“Do your research on the culture of the business that you’re walking into.” – Andrew Kappel and Colin Specter in today’s Tip 1753
How is your deal going? Have you done your research?
Join the conversation below and check out the links!
Andrew Kappel on LinkedIn
Colin Specter on LinkedIn
How the Deal was Done Podcast
Ep. 37: How the Deal Was *Not* Done, Navigating Cultural Differences with Colin Specter
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Andrew Kappel. Andrew is a Principal Consultant at Benchmark Signal Consulting. Specializing in Sales Optimization and Acceleration Projects for Gong and HubSpot clients. He has been a listener of Sales Success Stories podcast since 2017, and just recently created the How the Deal was Done Podcast and this is actually a clip from that show featuring Colin Specter. Listen to this.
Andrew Kappel and Colin Specter: When I made that jump from SDR to closer and account executive. I was still pretty early in my sales career. Something that I did really well, just to continue on that question of why was at the top? I really put in a lot of effort in champion building and developing that connection with the buying committee and the buying people. At that time, it was HR leaders, VPs of HR. Part of the ethos of Namely was elevating the HR leader to a higher place in terms of the corporate structure. This whole concept of having a chief people officer was new, and Namely was really evangelizing this. We had a great sizzle effect and emotional appeal with HR leaders, really evangelizing HR as this great career path and created a community around that. I had a really great connection with the HR buyer. But the HR buyer would be the champion, and the CFO would always be the economic buyer.
One of my early deals, well, many of my early deals were with tech companies, Namely was this cool HR tech company, and we were selling to all peers in the SaaS world, and Namely being headquartered in New York City, we also had, of course, the financial services market, insurance market all here. I started to get into these larger accounts, these older-school accounts. One of the first lessons learned, and maybe how the deal was not done for me, was I was assigned this really large financial services account. I thought I’d done my research, but they had a brand new HR leader, and she was keen on bringing in new-age tech and process and everything. I had a great champion, great initiative, and we were a vendor of choice and had done a great job on the business case and everything. It was time. She had got me access to the CFO. It was time for me to come in and present to the CFO. I put on my Namely polo. It looked like one like this, tucked it in and brought my Namely backpack with my laptop. My sales engineer came with me and we took the subway down the financial district and went up to this big high-rise building and get brought in by the reception and brought into the boardroom where my champion is sitting, the CFO and the controller. They’re really business formal, completely business formal. Here I am in my Namely polo thinking I’m this young hotshot account executive. I’ve got a champion. I got this in the bag. I got vendor choice over ADP, paychecks, ultimate software. The CFO looks me up and down and he just clearly eyeing what I’m wearing. He’s like, I’ll never put my payroll with you. Oh, wow. Just like, up and down.
I remember I was just shocked. I have my backpack still on my shoulder. I’m looking around, I look at the champion and her face goes white. I’m like, Okay, I guess we’re done here. I just turned around and the sales engineer and I walked out. It had hit me right away when I got to the office. Then you were a fish out of water a little bit. I was really a fish out of water. I guess the lesson to impart for the audience there, especially the newer rep up and coming in the world, and I interview a lot of SDRs today as VP of Sales, is do your research on the culture of the business that you’re walking into. Even if your champion might seem cool and edgy, the other buying committee might be a little more formal or buttoned up. You really want to understand a sense of, especially on the dress code, all of that, every touch point counts. You are a representation of your business and everything. They tend to want to partner with like partners. The CFO, much more conservative, suit and tie. That deal was a close loss for me, unfortunately. But I was able to reassign that account, and we were able to get back in a quarter or two later. They were still having the same challenges they had been having with their payroll provider. I gave all the tips to the new account executive, and he went in suited up with our VP. I’ll never forget that lesson.
Scott Ingram: For a link to Andrew’s full interview with Colin Specter in episode 37 of his How the Deal was Done podcast, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1753. Once you’ve clicked over there, be sure to click right back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!