An Agile Way to Multiply Your Sales by Ten

00:15

Good afternoon, LinkedIn Live community and welcome to our webinar series on lean sales lean agile sells rather. I’m Charles Mattox. I have my co facilitator here Harada Rosario, and we’re here to give you some good information on how to combine a lean, agile approach to your sales team. And there’s a lot of data out there that says you can even multiply it by a tenfold, you know, in terms of revenues that you can actually achieve with with these new methods. So why are we here today, we’re here to address some of the challenges that we’re having in facing with our sales teams. Alright, so I think you’ll get a good piece of information from this, this webinar. And again, there’s gonna be a series following this. So yeah, stay tuned, and we’ll definitely be glad to share more with you. All right, next slide, please. So myself, I’m Charles Maddox. I’m the founder of the i Four group, we are a lean, agile consulting firm, we’ve been doing training and consulting in this space for the last 10 years. Me personally, I have a lot of background in the technology field as a software developer, and most recently into business agility and Dev SEC ops. We are definitely kind of on the cutting edge and how to apply Lean and Agile to various environments like sales and marketing, obviously, finance, quality assurance, and the like. And we’ve definitely have a lot of valuable information to share with you here. This particular topic is very close to heart about Lean sales, because my partner here Harada, Rosario, he approached me about a lean sales and marketing approach that we could take to our our company, and me being a small business owner. And also in the lean, agile ways of working, I was very attracted to this, this approach. And it was really helpful to be able to strategize and align our organization and our sales approach around a lean agile approach, which was always very familiar to me and I grasp the concepts right away. So definitely think that you know, any one in the Lean agile space, as well as in the sales space could definitely take value from these conversations that we’re going to have today. So with that, I’m going to turn it over to my co facilitator, Geraldo Rotter, you can take it from

02:37

here. Hi, Charles, thank you so much, initially for the invitation. I’m so glad to be here with you sharing of course, from experience, let me introduce myself to the audience. I’m currently the MA services co founder, this is a lean revenue transformation consulting firm, where we sit in Mexico, but we are we do still have offices in Spain as well. And I didn’t just give a lot of help to other customers all around the world globally, especially in USA and South America. And I’m in charge of the division of the Lena gal. Sales consultancy. And today we’re going to be sharing some some of the experiences we have been having in all these 10 years bringing all these lean Agile principles to sales. I’m three years experience managing it b2b sales and global expansion projects. My experience is not just in sales, I’ve also been

03:42

busy business owner on different projects that got me to the point that I been in the purchasing process. So one of the main experiences that I have is to understand exactly from a Buyer Protection perspective, and how how can we make more more efficiency, the purchasing process of course, with the help of consulted sales. So in this way, what I want to what I want to share with you is that being honest, I I’ve never been you know a high class closer deal salesman, I’m always feel more attractive for the processes. My dad was an engineer and I’ve been from you know, very close to software development processes. My first experience is doing sales with software development products, and you know, hardware software. So I’m very familiar to Visionnaire gal. And and initially when when I when when I started doing this, I was just felt so amazed on the way that product development was done. But before going further, I want to explain you that this is going to be one one of the three sessions that we’re going to be sharing with you in this Lean agile sales. The first one is today, and we’re going to share share how to how to apply the principles that enable you and your sales teams go from there. addition out to a lean agile sales manage. The second webinar is going to be doing, we’re going to be focusing on lean pipelines and discovery techniques to reduce waste, and accelerate conversion, were dividing this into a lean sales approach and then to an agile sales approach. And in the third webinar, what you’re gonna, we’re going to be sharing is how to manage your sales team with an agile framework to deliver critical value to customers, you know, and work and making these couple of difference. Of course, we’re going to be explaining this in the following slides. But basically, that’s, that’s one word. This is a one of the three webinars today take aways. Okay, the first one, and the first thing that probably we need to understand is what is happening with our customers and with the markets in a post COVID area that are probably the challenges that our customers are having is related on how much we’re understanding the perception of the value that they’re needing right now, then we’re going to be jumping to the traditional sales approach versus the Lena dial. I don’t want to assume that everybody is an expert Nina gal. I know some of you have a lot of experience during the night yelling it er and transformation processes. But we I also understand that some of you is probably the first approach that you’re having to this concept. So I don’t want to assume that we’re going to have like a brief explanation and that frameworks and roadmaps you can use to start doing it and where to start this is going to be you know, the outcome probably is a roadmap to increase efficiency by reducing significant amount of waste in your sales process, waste is going to be something that you’re going to hear a lot in this webinar. So Charles, in you know, what one of the first things that I want to have this conversation with you is like, since such a long time ago, you know, that large companies and small companies has been you know, investing a lot of money in their product development, you know, actually lean agile comes exactly how how to believer, not so, you know, complicated products, and some limited just what the customers in the market needs. And in this way, we have seen, like, you know, there’s a lot of frameworks, a lot of processes, that enables all these internal product teams, to think about how to validate and not assuming that the market wants. So you know, specific products. So in this way, we have been working all in, you know, probably in the last 510 years on how to deliver MDPs and all these concepts and everything. But then when we’ve got to the point, that we need to deliver these products and these value to our customers, then marketing and sales seems to be working still traditionally. So why are we doing and a lot of investing? Where are we making a lot of investments on the innovation process, if we are going to push all our products into the marketing and sales processes? So in this, it should, it should be sometimes funny, but it’s a real layer, you know, and it’s happening in most of our companies, and most of our customers are dealing with this, okay, how can I make this a leaner process or lighter process and not a complicated process? Not just in, in, in sales, but also in marketing? You know, and we are bringing the concept that I think some of us are dealing with, and it’s like, are we really ever stuck in our sales teams with a lot of leads, you know, sometimes some of our customers are telling me you know, can I do though, I don’t know exactly what’s happening in my sales team, but I just feel that there’s so very busy and there’s a couse, and and with this with this first topic, I just want to introduce the concept of why Lean is actually very focusing on not delivering and not overstocking our any kind of processes, and try to deliver the fewer possible and more valuable things to our customers. So Charles, this is primal concept, you know? Yeah. hereto as

09:21

I was going to make a comment and observation and something that I noticed when we were working together on this, my familiarity with the software process and how you apply Lean and Agile, and the a few slides ago how you showed the design thinking the MVP cycle, and then the development cycle. One thing that was very key I remember when we were working together, is that concept of validation with the customers that we’re working with that are we actually solving the right problems, are we actually putting out the right product? And you need to iterate you need to test and validate with your cost strummers just as you would in a software development process, so you know, and that’s the whole concept of MVP, and I thought it was very impactful to, to think about it that way is that, you know, the customers don’t always, you know, you know, you’re not going to deliver exactly what they want all the time. And then you jump to this slide here, which is very impactful to, a lot of times we solve the problem by throwing more people at it. And that’s not necessarily the way to go about it, either. That’s, you know, to your point about waste? And are we actually doing the right thing by just adding more people to a faulty product or to a faulty offering to the market. So that was one of those, those those those tidbits in there, because that that was really impactful when we work together and talked about that.

10:42

Yes, I remember that, when we were, we were having our first conversation on how to apply these concepts to the, to your sales process. One of the first things is that I remember I showed you how I started to realize how all these concepts of MVP or a minimum viable products and the validation and not to assuming things with in the in, in the software development on the product development process was very dope that amaze me. And I remember like, a 10 years ago, when I was working with my brother who has a software development company, he I was invited from it to him like to check his cell process. And you know, something, when I started getting this first approach on how to understand the technical requirements of their clients, it was so amazing to see them use, you know, users, their back pain, and all these innovation tools and everything and just make it easier. One of the one of the principal problems that we are facing in our sales teams is probably not just making an leaner process to get to the closing process. So the closing phase is okay, if you’re closing something, and if you are bringing a complex solution, then you need to mix makes it sustainable, sustainable, okay, why? Because one of the main problems right now is to avoid churn. And if we are stuffing our sales teams with a lot of leads, because we think that as much as we can have as lead, we’re gonna get a lot of, you know, deals, probably, that’s going to be a problem, you know, so I don’t know if all of you that are listening to us and attending to this webinar, feel familiar with this, with this pipeline. I don’t know, probably 80, or 90% of our customers, bring us and call us, you know, I don’t know what is happening, get out of the water do Charles, but you know, it’s going so slow, I’m getting a lot of a lot of stock of leads, and I just don’t get the way to organize myself on myself seems to match with our caucus, you know, and some of the things that we’re going to be talking not just today, but in the next days is how to unblock this concept of the pipelines, and try to understand how relevant is to validate in the first phases of your pipeline to unblock and really get a leaner way of understanding how to progress in these in these in this way. But, Charles, I just want to I just want to show you these because the other I don’t know, months ago, I was reading, I was looking at a Tomasky VC that it says another guy that is working very hard on agile sales process and everything. And you know, we were I was just so amazing how it seeds planted, you know, do you know that great sales organization close around 30 40% of their data when they’re successful. I mean, but but this is amazing, because we don’t understand it on the other way. Basically, working with 60 70% of the process waste is successful in most of the companies. So waste is something that we are not be really understanding and probably working into the sales process. Because probably we think that it’s more like an individual or it’s more like a market way of doing things are probably it has not to do with us to the products or anything, but we have a huge, a huge opportunity here to work. So it’s like operating like a baseball odds. You know, we’re a consistent 33% hit rate is absolutely world class. And so this this, this, this information is relevant, because from that point, I think we’re going to be understanding and if you’re listening to us, and the audience, please understand exactly how much is your hit rate now in sales. It’s around like what 15% 20% 30% But even if it’s like 30 or 40% There’s a lot of amount of waste. So in this other thing, okay, we need to understand how customers are buying right now. And and this is it, this is relevant. Because, you know, in some of our experience, customers really don’t want to deal anymore with the traditional salespeople. You know, they don’t want to have, they don’t want to waste, you know, time into demo meetings into product featured meetings, you know, they just want to do their own scouting, they just want to make the comparisons, they distribute their the writing process in different stages. But as unless you’re finding someone that really wants to understand their moments, their situations, and everything that is going on, there are going to have like some space and invest in some time and understanding that, I know that I’m talking more about the consultant in way of selling. Yeah, that’s correct. But we need to understand a lot more ways that we are, you know, pushing our sales team to do more things that you’re, you know, attending our or, or getting in touch with our customers, you know, and this is this information is relevant, because it’s related to how much waste, we are assuming that our customers should need, you know, so in terms of b2b sales challenges currently, and this is this is information that I’m not, I’m not just showing you here, because, you know, I’m assuming that is what happens, this information is directly comes from customers, and from from sales managers from VPS, that are really concerned about what’s going on. And there’s like, two different ways of understanding. The first one is with customers, you know, and one of the main concerns is the long b2b sales cycles conversion, okay, are probably they’re getting a lot of leads, but they’re not really making progress. And they can the closing and this this, this is a really huge concern for all the the sales areas. The first one is a understanding one, fix it and linear paddling for all elites. This is one of very common common problem. Yes. Just to bring in all the leads into one specific pipeline, probably not really building a pipeline with understanding how is the purchasing process of our of our market? This is one of the main problems approaching detail leads, which are the chain of the dates charged, you don’t know how many people this is still approaching with a pushy approach. This is this is this is amazing that is happening in this time. But you know, we are pushing ourselves, our sales teams to do that focusing on escalated the lead some probate conversion, because the there’s a myriad of misunderstanding on on probably doing it fast versus doing it agile. And this is got us to a lot of problems that we’re dealing with. Within right now. Charles, how do you what do you think about it like this? Is something familiar for you?

17:46

Definitely. You know, one of the things that you mentioned, from a lean sales approach versus a traditional sales approach that lean sales is more of a pool versus push. And when you say that, can you can you explain a little bit more what you mean by that? And what’s the difference between pull and push for maybe those that are familiar with the lean, that how lean emphasizes a pull method versus a push?

18:15

Yes, of course, this is this is a concept that is has been used in lean methodologies for so long, but when you apply it to the to the sales process, it’s as easy to understand that is a push process is when the market or the lead or prospect has seen requests anything from us. So you abroad them to approach them to them, but you don’t have visibility on any of their problems on any situation, because you think that you can actually convince them or to approach them to create the need. Do you know creating needs, it is so nice, because because you know markets have the opportunity to look for look and make scouting and internet on whatever they feel they need it but we are dealing with b2b customers, this is not been to see b2c you can you know, get more emotional techniques and everything but in b2b this purchasing process is so different and pushes that concept you know, you are trying to push your sales in someone that are really not really asking for anything. On the other side you have the pull concept that is how you can make a strategies with marketing and with products so you can actually make a lot of content and just go with the customers on the market that really needs and understand your during your unique value propositions and they approach to you know, do approach to them. So in this concept is just not related to the techniques but also on how we can manage our teams. I mean, you are an expert in agile as well. And you You probably use this concept when you’re when you’re approaching onboarding In all the it and and product development teams, how you can do it in a push and pull. You know, it’s like more collaborative way of doing chores. This is basically the approach.

20:12

So just to just and I think we’ve been talking about this a little bit later, but I think it kind of revolves around your unique value proposition that allows your potential customers to be pulled towards you versus you pushing something onto them.

20:27

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So when what that what, that’s one of the things that I’m like crossing the line here on the lack of validated leads, because when we’re thinking about traditional sales, we think that the role of our sales team probably is going to be getting leads. No, no, no, that’s, like, that’s so 90s. I mean, like, we need to make an a strategy to bring the leads. Because when you’re getting into this traditional process, probably you’re going to be spending 50 or 60%, of the of the time of the sales team doing something that it’s not really valuable for anyone. So in one hand, we have like the cooperation, the understanding the value on the other on the other side, charts, we have the sales management, you know, traditional way, yes, our reporting meetings, like a all of us has been, you know, in the Monday sales meetings, you know, the reporting process, how is this going this leads, review in leads or are just staging in in in three months and not moving missionary, just financial KPIs and lead time exclusively, you no resistance to transformation, and in a way of the sales leaders were trying to help our, our sales teams, but if we’re pushing them to use, do the same thing with their customers, of course, they’re not going to be focusing on understanding exactly how to unblock these things. So reporting and command control, and all these traditional things that probably we’re going to be exploring later on the Yelp process is not helping the sales team to be more transparency, you know, that one of the probably more common problems that we’re having with our sales teams, transparency, not just with us, with the with the customer, when you are dealing with some traditional salespeople, you’re always thinking okay, okay, just I don’t know, if I’m gonna give you this information, because probably is going to take advantage of that and try to sell me something, instead of Is he really understanding my problems? My organization problems, you know, and probably this has to do with with with a magnet that we’re going to be dealing with? And And related to that, Charles, you know, I’m not going to stop that much here. Because probably most of you have you comes from sales have been going through all these kinds of technologies all around inbound sales, and from like, probably five or seven years ago was some kind of of methodology. I don’t think it’s a methodology. I think it’s somewhere out in a strategic way of doing things. Bottom why Lena gal now here in this moment? Well, because the markets are moving faster, the markets are demanding a more a more accurate process. And and they need help or make a buyer’s decision. It’s not something that that we just need to push in the market. And Lena gal gave us this structure, leaning somewhere to help us to understand the value of an agile how to manage all these things. But talking about the linear pipelines, the traditional linear pipelines, I remember the one of the one of my co founders, show me the other day this Gartner chart. And of course, it’s related that okay, you’re talking about probably building a leaner pipeline Corrado, and you know, but there are some linear pipelines in the b2b process. Why because they conditions of the market and the customer change like everyday everyday. And you know, another another thing that we have been exploring, the buyers decision is taking longer Charles, because they need they’re afraid to make a decision on investments. And the churn rates are increasing as well. So this is this is this is one of the probably one specific data and metrics we need to understand. And before going forward, I know you guys are just starting to, to get in touch with this probably methodology and in some cases, that there are some first experiments What do you think about all those challenges? Do you feel familiar with what Oh, Charles and I are sharing is not your case. You think you have another another challenge that we’re not going through through this explanation? Please share your comments in the chat please. I know some a lot of people that is watching this probably now but a lot of people is going to be watching this later. Please send us an email and share with us all becomes so getting to the point Charles lean agile Design Thinking MVP is you know, all these words that I’ve been bringing, all in all these last years, and seems like so innovative and seems like we’re cool. And you know, talking in the Starbucks and talking about like all these words and being cool with this, but it’s how realistic is lean and agile in sales, you know, before going to that point. And for some of you, I know that you’re experts that the ones that are listening, but some of you are not really familiar from these concepts, we divided Lean and Agile into different ways of understanding how to approach to clients and internally lean, okay, the famous lean house, you know, it’s something that to Europe rang us from so many years ago? And how to good the understanding the value, how do you do don’t do don’t assume the body of your customers, you need to validate how they perceive the value. And depending on that is the way that you’re making all your strategy, so you don’t do it on our stack, a lot of things. And when we’re talking about Agra stacking, the process is okay, you’re sending a lot of information, you are asking for a lot of meetings to them that are valuable, you are having three or fours to probably make a request on the technical information. You know, there’s a lot of things that that customers do not have enough time, we live in a complicated moment when nobody has time. So we need to understand what is the waste, not just for us, but for our customers. On the other hand, when you’re starting learning how to validate that value, then you need to manage that value. And that is where they agile manifesto help us to understand how to manage the discovered value by collaborative revenue teams. And I’m talking about revenue teams, because this is not about sales, some of the problems or some of the challenges we’re having here is that probably we’re not understanding what it’s marketing doing, or product doing, or delivery, or the delivery areas doing. So. So So do we can delivery deliver this value as quick as possible, you know, and for for the people that are screaming, yeah, Charles going

27:12

one on one of my one point on that, that. The, to me anyways, lean Agile is a way of working, no matter what type of work that you’re doing. It’s, it’s a way of working that to your point you pointed out eliminates waste, and accelerates value. So obviously, you know, our sales activities there, our sales work that we do is highly valuable to us. So we know what better methods to apply to our sales activities, then apply lean agile way. And one thing you know, also, I just want to make a point about the Lean agile way, again, why it resonated with me, when we were talking is that adaptability to fast changing markets and things change very frequently. Lean Agile is a way that manages that variability, that uncertainty, that cyclical nature of how things just keep coming at you in a different way. You know what better methods what better way of working in a lean, agile way to manage that type of work environment. So it’s obviously a great fit to apply lean agile methods to sales. So

28:21

yeah, of course, of course, I’m probably in the third webinar, we’re going to talk about the work in progress and how to, to build our week on some of the techniques that we can do it with our account, planning, account, planning and everything, a little bit more techy in this way. But yeah, you’re right, is like how we can work together. Usually, the sales teams are not very collaborative, you know, your metric is you need to close the deals, and I’m gonna give you a commission and bonus plan, and you’re going soul, and you don’t get your way. And that’s it. And that’s it. So having that systemic and a complex understanding on how words are going right now with our customers and within our organizations, it just requires a lot of mind changing, you know, a mindset change. So I’m sure this is live because probably you’re probably with the ones that are familiar to the to the Lena galley in it or product development, probably going to be familiar with that. And in other webinars, some of the people has asked me Okay, so what is the difference because either I don’t really have clear how you actually have, you know, brought up these lean agile concepts from software development to sales, you know, and this, this can be kind of a guide, so you can understand because, you know, inaccurate forecasts, this is something that we have all done, you know, wishful thinking about where what are we when we want to attain, you know, release dates and sales forecasts, not meeting you know, everything consistently misses, misses, commitments and not just with our sales team, but also with our, with our customers, you know, the way that we are understanding how to approach to them is not just to the labor is to co create things, you know, failure to provide what the customer wants, do, you know, we assume a lot of things. So we’re going to show later, the some of the parameters that we’re using to reduce assumptions that comes basically from similar similar techniques that are using in the software development process and the product validation process. But of course, of course, another way is to understand is okay, how much are we creating waste, we have been talking about that opaque processes isn’t really clear, and we don’t have visibility and typical level of CEO understanding about how the process works. I don’t want to get so much into the leadership role right now. But probably, if you’re thinking, okay, my customers or my organization is really, really is ready to approach to this lean, agile sales process right now, it has to do with the mindset of the organization, you know, are they really ready to do that, you know, sea levels, you know, VPS, and everything need to understand exactly how we can actually make conditions to our customers. So the new role of sales teams with customers, you know, you can read here, you know, like, a lot of things that we are sharing with our customers is that systemic problems, Elysium approach, everything related with you, Charles have already mentioned, you know, we need to leverage our consultative selling, and probably not accelerate that process. Because probably, if we are not having a condor standing, and and we don’t, and we don’t do you know, drive any any kind of understanding on the on the specific integration tools, we’re going to have problems. One of the benefits of this in the digital world after COVID-19 is that we can use, you know, you know, tools like Bureau like Bureau to calculate understanding and probably have a big period, if it’s valid, if it’s if it’s going to be validated the provenance of our customers, or if we need to continue following up someone that is not ready to make a commitment, you know, and we did our company’s, you know, the new role is a product validation, understanding process, you know, getting closer to marketing and to the product validation, and to the product, guys, sales and marketing strategies, cocreation, defeating sealed sale, sale or mindset within revenue areas, agile frameworks, avoiding cerium, to control you know, there’s a lot of things that you actually can do with the new understandings of the roles, the roles as you, as you understand, Charles, is a mainly focus on collaboration, you know, and this, you know, I do know that the Kubler Ross curve, you know, for how, how painful is the transformation process? Charles, I know, you have been leaving this in your own, not just with your organization, but also with your customers, you know, the Denia. And I remember, one customer asked me, okay, you know, I just feel a little bit of resistance of myself seems to approach into this new perspective on the customers. And my question was, okay, well, like, how are you motivating them to make this happens? And the first half of the rooms are like, well, they have a very huge commissions and bonus, you know, is easy as a solid driving, of course, there are gonna be resistance, if you get at someone that is very good closing. And he has been doing the right things for the last 10 years, why does he needs to change? You know, this is something that is very common in the sales service. And the resistant has to do with, okay, I’m doing my own process, lead benefits myself, but they’re not thinking really fits, benefits, you know, the areas, the customers and everything, they just want, you know, very focused on the commission and bonus. So when you’re starting this process, we need to be very careful on the conditions that the rest of the organization are holding and supporting our sales areas to help them to co create and not pushing away. So it’s very hard to get to that point. But in my experience, leaders have a crucial role in this in this transformation. And transition from traditional to in thinking in sales. I remember when I read this from from from this book link selling from Robert gate prior, I just I just I just liked so much the way that Robert is approaching to this, because it just gets us in a way to understand exactly the difference from the traditional to the Lean belief, you know, is the more is better each sounds like No, no less is better. Yeah. But if you are bringing a lot of information to your customers, you’re not you know, helping them you know, information. I still get presentation so you know, PowerPoints or PDF or 40 slides Charles that’s that’s that’s a lot of waste of time because I’m not gonna read it, I’m not even see videos send me, you know, people don’t have time right now. And this is the third way to sell your stock tank. Now, it doesn’t really take time just need time to understand qualifying if you are making the right qualifying approach the mindset of when when the interaction, it’s going to be more ongoing easy for them in unblocking the timing of their people that are wasting, you know, relationship or consulting collaborative and the driver. We have already talked about this. So too many sales brokers hate talking about techniques, but none of them teach you clear methodology and how to implement it to solve in the real world problems. And neither neither of you read a book of linaria, do you need to explore this? Do you need to adapt this to your situations? Do you need you need to understand you need to walk the path? And I don’t know, if you want to share some of your experience into the transformation process, Charles, but I don’t think is that, that that differ in the cells? Because you know, we’re people dealing with transformation process. So in this way, you know, we need to understand that you need to approach this methodology by Sprint’s even in your, in your own transformation process. How is your process a transformation process right now, this is something that we’re going to be talking with this framework, and I want to show you something that you have already been going through channels. I remember the last year when we were in the first conversation exploring your pipeline.

36:31

You of course, were you know, explaining to me how all the stages of your process were. And when I started talking about like, okay, but where’s your, your, you know, your bottleneck? And probably your response? Do you know, like, some something very similar to most of our customers? You know, it’s like, it just gets to the point that I just don’t think that I’m moving faster. But I have a lot of, of customers in the proposal station legalization, but then I just don’t know what happens. Because, you know, I just lack of visibility, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know, their buying decisions. And probably we started working with you, Charles on Okay, why don’t we start slowing down and probably made approach a slower approach, and a leaner approach in the first phases, you know, to understand that the assets is the closing, you know,

37:23

and yeah, I was gonna, so yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. You know, one thing I want to comment on that is that the Lean mindset versus the traditional mindset slide that you just showed previously, when you know what there’s, there’s a value to be had or gotten at every step. That’s kind of one, I think, major difference from the lien perspective that we’re getting value out of each step. And it can’t be any more clear than that last piece, that last bullet that you had at the bottom that the buyer receives value at every step in the process. So that actually, you know, that’s actually very impactful, because when you when you apply a lean sales approach, from the approach of our sales team, we should be getting value from each step as well, because it’s a win win, right? That’s the that’s one of the other lean mindset ideas, it’s win win. And so we should be measuring and showing that we are getting better or learning more out of each step as well. And I think that’s one of the things that you really emphasize, throughout the process is that we measure we’re, it’s a continuous learning approach to our sales process is very iterative, in terms of how we’re learning to be more effective, every, you know, each each cycle, each sprint or each step as we go through the pipeline phase. And I think that’s one of the key things that just doesn’t end, you know, traditionally sales, like you said, proposal phase done. But in a lean approach, we’re constantly measuring and trying to get better at every, at every step. So that’s one to emphasize those those points.

38:56

Yeah, and I’m so glad that you are expressing this because, you know, the traditional concept of sales, is that we hire someone are we are having ourselves a sales team, just to understand the process by itself. And it just ends, you know, and when it ends, we assume that it ends when the customer signs, you know, the proposal and everything. And probably that’s it. And then the sales team just concentrate again, in the process stages of the, of the process with the new leads. And that’s a mistake. You know what, it’s a mistake, because the sales correctly doesn’t end when when they when the customer signed the contract. It ends when they solve their problems. And this, this kind of mindset is going to help us to understand that we need to be more collaborative with other areas of our organizations, because we need to leverage our sales team to understand that it’s just not a sales process. It’s a business process. And in terms to make this a good approach, we have also understood that in the product development process of understanding and CO creating and validation process with the market, it has been building a lot of of, of tools that has helped it those product development teams. And I remember this conversation that I have with with ash Maria, like three years ago, when when I was certifying this, you know, continuous innovation methodology. And he was showing us the lean the Lean Canvas model. And I was amazed on how like, you can reduce your assumptions. And probably, this is something new that actually, I don’t know, you have shown it already to use charts. But we have gotten to the point that we have created a lean sales canvas, so we can give the tool to our salespeople to reduce assumptions in each step, and it doesn’t really ends. And every time that you’re approaching to your customer, you need to validate if the same situation is already is has changed it, or it has new moments, new problems, new challenges, because that’s the way to avoid churn is not just about solving problems, is to be sustainable, and to keep your customers very close to your organization and understanding the value. So there’s, there’s a lot of things that we actually can learn from them in the past, you know, seven years ago, eight years ago, and agile manifesto that can help us to understand how to deliver this value. But you know, everything that you’re mentioning is, is really cool, we’re gonna be we’re gonna go deeper in this linear pipeline in the next webinar. But I just want to show you that there are some frameworks, also for a lack for agile, bringing some of the things that probably are doing in general, there’s a lot of frameworks, there’s a lot of things that we have been learning from other from other areas, but especially, you know, scaling, a guile and other other kinds of things that you are their expert as well, Charles, how can we make the award things as easy as possible, of course, we need make, do an assessment and understand where is the maturity level, not just from our sales teams, but also from our organizations? Do you know trying to understand exactly where the bottlenecks are on our pipelines to co create with our, our, our sales teams, make them understand that ACLs not a process they need to follow, but to improve the process. Okay. And and then, of course, working into all the Agile ceremonies and everything, selection criteria, policies and procedures, you know, of course training kickoff of the callin says, you know, of course, leaders need to understand exactly how to make these ceremonies lighter. And why because we need to empower our team to be transparent. Transparency, one of the key things, not just which we understand that we need to avoid doing, you know, this, this focusing on on just some financial KPIs. When you were talking before about, like how we can measure our improvement is probably because we are not understanding that there’s another KPIs, we need to take into account, you know, management KPIs, not just financial KPIs, we are really understanding the problems of our customers in the present stages, we are really validating their problems are the amount of problems of our customers are very similar to our product or solving how many validation processes are we’re going, this affects directly to our our lead time. So in terms of this, of course, our first approach to it is, of course, an element to enable the team and then to start working in making progress in our in our pipelines, you know, but this is just the first approach, I’m going to be explaining this in the third webinar exactly on how to make it so you can have more tools, but how, like shift integrating a lean environment on daily basis, you know, we consider our experience, there’s like three specific roles, you know, executives, camps, like the people that are RBDR that are approaching making diverse approaches, in other methodologies, they call it hunters and farmers and you know, all these kinds of things. But the real deal is that the key account managers are in charge of the of the process and the closer contact to their, to our customers. So in Lean, we need to focus on enable them to understand deep discovery process to avoid follow up accounts, which are not ready. One of the one of the common things that happens is that we waste a lot of time following up accounts that are not ready because we believe that we can convince all of our customers and that’s not true. Not all the companies can be our customers. And as long as we understand these, we’re going to be allied or a sales process, you know, and into the Agile point of view. manage jobs to be done with a collaborative prioritization meeting. And one of the one of the things that managers aren’t really eager to get too eager to, to have with their, with their sales team is okay, how can I make my team understand and to let them have liberty to create their own criteria to make advances and progress, because, you know, when we have experienced ourselves, when we are seeing that one of our junior KMC, and are not making progress, we want to help them and we are, you know, here to go to that account and to solve that problem, because we don’t trust them the criteria, if we don’t manage to understand how to set criterias from our sales teams, we’re going to keep doing the same things. Okay. Sales Managers also need to understand how to make data driven strategies to support sales teams and efficiency. And, of course, prioritizing collaborative management KPIs, instead of closing reporting needs, you know, and in in the sales VPS. And, you know, sea levels and everything as create conditions, I don’t want to get so deep in this is just create conditions, help your sales teams to make this process as painful as possible. Mindset is the key to success. Charles, do you know that you have been working a lot of time with your, in your own company, not not, not just for yourself process work in your consultancy process to your customers? How important is for you, Charles, the mindset, just give this I just want to share some of your experience in this way. I

46:33

mean, the mindset is everything, obviously, because it’s based on your value system and principles that you work by. And, you know, we’re shifting to, you know, in a traditional sense, we’re shifting to thinking, you showed a slide previously about the traditional way of thinking about work towards a lean, agile way of thinking about work. And that that just doesn’t happen overnight. Right, as you said, you have to start experiencing working in a lean environment, in an agile environment. And then you can actually see firsthand how the difference in work. And the difference in mindset that you bring to work comes to light. So as you play it out here, respect for people and customers, you know, one, you know, that’s obviously big flow, that’s something that might not be familiar with people, but the flow of work that’s very important, being able to innovate, continuously improve. So these found foundational principles, and then leadership involvement, obviously, in the process, going to see and getting their hands dirty, and being involved with the team in a very collaborative way. That’s another principle around lean, but this way of working is different than the traditional way of working. What’s funny, though, is that sometimes, you know, as you know, and you’ve probably seen it with some clients that you’ve worked with that there’s traditional sales processes that probably are they call them traditional, anyway, that are probably somewhat successful. But the thing is, you probably live deep, take a little level deeper look, and they’re probably implementing some of these Lean principles and ways of working, unknowingly not calling it lean, but it’s just because it’s best practices that have been evolved over time. So so the mindset, you know, if you have a an organization that’s continuously learning, they’re probably going to evolve or gravitate towards this way of working overtime anyway. But But yeah, it’s really, you know, the mindset is everything. You know, as the as the mind goes, the body follows and the body in this case is the organization.

48:32

Yeah, that’s That’s right. I know that you’re mentioned he probably forgot to say this. But the you know, the title of the of this webinar was like how to increase by 10, your sales. And this concept of increases by 10 is more about like the benefits that revenue that you’re getting, because probably you don’t need more sales, you need to be more efficient. And the only way that we have found that that in a word that it’s have a lot of competitors, and a word that customers don’t have time to, to really understand and to to have meetings with with a lot of salespeople, we need to understand that it’s not about amounts, it’s about efficiency, and to professionalize our sales teams is probably one of the main route ways that we are having our customers or from our of our partners in all around the world, how can I make more efficient? I don’t want the continuing and you’re saying something very relevant. Probably some of the customers are already doing some lean process processes. But but you know, as we are approaching to more business agility, way of thinking in the whole organization, I think the benefits are going to be more real. And that’s one of the things that we need to consider, too. If we’re thinking about implementing Lean agile, that it’s all about mindset. It’s all about principles. You don’t know it’s not about process because we are just showing you an example of a process. But it’s not about that. It’s about mindset. It’s about like how you’re transforming the way of solving your problems. So poor mindset, data driven strategies, understanding people resistant as an opportunity to accelerate how they deliver value. And of course, how ready is your organization to support sales, transformation, you know, benefits benefits that I myself, I think yourself chars have gone through, I don’t want to talk about my other customers. But after going through this process, of course, sales process effectiveness increasing between 60 to 80%, of conversions, not just conversions. Also, to understand where not to be stopped following up leads that are not ready, most of the energy and waste of time of our salespeople is due to jump to following up something that it’s not, you know, reliable or, or has enough conditions to go forward. So it’s not always about closing, it’s about how efficient effective it is, you have less waste on sales activities that they don’t believe or value from anyone that’s something that I mentioned and leverage sell to do a customer centricity is strategy isn’t just enough enough to have a consultative selling way, is like the word that’s related to techniques. And of course, there could be a, you know, huge opportunity to make a digital consultative selling, but it’s also how we align Okay, to how we are aligned to our organizations, and to our OTA ers. Strategies, because that’s one of the other ways that I’m having Charles. Okay, you know, it seems like my Okay, OKRs are perfect, you know, but then when you get to the practice, and you don’t consider yourself themes probably isn’t matching you drastically reduced churn of plants, you know, that’s, for me, it’s probably one of the most relevant and managing sales team with transparency, self motivator, and accurate metrics. So in this way, Charles, this is just an introduction, we’re going to be continue talking about these. But I know some of the people that are watching this, this, this, this webinar, probably have a lot of questions, and probably have a lot of comments. And I want to just to give an NLP q&a opportunity. So you can actually ask a lot of things that you’re probably you are having or comments that you’re having your mind in this way. Charles, do you have any comments about this? And how can we reinforce all the energy to try and explore these new methodologies?

52:42

Yeah, for sure you have where, you know, while we’re waiting for any comments to come on over our questions, or at what urato? What do you think, is the easiest way to I mean, kind of what’s the starting point that an organization would go through? If they want to, you know, experiment with this approach? Like if you know, what does that starting point look like to to, you know, to start thinking about a lean sales approach for their group, kind of what what does that engagement look like? How would they get started? And you know, what, what do you need to go through to get started with that? Well, depends on

53:21

the role of your organization, I will like to explain through the three different roles. And of course, if the if your organization that are more familiar with the leaner yell process in your IT or product development is going to be easier, because one of the successful experiences that we are having is that organizations that are more familiar with this chances are when it’s in the C level, you know, C level of understand and the business owner, understand, lean and get an idea of concepts. You need to be supported by the leaders in this way, you know, they need to understand if you’re a leader, my first suggestion is please read something about Lean and Agile principles, understand exactly how they work. And please apply first to your management not not to your teams. That’s my first suggestion. One of the things that are probably I’ve been learning implementing this is when when someone is really convinced about how to implement it, they want to bring all these concepts to their teams instead of learning them and practicing as a leader. So if you want to start doing the things, do you as a leader need to do this by yourself. Okay, we call it don’t like that, like just just just do that cannot sell what you don’t eat. Okay. And probably this is something that has happened to you. That would be the first recommendation. Charles, how do you what do you think about?

54:54

So yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that because every and lean As a way of working always at the foundation is leadership. So if leadership does not get it and support the method, then yeah, it’s you’re gonna, you’re probably not going to succeed and implementing a lean approach throughout your organization. So I’m glad you, you call that out right off the bat that, you know, having leadership and management, First, understand Lean principles and get it and then understand how to apply would be definitely the first step. Another question to kind of on this note, what has been your experience in terms of applying a lean sales approach to an organization? And, you know, if I’m, if I’m a sales leader, I might say, you know, this might be too disruptive, how would it impact our current sales pipelines? And how we’re currently working? What, you know, what, what might you say about that, that they want? They think this is a good idea, but they’re worried about the disruption of how their current sales teams are working? And how would they, you know, come, you know, add this approach or adopt this approach, in the midst of current the current sales processes that are going on? Yeah, sure.

56:07

Sure. Well, it also depends on the challenges that you’re having. I’m going to give a couple of weeks of, of example of this, we have these customers, probably 80% of our customers, they are, they’re having a complicated times to close deals. So they they don’t think about Lena gel as a solution. Okay, we need to name the things as a traditional way of solving, okay, you don’t approach to being a gel as a solution for something that probably you are not really understanding the the root cause of the problem. So when companies are having a complicated times to make it a linear pipeline, or to really going faster with their closing, probably they approach to us and one of the first things that we do is to understand exactly how much waste are they are doing into their pipeline, as easy as that we don’t complicate things. Okay. And from that point, we understand bottlenecks. And we just made some adjustments, very few adjustments to improve the quality. And we’ll explore remember, experiments, as you know, in continuous innovation, and all these validation process of the products, and agile as well as the sprints is the main things when we need to understand how to start with minimal thing when minimum things. So after that, of course, what I suggest is just to make a easy onboarding, to, to understand it, this is going to be a benefit on a management side, or into a technique side on to a value that we want to bring from our customers. I wouldn’t suggest to push these methodologies to to companies that are not really supported by leaders that really understand that the market is demanding things, you know, another another key success factor, Charles, when a leader wants to implement this, and they feel resistance, is my suggestion is interview the five most important customers that you have right now and openly asked him How can I? How can I improve the services or the products I’m bringing? How can I improve my customer success area, and you’re gonna get a lot of information and when you get data from your customer is not the leader that is pushing the changing? Is the market that is pushing the transformation? I don’t know that response to your question. Of course we can be I can be telling you a lot of experiences. But in other way, that is companies that are growing really fast. Most of them call us because you know, my management myself manage Denise and cows in that way we can help them in, you know, in more into an agile and agile process. But I don’t know if you ever respond to your question. I

59:03

mean, it was great. Yeah, that was excellent. And we’re right at our hour of completing the webinars. So Harada you go to the next slide here, if there’s any questions or comments that you want further information on lean sales, please contact myself or Geraldo and we can definitely give you some additional information on that. There’s training courses that go along with this approach, as Geraldo said that giving leaders an overview on these methods before you start the process is probably the best approach. So yeah, definitely, we would love to field any questions or comments that you have on this. We will also to send out a recording of this this session so that those that weren’t able to attend you could you know, give this to your colleagues or your your managers or leaders so that they can hear it as well and we will send out information on our next series. So this is the first of a three part series. And we’re going to continue on through the process so you get the full information on kind of how to roll out this approach in your organization. So with that said, thank you, Geraldo, so much for your vast knowledge on this topic. And we definitely appreciate you so much to for joining us here and for those in the LinkedIn community. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. And we will see you next time.

1:00:23

Bye bye.