Closing the Gap Between Prospecting Activity and Real Pipeline with Brad Pearse

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This is the sales gravy podcast.

Hi, I'm Jeb Blunt,

guest-selling author,

fanatical prospecting,

objection sales EQ and Aint.

And I'm here to help you open more doors,

close bigger deals, and rock your commission check.

Welcome back to the sales gravy podcast.

I'm Jeb Blunt Jr.

And today we have a special guest

who came all the way up from Florida today,

drove the entire six hours or so, right?

Okay, so drove a long ways

to be in studio for the sales gravy podcast.

And we invited him up

because our good friend,

Bren, who just released the LinkedIn Edge

with Jeb Blunt Sr.

has recommended Brad

a Brown LinkedIn navigator

because if your team is busy,

but they're just not producing,

this is the right conversation for you.

A lot of teams are stuck in research paralysis.

They're on their own social media.

They're on LinkedIn,

especially if you're going to the SaaS world

and they're getting likes,

but there's just not a lot of leads

that are coming through.

And you don't know how to scale your best reps

so that you can build a team around them.

Also, if you're running your sales work on charisma,

which is like what I like to run on,

this is absolutely going to be a great conversation for you

because Brad is the founder of Simplified Sales

where he is here to end chaos.

Brad builds revenue operation systems

that drive predictable growth,

replacing guesswork with a scalable

go-to-market blueprint

and turning social activity

into real trust-based revenue.

Brad, thank you so much for being here

and thanks for driving all the way for Florida.

Yeah, thanks for having me, JBJ.

Super excited.

This is going to be a fun conversation.

I want to dive a little bit back into your background

and kind of wire sitting here with us.

And then the second part of this interview

which is going to be the longer part.

So if you're listening to this

or watching on YouTube,

we're going to talk about some scenarios.

Some places where reps are failing

or succeeding, but not succeeding enough.

And we want to get your coaching

and hear your perspective

on how you might solve these challenges.

So it'll be a really fun episode

and I look forward to hearing what you've got to say

about these three scenarios

that we're going to bring to the table.

But first, tell us a little bit

about your simplified sales system

and your company and what you do for businesses.

Yeah, so simplified sales.

I started it a couple of years ago

and really, really came from the passion

of like business development sales.

I've been in business development and sales

for over 20 years.

Did consumer tech and SaaS software sales

work with many enterprise teams,

lead teams and really this passion

over the last couple of years

to really empower enterprise sales teams

with a right-go-to-market strategy,

but really be crystal clear on a sales development.

But at the pillar of it is really leveraging,

how do we best leverage like trust-based conversation?

How do we get into these conversations

leveraging the right tools?

And that's where kind of like sales navigator

and LinkedIn really came into play.

And the story behind that really is for me,

I dove into LinkedIn and sales navigator,

probably about 12 years ago.

And I was director of business development

and kind of moved my way into more leadership roles.

But when I was starting to find opportunities on LinkedIn,

just trying to figure out,

hey, how does this tool work?

And all the things that right new people dive into

that really kind of like,

how do I even start or where do you even start, right?

So I found a way to get into opportunities

that I would have never found

if it wasn't for Sales Nav and LinkedIn.

Now, it's evolved over the years

and a lot of the new things that are happening today

is really empowering sales reps

to really gain access into those conversations

that would never happen, right?

So one quick question before we dive into these scenarios,

and I know it's on the mind of sales leaders, business owners,

people who are running enterprise sales teams

and sales navigator is a really big budget line item

for a lot of businesses.

They're quite an expensive product.

And there's lots of sales leaders

who are looking at LinkedIn and saying,

okay, well, my reps aren't using this.

I don't even see any effectiveness out of it.

So the state of LinkedIn navigator

and the state of LinkedIn in 2025

is much different than 12 years ago.

What are your kind of general thoughts

around the investment into Sales Nav?

And what should the leaders kind of think about pros

and cons when it comes to that particular platform

for their sales teams?

Great, great question.

So I think the older school of thought, right,

around LinkedIn is just,

hey, I'm gonna put my resume up online.

I wanna find a new job.

Well, over the years, as you know,

it's kind of like morphed into this sales tool

that reps can really leverage to establish relationships.

And so when we look at LinkedIn today,

one of the things that sales leaders

really need to think about,

and it's with any tech stack, right,

any piece of software that they adopt,

they really have to kind of create this culture

first and foremost.

But I would say to sales leaders

that are investing in Sales Nav and LinkedIn

really understand what the objectives and goals are

for your team and understand what is the cadence

from an outbound perspective and prospecting perspective.

Are we doing this fast play

or are we doing this long term, right?

Right.

And so it really starts with this mindset around

how do we leverage the tool in a way

that we can get the right conversations

with the right people at the right time?

I will say that Sales Navigator in LinkedIn

is really evolved into, you know,

when you think about kind of some of the new features, right,

that they rolled out this past year with account IQ

and lead IQ, this idea of giving more insight

and context has been super powerful

with some of those integrations

that they've actually came out with this past year.

And it's really allowed reps to have that context

and relevancy when they actually drive that outbound mode

in and that way.

I agree with you.

As a sales trainer and consultant in the space,

we have businesses that I will absolutely look them

in the eyes and say,

this is just not an investment for you.

And it's typically because their sales teams

don't have a clear goal of what they want out of it.

You know, they're essentially using it to look at names on lists

and put it in their CRM and you can do that with Zoom info,

you can do that with a bunch of different platforms.

And LinkedIn is not necessary for that function,

but the outreach and being in the right place

at the right time, if you are a sales organization

and you look at like little LinkedIn edge in that book,

they talk about slow and fast prospecting,

just what you brought up.

If you're looking at fast prospecting,

there's a great tool for that.

I think LinkedIn Navigator has process for that

and I think it can do it.

But you have to have that system in place.

It's not just LinkedIn, it's not gonna solve it for you.

However the long-term play,

I don't think there's any other system that works as well

as LinkedIn outside of marketing

because your sales reps are the ones who are building

their own brands, they're the ones who are reaching out

to people and getting in networks

and networking is really powerful that way.

So I think that those two lanes,

you need to take a perspective on it

and then determine what you want most out of the system.

100%, 100%.

Yeah, it's interesting because the sales teams

that I've talked to, it's that whole question of like,

gosh, we're not getting return on investment out of this tool.

I think it really just comes down to like really understanding

like the expectations and how do we drive that.

The other part behind it too is when you talk about data

validation, like LinkedIn, I look at it

in two different ways, right?

So one, you look at sales navigator specifically,

it's really the what and why and your CRM is who, right?

So that gives you a little bit more context on how

you can kind of think about your tech stack in that way.

And you can obviously integrate sales

now in your CRM.

So that's a really cool perspective

on LinkedIn sales navigator, which is, it's the what and why.

Yes, the context.

And if you think about ICPs and IQPs

and who you're going to go sell to, I mean, ultimately,

at the end of the day, who you're going to go talk to,

you have a product or service and why are they going to buy?

And if you have that context, it makes the who way more relevant.

If I'm talking to Brad and you're, you know,

chief human resources officer, and I'm selling, we're talking

about my role in the HCR and human resources software space.

If you are talking to a CHRO, just because they're a CHRO,

you're missing like 99% of the picture.

And they're all different and they all have different

contacts and they're in different markets.

And I think that you're absolutely right that the who is important.

But why is way more important?

And if you pair those things together,

you have a wonderful tool in sales navigator

and you help teams implement this day and day out,

actually adopt it, and start using it.

And I have a couple of scenarios for you.

So we're going to get to the scenario part of this,

which I called this the social media vanity trap.

I'm hoping I captured this correctly.

So we have a rep who is doing all of the best social media practices.

They commenting, they're liking, they're posting,

they're active, their profile is set up right.

But problem is, they're doing all of this and they're not getting any leads.

There's no activity that's resulting in sales conversations and revenue.

Their LinkedIn looks, if you go into it,

looks like an echo chamber of validation.

So there's a lot of people who are in the industry that they're in,

which we're in sales training.

So they're going to be in the sales training industry.

A lot of other sales trainers in the sales training industry, as you well know.

And it's just a bunch of the same thing.

And they're not getting any revenue out of this.

So all activity, no execution.

Yeah.

What would you do to help this rep start to branch out and start building a pipeline

from LinkedIn based on the situation that they have right here?

You know, the first thing that I always tell the reps is to really be crystal clear

on the problem that you're solving for your customers.

And the reason for that before you dive into any tool is because you have that

context, it's more of a mindset methodology.

So when you're out there prospecting and you're engaging with the CHRO or whoever

that might be, you already have it in your head as to kind of the controlling idea

of what the problem that you're solving.

So that would be number one.

Number two, the thing that happens is, and it's funny,

because I was just working with the sales team a couple months ago.

And one of the reps was exact same thing.

Hey, I'm commenting.

I'm doing all these things, but I'm not getting any meetings.

Well, that's great that you're commenting.

That's great that you're liking and that you're engaging.

Maybe with potential prospects, but I would challenge that rep to take it a step further.

And when they actually do comment, and when they do like certain posts, right, that their

target prospects are posting on LinkedIn, is that you want to respond with context and

you want to respond with relevancy of what their problem, but you got to take the time

to really understand what the insight is, right?

So when you comment on a specific post with a prospect, really take the time to understand

what they're posting and really think about, hey, how can I add value here to this individual

and do it really in a thoughtful manner, if you will, versus the whole idea of like, hey,

that's awesome.

I'm glad you guys are growing this year, so on and so forth.

It could be questions like, hey, what a great approach on how you guys go to market, curious

to learn a little bit more on how you guys are actually doing it and how did you get to

that point where you actually have a defined go-to-market strategy with love to chat or

with love to hear a little bit more, right?

So then now you're actually starting to engage in conversation with an individual and then

ultimately that kind of opens up the door for that connection request or that in-mail

and take that conversation over there and then the snowball kind of.

There's a couple of things from this rep that I might, if I was sitting in the room with

you and you're coaching me, I might come and be like, well, there's two, you know,

I'm going to complain.

There's two things.

One, isn't that pushy to always be having the longest comment on someone's post and

delivering the most added value to their post?

They see what I'm doing here.

Like maybe they see the kind of work that you're doing.

They see that you're trying to get a meeting with them or whatever and it can kind of feel

salesy, I guess.

And then the second part is, man, it feels salesy.

No one's responding to me and it is taking so much of my time to comment on these.

I can't scale this very well.

So those are the two problems I'm seeing.

Can't scale anything.

It takes way too much time and I feel salesy doing it.

How do you help the sales rep kind of overcome that?

Once you've told them, okay, look, you got to change your mindset about this.

It can just be the platitudes.

So good to see your post.

You look like you look like you're doing good.

You know, congratulations.

Like that's not working.

But this next step might feel really uncomfortable for them for those two reasons.

For sure.

Yeah, that's a great question.

One of the things is that, look, if you're not getting a response back,

that's okay, right?

There's going to be this long play with these,

especially if you're trying to get in the door with the C suite, right?

And you're trying to get in with these decision makers.

Sometimes they're not going to respond right away.

But what you're doing is, is you're building awareness around who you are,

your brand providing those insights and over time, right?

The hope is, is that those conversations will open up now.

I will say that I get a lot of questions on like,

hey, when's the right time to like reach out to this prospect?

They haven't responded back to me.

What do we do here, right?

So one of the things that I always recommend for those sales reps is that

not only do you provide insight there,

but you always want to have this mindset of leading with insight and value.

So here's what I mean by that.

If you're working in an enterprise sales team,

it's really, really important for you to work with your marketing team,

to understand some of the information that you're sharing

and educating your perspective prospects with, right?

And that can come in the form of a webinar,

that can come in the form of an event,

that can come in the form of maybe a PDF,

something along the lines of that you're always like trying to add value and insight.

So one of the things that I coach the rep the other day on was that,

hey, if you're not getting traction here,

keep in mind like this is a long play,

you're building your brand,

you're building your awareness,

like you're not going to be just somebody cold coming in asking for a connection request.

They've seen your posts,

they've seen your comments,

you're providing value and insight.

The next step is to invite them to something that you're putting on

that would add value to them,

could be a webinar,

could be event, whatever that might look like.

And so now you're kind of taking that relationship,

kind of then in the next level of inviting them into your house per se,

right, in teaching them a little bit more about you

and what you have to offer so and so forth.

So that's kind of the next step of what I typically

recommend that these sales teams do in really working with the sales enablement team

and marketing and have that kind of like flywheel put together.

I want to come back to this in just a moment.

So hold that idea because it was really good.

Scalability.

Yep.

So the next part,

well, that sounds great, Brad.

If I was just talking to you,

I think I could do it,

but I've got 400 prospects in my market that I'm going after right now,

and that's not even counting all the thousands of people that I could go talk to.

How do I do that over, you know, a month or a week or a day

to make sure I'm wasting my time on LinkedIn.

And I'm actually picking phone calling people,

and I'm emailing them out in the field and all of that.

So how do you help teams scale their effort?

Love it.

Love it.

Great question.

So from an activity perspective,

when you look at LinkedIn,

what you wanted to,

you're not going to be able to attack all 400 of those prospects.

Obviously in a week, two weeks,

even a month, right?

But what you want to do is you want to chunk those leads down

into bite-sized activity every single day.

So what I typically do is I teach teams,

and even myself for that matter,

but you want to block out at least an hour a day,

and you want to be able to hit,

and there's this rule called 531.

And 531 rule is this,

and that is you want to pick five prospects,

right, or leads,

and you want to go on that alert page,

and you want to do that comment, like, you know, action, right?

The second one is when we talk about the three,

right, and the five three framework,

the third part, or the number three,

is you want to be able to actually go in

and thoughtfully pick out those prospects

and figure out like, okay,

I've got three people here that are interested.

I got three people here that I want to actually add value in,

because I feel like the ICP measures up really well,

right, and just invite them to an event,

invite them to a webinar, whatever that might be.

And then the last one is just do a connection request, right?

So you can do that 531 framework

within like a 30 minute to 40 minute time block.

You know, you could spend a little bit more time

like in an hour kind of thing.

Yeah.

But if you pick that off every day,

right, prospecting, as you know,

right, it's a compounding fact.

So when we think about all these activities,

it's really a compounding effect

that you're starting to build your pipeline that way.

So the things they pulled away from this,

the 531 framework and time blocking.

And you know, we talk about this

and phonetical prospecting is picking your day apart

and saying, okay, I've got golden hours

and I got platinum hours.

And these are the hours to sell.

And if I am not actively in meetings,

if I'm not actively doing sales activity,

then I need to be filling my calendar

with things that will bring me pipeline

because the number one reason for failure in sales

is an empty pipeline.

And this is a great strategy for doing that.

But in order to make sure that you can scale this up,

you do it in time blocks,

and then you go back to the value

and you talked about inviting people into your house.

I love this.

And this is part of the partnership

that sales and marketing should have.

And when I am running my marketing department

and I'm thinking about my relationship with sales,

we are ideators.

We are people who are creative,

we're people who sit back there and say,

okay, how do I add value to my customers,

be a PDFs or webinars or whatever?

And you as a sales rep, you don't need to do that.

You as a sales team as a sales leader,

that's not your job.

Your job is to generate pipeline.

So come talk to the marketing team and say,

I need support in generating pipeline.

What can we do to invite people into our house,

social media, if that's messaging,

if that's emails, whatever that is,

and start using LinkedIn as a medium

or delivering that kind of relationship

that doesn't feel salesy,

just commenting to try and get a meeting with somebody.

Right, right.

So I love that those two things

I took away from that scenario,

I want to go into this next one.

It's called the research black hole.

We talked about time blocking a little bit.

So I know this is going to come up in this scenario,

but just can I make one comment

about the sales and marketing side?

You have to make one comment

about the sales and marketing side.

So for all those sales leaders that are out there

and marketing leaders,

you have to get in a rhythm together.

Now here's the thing, right?

Like I worked for a company

where it was that push and pull mentality.

Like marketing is creating the pitch decks

and the messaging and sales is out doing

doing the thing that they're doing, right?

It's going wild and doing nothing like marketing side.

Yeah.

So you got these two pistons going

that are going in completely different directions.

So for those sales leaders and marketing leaders,

it is super, super important to get

in a monthly meeting rhythm

between the leadership teams.

And the reason why is because we are living in an age,

as you know this,

where marketing and sales

is really one revenue engine.

So as a sales rep from an outbound perspective,

the number one thing that I can really provide

is insights, right?

In value.

And part of that really comes from

content that marketing can create

all the different kinds of things

because I mean we live in the digital world, right?

AI, it's digital, the very first spot, right?

Where sales reps are, it's online.

Now yes, we have events,

we have other things that kind of are

in that whole entire ecosystem,

but we have to leverage each other

as a sales and marketing team together

as one revenue team, that makes sense.

I agree with you.

And one of the things that I had to shift my mindset

around in terms of marketing,

and I look, I've grown up in tech and telecom

and blue collar sales

and then in sales training and consulting.

So I was like, kind of,

I've been in a couple of different industries

and marketing always hit sales and sales marketing.

It's the same thing.

And the reason that I've seen

is exactly what you pointed out.

It's, there's two departments running

with two engines

and they're going in different directions.

And marketing says, well, I wanna dictate

all of the messaging and all the value

and you need to listen to us.

And sales says, you guys don't sell stuff.

So show it where the sun don't shine

and I'm gonna go do what I wanna do.

And I love both of them

because they're both competitive, but you're right.

You have to have conversations with each other

because in this day and age,

and I'm telling you as a young sales rep

as somebody who grew up with all of this technology

and exists in the world of AI,

email from a sales rep that's just a bunch of text

is just not covering it anymore.

You're just not delivering enough value

and unless you're picking up the phone and calling people,

which I know most of you are reluctant

to do every single day, you're going to fall short.

So lean on the marketing team

to help you build that flywheel of assets

and content and value.

We have a really fun scenario,

which is, I've dubbed the research black hole.

So this company, they have a sales team

that has been taught to personalize,

I'm air quoting, personalize,

and now they're stuck in this deep research black hole.

They need to make every message exactly right

for the person they're talking to.

They spend 45 minutes reading companies,

financial report, they're 10Ks

and they derive some message from that 10K.

It's irrelevant, and it totally gets ignored.

Their pipeline is completely empty.

And this personalization is super high effort,

but absolutely zero impact on the organization.

Even though they feel good

because they're doing the right thing, quote unquote,

by their leadership, but they're slow.

They're really burnt out

because it takes a lot of emotional energy to do this.

And then again, their pipeline is completely empty.

Talking with leadership now,

you're not talking with sales reps.

And leadership wants personalization

because they've heard on a podcast,

not this one, but other podcasts, I can't not this one.

They've heard on podcasts that you have to be hyper personalized,

which isn't incorrect, but out of context

can be really debilitating for sales teams.

So how are you helping these teams start to leverage

their research that they can do

on LinkedIn navigator efficiently,

but also helping leadership change their mind

around what they should be doing.

Sales reps in those situations, right?

We always hear like the adage of like analysis,

hyperalysis or paralysis by analysis.

However, that goes right.

But honestly, like a lot of these reps

they'll go in, they'll do the research, which is great.

But they're literally getting in their own heads

and trying to figure out the perfect message

or the perfect thing that they can

throughout there that will get them the meeting, right?

So what I typically tell sales reps,

when they, your goal, when you do deep research through AI

or through other individuals inside of an organization, right?

What you're trying to do is understand

and relate back and it goes back

to the beginning of our conversation today

is that if you have like the context of the problem

that you're solving for that client,

the controlling idea, the controlling problem

that you're solving, in the back of your mind

you're thinking of that.

And so when you're doing a research,

what you're doing is you're trying to figure out

the right triggers in your research

that relate back to the problem that you're solving.

And the messaging leads with the problem

that you're solving, not the product that you're selling.

Right.

And so if you can put that together in context in that way,

that really goes a long ways

because you're really talking about the problem

that they're solving, like these leadership teams,

that's what they care about.

I'll give you an example.

So I had, I was working with the sales team,

they were in HR, HR software,

and they are basically i9 processing software.

Right.

And you know this world, right?

I came, I came, I kind of got sweaty

when you started talking about this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they can do a lot of different things.

i9 processing, e-verify, all the different things

on there, but the controlling idea

of what this company does really, really well

is to solve compliance issues with companies.

Companies that are out of compliance for i9

as an example, that was the controlling idea.

So everything that we did

from a research perspective,

from a content marketing perspective,

all of that related to this controlling idea.

So when the reps did research around it,

what we were doing is,

we are researching obviously the problems

around any compliance issues

that that company was having.

Then you kind of have like this idea

of like this map, like stakeholder mapping strategy,

where you're not just going through one single thread

in HR, how we can actually open up the doors

with compliance, right?

And so this research that you're doing,

you are more clear and concise

because you have this controlling idea

and you're servicing the triggers

and really looking forward to what brings that back

to the controlling idea and problem that's solving,

if that makes sense.

So it's about triggers, it's about relevancy,

you know, the messaging to behind that

is another way to do that outside of the research

because you have to have multiple ways to do it, right?

Another way to do it, which you know well,

is when you're doing enterprise sales

and you're cultivating relationship

with your champions and your influencers,

that's another way to grab relevancy to it.

I agree with you.

One of the challenges that, you know,

I worked in this industry that, you know,

they thought their best buyer technically was true, technically,

but it was really difficult to open the door

was when there was a new VP of XYZ position.

And so if there was a new hire in the C suite

or like a little bit below it,

they believed that that was the best time to go jump on it

or they just got like this next series of funding.

So series A to series C to series E, you know,

all of the series, if you ended up, you know, I was on crunch base,

you know, doing all these 10 care reports

and trying to figure out if I could, you know,

see if there was an acquisition and when they got acquisition

and when what kind of the funds they had

and all the message sounded like,

and I'm sure you see this is, I would, and I was,

this is my mistake, but I was going to these groups

to this buyer potentially and saying, I'm JBJ

at XYZ company, I want to meet with you

because I saw that you had an acquisition

and you got X number of dollars in funding

and you hired a new person for this position

and I thought it was an opportunity for us to sit down

and talk about our product.

And you're just proving to somebody that you did research.

Like all you're doing is like, I read online about you,

meet with me and what you're talking about

is repositioning your controlling idea.

Okay, I solve empty pipelines for sales teams.

Look, I know that you've had some acquisitions

and you're in the VP of sales position,

your job is to grow and look, I want to learn more

about your strategy, but I've worked with teams

just like yours that have an empty pipeline

and it's because they're doing everything

but getting on LinkedIn Navigator and using it correctly,

I have some strategies for you.

I thought you might want to see them house 15 minutes

and you've got a message that is geared towards them,

you can research their business more specifically,

AI is huge, you said get specific,

well AI works best when you're specific instead of general.

So get really specific and then you've got research

and look, it takes 45 minutes to build a message.

Yeah, I tell the story a lot,

but I sat down with this CEO in a company

and I was really excited to, I was like 22 years old.

I don't know why they let me go talk to this guy.

Let me go talk to him.

And I was so nervous, so I did every bit of research

before AI and I had this stack of notes on the table

and I opened the first page and I went,

I'm really excited to meet with you

because I learned that your business does this, this,

this and this and I want to ask you more about that

and he looked at me and went,

son, that is, that is not what we do.

And all of the research, I spent like three days

on this research, I just went,

I just took the stack of paper and I went,

boom, off the table, just threw it away

because what did it matter?

And I tell us the reps and you'll probably tell them too,

like look, do all your research,

but if you have the controlling idea

and you have some level of research in this industry,

you've worked with them, you've got champions,

just go talk to somebody.

For sure, for sure.

But then they go talk to somebody, yeah.

Because you think of the idea of like research, right?

It's not just AI.

It's researching inside that organization.

So when we think about like enterprise sales teams,

multiple layers of leadership and decision makers

and all of that, now I'm talking about like

multiple stakeholders in an account

that you're trying to, you know,

I heard actually a podcast the other day

from sales gravy.

It was a really good one I bet.

Jeff, so Jeff was talking about a sales rep

that was trying to get into C suite

and having trouble to get into C suite.

Well, the problem was is the whole business acumen, right?

And so this idea of the sales rep going in

and actually just coming from the angle of,

hey, I just want to learn.

I want to educate myself.

So this idea of educating himself

and learning a little bit more about that organization

before he goes into C suite.

It's the same approach in this, right?

So AI and the research that you can do online, right?

Can actually add more context in getting in the door,

maybe with some of those other individuals,

that can be an influencer or a champion.

That would be one way to do it.

And then you actually have kind of extra ammo

and really more crystal clear kind of data and insight.

So when you do go up top,

you have actually something to say

that's meaningful and relevant.

It's such a gold.

It's such great insight into how someone

can be more successful, especially an enterprise role.

Honestly, if you're selling complex services,

this is the best way to learn.

And like you said, the research you do with AI or Google

or whatever your tools are out here

is giving you knowledge, but it's not giving you context.

Yes.

And I always tell people, you know, I just,

I want to level up, but I don't know who to talk to

an organization, call the sales team.

They pick up the phone.

Absolutely.

They need they need pipeline just as much as you do.

And my line is always, you know, if it's LinkedIn

or if it's email is Hey, Brad,

Jumlin Jr. I'm over at this company.

I'm a sales rep just like you look, man,

I don't want to sell you on stuff.

I just I want to level up, but I need to learn

and it just sells person to sells person

would you be willing to help me out?

And like eight times out of 10, they're totally interested

in helping out because they figure maybe they can sell back

to you.

It's like we're all in this game together.

I think that, you know, walking into this next scenario,

this is going back to that scaling conversation.

Yeah.

And I called this a scaling catastrophe.

So I'm noting this one for for the YouTube channel.

So go to sales gravy at YouTube

and you can find all of our videos.

All right.

It's an executive failure.

A high growth company is completely reliant on it.

You superstar closers.

Actually, let's call it one.

You got one person who's actually selling all the business

and there's five other people in the sales team.

Well, they're there.

You know, they're they show up every day

and I'm happy for it.

But this one person's really crushing it.

It's a charisma driven organization,

not a process driven one.

So this person is not the founder,

but they were there at the beginning.

So they sort of have that kind of founder vibe to them.

They are really inconsistent month to month,

you know, if he pulls in a big deal.

Great.

If not, they're sunk.

And these results result in churn.

So the sales team keeps turning over.

They can't find the right people.

The sales director who's supposed to be leading

this person keeps getting turned over

and they have no scalable go-to-market blueprint.

It's just not repeatable at all.

Okay. So you got that scenario.

You walk into the building.

The CEO says, we need revenue fix it.

And the sales director is bags under their eyes,

haven't slept in six days.

And they're like packing their desk up.

Like you walk in and they're about right there.

Like thank God, you're in.

They're like tagging you in.

They're like, I'm going home.

I haven't seen my wife in like six years, you know,

he's just sweating.

And then there's one guy in the corner

who's like talking it up at the water cooler.

Like he's all that because he sold all the revenue

in the business.

And so what are they going to do?

Fire me.

You know, you've got that situation.

You've walked into it.

How do you handle that?

Yeah.

How do you build a go-to-market blueprint

around this kind of organization?

So this, this is a great question

because I ran into this multiple times.

Oh good.

It's not just money.

Just kidding.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I was literally just in a meeting

last Friday with the CEO and owner.

And they were talking about all their sales reps

and one sales rep has been with the company for like 15 years.

And he's the one that's absolutely crushing it.

And no, this wasn't like teed up before this podcast.

I just did my research.

OK, so here's what the problem is with that, right?

Like a sales director, a VP of sales,

they can't go into that situation

and just throw more gas on the fire

and expect different outcomes.

Like you have to back up.

And it's more about the culture, right?

So when we think about scalability,

we think about leadership stepping in

and building scalable systems and processes.

It has to come from the top.

And it has to come from the owner of the company

and saying, hey, we are changing directions.

I know that, hey, I've been probably doing this

for the last handful of years with no right systems or processes,

but we're at a point right now where we are looking to scale.

And the only reason that we can scale

or the only way that we can scale is a systemized way

to go to market.

And we have to have everybody on board with it.

And so to answer your question, the thing about this JBJ,

it all comes down to culture.

So that leader has to instill a culture of excellence

and accountability.

That's super easy, Brad.

Yeah, I mean, you could do it overnight, not you can't.

But the owner absolutely has to instill a culture or a sales leader,

BP, CRO, whatever that may, a sales culture of excellence

and accountability.

The second part behind that is a scalable process.

You have to identify out of your entire sales team, right?

Who are actually the top performing sales reps, right?

What are maybe one or two key actions

that they do that really work well?

And can we put that in a way or a systemized process

for the entire sales team to adopt?

Now, the pushback is going to be the sales reps.

Well, I've never done it that way.

I've been doing this for the last 10 years or five years

or two years or whatever that might be.

We're not telling you to change the way

and how you're doing things completely.

Because your sales style is your sales style.

But what we're trying to do is systemize an outline and framework

on how to execute high-level sales and revenue growth

in this company.

And so if the sales leader can come in with that expectation

and build a sales process out in that way,

then you're in a much better position

with the business owner or the sales leader

coming in with that expectation.

And look, at the end of the day,

they have to create this culture to empower their sales people

and know like the leaders actually really care

about the sales reps and about their success.

You'll have better buying with that.

But it's a big project to do that.

This idea of putting and implementing a scalable sales

process in, it takes time.

And it takes time for everybody to get bought in on it.

So it starts with the culture, it starts with the top.

I love that that's the first step of this blueprint

where we talk about go-to-market,

and blue prints, and playbooks.

And you start talking about the technical things.

Like you've got to have a sales process in place.

And what does that process look like?

And then how do you hand things off?

And you said something that was really impactful.

And I think that leaders of businesses should pay attention

to whether you're in a Fortune 500 or your own

your own business, whatever it is.

Reps want to know that you care about them.

And here's the thing that you should know about this scenario

with the one rep who's crushing it

and everyone else's failing.

Leaders who aren't stepping in,

who aren't building culture intentionally.

And often that person who's crushing the sales

is holding all the others back.

And while they have a bunch of revenue in the pipeline,

they're not a fit for your business anymore.

They don't fit the culture, they're not helping others.

And if you as a leader are not stepping in,

it tells the other people that you don't care about them.

And the only thing that matters about their life

is how much revenue they bring to the table.

And look, I'm all about sales reps

to be measured by the amount of revenue they bring in.

That is truly the only way to show success in business.

But people are people first.

And so if they feel you don't care about them as a leader,

like look, your culture's going to suffer

and your scalability just plummets.

And that good market plan that you've spent $400,000

on with the consultant.

And they wrote it all up on a whiteboard

and looked all pretty and they put it in the document.

And you went, hey guys, this is a good market plan.

And then six months later, you're like,

we have this plan, what happened?

And Joe Schmoch sales rep over here

is still selling everything and going,

I ain't care about your plan

because I know what I've been doing for five years

and I'm not changing what I'm doing.

And you're still in the same boat that you were in

when you first started the conversation

or how do I fix the situation of scalability?

Businesses sell, crumble, or have to be reimagined

when the scalable challenge, the scalable question

is never answered correctly.

Final thoughts on leadership.

This wasn't supposed to be a leadership sign,

but I think it's really important that you,

you have a lot of experience in this space.

So, you know, based on what I've just kind of laid out there,

anything kind of popped your mind about what

you might say to leaders in this kind of situation.

Yeah, I mean, I would say in this situation,

you gotta be like looking the mirror as a sales leader

or a business owner and be completely honest with yourself.

And the question that you have to ask yourself is,

hey, do I have the right people in the right seats on my team?

Because it's one thing to create a sales process

or a scalable process to grow,

but it's another thing to execute, right?

So, in order to execute at a high level,

which you already know, you have to have the right people

in the right seats.

And so as a sales leader, you have to be honest with yourself

and you have to be honest with your team too.

And look, not all sales reps are gonna be the right fit

for your team, especially if you're making changes

or there's certain things that a company's doing

and moving forward, they may not be the right fit

and you have to make that hard decision to say,

hey, are they gonna be able to, you know,

be on board with the changes or not?

That whole thing.

So that's really, really important.

Quote comes to mind about this particular situation,

which is, you know, if you are a leader

and you have that hot-shot sales rep,

and look, I am more apt than anybody

to be the hot-shot sales rep.

I love just doing my own thing.

I'm a, your Disprofiles ID.

You tell me what to do and I don't wanna do any of it.

And I'm gonna do my own thing,

but the quote that comes to mind is,

if you wanna go fast, go alone,

and if you wanna go far, go together.

Yes.

And that's so true for sales teams in that,

yes, as a leader, you can put a bunch of hot-shots in there

and you'll run really fast, but it's hard duplicate.

They get burned out.

They're excited about going to something new

that they can go, and then you have to build process

because you grew and they don't like process.

So they do their own process

and then you have that same situation

that you just can't get out of that sort of,

Meyer of the one person doing everything

or the couple of people who do all that.

Well, it's interesting.

I'll say one thing about process.

I think the word process scares a lot of people.

Sears me, especially as a sales rep,

because you feel like you're pigeonholed

in a certain way of doing things.

And that's not what we're saying.

What we're saying is within that process,

if you look at the definition of process,

honestly, it really comes down to taking the right actions

at the right time to get the right outcome.

And so when you string along the right systems

and processes, you should be able to get the right outcomes

when and how and with who, every time.

Now, how you get there in each step of the process

is really kind of related up to you and your style

and all of that.

That's not what we're saying here.

We're not trying to change the sales rep style.

We are trying to organize the sales process

in a way that everybody's on board.

And honestly, it sets you up for better coaching

and better leadership,

because then you can actually identify the gaps

in that process that might be missing, so and so forth.

So yeah.

Process is doing the right things at the right time

to get the right outcome, put that on a t-shirt

and sell that thing on the beach.

Okay, I want to give you some space to tell people

where to find you, where to learn from you,

where to connect with you,

because Brad is going to be back in the studios

here at sales gravy in a very near future

with some great courses that he'll be recording

with our wonderful, wonderful team

who is adding that to sales gravy university.

And before those courses come out,

people should start to get familiar with who you are

and what you do so that they can tie all of these concepts

together, put it in context

and start leveraging them every single day.

So give people a little bit of your business card.

Yeah, yeah.

They say we're simplified sales.com.

That would be a great resource for anybody

that wants to jump on there.

You'll find out all the programs

and everything else that I'm doing.

And then number two is just LinkedIn, really easy.

Jump on LinkedIn,

jump to my profile page, connect.

I'm always open to connect with people.

So go connect on LinkedIn.

So before we leave this podcast,

look, if you're watching this on YouTube,

thank you so much.

But if you're not, go check our videos out on YouTube.

You can watch these conversations

just to get yourself some professional development.

And then also give us a like

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We really appreciate y'all listening

to the sales review podcast

and we'll catch you next time.

Hi, I'm Jeb Blunt, best-selling author

of Fanatical Prospecting Cells EQ Objections Inc.

and my brand new book, The LinkedIn Edge.

You know, companies and people from all over the world

come to me to get answers to their toughest cells

and growth questions.

And that's why I created Ask Jeb.

There's a segment on the Cells Gravy podcast

where you can come and ask me anything.

If you wanna get on the show, just go to

sellsgravy.com forward slash ask

that sellsgravy.com forward slash ask

whenever our great producers will get you on

and you can ask me anything about sales.

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