This week on The Digital Download, we're unpacking the challenges of building an effective B2B sales playbook with our guest, Mark Cox, Founder of In the Funnel Sales Coaching and author of “Learn to Love Selling”. Mark has dedicated years to helping B2B sales teams achieve double-digit growth through structured, repeatable strategies that deliver results quarter after quarter.

While many leaders aim for quick wins, Mark advocates a systematic approach that redefines how sales teams are hired, trained, and retained.

Join us as we discuss questions like:

* What are the hidden costs of ignoring your sales process?

* What are the four essential steps in any successful sales playbook?

* Why do so many sales teams struggle with retention?

* How can you onboard salespeople for lasting success?

Mark’s experience with hundreds of companies and thousands of sales professionals offers practical insights for any business leader or sales manager looking to build a resilient, high-performance sales team. His disciplined approach brings clarity to a notoriously challenging field, offering valuable takeaways for those ready to rethink their approach.

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

This week we were joined by our Special Guest -

• Mark Cox, Founder of In the Funnel Sales Coaching and author of “Learn to Love Selling”

This week's Host was -

• Rob Durant, Founder of Flywheel Results, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, CEO & Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

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

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

Transcript of The Digital Download 2024-11-08

Rob Durant [00:00:02]:

Good morning, good afternoon, 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 on TuneIn Radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk, news, and strategy radio network. Today, we're addressing why sales teams keep missing their targets. We have a guest, Mark Cox, to help us with the discussion. Founder of in the funnel sales coaching and author of learn to love selling, Mark has dedicated years to helping b to b sales teams achieve double digit growth through structured, repeatable strategies that deliver results quarter over quarter. But before bringing Mark on, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. And while we're 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 is highly encouraged. Right.

Rob Durant [00:01:14]:

With that, Tim, would you kick us off, please?

Tim Hughes [00:01:18]:

Welcome, everybody. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and cofounder of DLA Knight, and I'm really excited to have, Mark on today. And I'm famous for writing the book, Social Selling, Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers.

Rob Durant [00:01:34]:

Excellent. Thank you very much. Adam, welcome.

Adam Gray [00:01:38]:

Hello, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I also am cofounder with him of DLA Ignite. And I'm really excited to watch some more of Tracy's dancing that she was doing just a moment ago because that was fantastic. A great way to start the show. So,

Rob Durant [00:01:53]:

it's great for radio too.

Tracy Borreson [00:01:55]:

Telling these people to bring their friends. Come to the show. But we can call it dancing.

Rob Durant [00:02:03]:

Excellent. Thank you very much, Adam. Bertrand.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:08]:

Good, good afternoon, everyone. Good morning. Good day. My name is Bertrand Godillot. I am the founder and managing partner of Adeceos and Co working with customers to create more customer conversations, And I'm very glad to be here today. I'm not dancing, though.

Tracy Borreson [00:02:27]:

He's not that glad to be here today.

Rob Durant [00:02:30]:

Thank you very much, Bertrand. Tracy.

Tracy Borreson [00:02:34]:

And good morning all because it is morning where I am. I am Tracy Boursin, your friendly and neighborhood authentic marketer with TLB Coaching and Events, proud partner of DLA Ignite. And I'm excited because I get to be here 2 weeks in a row, which doesn't happen that often. So I'm just so that's why I'm dancing. I'll do all the dance things.

Rob Durant [00:02:55]:

We're excited to have you here too. Thank you very much. And myself, I am Rob Durant. I am the founder of Flywheel Results. We help start ups scale, and I too am a proud DLA Ignite partner. As I said, this week on the digital download, we'll speak with Mark Cox. Mark's experience with hundreds of companies and thousands of sales professionals offers practical insights for any business leader or sales manager looking to build a resilient high performance team. Let's bring them on.

Rob Durant [00:03:33]:

Mark, good morning, and welcome.

Mark Cox [00:03:34]:

Thank you for that. That's a warm welcome. Thanks, everybody. It's just great to be here.

Adam Gray [00:03:40]:

Nice to see you, Mark.

Mark Cox [00:03:41]:

Nice to see you, Adam. Love the guitars behind you.

Adam Gray [00:03:45]:

Yeah. So at least I won't be playing them, which is a win, isn't it?

Rob Durant [00:03:50]:

Mark, let's start by having you tell us a little bit more about you, your background, and what led you to where you are today.

Mark Cox [00:03:59]:

Yeah. Interesting question, Robin. Thanks. So most of my career was spent running large sales organizations in either outsourcing or technology companies. And I did that for about 15 years. And about 10 years ago, we intentionally founded this company in the funnel sales training. And what we thought there was a huge opportunity to elevate the profession of sales to the profession it really is, And we do that by training sales leaders, salespeople, and BDRs and SDRs, people who do prospecting. And our belief is that by making these professionals better at what they do, we actually improve the lives of professional salespeople.

Mark Cox [00:04:42]:

So we've been doing that training for 10 years now. We actually have training that impacts behavior, and we love this subject matter because we know that professional sales is the most biz important business discipline there is.

Rob Durant [00:04:58]:

Excellent. So, Mark, let's start with a foundational question. In your opinion, why do sales teams keep missing their targets?

Mark Cox [00:05:10]:

Well, it's a bit of a loaded question. Right, Ross? Okay. So, and I'm I'm sure it's very good to get attendees here, which is awesome. But one of the things I'd I'd first start with is, when we start to think about the targets that salespeople get, we have to remember that just by nature, there's no expectation that any sales team ever hits a 100%. So so let's go back to the way quotas are created and goals are created. There's sandbagging from the CEO on down. The CEO passes to an SVP of sales that passes to a VP of sales that then passes to sales team. They distribute quota.

Mark Cox [00:05:49]:

But every stage, each of those person sandbags. So we have, you know, the the CEO's goal is a million. They distribute 1.3. That layer down then distributes 1 point 5. So so when we talk about teams hitting quota, I know people like Gardner and McKinsey, they love these x number of people are missing quota. This is not like tracking performance of somebody in HR or finance. You know, there was sandbagging built into this model. But but I think today, generally, if we were looking at two reasons that most sales teams misquote, I think there's a strategic issue, and then I think there's a tactical execution issue.

Mark Cox [00:06:29]:

The strategic issue is we are wasting time chasing the wrong buyers. So a lot of the times when we come into organizations, we start to assess how they're doing. We do that as part of our training programs. We we we understand that they're actually not measuring twice to cut once. They're chasing lots of folks for conversations, many of which are the wrong folks. So this idea of spending a little more time on the strategic end to say, listen. Do I understand who the economic buyer is or a key buyer is? Do I have the right person? Do I have the right information? Spending a little more time, oftentimes, the sales enablement gang or the marketing gang, Tracy, helping us with that. So so am I chasing the right person? The second challenge we have generally, you know, across the board, if we had to pick one thing, is there is still a prevalence of pitching instead of helping.

Mark Cox [00:07:31]:

So if we're new to professional sales particularly, we get on a call, we can't help it. Right? Our fear centers in the amygdala are super huge, so I'm nervous. I'm a little scared. I'm gonna default to pitching instead of having a calm confidence and triggering a conversation, which is all I really wanna do because selling is about helping. It's not about pitching. So I think those are the 2 things that people listening today were to think about for their organization, whether you're a midsized organization or a large enterprise. Both those issues are highly prevalent today.

Rob Durant [00:08:06]:

I knew we were gonna get along, Mark. So many of those things that we could talk for hours just based on that. But I wanna pick up on that sandbagging. Isn't that setting up your team for an attitude of failure?

Bertrand Godillot [00:08:23]:

Yes. And

Rob Durant [00:08:25]:

Yeah. Is that detrimental?

Mark Cox [00:08:29]:

Oh, is it detriment? Absolutely. It's who who feels good when they think they're losing the hockey game or the football game? So so who feels good when that's happening? But but but, again, you have to realize where this came from, particularly over the last 8 to 10 years. Venture cap we were talking about SaaS companies before we joined this morning. Venture capital throw tons of money into, you know, midsized organizations that are looking to scale out of the messy middle into a large enterprise. They wanna see that money spent on sales and marketing. Okay? So they wanna see it in there. And so so, you know, they're they're giving huge goals. They wanna triple revenue.

Mark Cox [00:09:11]:

They're looking for exits. They don't really care about the impact on the 30 new BDRs they just hired. Right? I won't name it here, but even a very large top ten enterprise software organization today does group interviews for BDRs and SDRs. They hire 30. They're gonna have 13 left after 3 weeks. They don't care. So so what we really care about is the psychological impact on the self esteem of that BDR who just got hired out of college or university can't wait to tell their friends and family, I got hired by a top ten technology company, and 4 weeks later, they have no job. So so I think we're getting very lazy about training salespeople, about hiring the right salespeople.

Mark Cox [00:10:04]:

We bring, you know, huge BDR and SDR farms into organizations, set crazy goals. And if the vast majority of the sales team doesn't meet it, but 3 or 4 can carry us to quota, the VP of sales or sales leader feels like they won. And, by the way, I have a lot of love for that VP of sales or sales leader because they're only lasting 18 months in the jobs they're in right now. So so the whole model's kind of broken. I think it's I think we're set up for this nice, common sense revolution in professional sales, but but I'd much rather have realistic goals that we can beat because everybody on the team feels 2 inches taller. And I feel like I've got a wonderful head of hair, and it's far easier to recruit people into an organization, the kind of people we want, when we give them attainable goals and people beat their goals and they surpass their, target incomes instead of, you know, being 2 thirds of what their target income is.

Adam Gray [00:11:04]:

So, we absolutely concur with everything you've said. But isn't the argument from the enterprise level organization that's hiring bunches of salespeople, they are, they're a commodity. They are, a crop to be harvested. So I'm gonna hire 30. I'm gonna get a 50% wastage within the month. But, actually, I don't care because what I'm looking for is those 1 or 2 people that have a natural ability to outperform the rest. And whilst, you know, if you're a big enterprise level organization, you can afford to pay people very well. And they know that if they're being paid 20% above the industry average, then they're gonna be getting a a rough time and someone is gonna be riding them quite hard.

Adam Gray [00:11:54]:

So that's kind of potentially their expectation, and this is very much a sink or swim. I'm looking for people that absolutely have got a natural talent for this. And everyone else, they can be hired by my competitors. I don't care. And so so if that's the norm and we've got a constant stream of of quality people in college, how do we change this dynamic?

Mark Cox [00:12:18]:

What a great question, Adam. But but but let's think about the how that flows down. I don't care. I'm seeing my team as tools to help me achieve my goal no matter what happens. If I don't care about my team and truly helping them unleash the potential that they've got within them, they're not gonna care about our clients and prospects. They're gonna see our clients and prospects as tools for them to hit their quotas and get their paycheck and do all of those things. This is where this sort of death spiral in professional sales comes from because suddenly the prospects and the buyers, as, you know, everybody on this call knows, sort of puts up their hands and says, listen. I don't wanna take that next conversation from Mark Cox because, you know, he doesn't care about me.

Mark Cox [00:13:04]:

He's pitching. He's got a sense of desperation. His voice probably got 90 days before he gets taken out of the company. I think this is that common sense revolution that we need to change. And by the way, there are a lot of organizations out there, by the way, where they fix this. They have a different approach. It's hard, by the way. It it's hard to take a step back from their command and control management and go to this management that says, actually, I care about Tracy, and I'm trying to unleash her true potential.

Mark Cox [00:13:34]:

So I'm gonna give her leeway. I'm gonna intentionally try and train and coach her. I'm gonna try and help her develop. I wanna make her the hero of the story. And, you know, all of you are entrepreneurs, and you're you've got amazing success stories far more interesting than mine. It's highly likely you had a couple of those leaders along your journey to get you where you are today, and you still remember them. And they're still meaningful to you. And when you come across them in a social setting, you really do have a little bit of love for these people.

Mark Cox [00:14:10]:

We need more of that. Right? This everybody's desperate from the top down, and everybody's unhappy. The clients and prospects are feeling it, and everything has to be about them. And if they feel like the person they're talking to is desperate and they wanna pitch and they're panicking and all of they don't enjoy the experience, which is how we got here to a certain extent. Again, there's a lot of great stuff happening in professional sales right now, but I think we have to treat a little bit more like a profession.

Rob Durant [00:14:41]:

We have some great comments coming from the audience, so we want to, bring some of those on screen. Thank you all and keep them coming. First, we have from Tyler Moylan, bringing humanity to capitalism. Respect your saying it. He goes on to say, when we treat making profit only as a mathematical equation, we gain profit, but at the cost of humanity. Amen. Peter Else says it's all about building capacity. Otherwise, it's just pushing rocks uphill.

Rob Durant [00:15:16]:

And from Akar Haydn Duplessis, I do my best. I apologize if I if I butchered your name. How do we keep improving our sales initiatives? So, Mark, I I turn to you with that question. How do we change this?

Mark Cox [00:15:36]:

Well, a couple of ways. First of all, I'd start top down. I'd just say, let's let's create reasonable goals and objectives for the organization. So so when it comes down from and by the way, that takes a lot of courage around the executive table. Right? So that's where you've got a sales leader who stands up and says, listen. You you know, we've grown this company at 13%, you know, CAGR for the last 3 years. Now we've got some money put in. We're not gonna bump this thing up to 75% CAGR.

Mark Cox [00:16:05]:

So so let's have I'd rather have that courageous conversation there than have to have 5 courageous conversations with BDRs and salespeople I hired that I have to let go 9 months later. So so that's where we start. Let's start with realistic expectations And then we have to have this point of view that says, if I have a mature model where we know how to do this, okay, let's do the math and replicate it. But if I'm in a midsized organization where we haven't grown and we still don't have perfect product market fit,

Tim Hughes [00:16:38]:

I think

Mark Cox [00:16:38]:

we have to have the the second courageous conversation that says it takes 6 to 18 months for somebody to ramp up in an enterprise sale. Are we gonna give them that time, or are we gonna just keep churning? Tim's laughing because he and I have been with large enterprise software companies where the legal teams, you know, have a graveyard of of desk plates, you know, in their office and they're joking about how many people have come in and gone. So so I think you have to have this sort of reasonable assessment. Okay. This is what it takes to ramp up. And, Gang, I will, drink our own champagne. You know, as part of our training initiatives, particularly with midsized companies, we have these conversations with CEOs because we get in. We do a little due diligence and consulting with them to make sure the training is gonna resonate for their team.

Mark Cox [00:17:33]:

And that's where we'll have as a third party coming in, we have a little more chutzpah to tell the truth because we're not worried about a job. So we can let somebody know that if you don't have a history, you know, of a 100% growth, it's not gonna trigger overnight. If you haven't been booking, you know, 5 meetings a week, 7 meetings a week because you're not leveraging the DLA ignite social selling model, You know, we're not gonna get 6 different BDRs ramped up in 30 days where they're all doing it flawlessly. So so we I think we just have to give people a little bit of time for that growth and and and, you know, a little more patience in professional sales because I think if we have that patience, then I think our clients and prospects are gonna feel it that we're not trying to pitch or control or hit a quarterly number, but we're actually trying to help.

Bertrand Godillot [00:18:28]:

So, Marc, let let me just pick up on on the VCs because you you said it it's the source, basically.

Mark Cox [00:18:35]:

It is.

Bertrand Godillot [00:18:35]:

The expectations is what are are what, what is driving most of the the disaster later on. So do you see changes in this? In other words, you know, do do we have VCs that that start to think differently?

Mark Cox [00:18:55]:

So, Birshin, maybe 2 comments. So first of all, you said, hey, driving the disaster. I will call out again. I actually don't think our profession's in a disaster right now. I think it it makes for better news and conferences and, research papers from big names. But but I actually think we're doing amazing things. I I think people in professional sales were the engine driving business, and I think we're doing really, really amazing things. And I, according to Frank Cespedes, who's one of Harvard's top people in professional sales today, he's been doing it for 30 years.

Mark Cox [00:19:30]:

He was on the front end. In his book, Sales Management That Works, if you graduate college or university today, you have a 1 in 2 chance of being in a professional sales job at some point in time in your career. So the profession is expanding. I think a lot of great things are happening. I think, many people understand our professions about being really, it's management consulting in, you know, at an enterprise sale level rather than pitching and cajoling. But do I do I see things changing? I would say, again, I don't have the data, Bertrand, but we've all seen what happened to SaaS in the last 3 years. So so this idea of chasing the rule of 30, the rule of 40, grow at any cost. We're not making money.

Mark Cox [00:20:18]:

That changed overnight, you know, and then they ended up dropping lots of people. So I think maybe there's a bit of a common sense, you know, idea coming around there where you have to go to these almost entrepreneurial fundamentals that say you grow a business by adding value to clients. And so you're not scaling as fast as you can at any at any cost. We want to properly grow and actually add value, and then we can build long term value into the business that way. I think a lot of leaders were chasing the SaaS exit, but but one thing I think people have realized is it was exciting to be on those journeys with those companies. But gang, 3 people in those exits do well. So you got a 75 person SaaS org and by the way, god bless them. Entrepreneurs are amazing.

Mark Cox [00:21:13]:

They take all the risk. You know, they've got the stories of running the business on the credit card, but 3 people exit well. Right? So so it's not the model that works for the the whole organization. We gotta figure out the model that works for the whole organization for the sales team. And and so I do see things, Bertrand, moving in the right direction because the market has this way of correcting. Alright. Great question, though.

Tracy Borreson [00:21:43]:

Mark, I have a question. You talked earlier about the, like, strategic challenges and the tactical challenges and how the strategic has really tied into chasing the wrong buyers. In my experience from a marketing point of view, very often, the sales team will, like, offload that completely to marketing and be like, marketing, you figure out who our key buyers are, and then we'll just use your personas and we'll go find people. Do you feel like that's a productive way to identify key buyers, or do you see it as in, like, sales and marketing have to work together in order to figure this out?

Mark Cox [00:22:19]:

Well, you know what, Tracy? It's hard for me not to answer the latter the way you teed that question up, and I don't wanna mess with you. So I'm gonna be I'm gonna be I've I've already figured out how this works, and I'm probably most afraid of you.

Tim Hughes [00:22:34]:

Yeah. But you

Tracy Borreson [00:22:35]:

pink headphones. They're super intimidating.

Mark Cox [00:22:37]:

Pink headphones. You know? But but, so so I really think I do joking aside, Tracy, I think there's this real opportunity for sales and marketing to work more closely together and to make sure that the KPR KPIs are more closely aligned. And so, you know, in fairness, I think I have to look in the mirror first. We've done a 100 episodes of the SellingWell podcast, and Tim's been on it, and all these great people have been on it. And it's only recently that we actually had a marketing expert on. So I think maybe I'm part of the problem where it's, hey. How could we have a 100 conversations and not find a marketing expert like yourself for for the podcast? But, it was Matt Hines. He's a good guy.

Mark Cox [00:23:21]:

And and we had this great conversation about, you know, trying to align the KPIs between sales and marketing so that there's going to be a natural tendency or tension, which I think is always good in an executive team level to a certain extent as long as it's healthy. But but you wanna get away from, hey. We got you a lead. And then, you know, some marketing saying, hey. We got their leads. We got the conversations. And sales are is coming back saying, it's the wrong conversation. It was a terrible lead.

Mark Cox [00:23:51]:

So we have different types of KPIs. And I think I think there's always that that opportunity for sales and marketing to be, more closely aligned. And one of the things we just coach on is a little bit of empathy, so for both organizations. So in large organizations we work with, we don't understand why marketing isn't in the sales meetings or why sales isn't in or having representation in the marketing meetings. They shouldn't be silos because we're all trying to do the same thing, which is help more clients and prospects.

Tracy Borreson [00:24:26]:

Yeah. And this is the thing I always think is, like, we're trying to help the same people.

Mark Cox [00:24:31]:

Right.

Tracy Borreson [00:24:32]:

And I'm over here, and I'd be like, my job is just to get many leads so that I get many leads and then I blame sales because sales doesn't close the leads. That's a sales problem. It's not a marketing problem.

Mark Cox [00:24:42]:

My job is to

Tracy Borreson [00:24:43]:

get many leads. But then sales, very commonly, is like, well, marketing's giving us, these aren't real leads. Right? Like, they're just people. And then you're like, well, I don't know if this is a, like, are they pitching them and not helping them so that's actually the wrong person or, like, how wrong can it be? I've created my marketing persona. Right? And so I feel like that it very minimally, there needs to be, like, an active feedback loop between sales and marketing to understand not just, like, your leads are terrible. Okay. Well, that doesn't help me. Right? So, like, what is terrible about them? Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:25:19]:

Be more helpful for you? And it's really interesting because I started just working with a new client recently, and they also have a fractional sales leader. And I sat in on the sales meeting when he was onboarded, and there's just I mean, I don't think anybody I think everybody kinda gets at the end of the day that sales and marketing have to work together, but they also don't really expect it to work. Like Yeah. Oh, yeah. Marketing's usually doing that over there, but that doesn't usually have any kind of impact to sales. And I'm like, what? And we let that happen? Like, that sounds like something? We're letting it happen.

Adam Gray [00:25:52]:

That's the norm, isn't it? You know, the companies that I

Tracy Borreson [00:25:55]:

talk to happen. We don't have to.

Adam Gray [00:25:57]:

Yeah. The the companies that I talk to, the vast majority of them don't have this single view of the customer and single view of what their objective is. They live in their silos. You know, it's my job running the company to ensure that I measure each person to to ensure that they are providing value to the organization. I'm gonna measure you on leads, Tracy, because that's nice and easy. I'm gonna measure you on closed business. Mark, you only have a last year you did 80% of your number, the year before you did 80%. I need you to do x, therefore, I'm gonna overquote you 125%, because then when you hit 80%, because you always do, then I'm gonna get the the money that I need.

Adam Gray [00:26:37]:

And, unfortunately, this is very simplistic view of things. You know, it's like, what's your contribution to the world? Well, I'm rich. Okay. Well, it's easily easily measured, but actually it's not the measure that we should be employing for people. And I think that the challenge is that when organizations are so often living on this knife edge, you know, it's an incredibly competitive world. The investors are demanding their pound of flesh. You know, we're asked to do more with less. We have to run the company leaner.

Adam Gray [00:27:13]:

We have to grow the company. You said 3 times increase in sales. I mean, that's that's a fairy tale for almost every organization that there's ever been. You know, tripling your revenue this this year. I mean, it's like it Twitter did it and Facebook did it, but that's it pretty much.

Tracy Borreson [00:27:29]:

I worked for a company who had a goal of 5 timesing their sales in 1 year without changing any thing operationally or strategically.

Adam Gray [00:27:38]:

And and it's nice because, you know, they they they they they pop open a bottle of champagne, and they say at at the kind of the the annual kickoff and say that's what we're gonna achieve this year with no concept as to how it's actually gonna happen. And, unfortunately, whilst there is a pool

Mark Cox [00:27:53]:

of people

Adam Gray [00:27:53]:

available that appear to be good I say appear to be good because, actually, a salesperson that's out of work is normally out of work because they haven't hit their number. So there's a large number of people that are available in this pool. They've got varying qualities of CV. Tim's just gonna sack the half a dozen that haven't performed well in our company and hire half a dozen more because there's a million out there that he can hire. So he's gonna pick the the the 6 that appear to be best.

Tim Hughes [00:28:19]:

By the way, that's a metaphor. I'm not asking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. But I don't think

Adam Gray [00:28:24]:

Tim is Tim is very much in your thing about, you know, this is a hand holding exercise and a development exercise of individuals, And, you know, we as an organization want to do the right thing, and you want to do the right thing, but, actually, most organizations don't want to do the right thing because the right thing is make more money so that they can pay their staff well and they can return revenue to shareholders or or investors in the organization. And until we until we break that cycle, there will always be a reason for doing it. Why am I gonna hire you, Mark, because you're a dreadful person to run this company? Because I delivered a 120% year on year growth. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's why I'm gonna hire you. I don't like you. I don't like your your your your the way you do things, but I do like the fact that I've got a new Lamborghini parked outside.

Tim Hughes [00:29:13]:

So so I could add things to this, and Mark and I have talked many times before, and I I'm not gonna because I could sit here back and tell lots of terrible stories. But, Mark, I just wanna change the conversation. Is it true that you have a book out?

Mark Cox [00:29:27]:

Well, thank you for that. I've heard I had heard something about

Tim Hughes [00:29:32]:

And so so so, Mark, because this goes out out over Internet radio, you need to you can't just hold things up and that you gotta you can hold things up and you gotta read it at the same time. So so what's your book, Mark?

Mark Cox [00:29:44]:

The book is called Learn to Love Selling, the Universal b to b Sales Playbook.

Tim Hughes [00:29:49]:

Can see. That's it.

Mark Cox [00:29:50]:

Go on. Learn to Love Selling, the Universal b to b Sales Playbook. Thank you for that, Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:29:55]:

And where could we get a copy of that?

Mark Cox [00:29:57]:

Amazon. Jump on in. Way.

Tracy Borreson [00:29:59]:

And And now I'm just firm. That's not a pitch. That's helping.

Mark Cox [00:30:04]:

Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. And I'm just being polite. Tim asked a very direct question. I I just wanted to respond as thoroughly as you would.

Adam Gray [00:30:11]:

If I buy a copy of your book if I buy a copy of your book, what will I learn from reading it?

Mark Cox [00:30:17]:

Great question, Adam. Thank you. So what we tried to create with our experience and expertise and background was to figure out how what are the steps needed to convert any core capability into revenue? What are the core steps required to convert any core capability into revenue in a b to b format? So when you think of the literally 70,000 books out there in b2b sales, many of which are just absolutely dynamite. We hadn't found one that says, okay. No matter what, I'm I'm dealing with midsized organization with a product market fit that I'm trying to replicate for a large enterprise where I've taken over a territory, and I'm trying to step in and figure out what do I need to do to be successful. We tried to create the framework for that, and and that's fundamentally what we've developed over the last, I guess, 20 years that I've been doing this. And we've captured it in the book. So that that's what, you'll get from reading the book, Adam.

Mark Cox [00:31:19]:

You'll figure out the steps that you need to take to get both strategic and then tactical to execute Right. On just, converting any core business capability into revenue.

Tim Hughes [00:31:31]:

And and Tyler Mowland has basically asked a question, then if you can bring that up, Rob, which is, is there an audio book?

Mark Cox [00:31:39]:

There isn't. Thank you, Tyler. There's not an audio book yet. It's coming. So a little bit of a fun story. So with AI today, we all gotta be talking about that. We we did convert the book into an audiobook with AI. And when they they gave me the first chapter, I was shocked at how good it was.

Mark Cox [00:31:58]:

I couldn't tell the difference. All they did was load some podcasts for us up and then load the chapter of the book. But there's some idiosyncrasies in it because of the way I write, And now there's a new AI tool that will take your book and convert it so it is better to be used by another AI tool that will make the audiobook, and we're gonna do that. So so it's coming in the next 30 days. But but, Tim, as you know, this will save me 2 or 3 days of recording, you know, in a studio.

Rob Durant [00:32:31]:

I wanna come back to that book as well as something that you said earlier. But first, I want to address some great comments that we've had. We've got a comment from YouTube. Dee Bowden says sales, marketing, and accounts receivable need to be connected. Sales the sale is not complete until the money is in the bank. Amen to that. Lindsay Sheldrake says alignment starts at the top. Silos hinder more than help.

Rob Durant [00:33:01]:

Empower your people to work together towards shared objectives.

Mark Cox [00:33:05]:

Mhmm.

Rob Durant [00:33:06]:

And a LinkedIn user shares with us, it has to be a continuum. Creating distinct compartments creates break points and creates false KPI chasing outcomes. Absolutely. So, Mark, earlier, you made reference to Frank Cespedes' book, and I believe what I heard you said was, and I'm paraphrasing, at this point, half of the people who graduate college find themselves in a sales role at some point in their career.

Mark Cox [00:33:38]:

Yes.

Rob Durant [00:33:39]:

And your book, Learn to Love Selling, I would infer from that title that there are people who don't love selling. Who could possibly not love selling?

Tracy Borreson [00:33:51]:

Is there anyone in the audience who would self identify as not loving selling today?

Mark Cox [00:33:56]:

Yeah. That's true.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:56]:

That would be interesting to hear.

Mark Cox [00:33:58]:

Man, I hope the whole premise isn't wrong. You know, I we may have to revisit that. Well well,

Rob Durant [00:34:04]:

it I will share with you, Mark. I was a reluctant seller.

Mark Cox [00:34:09]:

Well well

Tracy Borreson [00:34:10]:

I will also share with you that most of the people I know who have found themselves performing in a sales scenario, and especially because my background is marketing, feel like marketers are like, no. I'm a marketer. I'm not in sales.

Mark Cox [00:34:24]:

Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:34:24]:

But, like, we actually do a lot of selling, folks.

Mark Cox [00:34:28]:

Well well, you know what? They're both great comments. Tracy, think about that. I'm not in sell I'm not in sales. I'm in marketing. We we get a lot with client success teams. We also do work with client success teams. We get a lot of those folks saying, listen. I'm not in sales.

Mark Cox [00:34:44]:

I just build relationships and help customers. And and so we go, guys, this is you know? Glenn's like this is not Glengarry, Glenn Ross. Okay? Gil from the Simpsons was not an accurate depiction of what actually happens in b two b sales. So so that's all it is. But but sometimes, again, there's still that stereotype. And what I what I should mention is Frank's book didn't mention anything about people leaving college and university and wanting to end up in sales. They they said they're going to end up in sales at, you know, 12 will end up in sales in a professional sales job. The analogy I make, team, and we've all been there.

Mark Cox [00:35:26]:

Right? You know, you you look at Adam's background. He's got guitars, on the wall. He's obviously a musician. My money's on. He's a pretty good one. There's a joy He's lost. Yeah. Sorry.

Mark Cox [00:35:42]:

There's a joy to to mastery. Right? You know, Dan Pink's book drive the 3 things that drive people. There's a joy to mastery. So when you actually know what you're doing and you don't feel you're out of control and I'm picking up the call and I have no control over what happens in this conversation, if I actually have a game plan and I know what I'm doing, I actually have the right intent, which is to help someone and make a deposit before I ask for withdrawal, I'll actually like it more. And that positivity and that energy, because I've got good intent, comes across. You know, same thing in any sport you take up as an adult. It's no it's not a lot of fun at the beginning where you're terrible. Tracy and I think everybody on this Zoom call should learn to play hockey because why wouldn't you? What how can you live a life without being on skates or try and catch a puck going 70 miles an hour? I don't understand why anybody wouldn't wanna do that.

Tim Hughes [00:36:41]:

But Monarch is the goalie. I am the goalie. He's the ice hockey goalie. Yes.

Tracy Borreson [00:36:47]:

And also That explains

Rob Durant [00:36:49]:

so much.

Tracy Borreson [00:36:49]:

Thought we should probably just clarify that.

Tim Hughes [00:36:52]:

Are you he he he takes he he's got a puck flying at him at 70 miles an hour.

Mark Cox [00:36:59]:

And it's but it's a metric system there,

Rob Durant [00:37:01]:

so it's completely different. Area. That's right.

Mark Cox [00:37:04]:

And then it hits you.

Rob Durant [00:37:06]:

You know? So so it's usually

Mark Cox [00:37:09]:

at places you don't wanna get hit. But but it's it's more fun, and I haven't attained that in hockey. Believe me. But it's more fun if you've got some sort of sense of mastery or some sort of some sense of control. And that's where the the learn to love it is we've just come across, whether it's midsized organizations and, you know, all of these people, Tracy, who default to what you said, just said, hey. I'm in marketing. I'm not in sales. It's like, oh my gosh.

Mark Cox [00:37:36]:

That's a nightmare. So I do think, first of all, I'm a lifelong learner. I I still learn continually. We had the pleasure of bringing DLA Ignite into one of our 2, clients, and I had Adam and Tim just do an amazing job. And I was learning the whole time. And, frankly, you know, when when you when you're curious and you learn things, dope you get a dopamine hit. So our we like learning, but sometimes we have to trigger that again, that growth orientation. Sometimes we have it in one stage of our life.

Mark Cox [00:38:11]:

Like, we're we're really watching lots of YouTube videos to learn how to cook or to do woodworking or to do carpentry, but we think professionally, whatever skills we have are fixed. So so I think we can I think we can all get a little more control in everybody listening to this? Start reading. Listen to great podcasts like this one. And there's so much good material out there. And the only caution I have is, you know, look at the source for these things. You know, I referenced Frank Sysperthe from Harvard because he's written 9 books. One of them is called aligning strategy in sales, one of the most books I've ever read, period. And and so just make sure that you're not catching a quick Internet, you know, Internet platitude that said, hey.

Mark Cox [00:38:57]:

I was successful because I shouted at a customer and they responded. Like, it's literally that insane, some of the things you pick up. So you have to look at the source. Doesn't have to be us. But but, I do believe that if you learn how to do this, it just becomes a joy because I think smart people are intellectually curious, and they wanna learn about clients and prospects. They actually love that conversation. And I

Adam Gray [00:39:22]:

also think that that you said about mastery, and you said about music and then sport and other stuff. And I think that one of the things that's often overlooked is practice as part of the mastery thing. Because, you know, it doesn't matter whether or not you're practicing your sales pitch or you're practicing your script or you're practicing the technique of writing a blog post or you're practicing the presentation, my guitar teacher said, you need to practice every part of the performance, even the performance. And, you know, it it's so crucial that that when I'm facing off against you in in a helpful way rather than a combative way, but when I'm facing off against you, I'm confident enough that no matter which way the conversation goes, I can cope with that. And I think that that, you know, I know that you guys do a lot of kind of, like, role playing and getting people to repeat things and rehearse and and refine. So so explore that a little bit. What what would your advice be to somebody that is just starting on their journey to to be interacting with people, and how should they practice?

Mark Cox [00:40:31]:

Yeah. Great. So so so first, I love I love that, Adam. First of all, let's think about what what we have to practice. And so there's some of those things in the book. Like, I need an answer to, who are you folks? What do you do? That's coming up in every conversation I have with anybody, anytime. Hey. We're listen.

Mark Cox [00:40:51]:

We're good. We're already using somebody for this. Why should we have this conversation? So we call that the value proposition message, you

Adam Gray [00:40:58]:

know,

Tim Hughes [00:40:58]:

where you

Mark Cox [00:40:58]:

have to say, what do you do? How does what you do tie to a desired outcome of a client? And then what's unique and different about you given their options in the marketplace? But but then I would go to folks, particularly if I'm new on board, Adam, and I'd go to people who know. I would ask, hey, Tim. How do you how do you actually explain the value proposition of DLA Ignite? Hey, Rob. You know, when a client comes back and says, hey. We're good. We don't need to to work with anybody. We already have a supplier for this. What do you actually say to them to keep the conversation going? Hey, Tracy.

Mark Cox [00:41:32]:

What are the 3 really important things that our solution does for a client? What do we do for them and for their business? So so I think I love role playing, Adam, you know, professionally, you know, sitting down and just, a, trying it with a peer because I'd like to have that conversation with a peer first or somebody else new before I get, you know, on a call with a live prospect and panic. And then, you know, I think after you do it a little bit, you start to realize you get better when you plan and prepare and then as you say, reverse. So I'm either gonna learn on live calls where I'm wasting my time and the the time of the prospect, I'm gonna leverage video, my cell phone. I'm gonna practice and rehearse. Even today, folks, I still do demand generation for in the funnel. So at some point in time, for for our large scale training of big corporations, they still wanna talk to me. So so at some point, I'm gonna think about it, sit down, and think about, okay. What's my desired outcome from this conversation? By the way, I know no matter who I'm talking to, they're only gonna remember 3 to 5 things.

Mark Cox [00:42:48]:

What core message do I wanna leave them with? How do I structure that conversation? What are they likely to push back on? What are some concerns they might have? And I don't think objections are a bad thing. I think people think through things by saying you know, addressing some of their fears. So and then, also, what do I think I wanna close for next? What am I hoping will happen? So so just a little bit of preparation and rehearsal. And, Adam, as a musician, you know this. You know, if I go 2 weeks without playing drums and then go to band practice, it's not good. And given my personality, I'm always, you know, one band practice away from getting kicked out of a band, let's be honest with you. So it's not good. They don't need much more to just push me out the door.

Mark Cox [00:43:37]:

But but you do wanna I warm up before I go on the ice to play hockey because at my age, bad things could happen. And so so you wanna warm up before I get into the day and start working. And before I start picking up the phone and having conversations with people or engaging most important means. I wanna I wanna get in the right mindset. So rehearsal repetition, completely underutilized in professional sales, but the best footballers in the world practice more than everybody else. They practice 4 to 5 times more than they play games, and they're the best in the world. That's how they stay there.

Adam Gray [00:44:18]:

You you said about when you're facing off against a customer and you your exact words were and you panic.

Mark Cox [00:44:28]:

So we

Adam Gray [00:44:28]:

all get into that situation where we're we're having an interaction and we become nervous at what's going on. So so what advice would you give a salesperson that is in that situation? This is a high pressured environment. They're scared.

Mark Cox [00:44:40]:

Yes.

Adam Gray [00:44:41]:

How can they hide that fear or at least work with that fear to to perform at their optimum.

Mark Cox [00:44:48]:

Amazing. Thanks. I'd go back to, you know, what what you said at the beginning, which was you said, listen. I wanna understand what the structure of this call is gonna look like, this conversation, if it goes really well. And then I also like to think about backdoors for me too. What am I gonna do with this conversation if it doesn't go really well? What would what would I say? Because when, I'm in the middle of the call I'm no different, by the way. We we do sometimes, we do, cold calling or demand generation in front of a team we're training. So we'll do that for a couple of hours, and they'll give us the worst leads they've ever had.

Mark Cox [00:45:28]:

So so they'll throw them in, and we're gonna be reaching out. No matter what happens, I wanna I wanna think through those things before I sit down and pick up the phone and start calling on their behalf. Because I know how it's gonna go, whether it goes well or not, even if it goes a little left of center. I've already thought about what to do. What happens with fight or flight, any time you get a little surprised, somebody picks up the phone and they go, I'm really busy. Why should I talk to you? We can't help ourselves because, again, our fear center of our brain is so prominent. That's how we evolved as human beings. We we were scared and we stayed in the group and we didn't come out and try and attack the saber toothed tiger.

Mark Cox [00:46:10]:

The person who did that got killed and their gene pool was gone. So we're pretty good. 5 times a second, we're checking out our environments for things that are dangerous to us subconsciously. But if I do get a little nervous, suddenly all my blood's going I got the fight or flight. My blood's going to my extent extremities in case I need to run away. I'm not the smartest tool in the shed in that moment. I'm not gonna adlib super well. I'm not I'm not, you know, on the stage of Saturday night live because I'm a genius at improv.

Mark Cox [00:46:43]:

So I need to think about the 3 or 4 things that are gonna happen and rehearse them, and I can get a little more comfortable. And, by the way, you know, a simple backdoor, if somebody said, well, I'm totally not interested. I'm not sure why you're reaching out wasting my time. One backdoor for us would be to come back and say, well, listen, Tim. I just wanna thank you so much for your time today. And you are one of one of the few large enterprise software organizations in Canada that we haven't had a relationship with. So my intent today was just to formally introduce our company to yours. I'm sorry if I caught you at a bad time.

Mark Cox [00:47:21]:

I very much appreciate your time, and I'd be delighted to speak with you anytime in the future. Sales training is coming up for your team. Now is that an amazing, you know, outcome for me of the call? Not bad. It's not terrible, but I know what I'm gonna do if I actually catch somebody. The truth of it is you never catch somebody who's that angry or that, you know, ticked off or all of these kinds of good things, but I just know what I'm gonna do. So it makes me feel a little more comfortable when I'm reaching out.

Bertrand Godillot [00:47:54]:

So, Mark, so so what what, assuming we get, because I I suspect that's the case, that you get with faced with the sales team who have missed their target. Yeah. Do can you share with us some some of the, you know, maybe 1 or 2 example of strategies that you use to remotivate, I mean, reengage the team? Is that down to the leader, or, you know, are there specific strategies that you can use?

Mark Cox [00:48:26]:

Yeah. So so, Bertram, I think maybe the thing to do is to sit down with someone. And, again, you need the safe environment. And sometimes being an outsider, believe it or not, team, they feel more safe speaking to me or somebody on our team because, again, you you know, if I've been on a sales team for 12 months or 14 months, I may not be that comfortable telling my boss, I don't even know what to say, you know, when I get you know, when somebody puts this objection. I feel like I should know that by now. And, boy, Tracy, we've got a really important new guest here today. Who's that?

Tracy Borreson [00:49:03]:

We do. Nicholas is joining us, folks, for those of you who have seen him

Mark Cox [00:49:06]:

on the show. Hi, Nicholas.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:07]:

Hi, Nicholas. Now. He wants to learn to love selling.

Rob Durant [00:49:10]:

Happy Friday, buddy.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:12]:

Percent chance he's gonna end up in sales. He should probably

Tim Hughes [00:49:14]:

Carl, isn't he isn't he growing up?

Tracy Borreson [00:49:16]:

I know. 6 years old.

Tim Hughes [00:49:18]:

Oh my god. He'll be leaving home soon.

Mark Cox [00:49:21]:

Happy Friday, Nicholas.

Tracy Borreson [00:49:24]:

Nicholas has no school today, so he gets to hang out on the digital download.

Mark Cox [00:49:28]:

Awesome. We're glad you're here. We're glad you're here. And and so, Bertram, to to go back to that then, the other thing is just to to have this conversation. I think a lot of 1 on ones and meetings with salespeople, I think the salesperson walks in and the sales leader kind of feels this is about inspection. And then there's gonna be a little judgment. Hey, Mark. You're missing your numbers, and so I'm I'm not feeling good.

Mark Cox [00:49:53]:

They're not feeling good. I think there's a different type of conversation where we just call it a sales boost meeting and go, listen. Hey, Bertrand. I just wanna sit down with you. Let's go for a coffee to do this maybe, And let's just have this conversation about what's going on in the territory. And as a leader, I'm trying to diagnose, are they doing the wrong things or not doing the right things, or are they doing them the wrong way? So so what's going on? But I wanna move away from, hey, I'm gonna make that judgment based on what I saw in Salesforce. You know, you know, certain of you are old enough to see what happened with the advent of these technologies that came on board in kind of 2011, 2012. What it did, it took sales leaders out of the field and move them back in their office so they could start counting everything.

Mark Cox [00:50:50]:

And now, man, I'm a genius. I'm just gonna count. And then we started making, like, accountant sales waiters because they're so good at counting. So so I'd really just wanna have that conversation. And the basis for that conversation for me is always, I do wanna know what's driving Rob. So so I don't know if Rob cares what I know until he actually feels like I act until he knows that I care about him. So why is it Rob does this job? You know, how many Nicolases does Rob have? Okay. What does Rob wanna do with his career? 5.

Mark Cox [00:51:32]:

Wow, Rob. Evan Zabetzky. Thanks for making the call today. I can't believe you got here. So so so really, I think it's you know, from that leadership level, if it's not working, we have to have a reasonable conversation where the salesperson doesn't feel it's all judgment.

Tim Hughes [00:51:47]:

And at

Mark Cox [00:51:48]:

some point in time, we roll up the sleeves and say, listen, my job here is to try and make you successful or help you be successful. They have to believe I want to do that. And then then we can have this open conversation where they say, well, listen, Mark, I really don't I'm I'm really getting stuck after the first conversation. Every conversation I have, you you know, with the the head of a wealth management organization, they absolutely have no interest in the CRM tech technology that we're selling. I don't know how to trigger, you know, interest. And it's okay. Great. Let's talk about that.

Mark Cox [00:52:23]:

So are they doing the right things, or are they and are they doing them the right way? And then ask them what they think is going on. But but you need to understand what they're trying to get out of the role. We assume everybody wants to make more money. We assume everybody wants to move into management. Those are false assumptions. K?

Rob Durant [00:52:46]:

Mark, you're telling the sales leaders to care about something different. Right now, what they care about is their quota, their their number, and so on. I'm reminded of the line from Into the Woods where prince charming says I I was, bred to be charming, not sincere.

Mark Cox [00:53:06]:

How about that? That's fantastic, by the way. Yeah. You know, Stephen Covey Stephen MR Covey, Stephen Covey's son, took took, the Covey Institute, merged it with Franklin Planners. I think he I've got may have this wrong. I think he got a 65 x return for shareholders when he did that. He took over his dad's company and blew it up. But he's written a good book, a great book called trust and inspire. And, really, the core theme is, hey.

Mark Cox [00:53:36]:

As a leader, our job is to unleash the potential of everybody on the team. It's not to use them as tools for us to get our goals and objectives. And one of the things to think about if you're in sales leadership today is why are you there? You know, is it because you thought that was the next logical step up the chain, or do you actually enjoy seeing a team get better? There there's a big difference between a good football player and a great coach. Those are not always the same. We've seen nothing but examples where the best football player could not go into coaching, but tried anyway. Right. So so I think we need to just think about at a leadership level. I think that's kind of the x factor of b two b sales these days is just making sure we have the right leadership.

Tim Hughes [00:54:25]:

Rob, before you close, could, could you just bring up Dee's question? There's a question to you, Mark. Can you remind people what the the, the title of your book is?

Mark Cox [00:54:36]:

Oh, thank you so much for that question, Dee. The title of the book is Learn to Love Selling the Universal B2B Sales Playbook. Learn to Love Selling the Universe, and it's available on Amazon. And, Dee, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to plug the book. I appreciate it, sir.

Rob Durant [00:54:55]:

Mark, this has been great. Where can people learn more? How can they get in touch with you?

Mark Cox [00:55:00]:

Thank you so much for that question, Rob. So the easiest thing to do is connect with me on LinkedIn. Connect with me on LinkedIn. So it's Mark Andrew Cox on LinkedIn, and the company is in the funnel. So the website's in the funnel.com. Team, I I'm gonna proactively bring up that if you have not read Social Selling by Tim Hughes, you should read it today. So we talk about this common sense revolution in b2b sales. I can say firmly social selling works.

Mark Cox [00:55:33]:

The strategies in that book absolutely work. And when you're trying to figure out how do I trigger more conversations where I'm trying to help folks, social the the strategies and processes in social selling will absolutely help. And that's not just because I'm on this podcast. Check out my posts because I comment on this all the time. So there's some great stuff there as well. Rob and team, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for hosting me on the podcast.

Mark Cox [00:56:04]:

It's been a huge pleasure.

Rob Durant [00:56:06]:

Thank you, Mark.

Mark Cox [00:56:07]:

Thank you, Mark.

Bertrand Godillot [00:56:07]:

Thank you.

Rob Durant [00:56:08]:

We now have a newsletter. Don't miss an episode. Get show highlights beyond the show insights, links to our guest's book, and reminders of upcoming episodes. You can scan the QR code on screen or visit us at digital download dot live, forward slash newsletter. On behalf of the panelists, to our guests, and to our audience, thank you all for being a part of this week's digital download, and we'll see you all next time.

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