Navigating The Great Sales Paradox Of 2024

Taylor Wells (00:01.125)
Hey everyone, welcome to the GTM News Show. I got Howard here today. Hey Howard.

Howard (00:06.934)
Hey, glad to see you, Taylor.

Taylor Wells (00:09.249)
You as well. Thanks for coming on the show. So, um, Howard, I came across, uh, Howard, I think it was Jocko from Winning by Design posted his new book, uh, which we'll talk about today. Um, the S the sales innovation paradox harnessing modern methods for optimal sales performance. And, uh, Howard is the director at the center for professional sales and sales coach.

at the University of Texas at Dallas. And I wanted to have Howard on because his book is really interesting. And we're even before I hit record, we've been talking about how the world of sales, especially in the world we work, I work B2B sales has changed so much over the past couple of years. And the predictable revenue model that has been pioneered for the past decade has become less and less efficient. And so sales has been really struggling. You know, some of the guests, previous guests I've had on the show,

As you all have listened to talked about, yeah, just the challenges and, um, a lot of folks are ending quota. We're coming to the, you know, starting about to get into 2024. And so one to have Howard on to kind of talk about his book, what his thoughts are on, um, kind of the future of sales and, uh, and how to, uh, ultimately get better performance for individual sales folks and the team. So Howard, we'll start off with your kind of, why did you write the book? Um, the sales innovation paradox.

What was the impetus behind that? Love to start there.

Howard (01:36.994)
Well, I think at a heart, I've realized I want to call, I call myself now a sales technologist because I have a technology background and then I got my PhD in quantitative methodologies, which makes a lot of sense that I teach sales. But it gives me the quant and the kind of operational background. And I used to build computer systems for the state of Oregon. So I understand.

how to harness technology to create efficiencies and effectiveness gains. And so to me as an economist by training, I looked at this fact that wait a minute, if we add technology to what we do here in sales, we should see efficiency gains. And if you see efficiency gains in most industries, you'd see a headcount reduction. But in our field,

We deployed technology which was giving us the capacity to have one person do the job of five to ten, even up to a hundred salespeople. And at the same time, we increased the number of people doing outbound by 13x. And to me, I said, that doesn't make any sense. And so I studied it for several years and said, why? Why is this going on? It's a paradox, right? In the midst of innovation in sales technology, the explosion of the sales tech stack.

the marketing tech stack, we should have seen a lot of efficiency gains and we should have seen a reduction in the cost of acquisition. And instead what we found is that we somehow double tripled actually 13 times down collectively, not individually, on the number of people we have doing the job. So that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And that's the whole impetus for writing the book.

Taylor Wells (03:32.577)
Thanks for sharing. Yeah, that is quite the Ironic situation we're in. What do you think drove that? I'd love to hear your thoughts

Howard (03:41.386)
Well, it's interesting. I was talking to a global leader of a B2C company, so not B2B, B2C, and I was trying to help him understand this concept of the effectiveness and efficiency differentials, you know, productivity in general. And I was really struggling to get my point across. I said, so if I were able to show you a tool that allowed you to...

reach more people in the same period of time, what's the first thing you would do? And he said, I'd hire more people. And I said, well, that's the wrong answer. And I said, why would you do that? And he said, well, because I could make more sales, so I would hire more people. And I said, I didn't say your addressable market increased. I simply said you could get after your addressable market with greater speed and efficiency.

your total addressable market actually didn't increase at all. So I thought that was an anomaly. Um, but I realized in trying to talk to him about the proper deployment of technology that, that he was after the more game. And so I put a LinkedIn, um,

pull out, which the problem is I know too many people in sales enablement who are strategic. And so they started going, well, that depends. And I said, shut up, everybody. I said, sales leaders. I said, sales leaders, no enablement people. Don't muddy the water. And inevitably what had happened, because I said the same thing, if you could increase for the same level of effort, you could get more leads. So efficiency is the question.

Howard (05:24.882)
What would you hire more? Would you stay steady or would you reduce your force? I think it was 70% of people said I'd hire more people. So we're kind of, we're kind of stuck in this more game that if I'm more efficient, therefore, right, because then I can go back to the CFO and say, Hey, I got, look what I've got. That's working.

Let me go get more people because I obviously, if you give me more, I could get more because I can do more. So sometimes we just miss that addressable market problem. And that addressable market doesn't necessarily expand just because I can be more efficient. And unfortunately, what ends up happening is when I deploy that kind of technology and I haven't thought about the addressable market, I simply burn through my white space faster.

And inevitably that means my productivity goes down, which then we've got the effectiveness problem, right? So in the initial phase, this is what happens when I deploy technology. I'm usually gonna deploy it for the efficiency. I can get to people faster. I can increase my pipeline faster. A lot of companies actually fail to keep track of the effectiveness game, which is my conversion ratios. And so...

What we end up happening is, so let's just take it, let's take it some individual contributor. Let's not pick on the individual contributor, but let's be honest. I give you a tool that allows you to get 10 time, or let's go double, double the number of meetings with the same amount of effort. I'm not calling you, you know, someone who isn't professional, but you're gonna cherry pick now. You're gonna go, hey,

I used to get 10 meetings. Now I get 20 meetings. I had to deal with a lot of crap when I had the 10 meetings. Now I got 20 meetings. I could throw some of the people away that were really gonna be a lot of effort and I can go for the easy deals because I can get easy deals faster now. And I, right, I'm gonna go cherry pick at the top. I'm not saying everybody does this, but why wouldn't I do that? And so instead of getting, I should get a 2X.

Howard (07:44.978)
And I am going to get the 2x at the top of the pipeline. But as I come down to the bottom, I maybe only get about a 20% increase, maybe a 25%, maybe 30% increase. Yet I should have been able to get a 2x at the bottom. So it's only when we're actually looking at those. And you mentioned Jocko winning by design. It's really looking at those key metrics. And once I'm actually understanding my effectiveness ratios, and then I introduce

concepts that actually look to bring more into that particular element in the revenue architecture, then I can actually really fine tune that measurement and make sure that when I deploy technology, I'm holding tight to the ratio so I actually get the doubling. Because if I simply double the amount of stuff at the pipeline, but I lost my ratio, well, then what did I really do? I just burned through white space.

And in the end, I'm actually going to pay for that down the road because I've already burned the white space up. I can't. It's a lot harder to go through the white. It's not white space anymore when I burned through it the first time. It's burnt space. And it's a little bit harder to get it going again. And so that's exactly what he said. This colleague of mine, he said, let me tell you what we did. He said, we turned on this technology. And he said, we experienced a phenomenon. He said,

Howard (09:14.026)
We basically screwed up our whole sales org because they have way too many leads. And so we really didn't increase our sales. And I said, of course you did. Of course you did. And I said, and you burn through your addressable market much faster, but he wasn't understanding it because he said, but, but I should be able to hire more. And I said, no, because you didn't stay focused on your conversion ratios. So if we, if we focus on effectiveness, and this is what I talk about in the book around modern motions.

If I'm focusing on what works, what's relevant, what's potent, it's precise, then I bring some efficiency to that. Then I actually end up with exponential performance. I don't see just a 50% increase. We've witnessed 8X, 10X, even a large scale. I found companies out there doing 3X, 8X, 10X. I have alumni.

Howard (10:10.958)
to report 8x performance differentials, 10x performance differentials. And primarily, they're precision, right? They're doing all the proper motions with all the modern tools. They're allowing themselves to be augmented. They're using the technology to be relevant, precise, and contextual within an ICP. And then they're deploying technology to increase the amount that they can get done.

Howard (10:41.014)
But they've already fine-tuned all of the different key parameters and conversion metrics, then they revved it up. Most companies rev it up and don't look at the other piece of the puzzle first.

Taylor Wells (10:53.629)
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, I can see how obviously providing more technology doesn't necessarily, you still have to do the right practices, right? You still have to do the right sales practices to be able, and if you're doing the wrong practices or, you know, for lack of a better expression, you get lazy and you, like you said, you cherry pick, which is almost in human nature, right? Then you're naturally gonna get, if you scale that up, you're gonna get, you know,

go through your TAM, which I've actually never really heard it from that direction of looking at your total addressable market and burning through that and probably creating poor experiences on the flip side, right? For the prospects that you didn't create a great experience for and that you just use technology to ultimately, for lack of a better expression, spam people, right? Or you weren't relevant or whatnot. So, fascinating. I loved it. We can maybe we'll put a pin in that for a second because I love to kind of get into your thoughts of...

Howard (11:31.755)
Yes.

Taylor Wells (11:52.461)
What are those good practices? How can you actually be relevant and contextual and all those things you said potent, which I love. Um, but first I love to talk a little bit more about technology because it seems like, uh, especially over the past, you know, even this past couple of years, it's just been just crazy. Every category of sales technology, there's just been, you know, 10 more added. It seems like every, every quarter now with AI it's even crazier with how much sales technology is out there and marketing tech and whatnot.

So I'd love to hear, I think maybe your answer would be to filter it through those best practices and making sure you have a great experience and great conversion rates all the way through. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on do we have enough technology out there? Is it, should we be, is there like maybe some non-negotiables when it comes to technology? Should, because it seems like a lot of the sales leaders I'm talking to are just overwhelmed. There's low adoption with it.

Number one, low adoption. Number two, there's just so many options. So how do they even start with figuring out what works, what doesn't work and how to prioritize what technology? That's kind of a question that came to my mind.

Howard (13:03.638)
Well, I think the challenge, obviously, you've got point solutions, and then you've got overall solutions. And that's one of the first challenges. Then the second challenge you have is when we have point solutions, we have too many places to go. So if we think about it, a technology that requires me to interact with a platform is going to have an adoption problem. I've got to find the value. The cost to me to learn versus the value I think I'm going to get in return is going to be at play.

And then let's be honest, if what I'm doing is working good enough, why even mess with what's working? That's another fundamental problem. So that experience and bias and inertia that I talked about at the end of the book. But I think one of the challenges is we've had a flood due to the VC money that was coming in prior to 2022 at Q4.

We had a lot of money flowing into fun point solutions. So we got a lot of point solutions in the field. And those point solutions were cool and lots of people bought them because it was a shiny object issue. But at the end of the day, if I got to go into five or six different platforms to get my job done, I find that overly problematic. That any time that I have to go into something and then report something, it's a reporting mechanism.

Howard (14:26.43)
And that's going to cause slowness within my motion. Anytime I can integrate all this into one singular platform, and it's more observational than it is reporting. So for example, if I'm going to do an email, this is why when you look at things like sales engagement platforms are fascinating. Because if you have your person actually do the dials out

platform and you have them do their email out of the platform, you have them do their responses out of the platform, you have everything. So it's a single source. I'm picking up data in an observational setting. When I went and did a site visit at Microsoft pre-COVID, I got to see the ugly baby of Copilot that they're launching now. It wasn't ugly, it was beautiful.

the recommender system that they had was constantly observing the motion of the salesperson, gathering that data, and then also connecting with all of their marketing outbound efforts, all their web-based efforts, and it was constantly updating probability of purchase and this next best action in a way that was generating massive returns. Now that was Microsoft and now...

Howard (15:49.918)
Now this is commercially viable with Copilot coming out, but they had been using it internally for, gee, half a decade. And now they're just giving it to the rest of us because now everybody else is saying, wow, we're first to this. No, Microsoft was first to it years ago. And then we're using it internally with huge success rates because it was all integrated into one platform. It was a single source, a command center.

Howard (16:18.934)
that augmented the capacity of the salesperson. It didn't make it more clunky, it made it just more intelligent.

Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I just pulled up the copox actually haven't looked into that much and that's super cool. I Bet yeah, that's gonna be that's super cool

Howard (16:38.346)
Well, it's going to blow a lot of people's minds. So the consolidation of tools is going to be, I have several friends and the consolidation of platforms. So prior to chat GPT and generative AI in general, when we tried, when you think about a platform and a technology. So if a point solution came up and it was really cool.

In the old world before generative AI you'd say oh, maybe I should acquire that company Well now you can get chat GBT to code that concept within like a week

So my friends who own some of these platform-based companies are saying, hey, you know, our roadmap is exploding because what used to take a year can now be done in a week. And we didn't have to hire any extra people, we're simply coding with generative AI at a speed that is ridiculous. So when we look at something and say, gee, maybe our platform should have, I don't know, a generative AI engine that does an API call to chat GBT and generates an email.

Okay, well, boom, done. I don't have to go buy that. I can integrate it quickly. I can integrate most other cool ideas. I see I can integrate them quickly. So we're going to have kind of a platform consolidation period. I think we're already in it. A lot of these point solutions are going to get if they don't have enough funny, they don't have enough momentum. They're just going to die in a vine because they number one, the VC money is gone for that kind of play. And

The other companies can simply co-op them quite easily. Case in point, it's fascinating. For years, Salesforce, you'd have to buy Einstein as a secondary concept. You have to buy it, it's an add-on. All of a sudden, Microsoft starts coming out with CoPilot and Einstein's showing up all over my Salesforce for free. Funny how it just goes up, right? Now all of a sudden, it's just ubiquitous, right? It's just there.

Howard (18:53.498)
So we're going to see a lot of consolidation in the space. And unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean adoption is going to get any better and people are going to necessarily do anything different because we still haven't trained people why and how and make it efficient and effective. So that's a challenge, right? How do we get people who've been able to get away with what they've done for the last decade to move into...

This new very unique moment in which outbound is almost impossible. People are not buying because the CFO can actually make some money on whatever cash is sitting in the bank now. And we've got generative AI that is causing pretty strong disruption. I'm going to be a little controversial and say we're in the midst of a world war.

It sure feels like it were on two fronts, maybe three fronts of active military operations. So most people around the country are kind of being cautious with their buying. And then outreach has almost completely lost its efficacy. And so we're operating in a very different world and we're living with a bunch of salespeople who've grown up in the hack world.

I've been hacking away at everything and hacking's been working. All I gotta do is hack to get the appointment. All I gotta do is hack to get the demo. All I gotta do is hack to get the first buy. All I gotta do is get an install and then we'll land and expand. And I've been hacking, hacking. And what Gartner's research says, well, the buyers have been tired of being hacked to death. They actually, 87% of the time, they actually would prefer not even to talk to a rep.

Howard (20:45.73)
So that's the world we're in. I don't know that technology is the solution. I think the motions, the skill, the skill and the right motion being relevant. When I contact you, am I hacking you or am I delivering value? Then we deploy technology and we get some amazing things happening.

Taylor Wells (21:10.377)
That's cool. I love that with the focus of the outcome being obviously value being relevant. Any additional thoughts or best practices you've seen of getting back to almost some basics, right? I think like with AI and what I've seen even like as a marketer by trade, I come at this from a little bit of a different angle than a salesperson would. But the buyers, obviously the buyer's journey is changing. Folks are buying in so many different ways now and are getting exposed to new products.

through communities, through social networks, through all sorts of different ways. And they prefer if it's, and I like actually that hack because I think it's almost a two meaning, right? It's on one level you feel hacked by sometimes a sales rep, on another level they're hacking their way and some of the best sales reps I know are really are like that, right? Because they're just trying to figure out their angle to get in and it's almost a double meaning for each side.

I love to hear you any best practices you have. How do we get back to the basics? Because I think, excuse me, AI was only going to make every channel more crowded and every channel more saturated, which and there already are crazy saturated. Right. Whether it's marketing, doing ads, whether it's outbound, whatever it may be, every channel. And I think I go back to these ideas to two concepts. I go back to number one, who can provide impact?

and who can actually provide value and not just value of like, hey, buy my product and like educating you about how I can solve problems because that is value. Excuse me. But one step further of how do you actually help them solve a problem selflessly? Right. Actually, like, here's how you solve this problem. You can solve more problems with my product. Right. And I think that's one lane. Thought leadership is a big part of that. Consultative selling is a big part of that. The other lane is relationships. How do you how do you.

connect with people through relationships, warm intros, networking, communities, partnerships, teacher partnerships, channel marketing, all those things are like relationship based and you're leveraging the relationships. Customer advocacy, getting intros from your customers, et cetera. I love to hear your thoughts on how do they, how do you be relevant? How do you be impactful? How can sales reps ultimately stand out in these really clouded, every outbound channel is ridiculously clouded. Crowded.

Howard (23:30.558)
I think one of the things, so we teach for several years, Gartner put out the jobs to be done framework and maybe I'm weird because when I saw this and Brent Adamson would show us that and research related to it and the decision-making that was going on, how complex the decision-making was becoming and...

And there was a moment where a bunch of us were with Brent and they're at the Gartner facilities in Arlington, Virginia. And they were showing us the most recent research and Lori Richardson, just who's well known for women and sales and a lot of initiatives around promoting us, bringing more women into the sales workforce and leadership.

And she looked at Brent and said, Brent, is anybody even doing this? Is anybody even, you know, does anybody, is this the core of anybody's go to market strategy, the jobs to be done framework? And, and, you know, after a little bit of him and hon back and forth, it kind of became this, well, no, nobody's really doing this. Um, nobody really teaches this. Nobody, even though it's the way the buyer.

is really making the decisions because Gartner did the work to say, hey, go out, let's interview the buyer and say, what do they actually do? Not what we as salespeople do. What is the buyer actually doing? And Gartner basically came out and said, well, there's actually four jobs that have to be done for a buyer to be able to do a complex purchase. And they're actually pretty simple. I mean, most of us who have taken marketing one on one would go, duh. Well, the first thing is they have to identify a problem. It's a job.

So now that's not the first thing, it's the job, one job. There's four jobs. You have to identify problems. You have to search, have to search for a solution. You have to develop requirements, right? You have to, what are the requirements of what it is we're gonna purchase? And then you have to select the vendor. Those are the four jobs that have to get done. The challenging piece of that framework is that it's not linear and...

Howard (25:47.682)
people can re-enter the jobs at any point. So it's actually quite complex. You know, we teach our students the jobs to be done framework for the very one reason that when we do outbound or when we're in a meeting, one of the most important things you need to do as a relevant salesperson is to figure out where are we, where are you, where are you collectively? So if you think about it,

if those are the jobs that have to be done.

Which of the jobs have you completed? Which job are you currently operating in? You personally, right? You tailor. Now there's a buying committee or influencers. Where is the rest of the team in the job to be done framework? How many of those jobs? Because all the jobs have to be done. So now all of a sudden, I go into my outbound and say, huh, well, if you're at vendor selection, my

Howard (26:47.438)
Outbound probably should be different than if you're in search. It probably should be different if you're in problem ID. It should probably be different if you're not even started yet. Right. I'm not even aware and I don't even care. Right. So, so actually I'd create another box from a, from a targeted standpoint that I would say not aware that I even have a problem. Then I have

Howard (27:12.91)
Problem ID, but that's kind of a subset if you if you have three-dimensional out the problem ID There's a lot of components in that space Now let's go into the meeting and deal review and the deal management I'm trying to manage a deal and if I if I process you Right. I'm gonna go through my sales process I've done my job. You should buy Well, wait a minute

If I'm still trying to identify what my problem is, this is a classic sign, this is a beautiful, so you get all the way to the close, then all of a sudden they ghost you. Well, behind the scenes, the CRO gets replaced, or the CFO gets replaced, comes in and says, hey, I got this thing on my desk, where I'm supposed to sign this and pay for this. What in the heck are we doing here? What does this solve?

So where is the CFO? The CFO's all the way back out, problem ID. Now, am I really gonna, if I'm the buyer who is the champion, am I really gonna call you up and say, hey, Taylor, dude, man, I'm feeling kind of stupid and sucky, but you know, hey, we're back at problem ID, man. I'm kind of impotent, my job is your champion, so I'm just gonna just ignore you. Now, what's amazing is we have, this is where tools come into play. All right, now.

Howard (28:35.998)
If I have that framework, this is where you're asking what's the modern motion. If I have the framework of jobs to be done, and if I lay on top of that, things like personality profiles, like with XIQ or crystal nose, so I kind of understand who are the drivers, who are the people that are never gonna change, and I lay on top of that, so I'm really getting dimensionality to you to talk about modern.

because these are the things we teach at UTD to my students. Then I actually look at the fact that Scott Gillum has done some really amazing work around mapping the Challenger customer and the Miller-Hyman framework to personality profiles. So I could actually line up and say, hey, I've got a bunch of people trying to make a decision. Now, if I go one step further, I'm going with frameworks here before I get into the technology.

Howard (29:31.85)
And I say, well, Matt Dixon just came out with something called the Jolt effect. And he's actually proposing that there are certain teams that are so dysfunctional, they'll never make a decision. And I should be able to judge that. Well, if I look at the data available to me and I'm asking the right questions, which is not processing you, there is no process here. There's a buying.

job to be done framework, there's personalities, and there's conflict or there's consensus. And if I could figure that out, and I can with a lot of different technology and the right questions, when I marry what I can get through the technology and the right frameworks, I actually start closing down deals that will never ever go anywhere. And I focus on the deals, but I also call you back up and say,

You just got a new CFO. We were ready to sign. Do we need to bring that CFO up to date on what the actual problem is? I'm sure that's gonna be a weird conversation because I've been in deals like this before. I think we probably need to sit down with, in fact, I also noticed you got a new IT person that looks like they'd be deploying. So actually these two people probably don't know the problem we're solving, the search we've done.

So we need to get them up to speed or are we good?

And all of a sudden they go, wow, dude, I didn't wanna tell you, but yeah, I mean, we're back at ground zero. Can you come over here and visit with my CFO because he wants to go all the way back? And you say, hey, that's great. I get it because we're back at the problem ID. That job has to get done by the CFO. I completely get it. Let's do this. Now I'm your partner, I'm relevant. I actually, I'm contextual to you. And if I'm using some of these other tools to say,

Howard (31:30.73)
Wow, this particular person is a dominant. So I'm going to be very dominant with data or this person is very steady. So I got to be really careful about this. So I actually think, so when I bring all this together and I kind of harness it all together, you know what? My performance is ridiculously better. Because I'm using the technology to augment my capacity and I've been trained to operate like a modern seller, not a hacker.

Taylor Wells (32:01.205)
Wow, cool stuff. Man, I love the personality and analysis or even looking at what are some, uh, some, some themes and or, um, warning signs, red flags of these deals. Not, and it's almost, cause I think sometimes it's, it's hard to, we think we can reverse engineer the buyer's journey or, or really, and I think that's where the process comes in, right? Marketing does it, sales does it. I think the entire go to market motion. We, we try to.

create an assembly line and make it as scalable as possible. And I think that's what we've seen, especially in the VC world, money we've been in and whatnot. But it's cool that what I'm hearing is you're actually ultimately trying to better understand where your prospects at and get inside their head and see what from their perspective, right? And using data, using research, using tools, using just probably emotional intelligence, using all these different things that empathy

or you're putting yourselves in their shoes and then figuring out really what's going on. And that takes effort, right? That probably takes a lot of skill. It takes effort. That takes versus, you know, clicking a button and just having everything done for you. Yeah, I love to hear your thoughts. Any other best practices you have or ideas you have around, first maybe how do we create a culture of this? How do we create a culture of thinking outside the box and using

Technology to augment what we're doing not just almost replace what we're doing or making our lives easier Yeah, love to hear any additional thoughts there

Howard (33:37.314)
Well, I think we're in a... So first thing, I'm not... You're probably not gonna like this. I'm not a huge fan of a best practice. If you read the book and you... Best practices usually are hack best practices. So I would say best practices is understanding the frameworks of how the buyer actually buys and meet them in the moment that's relevant. That's a best practice, but it's a theoretical and a framework best practice. It's an approach, it's a way of thinking.

A lot of times when we're talking about best practices, we're often tactical and that tacticalness usually comes into hacking space. So we usually are running off a trend line. Hey, I did this at work, therefore let's go scale it. We tried it a little bit more, it's working really well, so let's scale it. The challenge with some of these hack concepts, and this is what I talk about in the book around the SIB cycle, is that sales innovation has a problem because there's a buyer on the other side.

If you're relevant and if you're valuable, you don't need to worry about this. This is where once again, if you're, if you're around, if you're already effective and then you're deploying something on top, you're going to have a multiplier effect. But if you're just marginal, you're just average, you just get lucky. Cause by the way, we do get lucky. It's okay. I love lucky moments. Listen, we all love lucky moments. You fall into a great account. It just drops in your lap. I mean, I had one in the last six months.

There was a company that's we've been doing this dance for a while, hasn't been going down. Then all of a sudden they acquired somebody in the Dallas market and boom, the deal falls in my lap. Right. That wasn't, I mean, sure. There was a little bit of effort there, but come on, that was luck. They acquired somebody in my market. Now all of a sudden they need, they need a Dallas presence. So we were a natural partner as a university for them. Um, but that was luck. I didn't get to control the acquisition.

Right? That happened and it opened a door for me. So, but outside of luck, we usually have to use skill. We usually have to understand and really develop an ICP and, and really kind of think about this. So a lot of the times when we're doing something that's hacky or, or as tactical, the challenge becomes that tactic, if it's not relevant and valuable to the buyer, it becomes recognizable.

Howard (36:01.802)
And when it becomes recognizable and it's not providing value, it actually becomes a signal to the buyer that, oh, you're not going to give me any value. I've been here before. Now, what's really weird about this is as you're scaling it up, so is everybody else. That's why we call it a right. It's a best practice. Therefore, all the trainers go out and run and do by the there's thousands of people being trained, all your competitors, not your direct competitors, your competitors for attention of the buyer.

Howard (36:31.478)
are all deploying the same best practice tactically. And the buyer starts figuring it out and they disengage with you using that tactic because they get smarter. They shift their behavior as they see the tactic more and more. By the way, if I'm, there are certain people that call me. I always take the call. Even if they're trying to sell me something, I always take the call because you know what?

Howard (37:00.194)
That call is valuable. I don't know if you know a guy by the name of Jim Dickey. Jim Dickey, a little bit older, a little pre-COVID-y, and he ran a company called CSO Insights for a few years. It was bought by Miller Hyman and that was bought by Robert Half. And if Jim Dickey called you, you took the call because what Jim would do in the first three to five minutes of any call would be he'd drop.

mind-blowing little vignettes on you. He'd say, I was just talking to the senior vice president of global sales and Siemens of the wind turbine division. And what I found was blah, blah. And he'd say something that you just go, what did you just say? And then he'd drop, then he'd go, then I was just talking to Caterpillar and they do blah, blah. And then he'd go, and then I was talking to this company who actually figured out a way to do this and had a three times increase in their performance in the last 30 days.

Howard (37:59.214)
Howard, what did you want to talk about? And when he was done, you went, I don't know, Jim. I want to talk about the two things you just, two of the three things you just told me have made my brain fry. So anybody who Jim Dickey called, you just go, I'm taking the call. I don't care if Jim's going to say, hey, Howard, I want you to buy stuff, or hey, I want to introduce you to introduce me to your most valuable client. You'd be going, okay, Jim, I'll take the call because Jim would always add value.

Howard (38:29.55)
to you when you made the call. But when we're tactical, we're hacky, so that's the thing, a buyer, any of us, if we find value in the interaction, we're gonna take the interaction. If we don't find value in the interaction, actually, it's worse than that. If it's costly, I'm actually mad at you. I actually dislike you. And I dislike you collectively.

Howard (38:54.538)
Right. If you cold call me and it was invaluable, I go, wow, cold calls are cool. But if you actually waste my time and I gain no value from it, same thing with email, same thing with LinkedIn requests. But if I can't, and it doesn't take, in my view, a whole lot of effort, but it does take structure and framework to say, don't, I love the people who send me an email and say, because I have director in my title.

Howard (39:24.414)
It's always funny marketing people and sales people. Um, I would like to help you increase your sales at the University of Texas at Dallas. I can show you how to increase your organizational performance and I can do massive lead gen for you. And I'm like, you know, I'm a professor, right? If you had just looked at my LinkedIn profile for more than a few seconds and said, huh, he's on.

Howard (39:53.694)
advisory boards. He does have an institute, but it also shows that he's been working at the university for 13 years. I wonder if that's his main job. I bet that's his main job. Probably the first thing I want to say to him is, hey, I have something for you. If you really do the other two things, it's your main job. But if you're a professor, I probably just need to say, hey, nice for connecting.

Howard (40:22.866)
If anybody ever did that to me, I'd be like, hey, that was such a dude. I'm primarily I'm primarily a professor. Sarah, Sarah B worked at Gong. She actually approached me at a major conference and she said, I want to meet with you and I said, well, Sarah, I'm a professor. And she said, that's cool. I still want to meet with you because I like meeting people.

And I went and saw her. Lots of people sent stuff to me at that conference. And I went to her and I said, all right, Sarah, I'm here. I'm a little surprised. Why do you want to meet me? I'm a professor. And she goes, you know what? I've learned I need to meet all types of really amazing people. We found out that I knew her professor at Western Kentucky. I'm actually co-authoring a paper with him right now. And we had been on committees together. And I went, oh, I know Lucas.

Howard (41:20.702)
I said, you're one of Lucas's kids. And she goes, yeah, I had Lucas. I went, oh, that's so cool. Never bought anything for her, but you know what? It was a relevant approach, right? Fresh approach. So a lot of our challenges with outbound and even in the, in the managing of a pipeline and a complex deal, too many times as salespeople, and if we're not careful as marketers, we're actually developing outreach, communication content.

Howard (41:49.474)
that actually isn't helping them get the jobs done. So what the Gartner Research says is that they're saying we're irrelevant. We're not valuable to the purchasing decision. And yet in the same research, they actually say that they're dying for us to be relevant.

Howard (42:06.99)
So they want us to be relevant, but we don't. We don't do it.

Taylor Wells (42:12.689)
Wow. Thanks for sharing. And I love that, uh, that contrast between frameworks and best practices. And I think the frameworks are cool because it can give us, you can create a, uh, almost a competitive advantage as you go to market because you're not doing what everyone else is doing. Number one. And you're, you're going to, like you said earlier, grabbing their attention in a way that maybe be that's unconventional or, um, that's outside of the box, so to speak. Um, and meeting people where they're at, where they want to be needed.

versus just doing what everyone else is doing. And I can totally agree with you that we're all, even if it's not direct competitor, we're all competing for attention, ultimately, whether it's whatever the channel is and super interesting stuff. Wow, we're almost out of time. We've covered a lot of areas. Is there anything in the book or that you'd like to share, especially as we go into 2024, that folks should keep top of mind as they think about optimizing their sales teams?

Howard (43:12.61)
So I love something said by CNBC because I think it's a very real feeling out there. And one of the co-anchors in the morning show, Squawk on the Street said, the goal is survive to 25. And I thought, wow, that captures what everybody's feeling is that 24 doesn't really feel very good. We don't really know what 24 is gonna bring us.

And we're so shell shocked coming out of the last few years all the way back to 19, that we're just like, oh man, it's gonna be another, it's like another year in the trenches. It's like, it's like home alone too, right? It's like, oh, another Christmas in the trenches. And so, you know, we know it's gonna be ugly. And so the sentiment of, I just need to survive to 25. But I've actually thought about a pivot on that. And I think what people need to be doing is,

How do I prepare that I'm ready to thrive in 25? Because I think if we keep on doing what we've always done, we're going to survive to 25. But if we really think about pivoting completely, see, there's a great guy out in Berlin, and I don't know how to say his last name, so I'm not gonna slaughter it. I was on a webinar with him this summer with my board of advisors who worked with XIQ, and he said the most,

mind compelling thing this year to me. He said, there's gonna be two types of organizations in the world and we can say people if you want to. So most people are going to take the existing work they're doing and they're gonna look at the new AI and technology and they're gonna make some incremental changes. And he said.

Then there's going to be the transformational companies. And what they're going to do is they're going to look at the result that is needed, and they're gonna look at the technology available, and they're gonna reimagine the work that it takes to get there. And I am, we at UTD, we're taking a pivot year, and our whole theme in this academic year is reimagine. Reimagine where the puck's gonna be.

Howard (45:37.73)
Re-imagine the skills that are going to be needed. Re-imagine the way the work gets done. It's okay. We're going to be messy. 24 is going to be a lot of experimentation, but you need to reimagine the work given the technology. Don't keep doing the same motions. They don't work. Re-imagine the work with the technology. Use frameworks, do it different, do it more potently.

Howard (46:06.186)
and you'll be thriving in 25.

Taylor Wells (46:09.229)
Oh, I love that. And it's a great close, especially that we all feel it, whether it's the macro economics or global events or just AI. I mean, AI is just such a, it's such a fascinating disruptor across the entire go-to-market function and across the entire world, but especially in how folks are going to move into it. So super great. Thanks for coming on the, on the show. Really interesting. How can folks connect with you online?

Howard (46:38.13)
LinkedIn is the best place. If you go to my inbox, you'll find the ugly space that everybody throws the same old best practices.

Taylor Wells (46:50.949)
Perfect. I'll put the link below for everyone to check out your other work and definitely check out your book. I've enjoyed the read and yeah, thanks again for coming on Howard. Really great meeting you. And as a side note, in closing, you used to live in Oregon. You worked and I'm from Oregon so I don't know we didn't connect on that but I'm sure we could have another whole podcast on Oregon itself.

Howard (47:06.284)
I did.

Howard (47:15.074)
Yes, I graduated from high school in Oregon and spent five years there again in my career. But unfortunately, I have severe allergies to grass seed. And Oregon is one of the biggest grassy producers in the world. So it's not a good place to live for me. For me, I've learned that. But I loved it. Beautiful. So green. So...

Taylor Wells (47:20.551)
Okay.

Taylor Wells (47:40.425)
Fascinating. Yeah.

Howard (47:43.946)
Lots of rain and lots of grass pollen.

Taylor Wells (47:48.713)
Yeah, don't come here in the spring is what I'm hearing. Spring or summer for sure. My dad has severe allergies as well and he moved to California. So it makes sense, Southern California.

Howard (47:58.642)
Yeah. What part of Oregon? Are you in the Portland area?

Taylor Wells (48:01.989)
I'm right outside of Portland. Yeah, I'm in a small town called Scapouse, just north of Portland. Yep. Yeah.

Howard (48:07.33)
Oh yeah, no more scapooses. I think I went to Scapoose High School for a sales call once. So back in my post high school days, I was selling something, went to high schools, and I think I went to Scapoose High School.

Taylor Wells (48:14.064)
Oh really?

Taylor Wells (48:23.049)
Small world. Oh man, that's awesome. Very cool. Well, thanks. Thanks again for coming on. Great meeting you. I'll probably have you on again. I'm sure hopefully maybe in 2025 to recap what we learned in 2024. So I love it. Perfect. Thanks again.

Howard (48:24.31)
Yet? All right.

Howard (48:37.614)
There you go. All right, good to visit with you.

You bet.