This week on The Digital Download, we're tackling an inconvenient truth in the world of sales: that sales teams are drowning in activity but starving for results. Pipelines are filled with 'dreams' that never close, and the proposed solution is almost always to increase the cadence. For this special panelist episode, I am joined by my co-hosts, Tim Hughes and Adam Gray.

We will be breaking down why this obsession with activity, rooted in myths like the need for a certain number of 'touchpoints' to close a deal, is fundamentally flawed. This 'school of thought' in sales does nothing but create noise, erode trust, and train buyers to ignore outreach because it is perceived as spam.

Join us as we debate questions like:

• Why are traditional activity metrics (calls, emails) just vanity metrics?

• Is the 'seven touchpoints' myth the biggest misunderstanding in modern prospecting?

• How can sales teams break out of this cycle of ineffective activity?

• What is the fundamental difference between 'interrupting' a buyer and 'engaging' in a relevant conversation?

• If volume is the problem, what should sales leaders actually be focusing their teams on?

Together, we will share our experiences and observations on why buyers no longer respond to cold outreach tactics and what businesses must radically change in their approach. Expect a frank conversation that challenges the very foundations of many current sales strategies.

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is keenly encouraged!

This week's Host was -

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, CEO & Co-founder of DLA Ignite,

• Tracy Borreson, Founder and CEO of TLB Coaching & Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-09-19

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:10]: Good afternoon, good morning and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, now globally syndicated on TuneIn radio through IBDR, the world's not number one business talk news and strategy radio network. Today we're tackling an inconvenient truth in the world of sales that sales teams are drawing. Droning in activity but starving for results. Pipelines are filled with dreams that never close and the proposed solutions is almost always. To increase the cadence. For this special episode, I'm joined by my co hosts Tim Hughes and Adam Gray. Before we begin, let's go quickly around the set and introduce everyone. Bertrand Godillot [00:01:06]: While we are doing this, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them and have them join us. We strive to make the Digital Download an interactive experience and audience participation. As you know, he's more than welcome and highly appreciated. Tim, do you want to kick us off, please? Tim Hughes [00:01:26]: Thanks. Bertram? Yes. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and co founder of DLA Ignite and famous for writing the book Social Selling techniques that Influence Buyers and Change makers. Bertrand Godillot [00:01:38]: Excellent, Adam. Adam Gray [00:01:42]: Hello everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm co founder and his business partner at DLA Ignite. And yeah, every time, every time you do the intro, Bertrand, I'm just overwhelmed by what an achievement this has been that we've been doing this for how long, Tim? Like four and a half. Tim Hughes [00:02:01]: Since the 4th of May, 2021. Adam Gray [00:02:03]: Yeah, so four and a half years. And it's the longest running weekly business talk show and we're globally syndicated and it's amazing, really, isn't it? Absolutely amazing. Tim Hughes [00:02:13]: It's an amazing creation. Adam Gray [00:02:15]: It is, yeah. Tim Hughes [00:02:16]: I mean, before we went live, Bertrand asked me, you know, how was I feeling? And it's like, it's that it. And, and I, and I, as always, I try and talk in French, which I completely fail at. And I was trying to come up with the French for like a bouncy, celebratory Friday feeling. Feeling. So if, if, if I was going to say that as a response to Savant Bertrand, what would I say? Bertrand Godillot [00:02:47]: C' est lantaudit. And it is indeed. All right, thank you so much, guys. Myself, Bertrand Godillot, founder and managing partner of Odysseus & Co and a very proud Daily Ignite partner. So, gentlemen, let's start with a foundational question. Why are traditional activity metrics like calls, emails, just vanity metrics? Any Ideas? Tim Hughes [00:03:19]: Yes, because they're inputs, they're not outputs. So we know of an individual who's been through our social selling methodology and they're getting eight high quality ICP meetings a week. Adam Gray [00:03:40]: Every week. Tim Hughes [00:03:41]: Every week. Now you can't get that from, from any, any. I, I've, I've asked many a time on this for someone to put their hand up and say, I know someone who's getting more than that. And nobody does. You can't get more meetings than that. And so, so they're getting, you know, just think if, if, if, if your sales team was getting three or even five meetings a week, the impact that that would make on your pipeline, it, I mean it would just be, it would just be massive. So that, that, that individual is actually being berated by their leadership for not making enough cold calls and not enough sending enough spam emails. How can that be, how can they not be being carried in, into meetings as a, the, the king of meetings? I mean, I mean it's just, it's a male just. Tim Hughes [00:04:37]: And, and you know what, why is it, and we've worked with organizations, I mean there's one organization we went to where they, we, we explained to them how many meetings that we get and they said, oh, this, this quarter. It's just a bad quarter. Okay, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we know that all they were doing was that they were measuring the number of calls that people make and the number of emails they send. And because we know, we know that because there was an individual, we have a, an AE who has the, the highest number of meetings a week. He's generated 35 meetings consistently a week. And, and we asked this individual said, so how many meetings you make in 10, but you can make 35. Yeah, I can't be bothered. Tim Hughes [00:05:26]: Why is that? He said, well they, I'm getting told off just for making 10. If I made 35, they would think I was on something or other. So, so he said, but the thing is I'm being measured on the number of calls and the number emails. So even though I've got 10 meetings, which is more meetings than the whole of the sales team put together, I'm on a pit. And, and so we went, and so we went and said to the, the, you know that guy over there, we can do that for the whole of your sales team. Adam Gray [00:05:52]: They said that's about quarter. Tim Hughes [00:05:54]: Okay. So we went the next quarter and they said, and had us exactly the same quarter. And I said we could do the same for you for the rest of your sales team. I said, no, no, just another by quarter. So we then said, okay. So the third quarter went along and said, we can do that for the rest of your SAS team. You know, 10 meetings across the Holy sense. They said, no, no, no, we're actually closing the whole of the European operation and making everybody redundant because of the fact that we haven't got enough meetings. Tim Hughes [00:06:20]: But we could have done that with the. Yeah, but we shut it now. So, so why, why. And, and so when, when we're in a world where you, we, we say to, we, we say we're going to be data driven, but the data is the fact that we, we can generate five, eight, ten meetings a week. Or are we living in the world of confirmation bias, which is we're going to come from. We're basically going to live on the fact that we may summit so many cold calls back in 1980 and seem to make men and make some meetings, but the whole thing is back to front. So did I bring my, Did I bring. Adam Gray [00:06:54]: Bring your soapbox? Tim Hughes [00:06:55]: Yeah, I bring my soapbox with me. Yeah, that was a quick start, I think. Adam Gray [00:07:00]: I think there's another thing there, though, isn't there? Because, you know, many sales leaders would argue that until you start to see results, you have to focus on the inputs. And I would say that the problem with traditional inputs is that they are very, they are very binary. You know, either you make a phone call, and this is not about rubbishing cold calling, but you make a phone call and the person either picks up the phone or, or they don't. And if you leave a message, they don't respond ever to your message. So you're hoping that you will dial, they will answer and they will, they will listen to your pitch and they will. You build some sort of relationship with them. But the problem happens. What happened? But the problem is what happens when they don't answer the phone. Adam Gray [00:07:52]: So you've wasted the time because they haven't answered the phone. So therefore you have to call back again or call somebody else, and every one of these activities you do is time sunk and there's no, no measurable benefit for it. If you instead sent a connection request to somebody, a friendly connection request, that said, hi, saw you on LinkedIn, think you look really cool. Is it all right if we connect? I'm not going to try and sell you anything, then most people will accept that. Connect. Given that you don't look like a spammer, most people will accept that. So even if they don't say, oh, I looked at your profile, you look really great. I'd like to buy something from you. Adam Gray [00:08:27]: You have at least moved forward with them because you weren't connected, and now you are. I think so much of this is about focusing on little steps. You know, it's an iterative process where you're. You're getting incrementally closer to a relationship with somebody with each activity that you undertake. Because, you know, if I phone you and you don't answer, and I phone you again and you don't answer, and I send you an email and you don't respond, and I phone you again and you don't answer, and I send you. There comes a point. You just block me. So the. Adam Gray [00:08:57]: The activities that we're measuring as those input activities, they need to be activities that are moving us towards our goal, not away from our goal. And I think that's a fundamental mistake that many, many sales leaders haven't really. Haven't really sat down and thought about yet. Tim Hughes [00:09:14]: Your response, Adam, was far more articulate than my emotions. Adam Gray [00:09:18]: It was just. It was just different, wasn't it? Because, you know, at the end of the day, you. You focused in what you said on what the success was of. Of a salesperson undertaking these activities. But I. I think that in many instances, that looks like. That looks like it's a long way from where people are. And. Adam Gray [00:09:41]: And maybe they need to focus on the stuff that they can control at this stage, because you can't control any of the stuff that requires somebody else to have input on it, can you? Tim Hughes [00:09:50]: And. And I think that anybody under the age of probably 35 will probably. You know, a telephone call isn't a natural thing. You know, we. We've grown up. What, you know, text messages are, what, 35 years old now. You know, we're. We. Tim Hughes [00:10:10]: We see our, you know, the mobile phone, even though it's called a phone, we rarely use it actually as a phone. And so people are far more used to and far more comfortable. I'm talking about the buyer's perspective. Far more used to. But actually receiving things. You know, my phone rings. I, like, panic. God, what's. Tim Hughes [00:10:31]: What's going on if someone wants to talk to me? And, And I think that sometimes. And I think a lot of people older than 35 sometimes forget that, because we grew up in the time when, you know, when I started cold calling, you could ring anybody up, and actually people wanted to talk to you because there wasn't an Internet. So the only way they found out what was going on, you know, I was selling Payroll systems. With my first sales job, it's like, so what can your payroll system do? You know, I was asked, so what can it do? What, what can it do? More than people were actually genuinely interested. Oh well, we can do an online gross and that. Oh, well, we can't do that because we've got a patch system and all of that. So. So, you know, it's completely different in, in terms of the way that I was selling way back in the 80s. Adam Gray [00:11:20]: Way back in the 30s. Tim Hughes [00:11:21]: Yeah. Bertrand Godillot [00:11:26]: Maybe there is a. Maybe we should approach this in a differentiated fashion. Right. Just to make sure that we don't get the entire earth on our back, the entire sales world on our back. I see a difference between acquiring new customers. So basically trying to penetrate an account, to penetrate a market segment and industry where you've got no relationship whatsoever and you're not known, you've never done any business and the upsell part of the job. So say, okay, so we now have a relationship because you're one of our customers. So I can make sure that I keep on top of your mind by using, let's say, the very classic marketing sequence. Tim Hughes [00:12:27]: I mean, social is a classic way of nurturing. Bertrand. Sorry. Bertrand Godillot [00:12:32]: And therefore the question is, do we say we have a. There is a sweet spot where the true social selling approach, which is nothing to do with communication but really creating relationship, is actually more efficient. Adam Gray [00:12:55]: Yeah. At every point. And I think when you talk about efficiency, you know, if I send, if I send an email to you that enables me to provide a degree of scale, you know, only based on my database. It won't go beyond my database probably, but, but based on my database. But if I'm telephoning, that's literally just a one on one interaction. And you know, everybody knows the data out There, you know, 95% of people are not in market to buy at any one time. So if I'm cold calling people or cold emailing people, but if I'm messaging out to these people, there's a 1 in 20 chance that the person will be even interested in talking about my product. So the problem with that is that 95% of my effort is going to be wasted. Adam Gray [00:13:46]: Well, even if 1 in 50 people answers the phone, I've got to make an awful lot of calls before I find somebody and an awful lot more calls to find somebody that might be in market to buy. And the, the beauty of doing it in a less invasive. Because like you said, Tim, you know, you get terrified when the phone rings because, oh, someone's Going to try and sell me something and I've got to hide from them, hide under the desk. The beauty of doing it on social is I'm presenting something to you, like in a magazine shop. You know, there's a magazine out there. You can either look at it or not. As you walk past. Hopefully you'll notice it even if you don't look at it. Adam Gray [00:14:20]: You know, it'll be in your peripheral vision. But fundamentally, you don't feel that you're being farmed or that I'm being aggressive toward you. Tim Hughes [00:14:28]: But, you know, on the Internet, there's. There's two. The two worst things. The biggest, worst thing is when you go to YouTube and you play a video and it plays an ad and you go, get, get off, get off, get off. And the second thing is, you know, when someone sends you a connection request on LinkedIn, they're going to. Basically, the next minute they're going, here's a list of my products and services. Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, is that we say this all the time. Tim Hughes [00:14:56]: And then, you know, I mean, I'm. I get pitched at least once a week from somebody, and it's not even a connection pitch. It's just a straight, Tim, here's a list of my products and services. It's like, where have you been? You know, do you not understand that? You don't understand. So one of the things I think that, I think people, the mistake that people make always is that they think that LinkedIn is, is, is, is a sales network. And you see that through the timeline saying, here we are, the sales kickoff. Here we are. Here we are, you know, opening the box of our new product here. Tim Hughes [00:15:31]: And, and, and because as if people are going to go say, oh, wow, Cat, can I actually buy two? And, and have you got any in blue? I mean, it, it just doesn't happen. So, you know, LinkedIn is a social network. It's about building relationships and having conversations with people. Not necessarily a conversation on social. You still may have the conversation on telephone or on Zoom or teams or something like that. And I think that, that what we have to do is flip this, flip the script away from thinking that social is about. I connect to Bertron and immediately pitch to him, which is what everybody thinks that social selling or social is about. And, and it's one of those. Tim Hughes [00:16:17]: So, so Jean Van Urso basically said, you need to, need to be relevant if you want attention. Now, I totally understand that, John. You do, But I can get a meeting without being relevant and I can get attention without being relevant. Why? Because, because I just go to the person and say, hey John, your link LinkedIn profile looks really interesting. Can we connect? Adam Gray [00:16:45]: Okay. Tim Hughes [00:16:46]: And then start a conversation with you? Nothing about my product, but it may, I, I, I'm, I may be totally irrelevant and it may be that I'm trying to get to you because I'm actually your boss is, is mena and I'm trying to get to mena. Adam Gray [00:17:01]: I, I, I think the other thing about relevant takes many forms, doesn't it? So, so when, when somebody says about you need to be relevant, they think or they often mean you need to position your product in such a way that your product or service is relevant to the buyer. And actually that's, that's a long way down the relationship journey. You know, if you want to be relevant, the first thing you have to do is you have to demonstrate empathy with the other person's industry and issues and challeng. So if they're in pharmaceutical, let's say for an example, and there is some changes in government legislation about how pharmaceutical products can be produced within a particular jurisdiction, then writing about how that's affecting the pharma industry is much more likely to make you seem relevant than saying I have a new packaging machine because the person in pharma is more interested or more concerned about the fact that they can't manufacture drugs in this particular country anymore. And I think that so often we joke about journey mapping, customer journey mapping. It's never customer journey, it's always seller sales mapping. And so often we think about relevance and we think about relevance to us rather than to the people that we're trying to develop a relationship with. And I think that's a very dangerous route to go down. Tim Hughes [00:18:27]: Well, it's sales centric rather than customer centric. Adam Gray [00:18:30]: Absolutely. Bertrand Godillot [00:18:33]: We often have the, because if we look at the background of all of this, this is all I said, the main driver has always been volume. So it's the assumption that if I do send 10,000 emails, I'll get five customers. So if you are in that mindset and you've always been in that mindset as a sales manager and so, so how do you get out of this? And first of all, should you get out of this? And, and because it's as, as I've heard many times, you know, maybe it's not, it's not outstanding, but it is what it is or you know, is there a, you know, a different approach and how do I get my team to buy into that different approach and including my Manager potentially. Adam Gray [00:19:26]: Well, I think you have to lay out your stall according to how you want to be perceived. So do you want a relationship based sale or do you want a sale? So if you want the latter, then you're incredibly vulnerable to changes in mood of the buyer. And if you want to build a deep relationship with the buyer and they want to see you literally as a trusted partner and advisor, then you don't begin that by saying I'm going to send out 10,000 emails or 10,000 messages or 10,000 phone calls. You say that by saying I've looked in depth at your business and I think you would be a really good match for me. Let me explain why. That's a much better way to start the relationship than we can beat any quote you've currently got. That's not relationship based, is it? That, that's a numbers based thing and that's, that's incredibly bad. Particularly when organizations are always saying we want to have a relationship based sale, we want to be a trusted advisor. Adam Gray [00:20:23]: Well, act like it then. Bertrand Godillot [00:20:26]: Okay, we have a comment from Patrick in the audience and I'll take it because there's probably a lot to say about this. So CRM has replaced sales managers making strong lesson based calls with sales rep. This has to impact result. Tim Hughes [00:20:51]: I agree with Pat. I mean in my experience of CRMs in corporate, it was very much what we're going to, we're going to manage the sales team through the CRM rather than manage the people. And the CRM was ultimately a mechanism that you use to, to beat the sales team with rather than empower them. So, so yes, I mean I think it's, it's interesting that Amazon are just about, Amazon are just launching a CRM. We reckon it's going to go to market in 2026. You heard that first here by the way. Adam Gray [00:21:34]: Very, very interesting. Tim Hughes [00:21:35]: Yeah. Adam Gray [00:21:37]: But I do think that it's a really good point about managers used to manage and effectively coach the sales team on how to do this stuff. And I think that one of the problems with the CRM is that people talk about coverage, don't they? We need seven times coverage of your number. Why? Surely if you're going to close everything that you're forecasting, which should be the instance, then you only need one times coverage, the number. And, and the further away you get from being confident in the deal closing, the greater the amount of coverage that you need. And surely the answer is to, to focus on the deals that you've got, building the relationships with those deals and closing a Higher percentage of those rather than just throwing yet more mud at a wall. Oh well Tim, I, I need to increase my coverage. So I've put in three, 15 fictitious deals because then it stops you shouting at me because I haven't got seven times coverage. Tim Hughes [00:22:38]: Yeah, we had loads of deals which were always closing in Q4 and then the, and then as it got close to Q4 that the person would change the year, you know, and it would, these, these deals would just go on from year to year to year to. Adam Gray [00:22:51]: Year and never close. Tim Hughes [00:22:53]: And never close. Bertrand Godillot [00:22:54]: Yeah, yeah, well that was a little bit my feedback as well. We know for sure that a lot of CRMs are, I mean if we are to take decisions on data, the data quality of most. I'm not saying this is the case across the board, but most CRM systems, it's so painful. It used to be so painful to use. It was always a punishment. Tim Hughes [00:23:28]: The figures are just coming back to me. So when I, I worked in corporate, 80% of anything that was put at stage one on the, the CRM never closed. 80% and there was about a billion, billion and a half dollars in that, in that CRM. Adam Gray [00:23:47]: So not much then really. Tim Hughes [00:23:48]: No, no, no, no, no, no. So, so the only stuff that ever closed which was stuff that the sales team put in, it's which was at stage three or stage four. Bertrand Godillot [00:24:00]: Not surprised. So as, as a sales manager, if we want to change this and go from volume to value, what is the first step? Tim Hughes [00:24:18]: So I'm sorry, I'm, I'm reading the comments. Adam Gray [00:24:21]: Yeah, I was just reading the comments. Tim Hughes [00:24:22]: Sorry, I was reading the comments and you asked a question question at the same time. Sorry Bertrand, I'm being, I was saying, I was saying. Bertrand Godillot [00:24:27]: So if we are. Yeah. Let me know if I should leave. Okay. So we have a volume based approach, a traditional volume based approach and you know, what is it that we should be doing to move towards, maybe what's the first step to, to move towards a value based approach in our, you. Tim Hughes [00:24:49]: Know, well there's, there's certain digital activities that you should be doing that we know that if you follow those digital activities, some of those activities are, I can see as a, as an external person, I can see what you're doing on social and digital like the number of connections that you're making. Adam Gray [00:25:13]: I'm going to close a deal with IBM. I'm connected to two people already and I'm confident it's going to close. Tim Hughes [00:25:19]: It will never happen. It, it will never happen. And you know, we, we working with One client where there was, it was Domino's Pizza. I always remember it was Domino's Pizza and what the situation was. It was forecast to close that quarter. The salesperson was not connected to anybody in Domino's Pizza on LinkedIn, even though the CRO and the, the CEO had met the client. Adam Gray [00:25:48]: I. Tim Hughes [00:25:48]: And they were forecasting it to close. And it never closed. And it never closed because there was no relationships. You know, when you're connected to people in, in, in LinkedIn, to a customer, it shows, it shows the start of a relationship. And the more people that you're connected to, you know, LinkedIn called this multi threading. You know, the more opportunity that you have to have conversations, the more opportunity to have multiple sponsors just in case one gets, one's gets, gets fired. And it shows there's a, a penetration in the account and a, and a, and a level of, of relationship. And that's what we should be, we should be looking at, you know, looking at the number of people that have liked and commented on your, on your, on your content. Tim Hughes [00:26:38]: Because what people are doing when they do that is that they're saying, in effect, you're building a digital bridge to them. You're saying, that resonated with me. And, and therefore that gives you an opportunity to go and speak to those people. So that there's different. So you asked the question, there's this. So there's different measures that we can be using in. On digital before we get to the point of saying we've got a meeting. Adam Gray [00:27:03]: Yeah. Tim Hughes [00:27:04]: Would you agree with that, Adam? Adam Gray [00:27:06]: Undoubtedly. Tim Hughes [00:27:07]: Okay. Adam Gray [00:27:07]: You know, I think that if you're connected to one person and one person is aware of you, and one person's a great champion for you, you have a single critical failure point within that account, they leave, they die, they get laid off, whatever, or even if they just change their priorities, they're carrying a huge amount of hope for you. If you're connected to everybody in the company and everybody's seeing your content and you're engaging with everybody's content and everybody loves you and everybody's more than happy to have a coffee with you when you go in and everybody shares your life story with you, I mean, of course it never guarantees that you're going to close the business, but you can be a great deal more confident about it. And also, you're much more likely to pick up on any insights in policy changes within that client, aren't you? Tim Hughes [00:27:54]: So if you look at Carrie Cunningham from Six Senses Recent Data, I think he's had this now three years in a row that the, that the buying cycle now is about average buying cycle, not selling cycle is 18 months. And, and in that time the buyer basically goes through a process of not choosing who the shortlist is, but actually choosing who the, the person that they're going to pick. There will be a short list, but they will actually, it will be ranked in. We want this number one, number two, number three, maybe five. They'll choose who, who they are and we'll have it in order. There'll be 80 of the way through the buying process and it's at that point when they engage with a salesperson and, and it's really down to whether, whether the top person loses the deal and the second one or third one basically wins. But ultimately there's a, there's a rank in terms of who's going to win. The, the data shows that the sales cycle generally is about three months. Tim Hughes [00:29:05]: So we're now in this situation where we know that and I'm trying to, trying to remember the actual terminology that Carrie uses, which is that we're now in this situation because of the ability to go on online and, and educate, which is that we have this, this whole buying process taking place where if we're just focusing on in market. So the current 5% that are in market, what we're doing is that we're losing the other 95 because they're actively going out and looking and we're not party to that. And now I understand people saying so someone said to me this week, said we ourselves team will only sell to people where there's a burning platform. And I understand that if you're cold calling organizations, you're never going to call every, everybody in the total addressable market because you'll never get through because there's so much wasted time. The same, same with email. You're not going to send emails saying buy my product because we're great to all those people because again, you're not going to get a response. But I would put, I would, I would say that there is, there is a possibility that you can actually talk to the whole of your total addressable market at scale and at speed. I don't know. Tim Hughes [00:30:25]: There's a unbiased but I reckon that you could do that. Adam Gray [00:30:28]: But well, you're not biased because you have proof that this works. So, you know, we talk to clients and they want to engage us in conversation or engage us to show them what they need to do because they themselves have a burning platform. You know, they themselves are not making their number or, or even if they are making their number, they look at their dwindling pipeline and number of conversations and opportunities they have and they realize that the tools that they had previously used in order to generate new conversations simply are not working anymore. So you send emails to people and you get a 50% open rate. You go, well, hey, we've got 50% open rate. Which oddly mirrors the unsubscribe rate in many instances because people open it in order to unsubscribe from the email or it's just being previewed in the preview pane on your mail client. People don't answer the telephone to you. You know, you and I, Tim, have sat in a meeting with a prospect where the guy has said his phone is rung and he's gone. Adam Gray [00:31:26]: I don't know who that is. I'll send a voicemail. And then he's turned around and said to us, I'm going to get my people to do more cold calling because that's the way to get through to people. And we said, but surely your evidence from your behavior just a moment ago that that isn't the way to do. Oh no, our people are very effective. You know, they do 400 dials a day. But ultimately, you know, I think that the people need to, to recognize that you said, oh, you know, it's just a bad quarter. It isn't a bad quarter. Adam Gray [00:31:57]: We know from our own behavior that we don't like to be approached cold. Now I think that one of the big challenges that people who are very skilled at the telephone face is that they think that don't cold call is the same as don't call, which of course it isn't. You know, if you have a call with someone, it's because the person's had a messaging exchange with you, they've given you permission to telephone them. And then when you do, oh, Tim, hello, how are you? Nice to speak to you at last. That's very different to, can I just have five minutes of your time? No, go away and take me off your mailing list. Bertrand Godillot [00:32:38]: So if we are not measuring. Adam Gray [00:32:43]: Say. Bertrand Godillot [00:32:43]: Performance or at least activity through the number of calls and the number of emails, then what is an appropriate measure? Adam Gray [00:32:57]: Well, there is some activity based stuff that people have today. So if we're talking about selling across social media and using that as a mechanism to generate conversations, growing the number of followers, connecting to new people, engaging those people in messaging exchanges, publishing content, publishing content and measuring the content in order that it gets the maximum number of views and the maximum engagement and then pursuing the people that have engaged it in an appropriate manner. All of that's measurable. It starts with, if I'm not connected to you, you're not going to see my content. You're not within the orbit of my content. First thing is I need to connect to you. That's a very easy metric to measure. If we also measure how many connection requests you send, we then get a very good handle on whether or not the connection requests are being effective or not. Adam Gray [00:33:47]: If they're not, we need to understand why they're not and change it. But all of this should be data backed, shouldn't it? Tim Hughes [00:33:55]: I like Patrick's. Adam, was it. I walked into a car dealership with my new sales negotiation video learning platform and was told, we sell things, we don't buy things. Yeah, so. So, Pat, do me a favor. Can you contact Bertrand? Because I want you to come on here and talk about sales negotiation. Adam Gray [00:34:16]: Thank you. Bertrand Godillot [00:34:17]: Yeah, that would be great. Adam Gray [00:34:18]: Yeah. Bertrand Godillot [00:34:19]: Okay. All right. So we talked about, we talked about the, the KPIs that we believe are appropriate. So it's growing your network and the number of activities that will measure around the digital activities that you can do and that you have to do in order to be successful on social. Adam Gray [00:34:42]: But it is worth saying, patron, that those are, those are leading measures. Tim Hughes [00:34:46]: Yes. Adam Gray [00:34:47]: You know, because so much so, I, I guess that the key thing is the stuff that you do, you are 100 in control of. You can 100 control how many connection requests you send. You can 100 control what content you share and how often you share that content. What you can't control is whether someone accepts your connection request or whether somebody engages with your content or views your content that you can't control because that's in someone else's gift to be able to do. So we need to measure those things that we are in 100% control of to begin with. But also we need to use the results we get from those in order to measure and change what it is that we're doing if it isn't working. So, you know, If I send 200 connection requests a week and one person accepts them, then something is wrong. Now, maybe the connection request is unattractive or my profile is unattractive, but fundamentally, those are very easy things to look at. Adam Gray [00:35:43]: If I publish a piece of content and nobody views it and nobody engages with it, then the content isn't very good. Doesn't matter. It can be the best written piece of content in the world. But if people don't like it, it's not doing the job it needs to do. So I think that this iterative process is absolutely crucial to refine what it is we do. Because at the end of the day, if you're in a sales role, your job is to sell things, is to be out meeting customers, closing orders with people, not spending eight hours a day, every single day on social media. So you need to do it as efficiently as possible. So if you can get the results you need to get in a shorter period of time, then that's good. Adam Gray [00:36:22]: So you need to be very, very skillful and very efficient at doing it. And you know, Tim, Tim and I coached a guy who is a head in Ste. Singapore and he said I need to reduce the amount of time I'm spending on LinkedIn because, and wait for it, I'm getting too many meetings with customers. Okay, so. So he clearly was doing this incredibly efficiently. Tim Hughes [00:36:49]: Yeah, his PA told him not to book any more meetings. Yeah. So one of the things that, one of the things that. Difficulties that we had in leadership when I was in, in corporate was about knowing who in the sales team was contributing and who wasn't. And the thing is you, you can do that if you have, if you're using like a, a gong or something like that. Because you know who's making calls in those days? We, you know, someone could say, yeah, I've made 50 calls a day. They may not, they may just have the feet up. But the thing is, is about social, is that you're, you can actually measure what's happening. Tim Hughes [00:37:26]: And it's one of those things where we know that if you, if you send the connection requests and I can measure the, accept your, the, the acceptance rate on your connection requests because I can see that the amount of followers is going up. So we know that the process that you're going through, if we're sending the, the connection requests and I can see the followers up. Followers going up. I therefore know that you're contributing and that you're actually, you're, you're working and doing what you should be doing. Then if, if you're not getting the, the number of people accepting, there's a coaching point where we can basically where you can be coached to increase the number and of connection requests that are being accepted. So what we're able to do is walk through the whole of the sales process rather than just saying, I've got a, you measure me because of a meeting that I've got, which is with a mate. What we're able to do is Walk through the whole of the sales process from a digital perspective and then measure the meetings and then go on to. So you've got this far longer process in terms of measurement of salespeople. Tim Hughes [00:38:43]: Sorry, Petra. Bertrand Godillot [00:38:44]: Well, that's fine because I, I just wanted to talk about the elephant in the room. Adam Gray [00:38:50]: The elephant in the room is. Bertrand Godillot [00:38:53]: Because what worked. So, you know, I'm gonna get a big blow up element chasing customers, new customers, you know, looking for new leads. Isn't that a marketing exercise, a marketing duty? Adam Gray [00:39:10]: Yeah, you would, you would think so. Bertrand Godillot [00:39:14]: And if so, why are we, why are we even talking about this from a sales perspective? Adam Gray [00:39:19]: Well, market. So Tim and I did some work with a, the UK part of a big Australian company a few years ago and the person that was heading up the marketing in this country said, and I quote, marketing doesn't work anymore. And they had, they were incredibly well regarded and had a very loyal customer base. Tim Hughes [00:39:40]: They still are. Adam Gray [00:39:41]: Yeah. And they had a, they had a great database of people that came to events of theirs and they mailed out to this database every couple of months and they would hold another event and they noticed that, you know, you've got a thousand people on the database. So you, you mail out and 100 respond and then the next time you mail out and 60 respond and the next time you email out 20 respond and the next time you mail out, 10 respond. And then it flatlined and nobody responded for two or three times. And it became very clear to them that how people engage with this content has changed. So and it's, it's certainly B2B and B2C are very different worlds. You know, we all of us buy stuff from ads on Instagram because we think, oh that's cool, I'll buy is $50 or whatever, it's not a big deal. Tim Hughes [00:40:31]: It's always when it arrives. Adam Gray [00:40:32]: Well, it often is. Tim Hughes [00:40:33]: Yeah, it's always. Adam Gray [00:40:35]: But, but in the B2B world, people do not consume things in that way. So placing B2B adverts or shoehorning your message in front of people is at best a waste of time and possibly a real turn off to people. So actually the route to, to any company now is not through the company brand. Company brand needs to be there. You need to have a company website, a company LinkedIn page because it proves you're a real company. It goes some way towards proving you're a real company. But actually the route to market is through the people. So you know, if I wanted to buy, so Tim and I worked at Oracle all three of us worked Oracle, actually. Adam Gray [00:41:15]: Sorry. So if I wanted to buy something from Oracle and I went to the Oracle website, I would find it extremely difficult to find A, the product that I needed because there are so many products and it's so diverse and complex and it's in. Tim Hughes [00:41:30]: Written in jargon. Adam Gray [00:41:32]: Yeah. And B, if I decided that this product looks like it's appropriate, there's no clear route for me to be able to say, okay, this Bertrand guy looks like a nice chap, I'll speak to him. So the process of recruiting me as a customer is extremely difficult through those marketing channels. However, if I go out onto LinkedIn and I see someone that works at Oracle and they seem really friendly and nice and we share a passion for music and travel and whatever else, all of a sudden there's somebody that I feel I can reach out to. Hi, Bertrand, I'm looking to buy, looking to get some advice on this. Who should I talk to? And Bertrand can look it up and go, yeah, you need to speak to Tim. He's actually not far from you. Why don't you give him a call? That's, that's how business is done these days. Tim Hughes [00:42:14]: Yeah, the, the, the days of the. I mean, a lot of people have built businesses based on MQLs, haven't they? Which is what you do is you, you, you drive people to your website. So that's through SEO, through content, whatever. And then what you do is you get them to come to your website and they put in their email and then that creates an email list and then what you do is you nurture that email list by basically sending, sending. Adam Gray [00:42:45]: Them content, but by annoying them over an extended. Tim Hughes [00:42:48]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I, I'm, I'm. Yes, it'll never. I, Yes, I, I've been in, I've been in shops where they say, we'll give you a discount. And I say, no, I prefer, I'll pay more. Adam Gray [00:43:01]: Yeah. Tim Hughes [00:43:01]: And, and, and so, and that, that even though we've been saying for years that that's broken, everybody is basically saying that's broken, broken now because of the fact that we can, we can sidestep that by going to chat GPT or other AIs available. And, and the reason why we do that is that we, we want to have a rep. Free experience because we know the moment that a rep talks to us, we become a line in the CRM and what happens is that they ring us every month saying, are you going to buy something? And so what we want to do is keep away from that. So that this whole idea of suddenly having a. This, the website is the thing that you're going to drive all prospects to and they're going to fill in forms and then we're going to hand those out to the sales team and they then take an MQL and work out whether it's an SQL and qualify it. It's just broken. Adam Gray [00:43:58]: Yeah. An interesting, an interesting comment there from, From Patrick. To sell to B2B, the basis of the business case call should be this offering of ours is so de. Risked and profitable to your company, it could give you a. Not looking at us could give your competitor a competitive advantage. The only problem with that is that nobody ever says this offering of ours is so risky and not profitable that not looking at us will give you. So everybody is saying the same thing. They might. Adam Gray [00:44:32]: Now in fairness to Patrick, that is beautifully articulated. But the fact remains that nobody ever says buy from me because, because my product's crap or buy from me because I'm not reliable or buy from me because I'm overpriced. So everybody's making the same, the same pitch, aren't they? You know, they're saying I'm the answer, I'm better than everybody else. You would be foolish not to choose my product. Now the problem is that those are just words until I know you, if I know you and like you, then not only am I going to like listen to you, but I'm also going to believe what you say. And that's where the battleground is for modern selling. Tim Hughes [00:45:10]: Yeah, yeah. So, so when I first, the first time I worked at Oracle, Oracle was not as good the competitor. There was a company called Ingress which many people were, you won't have heard of. But you know what, you've heard of Oracle and Oracle was worse and more expensive than Ingress, but history shows that. Where's Ingress now? Yeah, and I, I and, and you know, our sales pitch was and, and Pat. Yeah, I know what you're saying is right. Anyway. Bertrand Godillot [00:45:40]: Comment from. Tim Hughes [00:45:42]: Yeah, Leah's a guest has been on, on. Bertrand Godillot [00:45:45]: Yes. Adam Gray [00:45:46]: Hi Leah, nice to see you again. Bertrand Godillot [00:45:49]: And Leah says additionally it can be extremely expensive to get to gain insights into who's visiting your website and where they are dropping off. Tim Hughes [00:45:59]: So yeah, so we had a, we had a, one of those tools. One company came to us and said we've got one of these tools that it will measure who's coming to your website and it therefore you, you can see who's coming. Wow, that's, that's brilliant. And they gave it to us for free. So double E. So we would go basically tell people how great it was and none of the sales team used it. Adam Gray [00:46:25]: And the reason for that Tim, was because. Tim Hughes [00:46:29]: So, so I'm going to tell you. So what would happen is that we would get loads of people coming to our website and it was like Marriott, Hilton and, and the conclusion that we jumped to was that when somebody wanted to, to look at our website we assumed that they didn't. You do it during like work time when we'd know that GlaxoSmithKline or Oracle had come to our website. What they did was that they waited. They, that that job they did was that they waited till they were working away and they were in a hotel room and they had nothing else to do. So, so, so, so and they were in the Marriott or the Hilton and that's when they came and looked at our website. The sales team basically said in the end we just didn't use it. We changed the website and we didn't even bother moving it over. Bertrand Godillot [00:47:22]: So good point. And I mean a number of good points. And, and I have a remaining question which is okay, assuming I want to move to more of a relationship building way of selling and leveraging social. So assuming I want to do that, how long does it take before I see the first results? Tim Hughes [00:47:46]: Good question. Three weeks. Adam Gray [00:47:50]: Yeah, well it depends, you know, how long does it take until you get fit? How long does it take until you lose weight? Depends how much effort you put in what, what we do. See and, and you, you pointed me at this quote that somebody had, had made the other day, Tim, which is they said that doing this stuff increases the surface area of luck. Tim Hughes [00:48:10]: Yeah. Adam Gray [00:48:10]: And it's like the harder I practice, the luckier I get. You know, the more of this stuff you do, the more you happen. Now don't get me wrong, we're not in the business of luck. We're in the business of, of surety. However, on the way to building that process that guarantees you're having lots of calls with the right people, you get very lucky along the way and invariably the very quick wins come from just happening to be in the right place at the right time. So we're doing some work with the client. They moved into a new office. One of the people in the business did a photo of the office and posted it saying we've just moved into a new office. Adam Gray [00:48:50]: Isn't this exciting? Of my old friends can come and join me for a cup of coffee. You know, very nice post with a, you know the fancy new sofas and things that they had in the new building and somebody that they had not had any interaction with for seven years but were connected, saw the post and sent them a message saying I didn't realize that you were doing what you're currently doing. Now we should have a conversation about this because there might be an opportunity for you that I can introduce you to. And that yielded 180 million dollar framework agreement with the UK government. Bertrand Godillot [00:49:21]: Now that's a good win, that's a good wind. Adam Gray [00:49:25]: That is a good win. And you, and the beauty of this is you couldn't have legislated for that because this is somebody that the person had effectively lost touch with except for the fact that they were on the social network. And clearly this person had noticed some of their posts in the past. But the point is that you cannot factor that in. But what is amazing to me still to this day, having done this for 10 years, what's amazing to me is how often people get lucky when they start to behave this way. Tim Hughes [00:49:55]: So the first time we ever run this, ran this, this is like 9 years ago Thomson Reuters. And what we were doing is that we were writing the program and turning up to basically present it to them. We, it had never been tested before for. So the first thing with the first session they did was about changing their profile because you've got to look, you, you've got to look the part from, for the bar, the social proof and stuff. So they've done all that. So the next time we went in and said what you need to do is going to connect. So we were teaching them how to connect and there was a guy at the back and, and, and basically he was on his laptop like tucking away. And I thought, you know, we, we've come all this way into London to, to teach us stuff and all you can do is sit at the back and, and, and send in, and send emails, you know what waste of time. Tim Hughes [00:50:43]: So it really annoyed me and I actually went home on the train and I was sort of like, you know, spitting feathers and using words beginning with F and stuff like that, you know, and, and anyway I got home and I had an email and it was from this guy and he said so, so I've just spent the last 18 months trying to get through to the, the VP of supply chain at Microsoft and in Thames Valley Park. So the, and I've rung and I've emailed and I can't get through. He said, using your technique with a you did profile, I've sent A connection to Christ. And he accepted, and he's going to have a meeting with me. She. Sorry. It was, she was going to have a meeting with me. And, and it was at that point I rang, I got home and I, I said, adam, Adam, Adam, they, they, they've got meetings. Tim Hughes [00:51:30]: And it was at that point that we knew that we were actually onto something, that we'd actually created something from, like, from, from our heads. And, And I remember. Do you remember the moment, Adam? When I do. Adam Gray [00:51:41]: It was like, because. Tim Hughes [00:51:44]: And everybody in Thompson, Reuters went, wow. And, and then all of a sudden, I got a meeting. I got a meeting. I got a meeting. I got, I got a meeting. And it was just like, it just came like that. It was just amazing. Bertrand Godillot [00:52:00]: Sounds great. Tim Hughes [00:52:00]: So, so, so, yeah, you know, it, it, it, it's possible. And just. Because what you're, because what you're, because not what you're not doing is going to the market and saying, buy my product, because we're great. What you're doing is that you're, you're actually treating this as a conversation. And it's. Because your LinkedIn profile doesn't make you look like, you know, this is, you know, this is how many times I've made my number and been to President's Club because buyers aren't interested in that. What you're doing is, you're saying, this is how I help people, and this is the social proof that I understand supply chain and stuff. The people go, you look interesting. Tim Hughes [00:52:37]: I think I'll have a conversation with you. Adam Gray [00:52:38]: Wow. Tim Hughes [00:52:41]: And, and, and do you want me to speak for another two minutes, Bertrand? Because we've got another two minutes. Bertrand Godillot [00:52:46]: We have two minutes to go, but we also have a newsletter, so don't go too far. Tim Hughes [00:52:53]: So, Pat, Leah, Americo, sorry, didn't come to your point. John, Mina, thank you so much for the engagement. I mean, this, it's, it's all, it's, this is all about the audience. Adam Gray [00:53:08]: Yeah. Tim Hughes [00:53:09]: You know, it's, it's, there's, there's a hierarchy of, of. And it's the, the audience is always, always first. And thank you so much for coming on and engaging. And it's always been the audience the whole time, since the 4th of May, 2021. Bertrand Godillot [00:53:26]: Excellent. And I'll be in touch with a few of you, by the way. Tim Hughes [00:53:29]: Yeah, yeah. So Leah's been on before, but he's a great guest. Pat is Pat. And, And America is. He's been on my podcast and. Bertrand Godillot [00:53:40]: Okay. Tim Hughes [00:53:40]: And. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, so he's so America, if you're still watching, contact Bertrand and, and, and come on there because you'll work out. He's, he's, he's a great networker. Bertrand Godillot [00:53:53]: Okay, great. So we'll be in touch. Anyway. Well, gentlemen, this has been great. Thank you very much for your participation. As I said, we now have a newsletter and that's the time. Now, Adam, where are you going to be disappearing behind the the QR code. Adam Gray [00:54:10]: It's a win win. Bertrand Godillot [00:54:13]: Don't miss an episode. Get the show highlights, be on the show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes. You may scan the QR code on screen or visit us at digitaldownload.live/newsletter. Guys, thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Tim Hughes [00:54:32]: Thanks everybody and thanks for all the engagement. Thanks both bedroom. Bertrand Godillot [00:54:36]: Bye. Adam Gray [00:54:36]: Bye. Bye. Bertrand Godillot [00:54:37]: Bye.

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