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Chris Prangley

SUMMARY

What was it like when the business started to scale and a new firm was hired every three months?

The scaling process was really exciting, and there were initially less tools available. However, automation ultimately entered the picture and helped, but it is crucial for sellers to recognize which tools are crucial and actively use them.

What technology stack are managers going to require to enable their team to produce their best work?

A CRM and a precise call list are necessary for managers to help their staff perform at their highest level. However, it's crucial to keep in mind that the objective is to improve sales, not only measure metrics. Other technology, such as techniques to manage emails and marketing materials, can also be helpful.

How does Chris Prangley train his managers and give the next generation job advancement?

In order to grow his managers and offer possibilities for professional advancement, Chris Prangley stresses the value of having a distinct "why" and a dependable procedure for success.

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TRANSCRIPT

Marcus Cauchi: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back once again to the Inquisitor Podcast with me, Marcus Cauchi. My guest today is Chris Prangley. He's the author of Tech Sales War- the Tech Sales Warrior. Um, and today we're gonna be looking at some blind spots like, um, you know, when deals seem to be too good to be true, you know, the truth about RFPs when to go for them when not to when they're real and when they're bogus.

Understanding that a great deal is only a great deal, if you understand what the prospect's real pain is and why they would be motivated to change because 60% are buying cycles end up in the status quo. That's your biggest competitor. We're gonna look at how you can accelerate deals and whether you should.

What are you missing in deals? Have you, uh, covered all the bases with legal paperwork? Have you made sure everybody who needs to be involved is involved and if you're a manager, how can you help your team achieve their targets and, uh, meet the metrics. So, Chris, [00:01:00] welcome.

Chris Prangley: Thank you Marcus. Glad to be here.

60 to 90 seconds history

Marcus Cauchi: Excellent. Would you mind giving us 60 to 90 seconds on your history, please?

Chris Prangley: Yes. Yes. And, uh, to keep it short I'll I'll focus on the last decade, I broke into the world of software sales, cyber security, actually through LinkedIn, someone had mentioned, uh, this startup in New York city. And, uh, there was a lot of high regard for them, what they were doing in the early days.

And after many, many interviews I got in and I got in as a, a TDR BDR, SCR, whatever you wanna call it. Cold calling away, which led to, uh, a, a role on the inside commercial team eventually to an enterprise field seller, eventually to the regional director, managing several enterprise sellers, then to a senior director covering part of the country.

And now, uh, VP of sales on the west. Covering a bunch of teams, right? So it's been a heck of a ride and each [00:02:00] role has been so awesome in the journey and so valuable. I, if I could-

Marcus Cauchi: all in, in the same company?

Chris Prangley: All in the same company. Yeah.

Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. Okay. In that case, I'm gonna take a slightly different tact on this one.

What was it like when the company started to really scale and it was a different company every three months, what was living through that like?

Marcus Cauchi: Uh, cause it's to be really interesting. Okay. So that early stage where it was just you a phone and a lot of hope. What was it like when the company started to really scale and it was a different company every three months, what was living through that like?

Chris Prangley: Very exciting, riveting. I will say initially way less tools.

And so, uh, when we first were prospecting, a lot of it outside of like call lists and whatnot was manual, a lot of manual dials. I love manual dials actually. I found that I got a lot of connects that way. And then eventually a lot of automation came in and helped, um, to a point [00:03:00] where really any tool at your fingertips, which is amazing.

But I think once you get to the point of, of a mature company and have all those resources as a seller, you really need to identify which tools are important to you and use and actually use them. You wouldn't be , you'd be amazed how many sellers I talk to don't even know that they have this amazing tool that costs significance, uh, amounts of money that someone would be dying to use.

And it's just sitting on the shelf.

What do you have to do to make sure that it doesn't just turn into this technology spaghetti and it starts creating friction and becomes a deal prevention exercise rather than actually helping sales people sell?

Marcus Cauchi: So that then brings me to the next question. As the tech stack starts to build, what do you have to do to make sure that it doesn't just turn into this technology spaghetti and it starts creating friction and becomes a deal prevention exercise rather than actually helping sales people sell?

Chris Prangley: Yeah, I think it all goes back to your mission and [00:04:00] your process. So one of the things I talk about in the book is start with why, and it's a concept we all know, but few of us embrace and really understanding what am I here to do every single day, not just my metrics, but why am I doing this? And I think if you first understand

that, will put all the pieces in place. And then it's about time management. What am I doing? And why am I doing it? Not just to use technology, but to use it, to achieve the outcomes, the most effective people I know do exactly that they take the tools that they have available to 'em and they use 'em for the mission, for the role.

There were times I can say when, when technology was first deployed, that folks were like, Hey, use this. No one knew the effectiveness of it, right? And, and eventually it, it, sometimes it was very positive. In other ways, it was like, Hey, this isn't working, right? So that can get in the way of booking meetings or closing deals.

So you do need to [00:05:00] monitor that. I think it's harder when a company is in the startup phase in doing that because you may not have that data yet, or know the impact you learn on the fly. So.

As a manager, what technology stack you need in order to support your people to do their best work?

Marcus Cauchi: As a manager, what technology stack you need in order to support your people to do their best work?

Chris Prangley: That's a loaded question, Marcus.

I think at the, the minimum, ideally, definitely a CRM of some sorts, just to be able to, uh, have accurate data track data. I think at the minimum definitely accurate call list to be able to, you know, easily research companies and, and find data quickly. If you don't have that information and you're having your teams waste a lot of time researching, I think, you know, you're, you're basically paying people to research way more than you could just pay a service and, and be efficient with your time.

Marcus, we talked about some, some companies, depending on size, may benefit from an outsourcing model in terms of like [00:06:00] booking meetings. I think that's really gonna depend on the company size. And then outside of that, of course you need the basics. You need the cell phone, you need the laptop now in all of that, right?

I haven't mentioned there's dozens of other new technology. That's come out over the past decade, even the past year and a half. That greatly help things like ways to track emails and, and ways to deploy marketing materials in a way that you can understand if customers are leveraging them. But at the minimum, I would say those things, you know, I think any great sales team that truly knows, you know, what they're selling, the reason why they're selling it.

If you have those things, you can go out and sell all the other things, help with efficiencies. Now I'm all about efficiencies. I love 'em, but, don't ever like, let efficiencies get in the way of you selling, right? Or,

Marcus Cauchi: and, and this is my, the reason for my question, because what I've seen time, and again is people invest in [00:07:00] tech, uh, in the belief it's gonna drive efficiency, but what they sacrifice is effectiveness.

Chris Prangley: Mm-hmm

Marcus Cauchi: because people seem to forget that the reason we are investing in these technologies is because we want sales people to sell more, same thing with training, same thing with having managers, same thing with recruiting, more sales people, we want more sales, but that outcome seems to be forgotten somewhere along the way, because then it becomes a matter of trying to track metrics instead of is this actually helping my sales people to sell more and more often for more money, more frequently to more people.

And by and large, the answer to that in my experience is no. And what it does is it creates more friction. It creates more workload, more bureaucracy, and I'm not, yeah, the, the evidence is out there, but the results are not. And I wonder when you have nine and a half thousand tech companies just focused on the, uh, the MarTech and sales enablement space.

Plus all the, you know, their consultants and [00:08:00] coaches and trainers, you know, more of them than flies,

Chris Prangley: endless, endless

Through the lens of the customer

Marcus Cauchi: yeah. People like you and I, feeding on this trillion dollar year market. And what I'm convinced of is no one has solved the problem because they're all trying to fix symptoms and they're all trying to fix their little bit,

because they're not looking at the bigger picture, which is what the customer has to look at. And very few sales people look through the lens of the customer. Their problem and what they're trying to accomplish and their struggling moments and the jobs that they're trying to get done. So as a tech sales warrior, I'm really curious to understand how you made sure that you had that kind of understanding and insight before you committed hundreds of thousands of dollars of company resources in a pointless proceed.

Chris Prangley: Yeah. I it's. So this, this concept of why in aligning to your [00:09:00] mission, aligning to the company mission, it it's so critical because it, it opens your eyes to what's needed, right? And what you're doing, uh, this, this point, you're bringing up Marcus with the, the business pain. To me, you first have to understand that whether you're going into a first meeting, whether you're making, if it's a cold call or a warm call, or you're working with a partner to try to get a meeting at the most minimum, you have to understand who you're reaching out to, who they are, what they focus on, what their company is, what do they do?

How do they make money? Did you read their 10K or did you see on their business site that they're struggling with some things, have you looked at their name in the news to see if there's any articles that pop up or have you seen any of their leaders recently give talks, understanding your customer in understanding what they're going through?

You may not know all the information right away and that's fine, but at least showing up with some information that you've done your homework [00:10:00] and then in that meeting or in that call, or maybe it's a couple minutes together in an elevator, you understand that'd be a long elevator ride. You understand really what they're struggling with and you attack it from that angle.

Going back to the top of the, the question when we're talking about metrics, I think being effective in your role. If we look at it from a sales rep's perspective, what I would do and what helped really change my careers every day, I sent myself a daily report and it was on the outcomes of my activity, not what I did, not so much.

How many cold calls did I make? How many emails did I make? How many, you know, LinkedIn navigate, whatever it may be. What was-

Marcus Cauchi: effective results. Good Lord.

Chris Prangley: Yeah. yeah. Yeah. And, uh, the same thing I, I say to managers, you know, leading teams, not just being a manager, but leading coaching is if you find your team every day in the same place, [00:11:00] we need to help figure out what part of the sales cycle is breaking down.

Because if every day it's zero, we have a problem. Just saying, Hey, you're at zero. That's not gonna help anyone. So is it in their list? Is it in their outreach? Can they not overcome obstacles? Is it the times that they're reaching out? Is it, they don't understand the product or how to overcome things?

There's so many pieces of this that a leader needs to break down, versus a manager may just look at a sheet, say, Hey, you know, you got zero today. You got zero X. Say it doesn't help anyone.

Marcus Cauchi: Well, this again, then speaks to so many issues. The first thing is, if we look at the management layer, a manager has two primary functions in my book, hire the best people.

And then get the best out of them. If you hire the best people, 95-98% of your management problems go out the window. Sometimes you have to deal with a bit of prima [00:12:00] donna, but it, it, it's better than more of the many of the other problems you're gonna have to deal with and then get the best out of them.

That means they have to have the tools and resources. They need to do their best work every day. They need the right training. They need the right support. They need the right mechanisms. They need accountability. They need coaching heaven for bed. There was a study that, uh, Sandra did, um, a couple of years ago, 78% of managers were convinced they were coaching, but only 18% of their sales people said they received any coaching at all.

Um, which is yeah, that,

Chris Prangley: oh man

Marcus Cauchi: gap.

Chris Prangley: Yeah.

How you develop your managers

Marcus Cauchi: So again, In terms of how you develop your managers, I'd be really curious about that because it sounds to me like there was career progression for you, and I'd be curious what you're doing to give that back to the next generations.

Chris Prangley: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll start first with, uh, with sales reps.

You know, when I started taking over [00:13:00] teams, of course I would share process. And I think if we, number one, you gotta have the why, right? If you don't have the why let's not even talk. The next step is we need to have a process. What's your process? Day to day, week by week to achieve success. It's a basic concept, but when you drill into this with many folks, they're not doing it.

And that's really the basis of the book is a lot of folks would reach out to me go, what's your secret? You're on stage every year. What's your secret? What's your secret? And I go, you ready? There's no secret.

Marcus Cauchi: Mm-hmm.

Chris Prangley: There's a process.

Marcus Cauchi: Yeah.

Role play/Case studies

Chris Prangley: And literally I break it down in a book, but it's, it's common concepts that we all know it's just implementing it.

So one of the things that evolve from this over time, is, I know we all know role play. Some people love it. Some people hate it, but where, where I found role play to be

what's that

Marcus Cauchi: practice it's practice

Chris Prangley: it's practice. It is yes.

Marcus Cauchi: If you went to a surgeon and they hadn't practiced [00:14:00] your open heart surgery, your, your brain surgery, you would worry.

We, we are just about to go in and ask you to part with 20 million and buy a system. That's gonna affect every part of your organization, your customers, your supply chain, your people, and you want me to turn up unprepared?

Chris Prangley: Yeah, it's, it's, it's crazy. So one of the things, and I I'd recommend this to all, you know, frontline managers, I would build these case studies.

It'd probably take me, you know, an hour to build these things, give a backstory of a, a fictional company. I'd actually relate it to a deal, but make up all the names. The sellers in the room, I would give 'em a title. Maybe it's, uh, the CSO CIO, you know, I focus a lot in, in, uh, cybersecurity. So I'm using those titles.

And then within the room within those titles, like the CSO or the CIO, they may know things unique to them like the other person in the room doesn't know. So it's a true [00:15:00] workplace dynamic. And the seller comes into the room, literally walks into the room as if it's a board room meeting in person. And I have the rest of the team sitting there watching, and I pulled this concept, this kind of wild back in the day I was, I was in drama.

It's a, it's a very common technique use to learn in drama schools. And so you see what unfolds before you a live meeting and it's wild to see all the nuances. And I think if you do it enough, you can actually pull out the gaps in a unique seller's

Marcus Cauchi: Absolutely.

Chris Prangley: Uh, day to day process. And from there, the, the whole concept, you gotta make sure that,

hey guys, this is a fail, fail zone. Everyone's failing. We're doing this together. You can't allow anyone to like put anyone down in those meetings. It's all about building up as a team. So when they get in those situations, exactly, like you said, Marcus, they're ready. They're not making those excuses. And we go, by the way, those meetings, we go hard, right?

We're we're, [00:16:00] you know, there's, this is not,

Marcus Cauchi: it's harder to sell that during the red, uh, the red team rehearsal than it ever will be in front of the customer.

Chris Prangley: Exactly. Exactly. So

Marcus Cauchi: it's like, it's like putting a, an indoor plant outside you season it, the rehearsal is where you practice and you live all the moments so that you don't have to make it up on the spot.

Chris Prangley: Yeah.

Marcus Cauchi: Because there's a really good reason for this. If you've rehearsed it and lived it and you know, what's coming next, then you're not panicking. The moment you start to panic, your amygdala gets fired off and you move into freeze flight or fight. That's an idiotic place for any salesperson to ever let themselves get into.

And lack of practice normally puts you into that place. That's why you give away money and you leave it on the table.

Chris Prangley: Yeah. I, I just, I've seen this common thing across organizations where a seller comes on, right? They get, they get their gifts in the beginning. It's all, hey, exciting. They do a very basic training.[00:17:00]

Then they're thrown in the field and whether they're seasoned or not, you need to get in there and practice. And we all know, you know, practice makes perfect, but also how you practice impacts if you're-

Marcus Cauchi: Practice makes perfect

Chris Prangley: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So. Yeah, it, it helped those teams a lot. A lot of those, uh, folks that have been in those classes have gone on and become, you know, consistent quote crushers, eventually have become leaders in it, their own right now, flipping to the managers side, what I've found to be one of the things.

And it, it, once again, it seems like a basic concept, but having managers adjust to the seller's personality and truly understand them seems to be, not always a thing that folks understand, how can I serve this unique individual and what they're trying to achieve, what they're strong at and also how I relate to them and coach lead them.

Sometimes folks are [00:18:00] treating 'em as the same, same seller. And that , that does not work. So that would be one of the biggest things. And then, you know, there's this big term culture. In culture I believe is built day in, day out. It's, it's how you treat folks. It's also how you treat your day to day and what you expect.

And, uh, the frontline manager has a huge impact on that. I think much greater than what we hear at a company level. Oh, that company's great. They have great culture. I think that's built on the ground. Of course there's concepts and whatnot that the company must believe in that can impact the culture. No doubt about it.

But when you're a frontline manager, I love the role love doing that. You're there in the trenches with your team. And I think your ability to create that culture, it's so powerful. It's in your hands and it can slip right by if you don't own it.

Marcus Cauchi: And this is why I [00:19:00] think the middle management layer is the single biggest untapped latent resource within almost every organization and every management, uh, function, not just in sales.

Interestingly enough because I've been observing these problems for years, I've been going out there finding solutions. So there are a couple of solutions that are really management solutions that, uh, catalyzed that middle management layer to move from a command and control type of management style to one that is inquiry led.

And on the job in the moment, operational coaching at the point of need, then backed up by a technology that fits on your phone. And I, as the manager can say to you, Chris, I noticed that, uh, when we talked about the price increase to Bob, you checked a little bit, so let's practice that skill. And then I can issue instructions specifically on the behavior.

You then record it. But what's interesting is they [00:20:00] record four or five times before they save it. So they become more self aware of the car crash. That's them in front of the customer and that's priceless. And once they've uploaded it, I can then, uh, give feedback as the coach or the manager at a time that's convenient to me.

Now, interestingly enough, about 60% of all these videos are done from the car. So whilst they're waiting to go to, into a meeting. They do the video, the coach then can coach back and you go back and forth until they perfect it. Now I can tell that and use that as the best practice video with your permission, I can say, Chris, do you mind if we use this best practice and I can use that in the recruitment process to test coachability, I can use it in pre onboarding to get people up to speed.

I can use it on the onboarding and I can use it as a way of avoiding having people delegate up to me as the part of the three before me. When you come to me with a problem, I want you to try to try three ways to fix it. Well, if I have an archive of all [00:21:00] this stuff and it's properly indexed, you can go there and then you can fix it yourself.

Cause I don't want to create learned help personally. Now I can also shadow coach because I, as the trainer or the VP, can then coach you as the manager to when you are coaching Fred. And I can see that and then I can give you third party feedback. So you've got, that's this incredible. Yeah, it's wonderful.

So you combine that with being able to change the management layer behavior simultaneously and practice the skill. It's incredible.

Chris Prangley: That's awesome. Do you, when you're giving these exercises. Is there a way to add a real world element? Like the, the point you mentioned about pricing, right. See it all the time, live in the field.

And then I, I typically will give coaching after, but when you're doing these exercises, which by the way, highly recommend video, audio, so people can really see how they come across at meetings. How are you adding in the [00:22:00] element of like a real meeting, right. So, and

Marcus Cauchi: everything is done by you as the manager in the real world based on.

The example here is one of our clients for that is an FMCG manufacturer. Uh, they produce, uh, smoothies and they produced a, a range of cold suits and they were struggling to sell these to the buyers because the buyers were saying, well, we love your smoothies, but your, you don't exist in this category.

Why am I gonna blow a hundred grand, uh, of this stuff for it to go off on my shelves? So they struggled with that. And at the product launch, everybody hit quota because they practiced all of those different scenarios. Cuz it's about taking moments in the sale. It might be just 30 seconds or two minutes and practicing those cuz they don't need the whole thing.

It's just that little bit that you, Chris struggled with. Cause as a manager, you coach what you see.

Chris Prangley: That's so good. [00:23:00] It's it's uh, it's something I've seen witness myself. So that's awesome to hear. So this is, this is your program Marcus, or,

Marcus Cauchi: uh, it's it's one of the companies I'm a fractional CRO for a company called mobile practice.

Nice. And then the other one that does the, uh, the management performance improvement transformation is called Notion Limited. I'll introduce you if you want.

Chris Prangley: Very, very cool.

There is no I in quota

Marcus Cauchi: This is really interesting. As I look through the book, what I noticed, there's some really interesting points that you make. One of which is there is no I in quota and no one hit quota in a day.

So can you speak to both of those? Because I think it's really important that people understand the importance of cooperation and playing nicely with others.

Chris Prangley: Yeah, I, I think, you know, if you, if you want to become this seller who is closing large accounts and also becoming a consistent, closer, and we're talking about [00:24:00] Sable quotas here, you know, several million dollars, not, I'm not talking about, you know, $10,000 here.

Right? So four pounds, whatever you want or euros, right? So it's really about leveraging your resources and even at the smallest startups, there's so many folks, you know, I've, I've talked to sellers who, you know, team of 80 or so they're having to pull in legal counsel or sometimes even product development to help close a deal.

All goes back to this concept of first off, you don't have to be on your own in this island when you're selling, but also. Thinking about all the folks that you can deploy and leverage as tools to close a deal. And not just in a way of like, Hey, here I am closing, but that it is a team effort and this concept that which has been around forever win together, lose together.

Right. But when you bring that concept to the forefront of your selling, I don't know, in, in my opinion, [00:25:00] you feel more supported. You also are more just effective in your, in your role.

Marcus Cauchi: Well, this is really interesting because what I've seen in all the superstar sellers, and I mean, these are the top 0.1 percentage that I've met and I've been fortunate to meet quite a few.

Without exception, they are decent human beings. They humble. They are fantastic at driving discretionary effort from other people who have no particular vested interest in the outcome. They are really good pro- project managers. They're organized, they orchestrate things, their choreographer. And they understand that they are captain of the sale, everyone else's crew and their job is to make sure they choreograph the right conversations between the right people at the right time and make sure that they happen in the right order.

And then they bring everything together, cuz it to, to my mind, this kind of sale is [00:26:00] 90% project management and 10% psychiatry.

Chris Prangley: It's that's exactly right. And in the states, I usually say you're the QB, the quarterback, which is exactly the same concept, whether it's composer, the architect. Yeah. It really is that.

And going back to one point, you know, and this is more for the early, early sellers, the, the newer sellers, I get it. When you're first coming into the game, sales is a very lucrative industry and you can lean on all the money that can be made and get excited by that stuff. But eventually in time you'll learn like that's the aftermath.

And if you're you get good at your craft, that will just be something that, that comes along with it. The I'm getting to this point of the leading top, you know, 1% of sellers, this humbleness, this. It's not necessarily about the money, but the value delivery, because the money comes and really

Marcus Cauchi: the money's a [00:27:00] product of doing, of helping other people get their needs met and delivering the better future that they paid you for.

Chris Prangley: Exactly. And I think exactly what you're saying with the composer, the architect, it's just that you have this seller who understands it really is a complicated, uh, sport, and there's so many resources, so many other talents that you can deploy to help you solve the problem. When we solve the problem. Yeah.

Money comes. It's just the aftermath, right? So yeah,

Marcus Cauchi: there is a really fundamental principle that put humanity to the top of the food chain, which is our ability to cooperate and learn when to let someone else lead and when to take the lead. And if you look at tribal societies, like the Maasai, they have leaders in every generation.

They have leaders for different things. So leaders for defending their cattle against neighboring tribes, against predatory animals, for changes in the weather for foraging, for driving the [00:28:00] cattle, for dealing with social issues and people lead because that is their strength. And they know when to step back.

What was your moment when you realized that you had to keep your ego in check?

Marcus Cauchi: And one of the things that I see time and time again, getting in the way is ego. How did you learn that whilst your ego has its place, the moment you let it control you, then that's pretty much game over. What was your moment when, uh, you realized, uh, that you had to keep it in check?

Chris Prangley: One of the influences for me is, you know, a lot of philosophy, a lot of these self-help books, I know people are like, self-help no, but, uh, in my early twenties I was obsessed with it.

And I, I think ultimately it builds a foundation of just getting in the right, right mindset. And ego's one of the things that's often called out as something that gets in the way when it relates to sales. You know, initially ego is what empowered me. Because, you know, you're at the bottom of [00:29:00] the, the chain when you're coming in as TDR SDR, BDR.

But once you understand the value of what you, you bring, that changes things in a sales meeting where I learned this is, I just saw exactly what you just mentioned about the tribes and how there's different leaders for different roles. I just saw that there was leaders above me who were very precise and efficient with their words and excellent at what they did, whether it was from a process approach that they shared in a meeting or whether it was a very technical response or whether it was an executive leader talking about company mission and values.

I just saw that those folks were better than me in those categories. Right? My strength at the time for when I was a seller in the specific meeting I'm thinking of, was really creating the meeting, orchestrating the meeting, getting people in the room, setting up the business [00:30:00] problem, but then very precise delegating who was doing what,

in a meeting, of course we had rehearsals and stuff. It's just, it goes back to exactly this whole, you know, there's no I in quota, it's understanding that there's so many great resources and tools and you don't have to be the only one you don't have to be. It's not all on your shoulders and understanding that is really what.

What got me to, Hey, back the ego up a little bit now, Hey, when a big deal close. Uh, when I was an enterprise seller, am I all, you know about the ego? Yes. But if you look into that deal and how many times your sales engineer or your manager, or the technical team, or the R and D, or the legal you have to back up and be like, man, a lot of people helped on this.

I, you know, I'm thankful for those folks.

Marcus Cauchi: And again, that's another quality that you see in the top performers, gratitude, the gratitude they're willing to give the credit. And that that's, again, something that [00:31:00] the culture of sales I think has really done away with in many cases, but you, you look at those leaders.

I look at someone like Tom Schodorf who took Splunk from 10 million to 1.3 billion in five years and

Chris Prangley: amazing.

Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. 15 years. Well, 10, 10 years later, he's still loved by the people who were 3, 4, 5 layers beneath him because he really cared. And, you know, I I've been fortunate to have interviewed those sorts of leaders on the podcast.

And without exception, there is a, a real purpose about them and a real sense of service and they treat people well. So my, my question is this, because I have a real be on my bon about this there's people who've listened to podcast may have heard, but I'm curious, I hear the outgoing generation of leadership

beknowing the incoming generation as being [00:32:00] entitled and expecting everything on a plate and so on. But I don't think it's bloody unreasonable to expect your employer to create a safe environment and to have managers who look after your welfare. And want the best for you and to have coworkers who have high work standards and the ethics of the business are that you don't lie to customers for selfish

self-interest. You don't bully and manipulate. Uh, you don't exploit people, which is also known as burnout. And I think all of those are perfectly reasonable expectations.

Why is it that so few managers and leaders make that their mission to create that kind of environment, where they are a destination employer, where employees feel fully engaged and love coming to work, and instead they treat them like a commodity to be used and abused?

Marcus Cauchi: And my question is this, why is it that so few managers and leaders make that their mission to create that kind of environment, where they are a destination employer, where employees feel fully engaged and love coming to work, and instead they treat them like a commodity to be used and abused?

Chris Prangley: Hmm. [00:33:00] It's a loaded one, Marcus. Why folks do it? I don't know. You know, I think we'll have to ask on one off, but I, I think, uh, we spoke about in the past, you know, there's, there's this old culture of sales, you know, you, you think of the boiler room type environments and, and some of it was lauded as school, but we know you.

Not so great for the customer and probably not so great for the human either. It takes work, right? Uh, not everyone wants to do the work. It's easy to talk about closing a deal. It's hard to build a culture and hard to build a place that's, people feel valued every day, even though we have all these metrics and everything's going on and something may happen, but it takes effort.

And it goes all back to the principles and whatnot. In the book I talk about when you're looking for the seller, when you're looking for a company. First identify what it is [00:34:00] you are like, what your, why is, why you're doing this, right? You also then wanna look for companies that are solving a mission that excite you and their principles excite you, and is every day gonna be perfect?

No, every day is not gonna be perfect. But when you have those two things aligned, I think that's the starting point. Right? And then from there, this is once again where the frontline manager comes in, they can create. Almost a family in a, in a way, do you have to be buddy-buddy with everyone? No, but that place where people feel empowered, they feel valued.

They want to come to work. They're inspired versus do your job show up here. You know, one other point you mentioned earlier about, you know, just sales and opportunity. This is also in the book. We are given such an opportunity in this field, especially in the tech sales field. And there's a lot of other medical devices, another great one [00:35:00] ad sales, where you can make so much money.

And with that money create such an impact in your communities, your family, your friends, et cetera. The other aspect of this with the, with the newer generation is what lies before you is an incredible opportunity. Do you understand that? Are you embracing that. The fi final piece of this is look, I, I see younger sellers, some of them come in with the entitled mindset, like, Hey, I'm, I'm fresh outta school,

I wanna make 150 Gs minimum. And it's like, come on, you gotta be, you know, I gotta be reasonable. What is the word reasonable? I don't know, but there's some of that, but on the flip of that,

Marcus Cauchi: there's an apprenticeship. You've got to learn. You've gotta earn it. It doesn't happen overnight.

Chris Prangley: Yeah. So that's the one area I see sometimes like the earning piece is missing.

Like, Hey, I don't want to earn it. I just want to go right to it. We all had to earn it. It just it's the reality. You have to work through it and earn it and [00:36:00] you'll eventually get there. So I see that sometimes, but on the flip of that, I've also seen incredibly focused, disciplined, dedicated young folks coming into the industry and they, they wanna be the top.

They wanna earn it. So there's a mix of. It may just be a communication breakdown Marcus it may just, you know,

Marcus Cauchi: well, my, my, my point was really about, I think as leaders and as managers and as founders, we have an obligation to think and behave differently to prior generations. Because if we want to attract and keep real talent, then we have to create the environment that they want to come to work in.

And you're seeing it at the moment. You're seeing this. Mass migration of people out of this boiler room type of sales environment. People not wanting to go back, starting up on their own side hustles, you know, 40% of sales people are predicted to have a side hustle this year that makes every one of those, a flight risk.

You better be looking after your people [00:37:00] and

Chris Prangley: yeah.

Marcus Cauchi: You want your sales people to look after your customers to look after your people. Don't treat them like crap, uh, stop burning them out. Stop. Then, you know, one of the questions we were gonna touch on is, you know, how can I accelerate a deal? Well, very often I see management pulling deals forward that they shouldn't, they're only pulling it forward to feed a, a private valuation that is outta date by dinnertime.

Are we accelerating deals for the right reasons or are we doing it to try and serve our own pocketbook?

Marcus Cauchi: And the pressure that creates and the waste is just horrific. So what I'd like to understand are we accelerating deals for the right reasons or are we doing it to try and serve our own pocketbook?

Chris Prangley: It's a great point and I think a little complicated. So in terms of accelerating deals, you know, when I, when I view the word accelerating deals, I'm try, I'm focusing really on efficiency of deal, not so much.

Yeah. Not, not so much about sabotaging a deal, destroying [00:38:00] a deal to pull it in, but more, how can we have a deal close as quick as possible in its best form that we're not in the way of the deal. Maybe we're slowing it down.

Marcus Cauchi: That's that's a process,

Chris Prangley: right? Yeah. So I have seen the other side, right? Where it's, Hey, need, need this, cut it in half, bring it in.

Or like sell half the thing and that's. That's rough. That's rough for the customer. That's rough for the seller. Um, I think there's better ways to do that. One of the ways I think from a sales, you know, if you're a seller and you're in these situations, it's gonna sound very basic, but more prospecting, more opportunities and not just the concept of more, more, more, but having enough where at stage, and you have such detailed notes on your accounts that you can stand by them and not

be kind of put in this position where it's like, Hey, chop that the deal in half, bring it in now, you know,

Marcus Cauchi: the reason most sales [00:39:00] people have to comply with this shit is because they don't have enough in the pipeline cuz they avoided prospecting 12, 18, 24 weeks ago.

Chris Prangley: Right.

Marcus Cauchi: What you don't do today, you will pay for tomorrow.

It's as simple as that, that's the only bit of the numbers game that I agree with. To be honest, I would much rather work with a smaller group of account. With a smaller number of deals that are bigger, uh, with a higher probability of closing, faster, for more money. And then they come back and renew and bring their friends.

To me, that's a way more intelligent way of selling. And I think what is missing, uh, David Prima is the, uh, the person who advocates this the best that sales is a cerebral activity. And I think that the intelligence in sales has gone in favor of transactional selling. And what we should be doing is teaching salespeople how to think intelligently so they can be lazy at the right time.

You put a lot of effort in to building the foundations, doing your research, so that when you're in front of the customer, [00:40:00] you can just chill. I mean for me's sales meeting is like a meditation.

Chris Prangley: By the way, I love sales meeting. So I'm working on a, I'm working on another book on it right now. You know, we talk about the prospecting and, and you echo my, my belief.

Exactly. If you're not prospecting every day and film that funnel, then it's gonna eventually bite you. But here's part two. Once you get that meeting, do you actually, have of the opportunity or is it burned? It goes back to your coaching points too.

Marcus Cauchi: Seven, eight first meetings don't result in a second. You turn up and you, waste it .Idiot.

Chris Prangley: Yeah.

Marcus Cauchi: Ugh

Chris Prangley: yeah. Yeah. I know we're jumping around a bit. The, the other thing with, uh, this, you know, the migration or folks with the side hustle, you know, I've, I've worked. With a tons of reps and this, this side hustle, by the way, I love the fact that people have side hustles and whatnot. And as long as it doesn't distract from your main thing, here's, here's the issue I have [00:41:00] with it more in with, uh, tech sales, which I've seen is folks talk about, oh, the side hustle, I got this thing going on,

and instead of focusing their efforts on what they could do in their role and absolutely crush it.

Marcus Cauchi: Yeah.

Chris Prangley: They get these dreams and ambitions of like a get rich quick scheme on the side, whereas their peers who are these, the humble 1%, whatever that are crushing, it are making five, 10x what they make,

yeah.

if they just focus. And, and this other,

Marcus Cauchi: there is a Confucian proverb man who ride two horses end up with a very sore crutch.

Chris Prangley: oh yeah. That, that could be a scary one. This other concept too, you know, back, I don't know where it ever came. Maybe it's the used car salesman or whatever it may be if like sales being dirty, but it goes back to what you mentioned too, with the top sellers coming across as valued, you know, really trying to solve customer [00:42:00] pain.

In my view, sales is a very noble thing. And when you're solving these massive pains, people pay for that. And if we get more and more folks early in their career, understanding that it is a noble profession, it is an amazing profession. It's so cool. You have so many hats that you can wear. Detective consultant, the doctor you're still selling,

right? But yeah, there's, there's all these ways you can impact your communities, your firms, the world, if you believe it and understand that this is not just about getting on a phone and trying to get someone else's money.

If you had one golden ticket and you can go back and whisper in the ear of the idiot, Chris age 23, what one bit of advice would you give him that he would've ignore?

Marcus Cauchi: Chris, we have to wrap up cuz you have another meeting now, but if you had one golden ticket and you can go back and whisper in the ear of the idiot, Chris age 23, what one bit of advice would you give him that he would've ignore?

Chris Prangley: Okay. There's two: trust your gut, always trust your gut. And then the other [00:43:00] is for whatever you wanna accomplish, put a daily process and habit in place, and you will accomplish it. Stick to that process

Marcus Cauchi: habits and behavior that will outsmart talent any day of the week. Talent works best if you have process and consistency.

How can people get a hold of you?

Marcus Cauchi: So, uh, Chris, how can people get a hold of you?

Chris Prangley: LinkedIn is a great way. You could find me on techsaleswarrior.com and the book is live on Amazon as well. techsaleswarrior.com highly recommended. Yeah.

Marcus Cauchi: Excellent. So Chris Prangley, thank you.

Chris Prangley: Thanks so much, Marcus.

Marcus Cauchi: So this is Marcus Cauchi signing off once again from the Inquisitor podcast.

If you found this useful and insightful, please like comment, share, and tag someone who could do with a listen. And if you feel the urge, go over to apple podcast and leave an honest review. 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 stars don't care, which just tell the truth in [00:44:00] the meantime, stay safe and happy selling. And if you want me marcus@laughs-last.com.

Bye bye.

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