillman 16:58
About how companies are using it, and how people that are interested can get in touch with you to learn more.
Andrew Morehouse 17:04
Sure. Well, thank you. quick background on how we started Talewind. So myself and all my colleagues here at Talewind, we all used to work together at the same organization, we were at an HR technology software company. And there was a services first mindset and that organization. And so every time we propose the deal, I had to write and saw proposals for every prospect and that process took a minimum of five hours for every deal.
And we put together a pitch deck, we put together videos. So I was spending, you know, almost half my week, putting together content on all these deals. And as we grew and scaled, it became cost prohibitive with just the time involved and it was taking too long to get back to our prospects. So we started automating creating automation tools where instead of editing or writing a proposal, you could simply fill out a questionnaire and the technology would build the document for you and brand it for the client.
And so those early days are how we started this journey at Talewind. And essentially, we took that concept of you know, I asked this question, What if I could remove the on average 15 hours a week that that sales rep spent on writing editing content? What if we could delete that, and we can allow sellers to focus on what they’re good at, and what they like to do, which is interface with clients and close deals. So what if we could bring automation even to complex processes, there’s, there’s a lot of tools out there that are, you know, will replace merge fields or, or, you know, kind of search and replace and automate some of those things.
But we really going beyond that into taking our entire clients document workflow when it comes to their sales content and saying, “Okay, if you put in the deal points, you put in the customer information,” A lot of that can come straight from the CRM automatically, then why don’t we just build this use technology to create these documents, slide decks, power proposals, your contracts, your NDAs, brochures, whatever it might be, and then provide that to every single prospect in a digital sales room where we can track every single buyer.
We were talking about that. And do it very quickly with that accuracy, consensus, consistency and speed, so that we’re engaging buyers and kind of upping that quality game. So again, we’re showing up so good that we can’t be ignored. So that’s kind of the foundation of what we’re doing is trying to build this automated proposal platform that can take very complex documents. They could be like one of our first clients is a clinical trial research firm.
They have a 70 page proposal that was taking over 20 hours for each proposal to write, being able to take that turned into a questionnaire automatically generate the document in under an hour. This is what we’re doing with our clients now. So it’s hard to proposal platform, but it’s a digital sales room. That’s kind of upping that overall engagement and experience that our buyers are having with us.
Brynne Tillman 19:59
Fabulous so one things I’m going to end with on this is you have in combination with the name of your company, one of my favorite tagline, so it’s Talewind. Put the wind in your sales, Yes. Love that. It’s brilliant. So I just wanted to add to that. And, you know, I want to thank you so much. This has been so fun. I’ve learned a whole bunch. And, you know, I do believe this is the kind of thing that transforms sales organizations. So I really appreciate you being here.
Andrew Morehouse 20:35
Well, thanks Brynne has a lot of fun.
Brynne Tillman 20:37
Thanks. And for all of our listeners when you’re out and about don’t forget to make your sales social.
Outro 20:42
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