Feb 24, 2019
Bill plays a strategic role not only in role-based development, but how people, systems, and departments can positively impact the success of the Sales teams, and ultimately their companies.
He believes salespeople come to work every day to be successful in their role, and there is an opportunity through architecture to enable their roles in a meaningful way.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:
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How to use Storytelling in Sales
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How to build Storytelling Sales library within your company
- How AI and Video Will Change Sales
SHOW NOTES
[01:03] Welcome Bill
[01:09] Introducing co-host, Sahir
[01:26] Business success stories that inspire Bill
[01:58] Creating a Coaching culture within the organization
[03:52] Call recording as game films
[05:08] Gary Milwit story
[06:50] Working as a group
[07:50] Creating a sustainable system (library of stories)
[08:51] Sport and sales analogy
[09:00] How Bill got into sales
[13:46] Learning to be brief and specific
[15:25] Speak and write in bullets
[16:33] Tailoring messages
[17:16] The importance of mentors
[17:49] Expanding your network
[18:15] Self-development
[19:00] Taking a cue from your network
[19:30] Education and learning
[20:13] Learning and development
[20:20] Digital Intelligence Systems
[22:18] Institutional knowledge
[23:33] How storytelling affects sales
[24:34] Behavior change
[25:05] Customer
[25:56] Neuro-coupling phenomena during
[26:44] Encouraging salespeople
[27:32] Talent
[27:37] Environment
[28:24] Compensation and incentives
[29:23] Pipeline review
[30:48] Sales trends to watch out for
[31:19] The role of Videos and AI
[33:19] new Prospecting models
[33:33] The art of storytelling for Bill
[34:14] Contact info
Show transcript
Ed Bilat :
00:31 Hello, this is Ed Bilat Joining me today is Bill Ball, the director of learning and development. of digital intelligence systems. Bill Is also a founding member of sales enablement society and he's very passionate about sales talent management, sales enablement, and sales effectiveness. Bill plays a strategic role load on them in the role of the development, but how people, systems and departments can positively impact the success of producers and ultimately are companies deal with. Welcome to the show.
Bill Ball:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Ed Bilat :
Absolutely great to have you on the show. I will be joined today by Sahir Ponderay is my co-pilot and the cohost as well here in Ottawa today. Bill, I'm thrilled to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us. We would love to hear your story, but before we do this, I will ask you all a traditional question. What type of business success story inspires you and why?
Bill Ball:
So I thought about this and there are quite a few entrepreneurial stories that excite me, but I thought one that maybe I was a part of where I wasn't the ultimate success, but I was really proud to be a part of it is something that I thought I would share.
Ed Bilat :
Sure.
Bill Ball:
Great. So most businesses from a sales standpoint strive most modern businesses, and I'm throwing this out as not just a shared truth among sales organizations, but I think it's probably a universal truth at this point that many sales organizations are striving to have a coaching culture of some kind. So late two thousand I was working for an organization where we had one. We were really proud of it. You know, the job market at that time I think helped us a little bit where we had to people with greater tenure who are willing to give their time back. You know, they were brought in and they knew if they were sitting next to great other people doing their job, they'd be able to cross-pollinate and learn things from each other. So we created a circle of veteran peers who were coaching their peers and everybody was getting coaching from the leadership as well. But it's just, you know, as well as I do, people tend to make changes when they see their peers making those changes. They'll take guidance from the leaders, but they really make changes when they see peers making changes.
Ed Bilat :
Absolutely. This is something useful. Let's see. Okay, I need to this for myself as well.
Bill Ball:
Exactly. So that got a little bit more challenging when the job market improved because you know, we were fine, but at the same time, we had people sort of circulating in out, because we're hiring a lot of recent college grads and so we had people circulating in and out, no fault of theirs. They were learning, you know, what they wanted to do or coaching culture was still solid. But you know, eventually, even with a coaching culture, you can't rely on entirely new people to carry a torch of that pure coaching because they don't have the experience and at some point, it becomes a little bit of the blind leading the blind. You don't know who was a real leader. Yeah, it's the last thing that you want to have happened is yes, great coaching culture, but you have what's called rogue coaching where it's like, well, hey, I don't know how everybody else is doing this, but this is how I do it.
Bill Ball:
Start multiplying that across the workforce. You know, it wasn't total pandemonium or anything like that, but it was just not like it was. At the same time, we started looking at technology to help with this kind of thing. We were an early adopter of thinking about, I mean this is an inside sales organization, so we're thinking about call recording as game film, which was very progressive at that time. We're talking mid to late two thousand so a little bit of a different story now, but very progressive. Then where you know, you bring up call recording. I think in some organizations now anyway, and they're still thinking, okay, this is the big brother, you know, why do you want to listen to my stuff? Versus thinking like, okay, most athletes watch game film to get better. But being a younger company and being noodle this and being sort of, you know, pioneers on are trailblazers.
Bill Ball: 04:27 We didn't roll it out very well. So some people you know appreciate it. Some people did and the technology wasn't where it is today. It was a little bit of a struggle. And so this forced us to learn a lot about change management, but we eventually did get to a place of where we were reviewing at least as leaders one on ones with people and listening to their calls and talking to them about their game film. And that was great, but we still weren't back to that pure coaching level. You know, like if appears going to review the game, fill them with another peer and they're both, you know, three to six months in like there's only so much advantage that can be gained from that. So we had a lot of friends. The previous business owners that I worked for a long time, we're pretty well connected within the inside sales world.
Bill Ball: 05:07 And there was one gentleman, his name's Gary Milwit, he works for a financial firm in Maryland. He's the sort of prototypical ex-football coach. Really tough guy that you know you either love or hate, but his people loved him. I believe he was an AI espy award winner for a sales leader one year too. Yeah, sounds like a really good combination. I mean I would see someone in those boats feel, especially coaching athletes would have a really good understanding of how to communicate with someone and actually help coach and various aspects of sales, like how to close a deal or how to pitch properly for certain. And so he like us had started embracing call recording may be a little after we did, but either way, he was starting to use it with his team as a group. And so we went and visited him and wash that an action.
Bill Ball: 06:01 And it's not as simple as you think there are rules, you know, everybody has to know. It's a safe place. Like there are certain kinds of comments that aren't allowed there. Certain kinds of comments that are allowed. There was, you know, in some way, like I think he had sort of stumbled into something that was tremendous. We brought it back to our organization and that was the whole reason we sat in, you know, we're like, hey, we want to see what's happening here. We want to see if this is something that's viable to bring back. And ended up being something that was really viable to bring back. So we started testing it with the CEO leading and testing out those rules. And it started out as a one-way conversation. But what it ultimately branched out to was I led them and our managers led them and our peers led them and we started breaking down those moments of the conversation where something really valuable happened.
Bill Ball: 06:51 And when you can do that as a group, it's so much more powerful than when you know you're sitting next to your neighbor as a sales peer and you're saying what happened? And you know, everybody remembers that last objection. But maybe three minutes before that, the call, you know, went off track somewhere. So being able to do that as a group and start establishing business specific best practices around that was a huge, huge win for us. The ultimate thing that happened though was it became a pure coaching thing again because we identified the key elements of conversations and we identified how to get better at them as a group and the top of the mountain ended up being every month we actually hosted a call competition where people would submit calls to their managers, the managers would submit them to myself and the business owners. We would judge and in some cases you know down the road, left appears judge and play them all back, you know, in a group meeting once a month. So using that and then actually taking these call recording elements and putting them in a library where people could say, okay, I want to hear what good objection handling sounds like or I want to hear what a good introduction sounds like. By doing that, we were able to bring back a pure coaching culture because we're able to, you know, get new people onboard fast, understanding what good looks like.
Ed Bilat : 08:09 I love that example. I think that's a great story. And I see you combining two elements here. So one is a starting your own story library, right? So like that's what we're trying to teach our clans that instead of having those separate stories, why don't you create a company-wide library that at any given moment any member of your team can go and borrow a book, have the particular volume on the situation, their work you with. Right? Right. And another one is starting your own objection collection. The library, right? So this is what exactly you have done with his help or that coach. I think that's a terrific story. So thank you so much for sharing. I think it's the actually good segue to my next question. We just talked about the combination of sports and sales and then I do look at your
Ed Bilat : 08:56 own background. I see you been majoring in English and creative writing before. How did you even get into sales world yourself?
Bill Ball: 09:04 Good grief. So I grew up with a father as a traveling sales rep who worked for himself. Nowadays, it's not so exciting when the phone rings in your house, you know, whatever you say. I got it, I got it, I got it right. You know, back and forth caller id, that was a really big thing. But literally, 80% of the time the phone rang at my house. Everybody would run to get it. And it was from my dad defeating. So you know, between that and you know, me being a free spirit, you know, I think I thought more about how much I wanted to play in a band my last year and college. Then you know what I was going to do the next steps and hopefully, my parents aren't listing.
Bill Ball: 09:42 But when I finished school he was like, Hey, you want to come work for me? You know, I tried to say in the nicest way like, are you crazy? Why would they do this? Yeah. But you know what? You can't deny personas and DNA to some point. So I was always that friend who had to recommend music to other friends or restaurants to other friends. Like I was that connector friend. You know, I had a vision of what I wanted and what I liked. And I would say probably my wife would say I'm pretty outspoken about those things and sometimes to my own detriment. But eventually, I just needed to find something that I was passionate in. So I played in bands and I ended up working in a recording studio, which I thought was, you know, what I wanted to do, you know, meanwhile, I mean this was the probably late nineties so meanwhile there's a lot happening with technology.
Bill Ball: 10:30 At that point. There was the megahertz race and this was before gigahertz with apple and IBM. There are all kinds of interesting things. My friends and I were getting excited about that. One day I went into the studio and I was working there as initially an intern and then a second engineer because I wanted to learn how to document music. That was a big passion of mine and the band was late and it was myself and the head engineer, you know, he was like, Bill, I'm x, Y, Z years old. We're talking about technology and lots of things, different things happening and kind of the future, you know, eve absolutely. Flash was exciting, iPods were exciting. You know, like this was probably even right before those. So lots of the talk about, and he said, you know what, I love this job, but I'm in a dark room for a really long time and I don't make very much money.
Speaker 1: 11:18 It's a labor of love. But honestly, if I had picked a different trade, you know, I think I'd have more options now in this guy was one of my heroes. So it really made me think, you know, and I grew up, you know, even as misogynistic as it is watching James Bond and be like, I want to have awesome sports cars and I want to travel and meet amazing people. And so that really made me think like, okay, you know what? Maybe this is not my way forward. So I made a hard pivot. I did a few temp jobs. I eventually started working for a retail store that sold Apple products, and this was before Apple even had stores. So this is kind of like a small business consultant place and I was rough at first, but by the end of my first, let's say the month and a half, I was leading the rest of the company in sales and it was because I had found something that I was passionate about.
Ed Bilat : 12:10 Well, what was the need to challenge earlier on that? Obviously, you haven't been trained in sales, right? So you just have to see that this is your passion, this is where you can sort of how that alignment through the 11 goals. But what was, was he a major challenge
Bill Ball: 12:24 earlier on? Well, earlier on I didn't have a lot of challenges. It was easy for me to say, okay, this is what I have in inventory. These are the people coming in. If I ask them for what they want and I don't have it, I'm going to lose. Right? I mean, it's that straight forward. I need to just talk to them and break. Sort of the typical mold of the salesperson. I mean we had competitions with us, you know, how quickly can you get this middle-aged woman, you know, on a first name basis that comes into the retail store. You know, just those kinds of things because it wasn't a big mental challenge once you have the product knowledge. But after that, you know, thinking that okay, I'm doing great here, I'm off for my next sales job. And that ended up being a traveling rep job where I had to do a lot of self-motivation.
Bill Ball: 13:09 I wasn't prepared at all. I had no idea. I was used to people coming into me. So that was hurdle number one. But I think it's a big thing that really clicked for me because I went from retail sales to outside sales and then back into inside sales where I was like, okay, you know what? I haven't done this. I really like technology. I need to take a step back to take a larger step forward. And what I really learned first was because I wanted to advance quickly in that business was how to make a business case. And I didn't know because of my degree that you mentioned I was an English major. I'm clearly talky. I'm very verbal. So learning how to be brief and specific,
Ed Bilat : 13:47 which is not a bad thing at all, right?
Bill Ball: 13:50 Sure. But you have to learn how to annotate yourself, right? So learning how to be brief and specific and point to deliverables and measurables. The CEO and I did not get along well at first on that level, but once I learned how to communicate and speak that language, you know, I ended up being an email coach for a lot of other sales reps.
Ed Bilat : 14:10 This is where the real writing helps, right? Yeah. And unless soul, good copywriters, like extremely, extremely valuable now. And then like every little sentence, every little inclination that told humor, everything that comes into place, like the real art to creating something, what people will pay attention out of all the noise will even today. Right,
Bill Ball: 14:31 right. What's breaking the mold of all of the other vendor noise, right? Absolutely. We did say you were alone. Yes. I was a lot more verbose than I needed to be. You know, I thought I needed to tell the story of my work. Say I wanted a promotion or I wanted to see a change happen. Getting changes to happen in business, you have to completely translate what you're trying to achieve to the audience of the person you're reaching out to. So if you're talking to a CFO, right? Being an l and d person right now, if I go in with a bunch of Jingoistic Ellen Detox, you know I'm going to be talking to a wall. You have to translate what you're saying to the audience that you have. So I didn't understand how to speak to a CEO. I didn't understand, hey, these are the things that I've accomplished. This is why I want this promotion. This is what I expect to accomplish. And be able to point to actual results and speak and write in bullets and easily digestible things versus a diatribe I really had to learn that sat here.
Ed Bilat : 15:32 Yeah, absolutely. Look the white spaces and formatting as so many times, you know, when we're talking to the sales leaders and they say, okay, one of my sales are up, just send me an email and I'm reading it and I understand that it's a good idea. I just don't have 50 minutes to actually read it and the really, really comprehend it. And then you get another email where everything is bullet points, you know, concise. And there is a what the coke engagement call to action. Even the internal communication and say, well Kelly, I want to talk to him. I'm going to call him right now and we'll figure this out. Right? And as simple as it sounds, that's the entire decision making. And it happens internally. And of course, it happens when we see some customers. So I think it's a tremendous skill view house. So that's great. So thank you for sharing this.
Bill Ball: 16:18 First of all, it's making the message about the person, right? So it's the first thing that name mean to see that why is this relevant for me? You'd have to put yourself in their shoes. Anytime you're creating something for somebody else, even in a first sales email. So individually tailoring your message for your specific audience. Yes. And making it about them, not making it about you. So speaking in a language they can understand, but also if it's an initial message, if you're talking about a prospect, it's gotta be about them. The first thing, think about this. Think about what you do and what you think about when you're scanning your LinkedIn messages or you're listening to your voice mails or you're looking at your email box, you're looking at your subject line, you're looking at the length of that email. You're looking at who it's from, all of those things. You're looking for a reason to sort or flag, do I need to pay attention to this or can I dump it because you already have too much of it, right. So we have to be relevant as communicators internally or externally, really quickly.
Ed Bilat : 17:13 Absolutely. I love it. Idea. Cool. Do you follow in sales, where did you learn their craft?
Bill Ball: 17:19 Who was helping you? Oh Man. So there's been lots of people along the way. Naturally. I spent a lot of time at this business called Vorsight, which is now associated with a business called ExecVision. And I have to think all of the people that I work with, they're including the cofounders, Steve, Richard and David Stillman, David Stillman as the person who I really, you know, struggled with to learn how to speak to an established business case. And once I did it, yeah, we're still good friends. But I think, you know, this is a chance where there are people that I follow. What I would advocate is constantly expanding your network and going to events and getting out of your day to day because that's where you know, you're actually taking a pause to work on your own self-development. So people are helpful. You know, there are lots of really smart people out there, but just being able to take a little bit of time, you know, whether you're reading something or whether you're actually going to an event because at that one point you're finally just focused on your own self-development.
Bill Ball: 18:17 It's very difficult in your job to do that. You know, you may be thinking that you're getting developed and your job, and you certainly are for people like me, from sales managers, from your peers, but if you don't do that extra layer, it really doesn't help you establish perspective that you can bring back inward with the things that you learned. That would be my thought on who do I follow. You know, I meet people all the time. The other thing that I've learned along those lines, and we may talk about this a little later, is if you think that you have to have all the answers, you're in for a struggle. So knowing that I'm part of a group outside of my work in my profession called the sales enablement society, and there are lots of advantages we're trying to define that, take the profession forward, a number of major objectives.
Bill Ball: 19:00 But the thing that's been best for me is saying, you know what? I want to try this. You know who in my network, somebody in my network has tried this before and failed before me many times. So just realizing like you don't have to have all the answers and reaching out to somebody in that network that you've built to try to get that answer just inherently expands your perspective here. Two points. The first one is basically education is what other people trying to do to you and the alerting is what you're doing for yourself. So go into those events, finding something really valuable for yourself, those golden nuggets you can use right then the second one, not to underestimate the power over your network because we already have that connection. You already have your own think tank where you can go in. The old you've got to do is just to ask cause anyone has done that before.
Bill Ball: 19:54 These are correct and that was way more succinctly than I put it and it was okay. Great. We are always looking for golden nuggets, flow listeners in a certain shirt just right. Then we just in the middle of the interview, so let's move to the second area, which was really interesting on the profile, which is the learning and development and then, I've read one of the statements and obviously you work for a technology company, digital intelligence systems, will you guys do global staffing and 90 consulting? How did you get to do that with technology? For somebody in my profession, even though my title is one of the more generic titles, it's director of learning and development. I'm a salesperson by trade. Certainly, that's evident in my background and some of the things that we've discussed, but I'm also enablement focused, meaning that I'm looking to help our people in our organization, particularly our salespeople and our delivery people.
Speaker 1: 20:46 So I'm technically field enabled that sales enablement. I've got to care about the recruiters too, so they're part of my key audience. It's helping them with what they need to know and what they need to show and removing those hurdles out of the way, whether it's things that they need to get better at or you know, how other people in the organization are affecting them. So for me, I chose technology, not necessarily because of the industry, but partly because the work, because of the type of job, the type of job that I wanted to do and the type of challenge that I wanted to have was here. But for me it's also not just industry, it's people. When I came through the interview process, it staffing is a consolidated industry. You know, it's a tricky play right now for some of the organizations. A lot of people are being acquired or you're acquiring organizations.
Bill Ball: 21:34 We acquired another organization earlier this year, so I heard two things from the CEO that were very heartening to me. One that because of differentiation, he saw learning and development as a key strategy going forward to motivate and develop our people here. And he saw that as a differentiating factor to second. You know, he shared that same bit with me that I just shared in it. Staffing people are being acquired or they're acquiring others. Diocese is in the business of acquiring others. They want to grow. So those the two things that got me on board, the institutional knowledge, it was hard though. One thing I'd like to point out, I was at a previous organization for nine years and in a series of different roles, so being a part of the institutional knowledge to coming to an organization where I had no institutional knowledge, it was definitely intimidating and an interesting choice.
Bill Ball: 22:25 So I had to feel right with the direction the business was headed and for the type of work that I was going to do. Absolutely, because you're also a leader in your organization, right? There's a manager as a director, as a mentor, as a trainer, console him, coach. So you do know those things. So I owe loading in the operational technology, but I spend the majority of my time on development and talent. So I thought those were really interesting. Look, many people could formulate it like that. Well, that was a little bit of knowing my audience on Linkedin, right? So I teach salespeople how to be more effective, but certainly, salespeople are going to be looking at my profile and asking questions. I kind of wanted to set them up and say what I really care about is spotting gaps and then going to the technology versus like if you hit me up with, you know, a one trick pony email over Linkedin, I'm probably not going to respond to you.
Bill Ball: 23:16 It's all about the business strategy and working with the business to identify the gaps and then mapping the technology back versus saying, hey, there's some sexy new technology I need to run after it. I want to get this. And speaking of getting the attention, as a leader, as a coach, how do you think storytelling could help to motivate your sales team and actually drive the success in terms of reaching Oh, evil, Sebastien quarters or objectives? I think it's in three ways and if I get lost while I'm explaining this, hopefully, you'll hold me accountable. Okay. First off, it ties back to the story I told at the beginning of our conversation where peers make changes because appears I'm going to make changes because of what I learned from another enablement person. You know, salespeople are going to make changes from other salespeople that they admire or respect in the organization.
Bill Ball: 24:06 So when I do an in-person training for example, or if even online being able to have people have wind stories associated with the learning objectives, you know, even if it's just about a skill like objection handling or it may be something as small as setting agendas for meetings. Just seeing peers key in on that and see that behavior change is huge, but you have to tee that up with peer sharing that to peers. You know, I'm a little modest about talking about behavior change because I don't know if we necessarily need to change somebody's behavior. It almost sounds like we're brainwashing them a little bit, just changes in their game. They're going to learn that by hearing other peer stories. This is where I was, you know, this is what I discovered about myself. Hey, I'm just like you. So facilitating a way for peers to share stories is how you get them to try new things.
Bill Ball: 24:58 So that's the first way. You asked me about a few different ways. I would say the second way is with customers, right? And this is something that, you know, we have to challenge marketing with what story moves one customer from learning about you to being a little bit more curious, to want to have a serious conversation. Those are stories that drive each of those steps in their buying process. And it's the same for the salesperson. What stories can you tell that is going to drive a customer to everybody wants to see themselves in somebody else's shoes? It goes back to talking about messaging, how we were talking about messaging before you know, you want to quickly say you're looking in your email inbox. How is this relevant? To me, the most powerful way that we can make something relevant to somebody is through a story.
Bill Ball: 25:46 If they can see themselves in that story, they're captivated. It's in a conversation, it's in a training environment, it's in content. It's imperative, wonderful things. Captains, one would fill the story and the look of love that you will, the science one is assumption gold in euro and another one is called [inaudible]. So when you were accomplishing means that they actually made a research letter, good stories fold the Bulls brain, set up your rate on the same frequency and the person that you're telling the story too, they see themselves in that story. Right? So like it's happening to them. And so that's one and another one they actually feel you are empathy created, right? Because they understand the feelings and the neuro your emotions and you can't create as little was anything else marketing wise. So that's why it's so powerful. I'm so glad he already utilize it within the organization.
Bill Ball: 26:39 That's terrific. So here I think you had the questions. Yes, Bill, I was wondering what is the best way to motivate salespeople? There are obviously many bays like there are a bonus says exotic Krebs as like a VIP club. But what do you think is the best way to the morning where it tells people? I don't think there is a way. I think it's a combination of elements that end up driving performance and driving people. There's you being the best judge of talent if you're bringing the wrong kinds of people. And it may just be roles. You know, someone's not inherently good or bad, and I know that's a Duh, but you know, if you're looking for an account manager and you've got a hunter, I've actually seen that backward. I know a lot of people say, you know, I want hunters and not account managers.
Bill Ball: 27:22 Sometimes that's a backward thing. If you have somebody who just wants to break accounts and they don't want to do the work afterward to go broad, deep, you don't have the right person for the role. So talent would be one sec. The next would be the environment. You know, are people motivated by what's happening around them? Do you have an office where like nobody shows up because everybody's working from home? You've got to figure that out. How are people staying connected and staying motivated environment's huge? I'm a big advocate for loud and for people being able to hear each other and for that spring, everybody's development. I'm, you know, open, public transparent with information, data stories, that kind of thing because why not communicate it? Why not share it? So environments a big key, you know, I think we can debate the whole open office thing, but that's not where I'm going necessarily.
Bill Ball: 28:12 It's just a, you know if people are doing the same role, like they need to be able to see each other's work and be a part of each other's work to expand and grow their work and drive things. Obviously, the incentives, if the compensation and the incentives aren't in line, then you're already fighting a losing battle that makes it tough to hire. That makes it tough to retain people. Even if you do a great pitch in the interview process and you don't have incentives, then you're not motivating people. You're going to lose, you're going to have just a treadmill of new hires over and over again until you know Glassdoor eventually calls you out. Finally, there are a few other pieces, but understanding what good looks like and what success looks like in a job from activities to objectives to results and being able to show that employee what good looks like from these are the things you need to do day in and day out and this is the equation of things that you need to do to be successful.
Bill Ball: 29:02 What does success look like from a benchmark? Yes, results, right? A lot of people do it, but what's the map of activities that lead back to that result? There should be an equation there. And then finally, how are they using those activities and objectives and results to self-performance manage. You talk to managers and I think the quintessential thing is the idea of their one on ones being a pipeline review and those things are great, but you know what I would say is a, certainly use some of those pipeline reviews as coaching sessions instead on a particular skill that you've inspected. But B, if it's a pipeline review, have the employee do it, have them own that data and have them drive that conversation. You know, that lightens the lift on you and it also lets you know that they're hearing you if you guys have the same vision of objectives and results.
Bill Ball: 29:51 So I think it's a combination of all those things. And then when you start throwing out, I think you mentioned you know, Presidents Club, that kind of stuff. Yes, like that's key to a culture, but that's also a tricky one. It's a moving target. You're not going to motivate the entire group of people with one kind of incentive. So you need to keep it going. You know, for more senior people, maybe it's time off for monetary incentives or trips or escapes just so they can unplug. For junior people, it's doing activities together, but it's also like getting out early. You know, like that's the one that I've seen time and time again be the thing that like presses the button. It may not be money, it may just be like getting their time back. So all of those things, great.
Sahir : 30:31 Why not think about trends, technologies that are rocking the sales end street today. You have the rise of artificial intelligence, automation, the rise of generation Y as they're becoming a rising powerhouse as both buyers and sellers. There is a trend towards account based selling. I want to ask you what sales trends do you think we should watch out and 2019 as the new year is coming by. What do you think we should watch out for in this industry?
Speaker 1: 30:56 I think all of the things that you mentioned, ABM and AI are are important as a simple one that's possibly obvious and possibly not as just video. There are lots of applications that aren't expensive, where are free for salespeople to shake up the typical email, voicemail saying and use video and some of them give you teleprompters. I mean they get pretty involved, but we can't deny that videos now and becoming a big part of selling. You don't have to be a social seller to use video. It's huge. And Ai certainly too, right? Scaling, you know that coaching and inspection are helpful, but what I would say is with AI you always run the risk of creating too much rigor. We need to look at AI and how it flatters the architecture that we've built. There's still needs to be some kind of jazz band in there.
Speaker 1: 31:42 Without it, there isn't any creativity. I've seen both sides with new hires and experienced people and if you really locked down too hard what good looks like and a machine can certainly do that. You start limiting what people can become. So finding a strike, a balance between the organic and the architecture I think is huge. And then how we use AI in it. But you know the people that say AI is going to replace sales coaches or you can let the AI do the work. There has to be the organic human touch in there too.
Ed Bilat : 32:13 This, this is so true Bill. So look, don't they just tried to use AI for scheduling sales appointments and the natural salespeople just start using AI mean though to send those appointed one sentence. Right, right. Let's see what actually happened. There's would be angry customers to tell me, okay, if my business is so important to you, but why did you throw them into the robot? Could continue to ask me some questions at the end and trying to see where I'm available like just call me and you know, let's talk because that's the reason that you wanted to talk to me. Right? So to have that conversation, why do I have to deal with the machine, which doesn't understand my responses? So like what are you trying to sell me at this point? Right?
Bill Ball: 32:58 That's misplaced, right? So maybe right now, where are we are a hair appointment and not a sales appointment. Somebody wants a sales appointment with me. I'm thinking like I'm the scale, right? One Hand has to fill up with value and it has to outweigh the amount of time in the other hand that it's going to take on my calendar. And I think it's really difficult to convey that through Ai. I know prospecting is possibly the hardest and most painful part of selling, but that's absolutely the reason that we shouldn't leave it up to AI.
Ed Bilat : 33:27 Absolutely. Thank you. You've been terrific and so really appreciate it. I'm going to ask you one last question. What does the arc of storytelling mean to you?
Bill Ball: 33:36 I think it's all of the things that we hit on, right. But when ultimately audience can see themselves in what you're conveying, that's where the empathy, that's where the change, that's where the way forward happens. It's such a key to our communication and frankly, communication and lack of it is where we go wrong. And our roles were way too committed to outputs versus communication. And if we can use more communication and stories to tell that that's what captivates people, that's what gets people engaged and that's what creates business and moves us forward.
Ed Bilat : 34:12 Excellent. Thank you so much. So Bill, what's the best way to connect with you or follow you on the social media for our listeners?
Bill Ball: 34:18 I think, you know, hopefully, you been entertained if he looked at my Instagram. But what I would say is professionally I'm just good old. Linkedin is fine. I'm happy to connect and talk to anybody as long as it's not a sales development representative who asked for a meeting on the first guy
Ed Bilat : 34:32 with using Ai. Yes. Okay, perfect. So we'll make sure we'll include your information. So conduct, I'll Lucentis. So I'm thrilled to have you on the show, so thank you so much for the great ideas. I think it was a lot of golden nuggets here. So again, thank you for coming to the show. So happy to have you here,
Bill Ball: 34:51 and this was absolutely a delight and my pleasure and really appreciate the content, the direction of the conversation, and the questions. Hopefully, somebody at least amused by it.
Sahir : 35:01 Thank you so much. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.
That does it for this episode of storytelling for sale. You'll find show notes and links on our web page, storytelling sales.com you can subscribe to the podcast on Itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.