[00:00:00] Oren Klaff: We are live. All right. Hey, welcome. This is Oren Klaff and you are on the deal maker show today. I am lucky and pleased. I'm actually sad or terrified. I have Tony Hughes on from the, the co-author of tech powered sales and the author of combo prospecting. And I did a little bit.

[00:00:23] Oren Klaff: Yeah. A little bit of a pre-call with Tony and he is scaring me with how much more he knows about this stuff than I do. So I might actually do something I rarely ever do on this show, which is no, not take my clothes off. I do. I do that more often than I actually listen, but Tony, welcome to the show.

[00:00:44] Oren Klaff: I'm actually interested in listening to what you have to say, and I know other people are as well. So welcome. Thanks for being here.

[00:00:53] Tony Hughes: Thank you, Oren. I am super excited about the conversation. I've been a huge fan of your books, pitch anything and flip the script watched a ton of your stuff online and you and I are very close.

[00:01:02] Oren Klaff: Yeah good. You're aligned with the books, but that was stuff I did, year, two years ago, you don't know what I'm doing now. I was at, I was speaking at a sales conference yesterday for a SAS company, fairly large SAS company. We were talking about closing and I felt like they're closed.

[00:01:18] Oren Klaff: Needs to be Hey, listen. I'm not going to work harder on your company than you will. You have this problem? We don't. Okay. I'm happy to leave here. If you guys can figure out what you really want. And go work with so many and fix this problem. You have this problem as bad as it's going to get. I we rarely see this problem in, in, in such a bad form.

[00:01:39] Oren Klaff: I'll leave here and you guys keep your problem. If you want to go work with Acme, SAS company there's a bunch of kids surfing on couches and Bali. Go ahead. But let's figure it out quickly. What we're going to do together. So I think that's a better close than the one they were using, but what and you would have, three, four years ago that wouldn't have been appropriate or work, but I think the buyers have so much power today that you've got to escalate in power in status and control in effort, in energy in, in equivalent.

[00:02:08] Oren Klaff: We're not the lowly salesperson, you're not the buyer with the money in the contract and the status and the capability and the things we need. I think the roles have reversed. I can get, I can. Oh, by the way I said I was going to listen, but let me finish and then I can go get, I can go get from Justin, your partner or Daniel, my partner, a thousand leads, 2000 leads, 5,000 leads, leads I can get it's the closing. Of big account sales, real deals that has become a last, a lost art because you can buy leads. So what, wha you know, what are you seeing today that has changed in the deals that really matters. Everybody understands. You can get leads. You can throw a, you can throw a script against the leads you, every blind hog can find a truffle every once in a while.

[00:02:59] Oren Klaff: You'll convert at 1.8% against bought leads and see what falls out of that. But what is the last part? Of closing deals in your mind, what's changed.

[00:03:09] Tony Hughes: Laura and I work with big enterprises. My clients are companies like Salesforce, SAP, Adobe. I work a lot in the SAS and tech startup world as well on advisory boards, helping people raise capital, same kind of circles that you move in.

[00:03:23] Tony Hughes: I'm going to say something really controversial. Most people that think their problem is closing are actually wrong. Their problem is opening. Because if you don't open the right way, you never get the clothes.

[00:03:34] Oren Klaff: But when you say the right way, when you say the right way, because I feel like, what does that mean?

[00:03:41] Oren Klaff: What are the, what do you have to create when you open the right way? Whatever that is, what emotion, what situation, what stakes, what premise, what belief system do you have to create that allows you to close? Easily.

[00:03:58] Tony Hughes: Let's get back to fundamentals. I believe that selling is first and foremost about.

[00:04:04] Tony Hughes: Making a positive difference in the life of the customer personally and professionally. And if you don't believe that as a seller or as an entrepreneur then you're automatically doing the wrong thing right out of the gate. And the other thing is when we engage with people, we need to talk the language of leaders, which is dollars percentages outcomes.

[00:04:20] Tony Hughes: So we need to turn up. We need, I use this phrase when we spring from the bushes, we leave better surprise somebody that wasn't expecting to have any interaction with us on the phone, maybe an email in social, even face-to-face post COVID. But the thing is when we talk to them, we need a worthwhile point of view in their mind about why this conversation matters.

[00:04:39] Tony Hughes: So we need to personalize and show that we're relevant. So it's really important to warm the conversation. Not with artificial fake rapport, building and friending, but by showing them we've done our research and then we simply say, Hey, look up. The reason I wanted to talk is I've got some ideas on how I think you could, and then say what benefit I use and then, and in a way that didn't talk about a second benefit be and ask them a great, insightful question.

[00:05:05] Tony Hughes: So if we open in a way that gets them focused on their business case for change, The reason why they should work with us, then we get them focused on creating the funding and developing the sense of urgency. There's almost never a mythical compelling event. What we really need is a compelling reason, a strong business case, and what most sellers and entrepreneurs do.

[00:05:27] Tony Hughes: I especially see this with startups. Is they managed to create interest. The person's interested. They want to look at it. They want a demo. They want to talk about it. I want a second meeting, the third meeting, but they never buy. And the reason they never buy is because the business entrepreneur or the seller never anchored the conversation.

[00:05:47] Tony Hughes: In the commercial value of change. So don't confuse interest because interest can often just waste a huge amount of time and resources and never go anywhere. So we need to engage as if we're appear. And if we open where we create the focus on their business case, we avoid a whole lot of objections because if we talk about us and what we do.

[00:06:06] Tony Hughes: The other person naturally starts to compare us with competition and ask about price. We don't want that compensation to change.

[00:06:16] Oren Klaff: I totally agree. Let's unpack it a little bit and be like what's the worst possible opening? Let me frame a scenario. All right. The we've got some leads.

[00:06:26] Oren Klaff: We sent out an email to a $50 million SAS company. We sell $50,000 a year, accounting, SAS product. And we have the CFO, the COO, and the VP of finance come to a call and they have a problem that our SAS software solves there. They're interested. They're hooked by the. They looked at our website, the website is credible.

[00:06:52] Oren Klaff: They typed us in on LinkedIn. We looked like real dudes on LinkedIn and Microsoft are as our customers and they go, great. We'll take a call with you. They book some time we get on a zoom. What's the worst possible way to start that call.

[00:07:05] Tony Hughes: The worst way to start the call is to make it all about us. We need to make it all about them and their business case for change.

[00:07:12] Tony Hughes: I, when I work with sellers, I say, look, as soon as you can in the conversation, if it, if a lead comes to you, they'll be the customer or the prospect will be in the mode of asking their 99 questions or sending you their spreadsheet with their 1,343 questions, you've got to tick the boxes and provide a price.

[00:07:29] Tony Hughes: As soon as you can. You need to say, Hey, do you mind if I ask. What's happening inside the organization. That's caused you to want to look at this, not look at us, but look at this. So what's happened internally? This caused you want to look at this next question. If you were to invest in, changing this with us or anybody else.

[00:07:50] Tony Hughes: What improved results are you expecting both for the organization and for you and your role now, what these two questions do is they try to uncover the root cause or trigger event that's gone on. That's created the interest. It starts to uncover and get them thinking about their business case rather than comparing us with competition.

[00:08:12] Tony Hughes: And then the third question that we can ask that flows on from this quite logically is Hey, where do you see the risks? W where do you see the risks of getting this implemented successfully? And the thing we know from all of the research. Is that we become the emotional favorite, the one that they want to work with, if we're the ones that educate them and provide some insights get them to start to think about, other things they could be doing or unintended consequences that they maybe had not considered how they can ensure adoption, how they can gather consensus in the organization.

[00:08:43] Tony Hughes: One of the worst things that happens with buyers is they have a problem. They go to market. And then they buy something and try and solve the problem in a way where it's under supported at the executive level and underfunded.

[00:08:56] Oren Klaff: Hey, I don't appreciate describing my company like that, Tony. Okay.

[00:09:00] Oren Klaff: That's that's what we do. We go to market under-researched we buy anything, we install it and and then we go find another one that works a little bit better but I think something that you mentioned. Is to me, one of the biggest failings of the salespeople or business development officers or origination specialists, whatever you call yourself today is that unless you can add some insight to that buyer's knowledge of his business.

[00:09:35] Oren Klaff: Right there. If they feel like they're teaching you about their industry, they're always going to be doubtful about the impact you can have in their business. And I learned this in the various forays I had in the automotive industry with either SAS software or advertising agencies, but the automotive business is very tough.

[00:09:56] Oren Klaff: Their margins are low. And it's run by salespeople. It's not run by engineers. Maybe that'll change in the next 10 years, but they're super savvy. They're hard to sell against. They're moving really fast. They know how to sell. And when you're a salesperson, they recognize you and they feel like they have your numbers.

[00:10:16] Oren Klaff: And I've found the only way to sell into the automotive industry is if you can teach them or provide some insight about their business. Whether it's an automotive dealership, or a manufacturer, if you can provide them something. Wow. I didn't know that some real insight about their business or news that they didn't know.

[00:10:36] Oren Klaff: Boom. They love you that in that business, that was the Canary in the coal mine for that technique. Excuse me. Is when you can dig so deep into somebody's business, you can uncover something that's meaningful to them. That they can go use after that call and be like that. Then you have them, they believe in you.

[00:10:57] Oren Klaff: They're interested in trusting you. They know you speak a common language and now there's way more trust than you'll ever get. Then talking about parasailing, jet skiing, scuba diving, whether the Phoenix suns and all that kind of stuff that people believe. That they're building trust and recognition and really nothing is happening.

[00:11:16] Oren Klaff: That's what I want to talk a little bit more about all this rapport stuff, because I know you're going to, but yeah, th this thing that you said that triggered me is insight. When you can deliver a real, meaningful insight to somebody about their business, then all these questions go away about, do you understand what we do?

[00:11:35] Tony Hughes: Yeah. And the challenge is how do we move from insight? Just being a cliche. To actually being meaningful. And that's why it's really important for all sellers and business people that they really think about their ideal customer profile, because not everyone's a prospect and then the buyer personas they engage with.

[00:11:53] Tony Hughes: And then for all of our existing customers, we want to go and know those killer case studies that we can talk about. Now we need to be careful because if you called up Pepsi and said, Hey, we work with Coca Cola and I'd love to come and share some insights with you about what they're doing. They may agree to do a zoom call with you, but they'll never let you set foot on the premises, right?

[00:12:11] Tony Hughes: Because you're an unethical person that portrays trade secrets from one company to the competition. So we need to be careful. But what we know is this buyers are not interested in educating sellers. So the seller can pitch to them. They expect us to have done our homework and to turn up with a point of view.

[00:12:28] Tony Hughes: So if we say, Hey, look, I'm really happy to share with you what we're seeing other CFOs. Within the retail sector at the moment to try and solve this problem. When can we find time? The reason for meeting is not to get a pitch about a product or a vendor solution. The reason to meet is to gain

[00:12:44] Tony Hughes: Some insights.

[00:12:45] Oren Klaff: I'm even more aggressive about it than that, right? I will say for example, Hey, you are today I'm trying to think of a problem that people have, right? So today you're running cyber security on your platform, 13 websites, four petabytes of data annually across 250 users, that's key.

[00:13:12] Oren Klaff: I can remember the first day that we did that. It was 2002. We were so happy. It was a joyful moment. And we we, but since then, we've grown a little bit, four petabytes of data. We'll review four PI petabytes of data. Every 15 minutes, we may. 2,500 websites fed 2,505, who's counting, across 27 trillion lines of code and we'll see 17 to 25 cyber.

[00:13:41] Oren Klaff: Every two hours. That what we're doing is we're doing it at scale. The things that we're seeing at the leading edge of our business, you're not going to see what we saw three years ago for another five years. We want to share with you is what's happening at the real front lines. I know what you're doing.

[00:14:00] Oren Klaff: Feels like the front lines. It's very exciting and four petabytes of data. And so I try to, minimize what they're doing in terms of scale. What we'd like to do is let you know what you're going to see when you actually get big, your proforma actually happened. Your plans actually happened.

[00:14:17] Oren Klaff: The things you say your companies are going to buy. And the growth you're going to have actually happens in two years. Bear that shits in the woods, as you say, you'll be, what we want to do is share or with you, what the world will really look like when you get there and give you advanced view. Believe if we had that advanced view, we'd be 10 times larger ourselves.

[00:14:38] Oren Klaff: So , I try and even be more aggressive about where that insight comes from, why we have it. And I think, maybe the differences and not everybody likes us, but I do try and frame them down. It's hard to frame yourself up, or I feel like it's harder to frame yourself up then how people already see you because you're telling people what to think, but you do need a gap, right?

[00:15:04] Oren Klaff: Gap selling. Who's the guy wrote cap selling. I forget his name,

[00:15:07] Tony Hughes: But it's a good book.

[00:15:10] Oren Klaff: What is it, guys? He only has one name. I haven't talked to him and he'd be interesting guy to talk to you, but anyway but there has to be a gap to sell into. It's hard to elevate yourself because you're telling people that you're good.

[00:15:19] Oren Klaff: So we try and, elevate a little bit with this insight, but I do try and reframe them Horton hears a who. Have you ever read the, or a better book is a king rat. Did you read James Carvel? None of it was written 45 or 65 years ago, or what. Shin, Cavell just still alive.

[00:15:36] Oren Klaff: We need a Daniel, we need a researcher. I can't remember all this stuff, but anyway, so king rat, I'm going to give away the plot. If you haven't read it by now, like too bad, I'm spoil it. So what happens is, did this tale of these prisoners in world war one or two, and I think world war II and they have this social architecture.

[00:15:54] Oren Klaff: That's fascinating. And really as you would have in normal society, this whole built-out architecture of social hierarchies within the prison, but finally. When the soldiers emancipate them and, and release him from the prison. They're they're just scrabbling for bears.

[00:16:13] Oren Klaff: They're barely alive, but the whole book paints, like they have this complex architecture. So what I try and do, sorry, we're in, how are we in a sales conversation? I try and paint the buyer. As being in a different world from where he thinks he is right. Horton hears a who or rat they're just, a rat in a cage.

[00:16:34] Oren Klaff: And the real world is outside of them and open their eyes to what's really possible. Like they've just arrived in Hollywood as a, they're really just a bit actor from a community college theater. In Kansas, not to be mean to, Sioux falls, Kansas or whatever it is.

[00:16:51] Oren Klaff: And now they're in Hollywood and they, oh, I gave you a better example and not use sports metaphors, but when kids move from college football to the NFL, They think it's just like a more professional college football and you get paid, they hit fucking hard as hell. And then it fell every single college kids.

[00:17:09] Oren Klaff: God damn, they hit fucking hard out here. It's a totally different game. And that's why I try and show them is if you guys really want to go where you want to go, the hits are harder. It's a different world. You we're trying to help you move from small ball to big ball. Hey, little Tony.

[00:17:25] Oren Klaff: You're off the field, big Tony is in, right? Yeah. That to me, using that insight and helping them understand that there's a bigger game to be played than what they're in. And they're actually just messing around in the scraps. I find creates a gap and some cognitive dissonance or do some disruption, change in the status quo because ultimately.

[00:17:46] Oren Klaff: If they believe that they're doing a pretty good job, the status quo can hold. They can continue spending a little bit of money using some consultants here and there and not have to make any significant investment or change. It's just really hard to sell into that environment.

[00:18:07] Tony Hughes: So on, you said a minute ago, you wondered where you were going, but what you were doing was you were telling stories and that's what every seller needs to do. They need to tell stories, but the mistake most sellers make is they tell stories in ways that makes them the seller, the hero of the story. We need to make the customer the hero of the story. And what you just described is reframing.

[00:18:29] Tony Hughes: We're really hoping to lift the eyes of our customer out of the gutter and actually to the horizon, get them to imagine what that brighter future could

[00:18:37] Tony Hughes: be like

[00:18:38] Oren Klaff: But people get so confused by this idea of story. Like what is so that, they get confused by stories. So we call it a narrative, they get confused by narrative.

[00:18:46] Oren Klaff: So we call it a narrative arc. They get confused by narrative arc. So we call it a, pitch architecture. They get fused by pitch architecture. So we're just like, fuck it just here's the pitch. On page one, say these things like why, what are you motivated by? What's your mission? What's your vision?

[00:19:01] Oren Klaff: What's your plan? What to you is really a story that buyers will just be pulled in by interested in they're not giving you the time or willing to pay attention. They don't know any better. They're just. To what it is. You have to say, because then what w what is in your mind? I'm interested.

[00:19:24] Oren Klaff: I'm not giving you the answer I'm asking for, the answer what's what's a story made up.

[00:19:28] Tony Hughes: Let me just maybe preempt that. The first thing is when we approach someone that does not yet know us, right? This whole concept of creating opportunity pipeline, they aren't interested in our stories.

[00:19:38] Tony Hughes: They're not interested in us. They're just interested in themselves. So we need to personalize the conversation by showing we've done research, a common connection suggested we speak. We've noticed a trigger event that's occurred in their world or an attribute about their business. And then we have a point of view about how they can drive improved results in their role.

[00:19:56] Tony Hughes: As we go deeper, we want to use stories to emotionally anchor the fact that this is all believable, and we want to tell stories where we make our other customers. The heroes of the story rather than ourselves and related to that person's world.

[00:20:10] Oren Klaff: But do you have an example of that? Cause I feel like if we, if I tell people to do that, they're going to fly the plane into the side of a mountain.

[00:20:18] Tony Hughes: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:19] Tony Hughes: So one board, everybody, but I've got frameworks for all of this, right? I'll I'll I can tell you a story. When the GFC hit in March last year, one of my biggest clients globally is is a corporation called flight center, travel group. They operate in north America, Europe, Asia, all over the world.

[00:20:34] Tony Hughes: I do they training around the globe. Their executive team called me, and they've got about seven business to business brands that they work with. They called me and said, Hey, our sellers and account managers are universally encountering the same problem. They're calling up customers or prospects. And the prospects and customers are saying, look, I don't know why you're even calling.

[00:20:52] Tony Hughes: None of my staff are traveling. There's no point meeting phone me back when the airlines are back in the air. And I said, we need to make that excuse the very reason why they should meet. And this is the narrative that we created. They didn't, they then changed and called their prospects and they said, Hey, With none of your staff traveling right now.

[00:21:10] Tony Hughes: So right out of the gate, they killed an objection. They prevented an objection coming up. No, one's going to raise that. Objection. If you're acknowledging it straightaway with none of your staff traveling right now. I think this is the ideal opportunity time for you to drive eight to 12% of costs out of what will return to being the third to fifth biggest expense line on your P and L.

[00:21:32] Tony Hughes: When was the last time you reviewed your travel policy? And the way you run it as a process, right? So you're creating the focus on the business case. They've been quietly switching competitor clients over to them in the last 15 months. So as the transacting comes back, it's with them, and then what they would also have is they would have great stories to tell, they'd say, Hey another.

[00:21:53] Tony Hughes: And then they talk about another client in the same industry. Is that customer prospect, another CFO in a client with him working with was able to achieve this. When I can't promise that you'd get the same results, but that's why we need to get together. When can we make time? So they use the stories to provide the evidence and proof, and they lead with a point of view that causes the person to lean into the company.

[00:22:17] Oren Klaff: Yeah, I like it. That's in what you said, just triggered a story that I have. I'll just share it with you might be bad, but it's at the top of my head. So a woman comes in here and she is running a small company. That's really cool. It is a Uber for women with only women drivers, small company.

[00:22:38] Oren Klaff: Their goal is not to take over. And she has a fantastic pitch and she has a story herself of she was in a scary Uber ride and we'll get into it, and she just realized like, this is not safe. In the city she was in and the ride she took and everything I got, she was like, oh, I should just have women drivers for women only.

[00:22:55] Oren Klaff: And so they started the company and they got some money and she had a whole pitch. And she gave me the pitch and I just sat there nodding and it was, I never broke. Because she was going slide to slide dutifully, and it was filling in the blanks. And it's very interesting and get to the end of the pitch.

[00:23:07] Oren Klaff: And I go, it's funny. This is super interesting, but is it even legal? And she goes to me, everyone asks. I go God damn it. Why not just open it up and say, by the way, I want to let you know we're doing something real excited and yes, it is legal. Why don't you even see that before you even say what it is?

[00:23:26] Oren Klaff: If you always get jammed up on that. So I go how long does it take you to answer this question? If you've been through all that, to me, that's just legal while, I normally in five or six minutes, I go five or six minutes. Are you fucking kidding me? You want, I can do with five minutes in front of an investor.

[00:23:41] Oren Klaff: That's your $5 million

[00:23:44] Tony Hughes: Because all the clinics are. And the reality is if you don't deal with the elephant in the room, the person isn't listening to you properly, because they're distracted all of the way through. They're wondering this. You want me to move?

[00:23:55] Oren Klaff: First of all, if you're listening to this podcast somehow find some way to block everything I'm saying.

[00:24:01] Oren Klaff: And just write down with Tony saying, all right. It's my pockets. I have to act like I have something to add here, but everything Tony has said is triggering. Why am I yelling at you? I don't need to yell at you. It's because you're triggering in me these huge pain points of companies that I've worked with that are having these problems, developing insights.

[00:24:23] Oren Klaff: Not not having stories getting to the objections way at the end, and then the end of the meeting, when everybody's tired, everybody wants to go home. Nobody wants to go hear you anymore. Now you're trying to overcome their objections and do a call to action. So I think you're hitting every, pain point right on the head.

[00:24:40] Oren Klaff: And by the way, these are the things. If you need more leads, email Tony, email us Tony's partner, Daniel, Justin, and Daniel. Get they'll just walk up to the, like the water thing at the side of your house and just turn it on and you know what you'll be doing. You'll be cleaning your car with leads.

[00:25:00] Oren Klaff: Hey man, what are you doing? I'm washing my car. What is that coming out of the hose? Don't you need those now, Justin and Tony and Daniel are just got me so many leads. I don't even need these. I'm just scrubbing my car with them. So leads is not the problem. The things that Tony is saying, like these are so element.

[00:25:15] Oren Klaff: And so I want to go back to what you just said because I want dammit, we don't have any way to flash it up on the screen, but reviewers through your last statement?

[00:25:24] Tony Hughes: The most important thing is we have to do our pre-search before we run outreach to anybody.

[00:25:30] Tony Hughes: Because they expect us to know them are they're not interested in educating us. So the way we warm the coal up is by playing things back to them to show that we've done our research. We need to show that we're relevant to them, but super quickly, we need a worthwhile point of view about how they can drive improved results in their role.

[00:25:47] Tony Hughes: We need to be able to back it up with some true stories and have some great questions to ask. And the way we open is what determines the probability of closing. And when we think about qualifying an opportunity, just remember that no prospect or potential buyer likes to feel like they've been qualified by a seller.

[00:26:04] Tony Hughes: But what they are okay with is exploring whether it makes sense to invest time together and the degree to which a deal or an opportunity is really qualified in my mind is the degree to which they, the other side. Is sharing insider information with us and access to other people that formed consensus for the decision.

[00:26:23] Tony Hughes: So if that's not going on, if you're just doing all of the pitching and telling, and you're sending things to them, it's all one way. Then I think we're in deep trouble. And if we open in a way that anchors the business case and the commercial bank. And then we have insights about how they can implement successfully manage their risks.

[00:26:40] Tony Hughes: The way we sell makes us the emotional favorite. And even if there's others that do what we do, they go, Hey, I want to deal with Aaron because he took the time to understand my business. He knows what we're trying to achieve. He's educated me about other opportunities and risks that we're going to manage together.

[00:26:56] Tony Hughes: It's not about the tech or the features or functions. This guy is the lowest risk for us because he truly understands us.

[00:27:03] Oren Klaff: I think that's right. We can get into really technical stuff as you're touching lowest risk is really the other side of certainty in what we're seeking to create is certainty.

[00:27:11] Oren Klaff: Throughout this, but I think I haven't done like a narrative or a narrative arc or a story or a soundbite or whatever on this. If you really want to know what this feels like to be on the shitty side of somebody's selling you, it is when you call your insurance company or your bank. Or, there's something wrong with the payment on a lease equipment or a vehicle, and somebody answers the phone and they have 92% sounding American accent oh, Hey, thank you. Very call. I'll be here. Customer service administrator for today. I'm very excited to help you out. Hey, Mr. Klaff, I understand that you've been trying to get this payment through, on your lease equipment, but unfortunately, we haven't been able to get the payment from bank of America.

[00:27:50] Oren Klaff: I'll definitely help you out with that today. Oh, my gosh, like all the 1, 2, 3, press three for that. And call-in number finally, I'm here with somebody that, to who's going to help me. And they go, can we just verify your information? And then you go through all this information verification and then they go they go, so what seems to be the problem?

[00:28:09] Oren Klaff: So well, I've been trying to pay you guys, but every time I clicked. It says that the payments accepted, but then I get an email from you saying I haven't paid and I'm getting pissed off because I'm happy to pay, but you're just not taking my money. And then they go, so let me understand what your thing is that you're trying to pay, but you're not unable to pay.

[00:28:29] Oren Klaff: Are you fucking deaf? I'm sorry. Ma'am do you have a manager in America? Because yes, that's what I have been saying. And so there's a frustration of being patronized, the frustration of going through this whole process and believing this is the thing, like believing that you are in an actual process where somebody understands you.

[00:28:51] Oren Klaff: And then all of a sudden you realize they're asking questions that are just fundamental disconnects. Hey, you can find this out. On LinkedIn, you know where else you can find this out on our website, you know where else you can find this out. If you type in, "O", on Google, it will.

[00:29:10] Oren Klaff: Auto-complete my name. That's where else you can get this information and then you're like, you're just out. So these signals, and I'll give you a real world. All of this. I know I'm , hypothecating but my partner. I'm not going to mention his name, Jack. Hey Dan, can we beat that out?

[00:29:28] Oren Klaff: But my PR, so I'll work with a client for two or three phone calls, right? And professionally calmly, mathematically using sales, calculus, and business calculator, bring them to a point where they want us. Believe it or not to, to on their behalf, go raise $30 million of capital for their business.

[00:29:49] Oren Klaff: Based on the year over year growth that they're having, the quarterly, the results, they feel like they can use some additional capital. Their IRR is exceeding 18%, which is, 5% higher than the industry average. And as they're planning to move towards an IPO, they feel like they should have another $25 million on the balance sheet.

[00:30:05] Oren Klaff: When the, they only have a specific use of funds, whatever they want. Raise the money. And so then I'll call in Jack, who does a lot of our capital raising, not to throw him under the bus. And then he'll come on the call. This is the third call where I've done everything possible to share with them, provided insight.

[00:30:24] Oren Klaff: Let them know that we are high status. We're not going to work on their problem harder than they will. We know people in common just done all those things that you and I have been talking about. And 50 things that we haven't talked about yet. And then Jack will get on the phone and he'll go.

[00:30:38] Oren Klaff: Yeah. So why don't you give me a little background on your company?

[00:30:43] Oren Klaff: On the third call, and it's just lobbying a hand grenade into the deal. And usually it's irrecoverable. We have a conversations like don't come on the call, the third call and ask them what their company does. Because it's does everything that Tony is telling us. Not to do. And actually this is, for you to share your stuff, but I just want to add one comment is like the faster, and the more technical as I wrote in the script.

[00:31:16] Oren Klaff: You can feed back to them what they do. So it doesn't feel like you're thinking hard or you're not self-congratulatory that you've done the research about them. So you're like, oh yeah, you're another one of those sell side SAS companies with accounting plugins with the IRS and reduced costs by 25%.

[00:31:33] Oren Klaff: Growing 50% year over year. And you've been in Forbes and Inc three times. And you're looking to move a little bit faster by having better account sales and increasing, increasing sales cost by what three, 7% and making your company because of the competitive nature of hiring salespeople, making it one of the most competitive places to work in and increasing your average sale size, you can pay salespeople, north of 250 K OTE.

[00:31:59] Oren Klaff: It's so I think that's a good starting point and they're like, holy shit.

[00:32:01] Tony Hughes: You know me,

[00:32:02] Oren Klaff: And it's not just, me, it's that I feel like we have a common, let you speak the language of our industry. So when I hear you, Tony say it's about them, not about us.

[00:32:14] Oren Klaff: I also translate that into speak in their language exactly. To people. Here. Here's what, here's my goal. And then I'll, I'm taking up so much of your time, but I just want to fish great. My goal is this, is it. Anybody won't buy it from me. I hit them with this microphone. Daniel gave me a weighs like 60 pounds.

[00:32:36] Oren Klaff: No my goal is that I talk to them. The way they talk to each, I talked to them in the language the way they talk to each other on Monday morning at eight o'clock when there's an emergency. The website went down, the trucks didn't show up. They're not looking to develop rapport trust and talk about the weather and who won the Phoenix suns game and how the weekend was.

[00:33:02] Oren Klaff: And, they're just going the, Hey, the website received a denial of service attack. It looks like, Google has us down. They're telling us it's 58 minutes to lift the website back on. And then we're only going to be on in Europe and, 58 minute escalation in terms of they,

[00:33:16] Oren Klaff: increase rate of server availability and then that'll swipe across the Eastern seaboard and into north America across the west coast. We won't be up with full OTC service. Full-time until 10 o'clock this morning, except we have an ad campaign that Google says on cancel, that we'll be releasing across our 7, 8, 5, and seven seat zones by three o'clock.

[00:33:37] Oren Klaff: What are we going to do? Like whatever their language is. I want to speaking, maybe not with that level of urgency and maybe not in a tone, that level of excitement, but I want to speak in the language that they talk to each other when their urgency goes up. And that to me says, it's not about me. I'm in your world.

[00:33:58] Oren Klaff: I'm a peer to you. We're peers to each other. We work on the same kinds of problems. And we belong together. And then the last thing, cause I know I said the last thing I'll say, and then I'll let you run with it. Like celebrities, don't date, coffee, baristas, not the coffee. Baristas are beautiful and like walks on the beach and international travel and can write wonderful poetry and haikus and are good photographers and are nice people.

[00:34:29] Oren Klaff: That right. and our beautiful is they don't share the same problems, celebrities, date, each other, cause they're alcoholics and they're needy and they are they're slaves to their Instagram, feedback rate. And they're worried about aging and younger people taking their roles and they share the same problem in the same language.

[00:34:51] Oren Klaff: About the prompts watch entourage. Like I think there's so much to be learned from that of insider Hollywood language celebrities share the same problems. That's how they know they're right. Freight made for each other. They have the same pain. It's not right. Cause every sales book would be like, gap selling, a problem solution.

[00:35:12] Oren Klaff: I think what Tony is telling you, and I'm maybe I'm putting words in your mouth. It's pain and pain.

[00:35:17] Tony Hughes: It's pain. It's yeah, look, it's certainly pain and pleasure. But if there is no serious problem, there is no serious purchase order. So the size of the problem, the size of the opportunity to determine the level of commitment and priority and how much money they'll spend are an eye.

[00:35:31] Tony Hughes: Look, I agree with you a hundred percent and just to really help people that are listening to this, there's actually a huge paradox here because what are any saying? And he's right. Is, if you want to drive winning engagement to make someone a customer, you need to do an insane level of research, right?

[00:35:47] Tony Hughes: So you really need to earn this by showing them that, them have insights, have a point of view, and that stuff takes a lot of work. When you're building sales pipeline, you're driving outbound. You don't have the luxury of investing all of that time for every prospect. So I know there's a bit of a shameless plug, but in, in my new book, coauthored with Justin Michael tech powered sales, what we've actually got in here.

[00:36:09] Tony Hughes: Is examples of how you can go and build buyer personas that have that languaging in there. So if you're running a campaign to a CFO in retail or a CEO in manufacturing, you think, okay, so how has this person measured in their role? What are the stresses and pressures they're under?

[00:36:26] Tony Hughes: What are the industry trends they're facing? What's my point of view about why change and why now? Rather than just talking about why us, what are the common objections I'm likely to expect? What are the words and phrases and insider language that resonates with them? Where are they influenced online and within their networks, typically in their organization.

[00:36:47] Tony Hughes: What are the trigger events that go on in their world that I can look for that create relevance and context when I reach out. So the whole idea of those buyer personas is how you can still drive a level of personalization at scale because that's a big challenge today is everyone's automating with tech, right?

[00:37:03] Tony Hughes: But what they're doing is they're loading spam. Until they get lean gun of automation and all they're doing is alienating more people faster, they're failing faster and they failing in a way that's a lot more expensive.

[00:37:15] Oren Klaff: I think this is, and we were talking earlier and I think, yeah, this is really another problem as we shift out of speaking one-on-one at the CEO level, I think we've covered that.

[00:37:26] Oren Klaff: Aggressively, as we're shifting, yeah. How do you do this at scale? The first thing before, how do you do it at scale? I think comes, don't do this at scale until you have the messaging, right? Because it's just automation gone. Wild. I have a friend I mentioned to you, he called me up a week ago.

[00:37:43] Oren Klaff: He goes, oh my God. I spent $80,000 today because the advertising it's got a big e-commerce guy. He just got off the phone. He calls me, in crisis. I just got the phone yelling at my marketing department. What you guys, what are you doing? Don't did you just go lunch instead of lunch for four hours?

[00:38:00] Oren Klaff: Because the marketing that, that was working in the morning and they just let it run all day. But sometime around lunchtime, the response rate. Stop working or somebody else was bidding higher for the keyword. And they're at scale, there are three, $400 million e-commerce company. So they spent $80,000 by the end of the day by not, but by just letting the marketing scale right before they looked at it again.

[00:38:22] Oren Klaff: So if it's automation run wild, sending out messages, At scale without having the messaging right. First is you'll get some response rate because people will just, click either by accident or the wheelie have such an acute problem. They'll take anybody who works in the industry or whatever the case is.

[00:38:44] Oren Klaff: But the messaging that is about you is probably limiting your response rates by five X. Okay. Now a lot of people will say, okay, but how do I make the messaging about them? And I think that's what you're getting at every industry has its issues. W what just really quickly, one way I think about it is if you've ever well, not, if you've ever, the last time you broke up with your girlfriend, that you can remember that, that, when you were young, It's just incredibly painful. And you're like, oh, what was me? Your girlfriend or boyfriend. And you're just like, so torn up and how will I ever get over it? And everything like that, the reality is relationships only break up in seven ways, right?

[00:39:24] Oren Klaff: You have one of the seven ways to feel pain, but in those seven ways, psychologists have fixes for you to make you feel better and get you on a path of, healthy, emotional response. But I think in all these industries, The numbers are even smaller you, and there's only three things they care about.

[00:39:41] Oren Klaff: And there's only two ways to talk about the things they care about that is scalable, I believe is where, your material and your books go. Are we, we threatened the right needle there in your mind.

[00:39:55] Tony Hughes: Yeah! Are in the really interesting thing is that at any given point of time for us to sell is 3% of the market is typically actively looking for what we are offer.

[00:40:05] Tony Hughes: And 40% of the market is actually open. So if we talk about us and what we do will only appeal

to

[00:40:12] Tony Hughes: the 3%.

[00:40:13] Oren Klaff: And that feels like a response rate. You're like, Hey, I'm doing a good job. They say it's 2%, I'm getting 3%. Woo. Look at me. No.

[00:40:21] Tony Hughes: Just because 3% of the market is looking for what we do.

[00:40:24] Tony Hughes: Doesn't mean that all 3% would consider us if we tried to talk to the right. But the reality is if we build the conversation narrative, that's about them and their opportunity to drive improved results. Now we're appealing to the 43%. And we're doing what everyone acknowledges strategic selling is we're engaging early and we're really setting the agenda.

[00:40:44] Tony Hughes: In tech powered sales, we actually provide the exact framework for building these conversations and we provide the framework for how you inject personalization, because what we need to do is create a baseline value prop or what I call a value narrative for by industry specific buyer persona. And then you inject the personalization, the holy grail of tech, as it's evolving this decade is how do you inject personalization into automation in a way that actually works and doesn't call damage.

[00:41:16] Tony Hughes: There's a concept called liquid syntax that we actually talk about, but dumb. Hey I know we're at a time. Yes.

[00:41:23] Oren Klaff: You're out of time. I have all day. I love this stuff, you're busy. I'm not busy. I have no, but Tony, when you say we're out of time, you have four minutes.

[00:41:35] Tony Hughes: I do. I've got three and a half minutes.

[00:41:37] Tony Hughes: I've got a big commitment for a giant client. Okay.

[00:41:40] Oren Klaff: All right. Forget about those guys for a minute. Let me open the ties you, but give us a quick example. Of what that would actually look like a scalable personalization outreach without having to have a database. Cause I think everybody thinks like in order to personalization, you have to have a database which has 17 variables, that you can plug into your Salesforce Marquette.

[00:42:04] Oren Klaff: Sales stack and it's provides the exact perfect messaging for that particular client based on their LinkedIn and Facebook, Data Pull. that's not what you're saying. So give us an example of something that's scalable. And you have plenty of time. The amount of damage you can do in two and a half minutes is amazing.

[00:42:20] Tony Hughes: So the most powerful form of personalization that works is a common, trusted relationship. But they're rare. The next, most powerful is a trigger event. So imagine that you said my ideal customer profile is a tech company. That's a scale-up, they've, they're doing a series, a, B or C capital race.

[00:42:38] Tony Hughes: The reality is this technology out there that can automatically monitor for capital raises? Do you think I'm looking for clients that run this sort of tech in this stack, and they've done a capital raise and they use that as personalization,Hey Mark! Congratulations on the series B capital raise and expanding into south America.

[00:42:56] Tony Hughes: Hey, the reason for the call is I've actually got some ideas on how you can accelerate sales of the new jet Purdue product and in a way that also improves margin. Do you mind if I ask and then you ask them a question and you're off to the races and if you can make the whole thing three sentences, not three paragraphs in both your emails and the way that you speak.

[00:43:15] Tony Hughes: You're respecting time leaders want us to be brief. They want us to get to the point they're not lonely and bored looking for a new sales friend. So when you think about injecting personalization, A trusted relationship or something that's happened in the world that creates awareness of need of what we do.

[00:43:31] Tony Hughes: So for example, if someone's just started hiring a whole bunch of salespeople, you think, okay, so did the previous ones fail and they've replaced them or are they growing like crazy? They'll be thinking, man, it's expensive. Hiring these salespeople. Half of them will probably fail. How do we manage that risk?

[00:43:45] Tony Hughes: The thoughts in their mind, don't talk about your sales training. Your sales methodology. They're not interested in that. They just want more reps hitting quota and a predictable forecast. So talk about the outcome and buddy, I've got to go.

[00:43:59] Oren Klaff: It's great. Hey guys, by the way, don't do not invite guests on.

[00:44:01] Oren Klaff: They know more about this than I do. It's makes me look bad, but oh, sorry. You're still here.

[00:44:09] Oren Klaff: Hey, look Tony, where do people go if they want. To do this for them.

[00:44:16] Tony Hughes: Yeah. So I'd just really encourage you to buy tech power sales or the truth is I'm a one man band. I've more clients than I can cope with. But read tech powered sales connect with me in LinkedIn. Also Justin Michael. He is an absolute genius.

[00:44:29] Tony Hughes: When it comes to top of funnel pipeline creation, you can find me online. [email protected], Tony hughes.com.edu, and our, and I've loved the conversation. I love your books and I love your philosophy on breaking through and engaging into the C-suite and executives. But yeah.

[00:44:50] Oren Klaff: Yeah. Any more promotion I'm going to have to start charging you for running a commercial.

[00:44:54] Oren Klaff: All right, Tony, you have a good time with your client. I will talk to you later. I look forward to the next one. And so obviously I'm more in class. This is the deal maker podcast. Make sure to subscribe to this. If you could see that whiteboard right there. I don't know if I can turn the case. I can't reach the camera anyway.

[00:45:12] Oren Klaff: I'm not allowed to touch the camera, but if you could see that whiteboard right there, that has the list of guests coming up, that I'm going to be interviewing here on the deal-maker podcast. Like it's a messed up list of just amazing business development, sales CEOs, but everybody who knows origination.

[00:45:32] Oren Klaff: Lead generation tech stack technology origination pitch, how to put something in front of people. So there'll be enticed by it, hooked by it, excited by it and close. That's what we look for. Psychologist executives, people who are technologists who really know the full stack sales cycle. So if you want to grow your revenue, I just feel like the guys we have coming up from technology all the way through to negotiation are amazing.

[00:45:59] Oren Klaff: Subscribe here. I'll put those guys in front of you. You can decide if there's great, as I think they are. I'll see you here next week on the deal-maker podcast.