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The Advanced Selling Podcast
Let Structure Set You Free
00:12:44
In this episode, Bryan unpacks a counterintuitive truth: the more structure your sales team has, the more freedom they gain. As markets grow more competitive and buyers become increasingly digital-savvy, a well-crafted sales playbook isn’t just...
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Brian Neal
Foreign. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the advanced selling podcast. The longest running sales, training, podcast and podcast history. Brian Neal, flying solo two minute drill. The longest two minutes but the best two minutes you're going to find in podcasting everywhere. We are the longest running sales, training, podcast and podcast history. Like I said today, powered by Blind Zebra sales operating system. My little jingle's working. BZSOS@blind-zebra.com BZSOS@blind-Zebra.com need to put some music to it. I think if you want to learn about our operating system that we are sharing now. Across the country we have 81 certified coaches serving over a thousand salespeople. It's a corporate thing. You can't get certified individually but man, it's awesome. And everyone's starting up. The coaches are starting to like be together in different cities and stuff. So we're gonna do certain new meetups. It's really cool. If you're a podcast listener, you will love it, I promise. But we need an intro to your VP of sales or your CEO or your CEO. We actually have CFO certified now. We have a president certified with CEO. We have lots of people certified in the BZ sos So if you want to learn how to get that started, the first call is called a coin toss call. Isn't that funny that we would actually theme those things after my football job? BZSOS@blind-zebra.com just put in their coin toss or schedule call anything. It's monitored 247 by our team and we'll get you hooked up. But we need to bring your leader because it's not a salesperson thing. It's for like a leader or an enablement person or, or people to get certified to take these tools back to your shop. Really cool thing. I'm probably going to talk about this with Bill too. I, you have these funny things that you watch on TV that I, I don't know if they call them guilty pleasures kind of guilty pleasures. But there's something that you, you kind of can't not watch. I can't not watch the spelling bee. I, I and I, it just hit me in the head. Like I, I can't think of a more and this is not about these kids. What a waste. Well, we what we don't need to spell anymore. Like what are we doing? And we certainly don't need to spell words that we can't pronounce, don't know what they mean or never use. It just doesn't make any sense to me. But I can't not watch it. And I'm. For the kids. And I feel so bad when they screw up and they get the. That it's. It's a shameful. Ding, ding. It's like, shame. All these people. Everyone claps. And now they do. They fit. Now they have the person who. When they get knocked out and she immediately comes on and praises them like, you did such a good job. We're so excited to see you. You're still young. It's like the whole thing just kind of hit me a different way this year. Anyway, that's. I'll talk about that with Bill, too, probably because that's my thing. Okay, I'm gonna talk about theme today. I'm gonna talk about playbooks. Playbooks. Very buzzy word that nobody knows what the hell means. What is a playbook? What is a playbook? Everybody's, oh, we got a playbook built. I've got a couple clients that recently. I'm like, yeah, we got a playbook. Send me. Send it to me. I'm like, okay, now I've seen some football playbooks. I see the football rule book is my other job. A lot. And a couple themes about playbooks. I just want you to think about this first. Conceptually. If you're a salesperson and you work for a company that has a playbook, first thing I want you to ask yourself is, do you use it or are you supposed to use it? And you choose to do your own thing. And I just want you to think about that for a second. There's no. I'm not getting the right or wrong in this whole bit, but if a company has a playbook and you don't totally agree with it, you don't like it or whatever, I totally understand why you'd go off, you know, on your own. But there's a little cheesy phrase. I learned this from Sherry Leviton. Sherry Leviton. She's a great, like, sales coachy person. She said she used using this in the selling context, but I love it in the learning context. You can either find your way into something or find your way out of it. You can find your way into it or find your way out of it. I love the idea of trying to, as a salesperson, find your way into your company's playbook. Find your way in to your company's playbook. And you're sitting there listening like, Neil, that's why I listen to you guys. That's why I listen to you and Bill, because their playbook sucks. And you guys have such a fresh Take. And it's so common sense and normal and not cheesy. Yeah, I get it. Still, there may be things that you can. You can pull from. Okay, so that's the first thing to. To find your way into playbooks. The next thing is to think about why does a playbook exist. Okay, this is quoting God. I'm quoting all the. All my people, all my peers today. This guy's name is Tom Searcy. Great human being, friend of the show, local guy, Indianapolis guy, really great. Owns a company called Hunt, big sales. Co authored a book called Whale Hunters back in the day. Gave me this quote. He quoted, I believe, his dad, who said, and you may have heard us say this on the podcast before, sales is 90 process and 10 magic. 90 process and 10 magic. And a lot of what we hear from sales coaching people is the magic part. Okay? Playbooks address the process part. And I am the first one to tell you I am a wheelhouse Gen X dude who doesn't like to be pinned down. I'm a lone wolf, man. I want to do my own thing my own way, tend to perform pretty well, and I want to do things my way. And I'll, you know, I'll take things in, but that's my nature. Okay? I realized too late, unfortunately, that if I have process and system and structure, I actually have more freedom than less. I have more freedom through process and structure than if I don't and try to wing it on my own and do my own thing. There is freedom in discipline. There is freedom and discipline. I will tell you this. When we launched Blind Zebra and I got a logo, it's a big yellow dot that says BZ in the middle. Love it. Okay. I told my team person, Kelly, on my team, I said, hey, go find me 30 of those BZ T shirts because that's all I want to wear. And I have more than 30. I have hoodies. I never have to think about what I'm going to wear to work. Before that, I always had the sport coat and a blazer and the jacket and the button down and the different shoes. And I would go to a speaking gig or my dry cleaning was late and I was frantically running around trying to piecemeal a crappy uniform together. That's all gone now. I now have freedom from the discipline. A good playbook gives you freedom. It does not constrain you. Really, really take that into account when you're thinking about what a playbook is. Whether you like your companies or not or you do or don't have One know that the purpose of the thing at its core is not what people think it is. Everyone thinks it's, oh, it makes the sales people do what you want. It's a control mechanism. Is not a control mechanism. It is not. It is a, an efficiency tool to allow you the freedom to practice your art, the art of selling, which is critically important so you don't lose on the process. Okay? That's the second element to this thing. Hey, if you're watching this video, I know that you're a sales leader and I know that you have one of the hardest jobs in business because everyone's on you, your customers are on you, bought bosses on you, and you got nowhere to go and to vent and just to breathe a little bit until now. Several years ago, after working with thousands of sales leaders, I found a little gap in the marketplace. There were really big conferences all over with really, really great speakers and big stages and thousands of people, but there was nothing in between. There wasn't a place that combined both until now. And that is Huddle. Our theme this year is connected. We're going to talk about how to connect better with your customers, how to connect better with your teams, and how to connect better with your peers. And if you do all that, I promise you, you're also going to connect better with yourself. So don't hesitate for a minute. Come join us. It'll be one of the best events you've ever done. You will not regret it, and I will see you at Huddle 2025. The last thing I'll tell you is the reason why this, to me is the big case to have some sort of playbook or operating system in your, at your, at your fingertips at all times as the world gets faster and more intelligent. Okay? And the whole AI want was taken off and everything. And then the buyers are getting younger too, aren't they? And the buyers are, are now digital native, so they know how to find everything online real quick. You've heard it a thousand times, like, well, a buyer does 78 of the research before. By the way, I'm not a stats guy. Like, like, I love stats as a subject. I actually loved it in college. Most people hate it. I, I. Where do people get these stats? Like, how do you know? Just pulling on it, you know what I mean? It's like 70, you know, 78 of the buying decision is done before they even talk to a salesperson. And people hear that and they go, oh, really? Instead of going, where'd that come from? And what does that even mean? So anyway, I digress. It is going to become increasingly more difficult for you to compete on magic and, or on feature function and, or how your things better than their thing. Okay, it's. I think the biggest competitive thing a lot of us deal with is inertia, is that let's just not do anything right now. All of that can be overcome with strong process. All of that can be overcome with strong process. If you have a playbook that is detailed around process steps and very clear dates with a very effective, meaningful process with efficient steps, with extreme clarity. Most people are more than willing to go through that. Even if at the end you or they say no thanks, they will do that. When you don't have the structure, you allow the inertia of the status quo to win because you don't create your own inertia with your process. And I guarantee, if you're listening to me right now, you're going, oh my God, he's got me. I got one of those, I got one of those. I've had them, I get them. Everything's all, everyone's all fired up, like, let's go, let's do this. And then because of lack of process, something slips through the crack. We don't get a date, a holiday comes in the middle, time delays it. Something happens, someone leaves a job because we didn't have good, strict, clean process and the deal fades and fizzles away. So cliche. Time kills deals. We know time kills deals and it does. The way we avoid time killing deals is to have a playbook that addresses extreme clarity around system structure, process and timelines. And that, my friends, is a good thing to know. All right, so I just wanted to, in this episode, just tee the whole concept of playbook up. If you don't have one at all, like absolutely no playbook at all. We'll talk a little bit next episode. I will. You know, AI is your friend. If you go to AI right now and tell them who you are and what you do, you have to tell them all that. Give them, give AI context and ask them to write a sales playbook for you. Tell them about your sales process. It's normally 30 days long. I call in CFOs of credit unions and I sell them insurance products. And we have 48 customers and I've got 32. Prospect, whatever it is, just tell them all that. Say, just write me a five step process and a playbook that makes sure that I'm hitting all the the things. Include pricing, include questions. AI will generate a playbook for you in 11 seconds. A little bit longer than a bull ride. Bull rides. Eight seconds. If you make it to the buzzer. Okay. That's all it takes, 11 seconds. And it's there. You're like, oh, my gosh. Okay. So I just tell you that because if you don't have one, it's easier than you think to make one up. So I'm going to talk about next time and get more of the detail of what is in a playbook and some components that should be there. But for now, the case has been made. I hope everybody needs a playbook. If you want to learn about how to get certified in the Blind Zebra sales operating system, go to bzsosblind-zebra.com and we would love to have a conversation with you. That's it. I appreciate you all so much. See you next, the Advanced Lane Podcast. Cheers.