This week on The Digital Download, we are opening the crypt on your sales strategy for a special Halloween panel discussion. I'm joined by my co-hosts Adam Gray and Tim Hughes, along with expert guests Richard Jones and Tracy Borreson, to discuss one of the most frightening topics in business: the sales pipeline.

Your CRM is a graveyard. It's filled with "zombie" deals that died months ago but continue to haunt your forecast. We'll argue this is a symptom of a much deeper disease: a reliance on sales methods that, as Richard Jones notes, "have run their course". As Tim Hughes highlights, traditional cold calling and email marketing have failure rates approaching 98%, yet managers, terrified of an empty pipeline, still demand this activity. This culture of fear forces teams into "ghost reporting."

The result? As Tracy Borreson points out, sales is broken because "we just want you to buy a solution" instead of putting in the effort "to understand your problem". We're left with what Adam Gray would call a strategy built on "luck" rather than "inevitability".

Join us as we put a stake through the heart of these practices and discuss:

• Why is "pipeline coverage" the most dangerous vanity metric in sales?

• How does management fear directly create a CRM full of zombies?

• Is the monthly forecast review just a ritual of collective lying?

• What is the real cost of keeping a dead deal "alive"?

• How do we move from "interruption" to "authentic human engagement" and build a pipeline that's actually alive?

As co-founders of DLA Ignite, Tim Hughes and Adam Gray have pioneered the core methodologies to transform entire organisations beyond these failed analogue tactics. As a Go-To-Market Advisor, Richard Jones helps firms navigate a new reality where buyers are 80% through their decision before sales even shows up. As an Authentic Marketing Advisor, Tracy Borreson champions a new model of "togetherness" , reminding us that "Sales People deserve to be people too". And as for me, Bertrand Godillot, I believe it's time to "rethink B2B acquisition" entirely and clear out the old. This episode will be a masterclass in sales exorcism.

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is keenly encouraged!

This week's Host was -

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, Co-founder and CEO of DLA Ignite

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of DLA Ignite

• Tracy Borreson, Founder and CEO of TLB Coaching & Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-10-31

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:07]:

Good afternoon, good morning, and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn live now globally syndicated online on tuning radio through IBTR, the world's number one business talk news and strategy radio network today. Thanks, Tim. Today on the Digital Download, we are.

Tim Hughes [00:00:38]:

It's Halloween, isn't it?

Tracy Borreson [00:00:40]:

Happy Halloween.

Tim Hughes [00:00:41]:

Happy Halloween, everybody. Happy. I can't talk with it on.

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:46]:

All right, so as I said, today on the Digital Download, we are opening the crypt of your sales strategy for a special Halloween edition. For this special edition, I am joined by our panelists, of course, to discuss one of the most frightening topics in business, the sales pipeline. But before we kick off the discussion, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. While we are doing that, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them and have them join us. We strive to make the Digital Download an interactive experience and audience participation, as you know, is highly encouraged. Tracy, do you want to kick us off, please?

Tracy Borreson [00:01:34]:

Hello, everybody. Happy Halloween. I don't know if there could be any different, like, more drastic difference between Tim's costume and my costume, but I'm a care Bear today. Cheer bear, because we need to bring some cheer to our sales pipeline. What else? I am Tracy Forrest and founder of TLB Coaching and Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite. And while I might generally hang out on the marketing side of the funnel, there's an equal amount of living dead that exists in there. So I'm sure we'll cover it all today.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:13]:

Excellent. I'm sure they are.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:15]:

Adam ?

Adam Gray [00:02:18]:

Hi everyone. I'm Adam Gray. I'm co founder of DLA Ignite and I decided not to wear anything Halloween based today.

Tim Hughes [00:02:27]:

I thought you were wearing a mask.

Adam Gray [00:02:33]:

Thank you very much. Yeah, so. So this is really interesting and when, when you put the. The announcement together, Bertrand, and you said about, you know, the zombies in the pipeline, I thought that's a really good way of describing how this is for so many organizations. And I think it'll be an interesting conversation to have because I think it's probably a challenge or a problem that affects everybody.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:03]:

And I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to discuss that at length. Okay, Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:03:12]:

Hello, my name is Tim Hughes and I'm the CEO and co founder of DLA Knight and I'm famous for writing the book Social Selling Techniques to Influence.

Tim Hughes [00:03:20]:

Buyers and Change Makers.

Tim Hughes [00:03:21]:

And I'm really looking forward to opening the Crypt and delving into the coffin of the witchcraft, which is the, the sales pipeline.

Tracy Borreson [00:03:35]:

Is there anything good in the sales pipeline?

Tim Hughes [00:03:39]:

Dreams.

Tracy Borreson [00:03:40]:

Dreams. Dreams and dead things.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:44]:

And myself, Bertrand, I am the founder and managing partner of Odysseus and Co. A very proud daily ignite partner. And I am wearing a, you know, kind of, I mean, the color tone for today, let's put it this way. Well, I, I, I, I. At least I like to think so. Okay, thank you so much, guys. Ladies and gentlemen.

Tim Hughes [00:04:09]:

Sorry, Can I ask a question, please?

Adam Gray [00:04:11]:

Yes.

Tim Hughes [00:04:11]:

So I, I wanted to raise a point today because Bertrand basically asked Gemini AI oh, no. What it thought about him. And what did it say, Adam?

Adam Gray [00:04:29]:

It said he was a prisoner of his own brilliance, which is a, it's a tremendous thing to have said about you, isn't it?

Bertrand Godillot [00:04:40]:

Yeah, well, you know, every now and again you need a little bit of, you know, a little bit of a push. Absolutely.

Tim Hughes [00:04:47]:

And so, so, Bertrand, a prisoner of your own brilliance.

Adam Gray [00:04:52]:

Yes.

Tim Hughes [00:04:52]:

According to Gemini Google Gemini AI There.

Bertrand Godillot [00:04:59]:

That'S, that's probably the, the saddest thing about it. But although, although it knows a lot about me, so.

Tim Hughes [00:05:06]:

It does know a lot about you. You're a prisoner of your own brilliance. All right.

Tracy Borreson [00:05:11]:

I feel like we need a whole episode to dive into.

Bertrand Godillot [00:05:14]:

Let's get started because otherwise. Exactly. Well, we'll, but, but, but that was good. That was great mentioning. That was good mentioning. Tim and I will talk about this further, I'm sure. So let's start with a foundational question for today, because I've got one. Is the weekly or say, monthly forecast review just a ritual of collective lying? I'm sure, I'm sure there will be a reaction.

Tracy Borreson [00:05:46]:

Yes.

Tim Hughes [00:05:48]:

Yes.

Bertrand Godillot [00:05:48]:

Okay. That's a good start.

Tracy Borreson [00:05:50]:

Do any of us disagree with that?

Adam Gray [00:05:53]:

No. And I think it's all to do with the, the expectation, isn't it, of the sales function within an organization. So, you know, we get on a call, I'm expecting you to have X Times pipeline coverage for your number. So you are obligated to come up with stuff that you know is not going to be factual. You know, you, I can't imagine that many salespeople say, yeah, I've got one thing, it's my pipeline, and I'm pinning all my hopes on that. Even if they're 100% confident it's going to close. And I think that, that to say, here are 20 things I've got and they're all at like 20% is fine, but when the line manager pushes and Says, okay, so what have you done with this? Where are you at with this? What conversations have you had since last week with this? It's an invitation for people to say, well, yes, I spoke to all of those people, and they're all really interested in and. Because that.

Adam Gray [00:07:01]:

Because that's the expectation, isn't it? And. And it's not the sales manager's fault, because the. The VP is saying to the sales manager, we need more stuff in the pipeline, and the SVP is saying to the vp, we need more stuff in the pipeline, and the CRO is saying to the svp, we need more stuff in the pipeline. So that goes back down. And then, sure enough, stuff comes back up. Although all of it is, as Bertrand said in the the. Or much of it is, as Bertrand said in the the. The show announcement, they're zombie deals.

Adam Gray [00:07:27]:

They're deals that either aren't real, you know, like a spectre in the night, or they're deals that have been in there for so long and they're there as a placeholder, not.

Tim Hughes [00:07:38]:

Or you get ghosted.

Adam Gray [00:07:39]:

Or you. You get ghosted. Yes.

Tracy Borreson [00:07:43]:

There's gonna be so many jokes today, everybody. It's great. So, like, my. I always have wondered about this, honestly, from a marketing point of view, because then this holds up to marketing too, right? We need 60 leads, because we need to turn 60 leads into 20 opportunities, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, somewhere along the line, the actual focus on the revenue gets lost, right? Like, if we want to say, we want to hit this revenue number and we get really busy deciphering this down into activities. So then I say, you need to do 25 calls a day, and then people get busy doing 25 calls a day. And I can prove to you that I did 25 calls a day. I just didn't get any deals.

Tracy Borreson [00:08:27]:

And I think this is where this, like, zombies get created, right? Because you're like, I need you to have 20 things in your pipeline. So you're like, I will put 20 things in my pipeline if they're real or not. I don't know, but I will be able to tell you I put 20 things in my pipeline, and then I will earn that $50 gift card because you told me every time I put 20 things in my pipeline, earn a 50 gift card. So then we have like a weird. The behavior. The behavior that we are encouraging people to do is not actually the right behavior. And we're. We're rewarding them for doing the behavior instead of actually meeting our goals, which has always boggled My mind, yeah.

Adam Gray [00:09:14]:

And I think the issue is, isn't it that, that once upon a time, more calls, more dials, led to more conversations, which led to more pipeline, which led to more revenue and actually maybe things don't work that way anymore. So, you know, if, if Tim has got a number of a million that he needs to make and he's got just one deal that's worth 2 million and it closes, he's going to go on President's club. And if he, if he's so determined to close that deal, he basically moves into the client's office and acts like he's an employee in order that the clients are 100% dependent on Tim to achieve their objectives. Tim can be like, sit with his arms folded going, yeah, this deal is going to close. The problem is that Tim's manager says, yeah, but what happens if it doesn't? Tim's like, well, it is going to close because I've worked so hard, it can't not close. And I think you're right, Tracy. I think, you know, ultimately the thing that's important is achieving revenue. If you're achieving your revenue, no matter how you do it, as long as you achieve your revenue.

Adam Gray [00:10:26]:

So, you know, we know of, of somebody that's, that's currently sitting at 170 of their number and they're not making enough cold calls, so they're being told off by their boss. You're not making enough cold calls or sending enough emails. I'm selling almost twice as much as.

Tim Hughes [00:10:41]:

You expect me to.

Adam Gray [00:10:42]:

Yeah, but you're not doing enough of these KPIs, but what does it matter?

Tracy Borreson [00:10:46]:

And it's not a KPI like an actual key performance indicator if it has no relevant, no relationship to the revenue.

Adam Gray [00:10:56]:

No, but Tim always talks about how skilled salespeople are very good at playing the game. So, you know, you want 10x pipeline coverage, so I'll give you 10, 10x pipeline coverage. Well, yeah, but actually 10x pipeline coverage should equal 10x revenue, shouldn't it? If you're able to close these things and they're proper deals.

Bertrand Godillot [00:11:20]:

But isn't that the assumption here that, you know, volume will lead to results? So, you know, I, I, I don't want our audience to believe that we're that naive. Right. I mean, we understand that there is a political aspect at least. I think I'm deeply convinced that there is a political aspect into the, the way you report your, your forecast. Of course. But then the, the question, the question I have always had is it's a Little bit like when you enter a golf course, you know, at the end of the day, the only thing that counts is how much you, how much strokes you, you've made, not how you made these strokes. So the question, I think is really about, you know, incentives. Every single salesperson, director, VP are all incentives and revenue.

Bertrand Godillot [00:12:20]:

So why on earth do we have that many zombies?

Tracy Borreson [00:12:27]:

I feel like maybe there's a component of control here, like, like the command and control structure that exists traditional business where like, I, as the sales leader have to know with certainty, which there is in fact none of what is in the pipeline, so I can report it up to my people so they can make with certainty a decision about what is going to happen next. And I mean, even if I had the best intentions as a salesperson and I haven't been rewarded elsewhere to, to over exaggerate my behavior, put zombies into my pipeline, which we've already talked about then. Like, unless if you, if you're a sales leader and you've got 10, 20, 150 people underneath of you who are responsible for selling stuff, if I'm supposed to control what they do, I have to see what they do. So then I need you to put it in the CRM so I can know what you're going to do do. But then if I look at that month over month or year over year, I know that these are lies, but we just keep putting them in there because I need to control the uncontrollable.

Adam Gray [00:13:45]:

I mean, I, I remember Tim talking ages ago about. And the reason I'm mentioning you, Tim, is because I don't want to steal your thunder for this. Talking about doing a, a deal review with a, a bunch of salespeople and saying, how many connections have you got inside that company? And they're like, well, I got two. Tim fold his arms and says, well, that's not going to close then. Yes, it is. No, it isn't, because nobody knows who on earth you are. And, and I think that that's, that's.

Tim Hughes [00:14:15]:

I pissed off one of our clients because I said in a. I, I attended the, the forecast meeting and it was Domino's Pizza and they were forecasting it to close.

Adam Gray [00:14:24]:

And I said it won't close because.

Tim Hughes [00:14:26]:

The person didn't have any connections on LinkedIn. Oh, yeah, but the MDs met them and. Yeah, but you've got no relationship in that it didn't close.

Adam Gray [00:14:33]:

Yeah. And, you know, I think that one of the things that's, that's really interesting, isn't it, that the often Sales, not sales people, but sales functions want to spread their bets. You know, you've only got a finite number of hours in the day with which you can build relationships and gain insights on the people that you're trying to sell to. So is it better if you've got more likelihood of closing a deal or more surety perhaps of closing a deal if you've got two deals where you have a good relationship with 50 people in each of the two deals that you're trying to close, or 100 deals where you have one person in each of those? Now, you may get the same revenue from either route forward, but the hundred companies where you've got one relationship and each does feel rather like spinning a roulette wheel, doesn't it? You know, it's like, so one of these is going to close because statistically one of them is going to close.

Tim Hughes [00:15:30]:

It's a bit like astronomy, though, isn't it? Which is what you're doing is that you're using it to try and predict the future. And one of the measures of Sal's leadership is, as in your professionalism, is an ability to, in effect, predict the future. And that's. And that's about you understanding the humans. I know that Tracy tends to forward forecast stuff. I know that Adam under performs forecasting stuff and trying to get that balanced out. Because at the end of the day, as a sales leader, when you go to the board, what they're looking for is for salesforce sales forecast accuracy.

Bertrand Godillot [00:16:14]:

Well, predictability and contribution.

Tim Hughes [00:16:16]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because. Because the. The company is going to be making decisions. Do we hire people? Do we fire people? Based on what you come to the board. And if we, if we know you know any, it only takes you. You can lose your professionalism in three months by basically coming to the board and forecasting something that doesn't happen. And at that point you say, well, I just don't believe anything in the.

Adam Gray [00:16:36]:

The.

Tim Hughes [00:16:36]:

The c. The sales leader is talking about.

Tracy Borreson [00:16:41]:

So I think one of the other things I've seen happen there is that, like, people will put something in the funnel because they're actively working on it, but then they will move on to something else. And so they're not actively, like, nurturing this account anymore. So this is another reason where there's a lot of like 20%, right? Like, I, I do. And I could probably go back to that and say, like, yep, I would say that one's still at 20%, except now the close date is like a year out because I haven't nurtured it. And then I, I think that comes back to the behavior that we're rewarding internally. Do we want a lot different projects at 20%. And I, I don't have time as a salesperson to nurture these things or build up my relationship ecosystem within a target business. I have to move on to the next thing.

Tracy Borreson [00:17:32]:

So it's.

Tim Hughes [00:17:34]:

And I think that, and I think that the quality, sorry quantity G gives is a sort is a, is a comfort blanket, isn't it? Because we all sit there and we make, you know, we all have those ratios. If we have five of those then, then, then it will close to, to one of those. So I've just noticed a comment from Mark Woodham just coming.

Bertrand Godillot [00:17:56]:

Yeah. And we'll go for it because I like, I've not dry, but I like.

Tim Hughes [00:18:02]:

I used to work with Mark in a very large US Software company.

Bertrand Godillot [00:18:05]:

So Mark says. You want to read it, Tim?

Tim Hughes [00:18:08]:

Yeah. The way in which a buyer buys has changed phenomenally over the last five years. Yet our desire to measure in the same way has not. Even to the point where I have experienced managers forcing reps to inflate their pipeline and then blaming the rep for failing to deliver. I've seen it as well, Mark. It's a crazy situation built on fear and little understanding. My belief is that we need to create more time for the rep to sell. Yes, we need some data, but the balance has shifted too far, in my opinion.

Adam Gray [00:18:43]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:18:44]:

Emoji there.

Adam Gray [00:18:45]:

Yeah, absolutely.

Bertrand Godillot [00:18:48]:

Spot on. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:18:49]:

Which Mark, thanks. And thanks for. For watching.

Bertrand Godillot [00:18:53]:

There's probably something that doesn't change and that's the close. Right. Which I think is one of the. Well, probably most probably is one of the ingredients for pipeline coverage.

Adam Gray [00:19:05]:

So I think, I think the close rate goes down, you know, because at the end of the day fewer salespeople make their number now than at any point previously.

Bertrand Godillot [00:19:15]:

Which, which, that. Which therefore means that coverage goes up.

Adam Gray [00:19:19]:

Absolutely. So, so therefore your close rate goes down because now your vote forecasting 10 times your number rather than the five times you were, but you're still not making your number. And, and I think that, you know, it's, there's, it's as if this idea that Tim's performing at 80% of his revenue objectives at the moment. So if I ramp up his number by 50%, he'll still sell what is at today's number, 120% of his number because he'll add 50% to the number he's. And that the assumption for that is that the reason Tim's at 80% is because he's sitting with his arms folded watching daytime TV and, and you just need to motivate him to do more work. The reality is that he's working absolutely flat out to get that 80% and he's overquoted and the product's not competitive and he's so manacled and shackled by the processes that have been put in place. You have to make 50 calls a day, you have to send 50 emails today. You have to put people into this cadence.

Adam Gray [00:20:26]:

These are the words you need to use on your call. And all of that stuff which turns Tim from being Tim into being a corporate drone. And at the end of the day what we've all learned is that the thing that makes Tim effective is being Tim. Some people like it, some don't. But at the end of the day that's his only usp.

Tim Hughes [00:20:48]:

So when Mark and I worked together there was, we had a sales force of 69, 7%. Seven people always made 200%. You knew who they were and, and exactly what you said, Adam. You had basically you had to keep the corporation away from them. They had to get certain sign offs and certain things which you know, but you caught, you had to keep the corporation away from them and they would do one deal. All of the other people who were not going to do their number, you're basically, it's an, it was always a numbers game and, and so you need, so as a leader you, you were in a situation where in one place you're, you're having to be, you're having to run inspection on certain individuals, on others. You knew that they're going to turn to 200. If you inspected them, they'd walk out of the business.

Tim Hughes [00:21:43]:

So it's, it's a really difficult balance to get in terms of, you know, understanding the people. Also some other facts you'd like. I thought I'd give you in of the, of the, the leads that came into the CRM at 30%. 80% of those closed to win of the business of the forecast and it was about one or two billion dollars of that. Of that 80% of it was at 10% and none of that closed. And in fact most 80 of that stuff that was at 10. What happened was that they changed the calendar from. So it basically is going to close the last month of the, of the last quarter of the year and they didn't and they would just change the date.

Tim Hughes [00:22:37]:

It's going to change the last month or the last quarter of the next financial year.

Adam Gray [00:22:40]:

And.

Tim Hughes [00:22:43]:

And, and so you've got this, your, your, your from from a leadership perspective you've got this massive change of all the things, of all the plates that you need to spin, the different types of people, the, the way that people work and, and the rev ops, the move toward rebops. Rev ops can be good because it, you can work out if, if, if so so why do 80 of the stuff that comes in at 30 close to win? Well, because the CL, the salesperson had gone out to the client, they'd had a meeting, maybe even actually had a demonstration and they actually have a good visibility of, of the, of the path to close. At that point they would put it in the CRM. So it's about understanding some of these things. And one of the things that we implemented was which, because we had to run a 95% accurate forecast. 95% because of the fact that the, the corporation, you got to remember the corporation reports to the nasdaq. You get the, your forecast draw on this tank, your, your shares tank and everybody's really annoyed. So, so what did we implement? We implemented social because one of, because what we did any, any deal over 500k we basically there had to be a, a line in social because, because what you would do is, is basically smoke out any of this.

Tim Hughes [00:24:09]:

Is it going to happen or not? Because we knew if there was a deal over 500k and it was going to be happening and you'd have the salesperson, the pre salesperson, the sales management, you would see a discussion taking place on the deals that were over 50. I remember I, I, I'm not going to mention the person, but they had a deal in for Barclays. Oh, is it going to close? It's going to close.

Adam Gray [00:24:32]:

Is it? Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:24:32]:

Half a million? Yeah, yeah. There was no discussion going on in this, in the, so you knew that there was no pre sales work on it. You knew that the salesperson was just out having lunch or something like that. So, so it's, it's an amorphous job in terms of looking at that, you know, and looking after 69 salespeople and working out how are you going to get do, do the number? Sorry, I just, just, I think that's.

Adam Gray [00:25:02]:

Really interesting because I think that one of the issues is that the, the interrogation of each of the deals. So you know, I've gone and had a call or a conversation with company X. They said that they were really interested in our product, therefore I'm going to forecast it. You know. So the fact that one person has said they, like it is a million miles away from me being in the deal and things going to necessarily happen. And I think that unfortunately, you know, what the sales manager doesn't want to hear is from, from their reps that I've actually got no deals at the moment. I'm working on these five companies, but there's nothing I'm comfortable forecasting yet. What they want is I've got 10 deals that I'm forecasting.

Adam Gray [00:25:49]:

Even though there's no chance of any of those deals going anywhere at this stage. They maybe will at some point, but at this stage I can't pin my hopes on any of those. So rather than saying I've got nothing, it's a case of, well, I've got loads of stuff, I've got an embarrassment of riches here and I'm just trying to work out which one's the most likely one that I need to pursue.

Tim Hughes [00:26:08]:

We did actually have a sales leader come to a board meeting saying they didn't have anything to forecast.

Adam Gray [00:26:14]:

Did you?

Tim Hughes [00:26:15]:

Yes.

Adam Gray [00:26:16]:

How was that received?

Tim Hughes [00:26:19]:

What you'd expect. Like, so, so, so what's paying you? Basics. You're all getting a basic salary but you're not bringing. There's money going out for the company but nothing coming in. How does this work?

Bertrand Godillot [00:26:32]:

Yeah, just, just a, a quick. Well, I'm not sure it's going to be a quick one, but anyway, because I, I, I, I do believe that there is something that we need to discuss, which is qualification, because one of the things that you said, Tim, around the fact that if that deal is going to close, then there is a lot of activity between people internally discussing and that's so, so does that mean that there are, there is the need for a change in the way things are qualified right now, if they are in the first place?

Tracy Borreson [00:27:15]:

Well, and I think like qualification I find interesting because I do feel like this falls into marketing as well.

Adam Gray [00:27:23]:

Right.

Tracy Borreson [00:27:23]:

Like we do this and then we have a marketing qualified lead and then we turn it into a sales qualified lead and there's like weird qualifications that are going on, right? Like, what is a qualified lead? And I think there's again, especially now that we've layered in a lot of technology into these things, there's a lot of ways that you can say, like, well, I've, I've have seven meaningful interactions with this person and therefore that makes it qualified. And we want to like, get very technical about how we can use the systems to qualify a thing. So then I want to demonstrate within the system that that Thing is, is moving along or that it is being qualified. But I think we can all attest to like, I can have seven conversations with one person and it not be qualified. And I can have two conversations with another person and it be qualified. So I think that there is this. The level of automation has confused that, but also the inherent. I'm gonna come back to the uncertainty.

Tracy Borreson [00:28:29]:

Right. And unpredictability. Is that how I am as a human can resonate much stronger with another person and we can move through a thing very quickly or they have a more urgent need or they're actually trying to get rid of some budget. Right. Like I got leftover budget and I'm trying to spend this and I need to spend it in the next 30 days. Awesome. Let's talk about it, right? Like I. I've had clients that I got in 30 days and I've had clients that I nurtured for eight years.

Adam Gray [00:28:58]:

Yeah, right. But I think that's the crucial point. I think that that qualification, since the advent of social, I genuinely believe that qualification is not in or out, but now or later. Because you now have a vehicle to talk for an infinitely long period of time to a prospect and, and show them your thinking and show them all of the reasons that they should buy from you without annoying them. You know, I send you my weekly newsletter and actually after three episodes you, you just unsubscribe because it's, it's boring and you don't want to hear about that. But, but on social, I can show you this stuff which you can read and engage with should you want to and not if you don't want to. So the question is, at the very beginning, when you're targeting individuals or companies, you need to ask the question, are you a perfect fit for my business and am I a perfect fit for you? And if the answer is yes, then you would be a perfect thing for them to buy. They maybe don't have budget this year.

Adam Gray [00:30:02]:

Maybe they're going through a reorg, maybe they're moving the structure of the business. Who knows? It could be one of it could be under contract to another supplier, but at some point down the road the deal will surface. So connecting now in the way that you would if it were an active deal where you're connecting to lots of people within the organization and you share content that's going to be interesting to them, that is fun, entertaining, shows you in a good light, shows that you understand what it is they're doing. Eventually you will have moved them to a point where you Seem like the obvious choice. And I think that fundamentally the thing that we do wrong from a sales perspective is are you going to buy from me today, Tim?

Tim Hughes [00:30:43]:

No.

Adam Gray [00:30:44]:

Okay, well that's the end of the conversation then. And then three years later. Are you going to buy from me today, Tim? No. And actually there's that huge period in between when I could have kept nudging Tim along, looking better and better in his eyes, but I chose not to because I thought you're not going to, you're not going to land this quarter. And I think that this short termist view that we have, particularly when many big complex purchases have got an 18 month, two year sales cycle. So it's like, well, clearly you know, I've only just phoned you up and had a conversation with you for the first time. It's unlikely it's going to land this quarter. And yet still that's the expectation.

Tim Hughes [00:31:22]:

And I think that the, to, to go on that because I know Tracy, you talk a lot about nurturing. The, the nurturing process has got so simple now because, you know, I remember having a big spreadsheet of. Because one of the things, you go back to the beginning, we, we're always having as a salesperson, we're always balancing our time. Do, do we prospect or do we close? And sometimes as you said, Tracy, what we're doing is that we get told we need to be doing certain things and like you need to prospect more when actually we need to be closing and we get told to do stuff, whereas we, and, and we get told to do stuff because what's happened is that we've taken away the ability for salespeople to think. So we don't think for ourselves now we just have to, to do. And, and, and, and so in the old days, you know, you would have, you would be nurturing things and I would have a spreadsheet and it would be, you know, today I'm going to be doing that. So I'm basically. Hello, Clive.

Tim Hughes [00:32:22]:

Yeah, so, so where are you? Yeah, yeah, we said I talked to you six weeks ago and you would just go now I nurture my people all the time because I'm posting stuff on social and so that, so the nurturing process is just, so, it's just.

Adam Gray [00:32:37]:

So simple, isn't it? You know, you're constant, I can see your constant.

Tim Hughes [00:32:43]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam Gray [00:32:44]:

Every single day. So I never forget.

Tim Hughes [00:32:45]:

Well, yeah, before, you know, bringing up Clive, but he said, he said ring back in six weeks. He said, well, I won't bring him back straight away in six weeks because actually, I'll give it eight weeks. Yeah. How's it going? No, no, I'm actually nurturing Clive every single day because he's actually seeing, oh, there's Tim Hughes.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:01]:

But I also think, like, I think we can, similarly to how we interpret qualification, we can also misinterpret nurturing. So I think, like, because this is very common now too, right? Like, if sales is like, oh, I got that, I reached this point person, they're not in market today, I'm just going to put them in the email list and marketing is going to nurture them. Or this email newsletter that we send out once a week is going to nurture them. Sorry, folks, that isn't nurturing anything. No, I'm going to stand here right now and tell you, if you put a cold lead into an email list, it's not nurturing. It might be maintaining a touch point.

Adam Gray [00:33:44]:

It's more likely to be. It's more likely to be neutering than nurturing. Because. Because at the end of the day, you know how many of us, we see something and we go, that's interesting. I'll sign up for that newsletter. And then we glance at the first few newsletters that come and then they become an annoyance and we either unsubscribe or we just simply block them out because we haven't got time to read them. Even though at the point that we added our. Our email list email address, we thought, this is really valuable stuff.

Adam Gray [00:34:18]:

So the, the point is, you know, we all become totally turned off by that constant stream of you telling me what's going on in your life.

Tim Hughes [00:34:29]:

It's. It's an oxymoron.

Adam Gray [00:34:31]:

It's.

Tim Hughes [00:34:31]:

It's never. A newsletter is never useful and interesting because it's about you. You talk about yourself. You don't talk about me. You talk about, oh, yeah, we've won this thing. I don't care.

Adam Gray [00:34:43]:

Tim won a trophy last week.

Tim Hughes [00:34:45]:

Oh, yeah.

Adam Gray [00:34:45]:

So here's a photo of Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:34:48]:

Here's. Here's Rachel from accounts. She's won a. She's won something.

Tracy Borreson [00:34:54]:

Employee of the month. No. And the thing from a marketing point of view, again, a thing that confuses me is like, we all do this as consumers, right? We sign up for an email list and then usually we get the thing that we wanted and then we don't do anything else because we don't have a relationship with that brand, right? Like, don't open your emails. And I probably don't even opt out because I don't Care that much. I just delete your emails every time I get them.

Adam Gray [00:35:26]:

Right.

Tracy Borreson [00:35:27]:

Like, is that what we're going for? No, this is not. So if we know that this is the basic behavior of humans at this point with email, there are things we can do with email that would kick people out of that. But a nurturer only exists if you have a relationship to nurture.

Tim Hughes [00:35:52]:

I think you get it spot on there, Tracy. That nurturing is about relationships. And that's the. And. And when you have a newsletter, there's no relationship, is there?

Adam Gray [00:36:01]:

It's.

Tim Hughes [00:36:01]:

What I'm doing is I'm outsourcing. And somehow I think if I'm moving it from my plate to yours, it's your job or that I am.

Tracy Borreson [00:36:10]:

Like, I'm deluding myself to believe that I'm nurturing people.

Tim Hughes [00:36:14]:

Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:36:15]:

Like, I'm gonna put them in this list and they're gonna get my 7 email series of things and it's gonna move them from liking this one thing that they did into buying a thing. Has that ever worked on you?

Tim Hughes [00:36:29]:

We've just had A comment from Dr. Dale Child. Hi, Dale. Since AI has come into sales, I get a lot more cold emails. Yeah, so do I. And the majority of these are completely irrelevant. Yeah, spot on. And they have not even looked at my job role offering things to me that.

Tim Hughes [00:36:50]:

Nothing to do with me. Yeah, I got one the other week saying they could. Yeah, exactly. I got one the other week saying that they could turn my expertise into my first book.

Bertrand Godillot [00:36:58]:

But you're probably in their forecast.

Tim Hughes [00:37:01]:

Yeah, I didn't accept their LinkedIn request, so.

Tracy Borreson [00:37:08]:

But that doesn't mean you're not in there.

Bertrand Godillot [00:37:10]:

No, absolutely.

Tim Hughes [00:37:12]:

They probably hate me, but I think.

Tracy Borreson [00:37:15]:

This is the thing too.

Bertrand Godillot [00:37:15]:

Right.

Tracy Borreson [00:37:16]:

And we assume that these tools make. Make it so easy for us to do the things. And while I think there are opportunities to use technologies to nurture relationships. So, like, how can I find out information about, like, what this person is talking about? Oh, maybe I can go to their LinkedIn profile and I can see what type of thing, like, technology can enable these things. But it only enables what we bring to the table. If we bring innate curiosity to the table, then it can enable that. If we bring. I have to fake a bunch of stuff to show that I have these numbers.

Tracy Borreson [00:37:52]:

It can do that too.

Adam Gray [00:37:55]:

Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that, you know, Tim, and my work with the isp, you know, Andy Huff, who's the. The founder, has got a huge amount of data and research at his fingertips and conversations with him always kind of end up with those aha moments. So, you know, fewer than ever salespeople make their number today, and yet we spend more and more on sales tech to support salespeople to make their number. And the question is, you know, is the sales tech actually helping the salesperson sell more or is there sales tech helping the organization to report the things in the pipeline more effectively? So, you know, one of the things that amazes me is, is like Tim said about the, the seven people that always made 200 of their number, you know, those are the people that need air support for them to go out and do their thing. And one of the things that amazed me when I joined a large American software company that shall remain nameless is I thought, I'm moving into an environment where they pay really well, so I'm going to be surrounded by brilliant people. And I wasn't. There were brilliant people there.

Tim Hughes [00:39:16]:

You were with me and.

Adam Gray [00:39:18]:

Well, yeah, no, but, but my, my point is not that everybody wasn't brilliant.

Tim Hughes [00:39:24]:

Sorry, Tracy. It's a bit of a mafia, isn't it?

Adam Gray [00:39:27]:

But, but some, some people were brilliant, but many people weren't. And a lot of the processes that were put in place were catering for the lowest common denominator. You know, so, so here's what you need to say in this environment, Tim. Here's what you need to do. Here's the things you need to send people. This is when you need to send them. And like you said, Tracy, you know, some people you've been nurturing for eight years, some people, they close in 30 days. And the fact is that if you have to put people through a, a cookie cutter process, it doesn't legislate for the fact that everybody's in a different environment, everybody's got different needs, and everyone's a different person.

Adam Gray [00:40:04]:

And I think that one of the things that, that's amazing is that we've got all of this generic stuff to support people. These are the trigger words that work really well. These are the trigger works, the words that work really badly in a, in a telephone conversation. That's nonsense because Tim has a different lexicon of words to Bertrand, who has a different lexicon of words to you, has a different lexicon of words to me. And you're at your most compelling when you're using your words to articulate something, not someone else's. What?

Tracy Borreson [00:40:33]:

Isn't it marketing's job to just create a script for you guys that you can all read? And it will work exactly the same.

Adam Gray [00:40:40]:

For.

Tim Hughes [00:40:42]:

Brand won't we then I know as a leader that you're all saying the right thing.

Tracy Borreson [00:40:48]:

I can know as a leader, you're all saying the same thing. You can probably also see that in your revenue numbers.

Bertrand Godillot [00:40:58]:

Okay, so one of the things that just comes up to my mind is obviously when you. And that's probably for the sales. The sales directors listening to that conversation. When you. When you take over a new team, when you take on, I suspect, a new team, obviously you look at their forecast and you're probably, you know, most. Most likely you're going to remove the zombies. So why does that start again over and over again? Because after a period of time, they will come back. So are there any things, anything that we can advise or maybe recommend or, you know, we think is appropriate for avoiding the zombies to come back?

Tracy Borreson [00:41:49]:

I mean, I don't think. I don't think it's the easiest thing to be honest, because the zombies end up in there, because that is our behavior. And so even if you come in as a new sales leader, if most of your team was there, they have their behavior that is in place already. So creating human behavior change is not the easiest thing that. I often use the phrase corporate trauma, right? If you have a new person coming in, like, they think this environment is going to be like their last environment, so they behave in a way that matches the last environment, which may or may not culturally align with what you're trying to accomplish as a leader. And so, I mean, there's opportunity for alignment on that. But if you're trying to, like, coach people into behavior change, first of all, I think you have to change how they're looking at it, which means you have to know how they're. We're looking at it, right? Like, I don't know, your past leader.

Tracy Borreson [00:42:48]:

Were they really obsessed with this number of calls that you did a day? I came into this scenario, right? So I was a interim VP of sales, and I came into this department, and everyone was just 25 calls a day. And I was like, seven. No one's selling anything. So I don't really care if you're doing 25 calls a day, right? Like, that's clearly not working for you, right? So what would work for you? And I did this do what you want week. And I was like, you guys are all professional sales people. I believe that you can sell stuff. So how about you do it your way for a week and we'll see what happens. Worst case scenario, we have no meetings booked anyway if we keep doing it this way.

Tracy Borreson [00:43:33]:

So the Risk is non existent, so let's just try it. And it was really interesting to see because they were like, really? And I'm like, yes. I'm not even going to look at the number. I don't care how many calls you made. I'm going to see how many like meetings you booked. Right? Like, that's all I care about. I want book meetings. What do you need to do to book meetings? I don't care.

Tracy Borreson [00:43:58]:

And like we went from zero to three meetings in one week because people were doing what they would do and my boss didn't like it and she was like, why aren't we getting 25 calls a week? And I'm like, I'm sorry, don't you see what happened here? Like, we actually moved things through the funnel. But okay, but this is where that, like, how is the pressure being put on them and how can you release that pressure so they can actually do something that might work differently? And then there's also additional layers of that that depends on the size of the sales team that you're managing. Because everybody's got, like Tim said, there's some people who will just, if you let them go, they'll do 200. Right, like, good, great, go. And there'll be some people that are like, I don't know what to do.

Adam Gray [00:44:46]:

But, but part of this, it requires somebody to put their foot down and say, no, what we need to do is the things that are actually going to make a difference. Difference. So, you know, yes, traditionally a KPI has been how many calls have you made, how many emails have you sent? That doesn't work. There's little or no correlation between those anymore. What matters is how many meetings have you had. Whether that's virtual or in person meetings have you had. So that's what we need to be driving for. That should be the first measurement point.

Adam Gray [00:45:19]:

And if you're not meeting your, your, if you're not meeting your meeting quota, then you can look at, okay, so what are you doing to drive meetings? Because that isn't working. Okay, then you need to do more posts, more calls, more emails, more whatever. But if you hit your meeting quota, then at least you've got a starting point that means something. And I think that so often, you know, we're in this situation where people are playing the game. The salesperson, the sales manager, the sales leader, they're all playing the game. And like when Tim said about Domino's Pizza, like, this is going to close. How many, how many relationships have you got? How many calls are you you have. How many, how many people you connected to? Well, I'm not actually connected to any.

Adam Gray [00:46:01]:

Okay, well, and, and that needs to go through to each of those deals. You know, you tell me this deal is, is an opportunity. Where are you at? Well, I've sent them three emails and I know they've opened them. Okay, that's, that's, that's not a qualifying measure, but, but for many people. And I guess that in the absence of anything else, it's better than nothing.

Tim Hughes [00:46:25]:

You know, some of it is to do with measurement, isn't it? Because I think, as Mark said, we've become obsessed with measurement. So in the example where that person is 170%, but they're not making enough calls, it's a CRM vendor and they're able to measure the number of emails they put through the system. So they measure it rather than thinking. Because, because of course, the, the view is if I can, if I can see that everybody's sending 20 emails or making 20 calls, that's activity, therefore that's going to turn into revenue, isn't it?

Bertrand Godillot [00:47:05]:

No.

Tim Hughes [00:47:07]:

And so, so, so, yeah, you know, you, it's, it's. And that's, I think, you know, we, we often see that imbalance and we've seen lots of stories of people that have talked about a measured input rather than output. And again, that's because as much there's a, there's a, there's a. We've got, we've got sales leaders now that are running their sales teams through dashboards. And, and, you know, and is, is that, is that a good thing?

Adam Gray [00:47:35]:

Yeah, because you're, you're in the red team because you haven't made any cold calls this week and that's really bad. And it's Friday and you've not made any cold calls. What do you mean? You've had 27 meetings. I don't care. You've made no cold calls. And, and actually, that's the problem with the dashboard, isn't it? It's like giving someone a brochure and going, well, you've got everything you need to know to make a decision to choose me now. It. The world doesn't work that way.

Tracy Borreson [00:47:57]:

Yeah, I know we're getting to the end of the show, but there was something that came up for me earlier too, in this concept of the pipeline about how we're trying to use it to predict the future. Like we're fortune tellers and we're not. So there's things that we can do in, like, relationships that we can build where we have more confidence to say, like, yes, I feel a connection with this business. They clearly get that I can, like, solve their problem, right? Like, I've had enough conversations with them to know that what their problem is and all of these different things. But I think there's an opportunity to also flip that to say, like, this isn't about predicting the future, it's about creating the future. We want to create this business, right? We, we don't want to predict what's going to happen. That's guessing, right? Like Tim said at the beginning, it's astrology, right? We're gonna leave it to the stars and it's gonna predict. No, that's not a thing.

Tracy Borreson [00:48:52]:

But there are things we can do to create the future. And if we do want to look at those input things which I think are important to look at, I'm going to say, like, what are the things that I'm doing that's creating deals? And if I'm not doing activity that's creating deals, then I don't care about the activity that's not creating deals. I definitely don't want to scale the activity that's not creating deals. I want you to do the activity that's creating deals. And if we were looking at this from a technology perspective, then wouldn't it make sense for each individual salesperson to get like a profile of things that they do that creates business and then we find ways to better enable those things? Right? So I want you to spend the majority of your time creating.

Adam Gray [00:49:42]:

Do sales leaders know what activity creates deals? Because I don't think they do in the modern world. I think, I think people have a very strong idea of what they hope or what they think or what used to create, but I'm not sure that it does anymore.

Tim Hughes [00:49:58]:

It's the, it's. It's the big discussion in marketing, isn't it, Tracy? Attribution, you know it. You know that that was a piece of inbound. Well, was it? You know, they came.

Tracy Borreson [00:50:08]:

Well, and at the end of the.

Tim Hughes [00:50:09]:

Day, they came to an event and they, you know, they know.

Tracy Borreson [00:50:11]:

Charlie, in accounts and attribution, like you said earlier, Tim, is never one thing, right? So, yes, it might be one social media post that prompted you to connect, or it might be that, oh, I saw you at this show and then we got into a conversation. But attribution is never one thing, right? Like, no one saw your booth at the show not knowing anything about your business and talked to you once and bought your thing. It's not how it works. And so even when we want to look at attribution, there's never one thing that is the magic attribution thing. If we just get Everybody to open 20 emails then that'll no, it isn't magic like that. It is a combination of activities. So how can we look at how the combination is delivering or not quite.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:03]:

A number of punchlines today. But I'd like to thank Tracey for for you know the let's go and do what works for you. And also you can only nurture a relationship.

Tim Hughes [00:51:16]:

I like that.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:17]:

Yes, that one was and I think at the end of the day maybe you will have less zombies if you also build relationship with your team because at the end of the day that's where what will lead to, you know them making what works for them if they feel the trust and probably the freedom to do so. That was really great. Again, that was a great Halloween session and I can't leave you without without our newsletter and I do apologize because it splashes on on on your on your faces Tracy. Well Tracy cracking cracking show so don't miss an episode. Get the show highlights and beyond the show insights and reminder of upcoming episodes. Will will have a great one next week so you miss can the QR code on screen or visit us at digitaldonwload.live/newsletter. Well thank you ladies and gentlemen for this great session and see you next time.

Tracy Borreson [00:52:26]:

Thank you very much everyone. Happy Halloween everybody!

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