Forecasting vs Hope-Casting Your Sales Process

with Steve Ammann,

Managing Partner at Sales MEDDIC Group

In this episode, Pete is joined by Steve Ammann, Managing Partner at Sales MEDDIC Group. Together, they discuss the ramp challenges companies are facing today, tactical solutions in getting the most out of sales reps, key metrics to focus on in sales forecasting, and more.
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Notes:

Key topics in today’s conversation include:

  • Biggest challenges software sales organizations are facing (1:01)
  • Tactical approaches for your sales processes (5:07)
  • One thing sales organizations need to focus on for growth (11:07)
  • Steve’s professional journey leading to where he is today (20:05)
  • Explaining MEDDIC acronym and how that helps customers (23:52)
  • Final thoughts and takeaways (33:30)

 

The SaaS(ramp) Podcast explores how tech leaders scale from product adoption to enterprise success. Learn more at www.saasrampmedia.com.

Transcription:

Pete Thornton 00:04
All right, welcome everybody to The SaaS Ramp Podcast. I’m your host podcast Pete, awesome guest on today, gentlemen, I already have known and worked with as a great chance to have him back around. This is Steve. Ammann. Steve is managing partner at Sales MEDDIC group. Welcome to the call, Steve.

Steve Ammann 00:23
Thank you very much Pete, happy to be here. And maybe we can help out your audience here learning some more things about this ramp up transition. So happy to help.

Pete Thornton 00:35
Yeah, thanks for being on really appreciate it. You’re the first of your kind. We have a lot of other types of guests in like hypergrowth, SaaS, enablement, sales, but you’re training on something really interesting that I’m super excited for the audience to hear about. So sometimes we go straight into you, the company and everything. But I think especially now it’s kind of like a macroeconomic situation going on. Everybody looking at the end of the year, beginning of the next, like to start fast with a little bit of like, looking at what’s the biggest challenge you’ve seen in the software sales orders over the past year? So

Steve Ammann 01:08
yeah, sure, like within the context of, of your audience, right about people going from a ramp up of maybe a product lead sales motion into an enterprise motion, which generally means additional stakeholders, and also bigger dollars, right. And it’s hard. People gotta realize, like, you don’t just flip a switch, right. And so one of our biggest challenges is understanding qualification. And it’s a constant qualification, because your resources get more expensive internally. And then if you think about your customer, that you’re now talking about solving more problems for him or some, they need to have more people involved. And everything just at the expense of time and money of your order needs to be kind of qualified constantly, because there’s just so many initiatives that never make it past the whiteboard, right. And so, if you really are customer centric, salesperson, you kind of think about their resources and like what’s costing them to engage with you as well as you. And therefore you need to be qualifying them and helping them qualify their own people. And that’s hard, because sales reps are trained to like, keep going until they tell me no, or slam the door Vova. And it’s a tough transition to be in that qualification mode, versus just going until they tell me they stop answering my emails. That’s the biggest mindset wise.

Pete Thornton 02:50
Alright, that that does, it resonates with me personally. And of course, that’s why we worked together previously, but also with this audience. So there’s a couple things you said, first of all, and it prompts you about, like the hyper growth SAS space that you work in very frequently. But this, this idea that there’s a product market fit. And then we have these customers who are mostly coming inbound from like a product, lead growth motion, they’re already maybe free users, or self service users. And now they’re coming to the sales team and trying to get some teared up piece. And it might be one or two individuals. And then at some point, you might want to add on a bigger deal. And that deal is going to have a lot of people associated with it. And at that point, it’s not just Hey, is it a yes or no? Do they close the door? Do they not? Now you’re having to actually have a lot of time. And I guess bandwidth depends on whether you’re spent time with a customer or not. And that’s where this idea of qualification for the deal comes in?

Steve Ammann 03:47
Yeah, when you go from one or two people and get like this, you have a sales team or whatever. And then you’re engaging with maybe two people in the company to get the product lead thing in there, right? To six stakeholders. It’s a really different deal. And therefore the skill set and the way that you approach it, it is that what worked before doesn’t work. A two person stakeholder deal is way different than a sixth person. And then you have the dollars, there’s more scrutiny on the dollars on the sea levels strategically. So you got that component up here on the dollar spend, and then you’ve got the multiples trying to get really, then that transition. If we go tactical, like from a sales process standpoint, a lot of people put in a consensus stage in their sales process, because they’re trying to build consensus amongst those six people and they have different viewpoints and it’s just a lot harder and it takes up uplifting skill set to be able to do that.

Pete Thornton 04:50
So I watched this at a club. I’ve experienced this personally as a rep because I moved in from like the SDR BDR, ADR everybody, all the different letters Whoever the people don’t think he’s going to cold call, and that’s what they changed the name to into mid market account executive into enterprise account executive and each level with something so that you either stretch the sales process or you use the the intensity of it, the length of it everything. So I kind of personally understand that from an individual contributor, what’s the challenge? Like, why is this a risk of just running your reps into this? Why shouldn’t they just go until somebody says kind of No, or closes the door? Like, what’s the I don’t know? What’s the business impact? What actually happens here when people run into this challenge?

Steve Ammann 05:35
Yeah, so the thing that, when you’re selling the, like, maybe there’s someone that will have an operational cost or trying to reduce, right, and then you got it security. So you got the two stakeholders sale, right? It’s kind of tactical, and those are great sales, like subtle doesn’t just stay in that environment. Like, it’s not always the right thing to transition, if you’re a salesperson out of it, because you might be better at that. And you can do well there. But if your company is going into, hey, this is where we’re going, then as a seller, you need to upgrade your skill set to be able to handle multi stakeholder deals. And what it’s just like anything else you tried, you’ve tried to convince two people to do some kind of thing that has certain challenges. If you try and convince six or eight that it comes from different departments in different areas. It gets more complicated, right? And the reason I was harping on call qualification is, internally, these companies think about how fast you’re trying to grow. They’re trying to do the same thing. And so there’s six initiatives that they’re looking at. And yours is just one. So you got maybe six people that all have six favorite initiatives that they want to work on? And how do you get all six of them to put yours as a priority, right over the other things they could do. So that you’re not basically spinning your wheels in there, and they’re like, Hey, your stuffs great, Pete, but you know what, we’re gonna go, we got a bigger problem over here that we got to go solve, and it’s a different, it says nothing to do with your software, right? Or what it does. And we’re gonna go solve that. So it’s a project priority thing. So you got that going on when you go to the enterprise. And if you go and do what you said, you just keep going on your initiative. And you don’t realize that your initiative is ranked sixth. And they’re only going to spend money on the top three that they picked, you completely waste and all you have as a seller is time. So you’re completely wasting your time with them, probably pissing them off by bugging them, and you’re not gonna get a deal. And you’re and another deal that you are currently working on what your initiative is, and the top three you could be working on. And so it’s like a double whammy of wasted resources. And that’s, that’s the problem.

Pete Thornton 08:00
Like slip deals, lost deals, opportunity cost, and then the end like the external piece where your nightmare you mentioned, you’re pissing them off, maybe it was a deal for next year. That is no longer a deal for Yeah. But it was appropriate for both parties. Yeah. And then you’re telling readership, you’re rolling it up to leadership, and you’re letting them know, Hey, I think this is a good one like you just, why? Because I talked to them. And they didn’t tell me no, no, like, they didn’t say, Hey, you have another call or something along those lines.

Steve Ammann 08:28
Right. So like, here’s a tactical thing. When you’re making that transition, you would actually ask, what other initiatives are top of mind at your company now? Right? And if you were to, if the executives were to rank them, or you heard them, rank them or word at the watercooler or whatever, what would they be? And then you can kind of look at the like, Hey, do we just know it? Like, it’s not it? They just not be might not be ready now. Right? And so it’s not like they’re bad prospects or your product isn’t good or anything? Like it’s not about that. It’s the fact that in their current business cycle, their priorities are different from their other initiatives. And when they show you that it’s like, okay, well, you guys should wait until their priority, or their priorities are wrong. Well, I’ve had three people that have that same ranking that you have, and they all switch this one because of this and this and like, you can attack the priorities and have a logical discussion about them, right? But if you just blindly keep sending, checking up emails, it’s just not good. I can’t think is not good. So you can have some to talk about with your Savior. And then you’ve got a forecast full of hopium stuff like that. It’s just it’s on broadcast, we call it right. And, and then everyone’s wasting their time talking about opportunities that can’t close so they can say they have connectivity and that’s just wrong for everybody.

Pete Thornton 10:08
Okay, that’s private leadership, the VCs, everybody, though, we got you I went, Wow, this is like the first question. I’m like, well, let’s go all the way in just because I get excited about it. But there’s a book that we’re both fans of. And I recently finished called the qualified sales leader a lot of stories that unpack some of this from every level from like, individual contributors from the reps all the way up into the sales leaders and explains a little bit of why a lot of the stories are behind it. And you’re just like nodding along the whole time. Like, oh, God, that was me. Oh, that was him. You like see it? Yeah. All the angles as you read through it. It’s as a well written book speaks about a lot of the topics, you’re kind of you’re you’re talking about as well.

Steve Ammann 10:43
Yeah, yeah. It’s excellent. And it’s added in the story formats, easy to read. So it won’t take you a lot of time. Yeah,

Pete Thornton 10:50
okay. Yeah. Some of us reps or former reps, we’re gonna need it. It’s either gonna have to be a video or an easy to remember. Georgia. Okay, then I don’t want to assume and I’ll still ask this question like, because I like to get it down to you mentioned priority. So sometimes, it’s nice to narrow it down into one thing, just given your experience, the companies that you work with, what is the one thing that you would highly recommend that sales orbs kind of focus on in order to make sure that they grow? And we are thinking about these companies that have a million things going on scaling headcount, and have revenue expectations that are two and 3x? Every single year? Any one thing that if they could focus on that would make sure that they were successful for that year?

Steve Ammann 11:29
Yeah, unlike, I’m big on like, their skill sets to sales, right. So I’ll give you an example. Like, I’ve watched this guy operate at several places named as Bob Kostas. He’s one of the great SaaS sales leaders in the world, actually, in my opinion, and when Bob kind of gets hired to take people through some of these transitions, right. And he first what he does, is he goes and fixes fundamental things like territories, alignment of territories, and how that like the S E, A E ratios, and compliments, okay, this is, these are two, if you don’t have those two things, right, you can layer on all the fancy enablement, sales processes and the consensus stage. If those two things aren’t in place properly, you can’t scale. Okay? So he goes and fixes that first, right? Or set it up for the enterprise, because it might be a little bit different. Now your range territories and the ratio of your essays to A’s, right? And then what he does is he layers in the med pick qualification methodology, so that people start thinking that I’m going to be a multistakeholder. I need to be constantly qualifying. What are the things I’m gauging my qualifications around? And it’s very fundamental, in Dan’s book that we just mentioned, and talks a lot about it, right? And then nap provides the foundation for how you engage a multi stakeholder deal, right? And then he makes sure that’s embedded in the sales process. So that his sales process in his opportunities, when they bubble up to him from a forecast categories standpoint, like commit, which is a category best case, right? And pipeline, there’s accuracy. And now we can run his business, and decide whether to add more people where they add them, because those foundations are, and it gives him a lot better reporting data wise to the board about the accuracy of a forecast versus the hope cast. And I’ve just watched him do that two or three times. And he’s very successful at it. So I like that formula works.

Pete Thornton 13:55
That’s also

Steve Ammann 13:56
not just one thing. It’s like, though, you have to fix those that you know, and they may be right, but then you layer in the medic, and then you layer and then you embedded in the sales process with the stages and align forecast categories. And now you have a predictable business model around sales, versus someone pulling a number out of there, wherever and saying, Hey, we’re gonna do 20 million like, and then then and then you stop the hope casting. And that’s success

Pete Thornton 14:23
with interest. So a couple things on that one, because you mentioned a lot of things, but they were essentially, these fundamentals. You’re just like, hey, if there’s one thing you can do is just set the foundation like, see if you can have everybody aligned the right way in the correct ratios in the right territories. And then and then make sure that they meet a pick, we’re talking about a qualification framework to essentially ensure that what you’re rolling up what you say you think is going to close. We’ll close so that we can roll into a predictable business model. That was a bit of a mouthful like it. Did I get that right or anything you want to pick off? Yeah,

Steve Ammann 14:58
I mean, the thing is, at an enterprise selling, you switch from selling what your product does to selling what it does for their business. And that’s a business outcome mindset, right? So, like, I’ll give you an example, if I’m going to go work with Bob, right? I care about his sales performance outcomes, okay? The amount of revenue that he can generate, it’s a performance thing, right matter of revenue, we can generate with the resources that he has, with an accuracy of a forecast to meet or exceed his quota targets, right. It’s pure performance. It’s like thinking about that outcome. I know if Bob doesn’t go to fixed territories, and comp plans. I like okay, so I sell med pick training, right and professional development how to do it, I would coach someone like Bob and say, Did you fix your territories comp plan? Before we get like, before I sell you a medic engage medic engagement? Because if you don’t, I’m not going to be as effective at raising your sales performance because those fundamentals are there. So that’s a qualification mindset and an outcome mindset. Right? I’m, I know that I do better for them. If I help guide them on the structure of their own initiatives, I will not deal with Bob, because he already knows. But other people might not know that, right? And so and so yeah, might be delaying my own revenue stream of med pick. But in the end, we’ll both have a better engagement and better performance. And it’s kind of that kind of mindset that transitions you from, oh, I gotta go sell six med pick engagements to, I’m gonna sell the right ones to the right people at the right time. Yeah, and my revenue will be higher than if I just did. And that’s an enterprise kind of thinking. And that’s the transition that’s hard for reps that have been successful at transactional moving into this, because they’re used to just the raw talent, and energy and like, you gotta get this stuff right into more strategically looking at someone’s business and helping them with their priorities.

Pete Thornton 17:19
I know a rep has done extremely well with this. But just to give context to that, with a leading rep in 2020, at a PLG organization with over 300, closed won opportunities over 300. So he blew his quota out of the water, as you would expect with 300 opportunities, but 300 opportunities, that same rep today has 20 accounts. So that’s a transition to make from 2020 to 2022, making the transition really well. But these are the kinds of things because it’s the same organization, and he’s the same person. And his territory is IBM territory changed a little bit too. But that many accounts to that many accounts. And then the ability to and selling at a completely different tier had to move way up market and, and kind of up the product scale as well. If there’s four products and organization, he can only tip top 3x The next one, yeah, product.

Steve Ammann 18:13
And then if there’s people on here from a sales enablement standpoint, that needs to help or whatever. It’s like, you need this, you’re trying to upskill these people. It’s a skill like, like running a proper discovery process is a skill, right? Like negotiation is a skill. That one’s pretty straightforward, right? But qualification is a skill, right? And so if you for the enablement audience, it’s like, okay, how am I going to skill up these very talented, very motivated, someone that can close 300, like, the raw energy to do that, and the talent to do that, and just getting the paperwork done at that there’s a lot of raw talent out there from a Sales User. But you know, the enablement people have to put in a structure, maybe they still need some assistance to unlike those upskilling those specific skills like, like running a discovery process, it’s different multi stakeholders, single stakeholder, and you can’t just say, go do it, you got you got to upskill. So, enablement needs to have that mindset of like, these are skills, and then you got to compare it to, okay, what are the best doing right? And like, How can I? And how do you know, right? So you gotta have some measurements in place. And that’s the more sophisticated enablement teams know that and they know how to do that. But if you’ve never done it before, right, you might need some help to take you through as if you’re an enabled person through that transition by someone that’s done that before that knows and has the content of the skill set to train the reps versus like just telling them they have to do it and get wishing them good luck, right well Right,

Pete Thornton 20:00
you’ll get some different answers in those Salesforce buckets, if you just throw them in, there are a couple of letters in some fields. So I just really want to unpack that business challenge, because I think it was gonna resonate with the audience, a lot of members of the audience who are in that transitionary period right now and looking at how to do that. But yeah, who Steve likes, what kind of professional experiences? Oh, yeah, to get where you are, like, let’s shut it back up a little bit and have some fun there.

Steve Ammann 20:25
Yeah, just briefly, like, a lot of a lot of things are luck. But when luck meets perseverance, and hard work blah, blah, blah, and then magic happens, right? So I happened to decide to go into the software industry after a brief stint and another career. And then I read about this company in this magazine, I thought, wow, if that software actually does what it says, this is going to change, like how the whole world does, like mechanical design of products. And so I called them up. And I said, does this stuff really work? Because it sounds too good to be true, right? And the guy’s like, well, there’s issues right, but generally, it’s the fundamentals of it. So anyway, that company was called parametric technology company at the time, it was like 10 million in sales, big competitors, no one knew if it would do well, but well, but they had that game changing fundamental difference in how they approached the problem. And, and the luck part was the fact that the leaders sales leadership team there was so much better than any other sales leadership team. And I didn’t know that right. And that’s where McMahon likes, we hired McMahon, and people like John McMahon, or with the book like that. And it was like, the, the, in this environment this like, hyper skilled me up from watching these people operate and develop. And anyway, in the course of that engagement, we uncovered the medic, now med pick sales methodology, as our constant qualification methodology. And then, so when I learned it, because we developed it, and then, about six years ago, I left being a VP of sales and all the different sales roles, like you were mentioning right into helping my business partner, Jack Napoli is known as the godfather of medic, because he was in the room and it was created at PTC to help share how to do constant qualification at the enterprise level with other companies. So we started a business just doing that, that’s all we do. And, I’ve been doing that for the last six and a half years, just promoting what I did and learned as a seller, and helping people with this transition and work with CROs and enablement people. And it’s been wonderful to, to deal, to do that, and, and to help people like Bob and I had mentioned before, increase the sales performance and, and everybody wins, right? The customers win because they get the right aligned products from the companies, the sales reps are making quota, and, and all that stuff because of something that I learned that I could show them. Yeah, we’ll do it. Okay. That’s right, again, experienced that before, really helpful.

Pete Thornton 23:22
It kind of took that personalized, it made additional pieces of content, trained on that for new hires rolling through this postman organization. And, it’s been a foundation moving forward. And again, you mentioned a few of these, and maybe we should just give a high level but it’s medic, there’s a one on one, say there’s medic, two Cs, there’s med pick B and between, we have we’ve added some letters. So that’s what is still the same essential framework that we’re rolling forward with. Would you take a moment for anybody who is unaware, they understand that this is a constant qualification framework, but maybe roll through these couple of letters? And then of course, anybody Google’s this, they’ll understand what that is, and get a little backstory, but just from the man himself? Yeah,

Steve Ammann 24:07
with that? Yeah. Like, like those. There’s actually like the higher level skill letters and then there’s the operational letter. So let me just touch on the three higher level skill letters, right. And that’s metrics, implication of pain and champion, okay. So when you are making this transition right into the enterprise thing, and it’s in the brain is like, Okay, I used to sell what my product did. Now I’m going to sell what my product did for their business, that’s an M, you got to understand business outcomes that they’re trying to improve and then be able to align them to different stakeholders, right, because different stakeholders sometimes have different operational outcomes. And then also within the M is the fact that you need to tell them a relevant story of something you’ve done for another cut. Customer We call those M one those your reference stores like, Oh, you think you can improve my mice customer experience? Right? Have you done that? Before I go, Yeah, I helped Delta Airlines improve their customer experience with Medallia over and we’re competing against Alaska Airlines. And we were able to win the JD Power award because we improved customer experience with that software. Right? And would you like to be able to beat your biggest competitor to have a higher level CX and get the JD Power award? I didn’t say anything about what Medallia does. I just talked about the business strategic outcomes that they’re trying to prove someone in that company has been charged to CX, I want them on a stakeholder team, right? And I’m going to, I’m going to impact that outcome. So that’s a brief understanding of them. And then AI is just kind of the flip of them. It’s the implication of the pain. So oh, if you remain number two, behind Alaska, how much revenue are you losing? Because your CX is lower than theirs, and more people are going over to Alaska, right? So you go, Well, how much is that, like, roughly, right. And that’s, that’s the implication of pain, which is really the delta between the as is state two outcomes and the to be state right JD Power Awards, right? Number one was, so you got to understand, that is the outcome selling mindset in them and I, and then you got to find someone in the organization, that’s gonna hurt the cats, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be I want to be, I don’t want to get promoted. Because I was the one that got something that improved CX and beat Alaska and got the JD Power Awards. And I’m gonna get all my little other stakeholders rallied around the fact that this is the best thing we could do. We could add more people, we could buy more servers, we could buy more planes, we could paint the tails, right? All the other projects they could do like, oh, we need Alaska to have an Eskimo, right, like delta, maybe they got it, oh, we changed our logo, more people, you know what I mean? There’s all kinds of ideas. Yeah, they’re gonna pick something that drives CX, from a software standpoint is gonna have a bigger impact than repainting the tail, right? And someone basically says, that’s their career, that dropping 2 million bucks on this software is gonna raise CX give them the award, and that’s the champion. So if you don’t, if you don’t understand those three things, you’re still selling transactionally. And you’re not using med pick properly. And, and so all those, those are the three like, higher skill level things. It’s simple for me to explain them, the skill set to be able to do that with six competing stakeholders and blah, blah, and all that stuff. It’s hard, but it can’t, it can’t be done, and Pepto frame’s the same. Right? It’s that without help I overdo it. Oh, that’s

Pete Thornton 28:05
great. That’s great. Like, because it’s just three of them, too. It just helps like, okay, let’s just narrow focus to these three particular ones, these, they’re based highly around business outcomes, and business pain, like what you just called him and I the flips, like, that’s the transition is a transition away from product and into what is the true value for their business. And like, it’s a hard transition to make, because you feel like in the highly technical product, you probably have a million things that you are very proud that you have actually learned about if you’re a non technical, original seller. And that’s what you’ve been selling to maybe developers before. And now it may be that you need to go up above a technical individual contributor developer, and speak to somebody else about the business value. So you have to get above and then you have to actually be able to speak on their terms. Like it’s a transition into business acumen. I think that is a, it’s a leap, it’s a leap, and this framework kind of outlines what leap you need to make,

Steve Ammann 29:00
right? Like and you need to be able to, don’t forget your product stuff. I’m not saying that. You just need to be able to make the connection between the product capabilities and the outcomes that they drive. So you can ask questions about the outcomes and then go, and then he reverse it. Basically, this is the decision criteria. So I’ll throw in the first D, right, is that once you’ve been able to understand the priorities of the projects and the outcomes, right, you could help them with their as his state stuff, the implication of the pain, right? Then you go back to the capabilities of your solution. Okay. So you go back down, that’s not really down. This is different. This is different. They’re different priorities, right? The technical people cared about the features and functions right? Then you re rank the key differentiated capabilities of your product to move those outcomes. Right. And then you go do some kind of value The event to show that if we do these, I will improve, let’s just I will improve CX, right, if I have these capabilities. So you’re constantly aware of the two things and how they interrelate the capabilities and the outcomes, right? And it’s like, well, then you need these capabilities to do this. And then we’re the bat work. I was showing you that, go look at three other things. I don’t care, judge them on these criteria that are linked to the outcomes and may be the best software when right, so yeah, great med Qlik, salespeople will first design that decision criteria, and then go to battle. Transactional ones, let’s talk about some mistakes of transactional people that don’t have that mindset, and that operational and our M and I and DC work together, we’ll just go over we’re going to do a POC, let’s do it. And they’ll go do the POC, maybe the criteria has been designed by the competition, right? And they’ll and then they’ll lose. And they’re like, Oh, I lost because we didn’t have this or that. And it’s like, No, you really lost because you didn’t design the criteria upfront to make sure that it’s like wind before you go to battle. Right? Like so. So we’re getting kind of into the how-to’s, which is fine. But it’s a mindset, right? That’s, if you see a rap with 300 POCs, and a success rate of 10%. They’re just letting the customer define a Curie and it says cool. PC, POC and hope, strong cricket.

Pete Thornton 31:32
Yeah, when I believe the majority of the audience has been in the position before, but it’s very, like a very hopeless feeling for the rep as well. It’s not just bad for the company. But like it is a bit of a, it is hard to like being in a place where some things are out of your control. And so it’s a process in which at least you’ll know on the front end, whether it’s your finished chance, it actually has to close because your CRM will tell you, but that’s just because you move the button over like this is like a way to determine what you might have for a month or a quarter. It’s just yeah, getting more confidence.

Steve Ammann 32:06
Yet our opposite med pick acronym is called lazy. And being lazy means lots of activities, zero yield, I’m really busy. But right I got a bunch of stuff in the pipeline. Look how busy I am. And by the end performance, right, is 50% of quota because I was just chasing things that could never close but I was really busy. So so that’s the opposite of med pick is lac why

Pete Thornton 32:36
a different way than you even though because it’s like why?

Steve Ammann 32:41
It’s just half of its acronym, things Jack’s famous for because he needs quick things to remember it. So like they’re in a situation like what am I being lazy? Or I’m being nitpicky, right? And like, and like they got you got to make these decisions fairly quickly, because they’re busy. And these little mnemonic acronyms are things like a seller’s world of constant stop, they’re really helpful because you might be lazy. And we’ll take your brain and then you’ll stop and you’ll make a demand that the customer or prospect has written decision criteria. And they’re like, and then you know, if they won’t give it to you or do that blind outcome, that the chances of them getting something are slim, and the chance of them getting your things are slim. And so you’re out. Right, and you’re not being lazy.

Pete Thornton 33:30
Yeah, yeah. Good. That’s good. So it’s a lot to unpack. And I mean, already, look, it’s 35 minutes. And I knew this would happen, because it’s just like, it’s interesting. You want to keep on going down. For those who find this as interesting as I do. Where before we do our final question. Where can you be found? Where do you like to? Federal?

Steve Ammann 33:49
Our website is www.salesMeddic with one C to give it. That was the original thing since Jack was the original founder of it, sales medic, and EDI see.com. We have full descriptions of who we are, the workshops that we offer live and virtual. Our differentiators, we basically set it up. If you’re thinking about a medic thing, like what would happen, there’s different people that offer different options. You can look at ours, we’re all about are we the right fit, and happy to help people we’re coming up on what I call SK o season 2023. So if you have a request to utilize this, please try to get it in as but get it in early because we do book up because there’s only four of us. But we’re happy to help and take people through this transition and and focus this like I did with Bob right like sales performance outcomes, moving the needle on sales performance with an understanding this from an outside perspective and helping enablement with skilling up and and we’ve seen the elite of the elite do it so we have the bar For you to measure your thing against, and you got to crawl, walk run in a lot of places can’t just be, I’m going to be elite today, right like, so we help people with, okay it start with this and then move to this and move to this. So it’s even that you get to it just depends on your exit state, but happy to help. And when you call will qualify you and you can qualify us it’s a mutual thing. And it’s all about the right

Pete Thornton 35:25
fit isn’t perfect, that’s perfect. And that’s a better ending than I had. So that’s it for us. That was great, Steve, I really appreciate it. It was great for audio. And I hope we get to work together again, soon in some capacity, because it’s always a pleasure I learned and then I can in turn help any reps that I get to work with, and leaders also get to learn.

Steve Ammann 35:46
We have no one story of success that Postman has together, right? So there you go.

Pete Thornton 35:51
That’s it. That’s it, we’ll be your delta and we’ll end our competition.

Steve Ammann 35:58
The best indicator of future performance is past performance. So that’s why those M one stories are so important. And why customers should be very skeptical if you don’t have any or have any memorization. Because you’re like, what did they just cook this thing up? And no one’s ever like, like so. So, help them by being very fluent in what you’ve done for other customers, especially from an outcome standpoint. You are amazed at how that will open doors for you.

Pete Thornton 36:26
Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s a great tip right there in itself, unless you’re selling from a slide decK and you’d haven’t hired any engineers to build the software in the background. You only have to do that once, so you should have it after that right?

Steve Ammann 36:36
Sure. Yeah. That’s where you’re just looking for a customer fit. That’s you just want someone to talk to you like you’re not even ready for med pick really interested to see if there’s product market fit. That’s a different thing. There’s a scam.

Pete Thornton 36:54
Thank you so much. That was brilliant.

Steve Ammann 36:55
Thank you very much.

Pete Thornton 36:56
Thank you very much.