Selling in a Time of Corona – S3E3 – Deadly Sins of Sales – Nick Verykios

Season 3 Episode 3

Deadly Sins of Sales – Nick Verykios

 

Creative opening - Unstoppable - Sia

“I'm unstoppable
I'm a Porsche with no brakes
I'm invincible
Yeah, I win every single game
I'm so powerful
I don't need batteries to play
I'm so confident
Yeah, I'm unstoppable today”

 

Introduction

So someone ate a bat, apparently, and the world turned upside down. Hi, I'm Elliot Epstein and I spent the last 20 years of my life coaching, consulting, training and speaking about all facets of sales development, pitching presentations, negotiation, the C suite, sales calls and all of the various components in the sales cycle in between. And now we find ourselves in a world that's very foreign. Welcome to Selling in a Time of Corona.

My special guest today has proved unstoppable. For decades. He's built businesses from scratch to multimillion dollar success stories.

ARN’s IT Industry Hall of Fam, there isn't much he hasn't seen in building, growing and developing revenue in a highly competitive environment. Yet what stands out is his heart, his soul and his eclectic background. He's been a professional musician, a mentor to many in and out of the business world, championed mental health causes and set up orphanages as just one example of his contribution back to the universe. As you'll hear, he has great insights into ethical professional selling and sales leadership. It's possible his only key wasted opportunity was spending too much time listening to this podcast as he was building his own house.

That's the part I envy the most. I'm so spatially challenged. I do a triumphant lap of honour around the house if I managed to change the battery in the TV remote.

So prepare for a dive into overcoming some of the deadly sins of sales from a guy with the life stories to back it up and a spiritual centre at the heart of it all. Here is my chat with Nick Varykios.

Elliot

Hello, Nick. Welcome to Slling in a Time of Corona. Great to have you on after all these years. What's been happening in your wonderful world?

Nick

Hey, Elliot. Thanks for having me on , I really appreciate it. I've been busy. I've been busy, occupying myself with things that I didn't think that I would have to be, busy in a world of Corona with a lot of work that I'm doing with mental health, and looking after very old, very old parents, among other things, as well as just working on the iasset.com  brand and building that. I've found myself ridiculously busy because there's plenty of occasions to be busy.

Elliot

Yeah, And you've led an eclectic life. So it's no surprise that you're involved in so many things. And I wanted to delve into that today for everyone where, given your rich experience, creating and selling companies and being successful, I'm going to throw some of my pet subjects at you. And I'm going to get your thoughts about these areas where I think sales could be a lot easier. And sales leadership could be a lot easier if these things were addressed. So I'm just going to throw these topics at you and get your top of mind rich experience ideas on the fly.How does that sound?

Nick

That sounds fantastic, man. And I'm very grateful and very humbled to be able to participate. Like I told you, we had a chat before and I spent the weekend building,and found time listening to your words and your listeners words. So if I can add to that, I'll come through.

Elliot

I should say you should get a life if you spend your weekend listening to this podcast. Well, isn't that so many of the building about There you go.

Nick

I'm Greek. Funny story, I building houses since I was nine. In those days, I think they called it a learning experience. And I think today they call a child exploitation. But I told you if I told you, I've saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in doing it myself. I've probably underestimated.

Elliot

That's great to hear. All right, let me throw the first of my pet subjects for you, Nick. The end of quarter in the IT industry or in financial services industry.

And believe it or not, creeping into the professional services world. End of quarter comes along and all the strategies get thrown out. All of the deals get turned over. Someone panics, puts on their brown pants and says to the sales team “All right, guys, get out there. Drop your pants by 2030%. Tell people who are not even ready to buy that they should be buying”, putting pressure on and removing all the great trusted advisor status that they have. And you wonder why the client treats them as a commodity supplier and why that relationship is damaged.

So of all the interactions you've seen with sales leaders, what are your thoughts on this wonderful behaviour?

Well, it's a huge area of concern. And for me, an end of quarter or an end of financial year or, H1 or H2, they're just points in time to measure, to assess and then to change behaviour, change strategy. It's not a time to get panicky and do that stupidity that you were referring to, because what you're doing is reacting to a target.

It has nothing to do with the customer. The customer doesn't care. The customer’s actually offended. So if you’re not delivering, delivering on the customer success that they're expecting of you, that you sold to them. Once you know you're not managing any lifetime value of the assets that you sold them, you're not doing any proactive management of the investment that you forced someone to make in your product, so it's going to throw them. They're not part of that process. So how they're going to respond or react favourably to that process?

In fact, you’ll probably start doing a damn good job of losing them, and it stands to reason what I've just said. It stands to reason. So the fact that it actually happens is because of another problem. And that is that a company doesn't have longer than three months in its sales team in the execution of its sales team and the occasion of its sales team to be able to deliver customer success. It's not even on the radar, and it's probably in many instances, because of a reporting requirement rather than a flow of sales.

A good salesperson doesn't give a damn. What the reporting does is give them an estimate of how they're going, not an occasion to respond to a gap or something. There's a bigger story around targets as well, which we might get to later. But it's, you know, in effect, when you're acting like that, it's all too late. You know, the customers already made decisions, and they probably have made decisions with better reps that don't put them in that unfortunate but also embarrassing situation because there's no discretionary spend at the end of the order.

So what are you trying to achieve? You know, basically what you're saying is I'm asking you for a favour because I've messed up. And how is that the sound? How's that going to sound to you as a customer? You know, they spend with you as an outcome. It's already done, the plans are already done. Everything has already happened. So if you see it from the point of view of an installed base motion, in other words, your customer and what they have to do, you work on landing deals.

And if and of course, all you're doing is trying to land a deal, you've lost, you've already lost because you haven't worked on after they've spent money with you. How do you help them invest further so you can get a better return on the investment they've made and these proposals that should be there. How do you also look after what they've already sold you in terms of renewals and things like that, what they've already done. It also had to exist as an asset when it's no longer valuable.

There's plenty to do with a customer. If you're sitting there having better than a cup of coffee with them and the end of the count, it doesn't really matter, because what you've already done is extracted as much from that customer as you could, based on a proposition that says I'm going to sell you value now, that's value that they can't do without. So if you haven't presented something that they can't do without, you're not going to be able to pick up that at the end of the quarter.

Unless, by some miracle you can present them with something that they can't do without two days out of the quarter. And it's impossible to ignore. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a response to a target and the desperation if I'm not mistaken.

Elliot

Yes, absolutely. So why do you think it is that sales leaders don't have the courage to have this negotiation with their regional bosses, whether it be in Singapore, the US or the UK or wherever they are, and have the courage to negotiate and communicate with their senior sales team around these targets and these behaviours well? I would not have the courage to walk into a bullfighting ring because I'm not a bullfighter.

Nick

They don't have the courage to do that because they're not. Sales leaders go on. If they were a sales leader, this would not be on the agenda. If they were a sales leader, what they would be doing is looking at the targets and saying, “Look, I've got 25, 10, 20 sales professionals that I manage. They've done everything they possibly can to execute on the strategy, execute on the plan, sell the products that were given to represent and do all the things that are necessary in a plan to be able to achieve. Everything has been done. We're still short. Maybe the target was wrong, buddy. Maybe the target was wrong. Can we have that conversation?”

That's when you need to be able to assess that and say, “You know what? Someone pulled a number out of there wherever, and it's not relating to the actuality of excellence in performance.”

Many of them would say, “Nick, that's what I'm given from the U.S. So what can I do?”

That's the point. If you're a sales leader, you can present back and inform the US that that number which was created, and I know this for a fact which was created from some extrapolation of the financial formula that says it's got to be this, as opposed to be a reality because they don't even read the business plan to see what can be executed and what can be achieved. And a true sales leader will have already looked after that. They will already have worked that out. And the only thing that they need to manage as a sales leader if they've already worked that out is, “Are my people executing with excellence?”.

And that's the conversation, not whether you missed your target. But “What are the gaps in your ability to execute with excellence ?.” And by the way, the number is an outcome? Yes, I've lived that all my life, and it's worked 100% of the time. But I've also had to sell companies and work in the corporate world and navigate the corporate field. It still works. It still works. If you've got the courage to do it, it's because you deserve the title that you're given of a sales leader and it's all that.

Elliot

No, we're on the same page with that. So while we're talking about courage, the other thing that pops up in my soup is the fact that when people are looking at deals and you look at it from the outside in, as any good consultant would do and you say, “Hold on, you want this company to spend, you know, $123 million with you and you don't have a single C level executive on the client side that's even looking at this. Everything's bottom up. So, I'm just gobsmacked still that we get to C level too late.

Or then people are relying on their mid level managers, mid level clients to sell their message up the food chain, which doesn't happen. And the sales cycle takes 12 to 18 months and people get frustrated and tired. And at the end of it, some of those deals are lost, so no one wins, and I'm still getting my head around why there is this reluctance all these years later for companies to institute team selling and work as a team and get to C level early and often.

Nick

Well, there's a couple of facts.

Number one. Whatever you're selling is going to be some kind of expense that needs to be approved by someone at C level, or will sit on the balance sheet that needs to be approved by someone at C level. Either way, it needs to be approved. Therefore, the first thing that you have to do is establish budget and you’ve only established budget when you actually can present a proposal and sell at the very beginning. That says, this is something you can't do without, And I'm just showing you the dramatic increase in revenue or the dramatic decrease in costs.

Perhaps both. If it's that good technology or product or an investment now, now that we've established that, I'll go and work with whoever it is in your organisation to fulfil that to deliver on that, no one's going to spend money with you unless they budgeted for it. They're not going to get budget, unless they've had some level of initial approval. It's a sales process that's been lost, and there is what's been lost because people have created relationships at the execution level. The execution level does not determine the return and the technology.

They determine the quality of the delivery. You do have to have it, too, but you have to work out who you're going to be talking to first. Out of 100 conversations, 10 of them will work on those, when the person who controls the money isn't some idiot. It's some person who is responsible for return on investment.

Elliot

So do you think it's a case where people in their deep, darkest moments say, “I actually don't feel confident talking to the CEO or the CFO”, or they don't feel they have the skills or they're worried about burning the relationship at execution level?

Nick

Well, that's a really good, such a good question. I think it starts with, “Do I have something to give you that you can't do without?” If the answer is yes, it has nothing to do with anything other than being able to deliver that to you, so that you hear it and there is a skill involved in that. There is a skill involved in that, and it's not taught often enough. It's not. We have 1000 books, you know. What's the latest book? The challenges are that this, the disruption that you know, the this or that.

It's all over the place. But where is the one, and there's your course, you sell this, which is wonderful, and it’s why I love what you do. Where is the amplification of the idea that I'm going to give you something you can't do without? Because the reciprocal of that Elliot is, I can't not listen to you. Because if I don't, then I'm not doing my job. Well, so I want a whole bunch of people who are going to present you, and I don't care who they are. I don't care how polished they are, how snazzy they are. I don't care what their history is. I don't care how long they've been in the game for, if they have a goose that's going to lay a golden egg in my organisation. I will listen to you. Okay. So how are you going to make me listen to you now? That's a skill that needs to be taught. Yeah, and I spent a lot of time coaching people, and it works. Which would, you know, if I've got something that I know you need, I'm going to find a way for you to hear it.

I'm not going to be embarrassed by my tenure or my title or my anything. All right. I am duty bound to find a way to make sure you hear it. You're talking about taking responsibility so that the right people hear this message and that takes ownership. And it takes a business mindset rather than a sales mindset that says, “You know, I'm derelict in my duty if I don't get this heard. So if it gets heard at C level and they don't like it for whatever reason, so be it.

And then you move on to somewhere else, but they can hear it. They don't think that it's something they can't do without, absolutely something that they can't do without, that's on you. Thank you. Who you are, that's on you. And then there is a learning opportunity that presents itself. If I had the cure for Covid and I presented to you and you didn't hear me, yeah, you're responsible. So it's your fault. I've got the cure.

If I can't get to listen to me, that's on me. So what skill isn't required to do that? All right, we can talk about what skills are required to do that till the cows come home. There's plenty of opportunity to invest in that, but I have to start with something that you can't do without. I have to have that first and foremost. 90% is that, 10% is getting you to hear me. That's right, it's not the other way around. So when we listen to the client, my next issue, one of my little favourites is that when we finally speak with a client and they tell us what they want politically, emotionally, structurally and technologically, and people hear it and then come back to the business and miss half of that because they'd rather sell them widget X instead of widget. Why?

And it's just it's just amazing how often that happens. So you spend all the time diagnosing what's going on. The client tells you they want to. People want a green one and a blue one, and what gets fed back to the business through their own filter is, Oh yeah, they're really keen on the purple one because we sell them.” Yeah, well, that's  not a sales professional. That's not a sales professional. We can give them 20 other names. When you find occasion to be in front of the customer and they talk about all this stuff, if they talk, when they're talking emotionally right there, that's the problem that you get solved.

Everything else, they're actually bragging. They're actually telling you why they exist. And that's fine. Good on you. Well done. Of course, I'm your biggest fan, but if you miss the emotional bit, you missed the problem that you have an opportunity to solve. And if you've got something that solves that problem in your bag of solutions you're in, if you don't, “Can't help you, man”. And there lies the rub, in industries like financial services and that are filled with very rational thinkers.

The people that have gone to university and they've studied engineering or finance or commerce, and they think that these are rational based decisions, and then no one kicks it out of them. In their early days as they're growing their career and they wake up. I suppose in their thirties, and all of a sudden they hit a brick wall because they haven't learned how to emotionally tap into the people with whom they meet. And I know you spent a huge, huge part of your life understanding the psychology and the emotional debts of human beings.

Elliot

That will be interesting sharing with people your two or three key takeouts about how important it is that these jobs are taken seriously and that it's almost, it's almost the job of sales professionals and business people to actually have that psychology is front of mind, and then the rational stuff simply backs it up.

Nick

Yes, you're right. And I should I should preface all this. But what I'm telling you is my experience and what I've seen to be high impact variables for sales success.

Everything that I've talked about has happened, and it's worked, and it's worked for me and my teams and the companies that I’ve built and the people who are responsible for me to lead them in the right way, and it's worked, so I'm happy to share all those high impact variables. But to essentially leave and bring it back to the last thing that you asked me. It's about one thing, and that is an innate compulsion to serve, it's servitude. If you have an innate compulsion to serve, what you've done is solved.

The big question and that is the question of purpose. And the question and the meaning of life is to find meaning, and meaning is to serve. And if you have that kind of DNA compulsion, you can't help yourself. You will be an amazing sales professional and amazing sales leader. I've seen them all, and that's what they have. And it’s a compulsion, compulsion to serve, servitude is, it's your superpower and it's not like you either have it or you don't or some people have it or some don’t.

Or sometimes it's the human condition. It's the creative impulse. The Big Bang a billion years ago hasn't stopped banging. What we need to do is continue to create, and we create by serving, making something happen that wouldn't otherwise have happened if you didn't turn up. That's the state that you've got to start from. That's the excitement about successful sales, being able to do something that they would never have done if it wasn't for you, and they benefited so much from them that you're in. And that's very exciting when you think about the people that you and I know, that have been very successful both personally and professionally in their lives.

In other words, they like who they are. They enjoy their work, and clients love them because of what they do. It is around sublimating that ego and the ones that struggle from job to job and flip around and complain about money. Or this company doesn't have the right products or has a debate with a client on an intellectual level about what it is they're trying to achieve. Rather than focusing on the client, I find that a lot of those people, they struggle in their personal lives and they struggle in their professional lives moving around because it's all about them.

And that ego gets in the way of them delivering what is so obviously based on what you said. And I think that insight is invaluable to anyone listening to this, that if you take from this that your client is just one party that you can serve and get paid to serve them well and focus on their needs, the whole world opens up. Yeah, look, it's so obvious. Today if we were talking about the client and servant, I still call it client/servant relationship in the seventies. It was completely different in the eighties and the nineties.

It was good. We're now in 2020/2021. And the client loves you because they can't do without you. It was the same in the seventies and the eighties, nineties because of different things. Now, you know, like in the eighties, the client, the client loves you because they can't do without you because you gave him a good bloody time. We remember that state. I'm old enough. Don't know about you, but I'm old enough to remember.

Elliot

Absolutely.

Nick

So that's what it takes now is a return on investment, a return on working capital because the client is getting judged on that. The client lives or dies in their organisation as the buyer, based on the return of working capital or the return on expenses renewed or whatever you want to call it.

But the return on investment. They're going to love you because you give them the biggest return on investment as opposed to anyone else. Number one. You have to have the right product or service that's going to be able to deliver on that. So work for a company that can do that. And number two, you don't have this ridiculous ego that says that I don't serve anyone. Well, you know what? If you're in sales, that's all you do. You are a servant to someone. That's all you do.

And the greatest sales people are the greatest servants that just happen to make a billion dollars. But they were the great servants.

Elliot

So last question, Nick, before I let you go, what do you think happens over the next five years as we come out of Covid at some point, and clients are going to be far more judgmental, in my opinion, about the way they were treated during Covid? What do you think is going to happen to salespeople, sales teams and the numbers of people that are in these roles?

Nick

If you held a relationship with your client based on an emotional threat. I'm not really here to sell you anything,mate. I just want to know how you are. I haven't seen you for ages ….all that stuff, right? How you feeling? What's going on? I'm really interested in how you're feeling right now and all that and have an intellectual conversation around that. All right, you're going to win. You're going to win because you've kept them in a circle of trust.

If you haven't done that, hurry up and start doing it because we're going to get out of this pretty soon and your time to do that is running out. Now, here's the thing. I started by talking about customers successfully. If you're not looking at your existing customers because you're trying to find a way to hit that target by getting new customers, you're screwed because someone else has looked after that customer. And while you've been looking for new customers, someone else has looked after that.

Elliot

Great insights, Nick. It's been great chatting. We could probably keep going for another half an hour, but I need to let you go. Thanks so much for being part of this. I think the key thing here is that the truth is out there. Whether you want to face it or not, we either have the courage to face some of these things or not. And we either have the heart to do these things or we don't. And when you do it, the opportunity is just huge.

So thanks again for being part of Selling in the Time of Corona. We’ll catch up when we're free at last.

Nick

Well, thank you, man. I'm grateful for the opportunity and looking forward to seeing you face to face.

Elliot

Nick is just terrific at calling out what sales leadership should be all about.

With that in mind, let me leave you with this fabulous piece from the comedic animators at XtraNormal on Managing Sales Compensation Plans.

 

Creative Outro - Managing Sales Compensation Plans by XtraNormal

 “Hello, Brad. You said you had some questions about your new compensation plan.”

 “Yes, if I read it right. It looks like you have doubled my quota and cut my territory in half.”

 “Well, Brad, last year you made more than me and we were over the commission budget, which put my projections out of whack.”

 “Isn't the point to sell more than you expect and build the company with new revenue? “

 “Yes, but we need to even it out among all the sales people and territories. Otherwise, my projections and business plan do not look accurate. You can understand when one person does better than everyone else, it makes everyone else look bad. So I have to adjust things, so it looks like I know what I'm doing. “

 “So where does this leave me as part of our team.”

 “Brad, now you will be with the rest of us, not burdened with those high tax rates and wasting time wondering what to do with all your money. “

 “Well, thanks for solving that problem for me. So why would I stay here and endure all this? “

 “Well, if you play your cards right and learn how to do powerpoint and spreadsheets better, you maybe, just maybe will someday have a small chance of sitting where I am.”

 “I think I would rather be waterboarded. “

 “Great. So we are on the same page with the new Comp plan. Also, we have a new rep starting today who will be taking half of your territory. Will you show him around and introduce him to your account? I have a very important off-site where we are planning the next sales meeting and team building activity.”

 “Yeah, sure. Why don't you just direct deposit half my income into the new rep’s bank account? “

 “Great, Brad, I was going to do that anyways.”

 “And now, with your support, it will be legal. So we are on the same page and can go on with our lives. So go out there and crush it. I'm just glad I can help!“

 

Elliot

Remember, your ears are safe.

Nick and I recorded this entire podcast wearing full PPE to build his water fountain.

Take care of yourselves, until next time.