INSIDE Inside Sales

May the Tech Force be With You

June 5, 2022
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INSIDE Inside Sales

Tune in to INSIDE Inside Sales with Darryl Praill for actionable strategies and tactics from top sales experts to increase your sales development success. Darryl has unscripted conversations with the leading sales experts, from veteran sales pros to the newest rising stars. If you’re looking for lively debate, spirited conversations, and proven sales know-how, you’ve come to the right podcast.

Modern sales and marketing tech stacks teem with data. But, handled by the wrong tools, can huge volumes of data make a successful outcome just as challenging as low volumes would?  

In this episode Darryl is joined by Steven Eror, Director of Sales @ ChatFunnels. Find out how what shop class foundations are relevant in , why your tech stack must do more than just report data, what shelfware is, and the right way to bring a software ask to leadership.

🔗 LINKS

Find Steven on LinkedIn here. Find the beautiful ChatFunnels website here. Find Steven's YouTube channel Salt Make City here.

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn. Watch that Sales Sequence LinkedIn Live here.

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INSIDE Inside Sales is now a member of the Sales IQ Network. We partner sales professionals to help them become the best they can be. Find out  more by checking out our Create Pipeline Course.

Darryl Praill
Host @ INSIDE Inside Sales Podcast + CMO @ AgoraPulse
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Steven Eror
Sales Director @ ChatFunnels
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[00:00:00] Darryl Praill: My name is Darryl Praill. I'm your host and you, my friend, well, you and I we're gonna go on a journey every single week, talking to the industry's most accomplished sales legends, as they share with us, their tips, their tricks, their techniques, and their tactics to becomes sales rockstars. You simply need to do what they're doing and you will achieve similar nirvana. If you like to laugh, you like to be entertained, if you'd like to go off on tangents and tell stories, you're going to love what you're going to hear next. Sit back, relax, it's going to get real.

It's another week here on the Inside Inside Sales Show. How you doing folks? How's my voice sounds a little rough. Doesn't it? It sounds like I am. 14 going through puberty again. It's crazy.

Funny stories share on a shared story. So my wife and I are thinking about selling our house. The kids have moved out. We're empty nesters. We're officially empty nesters. You know, we've gone through that session where the kids leave and then come back, leave, and then come back, leave, and then come back. We did it four times in total and not for kids, but for times where kids would leave and come back. But. And we're looking at selling.

And I I'm at a certain age now where before I would do everything around my house, I would fix everything. But I was at different point in my life when I would do that. And now I work stupid hours and I have a global team. And I'm, it seems I, no matter what time it is in my time, I have staff in another time zone.

So honestly, I'm at a point where now I'm like, screw it. If I can just pay somebody a reasonable price to come in and do some of my stuff, it will. So we had some repairs that needed to take place on the house, nothing major, just some trim in, in, in woodworking, around, you know, little fit and finished to make rid of all the scratches, all the, all the war injuries of when you have young kids that were cute but then do not make the house sellable to the new buyer.

It's all about packaging. You know that kids here in sales, you gotta make it look good. You gotta make it sound, feel emotional, sober doing that. And so the fellow came in wonderful fellow. My wife's a designers and interior designer, so it's all her contacts.

And he was probably, I don't know, 28, 29 years old. Did a great job. And we're shooting the breeze about how you got into this stuff. And we're talking about, you know, how he got exposed to it in, in school and in shop class. And that eventually became his career. And I was explaining to him how I took shop class, but for different reasons, the fact that I was really proud, I was in, you know, in certain angles of my video recordings, not in them one today, but you will see a lamp often behind me.

And that's a lamp I made when I was in grade nine, 14 years old. So that my gosh, 40 years ago, that lamp is for my kids. You're making me feel old. There was a lamp behind me that, that 40 years old that I handmade, but the reason I did shock was not to have a 40 year old man. It was, it was rather, and tell me if you can relate to this so that I had familiarity with the tools for exam.

And I did it. I took machine shop. I took woodwork. I took mechanic. You know how to, you know, I don't recall it, small engine repair, whatever you want to call it. And and while I'm actually quite reasonably respectable, I woodworking to this day, I have zero desire to fix my own car, but the beauty is going back to why I took the course and educated myself.

It took the small engine repair course. So I understand. How an engine worked. I understand how the parts went together. I understood the labor involved. I understand just the whole process start to finish. So now when I go in as a consumer and say, I want you to fix my car. I think this is going on. I can opine on what I think the issue is.

I can sound somewhat informed, albeit a consumer level. And when they come back and I should qualify that sets the tone a little bit. They're like, oh, not a total moron. Okay. So, you know, there's a relationship, a trust factor being established, shall we say expectations on both sides and when they come back and explain to me the problem I understand, and I can say, okay, I get that.

Can you show me the parts? What about this? Is there a knock on effect? Do I need to do other things? And basically I'm informed. I'm informed. And because I'm informed about small engine repair, I can make smart decisions, economical decisions about my car maintenance on my car investments. And when do I fix it?

Or when do I replace it? In other words, a little bit of knowledge goes a long way, but it can also be dangerous. All right. So that's the cab yet? That's the setup for today's show. Now what we're gonna talk about today is in the same spirit. All right. So I'm not going to teach you about objection handling.

I'm not, I'm not going to do it not gonna happen. I'm not gonna teach you about mindset. I'm not going to teach about prospecting. I want to point out that more talk about any of that.

We're not even talking about the one-up we're not talking sales tips and tricks. No Bruna do the small engine. You are aware you are informed of what's going on. So you're a better. Sales professional. In other words, there may not be anything actionable here today, but what you're going to learn is going to make you smarter and more capable and will actually grow in its impact as you rise through the ranks.

So for now, you'll understand it, but as soon enough, you're going to own or talk about it. So what is that? Well, this is kind of like the meat and potatoes of what drives every sales organization. And guess what that is. If you said CRM, you're closing. It's the tech stack, everything you do today, whether it's CRM or conversational intelligence or chat, or what else do we have sales enablement or whatever.

All the tech stack intent signals, et cetera. That's what drives the sales machine that makes you successful or not. So. You need to know boys and girls, what the hell is going on and why it matters to you. What is a right tech stack with a bad tech stack and what are some of the decisions made behind the tech stack?

And when is it time to cut bait on certain elements of the tech stack? So who was the expert? It's

[00:06:50] Sponsor: Are you in sales, but you're not using a sales engagement tool? Then you're probably losing out on revenue because you are not engaging with prospects at the right time, with the right cadence, and with enough persistency. You need VanillaSoft. Go to vanillasoft.com.

[00:07:06] Darryl Praill: I am not talking to somebody in rev ops because Hey, you're in sales, I'm in sales. So what I needed was a sales rockstar that understood the tech stack. And that is where my good friend Steve Eror comes in. Steve is the Director of Sales at ChatFunnels, tack funnels. All right. I love them. I just check out the website by the way, ChatFunnels.com.

Great graphics, great messaging. The marketer in me. Totally coveting what they're having to say. So check that out. And as the director of sales, he's here to talk about the tech stack and that many people are using it incorrectly. Steven. Looking ever so epic in this incredible studio you are in,

[00:07:49] Steven Eror: I'm building it

[00:07:51] Darryl Praill: Killer lighting, welcome to the show.

[00:07:53] Steven Eror: Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm glad to see a there's somebody else that, that took a shop class as well and had some fun with it. So

[00:08:00] Darryl Praill: You took some, I know what I did total true story. So some of you may not, you may want a tuna. Now the following story is going to be a little bit great. So in machines, Class machine shop.

Right? So boys and girls, you don't want machine shop is that's what you're working with metal. We had ladies go figure and we had to make a hammer. All right. So the first thing you gotta do is you gotta make the handle for the hammer. And so you need to be on a metal eighth, and the way it works, kids is you put the piece of metal rod into the lave, and then you have this little T Chuck, you stick into the head of the lady and you turn the teacher, Chuck that tightened its clamp on that metal rod, which is what I was doing.

Unfortunately. My leg, this was different era, different time, different safety standards. The start button while my hand was still on the teacher's square. And these things, kids travel, like I dunno with three, five, 10,000 revolutions per minute, it's like crazy. And it took my hand with it. And in my thing, Got whacked against the actual frame of the lake.

And it was literally dangling layer by the muscles and that was it. And the shock teacher to driving his own personal car to the hospital to get it repaired. I have a vicious scar to this day and you know what I remember out of that. You know what? I remember the whole experience beyond me being dumbfounded with blood dripping everywhere teachers, that my mother was annoyed at me that I interrupted her day for her to go to the hospital and check in on me.

That's parental love for you right there.

[00:09:26] Steven Eror: Th there you go. I was going to say, did your shop teacher have all his fingers?

[00:09:30] Darryl Praill: He was, he was he was a little discombobulated. He didn't know what to do with me. He was humming and hawing. He was stuttering. And finally it was like, okay, we probably should get me to the hospital.

So yeah, but so yeah, I, I, I, you know, there's your high school memories? So my goal was in you know, castle recall for the next, I dunno month or two, but and it didn't get me any special, any special privileges at all, not even a shot glass. So I was, I was annoying. Talk to me about the tech stack.

You, you, you have it up, you have an opinion on this brother.

[00:09:59] Steven Eror: I do. I've worked at I've worked at large companies, some of the biggest in the country. I've worked at small startups. I've worked at things in between, and I've seen some behavior from those companies that is good and bad and just, it needs to be addressed and, and especially.

You know, I'm in software sales. And so I'm, I'm, I'm hearing about people's tech stack all the time. And, and I've noticed some trends. And so just some things that need to be addressed with regards to, to tech stacks, I'm also a tinkerer. I've got two workshops. One is, is, is kind of my woodworking blacksmithing welding shop.

Right. And then I've got my 3d printer, laser cutter shop at home. Yeah, I do. I do. I do. And I actually I've got a YouTube channel and in my, my, my, the partner, I do the YouTube videos with the said that I can't buy any more hammers.

[00:10:47] Darryl Praill: Okay. But in all fairness, you have to give us a YouTube channel so we can go look it up.

[00:10:51] Steven Eror: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's we haven't done anything for a little while. COVID kind of put some breaks in that, but it's Salt Make City. It's like salt lake city, but with make it

[00:11:00] Darryl Praill: Salt Make City I love that, you know, true story. Another segue here, kids spare with us. My daughter went to college and is an official certified blacksmith, but she'd left the blacksmithing career because she could make more money in high-tech.

So, but she was a blacksmith. There's not a lot of money. Yes. And she's got the forge and we've got this Dunning anvil that's I don't know, a hundred years old and is a big mother, but yeah. So there we go. We're bonding here and I have, I have a woodworking shop, so that's my. But you you're doing the maker thing and the blacksmithing thing. So you get, so you have your own little version of a tech stack.

[00:11:39] Steven Eror: Yeah. Yeah. And it it's, you know, as I was looking at all my hammers and justifying why I need all of these hammers, right. It occurred to me that let's just like you pointed out that is a tech stack in, you know, in a sense, right. That's my blacksmith.

Tech stack either ball-peen hammer, you need a cross bean hammer. You need two pound hammer, you need a four pound hammer, right? You need all these different tools to get the job done. And when you try to use the tools the wrong way, or for the wrong purpose, you know, it, it doesn't turn out. Right. Usually it turns out in some metal blob that doesn't resemble anything like I was trying to make.

So what I'm trying to do is help people avoid making some sort of metal. And, and make, you know, the lamp that's going to last for 40 years. So that's the goal here.

[00:12:28] Darryl Praill: All right. So let's get into it. Where do we, where do you want to start on the conversation?

[00:12:31] Steven Eror: So, so the first thing I see out there is there's every tool that I'm talking to and see, everybody's excited about the analytics and the data.

Yeah, it does what we think you want it to do it, it helps make phone calls. Right or, or whatever, it sends out an email, but the analytics, the reporting that you're going to get, that's what you really want to focus on. And, you know, I love the reporting. It's important, especially as a sales leader, you need to be looking at reporting all the time, but the focus of the tool should be more on just reporting data, unless it's something like a Domo or a Tableau, some sort of.

Business analytics tool. It needs to do more than just spit data back at people. One, one big one that I see a lot is intent data. Right? You put on your website and it's going to go ahead and it's going to tell you, who's looking around for you and who's, who's poking around for your type of solution and stop.

That's it for me, that's like a thermostat. And your house. That is, it is, it is showing the temperature and saying, Hey, you just see, you know, it's getting really cold in here. You probably should turn up the heat. You you're like, I don't want you to turn. I don't want you to tell me to turn up the heat, turn up the heat.

Right, right. Take an action. Make it motivational. So it's got to do more than reporting, right? Because that, that, that, I mean, in the AI world, they call that no lift. Great at your you're telling me all this information. Now let's do something about it. It needs to be,

[00:14:07] Darryl Praill: and I want to stop there for a second because actually that's one of the areas.

I see a lot of people, not just sales folks, but sales folks are part of this group fall down where they get the numbers, they get the data, they get the reports and they don't know what to do with it. A hundred percent. Good. Is this bad? Am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? Maybe I need more data.

I need to see a trend and maybe I'm trending in the right direction or not. So I'll wait three months, six months a year. I don't know. What's the right channel right now. That was bad. Where rather, you know, use the tech as a tool, make it actionable. Right? So in other words, you can use those signals to say based on best practices or based on the sample data set we have from you, or based on the state of goals you want to achieve.

This is our recommendations. One of the pieces of tech I I've seen, I've seen a number of pieces of tech to do this. I'll use an example and I, I should say no examples I may use. And Steve, please use ChatFunnels or anybody else you want to use as, as examples. Cause right now we're just having a conversation.

We all work for. Gong did a good job on this where the clearly their whole, where they began was conversational intelligence, but they began to take the insights, the reporting of those recordings. And then they actioned it to the sales leadership to say, Hey, nobody has in the recording. It said, here are our next steps, but nobody's called them in three weeks.

You really should do something. So that was an actionable or create it to dues for the rep that was actionable. So it knew the reports, but it made next steps, which made the tool far more sticky and compelling. And what happened was instead of the ops people picking the tool, then all of a sudden they had more stakeholders advocating for the tool, the sales leaders having to think about. Yeah.

[00:15:47] Steven Eror: Good sales rep would love the reminder themselves. Right. It's not just about the management, but it's the, it's the guys in the. One of the things I mentioned, the intent data, and I think that's one of the things that you know, I love about what we're doing is, you know, if, if you know, part of what we do is with intent data we're, we're looking at it and does a company that's poking out and around on your website, does it meet your ICP?

But we're not just handing the report to the rep because I found two things happen, especially with intent. Data is one, the rep doesn't know how to act. Because there they've never been trained on that or two, if they try to act on it, they act on it too late. So part of what we do is we kick off with that intent data.

We kick off an email right off the bat from the rep. You know, someone from your ideal is hitting your website. Great. We're going to send an email from your reps inbox from them automatically to the buying committee and it makes it totally actionable. And so your tech stack has to be actionable.

[00:16:44] Darryl Praill: So that's huge for, for you as a sales rep, you can be having conversations with your sales ops people or your revenue ops people, or even your, your VP or director of sales who maybe is influencing the choices in the tech stack around that.

It's not enough just to have tech, the tech has got to help you do your job. And it's funny, you mentioned the ICP element because I'll be honest. When I was scrolling through the chat phenols website in preparation for the show. One of things that jumped off the page with me was prioritized traffic by ideal customer profile.

And why, why that was interesting to me was because I do get those supports saying, well, you know, this person's in this industry or this company size as they come in and that's great. And that's interesting. And we share it along with the customer, with our sales rep. Here you go. This person was on the site.

All right. But we don't necessarily prioritize. And the fact that you did that for me as a person who is, who owns revenue in the pursuit of. All of a sudden, I'm like, holy smokes. You're helping my reps be more responsive because I know the faster they respond to that lead, that's fitting their ICP. The more likely they are to engage and have a successful outcome, as opposed to that lead, getting buried amongst all the other visitors who may not be in the ICP.

That's a, that's a value add. So that makes the rep more successful. That makes the company more successful. That's a good use case. I like that. So that's what we should do, but we don't write a lot of people just buy. Yeah. Okay. So. Do you have tech today? That's not giving you anything actionable gives you reports, maybe dashboard, but you're not actioning.

It. That's an opportunity for your life to get better. Talk to your sales leadership, doc, your ops people.

[00:18:18] Steven Eror: I think the next thing I want to look at going back to the hammer example that we're talking about is hammers are really awesome tools. I had a hammer made for me for blacksmithing. It's a three-pound hammer.

I engraved the handle. It's beautiful. It, it helps me move metal around on the end. Beautifully. I love it. However, I caught my son one time hitting a nail with it. Oh no. And I wanted to wring his neck. Yes. Cause it's not a hammer for that. In addition, if someone was trying to replace a light bulb and they use that three pound hammer, they're probably doing.

Right. Well, not probably, they're absolutely doing it wrong. Right?

[00:18:58] Darryl Praill: They're wrong.

[00:18:59] Steven Eror: I'd like to see the light bulb that you need a hammer to install.

[00:19:02] Darryl Praill: Well, your point here is, I mean, I think at the classic cliche, you know, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That's kind of the, the cliche that comes to mind.

But your point, I think you're saying here is easy to have the right tool for the task at hand. Exactly.

Exactly. So, can you give me an example of that one? I find I'm a sales rep. It would be a good example of maybe where I'm using the wrong tool or I should be using a different tool.

[00:19:26] Steven Eror: Yeah. Well, I mean, let's, let's use the, the ever-present Excel.

Okay. Right. Excel is great at spreadsheets. It's great. Great. At pivot tables, it's great at creating graphs. Right. You know, it's not great at keeping track of contacts. You know, just, just a real basic example. People use Excel spreadsheets to, to, to put in their contacts and phone numbers. And when they're going to reach out to you next and you know, what does that better, a CRM that's made for that very tool?

You know, just as a very basic example you know, other tools that they've got you know, distributing leads. You know you know, I worked at a company where they're convinced the best way to distribute leads to the sales team was through again, an Excel spreadsheet. Well, there are tools that either a do that or B it's part of what they do, right?

Find out what the tool does and use it for that purpose, but shoehorning it in to something it's not intended to do. It never works well. And, and I I've seen that, you know as, as, as I've sold software over the years, people buying our solutions not, not here. I haven't seen it here at ChatFunnels yet. But at other places where they, they buy our solution, then they try to make it a little bit different for what they need to do. And I rarely see that in. A tool has got a purpose and use it for that purpose. And, and, and, and, well,

[00:20:45] Darryl Praill: It's funny you use that example, so I'll give you a different example.

Same premise. The other day I was on a LinkedIn live. I was doing with my cup of dough. And if you guys missed the LinkedIn live, just go to my profile on my activity or my posts. It was a great LinkedIn live. So one hour long, but we built a sequence lives on myself, Michael and one of my sales reps, and we just sat there and we said, okay, here's our ICP.

Here's the persona. We're going to do email, phone, social, whatever. Let's just know let's go build the scripts. That's built everything. So we did it. But when we're getting ready to, you know, doing this and the early first few minutes of M an a Michael's turned to this whole like, well, how many dials a day can you do?

And you know, how many contacts and he's trying to, what he's trying to do. He's trying to figure out what was the reps capacity to do outreach based on interacting with the CRM. Cause then you got to make tasks and everything follow up tasks. And I was gonna stop and I'm like, Michael, Michael. I said, let me, let me, let me correct an assumption here.

I said, this won't be done in this CRM. We'll be using a sales engagement platform that will automatically be feeding this next contact of the rep. And it will know, oh, this contact is next up. This is touch number four. This is what you should be doing this. Now this is the next one for the next contact, such number two, this is what you should be doing.

And I said, so you don't worry about that. I said that. Will control the flow and the sequencing and the timing. It's all like the rep just has to do their thing and he's like, oh, okay, good example of using the right tool for the job by your spreadsheet example, it's actually a much more profound. So take away for the reps, listen to this.

If you're using tools today that are maybe a hammer, because that's all you got, you may want to look out of those other tools out there who can help you be more efficient, more effective.

I'm laughing folks. You're listening to the audio version. Steve's holding up a pair of needle, nose pliers, instead of a hammer suggesting that there's other tools out there that you could be using that will help you be more successful doing it, what you should be doing. So there you go. All right. Next takeaway on this conversation.

[00:22:44] Steven Eror: Yeah. So you, your tool, your tech stack should be it should be motivational in nature and I don't mean a rah. Rah, get everybody excited. Pump everybody. It should set off motion from the sales rep. They should act on it. And it should set them in the right direction. So you know, I, I look at you know, a lot of tools out there are, are used as the stick let's bludge in the sales rep over the head about how much they're there, they suck.

And, and that does nothing for any. Right. I, I think you do need to have those red alerts that say, Hey, listen, this rep's in trouble. You need to coach them, but really what these tools need to do is be putting the reps, putting you guys as reps on the right path to close deals. And if it's, if it's not doing that, why are we using it?

What are you doing with it? Right. Is it just to avoid getting hit over the head with the, with the club and at QBR time or at the pipeline meetings. Right. I, I see too many tools out there that are literally designed just to keep somebody off your back and, and. And, and, and, and that's how the cells are seasoned.

So that's how they use them.

[00:23:54] Darryl Praill: It's so funny you say that because it's true, right? I mean, I think the biggest cause of people leaving the profession is there's just. How do I describe this? The rundown there? They're so beaten down and they're like, this is just not for me. I had a couple episodes ago, folks.

We had the episode with David Delaney. If you recall, it was a shorter podcast. It was rapid fire. David was late, we were on a timeline, but that was the big conversation was about mindset. Right? And mindset. If you're finding, you're struggling with your mindset, maybe you're, you're having a hard time staying motivated as an example, or doing the activity.

It could be because the tools are doing exotic. Steve's talking about, which is they're physically beating you as opposed to motivating you. So can you give us an example of when you talk about that, what comes to mind would be a good example of a motivational element in my tech stack?

[00:24:42] Steven Eror: Yeah. Oh, well, what I know and love very well.

Well, when I used to work at inside sales, for example it would, it was prescribing and that's what outreach and a lot of these tools, these enablement tools do they prescribed to the rep, Hey, this is the person you want to call right next. Right now, get on the phone and call this. Right. It was giving a motivation to the sales rep.

It was getting them to act at ChatFunnels. Hey, listen, this target account that you're trying to go after they're on your site right now, they may not be filling out a form. They might not be raising their hand, but someone from that company is poking around on your site. Right now. You need to know about it, get engaged.

So that's a couple of ways I've seen tools out there that are. You want to get up into the right? They have this quadrant on this one too. I'm not going to name them, but you want to get up into the right. And if you were up into the right and if you're down to the left it was, yeah. And that was the discussion that your manager had with you.

And that's the whole point of the tool. So what did you not ever want? That particular tool versus, Hey, I want to get into SalesLoft or I want to get into gong and how am I working better? I want to get into ChatFunnels. Who's hitting my website. Who's hitting the website that I can engage with right now of my target accounts.

And so get them working in the right direction rather than flogging them. No flooding.

[00:25:56] Darryl Praill: That kind of comes back to your first point where tools should be actionable. Right. So there are my words. Hey, your ICP is on your website right now. And oh, by the way, their intense scores through the roof, that, that a whole bunch of things you might want to do something, just throwing it out there.

Here's a notification. Do your thing. Right? All of a sudden it's actionable and it's, it's motivating me cause now, I mean, now it's the hunt now it's the pursuit. Yeah. This is my person, you know, they've they I'm all over this one as opposed to them saying, well, yeah, We had 42 web visitors in the last hour. And we don't have to do

[00:26:29] Steven Eror: Yeah. At the end of the week. Here's the report of, but like even beyond that, what if it takes it from, Hey, here are these, your ICP was on the website and we've gone out and we've pulled in the names and titles and email addresses of your buying committee at the ICP company.

And we've sent out the email on your behalf. Oh. And we've put into a sales cadence within a sales loft in, in, in. So now you're calling out automatically. That is motivational

[00:26:57] Darryl Praill: That's motivation. Okay. All right. Last one. I love this last one. This is, he's going to use a term here, folks. I haven't heard it in a while, but if you've been around the block a time or two, you know, this term, and it won't make any sense to you in this cloud based world.

We live in now. All right. But I think you'll still get it. So go for it.

[00:27:19] Steven Eror: It comes from from the days when I was. And I would go buy a computer game and I had to go to the computer store and I bought a box and I took the floppy disks out and I put it into my computer. Right. If you don't follow those three things the three things we talked about before especially in sales, the software will get forgotten and it become shelf ware, which means it's all it's doing is sitting on a shelf somewhere right now.

It doesn't, you know, that that doesn't make much sense, but that's the idea is the software just won't get used if it's not motivational, if it's not doing the job that was intended to do, and it's not, if it's just reporting data, it's going to get forgotten.

[00:28:03] Darryl Praill: Here's the thing I'll get forgotten, but the expense is still there on the bottom line, the organization, which means they have no more money to invest in you in other areas because they invest in a piece of software, a piece of tech that's sitting on a shelf.

So what's the takeaway here for your raps. If you've got something that you suspect may has the capacity to become shelf where you want to communicate with your ops people or your sales leadership before the investment is. So that the money's not poorly spent and you can then use those funds for other wiser tech investments.

[00:28:38] Steven Eror: Can I add one thing to that real quick?

[00:28:40] Darryl Praill: Yeah, please do that.

[00:28:40] Steven Eror: One thing I want to add to that is also listen as a sales rep. You know, I'm buying tech for my team all the time. I, I, the best folks I have that are finding the right tech for us to use are the sales rep. Right. They know what they're doing, they know their motion, they know, and they see what's out there and sometimes they're looking, they have a problem they're trying to solve for.

So if you're a sales rep and you've got a problem don't just go with a problem to your, to your leadership and say, Hey, listen, this is the problem. By the way, this is what's going to fix it. Let's do, let's take a look at it. So go with the solution as well.

[00:29:16] Darryl Praill: So with that all said, let me, let me be the.

The may be the C-level officer for a moment talking to all my sales the crew here. The, one of the biggest line items I have in my budget beyond the people costs, it has become. The tech cost because everything's a subscription these days and it's out of control. And it was funny because at the last company I was just at, we just spent the last six months saying it's not a control.

We got to cut this back. Holy smokes. This is, this is outrageous. I changed, you know, employers, as you all know them at the next company, what's the first thing we're doing. It's out of control. We got to cut it back. So this is my way of saying to you as a sales professional, Into the management's budget for these investments is finite.

If you find in what I see reps doing is they see a lot of shiny pieces of tech and think that's going to make my life better. Okay. And it's amazing. It's tuck a today, tech be tomorrow in tech to see the day after, and they don't understand why you're not making this investment cause it's gonna make everything better.

End of the day. You need understand that the pot of money is fine. So you can't just go recommend every single piece of tech to your boss, but you do need to look at exactly what Steve's talked about here around. Is the data, the reporting come in to that piece of tech. Is it going to be actionable and help you do your job?

Is it going to solve a specific problem that you need address? In other words, it's not a hammer. It's just, it's a specialty tool because you have a specific problem. Is it going to motivate you or your colleagues to sell more? And is there a risk of it? On the shelf and doesn't get adopted. And if so, how can you mitigate that before it happens?

Here's what I want you reps to understand. You have a voice in this process. The ops team has never sold nine times out of 10, so they need your expertise. They'll answer to you, but you need to express your requirements. I would go as far and I do this now, when I looked for my next job, I make an assessment of their tech stack at criteria, before I accept the job.

So I know if I can be successful. Right. And then I need to know what their investment plan is. I need to know if they have an ops team or ops people dedicated to supporting me in my endeavors, because my time is better spent selling than it is nursing a CRM system to get every piece of data entry in there.

All right. Or trying to pull out actionable reports instead of the system, just telling me because it's got great AI or, or what have you. So this is why this matters. This is shop class. This is small engine repair. You don't need to be the tech expert. But you need to be savvy because you have a vested interest because just like me, if I didn't have that knowledge, my car repair bills could be a lot higher cause they're going to scam me.

But because I have the knowledge I'm informed and I'm educated, it's the same thing for you, reps. It directly affects your success and your take home pay and your. So you need to invest in a little bit of knowledge and by the way, a few of you will like it so much. You'll change career paths and go off in that direction.

And that's pretty cool too. So Steve quick and dirty ChatFunnels, what is it? Why do I care? You've already teases a little bit about it. Since we're talking tech, it only makes sense that we wrap up with a little bit of plug for ChatFunnels, cause you've given us your time.

[00:32:47] Steven Eror: Yes. So we plug onto your website and we're going to do a reverse IP on everybody that's that's lurking around whether or not they engage with the chat bot or not. That's part of what we do as well. And like I said, we're looking at we analyze your ICP and say, Hey, listen, your ICP customers are on your site right now. And so we alert the rep. We'll send out an email on behalf of.

We will put them into a campaign I'm half of the rep, and then we'll also go out and get the contact information for your buying committee and give it to the rep so they can act on it. And then, you know, they start coming around at the site that bot is going to speak, gathering more information. We, you know, we on our site, we use it for registration.

You engage with our chat bot and it's just more information it's going right back into the CRM. So it just, it it's constantly refining that data and allowing your sales reps to engage with those, those people. Might not fill out a form, you know, they might not ask for the demo, but we're going to see who's on there and who you want to talk to.

[00:33:43] Darryl Praill: So, so you have it, nothing at all, like what you thought I'm going to walk in today? Wasn't it? Well, don't worry. Our next episode, we get right back at it and talk about the hardcore skills you need to rock the Dave a little bit more soft, a little bit, a little more, making you a wiser, better, more seasoned wildly sales, professional Wiley.

How many times have you used that word? Come on. You're going to use it once now. Wiley, you look it up. It's a great word. With that, that is my good friend, Steve Eror he's got a kick ass, YouTube channels, Salt Make City. If I got that right, look at that, check it out. He hasn't posted in a bit, but he'll be back and he's a creator and a craftsman.

And he's also the director of sales at ChatFunnels. You can find them on LinkedIn, Steven Eror the one thing about his last name, there's an error. How do you spell his last name is E R O R. All right. So it's not quite. Maybe it's intentional. I don't know. But there you go. I don't know. I don't know how I, I says that's all I got for jokes on your last name.

Hope you don't mind. I'm sure you...

[00:34:38] Steven Eror: it could be worse. My cousin's a doctor, so,

Oh my God. Talk to Dr Eror. Oh, look folks. I can't top that. We're done. We're out of here. I'll see you next week right here on the Inside Inside Sales show, take care of folks to you soon.

This episode was digitally transcribed.

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