And I'll tell you in this environment, that status quo
decision is one of the biggest mistakes an organization can
make. As I've been kind of working
with teams, the biggest challenge is that if there's no
compelling reason aligned to the biggest risk, then the default,
the kind of action is no action. I'd say over the last 25 years,
this is the most complex environment any executive has
had to manage. And so to try to apply
yesterday's solution to today's problems, it's one of their
biggest challenges. Now they end up at the no
decision because they don't know what to do.
Welcome to the Environmental Transformation Podcast, where we
bring you interviews with industry leaders, climate
champions, sustainability practitioners, EHS and hazmat
professionals making an impact in their businesses today.
Each leader solving complex challenges and delivering
solutions within their areas of expertise.
I'm your host, Sean Grady, and thanks for joining us today.
Before we jump in, make sure to follow us on your devices and
visit my website at www.seankgrady.com and sign up
for our newsletter and e-mail announcements.
Now let's get started. Welcome to the Environmental
Transformation Podcast. I'm your host Sean Grady and
today's guest is Rohil Khan. Rohil is the CEO and President
of Avant AI. He's scaling people intensive
technology, enabling B to B services and their platforms
through growth and discipline and discipline M&A efforts over
20 years, leading multibillion dollar HR, healthcare, banking
and business process outsourcing services with the direct
accountability for commercial strategy, sales execution and
PNL management. He's built and scaled global
shared services and AI automation capabilities to drive
margin expansion, delivering 20 plus percent of compound annual
growth rate and 2 1/2% plus times the EBITDA growth through
operating discipline, technology enablement and acquisitions.
He's got a proven track record in the PE backed and sponsored
and has sponsored owned environments, leading
integration of 10 plus acquisitions and building high
effective, low ego execution oriented leadership teams.
Yeah, it's a little mouthful just trying to run through this
here. But there's one last point I
want to hit though, because this is how we connected.
You're also an executive consultant for Corporate Visions
and that's a leading provider in science based revenue growth
services for sales, marketing and customer success teams and
providing great training and and education for sales leaders
across the country. So, Rohil, thank you for joining
the show. No, it's my pleasure.
Well, you know, we had a great opportunity.
I had the great opportunity of sitting into a sales class with
you a couple about a month ago now.
I guess it is. And I was fascinated by the
training. It's probably the best training
I personally have been through. And I just want to let our
audience know, hey, if you're looking for great training, he's
the guy. But here's here's some stuff
that I wanted to get from out of Rohil in a conversation because
I think everybody in this sales environment needs to hear these
things and these tactics. So I wanted to start out if we
could, Rohil, many people, it's kind of like they get their
ideal opportunity, you know that in that elevator pitch.
So if you just give me a minute here to kind of frame this
question, I think it was it'll may help us dive in.
You're a sales professional, you're struggling to land that
meeting with the CEO or sales executive, you know, or I mean
AC suite executive. And let's imagine that you're
managing a large account and you're on your way to the office
to meet your sale, your procurement officer.
And just by happenstance, you meet the CEO on the elevator.
Now, most of us probably go, Oh my gosh, this is the CEO I've
been trying to nail. So this is that a quit.
This the quintessential elevator pitch.
We all kind of like dream about this opportunity, I think at
times in our life. But how important is it for a
salesperson? Always be prepared for this type
of an encounter. You know, what should they be
able to communicate to the CEO in that brief 2 or 3 minutes
that they have with them and what should they walk away with
from that encounter? And I think, you know, I want to
hit this because we went through this exercise and trading it was
pretty powerful. No, I think it's a it's a great
situation and it's a situation that's totally unpredictable.
You don't know when it's going to happen and in today's
environment, it's the frequency of that happening is a lot less
than historically it's been. So when the opportunities
present themselves, you've got to take advantage.
So a couple of things that you got to be thinking about.
First and foremost, you've got always got to understand what's
happening at your client, not at the operating, what I would call
the dual level, but also what's happening at the executive
level, meaning if it's a public organization, why are they in
the news, What's going on? What are their initiatives?
What are the most important things that are happening that
would be relevant to the CEO and the CFO?
Because at the end of the day, your pitch has to resonate with
the key decision makers of the organization.
And that's really two people, the CEO and the CFO.
So if I happen to be the CEO that you ran into, the things
that I'd be looking for is your interaction has to be memorable.
And why is that? Because I got too many things to
focus on. So being memorable means align
it to the biggest risk that I have, meaning you've got to
highlight something that's knowledgeable and insightful and
from your viewpoint, but it relates to the biggest risk that
I'm trying to manage within the business.
That's number one. Number two, it's got to be a
fact based measurable interaction, meaning it can't be
a series of acronyms and motherhood and apple pie
statements that don't mean anything and don't differentiate
you. If you were going to be
measurable, memorable, you have to be differentiated because I
talk to hundreds of people a day if I'm the CEO and those
conversations in one ear out the other, unless there's a reason
for me to pay attention, risk is the one reason I'm going to pay
attention because the risk is related to the organizational
performance that I'm accountable for.
So you've got to tie to a risk the most important one.
You've got to talk about something that's provocative and
insightful, that's usually with the complexities of the
environment we're dealing with something like an external
factor or some event that's that's going to impact, either
accelerate the risk or impact performance.
And then the last thing that you want to be able to do is you've
got to be able to engage me. It's no point just talking at
me. You want to talk with me, which
means there needs to be a conversation.
The only way I'm going to start to talk is if it's something
insightful and interesting that causes me to lean in.
So that's that's a tall order in a minute and 1/2 or two minutes.
But your preparation is going to be the key that allows you to
actually hit that and hit that out of the park.
And then ultimately the follow on is whenever you have a kind
of a transitory meeting like this, you're angling for a
follow up meeting, you're angling for something else.
So at the end, you what you want to close with is that's
fantastic. I'd love to grab 15 minutes.
I'll work with your EA or however you want to do it, but
you want to make sure that there is a compelling reason for me to
give you the most precious thing I have, which is additional
time. Right now that that's really
good. I mean, you know, it's being
provocative and memorable. You know, is, is, is probably a
challenge for some people, you know, and I think, you know,
coming up with some interesting fact that is going to shock him
a little bit or go, oh, wow. And I think being prepared
always on the ready, I guess is, you know, if you know your
account and you know that business really well, you should
be able to adequately do or, you know, deliver a quick elevator
pitch with any of the the various C-Suite people you're
looking for. But I do think that there is
some challenges and, and I think as salespeople, we kind of get
into this mindset of we're understanding what we do, but we
don't really try to think about, well, what do they do?
What's their responsibilities? And so it's, and I want to talk
about it's all about them mindset, right?
So talk about the mindset of ACEO, you know, and what their
jobs descriptions are, the CEO, the CFO and the CEO.
Because a lot of times when you encounter that person, I don't
think we're thinking about, well, what are their
responsibilities and how do I need to retrain or reframe my
messaging to meet their? Level yeah, no, it's a it's a,
it's a great point and I think you're absolutely right.
And you know, I've been AC level exec for 25 years and I even
trained my own teams, but I've also been approached by many
other organizational sales leaders.
And it's shocking how frequently they talk about themselves or
they talk about their own organization.
And I'll tell you, it's one of the biggest pitfalls of
interacting with AC level executive is, with all due
respect to the great things you as a sales leader might
represent for your organization, I don't care about those things.
What I care about is what your great capabilities can do to
accelerate my business performance and mitigate my
execution risk. Those are the only reasons I
actually pay attention because that's the mandate I have to
represent for the organization. If I'm in ACEO or CFO or COO
role, my goal is to operate in a way that drives business
performance. So what I'm looking for are
individuals that can either help accelerate that performance or
mitigate the risk associated with that performance.
And so the challenge is a lot of times people focus, so they're
so excited about here, here's the great things we're doing,
here's the great products we have.
All of that unfortunately doesn't resonate with competent
Cxos. What it does is it gets you
delegated down into the organization at the dual level.
So when you're talking to that executive exactly as you said,
you have to understand what drives their performance, what
are the initiatives or the the strategic pillars that they are
focused on, what's driving their day-to-day interaction and
ultimately what drives and gets their mindshare.
If you're not connecting to that, then you're not
connecting, period, because that's go ahead.
Yes what's a good way for a person to find out that
information like what makes them tick, what's driving their
decision is and what's important to them, You know, you know,
knowing the difference between the type that the roles of these
C-Suite executives with CEO they're I think you know,
they're mostly focused on strategy.
How do we grow and maintain our business, the CF OS, how much
money are we making and how can we continue to operate at a high
level, you know, a profit? And then the, the CEO is like,
how can we just keep the wheels running on this thing, right?
And and, you know, successfully deliver, You know, I think that
mindset is important, but how do we find that information out if
we're trying to figure this out? No, that's a great question.
There's a lot of ways to do it. Think let's say your client is a
publicly listed organization. The 1st place I would go is I
would go to their earnings calls.
I would look and track their earning transcripts because if
you listen to the earnings calls, it's good information,
but you miss too much information.
I've always coached my team. They look get a copy of the
transcript of the earnings call and they're sites like Motley
Fool and Seeking Alpha that easily get you access or the
investor relations sites of the actual client.
They'll give you the podcast, they'll give you the transcript,
they'll give you the presentation.
Those are three critical things to take a look at because
organizations that are public, on every earnings call, the CEO
talks about strategy, he talks or she talks about the key
initiatives that they're focused on.
They'll literally tell you what that is.
Following that conversation, it's ACFO.
They talk about financial results, they talk about
critical KP is they're achieving, and then they talk
about the risks. So if you're paying attention
just to those three kind of areas of focus, the podcast, the
presentation material and the transcript of the call, you've
got a big leapfrog jump into actually understanding what they
care about, what their priorities are and what risks
they're trying to manage. Because literally they'll tell
you what they are. And in addition, in addition to
that, what is very powerful with the transcript of the call is
there is a, there's AQ and a section for all of the analysts
that are actually asking questions once the call results
are shared. And that is fantastic
information for you as a seller to understand what are the key
areas that even the analysts are starting to find either are
working or not working. And now how did those problems
or opportunities relate to your ability to accelerate those
opportunities and mitigate those problems which ultimately are
risk related? Yeah, no, that's, that's good.
So there's good information to be obtained through these these
sources of, you know, of information that's out there
through the earnings calls and whatnot.
And I think that's a great place to find them.
And so it does take a little preparation to figure that out.
Do the research, be prepared. Hello ET Nation, I want to thank
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When we get into trying to figure out how do we actually
make these companies consider, you know, the services we want
to offer them if we're a salesperson, right?
So let's talk a little bit about this concept of the no decision
obstacle because I think we all find this in our daily kind of
sales and jobs and environment as we try to engage customers.
You know what the research indicates that 40% of prospects
ultimately stick with the status quo instead of making a buying
decision. And then from your perspective,
why is no decision often a bigger competitor than the other
vendors in the market? It's, it's a great question.
I would tell you that one of the real reasons that the no
decision shows up so frequently is the pitch that's made by the
sales executive doesn't resonate, isn't compelling
enough, doesn't highlight areas of risk or opportunity
materially enough to make a difference around performance.
So if I'm an executive and I look at what's actually
happening and somebody pitches something to me, but there's no
compelling urgency, there's no compelling risk, then my choice
is either I can keep doing what I'm doing and I don't have to do
anything differently, or I'm going to take a chance.
But there's no real quantification of what the, the,
the real value is or the real outcomes are that that I'm going
to take advantage of or I'm going to need.
And I'll tell you in this environment that status quo
decision is one of the biggest mistakes an organization can
make. As I've been kind of working
with teams, the biggest challenge is that if there's no
compelling reason aligned to the biggest risk, then the default,
the kind of action is no action. But as I said, this is an
environment over the, I'd say over the last 25 years, this is
the most complex environment any executive had to manage in.
So to try to apply yesterday's solution to today's problems is
one of their biggest challenges. Now they end up at the no
decision because they don't know what to do.
So if I don't know what to do, I'll keep doing what I'm doing.
That's the opportunity for the sales leader.
Yeah, right. I mean, I think in this day and
age with technology and how fast things are moving in this space,
you know, AI is, is affecting how businesses respond or
actually just work and function as a company.
It's got to be difficult to make some bigger decisions,
especially around making systematic changes.
I mean, you know that I think the big challenge a lot of
companies will face is the quote UN quote management of change.
You know, the fear of management of change is what I really want
to say, which is probably why the obstacle of no decision is
is use theirs because as they got the fear of management of
change and they don't want to do it.
Yeah, they don't. And I'll tell you, you know, and
that's where the sales opportunity becomes so
materially differentiated potentially if you as an
organization or as a sales leader have done the research,
if you understand what the biggest challenges they are, if
you've done research on their key competitors, because that's
a great course of insight. All of a sudden now you're
pulling together a viewpoint that's anchored in data that
relates to work that you as an organization has already done
for organizations like your target client.
Now you're starting to set the pathway for them to take action.
As we said, the no decision is because I don't know what action
to go. Maybe I want to make a decision,
I just don't know what to do. And if no one helps guide me
through that conversation, then I'm stuck not really knowing
because you can't ask a client, especially the executive, to
take a chance on something they've never seen or done.
They're not going to take that chance because that's going to
affect their career and potentially their job.
What they want is the ability to hitch their wagon, as it were,
to an organization that's been there, done it, navigated it,
solved it, and that's where the trust comes.
So if I'm going to take a leap, I wanna leap where a place where
I can get a soft landing, and that soft landing is the
organization that's competent, that's done it before, that
understands the problems and the risks and knows how to navigate
them. That's great insight there.
That's really good. A lot of times sales reps, we
get caught in the commodity trap.
Let's talk through this a little bit because I think a lot of
people won't realize they get suckered into putting being put
into that position without realizing they're in there.
You know, many sales teams focus on the identity, on identifying
their needs and, and the prospects already know what you
know, what they have as far as these needs.
But that leads to this commoditization conversation.
And how can a seller break the cycle of finding?
I'm sorry, the cycle to find an unconsidered needs versus you
know what they already know they have through this process of
kind of educating the buyer. What did you think of this?
Because this is how our capabilities can come into play
and help. Yeah, no, it's a great question.
I I would say one of the best things to understand when trying
to figure out where is the gap or the flaw that your client
isn't taking advantage of. It's taking a look at what are
the, you know, there there in today's environment.
When you think about AI, you think about global supply chain
challenges, tariffs and trade, geopolitics in terms of, you
know, conflicts that are happening, global warming,
demographic changes. And I could rattle off another
10 to 12 factors that are impacting organizations at the
global level. You want to be able to
understand what's the most important factor that's now
impacting the target executive you're focused on what's
impacting the role or the initiative that they're actually
accountable for. All of a sudden that becomes the
way to get their attention. Now, once you get their
attention, you've got to continue to tell the story.
And that means here's the the way I can de risk that issue in
terms of that initiative that you're focused on here.
Based on that de risking, here's how I can actually help you
achieve what your CFO or CEO are talking about in terms of top
line growth, global expansion. What are those major initiatives
are at the top of the house that drive the strategy of the
organization? If you don't do that and it's
not interesting, it's not relevant, what happens is you
get delegated down to the doer level of the organization.
Once you're at the doer level of the organization, like
procurement as an example, they'll say, look, that's real
great. That's right.
How about the best price? Yeah, you.
Give me the best price because everything else is above my pay
grade. I'm I'm incentive to squeeze you
to get whatever price I can. So my preach is going to be,
hey, we like your stuff. But five other people said they
can do this. What are you going to do to cut
your price? And all of a sudden you're in
this commodity dust spiral because you're being
commoditized and kind of pushed to to match pricing because
nobody understands the innate value that the old capabilities
can drive for the organization, which in almost all instances
far exceeds whatever savings they're going to try to squeeze
out of you. And I think that's the the
challenge is, is changing the the conversation around price to
value, right like, and So what are some specific like research
tactics Rep can take that, you know, to find the problem that
the CXO just hasn't they don't even know they have.
So first and foremost, it's understanding the nature of your
organization as a sales leader and what are all of the
problems? What are all the challenges you
guys are solving? Overall, a client is usually
focused on a singular or a binary set of issues because
they're limited to their industry, they're limited to to
a certain certain vertical. They've got limited kind of
purview in terms of the things that they're focused on.
So they don't get to, they know what they know.
The problem is they don't know what they don't know.
Now as a sales leader, most organizations aren't single
threaded in, in a single geography or a single category
or single vertical. So all of a sudden you have
experiences across different clients and different issues
with different problem sets with different industry verticals,
etcetera. And you get to see what I would
call a, a kind of a plethora of issues that you as an
organization are solving. So all of a sudden now that's
number one, which you have insight and variations of
problems that you're solving as an organization that a singular
client will never see or will never operate on.
So there's some insight that's there.
The second thing I would suggest is the ability to do some
research and leveraging your AI tool of choice, a perplexity, a
Gemini, a gunk, whatever it is that you use to start to assess
a detailed set of prompts that start to triangulate to those
sets of problems. So what I'm talking about would
be things like, you know, an example of a prompt that I've
used in the past with my teams is I assume a third party
persona of a strategic partner, like a McKinsey partner as an
example. So in the in the prompt, it says
you will act like a senior McKinsey partner in automotive
and you're you've been hired by Ford to figure out how the
organization that the sales leader belongs to can help them
accelerate their core strategies and mitigate their market risks.
And then a series of kind of drill downs that relate to the
research you've done that says, look, I listened to the earnings
call, here were the three strategies here are their
biggest risks that they talk about.
So that research now informs the nature of the prompt that you're
going to use as you start to do that further research.
And what you're doing is you're assessing public data,
competitive data, looking at market performance.
It allows you to synthesize information at a level and at a
depth. It takes way too long and most
people don't have the capability to do well.
AI has helped change the game for that.
As long as you focus in on being thoughtful and detailed with
respect to your prompts, it can generate a lot of good insight.
And that insight now combines with what you know about the
client and that target persona, and it becomes a way for you to
start to really dig into those insights overall.
Yeah, it arms you with the right information to make that
compelling conversation real, right?
I mean, that's great. Well, let's let's dive into a
little bit of this concept of, you know, the preparation and
the strategy of things. And I think one of the one of
the questions I would have for you is, you know, from an
executive lens, Rohail, having served as an executive at Xerox
and Bank of America, you've seen the high stakes pitches from
buyers. For the buyer side, what's the
single biggest preparation mistake you see sales teams make
when they finally get that meeting with the C-Suite?
The biggest mistake they make is they talk about themselves.
They talk about their product, they talk about their
capability, and they're totally ignoring the reasons why they're
in the room. The reason you're in the room is
to engage the executive. What does every C level
executive care about? They care about organizational
performance, which is accelerating the performance
goals they have and mitigating performance risk.
Why do they care about that? Because if the organization
performs, they get paid. It's as simple as that.
So if you show up in the room and it takes you 25 minutes to
start talking about the ways you can help me de risk performance,
trust me, you've lost me at minute 5 because I'm not paying
attention. I, I can tell you over the 25
years that I've been AC level exec, I see pitch after pitch
after pitch and I'm shocked at how infrequently the
organizational leader who's making the pitch focuses on the
client first. They focus on themselves.
They're great product, their footprint, their number of
people, their, their IP, etcetera, etcetera.
Honestly, I don't care about your stuff.
I care what your stuff can do for me in terms of accelerating
performance and mitigating performance risk.
So it sounds like, yeah, that that's, that's focus, not
focusing on them and, and basically not even addressing,
you know, the, the, the big issues that they are really
concerned about. I mean, waiting 25 minutes into
a presentation to finally get to what's important to them.
That seems to be a long time like you mentioned.
And, and you know, there's this, there's some stats on this where
they'll pay attention, people will pay attention like in the
first couple minutes of a presentation and they'll
remember about 100% of that. And they miss about the vast
majority of conversation until the very end, right?
And then they'll remember that part.
But that's, that's a little bit of this, the concept of that,
the hammock storytelling, you know, process you described in,
in your presentations during the sales training.
But, and it does resonate with you because you want to have a
really good, compelling conversation and, and why the
company should consider you and you understand their business,
the whole explanation of how you're going to do that.
That's kind of when they go, oh, I don't know, this sounds great.
And then at the end, you better hit them with, here's the most
important part. And, and I think you need to, we
need to be able to phrase and prepare our presentations that
way. It is.
I'll tell you the you said something is really important,
right? The inability to align to the
priorities that an organization has is one of the biggest
sources of failure. It's not hard to find that
information. Literally a minute of Googling
and a minute of research will give you that information.
So there's no excuse for situations that where I'm
sitting across the table from a sales leader and they say, hey,
we'd love to help you out. What are your biggest problems?
What are your strategies? What are your priorities?
Don't go in there with that question because it's like you
already know that information. I mean, that's a train wreck set
of questions because what that tells me as a sales leader, as
as an executive is you're totally unprepared and you want
me to do your job. Yeah, OK, that's good.
All right, well, here's here's another one here, here's another
great. I think the you phrasing as a
weapon. This one I really when I, you
know, start thinking about it, it is something that I think
really transforms a conversation.
So you advocate for you phrasing to transfer ownership to the
buyer. How does changing we can help
you to what you'll be able to do fundamentally change the power
dynamic at the at the C-Suite pitch well it.
Oh, important one, it's a, it's a slight nuance, but it's an
important distinction because what it does is it starts to
paint the picture of how the organizational performance can
benefit, be benefited or accelerated or the risk
mitigated in an environment where I now I'm starting to
visualize what is it going to look like?
How's it going to feel for my best customers or my
constituents or whoever the stakeholders are that I serve as
an industry? Because now I'm starting to
visualize what that looks like and what that performance is
going to be and the contrast between what it's going to be
versus what it is. That's the thing that starts to
gain energy and starts to gain alignment.
It's, Oh my God, look at the challenges we're dealing with
now. But it can be like this, which
is exactly what we're trying to achieve or exactly what we use
as a leadership team we're trying to drive overall.
So that that slight change in framing allows me to start the
channel and visualize what it is that's going to happen versus
the same old me we pitch that everybody else is going to have
when they follow in, you know, 3 sales leaders will follow.
You are going to say, effectively, we're trying to say
a lot of the same thing. Yeah, by by using this
application or this product, you will be able to da, da, da, da,
you can take advantage of, you know, the efficiency da, da, da,
right. I mean, that's kind of the put
them in the driver's seat concept.
I really like that and changing those words just I think they do
psychologically make a big difference.
They do because what it does is it puts them back in the
position of being able to drive the execution focus in a way
that today they won't be able to.
Right, right, right. OK.
Here's another pivot I think that salespeople may not get or
recognize on time and it's too late.
The EBITDA pivot. What Most reps talk about
efficiency and productivity, but when should a sale, a seller
stop talking about technical features and pivot to the
conversation towards EBITDA? You know cash flow, You know the
market expansion. Well, I'll tell you, they should
always be focused on that because when you start talking
feature, I call it speeds and feeds.
When you talk speeds and feeds, you're focusing down into the
organization. You're focusing at the door
level because the executives aren't the ones using the
dashboards or the Mac or the products or the services.
So when you talk speeds and feeds, you automatically are
under leveling at the, at the level of the CXO.
So they're going to push you down and you get stuck.
So when talking to a CXO, never lead with the how because that's
speeds and feeds. What you want to focus on are
the biggest risk. They have the biggest
initiatives that they're focused on.
That's the what and the why of the conversation.
If you, if you engage me in the what and the why, then you get
directed down to my team that I'm going to send you to.
But all of a sudden I as the executive, I have contacts and I
understand what the biggest risks are and I'll stay
connected to that directive that I've given you within the
organization that I have. It's always best to go with the
C level executive and get directed down to the doors.
Then start at the doer level and try to work your way up, because
that's a That's a futile effort. Yeah, because like the lower
level management teams, they just don't have the stroke to
get that service or that decision to the higher level
CEO. They don't Now a lot of them
think that they have a lot more influence than they have.
I'll tell you and for your listeners, I'm sure everybody
can think about situations where they're they're talking to the
doers in the organization. All of a sudden the doer says,
Oh my God, and some dumb decision happened.
We have no idea why the the executives made that call.
They changed this vendor. They made this strategy because
they're not purview to what the business performance execution
challenges are and need to be there at the doer level.
They're just, they're executing and, and, and executors or
doers, they're insulated from a lot of that risk the
organization has in a lot of instances.
And so that you're just when you're talking, as I've shared
with my teams over the years, when you talk speeds and feeds
and you expect major decisions to be made, you're talking to
the right level and you're usually talking to the right,
wrong person. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I think a lot of times sales people, they get stuck in,
you know, the arbitrary glass ceiling, so to speak.
You know, they've got a great relationship with the
procurement manager or the, you know, some of the OPS managers
or local presidents or whatever. But they can never break into
that next level. And for a lot of reasons,
they're, they're, they're sometimes they're kind of
blocked, right? I mean, they are not going to
get it because they those people don't want you to have access to
the CEO or the CFO. What would you say or how would
you break that cycle or that you know that dynamic so you can
actually get in front of the CEO and CFO?
What tactics would you recommend for that?
Yeah, Firstly, I think it's important for everybody to
recognize and I've shared this with my team for decades.
I said never be confused that you're pitching to the person
across the table from you, because you're not.
You're building a story for two people in the organization, the
CEO and the CFO. So what that means is you're
always kind of levelling up the conversation.
So if I'm talking to the head of procurement, procurement doesn't
own performance, They don't own revenue, they don't own
retention, they don't own engagement, they don't own any
metric of performance that's talked about on an earnings
call. But let's say you've got a great
relationship with the chief procurement officer.
What you want to do is Telegraph a conversation that's going to
be relevant to the CEO and the CFO.
Then all of a sudden, now the chief procurement officer can be
the hero or the hero and of the story with to help the
organization perform. Now, if you're lucky enough to
have a chief procurement officer who has some decent business
chops, then you can guide them through the conversation you
need to have. But you're, you're kind of
always telegraphing up and telegraphing that messaging up
to the CEO and the CFO. So now it's a capable
procurement officer is available to you.
He or she can then be the conduit through which that story
is told. But it's your story as an
organization, you're enabling them to get great visibility.
The problem is, yeah, the problem is those types of
people, unfortunately are few and far between.
So they're going to, as you said, appropriately, they're
going to either purposefully or just innately block your access
because they don't realize they're doing it because they're
either insecure or they want to make sure they're the gatekeeper
that all of the knowledge flows through.
So what you've got to do then is leverage your executive team to
do some kind of a top to top kind of conversation where you
protect the relationship you have with that executive that
you're dealing with and you have your executives come across the
top. But I like what you mentioned
there about, you know, always projecting up that vision or
that strategy in your presentation.
And I think it, you know, where it really comes to play in is
maybe you're putting together a large proposal, multi
$1,000,000, you know, proposal for a large, you know, RFP And
you know, the proposals come comes to you and, and they're do
they want price, they want your level of service, they want the
typical capabilities that you can, you can offer.
But in that, you know, I think those proposals, that's where I
think what you're suggesting is start to communicate in there
what is important to the CEO, what is important to the CFO.
Because if you do that, then at some point when those proposals
are going to be reviewed and they all will at some point at
certain levels of sign off, right, then, you know, the CEO
or CFO will eventually probably actually look at a proposal that
comes through that's that level in that size because they're so
expensive. That's a big deal.
It's a big decision. And the procurement officer
won't have a lot of ability to control the narrative enough
because someone's going to have to read it, you know, above him.
I think that's important conversation to think about when
you're doing these proposals because that would be a great
way to, if you're not, if you're struggling to get to the CEO,
you can get through possibly through that process.
Yeah, no, you can. There's no question about it.
You always have to challenge your own thinking as a sales
leader to say and, and, and there's a simple litmus test
question I've shared with my teams over the years.
I said, and it's, it's 5 seconds of reflection that saves months
and months of heartache. And it's as simple as this.
Before you pitch, before you send an e-mail, before you sit
in a finalist conversation, play through the the, the talk track
you're about to share or the e-mail which you're about to
share and ask yourself a very simple question.
And that's as follows. Can my competitor say the same
thing? If the competitor can say the
same thing, you're nowhere near as differentiated as you think
you are. And it's, it's going to come
across like everybody else that says everything that's that you
want to say or is already saying what you're said.
So you're not differentiated at all.
And if you're not differentiated, you're not
memorable. If you're not memorable, you're
not going to win. Yeah, no, that's a great point.
That's a real good point. Well, when you're trying to
close business and you know, you're trying to, you're trying
to figure out where the value gap is with your
differentiation, you know, in the market.
Let's talk about this a little bit, if we could.
The value gap or the value wedge?
Corporate Visions defines the value edge as the intersection
of customer needs and your unique defensible
differentiation. How do reps typically fail when
trying to identify their power position in that wedge?
The the biggest reason they fail is again, they make it about
their own stuff. They make it about the speeds
and feeds conversation because, you know, let's say you're
talking AI tools. Well, is it Chachi BT?
Is it open AI? Is it Gemini?
Is it perplexity? All of these tools have a lot of
similar capabilities. There's differences in nuances,
models, but the uninformed buyer doesn't know the technical
differences that exist. That's not something that
they'll be able to speak to. But what they need to be able to
do in terms of the value edge is understand that value edge is a
lens that's squarely on your client, executive and their
organization, not on you. The mistake people make is,
well, my value is based on our capability.
It's not. It's based on what your
capabilities can do to accelerate the performance of
your client and mitigate those critical risks that they're
trying to navigate, those that they see or don't even see.
That's the way you articulate value.
It's not about you or your product.
It's about performance and it's about accelerating or mitigating
the risks or the opportunities if it's good or bad that you
have the ability to impact. That's powerful, that's really
good. That's a good thought process.
I mean, I mean, that's, that's gold right there.
You know, when you're trying to close these value or the value
gap and you're presenting your differentiators, some of the
ways you do that is through storytelling and talk about, you
know, making the customer the hero in the journey while you
act as the mentor. You know, in the practical sense
of how does you phrasing bridge the emotional gap between a dry
business case and a compelling vision?
When you make it about you, what you're doing is you're making it
personal. You're making it about the
things that that executive owns, the initiatives that they're
accountable for, the performance that they're going to be
measured on. That's what gets their
attention. Otherwise, if it's not about me
and my performance or the organizational performance that
I lead, then it's easy for me to disconnect and it's easy for
things to sound like they're not very important because then it's
a priority prioritization discussion for me, right?
I know as an executive the things that are going to move
the organizational performance because I also know the things
that move my comp, right? There's a very Direct Line
between organizational performance and executive
compensation. And shockingly, executives
behave like they're compensated to behave.
No big surprise there. Just like everybody, you know
that that that watches these sessions, they're all sales
leaders that know exactly how they're comped.
And that behavior is going to be determined by that comp
structure. And so that value wedge and that
you framing has to be aligned to the things that drive value for
the organization, which by default enables that C level
executive to gain the compensation that they're owed.
Yeah, no, that that's really good.
So weaving in some some stories about, you know, how they're
going to be able to be the hero by solving these problems are
are really good. That's really good to put them
in that position when they're listening to how this is going
to help them achieve their goals.
Not your goals, their goals, right?
It's always about them, not about us, right?
We got to remember that the decision making process is quite
complex when you think about it. There's lots of elements of the
decision making process. And I think what's interesting
about this is, you know, there's, there's, there's
emotion involved, there's a logic involved, There's all
kinds of things about maybe if you could talk a little bit
about what sellers need to understand and what tactics can
they use to close a deal through understanding these elements of
decision making. I'll tell you at the executive
level, the most important thing, and it's a simple thing, but
it's a thing that's ignored almost all the time,
unfortunately, is you have to anchor on the biggest risk that
is going to impact the performance of that executive in
the context of the organizational accountabilities
that they have. It's the most important thing
because risk is the only thing that gets elevated up in terms
of importance. Everything else will get
delegated and pushed out. You know, if there's and, and
that risk is the most important thing because the risk is the
one thing that can derail an earnings call.
It can derail performance of an organization, it can derail a
career. If I'm an executive and it took
me 25 years to get to that role, my goal is to stay in that role.
And what that means is I got to manage all of the risks that I
see and those that I don't see. So I got to depend on strategic
partners to help me see the unseen.
So understanding those risks are key in this process, but when
you're, you know, kind of when you're presenting what you can
do to help them manage those risk, you're really hitting on
like their emotions, like, you know, because it's a decision
they got to deal with. You also, you know, you want to
like, I guess contrast the, you know, the positive, negative
things or show some visuals that to make them think like, because
there's a journey they have to go through to make a ultimate
decision. This isn't just like, OK, yeah,
I'd like your product. I'm done.
No, you there's a little more process involved to to make
somebody really feel like, OK, they want to make that decision.
And I think there's a lot of elements in that showing them
the path to to success is how to do it right.
There's no question about it. And you touched on something
that's important. It's the contrast between the
environment that they're currently operating in and the
environment they aspire to be in some point in the future.
That sales leader has to be helping them understand that the
challenges of today are so egregiously difficult and you
can't stand still because the Mack truck is coming.
And if you're standing still, it's going to be, it's not going
to be pretty. So what you've got to do is
you've got to demonstrate some motion.
Most clients don't know what that motion is or needs to be
because maybe they've never done it before.
And that's where your sales pitch and it goes to your point
around the visual. It's describing whether it's a
story or a visual. Here's what it looks like today
for your, your consider let's say you're, let's say you're
talking to a hospital and you're talking about new technology
that's going to drive better patient engagement and patient
care. You don't want to talk about,
hey, we got a cool portal and we got these cool little chat bots.
No, you want to talk Here's what your patient deals with today.
They'd spend 5 months trying to get an appointment.
Then you come into the doctor's office and they got 900 pages
that they got to fill out on a, on a, you know, flip chart
somewhere and. And then they get passed on to
their friend and their friend and their other doctor friend
before they finally get to the person's going to help them.
There you go. And then so that's that's the
current environment, the status of our current.
Health care system, right? There, well, there you go.
And and that's any executive understands because they've all
been patients, they can identify with that situational context.
And then you paint the picture of in the new world or post this
effort, here's what patient engagement is going to be.
It's going to be an automatic outreach to them.
Appointments already going to be set.
We know they like coming in on a Saturday morning or a Friday
afternoon. That's the intelligence of the
system that now is going to preemptively engage that
patient, route them directly to that physician or a clinical
care office that is going to be aligned to their knee.
But it's at contrast in what happens that becomes memorable
because they got to go back to the example of your chief
procurement officer. He doesn't know anything about
patient care. That's not his job, but he can
easily tell that story. You can easily you connect with
executives they here's how different that's going to be.
Yeah, and you've emotionally connected with them at that
point too, in that scenario. That's really good.
You know, another another way that you described the buying of
a of a product and services and reason why you're helping them
kind of address a risk or and mitigate something.
There's this concept of leveraging the prospect theory
and, and it's this Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Common conman.
He found that people value avoiding a loss twice as much as
an equivalent gain. And how should a seller
articulate the cost of inaction and tap into the psychology
without surrounding, you know, sounding overly negative if
presenting inaction is, you know, not the best?
And that's why you want to make this decision.
Yeah, it's a great point. And Daniel Kahneman viewed this.
In fact, he was a sociologist that won the Nobel Prize in
economics. But because of that decision
theory focus and there's research was very much focused
on a simple truth. They said, look, risk is
immediate, so you get compelling interaction immediately.
An opportunity or a future event is at some point into the
future. It may never happen.
If it happens, it could be protracted.
So the sense of loss is associated with risk, which is
immediate. The opportunity of a gain is
some point into the future. If I'm an executive, I'm I may
not be around to get that gain 3 years from now, or two years
from now, or even 6 months from now if I don't manage the risks
that are immediate. So what would that?
Look like. What would that look?
Like Rohil, when you when you if you're going to present that,
it's kind of a scenario. Do you have an example of what
that could sound like to? You know customer.
So I'll, I'll tell you. So you know, I, I do a lot of
work in banking. So let's look at a situation
with, you know, wealth management.
So today, if you look at the data just in the US, the baby
boomer segment of the US is has somewhere between 80 to $83
trillion of wealth contained within that that demographic
group. That's a ton of money and that
concentration of wealth will never happen again in multiple
lifetimes. So if I'm leading wealth
management for, let's say, a large bank or wealth management
firm, I need to understand how much of that money is moving
every year. According to the research, Baby
boomers are going to have about 20, call it 20 to 22 years to
manage the transition of that wealth.
And that happens when they retire, when they unfortunately
pass on the fact of life. Well, then their assets get
transitioned to their beneficiaries.
Yeah. If I'm in wealth Management
Today, if I'm a managing director of an organization's
wealth management firm and I have no idea who the, let's say,
Sean, I don't know who your kids are and you're a high net worth
individual. Well, how do I actually engage
you then? How do I know you should be
somebody I'm engaging? Because I don't even know that
you've got X amount of money and it's going to transition to
your, your, you know, dependence.
And So what do I do? I wait for you to, to, to
transition the money and then it goes to your sons and daughters.
And all of a sudden I'll be lucky if they come to me because
it's all chance unless I change that and say, look, I know
that's the dynamic of what's happening in wealth management.
So what am I doing to gain intelligence around my current
customer base? The customer segments I want to
go after, Like I live in Chicagoland.
Winnetka is one of the the most affluent suburbs in the US, in
fact, in Illinois as well. So if I have 5 clients in
Winnetka, which is the North Shore of Chicago bordering Lake
Lake, MI, and I know they have this kind of a profile.
I want to do a quick pull of everybody else in the zip code
who has a similar demographic profile.
And then I want to do some targeted outreach and say, look,
we're helping organization, we're helping clients like you
do this to manage, sustain and grow wealth and transition that
wealth. We'd love to talk to you about
how we can help you do the exact same thing.
But there's a level of, I would call it hyper personalized
outreach. You know the segment, you know
what they're behaving, you know how they need to behave.
Those are things that allow you to start to be much more
thoughtful about what is now notice and not none of this in
the last four or five minutes I didn't talk about great, you
know, investment return or 5% interest versus 8% on bond.
I'm not talking about the stuff or the mechanics of the products
and services that a wealth management firm has.
I'm talking about, do I understand where the market is
moving and where that risk is associated with people who have
the concentration of wealth that are ideally my target clients?
And helping them understand that, you know, by making a
decision now, they don't take the risk or they could, they
don't have to, you know, be at a, you know, have exposure
really to their wealth. Exactly.
They they get to achieve what they want to have, which is
potentially passing on that generational wealth.
Yeah, that's exactly what it's all about.
That's good. You know, we'll also talk about
telling details versus superlatives in a presentation.
You know, research shows that telling details, buyer focused
and specific data outperforms general superlatives in
credibility and likelihood to purchase.
So, can you share an example of how specific detail can be can
mitigate a buyer's fear of implementation risk?
You know, again, this, this is a critical point because what it
does is don't hit me with motherhood and apple pie
statements. Don't give me with generality.
Oh, we've helped a lot of organizations save a lot of
money. That means nothing.
And anybody can say that because they're not saying anything.
What you want to be able to say is, look, Rohit, we know
subscriber engagement is extremely important to you.
In fact, we've helped organizations retain subscribers
anywhere from X to Y percent and that's generated subscription
growth of A to B dollars. You want to give a range of
value that's meaningful, that's specific, that's I call it.
You have to help the executive size, the prize, help them
understand the impact of what it is that you can generate and the
value of what that is. Generalities and what I call
motherhood and apple pie commitments mean nothing because
you're not seeing a thing. Yeah, now that's, that's good.
Be specific. Give them the the focus details
of of the the solution and how it's going to help them.
That helps them instead of just saying, hey, we can do this like
anybody else. Yeah, I get that's a great
point. And I think a lot of people get
caught in that trap and not really articulating the value
and and the the proposition of that that they have for the
buyer. Reframing emotional anchors that
are sometimes you don't, you don't know these anchors exist
when you're going into a presentation, you know, these
are these deep bed embedded, you know, emotional biases, so to
speak, that CFO or CEO may have for a particular reason.
So when a prospect is emotionally anchored to a risk
like fear or fail a failure, rational and logic often fail.
What is your process for using metaphors and analogies to
reframe the emotional objections during a pitch?
Well, I'll tell you, it's, it's all centered on the theme that
we've been talking about today, which is this whole idea.
If you have to align to risk, you're right, you may not
understand the baggage, the history of what that executive
has to deal with or has dealt with, and that's OK.
You're not supposed to be, you know, a mind reader, but what
allows you to align to that and understand it in the right way
is you've got to align to the risks that are represented for
that organization and for that executive.
The more you align to the risk, the more you can kind of
dovetail into whatever bias they have because their bias is going
to be, how the heck do I mitigate that risk?
Or I got burned before, I don't want to get burned again.
You may not know that past history, and that's OK, But if
you're aligning to the risk, that's the biggest risk that can
derail their performance. By default, you come in in a way
that is aligned to the way that they're thinking that they've
got to mitigate that focus. And they're waiting for someone
to help them. They're waiting for someone to
help. Yeah.
And, and, and it's, it's oh, my God.
He gets it or she gets it. That's exactly the issue I'm
focused on now. I'm paying attention.
He gets me there. You.
Go. All right, right here.
We're kind of winding down here. Rohil, I really appreciate your
time today. But the last couple here were
these real simple ones. What are the three deadly sins?
You know, when we talk about the three deadly sins of messaging,
what are they? Make it about you, make it
generic and have no compelling follow up or action that's
engaging or inside the The challenge is you have to be
insightful, you have to be provocative, you have to be
precise. That's right, that's right.
I love it. I love it.
Well, hey, if anybody listening wants to level up, get their
game on and and learn some more, I guess sales tactics and, and
become a better sales professional.
How can listeners learn more about sales training that you
provide through corporate Visions?
Well, Corporate Visions is 1. I would say it's one of the best
organizations I've come across in terms of their IP and their
approach. And it's very pragmatic.
It's not about theory alone. It's about how does theory
integrate into practice and drive results.
And I would encourage anybody to take, you know, reach out to
Corporate Visions, corporatevisions.com is the is
the web page and just, you know, highlight a request and folks
will be eager to get back to you and figure out ways that we can
help you guys increase and drive performance.
Yeah, this is really good. Rohil.
Thank you for coming on the show today.
Like again, the sales training that I experienced through
Corporate Visions with you was just amazing.
Learned so much more than I, you know, already kind of knew.
Obviously, I mean, everyone can learn, right?
We all start continuingly, continuously learning.
And you made me think about a lot of different aspects of the
sales process and especially in this new age of AI and how to
use these tools to become a better sales executive.
That's the big thing that it really helped me when I walked
away and thinking about the unconsidered, you know,
challenges and risks that executives have that we can help
identify what those are and mitigate those risks.
That was a big take away that I thought, OK, this is really
good. So, but I really appreciate you
coming on the show today and we're looking forward to getting
this out in the coming days. And really thank you.
It's all for everything you had. I appreciate, I appreciate that,
Sean, you take the take, take care and and hopefully we'll
talk soon again. Thanks for listening and
watching the show. If you enjoyed the show then
please share it with your friends and coworkers on social
media and tell somebody in person.
Thanks for being with us, ET Nation.