Full Transcript below. Here you can find the condensed show notes.
Intro
You’re listening to the Sales Success Story’s pod cast where we deconstruct world class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more visit us at Top 1 FM. Here is your host Scott Ingram.
Scott Ingram
Today my guest is Bill Pai. Bill is the top director of Strategic Accounts at Cornerstone OnDemand. Thanks for joining me today Bill.
Bill Pai
Pleasure to be here Scott.
Scott Ingram
Now I haven’t done a very good job of representing the account management role lately, since you have to go all the way back to episode 1 to hear my conversation with Mike Dudgeon at Linked In. what makes Bill really interesting is that he has been in all the roles. He has spent most of his career in new client acquisition, he’s been in RVP but he’s very intentionally decided to stay in this role and I’m looking forward to talking about that, but before we do that we are going to start like we always do so that you can get as much value as possible, out of the first 5 to 10 minutes of the show and I’ll ask Bill what he believes are the top 3 things that have allowed him to get to, and stay at the top in this current role. Bill what do you say?
Bill Pai
Shure I’ll be happy to speak to that Scott and first let me say that of course there are many, many more than 3 keys to long term sales success. You know things such as studying and staying up on the industry and preparation and so on, but your question was specifically about the top 3 things that I would say and so after having given it some thought I have narrowed it down to these 3. The first being having passion for what I sell. The second being listening carefully and third keeping perspective and a sense of humor. Would you like me to go into those a little bit?
Scott Ingram
Please do.
Bill Pai
Sure. Well the first one I hope would be obvious for most successful sales people, and that is having passion. Quit frank, putting it quite simply, if you don’t believe yourself and what you are selling how are you going to convince anyone else it’s a good deal for them? I really feel very passionately for what I am selling at this time with my current organization. I believe our clients meaning the organizations, typically corporate and public sector in the organizations, plus the employees. The people that make up those organizations will benefit through implementing our talent management solutions. It will make them more effective as organizations. It will empower them as individuals and both their companies and society in general will benefit from all that happening. So I do believe in it and I really try to live it and express that when I’m talking with my client prospects. Secondly listening carefully. Once again that is probably no revelation to any successful sales person. You know people, client prospects they don’t want to be talked at so much as they want to be listened to, and listening you know is more than just the act of hearing it’s also listening in the sense of caring, of responding, of addressing and so it’s very important to listen carefully to who you are speaking with, and even listening careful on conversations where you may not be one of the main players. You know you may be one in a group you know a meeting and yet you can still learn a great deal by listening. That could be useful later and then lastly and I kind of toyed with the idea of making this the first one, but keeping perspective and a sense of humor. [03:28] Now I wouldn’t say this if I was say a heart surgeon but what I do, well I think it is valuable is not like a doctor. If I don’t close a sale you know on the last day of the quarter nobody is going to die. It’s unfortunate but keep in mind that it is simply business, and part of keeping perspective is also having a sense of humor, and a sense of humor is very valuable I believe not only in life but in business, because a sense of humor can help you from not taking yourself or losses too seriously. A sense of humor can help you deal with challenging clients by seeing some of the humor of what’s going on, and your interactions and then lastly a sense of humor is a great way to establish reports, to establish relationships which is such an important part of selling as well. I would tell you that all of my good friends, one thing I would say that I have in common with all of my good friends is that we have a shared sense of humor in many ways, and when you find a client or prospect that you are dealing with where you have a similar humor it creates a bond, because seeing a sense of humor in someone else that you appreciate and like suggest other crucial qualities, maybe a similar view on the world and so it can really help you build report. There has been a number of times in my career where having a shared sense of humor with one of my clients you know, really enhanced our relationships and our partnerships and just basically made it more fun to work together.
Scott Ingram
Well Bill the sense of humor piece that really intrigued me the most when you sent the list. Can you give an example and hopefully that’s in the form of a funny story?
Bill Pai
Well I don’t know if it’s funny but I can give you a story.
Scott Ingram
Go for it.
Bill Pai
Back when I started out my career, I’m originally from Chicago and I started out my career with IBM, and I was in the very beginning stages of my career and I worked for a division of IBM, and I covered Central and Western Illinoi and Iowa and I remember there was 1 customer I dealt with in Rock Island Illinoi. It’s on the west coast of the quod cities. 2 of which are in Illinoi and 2 of which are in Iowa. There was a company out there called Bituminous Casualty Corporation and it basically provided insurance for minors of Bituminous mines in the area. I believe it’s still around although it may have been renamed. [06:04] So there was the VP of IT there, a guy named Dick Smith who I was working with. Now here I am, I’m just starting out my career and here he is, he was at the tail end of his career. He was a Korean War veteran. You know an old grizzled battled scared veteran of IT, and I mean that in an affectionate sense and you would think in a sense we had very little in common. You know he lived all his life in the rural areas of Illinoi. I had grown up in Chicago but for some reason we hit it off famously although we had so little in common and part of it was because we had a shared sense of humor. We found each other’s jokes funny and you know we would have good laughs, went out to have lunch and so on. To give you a specific example like it became a running gag with us over the 4 to 5 years I worked with him. He was the VP of IT at this company and his wife also worked at the company. She was a few levels lower than him in the IT organization where she was a tape Liberian. If you remember mounting the tapes you know for IBM tape storage drives, and Dick it became a common thing for Dick to express frustration that his wife who was having some health issues, but really loved her job would not retire and so he would say I really want her to retire. She doesn’t need to work but she just loves it and it’s really hard on her knees, and so over the years to come every time I would see him I would ask, so Dick is your wife retired yet? He would go no still not retired. Then 1 day after a few years I come into his office and he is smiling like the cat who ate the canary, and I asked him what was up, and he said Bill, now once again just picture the big smile where he said Bill this morning I signed off on the purchase of an automotive tape management system. I have eliminated my wife’s job and she is retired as from today, and so I said congratulations Dick on your wife’s forced retirement. Let’s go have lunch and for the first and only time we got a beer together at lunch.
Scott Ingram
That’s hilarious. I guess he was in a position to make that happen.
Bill Pai
Yeas I don’t know how his wife responded but he was happy as a clown.
Scott Ingram
That’s awesome. So Bill I have a couple of questions on your other points. Particularly on the passion point. Did you seek out Cornerstone because you were passionate about what they were doing, or is the passion in what you sell really worked to develop?
Bill Pai
Well I had been in prior to my current company, I was with a competitor of that so I don’t really been in the industry or in selling these types of solutions, and I already did have some passion for it but at the same time once I joined Cornerstone, my passion for the Cornerstone in created as I learned more about it, and one of the reasons I joined and I was recruited to Cornerstone but thought somebody I hadn’t worked with previously, but while I found the space interesting I had not yet fully grasped the degree to which Cornerstone offered a superior solution to many of the other options out there. [09:23] The more I learned the more passionate I got and so it’s sort of an introvert process going at it from both sides. Does that answer your question?
Scott Ingram
Yeah it does. That’s great and on the listening front, I mean and this has come up on the top 3 of several of the guests that I’ve had on this show. Can you talk about that in more specifics? Are they techniques that you use, are there ways that you think you listen better than others that impact your results?
Bill Pai
Frankly no. I think listening carefully is something that is irrespective of whether its business or personal or educational, I mean simply a matter of being, its more related to being considerate of others and taking time to pay attention to what they are saying, and also being able to observe figuratively speaking how they say it and what’s important to them, and then part of that is making sure that you highlight what they said is important. Making sure you follow up accordingly. Making sure you don’t go off on a tangency, but you know I think that most successful sales people and most people who have strong relationships with others are capable of listening carefully. They may be stylistic differences but no I don’t think I do it better than anyone else. I may appreciate it more than others but I don’t have any secrets about it.
Scott Ingram
Well I heard what you said but I’m going to go off and on a tangent, and before I start to dig deeper into my conversation with Bill I wanted to quickly suggest that you set yourself up with the free account on Nudge. Nudge is a modern sales platform that uses AI to find actionable insights on your prospects and customers for you. Sign up for Nudge to start building real relationships with your buyers. Just type Top1.fm/nudge and you can get started today. So Bill talk about your role and how you got to be number 1.
Bill Pai
Well I’m currently a strategic account director at Cornerstone OnDemand and my role is to work with several of the largest strategic clients in our organization. These are typically all organizations with employee headcounts and extended partner networks in the hundreds and thousands. Typically are global although not every single one of them is but also deal with multiple languages based on multiple continents and so on. It’s my responsibility to maintain the client relationships and expand it, as Cornerstone’s offerings and client’s needs evolve.
Scott Ingram
Awesome and can you qualify your results for us in what better way you are comfortable?
[12:07]
Bill Pai
I’ve been fortunate enough to have a good deal of success during my time here. Last year I was at 195% number 1 in revenue generation in my organization. Previous year I was at 150%. So it’s been a run of a number of good years and I can say 5 out of the last 6 years I have been number 1 in revenue in my team.
Scott Ingram
That’s fantastic and I mentioned in the beginning that you have worn all the different sales hats, why did you decide to stay in account management cause I know that wasn’t you original intent?
Bill Pai
That is correct Scott. In my previous company and frankly for the last 18 years before I joined Cornerstone I had been in sales management, and my prior position was original VP of sales. Once again when I joined Cornerstone I was recruited and I was interested when I was approached by the person I worked with previously, I was seeking a sales management position. I was comfortable doing it and I had been successful doing it and I wanted to continue doing so, but I was informed they did not have a position at that time in sales management, but also that they had approached me with a different position in mind and that was the first of its kind, which was basically account manager although that’s not the title we give them now. An account manager for the client’s strategic accounts. Several years ago our company was much smaller. There were far fewer clients and far fewer very large strategic clients. So they wanted to bring somebody in who was a senior sales person, who could interact with executives at these enterprise clients, and as one of the people I interviewed with said way back when, he said “we want a sales person who cares” and so they brought me into that spot. I took it with the understanding that at a certain point had I proved myself successful, that I would move into sales management once again in the new clients acquisitions side, or within the account management group once it grew to the point where they had managers, and all that happened and I was given the opportunity but I decided not to take it, and stayed in the position I’m in, which I still am. Reasons were first that I found it to be far more interesting than I had anticipated. It’s fascinating working with these global enterprises to help effect organizational transformation, and also I have a couple of clients that are particularly interesting to work with, and had I moved into management I would have been forced to give them up and I didn’t want to do that, and then lastly I was doing very well financially and was starting to enjoy that without the additional stress and travel of sales management.
[15:02]
Scott Ingram
That’s great and where did this start for you? How do you get into sales in the beginning?
Bill Pai
Sure. Well when I was in college I became an IBM intern. My parents were IBM’ers. My father was a quarter century club IBM and spent over 30 years there. I had an IBM scholarship in school so I started at University of Chicago, and so I started as an intern in their AR department in one of the Chicago branch offices. Once again I was in accounts receivable and was basically handling invoicing and so on, working 20 hours a week in the school year and full time during the summer, and I have always been interested in watching the dynamics of groups of people, and so I was working this branch office and had a chance to observe people in action and all the different functions in this branch office. It was one of the larger ones. I worked with Sears among others which was much huger or larger at the time. Not the Sears that is a shadow of what it is today. So working with what was going on in the branch office I pretty quickly realized that the big dogs in the branch, the ones who were most glamoured, most respect, the most applause and awards at branch office meetings were the top sales people, and I had not envisioned being in sales at the time, but I didn’t really have a specific thing I wanted to go for and just being somewhat competitive, I said those are the top dogs and I want to be one of them and that’s how I got into sales.
Scott Ingram
Awesome and in those days, I mean IBM was legendary for their sales training, so imagine that gave you a really strong foundation?
Bill Pai
Absolutely. I was in a 13 month training program. 3 weeks at a time in classes down in Dallas area and it was just an extremely valuable sales and technology education training program.
Scott Ingram
Yeah it’s interesting, maybe some folks will reach out to me with this answer. I’ve scratched my head. I often think one of the best places to start and this will be the next question I ask you, but I think if you are starting in a sales career it makes a lot of sense to go to work for a company that one of those really amazing training programs, and back in the day you know IBM and Xerox were kind of the gold standard. I don’t really know what that is anymore. I don’t know who has the gold standard of sales training from an organization where you can get a great start, and then be massively recruited. Maybe you have an idea but I’m really interested in if you were starting over today, if there is anything you would have done differently, or if you would have taken maybe a different path in your career if you had a chance to do it over again?
Bill Pai
Sure you raise a good point Scott. You are absolutely right that companies like Xerox and IBM were legendary for their sales training programs, and I’m not aware either of another company at this time that would have occupied an equivalent position. I know at one point it was Acquired Seeable Systems was legendary for their training, but once again they are no longer around. [18:16] If it came to me starting over for me today, first off I would say I consider IBM to be one of the world’s great companies and it was great for me and it taught me a great deal and I don’t regret any of it, however if I were starting over today and if I were say advising my son, if you wanted to go into a business career as he is too young to know that yet but I think based on what I have seen in my career, and during my career I have worked close with the big 4 consulting companies okay, and if I were starting over today I think I might recommend starting with one of them because I have been extremely impressed by the people that have come out of those consulting companies, where it was Anderson Consulting way back when or Extensor, PWC, I think that their skill set, their analytical skill set, I think may be a little bit broader which IMB that is more focused specifically on IT, and back in the days when I was in IBM even more so on hardware. So I think that for a bright ambitious person looking to go far in the business world, I think starting with one of the big 4 if you could get in would be my recommendation.
Scott Ingram
You know I think that makes a lot of sense because the sales skills really mattered well in the [inaudible] [19:50], and most of our emphasis has be here of late. I think having a really strong business adermin makes a huge amount of difference, because you can’t communicate from a business perspective, it’s really hard to do the sales piece.
Bill Pai
Absolutely. Absolutely correct.
Scott Ingram
So Bill you have had a very long career. What are you most proud of through that adventure?
Bill Pai
Well there is a number of things. I mean setting aside that fact that I’m proud that I have been successful, shall we say that I’ve hit my numbers and that I have justified the investment that my employers have made in me. So I upheld my part of the deal so to speak but looking at it another way in terms of things I have had the opportunity to accomplish during my career, there are number ones but mostly I’m proud of what I worked together with some of the major clients over the past couple of decades to achieve. In the case with Cornerstone here to be able to effect organizational transformation at the global level. You know to enable organizations to become more effective. I’m very proud of how they been able to do that. I worked with one of the big 4 to totally transform their approach to learning in development globally. It’s been a multiyear project and I find that very satisfying. I’ve worked with these people now for years and we have accomplished many good things, and I can’t overstate how satisfying I find it. I mean when it comes to my career of business, not my personal life, in business I found there is nothing I found to be more satisfying than working together with people I like and respect successfully achieve a common objective. That’s very satisfying and so when I look back at when I’m most proud of, some of the larger and far leaching projects where we together accomplished some big things. Does that answer your question?
[21:54]
Scott Ingram
That is awesome. Yeah absolutely. What about the flip side? What’s been the biggest challenge or maybe the most challenging time?
Bill Pai
Well life is a challenge and sales is certainly not one of the lesser challenging parts of life. I mean part of the nature of intonation technology I find I’m hard pressed to think of another industry that changes more rapidly than this one does, and so to keep abreast of the macro trends, to keep abreast of the latest hot buttons for buyers, to keep a float of all of the products on enhancements, all of the competitive offerings, that’s almost a full time job in itself and in fact we do have for insane competitive analyst, we do have you know product specialists and so on. No one person can do it all and certainly not a sales person with all the other demands of their time. So to find that balance where you can keep on possibly refreshing your tool set to keep up to date, on all the things you need to keep up to date on while maintaining a steady level of activity to drive results. You know that’s a challenge and it’s an ongoing dynamic that we all navigate more successfully sometimes more than others. You know this can be like a pendulum swinging back and forth but that’s what I consider to be the greatest challenge I face.
Scott Ingram
And how do you manage it? How do you find you are most successful in keeping up?
Bill Pai
Well as I said some years sometimes I’m more successful than others but what I found in general is that you have to set aside times, specifically for say product you know product refreshers, prospecting and so on. You know don’t try to squeeze it in when you don’t have some fire burning. You have to set aside time. For instance I will specifically set aside time on Fridays to do more of my prospecting, than I would on Mondays. I think Fridays work better and so you know I have to fence off some time for that and stick to the schedule. Don’t just squeeze it in when you can.
Scott Ingram
Yeah. Are there any particular resources that you find more helpful than not as easy that work?
[24:11]
Bill Pai
Well we live in a, I mean when you consider how it is now compared to things a couple of decades ago, I mean we are in such a better position in terms of our ability to do our own research, I mean with the internet. I remember, I’m dating myself here but I remember in the early days of my career we would go to the competitor’s headquarters to get their annual report out of the lobby. Now days with a few mouse clicks or a few keyboard strokes you can find out so much that is out there. I mean everything from annual reports to business trends to stock markets industries and matrix and so on. So I guess it’s taking the easy route saying the internet but just by going online you can find, especially with public corporations they have to be upfront to a certain degree. So if you just simply you know make the time there is a great deal you can find out, and in my opinion any prospect that you go into has the right to expect that you should have done some research before you went in there and took up some of their time, because the information is out there and they should not have to educate you about their own business, their own company, what’s important to them. At least not from the ground up. You should have done your homework and in doing so you demonstrate creditability to them, and it puts you in a better position to have a meaningful discussion.
Scott Ingram
Yeah absolutely. What is the rest of your information diet look like? What are you typically listening to and reading, whether it’s while you are commuting or otherwise?
Bill Pai
Well I subscribe to several business magazines. You know I think it’s very important to stay abreast of that and the obvious things like Bloomberg and so on, but then I also subscribe to some industry specific things and then also Bersin by Deloitte I worked with Josh in a previous life and I think that the reports, the analysis, the insights that Bersin by Deloitte produces are tremendously relevant and insightful to the industry that I’m in.
Scott Ingram
Spell that for me and we will make sure we put that in the show ups.
Bill Pai
Bersin that’s B as in bravo, E as in echo, R as in Romeo, S as in Seara, I as in India, N as in November. Bersin by Deloitte. It used to be Bersin and associates until it was acquired by Deloitte a couple of years ago.
Scott Ingram
Okay awesome and then would you describe yourself as a morning person or a night owl?
Bill Pai
I’m more of a night owl but let me say that I get up very early each day, because I’m on the US West coast and I support clients on the east coast and in Europe. So I mean I love to stay up late at night but I’m up early every day working so you know I stretch both ways, and I also support clients in Asia so sometimes I have to be on evening calls, but I’m in the crack of dawn because there is a lot to be done.
[27:24]
Scott Ingram
Sure. How do you structure your day? What are your kind of core routines look like, whether that’s morning or evening?
Bill Pai
Yeah nothing too earth shattering here. Basically at the end of each day and let me say that I usually work a couple of hours in the evening to clean up loose ends, and set my schedule in order for the next day. So whatever that is at the end of the day I assemble a list of actions for the following day. You know and I priorities the list and so when I roll in first thing in the morning the following day I start attacking that list and checking them off, and if there is something that I cannot complete or was depending on someone else to get back to me before I can, I move into the next day and I just make that list my number 1 priority. Obviously there are critical interruptions that come up now and again, but a critical urgent interruption is not the only type there is going to come up. Sometimes there are urgent things that are not that important, or there are just important things that can distract you but I have to be very focused on making sure that those do not take me away from focusing on that list.
Scott Ingram
Yeah do you have particular processing to make sure that that doesn’t happen, that you don’t get derailed by those less important things?
Bill Pai
Not really. I use to you know set aside blocks of time which I wouldn’t answer the phone or email and so on. It’s getting a little harder with instant messenger and so on although you can turn that off as well, but I usually try to a couple of points during the day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, to shut off all interruptions and focus on something nonstop for at least an hour.
Scott Ingram
Perfect and then what about kind of the higher level, how you might be stretching your week, it sounded like your carving out some time on Mondays to do some personal development, and just learning and just keeping up to date or there other kind of anchor things that are important in the way that you set up the week or the month?
Bill Pai
Yeah well I mean realizing of course that there are always exceptions and a lot is subject to the schedule constraints of others, but I typically try to spend Monday’s and Fridays in the office. Monday to kind of get things going and handle some of the personal development as you mentioned. Tuesday to Thursday’s are when I would be visiting clients, traveling and visiting clients and the Friday would be prospecting and catching up on loose ends, and also for some of the large clients I have, I have standing reoccurring weekly calls and I usually try to put those on Friday.
Scott Ingram
That’s makes sense. What about when you are traveling, are there ways that you structure that time knowing that its often times very unstructured, or other just tips of the tools of the trade that you’ve found that help you kind of manage that when you are on the road?
[30:29]
Bill Pai
The only rule that I make is I do try to set aside an hour even when I’m traveling somewhere in the middle of the day, whether it be over lunch or sometimes you can’t get back to back meetings, or you may be in transit, I do want to have at least 1 free hour in the middle of the day to respond to emails and voice mails. Okay I don’t start the day and then go to the end of the day before I respond to emails and messages. I’m not saying that I respond to every one of them but I at least scan through them, identify what’s critical or time sensitive or what’s simple to respond to, because the speed of business is such that things can’t languish for days like they used to.
Scott Ingram
Yeah and anything else besides just making sure you have that chunk to stay on top of everything?
Bill Pai
This would not deal with my own personal organization, but more on how I would interact with others. I do believe that someday if I take the time I would like to write a little article on email communications, because I think it’s very important that when you are dealing with very busy people who are often on the go, many times when you send them an email they are going to see it on their smart phone. So it’s a very small screen and so you need to get to the point fast, and so I have some general policies where I always put the subject of my note in the subject lines. Okay for instance I don’t subscribe to the idea of people just hit reply to a long chain of emails, even if the email chain goes off to a different subject and they don’t change the subject line. People need to know just by looking at the subject line what you want or what it’s about, and then secondly I try to make the first sentence express clearly what I want out of that note. Now that’s not to say that I don’t say hello Jack. Great to see you again yesterday and then I jump into the main point, but either the first or the second sentence make it clear what that note is about. People should not have to read a couple of paragraphs or scroll down a few pages to find out what you want. Make it clear what you want right at the outset and I have found that you are far more likely to get a response especially from executives when you get right to the point, you are very clear and you don’t waste their time.
Scott Ingram
Well if you ever decide to write that article you let me know. We will be happy to share that with the community, and speaking of the community we have got a new little tool to make it easier for people to join our Sales Success community. If you text Top 1, that’s the number 1 to 444999 you can get your own invitation to the sales success community, which is all free and we try and pack that with as much value as we can. Just note that will only work in the US though if you are outside of the US go to Top1 FM and sign up that way. Bill any particular tools or apps that you find you just can’t live without?
[33:32]
Bill Pai
Well first and foremost is Sales Force. The last several companies I have been at have used Sales Force and I use it religiously. I think this is part of, I mean I first started doing this when I was a sales manager because I was very adamant with my folks that they should capture things in Sales Force, their contacts, contact information. They should be regularly updating their forecasts and they should not allow them to become obsolete and so on, and that they should attach all executed paperwork and relevant other documents or files to the opportunity or to the account. So I live in Sales Force every day then I have our company internet, company Wikkie which is always the best source for the latest up to date information and then I have various news feeds that come in including Linkin from the client’s organizations that I work with. So it’s a regular diet of information and quiet often when I’m in my office during lunch, I eat lunch as I call Aldesko. I eat at my desk and that’s when I review the news of the day and all the feeds and so on.
Scott Ingram
That’s awesome. Now Bill do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy, or in this case maybe it’s even an account management strategy?
Bill Pai
Well my company subscribes to the Challenger Model. Are you familiar with that?
Scott Ingram
I am.
Bill Pai
Yeah and I think that’s, we have seen I mean over my career I have gone through so many different selling methodology’s and workshops come and go, and this is one of the more recent ones although it’s not the latest, but I thought that one was particularly insightful. I thought it really made some strong points. I thought it did a very good job of identifying the different types of sales performers of which I have seen in my careers. So I can from personal experience say I think they are onto something there. So if somebody were to ask me, I want to get into sales, what is a sales philosophy you might recommend, I would probably lead with the Challenger.
Scott Ingram
Is there a second one that was a go to behind that or was a little maybe more foundation for you?
Bill Pai
Maybe Solution Selling, you remember that one and way back early in my career I went through Miller Hymen one, and then I really have gone through a bunch. There was the old Sibyls Systems, The Task, TAS, target account selling which was very effective as well.
Scott Ingram
Interesting. Yeah my caution would be on the Challenger Sale. It’s a little bit dense and you need to read the whole thing. I think a lot of people have read the first bit of Challenger and gone running off, and have taken it a little bit out of context and I think it could be a very dangerous methodology if you don’t take it all the way through.
[36:32]
Bill Pai
Yeah I would agree with that and also would say there are only 5 sales types that they identify in that book. You know nobody fits into a simple set of labels. You know there are each successful sales person has a little bit of all 5 of those characters and character types within them, and they come out at different points in time. You know you could not just be one type exclusively and not have any of the other traits I think and be successful. To a certain degree you adapt to the situation.
Scott Ingram
Yeah absolutely. How would you describe your style, your overall style?
Bill Pai
Well if you look at the Challenger Model I think I might describe myself as the lone wolf as it fits on in there. I tend to work somewhat independently. I feel that you know I should not go to my management and ask what do I do, I should go to my management and say here is the situation I’m facing, here is how I intend to approach it, here is what I need from you, do you approve? I think they are looking to me to come up with solutions, rather than just ask questions. So on those lines, consultative is an overused word but I try to listen carefully to the client, and to respond accordingly with what they say are their priority’s and needs at the time.
Scott Ingram
Awesome and how do you motivate yourself?
Bill Pai
You know that is an interesting question. I’m not sure how I would answer that because first let me say and both as a sales manager and as a parent, I believe that motivation comes from within. It’s not something you can you know hoist onto somebody. You know if your sales rep is not motivated to sell and over achieve or if your child is not motivated to do well in school, you are not going to be able to give them that motivation no matter how much you put him on plan or threaten to take away their games. So and I don’t have a problem motivating myself so I haven’t really thought about that, but you know I would say that I do believe that you know having goals and a sense of purpose are prerequisites for having a meaningful life. Otherwise you cannot judge whether or not you have been successful, whether you have made progress and you are also not able to acquire and enjoy the things that you find add to the quality of life. So you know I understand that what I do, while it doesn’t cure cancer, it’s not going to win the Nobel Peace Prize, I do believe that it contributes in a meaningful way to society. I want to be a part of it and also competitive. I see other people in the same field who I respect and I want to be considered in their class. So both just my goal to do something meaningful with my life and my competitive streak are what motivate me. Does that make sense?
[39:40]
Scott Ingram
It does and with that competitive piece, I mean being number 1 consistently as you have been, you don’t have a target in front of you, you’ve been more of a target on your back. How do you deal with that?
Bill Pai
Well I mean it’s ultimately flattering right. Everybody wants to knock off the top dog including me when I’m not. So I mean I don’t know that I have considerably have a target on my back, no one is the coworkers that I have in my company, we are all on the same team. It’s not some game and so I spend some time helping others when they request assistance or want to bounce ideas off me. I don’t look at myself as being above them or better than them, you know I’m one of them. I just happen to be enjoying a good run of success and I’m happy to share anything I can to help them as well. So I don’t really view it as having a target on my back. We are all just striving to do the best we can.
Scott Ingram
Yeah. Bill is there something that you believe that the average AE would think is crazy?
Bill Pai
Out of all the questions that I thought you might ask, this one stumped me a little bit because I don’t really have a good answer to that one. I’m sorry. I just don’t think so. I’m pretty standard. I don’t have any crazy off the wall ideas that I’m aware of that would give you an answer to your question. I really don’t have anything.
Scott Ingram
That’s okay. Anything on the flip side, is there something that you think the average AE that is not at the top believes that you think is a little bit nuts?
Bill Pai
I wouldn’t say nuts but I think a little perhaps misguided, and that is that the idea that I think sometimes sales management or at least sometimes overall company management believes that people, or that employees sometimes can be binary in their approach to the things they do every day, or that in effect you can flip a switch and be one way or the other. Let me explain. For instance many companies that I have been with when they are talking to sales people about going after sales, they will say okay you know go do what it takes. You know don’t take no for an answer, if you encounter an obstacle work your way around it and find another approach. Keep pushing, keep experimenting and keep trying new things and anything to get to the objective, okay that with the client and the prospect. Now internally make sure you follow the process, make sure you fill out the forms and make sure you don’t rock the boat. I mean people don’t flip on back and forth like a light switch, and so just as I would work to you know try to exonerate processors on the client side, sometimes you have to do that internally too.
[42:37]
Scott Ingram
Yeah that’s an interesting thought. What has been the most important decisions you have made, or lessons you have had to learn to get where you are today?
Bill Pai
Obviously that’s a rich ground for discussion but one of the most important lessons I have learned is you know, perhaps it seems like a blinding glimpse of the obvious but you know no one is an island in this day selling. Especially selling complex enterprise solutions and your part of a team, and as a sales rep or you know account manager you may be the tip of the spear so to speak or the tip of the iceberg, but there is a large organization and support structure in place to support you, and should never forget that and not forgetting that means a number of things. First don’t try to be a hero all the time. Leverage the other resources out there. Secondly beware those other resources can provide you with some useful ideas on how to do your own job better, and then lastly always make sure to show your appreciation for those who made your success possible. You know I mean if product people didn’t develop the product, if the consultants did not implement it, if the accounting people did not make sure the payments flowed it would all fall apart, if any part did not fulfill their respected responsibility in the organizations. So I think that’s a very important lesson to know that we are not islands and you have to learn to work effectively, and smoothly and consistently with all the other arms in the organization you need to be self-successful.
Scott Ingram
That’s an interesting thought. It reminds me one of my very favorite articles of all time, I’ll have to dig up the link for it, it’s a little bit dated but in the Harvard Business review there was a piece on networking for sales people, and what that really meant and I think typically when you think of what a sales professionals network is. Its potential opportunities and referral partners and things of that nature, but they really said yeah that’s one of about 4 different elements and the other piece is the relationships that you have in your organization, and you need that in order to make things happen for those clients, and it was just a really interesting piece I would highly recommend. I will again put that into the show notes. You will find that at Top1 FM as well.
[45:14]
Bill Pai
Agreed. Another part if I may Scott about fostering productive relationships within the organization and up, is the [inaudible] [45:25] I earlier point or sub point on email communications. One of the ways you develop productive relationships with people is by not wasting their time, and so you know in your emails, in your voice mails, you know get to the point. Make it clear what you need. Make it clear how they can help. Don’t make it hard for them to figure that out and when people find out that you don’t waste their time, they are more likely to give you some of their time.
Scott Ingram
I like that. So I’m playing with a new idea. I think we are calling this the soap box section and I think for you, if you have been thinking of writing an article on the email piece, what else have you been thinking of writing an article on? I know you have got a wealth of wisdom and I want to shake some more of it lose.
Bill Pai
Well I mean perhaps this comes from my having been a manager, a sales manager for a good part of my career, well actually for the majority of my career and then also being an individual contributor and being in that role now, you know I’m a big believer in the line from Peter [inaudible] [46:33] who said “so much of what we call management consists of making it harder for people to work”. I mean there are so many processers that need to be followed that sometimes people forget that the process was put in place to help accomplish an end, and they forget that and for them following the process becomes the end and we need to keep sight of the larger picture, and I find that harder and harder to do as organizations get larger. My last few companies have been relatively small. Typically pre IPO and I really enjoyed the lack of excessive processers in a small company, but as they got bigger, hopefully more successful they started to see more processers come in and that is inevitable of course and necessary, but you need to find a good balance or if say, and this happened for me a couple of times, if matters reached a point where you think okay that’s it, the company has reached a point where due to the growth size or whatever its just to bureaucratic for me, it’s time to move on and find another company. You know as [inaudible] [47:47] once said hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned, and when they start making life miserable something is wrong there and so I also encourage when I’m asked by friends or colleagues, or other people who may be considering career changes or job changes, or maybe they need to due to their company getting quiet or something, one thing that I recommend to them is don’t just look at the company or the opportunity and the company, look at where that company is in terms of what stage in its life cycle okay. So for instance like I started out my career with IBM but I would have no interest in joining IBM right now. I’m not interested in joining a company where A is so huge and bureaucratic but also I don’t find particularly interesting a company that is looking for say a single digit growth a year. You know I want companies such as IBO companies that are looking for hyper growth or exponential growth, or they are at the beginning of the hockey stick curve and so I think that is something to consider as well.
[48:59]
Scott Ingram
Yeah that was a great point. I think it’s important to have an understanding of yourself and how much bureaucracy you are willing to put up with. I won’t name names in this episode but it’s not hard to look at my Link in profile and fill in the dots here, but you know most recently, fairly recently I went to work for one of those pre IPO companies and there were about 300 people, and we did indeed go public and then we were enquired and I looked and I notices wow I have 130000 colleagues, and there is a fair amount of bureaucracy that comes with that and you know for me that is not the right fit. I needed to go find another place that was a little bit smaller, a little bit more dynamic but I know that about myself. Like I know where I am going to thrive and where I’m not. So that’s a really interesting point.
Bill Pai
Yeah I think that also applies to, especially applies to successful entrepreneurs. As we all know the skill set to found and get the company start a company are not necessarily the same skill set. So that may be required when you are taking that company across the casim so to speak, and becoming a main stream market company. You know where Churchill said “those who won the war could never make peace and those who could have made the peace would never have won the war”.
Scott Ingram
Oh that’s interesting. Well Bill let’s bring that back to kind of your experience across these different roles. So we have talked about finding the right fit and trying in terms of this [inaudible] [50:29] organization or its maturity level, what advice would you give for folks who are kind of considering, cause there is a lot of earlier stage sales professionals that I know that are listening to this show, and you know their SPR and BER type of roles and they are looking into the future, you know having spent a lot of time in new client development, and been on the management side, been on the account management side, how would you suggest people look at those options and evaluate them?
[51:03]
Bill Pai
You mean a single job opportunity?
Scott Ingram
Yeah.
Bill Pai
Well first and foremost is the point I made earlier you know, what’s the stage of that companies life cycle and is that something that you are comfortable with. Some people may want a mature organization where that is very stable. You know some people may like that more. So an entrepreneur organization that may change its submission every year until they find something that really sticks. So I would say look at what you find to be compatible, what you are comfortable with. Although I would say [inaudible] [51:44] again to one of our earlier points, I think it’s useful for new sales people to start out at organizations such as the big 4. Give yourself that solid base of sales skills and training, and also get an understanding of what working in a large organization is for. Once you have gotten that under your belt then consider the level of risk and activity and compensation or opportunity you find most successful, and then start doing the thing like taking advantage of offerings such as what you are doing Scott, which is listening to other people that have been successful in the same niche that you think might be one’s for you, and start to see what you can learn from them. Try it out and see how it goes.
Scott Ingram
Bill what would you want to know about top AE’s and other organizations?
Bill Pai
Well one of the first questions I would ask them or like to get insight into is how do they tune out the noise. As I mentioned how do they deal with the volume of communications, and it’s an irony that the more timesaving devises we have today the less time we seem to have. So how do you tune out the noise? How do you separate the important from the less important, the urgent from the less urgent and how do you find that balance because you know I think that would be useful. I can’t remember who it was but a few years ago somebody showed me some simple little Outlook tricks. You know how to manage your emails in Outlook. Filing them, color coding them you know based on the sender, thing like that. These are all minor things but when you are getting possibly a few hundred emails a day, just having a way to have the ones that meet certain criteria that you feel make them more important, and have those jump out at you either through different color coding or going into a different folder, whatever you know it can save you several minutes every hour and over the course of the day that can add up. Sao I would be very interested in all top performers, how do you manage your time, how do you filter out, how do you tell the signal from the noise?
Scott Ingram
Great question. I love it and I don’t need to re-ask it from you because you already touched on it. So that’s great. Bill who is the most successful sales person you know personally?
[54:18]
Bill Pai
It may sound a little self-serving but I would say one of them is CEO of my current company, who is not technically a sales person but obviously in that role. You know he is selling the company and what it offers and I don’t think his personality type is, and not what we might consider a natural sales person, so just by sheer effort, through constant learning, through constant practice and fanatical attention to detail he has been one of the country’s most successful entrepreneur/sales people. So when you say ones that I personally know that would fall into it.
Scott Ingram
Alright and to wrap up this is probably the hardest question of all, but I try and make it as actionable as we can. We spent a little over an hour sharing a lot of great insights, if you were to create a challenge for the listeners. Something they could do. Start today or tomorrow that would take them you know a week or 10 days to really impact their own performance and their own trajectory, what would you suggest that they do?
Bill Pai
And that is an excellent question Scott. Let me first say that I remember reading, let me try to change the browner a little bit by saying I remember reading somewhere way back when some phycologist behaviors, they take about approximately 28 days to form a new habit and so from that standpoint 7 days or 2 weeks aint going to do, something that you do for 7 days is not yet really an ingrained habit, but of course over the course of 1 or 2 weeks even if it’s not a habit that may be sufficient time for you to start to see if it works or not and then decide if you want to make it happen. So along those lines you know I would recommend, I can’t overstate that again how much it matters in a world where we are constantly interrupted, that you put some structure in your day. So I would that somebody sit down and think you know, okay I spend out of the 100% both the time that I have each week to work to focus on my job, you know what % of time do I think you know these handful of primary activities take, and then once you have got that idea then start to take a week and structure your week to allocate the appropriate amounts of time to each of those areas, and try it for a week or 2 and see how it feels. In a lot of cases you will find gee this one area X that I though took 10% of my time, is actually taking 30% of my time. So you start to notice when your own expectations are out of whack, and then you can either adjust to reflect that or you can try to adjust by reducing, by getting it back in line with your expectations. So try to set up a schedule based on how you think it would be most successful, or most appropriate for what’s important for you to do and then test that assumption over a couple of weeks. See if it works and most cases you will find there is something that isn’t what you expected, and so now how do you respond.
Scott Ingram
Yeah what a great challenge and talk about being right, you are not going to be able to figure out in week or 2. I mean I have spent years refining and defining sort of my own structure, and the way that I build my day and my week and my schedule and all of those things, but I think its critical important because if I don’t go through that process, you are not in control.
Bill Pai
Absolutely and there are certain things none of us can control, but we can exercise some degree and you know that fine line between knowing those things what you can and which you cannot is I would separate. The top performers are probably not that far apart in an objective sense from the non-top performers, but it is probably in those areas that little bit of difference that can make the big difference in performance results.
Scott Ingram
Yeah great thought. Bill this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and your insights, and everything you have shared with our audience today.
Bill Pai
It’s my pleasure Scott and I hope that somebody out there listening to it may find one or 2 things they find to be a useful or improvising value for them. Thank you.
Outro
Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our sales success community powered by [inaudible] [58:55], subscribe to our newsletter at Top1.FM.
[59:11]