Darryl Praill was recently a guest on the Sales Babble podcast. In the episode Darryl and Pat Helmers have a lively conversation about the engagement (or lack of) that happens between marketing and sales departments. When engagement does happen, many time it involves finger pointing, name calling, and other bad behaviors. Darryl feels strongly that sales is not doing its job. And that marketing should hold sales accountable for the leads it provides. It’s a messy topic but someone needs to be talking about it.
Not in the mood to listen? No problem, you can read the transcriptions below.
Host: Pat Helmers, Sales Babble
Guest: Darryl Praill, VanillaSoft
Pat Helmers: This is the Sales Babble podcast, episode 243, The Day Marketing Held Sales Accountable. An interview with Darryl Praill. Well, more of a babble with Darryl Praill.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Sales Babble, the podcast that shares selling secrets for non-sellers. And now your host, Pat Helmers.
Pat Helmers: Welcome Darryl, you ready to babble?
Darryl Praill: I am ready to babble.
Pat Helmers: Darryl, your guy Greg reached out to me, it was only a few days ago and he said that you had an interesting topic that you wanted to talk about. It was about the day that marketing held sales accountable. He said, “Pat, would like to? I’ve been listening some of your podcasts, I think he might be a good fit.” I listened to that topic and I go, that is such a horrible topic because I believe it the other way around that sales should be holding marketing more accountable because sales is the one who really owns this whole process. I thought, well maybe Darryl’s got a point of view so welcome.
Darryl Praill: Well thanks Pat. I have to laugh because Greg came back to me and he says, “Pat seems to believe that sales owns the process.” And my immediate response was, okay, so can I unleash on him or do I have to be respectful and just what? I get why you might think sales needs to hold marketing accountable and in fact I would even argue sometimes marketing, sales should hold marketing accountable. Some of my brothers and sisters are not the best sometimes. However, in the big picture no, marketing holds sales accountable.
Pat Helmers: All right. You said it. What’s your thesis?
Darryl Praill: What’s my thesis? Interrupt me whenever you want to. I’ll play a little role playing with you, okay?
Pat Helmers: All right.
Darryl Praill: Is that okay with you? And I’ve seen your background I know you’ve got the pedigree, the engineer to the rockstar sales guy. You’ve done it all. You’ve got all the accolades so I respect where you come from. That’s my suck up. Here we go.
Darryl Praill: Let me ask you this. Has a marketer ever come to you, you when you’re the head of sales or you’re owning the team, has a marketer ever come to you and asked any of these questions ’cause Lord knows, I have.
Pat Helmers: Okay, let me ask, so I’ll stop you right here.
Darryl Praill: Oh my gosh.
Pat Helmers: I’ve worked on a number of start-ups. There ain’t no marketing department. I’m the bloody marketing department. When you’re a start-up.
Darryl Praill: A one-man marketing department, ask you this. A one person, I’m sorry, I’m going to correct that. A one-person marketing team will ask, their sales counterpart, the one person sales team the following. You still haven’t followed up on those leads yet? Have you followed up on those leads? I gave you those leads last week. Have you followed up on them yet? Ever heard that one?
Pat Helmers: Yes.
Darryl Praill: All right. Next one. What do you mean those leads were crap? They were definitely not crap. Those were good leads. Ever heard that one? You’re laughing ’cause you know you have.
[bctt tweet=”What do you mean those leads were crap? 💩 They were definitely not crap. Those were good leads. Ever heard that one? ~ @ohpinion8ted #Sales #Marketing #MQL” username=”VanillaSoft”]
Darryl Praill: All right here we go. Why are you asking me for more leads? I just gave you a boatload of leads. Sound familiar? Dude, you’re killing me. You’re killing me. I just dropped $20,000 on that show and you’re telling me the leads sucked? Is that what you’re telling me? You’re killing me. I’ll stop there, I could go on. I think you’re getting into it. That’s me setting the stage. You want me to carry on?
Pat Helmers: So who is this person asking these questions?
Darryl Praill: It’s the marketer talking to the salesperson. Let’s just stick with that.
Pat Helmers: No it’s not.
Darryl Praill: Who is it? You talking to the janitor? What am I doing?
Pat Helmers: That’s the sales manager saying that.
Darryl Praill: No, it’s not. The sales manager has come to the marketer and asked the marketer if they’ve followed up on the leads?
Pat Helmers: No, that never happens.
Darryl Praill: Okay, thank you. All right. The sales manager is coming to the marketer.
Pat Helmers: To the salespeople and saying, we gave you all these leads, why aren’t you working them? And they’re going to say things like …
Darryl Praill: I’m going to get to that. You’re jumping the queue. I’m going to get to that. Let’s get to it now. Let’s have some fun with that. Let me see if I can guess. You’re going to say, “They’re not qualified.” You’re going to say, “They were just getting the free tchotchke at the booth.” Or they wanted that download, that paper. You’re going to say, “Yeah you gave me a 100 leads, I called 20 of them, I got a hold of one of them and they were crap. I don’t have time for this. I have a quota to hit. I can’t chase your leads anymore.”
Pat Helmers: Doesn’t that kind of like beg the question doesn’t it, that means the salespeople must have some other leads that they’re working, right? That’s keeping them busy. Leads that they have found themselves. Leads that somehow that they know are truly qualified. Leads that truly understand the value proposition. Because this is the thing about marketing is, ’cause they’re not closing the deals, they don’t necessarily know who exactly a perfect lead is. I will give you, hey whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I will give you, it is the responsibility of the sales organization to express that value proposition to marketing. I’ll give you that. They’re the ones who first find these people.
[bctt tweet=”It is the responsibility of the sales organization to express that #ValueProposition to marketing. ~ @ohpinion8ted #SalesBabble” username=”VanillaSoft @pathelmers”]
Darryl Praill: Wrong.
Pat Helmers: When you’re a start-up you got the hipper, you got the hipster, hacker, hustler characters going on.
Darryl Praill: We have a one person sales team. Gotcha. Okay.
Pat Helmers: Right, and the hustler and hipster’s the same person. While the hacker is making the thing or service that you’re selling.
Darryl Praill: Hey, I will be the first to say, sales needs to be involved, connected at the hip with marketing.
Pat Helmers: I concur.
Darryl Praill: Fully agree. They need to be aligned.
Pat Helmers: In a large organization they don’t even report to the same character which is beyond me why that is.
Darryl Praill: We can go into that topic. I have pros and cons on that one. I hear what you’re saying. The first thing I do when I start a job and not everybody does and this is not common sense I didn’t event this. I’m sorry, it is common sense but I didn’t invent this, is I go to my sales counterpart and I say, “Can we just, over a cup of coffee, can we just talk about our mutual rules of engagement?” What do you think is a lead Mr., Miss Salesperson?
Pat Helmers: And then I would say, hang on.
Darryl Praill: I’m listening.
Pat Helmers: We help these kinds of people with these kinds of problems by providing these kinds of services that have these kinds of benefits.
Darryl Praill: That’s great. You just told me what the selling proposition was. You haven’t answered the question of what is a lead?
Pat Helmers: Okay.
Darryl Praill: A lead could be it’s got this job title. There’s lots. We can go by the BANT if you want to. There’s lots of variations out there. They’re in this industry.
Pat Helmers: The demographics of them.
Darryl Praill: The demographics, the titles, the size, whatever it might be. The problems, the issues. You give me, if you give me this information in some way, shape or form, I’ll consider that a lead. Until you know that, you keep nurturing your emailing, doing whatever it is that marketing does. That would be, once you and I, Mr. Salesperson and Ms. Marketer have that agreement on what a lead is, we’re guessing. We’re not aligned. I need to know from you, what is a lead? And then I’ll build all my programs around getting you leads that match that criteria. I’ll ask the questions on the form. I’ll make sure I have all those questions in all my marketing material to prompt, to pull it out, to hit with them. Until we have rules of engagement that says, “What is a lead?” Remember we’re both just doing our job in silos sadly with the best of intentions but never to have success. And that makes me sad. That’s the first thing I’ll ask.
Darryl Praill: The next thing I’ll ask is, when I give you a lead, how long before I can a 100% confidence that you have followed up on that lead? One week? Three days? One day? Eight hours? Four hours, two hours, one hour, five minutes? What is our agreement that when I give you a lead, you will follow up on it within this time frame? And if you don’t, I get to hold you accountable and you get to not to be bitter and angry because we’ll have defined these rules of engagement up front.
[bctt tweet=”What is our agreement that when I give you a lead, you will follow up on it within this time frame? ⏰ And if you don’t, I get to hold you accountable…🤝~@ohpinion8ted #Sales #Marketing #MQL” username=”VanillaSoft @pathelmers”]
Pat Helmers: I’m not sure how you’re holding me accountable.
Darryl Praill: It’s simple. If we agree that you’re going to call a lead within four hours, I’m making this up. You take 24 hours, you dropped the ball. I have to hold you accountable.
Pat Helmers: Right. Right, right, right. Right. And if you like if we go work a trade show, if I don’t follow up with somebody within a week, it’s going to every day, every hour it’s going to get staler and staler and staler.
Darryl Praill: And a week, that timeframe is all part of that rules of engagement discussion. We’re going to negotiate. You’re going to say to me, “A week Darryl.” And I’m going to say, “No, 48 hours max.” And then we will maybe get agree on 72 hours or whatever it is. We’ll agree on something. But we have to get those rules of engagement down pat and then I need to hold you accountable to do that ’cause let me tell you what happens today. I have some wonderful stats here. They’re not my stats by the way. These are industry stats. You can argue with those who have done the research but these are the stats.
Darryl Praill: The stats say that 48% of new leads, so like a webform coming in, an inbound lead, never get contacted. That’s stat number one. Stat number two, less than two call attempts are made.
Pat Helmers: Yes, I know this one.
Darryl Praill: You know this one.
Pat Helmers: I know this one.
Darryl Praill: Stat number three, the average time to follow up on a new lead is anywhere from 35 to 60 hours. Let’s say a day and a half to what’s that? Two and a half days?
Pat Helmers: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Darryl Praill: All right. That we know is bad because again, on other research what do we know? We know you have to call a new lead within one hour, one hour. Some would say five minutes, they’re wrong. But within one hour because it goes staler and staler as you say. One would say, two call attempts is not enough.
Pat Helmers: It’s supposed to be eight. Eight.
Darryl Praill: I was going to say eight to 12. Pick your number.
Pat Helmers: Eight to 12, yep.
Darryl Praill: Depends on your industry.
Pat Helmers: Yep, yep, yep.
Darryl Praill: You nailed it. And then a 100% of new leads need to get contacted. Going back to my original discussion, when I brought you those 100 leads and you waited one week and then you started calling them and you called 20 of them once and you gave up on it because they were crap. Well the reason they were crap was because you waited one week and they moved on. And that’s why 19 of them never took your call. The day marketing hold sales accountable is the day that marketing says, “Listen, I spent a crap load of time and money and programs spend to get you this expensive ass lead. The least you can do is call within an hour and call eight to 12 times.” And then when you get them on the phone or get them in a social live chat or whatever it might be, knock your socks off doing what it is you do best ’cause you’re way better at doing that than I am.
Pat Helmers: What do you think is the root cause of this?
Darryl Praill: Oh I got answers to that. I got an answer to that.
Pat Helmers: I was hoping so. That’s why I asked.
Darryl Praill: You were hoping. You’re smug right now, aren’t you? Actually tell the audience, we have actually not rehearsed this. This is working out really, really well.
Pat Helmers: I hardly, I never rehearse these.
Darryl Praill: I don’t either.
Pat Helmers: That’s not a secret. That’s not a selling secret. That’s not a selling secret. I don’t.
Darryl Praill: I agree. I saw a LinkedIn post of the day, if you’re going to give a speech, you need to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse for hours on end.
Pat Helmers: That’s true.
Darryl Praill: No. I don’t necessarily agree but depends on the individual. I get that.
Darryl Praill: Here’s one reason we do it. There’s lots of reasons. People are people, we all have our own idiosyncrasies or strengths and our weaknesses so any one individual may have a reason that they are not doing this. But this is what I contend is the problem and you’re going to like this because I’m not throwing the sales person under the bus. I’m throwing the technology under the bus and let me explain what I mean by that.
Darryl Praill: The technology of wonderful, blessed CRM. Bear with me and I’ll explain what I mean. CRM, you log in, pick your platform, Salesforce, whatever, they’re pretty much all the same. And then this is not a fault of CRM, this is just the way it is. What do you see? You see a list. Here’s my list of all the calls I need to make and the tasks I need to follow up on. And that list is sorted. It’s sorted by whatever parameters your organization deems important. Could be a lead score. Could be a lead grade. It could be recency. It could be revenue size, title, I don’t care. It’s prioritized in some way, shape or form but it’s a list.
Darryl Praill: What do we do? Let’s just walk through this. See if you can finish my sentence here ’cause at every time I present this, people always finish my sentences. On the top of the list, Joe’s Garage. Number two on the list, IBM. Number three on the list, ABC Manufacturing. I’ll stop right there. Who do you call.
Pat Helmers: It depends.
Darryl Praill: You’re lying. You’re laughing and you know what the answer is.
Pat Helmers: No, no, no, no. You got to know where I’m coming from.
Darryl Praill: Okay, I’m listening.
Pat Helmers: Okay, I’m coming from a start-up space. I work with companies trying to find their first 10 customers. And if they go out there and I know what the right answer’s supposed to be, it was IBM but they go out there and go try to like get some whale like that, they’re it’s highly unlikely they’re going to earn it. For lots of reasons. But they might be able to get Joe’s Garage.
Darryl Praill: And yet, your view prioritization, if your sorting said Joe’s Garage was a bigger priority, a stronger likelihood, call it what you will. It’d put it first.
Pat Helmers: Right, it’s so thin that demographic of like, we help these kinds of people with these kinds of problem. If I say, we help garages who are looking to grow their revenue, whatever that might be. Yeah, that guy, those guys, Joe is my ideal client. He’s my ideal client. IBM’s not.
Darryl Praill: You a 100% right. I’m going to remove Pat from this conversation.
Pat Helmers: Most people would say, and this is crime you see all the time, “Oh look, there’s IBM. Oh, there’s so many dollars there. Let’s go chase that.”
Darryl Praill: Exactly.
Pat Helmers: Meanwhile, all the Joe’s Garages that you can probably close, you might be setting aside.
Darryl Praill: Exactly. I fully agree. And your system told you as much. Your system said, based on your lead score, whatever it is you do it, Joe’s is better than IBM but, we are creatures of habit, we humans are and we see IBM and for whatever reason, bigger brand, more money, bigger opportunity, who knows? Maybe IBM’s big into the garage game now. I didn’t know that. I didn’t see it my local Owler update or on LinkedIn or on Google alerts but who knows? I’m calling IBM.
Darryl Praill: All right. That’s a problem. They shouldn’t be calling IBM, they should be calling Joe’s Garage. So what happens? Carry on with the list paradigm. You keep on getting new leads in and eventually that first page of on your list, Joe’s Garage, IBM, fall off. Which is why 48% of leads don’t get followed up on because you cherry picked, you called IBM first and eventually the ones you didn’t call ’cause in your mind, you’re going to come back to that, they fall off the list, out of sight, out of mind. That’s number one.
[bctt tweet=”48% of leads don’t get followed up on because you cherry picked.🍒 ~ @ohpinion8ted #SalesEngagement #SalesBabble” username=”VanillaSoft @pathelmers”]
Darryl Praill: If you do call IBM ’cause you’re really excited about it, you’re going to call them once or twice, maybe call them three time then they fall off the list. Out of sight, out of mind even though the list has a second and a third page. Again, two call attempts, that’s it. You didn’t do your eight to 12. You didn’t get a hold of them. Finally, while you’re working on this list, Pat’s Kickass Sales Training Inc. fills out a form then it comes on the list. It might even come at the top of the list, who knows? But it’s a fricking list and I don’t notice that Pat’s Kickass Sales Training Inc. just filled out a lead and I should call them right the heck now. My speed to lead drops like a rock and when I finally call them, three, four, five, six days later, they’ve already bought somebody else. It’s a new generation and I have zero patience to wait. I want answers and satisfaction now.
Darryl Praill: That’s my contention. It’s not salesperson. There is biases like the cherry picking we talked about. It’s the technology.
Pat Helmers: This gets to your, I’m assuming this gets to your software product. There’s a ton of people out there HubSpot, Salesforce. I’ll tell you what, in the last four days, I’ve had conversations with people wanting to build the next hot new CRM. That’s supposed to take the leads from the cradle to the grave. Cradle to the they’re now clients.
Darryl Praill: Win loss. I hear you. You’re not buying it, I’m guessing?
Pat Helmers: Lot of people are trying to do that. And honestly, that is the right problem. That is the right problem to be solving. It is. It is. I can’t dismiss that.
Darryl Praill: You can’t argue.
Pat Helmers: No, no, no. Because yeah, it’s the handoff is too difficult. There’s just so much to know. Let’s just take this. Active Campaign is the email autoresponder system I use. It’s called a CRM. I could also have salesforce.com, it’s called a CRM. They are not the same thing.
Darryl Praill: Agreed.
Pat Helmers: Yet they both use the same terms.
Darryl Praill: They absolutely do and it’s confusing as hell. Because they’re not. They’re absolutely not. I could argue salesforce.com versus Pipedrive are both CRM but I would argue that Pipedrive is a Salesforce automation as opposed to a CRM. Yeah, it is confusing. That’s the conversation we talk about. We talk about just adjusting your stack a little bit. Yes, we have a software solution for that. You’re maybe going to think of this is a perhaps a biased or an influenced conversation. It’s not.
Pat Helmers: I’m good with it. And I would be good if you were.
Darryl Praill: No I hear you.
Pat Helmers: Bias isn’t bad. It’s good to have an opinion. There’s too many people don’t. All they do is complain. They don’t have any solutions of the world.
Darryl Praill: Candidly, I had my own gig going for almost the last 10 years, my own firm. Probably not unlike you. You notice I worked for the man for a long time. I had lots of fun, I had lots of success. I’ve been bought, I’ve been sold. Life is exciting and life is desperate and then I did my own thing. And then one day I had a recruiter come knock on my door with this opportunity and I had that happen on a semi-regular basis and I always say no. It just so happened I personally knew this recruiter and he had placed me many years earlier. He finally pulled the friend card and he yelled me. Darryl, I wouldn’t call you if this wasn’t a fricking real opportunity. Go talk to them for me.
Darryl Praill: I went and talked to them and in my first interview I got into a fight with the CEO ’cause at the time he’s calling himself, this dovetails to the point you’re making. They called themselves, their solution was, CRM for inside sales. And I’m like, what the hell is CRM for inside sales? And he goes, “It is what it is.” He was much more eloquent than that. And I’m like, so you want to compete with saleforce.com because when I hear CRM I hear CRM. Like what are you smoking?
Pat Helmers: Just had this conversation four hours ago.
Darryl Praill: Okay, so you get it. I’m like, no. I leave the meeting, I don’t know, 10, 15 minutes later I call the recruiter up, my good friend and I said, “There won’t be a second one. I’m sure I just …”
Pat Helmers: You guys are idiots.
Darryl Praill: Pretty much. I was me so I had nothing to lose. And he goes, “I’ve already talked to them.” I’m like, “You have?” “Oh yeah, they loved you, they want you back.” And then I’m like, “How the hell can they want me back?” He goes, “‘Cause you’re the first one to ask, you stood up and said that they’re wrong.” As I drilled down into it, you got to understand what the solution does, I myself ’cause like you, been around the block. I had this aha moment and I said, “Oh my gosh, that makes sense.” And let me put it you in really simple terms. This is the simplest way to put it. They take the sales qualification stage out of CRM and they say, listen that is the domain of the sales development rep, the inside sales rep, the bus/dev rep. Call it what you will.
Darryl Praill: It’s not the main of the accounting staff. Now in your case, talk about start-ups I fully get that in many of those, most of start-ups this is all the same person. But conceptually, you have a sales development rep then you have an account exec and the whole purpose of a sales development rep is to take a marketing qualified lead, the one that marketing gave them and to follow up on it.
Pat Helmers: Really qualify it. The SDR’s there to really qualify it.
Darryl Praill: Yes. And if it’s really real, and to do it they’re going to have to call within an hour. They got to call eight to 12 times. They got to call at the right cadence. It’s all science and if they get a hold of them and it’s all qualified, then they can pass that opportunity off to the account exec. They live in CRM and now it’s a real opportunity. I’m like, oh my gosh. The first part is, they took the SQL state out and they said, “You guys, you need your own platform just like marketers needed their own platform.” Remember marketing automation didn’t always exist. It kind of came out of CRM because it sucked in CRM.
Pat Helmers: It seems like it’s only thing that people want.
Darryl Praill: Yes. There’s truth in that.
Pat Helmers: Which greatly perturbs me because I kind of feel people are so afraid of sales they have this like silly idea that if I just buy this marketing machine, it’ll just create all these leads and they’ll magically close themselves somehow. And I’m like, well, not if it’s a complex sales it ain’t going to do that.
Darryl Praill: Not at all. You’re fully a 100% right, you’re a 100, 100% right. And that’s why I like what they’re doing. I was here about 30 days and I finally had my aha moment which the rest of industry of course had already had. And I said, “If we do sales engagement, just like Sales Loft or Outreach.io or insidesales.com, those are our competitors. We do sales engagement, it’s everything we’re doing, it’s just it’s got a name and the name is sales engagement.” And that’s what we do.
Darryl Praill: That’s why I came. I came because it just made sense. When I talk about the technology that’s why. Why did marketing automation not work in CRM? Technology. They do things differently. It’s not an indictment of CRM. It’s just the right tool for the right job. When I come back and I say the day marketing held sales accountable, that’s me really saying, guys and gals if you’re not calling fast enough, you’re not calling often enough, you’re not calling with the right cadence, then it’s probably your technology.
Pat Helmers: You’re calling the SDRs marketing.
Darryl Praill: Oh that’s a whole different question. Okay. I didn’t say that. What I said was, they sales qualified MQL but that does lead to the question, to your point, then where should the sales development team report? Sales or marketing?
Pat Helmers: Good question.
Darryl Praill: I can give you my opinion but you know I would contend in the end that’s an organizational decision based on the talent and the people and the processes you have. In my opinion, yes it should be part of marketing and here’s why. You’re going to like this. Because this is where sales would hold marketing accountable. If you’re going to give me a lead, I want to know that it’s not only marketing qualified, they filled a damn form out and that’s it but it’s also sales qualified. You’ve asked, you’ve talked to this person. You know it’s real. I’ll take that. I don’t want to waste this expensive person on calling up leads because they wanted a tchotchke at the trade show booth. That’s where …
Pat Helmers: Yeah. Exactly.
Darryl Praill: Yes, I agree with you. You see, we’ve come full circle that I think what I just heard you say was, you agree with me and I’m validating you. We should go drinking.
Pat Helmers: I’m a big craft beer fan.
Darryl Praill: Oh God bless craft beer. Love it.
Pat Helmers: I brew beer too.
Darryl Praill: Do you brew? Just have one. There’s a craft beer festival on this weekend I wanted to go to. I was so excited. I was even a bachelor this weekend, my wife was gone with the ladies for a weekend thing away and I ended up working all weekend. I didn’t get to it. Sad. I told you before we went live, I’m going nuts. It’s peak marketing season.
Pat Helmers: I don’t know if people know this, my wife Denise is a principal of an elementary school. She actually lives three hours 15 minutes south of me. It’s a long story why she does. It’s ’cause when we went and moved to Asia, she quit her job that she really loved but it was a new adventure and then she came back here and it was a little hard to get one. She got, she loves this job down there so we go back and forth on the weekends and every weekend’s kind of like dating. But in the week, I work all the time. ‘Cause I got no reason, I have no reason to rush home.
Darryl Praill: Our CFO here of the company, his wife lives two hours away and it’s exact same thing. He’s here all week long and he and I have contests every day to see who’s going to be the one to turn the lights out. He usually wins. I’ll call it. ‘Cause the same thing, he has no reason to go back home.
Pat Helmers: I’m making fun. There’s like meet ups every night so I’m usually going to something. Meeting people.
Darryl Praill: Do you like doing the meet ups?
Pat Helmers: Yeah, I do a lot. I do a lot.
Darryl Praill: You’re like an extrovert then, aren’t you?
Pat Helmers: Well yeah.
Darryl Praill: You see, I’m not.
Pat Helmers: That’s what made me a lousy engineer.
Darryl Praill: Well indirectly. I love the variety of marketing which is what made me in the end, a lousy programmer. Because I was going stir crazy staring at the screen trying to do code when I would rather be doing anything else but ’cause I was bored out of my mind sitting in that same spot the whole time.
Pat Helmers: See I think that’s where a lot of people go into marketing is because they’re not, they don’t think of themselves of being that outgoing. Oddly enough though, there’s only eight universities in the United States who actually have a undergraduate sales degree. One of them is Aurora University of which I do volunteer work for right here in Chicago land. The vast majority of people come from marketing. 80% of the people in marketing programs end up in sales. It’s not what they thought when they were little kids. I’m going to grow up and be a salesperson. I think there are a lot of people out there who really don’t like, the thing is sales is that, what’s great about marketing, the marketing people that I meet that I really love are the ones who actually are out there trying to earn clients. There are agencies out there earning clients ’cause they kind of get both sides.
Darryl Praill: Oh my gosh Pat, I love you. I’ll tell you why. I had this conversation the other day on LinkedIn. It was a heated discussion and in the end, this individual, it was a sales individual, I won’t name names. Threw it in my face that how would I know because you’re not selling Darryl. How dare you suggest what you’re suggesting because you’re not selling.
Darryl Praill: And I had to raise it right back to him, ’cause that’s what I do. I’m like, how the hell do you know I’m not selling? How can a marketer, how can a good marketer know what works with an audience or doesn’t work with an audience if they don’t pick up a phone and call occasionally? If they don’t go on a sales call. If they don’t listen in to the recordings. ‘Cause let me tell you, we don’t magically know the right expression, the right value proposition or how to handle the right objection soon as you walk through that door and start a new job. We got to figure it out. If you don’t pick up the phone then you are doing yourself a dramatic disservice both individually and for your career as a marketer.
Pat Helmers: Are you doing sales for this VanillaSoft doodad?
Darryl Praill: Am I doing? Isn’t everybody a salesperson at VanillaSoft? Do I? I’m not on the sales team. I’m not comped. But I’m active on as many calls as I can get onto and of course I’m out at every single trade show talking to people just like you. Having these very conversations. Doing the qualifying, everything else. I’m a firm believer in putting my butt right there on the front lines. Because that’s how you market.
Darryl Praill: I laugh. Again, last week I was at this conference and we’ll leave it at that. It was a good conference. That was when I floated this presentation. The day marketing held sales accountable and it was hilarious but this one woman stands out for me. She had paced back and forth and back and forth for most of the day in front of our booth but would never come up to us. Finally, at the end of the day she comes up to us and she goes, “I have to ask.” And I said, “What?” And she goes, “What do you mean by this?” Because we had this, of course we’re promoting our talk and it was right there and she’s pointing at this, The Day Marketing Held Sales Accountable sign. And I said, “Before I answer that question, what do you do? Are you in sales or are you marketing?” “I’m in sales.” I said, “Fantastic. Okay, no problem.” I said, “You give me two minute to talk to you and then before you yell at me.” “Okay.”
Darryl Praill: And then I got into that whole conversation about IBM, Joe’s Garage and right there on the, I happened to have, I gave her a preview of the deck I was going to show in the show. And on there I said, reps cherry pick. I’m talking to her and she’s like ignoring me. Cutting me off, she goes, “Oh I totally do that. Yeah, I do that. Yeah, I do that.” Then she was like hilarious. She starts laughing, she goes, “Okay I get it. I get you’re coming from.” I said, “I’m not disparaging you. I’m really not. I’m just talking about the challenges between the two groups and how do we make it work.”
Darryl Praill: I love selling. I really, really do loving selling. You know what I hate about sales though? I’ll be candid with it. I hate the anxiety and the stress of the quota. That’s what I hated about it. Hated it.
Pat Helmers: Well you know, there’s a whole, I had a guy on the podcast with the idea that his organization, his old company, he took everybody off quota. Everybody’s salary. Quota is a, this’ll turn your head backwards. Quota is a way for sales managers to be lazy.
Darryl Praill: I’m listening. I’m not disagreeing, I’m listening.
Pat Helmers: They have this feeling that if we just motivate people with money because obviously people are only motivated by money, then they will just work hard because want to get rich. And, it allows me to go do stuff that I want to do and not really like meet up with them very often. Not really follow up with them very often. Not really look at their pipelines. Not really look and see what, listen in their calls. Coach them. Help them. Get better at this. Go out on sales calls with them even though traveling’s such a pain.
Darryl Praill: This is how I look at it Pat. This is an opportunity for you and all those other sales trainers that I respect so much to set them straight. This is called a pipeline for you. That’s what this is. Because that individual’s wrong. Simple as that. That individual’s wrong. I can tell you candidly, even me in marketing, hey look at me in marketing. I’ve got a salary. I don’t have a quota. Oh but as part of my compensation plan there’s this little kicker that says, performance. And if you do this above and beyond you’re going to get that. And we’re dangled with carrot. Trust me, I don’t work 9:00 to 5:00, I work a lot more ’cause I want that performance bonus. I’ve already got it spent in my head. And I’m in marketing.
Pat Helmers: But those performance bonuses are often bogus. And it’s also dependent upon how the company does. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. I’m busting my butt and if the company does poorly, with something I have nothing to do with, because some tariff got tacked on at China or something. I got nothing to do with that and I’m going to get hurt on this?
Darryl Praill: I don’t disagree but in the same breath let me go a different way.
Pat Helmers: I’d rather have people say I’m working hard because it’s just the right thing to do. I’m here to make my customers happy. Just like firemen aren’t on quota, doctors aren’t on quota, nurses aren’t on a quota. Everybody’s not on quota except for salespeople.
Darryl Praill: Yes.
Pat Helmers: As if they’re some other kind of animal. They’re different than homo sapiens somehow. They’re like some other Cro-Magnon something or other. That’s bologna. They’re people like people too. They need to be managed harder. Managed like everybody else. They shouldn’t be just thrown into the deep water and say, “Good luck.” I used to work with a lady who didn’t think twice, she would spend an hour hiring people and throw them on the phone. And if they stuck out more than a week, she felt like she was successful. And if they quit, that was all right. That’s horrible. Just horrible way of managing people.
Darryl Praill: I can’t tell you how often …
Pat Helmers: I don’t want to talk about this actually.
Darryl Praill: No, no, but it’s true. I had this conversation the other day. Somebody was whining about some situation that they did and they felt bad. They actually felt bad. They were in the sales role. And I said to them, I said, “Listen,” okay, and then I’ll shut on this, I said, “I understand you feel bad and yes you can learn from that.” I said, “But in fairness to you, your manager should have come in way before that ever got to that point and said, what up? Something’s wrong, how can I help?” I said, “So, you can feel bad, maybe you dropped the ball, maybe you could have done better, but it’s not solely on you. You were let down by the system.” I’ll shut up now.
Pat Helmers: Bosses have got to be held accountable here.
Darryl Praill: Yes.
Pat Helmers: That’s what I’m really talking. These sales managers need to be held accountable and it ain’t about yelling. It’s about they need to start coaching these people and teaching these people. The thing is, is I worked with a lot of these people, they don’t know squat about sales, yet they put them in these positions.
Darryl Praill: But how is that any different and this is universal problem. I know we’re talking about sales here but I’ll come back to my experience as a marketer. How many times have I had an engineer, CEO tried cut the budget on marketing or say, “You guys don’t contribute to revenue.” And I just want to slap them to say, “You’re the CEO and you don’t understand how a business works?” Really? Seriously? You’re in that position?
Pat Helmers: You’re preaching to the choir. Oh yeah, it’s painful.
Darryl Praill: Pat, I see that we don’t get along here at all. We should work on some counseling or something.
Pat Helmers: I don’t think I’m going to. I don’t think I’m going to publish this.
Darryl Praill: I wouldn’t publish this.
Pat Helmers: Darryl, how can people find you online?
Darryl Praill: They can find, well couple thing. You want to find at VanillaSoft? Vanillasoft.com and that’s a nice sales engagement platform. You can kick butt and might also be good for you on the sales side. But you want to find me, Darryl Praill, just go to LinkedIn, Darryl Praill. Want to find me on Twitter? You search under Darryl Praill but my handle is, Ohpinion8ted, don’t you love that? But it’s kind of spelled different O-H-P-I-N-I-O-N, the number eight, T-E-D. That’s me. Don’t be shy, connect. Give me a shout. Join the conversation. I have a blast and I love to talk online.
Pat Helmers: That’s right, you said you had some podcasts.
Darryl Praill: I do. I have a, you know you’re good. I have a podcast. I have multiple podcasts but let’s just plug one for this context. All those sales, check out insideinsidesales.com where we get behind the issues, the tactical, pragmatic things that us sales development people have to deal with every single day. No strategy, no trends, no big picture just the meat and potatoes of being a sales development professional.
Pat Helmers: It’s all about tactics, not strategies?
Darryl Praill: It’s all about tactics, not strategies. There’s other shows and other people for that.
Pat Helmers: Cool. Cool, cool, cool beans. All right Darryl, this has been a lot of fun. This has been, I shouldn’t say this, all those Sales Babble listeners out there, you’ve been very patient and I appreciate it. Sticking us out to the end.
Darryl Praill: Well you know, the show is Sales Babble and I think I’ve just established.
Pat Helmers: This is the most babbling I’ve done in quite a while.
Darryl Praill: I’ve had a blast. I’m so grateful for the show, sir. You’re kicking it. You’re rocking it. I just thank you for the time.
Pat Helmers: Fun times. We’ll see you.
Darryl Praill: Take care.
Pat Helmers: Well my oh my, wasn’t that a lot of babbling? Just got done re-listening to it and I’m going, oh my goodness. I was rude a number of places. I interrupted. Poor Darryl. Certainly didn’t deserve that. Usually I’m so much nicer to people but something in Darryl just got the babbling out of me. There you go. My apologies to Darryl for over speaking over you and all of that. Darryl’s got some really good points here. 40% of the new leads never get contacted. Less than two call attempts are ever made. Average time to follow up is 35, 60 hours. Yeah, this is unacceptable sales folks. Darryl’s absolutely right. We need to get better at this and we need to be following up as quick as we can and follow up, follow up, follow up.
Pat Helmers: To find Darryl online and to connect with him and to VanillaSoft, you can go to the show notes, hit www.salesbabble.com/243 and while you’re there, you got a question, you got a comment? Don’t hesitate to reach out. Click the babble me button and you can be looking for past episodes in our archives. Did an update on the website very, very easy to find all kinds of it graded by topic, on prospecting and presenting and cold calling and closing and we even talk about marketing in there.
Pat Helmers: Anyway, I’m know this ran a little long. Thank you for listening. Thanks for going all the way to the bitter end. I really appreciate it. I hope maybe you’ve been able to take some action out of here. And hope you take my advice and go follow up on those leads. In couple days it’s the Thanksgiving holiday here in United States. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. And until next week, take care and have a highly successful and profitable selling day.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening the Sales Babble podcast. Find us at www.salesbabble.com.