131: Time Blocking and Staying Motivated with ClozeLoop's Haylee Taylor

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of Revenue Grid and QuotaPath. To learn more about them and all of the great companies that support this show and this community, just click over to top1.fm/sponsors. You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Haylee Taylor. Haylee is the top account executive at ClozeLoop out of Nashville. Welcome to the show, Haylee.

0:46 Haylee Taylor: Thanks for having me, Scott.

0:47 Scott Ingram: Well, I'm really excited to dig into this with you, and we always start the show with some immediate value. And I would love to hear what you believe to be the top 3 things that have made the biggest impact in your success and your results.

1:02 Haylee Taylor: Ooh, that's a good question. I kind of might bucket them, if that's all right. I think something that's been really helpful and I've learned has been my ability to adapt. And what I mean by that is my week's not going as it might have been planned out to look, I'm really easily able to decide what changes need to be made. Some folks might wait weeks to feel if something's not working or if it's just in fact timing or holidays, and I'm being specific to like prospecting or networking or whatever we're referring to it as these days, but I rarely wait like even 24 hours to make changes to my process. I want to pivot quickly and really get comfortable fast so that I can continue to have consistent results despite doing different activity. 2, I'd probably bucket into being coachable. I've had some of the best sales leaders I've ever met as part of my career, and I would feel very fortunate to be able to say that. I would consider my ability to be coached and receive some of that feedback as a key reason why I consistently am on the leaderboard. I really try not to make the same mistake twice and take feedback very directly, and I appreciate it more than most might, maybe might. So, I'm really quick to take action on that and do exactly what I'm instructed. Of course, maybe concocting my own language or making it sound more like me. And then third, it's probably just memorable. I like to make every interaction with prospects, customers, everything from first interaction to selling them something for the 4th time, right? Just really memorable. And sometimes I'll often hear comments like, oh, I gotta remember that, or I'll share that with my team, or I can really tell you like solving problems. So, Those are really, I think, my top 3 success factors.

2:53 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. And what specifically does being memorable sound like or look like? What is that typically?

2:59 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I'd say it's the feedback that I receive. I don't know that I'm doing it as much as I'm hearing it from people that meet me. I think maybe it's the direct nature of how I, how I speak or how I'm emotionally invested in outcomes. I think I ask really direct questions, but I'm also asking them in such a way that's part of my process and less about making something happen and just more of my interest and where I want to spend my time in a conversation with someone.

3:29 Scott Ingram: Haylee just mentioned being coachable, and coaching can be so much better if you have the data to drive that coaching. Revenue Grid is the revenue intelligence platform that improves your team's performance and helps them get to the win more often. Their guided selling capabilities are particularly eye-opening. Check them out, top1.fm/revenuegrid or top1.fm/rg. Let's contextualize this a little bit. Talk about what is your role? What is ClozeLoop? You know, what, what did you need to do to get to number 1 in all of that?

4:04 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, my role at ClozeLoop is similar to an account manager. I'm spending a lot of time prospecting and doing the things that people like to say are the hard stuff, like cold calling, emailing folks, asking for referrals. And then I'm driving that business from being a new to ClozeLoop to a raving fan of ClozeLoop. So, I'm working with folks at that capacity. We sell sales training. So, a lot of folks that start working with us see that sales training as part of my initial process in working with them. So, that makes for a really nice handoff to buy something else from us, which other products might look like a sales playbook or building out your enablement program, like your onboarding structure, different things like that. And then I work on a team of fantastic consultants that head up all of the training, build all of our product. So I just get to be the face and kind of act as the main point of contact from client to our consulting team.

5:02 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And then quantify your results for us.

5:06 Haylee Taylor: Ooh, that's broad. I'm thinking a couple things. There's, I mean, how I measure my own success is conversations I have in a day, whether that's someone that I'm talking to for the first time, or I'm having a secondary call with that I just am providing more clarity, or even if it's with an existing customer and just providing maybe some level of support, but more so talking about what's next. So, I view results for those conversations taking place, the quality of the conversation. And then of course, I'm measuring myself daily on my win rates, my conversion from first conversation into a closed won sale. And then even I'm also measuring my upsell potential for those accounts that I've sold into.

5:50 Scott Ingram: Gotcha. And do you have a quota?

5:53 Haylee Taylor: I do have a quota.

5:54 Scott Ingram: And how have you done against said quota?

5:56 Haylee Taylor: Done pretty well. I actually started using what I learned from the ClozeLoop team at my last company and hit 268% of my quota in my last quarter working at that company. And I fully credit it to the frameworks that I learned from ClozeLoop. So I was like, I gotta come join these guys and see what they're doing differently. So I have consistently hit with, of course, I don't know what I would consider a more generous ramp period of 3 months starting to sell services in comparison to my background in selling software. But yeah, I've, Definitely been able to hit and exceed quota consistently since starting at ClozeLoop.

6:34 Scott Ingram: One final shout out to QuotaPath here. No matter what level you're achieving against your quota, you should have an easy way to track your compensation and quantify your progress against your personal financial goals. QuotaPath can help you do both, and as an individual, you can use it for free. Check them out today at top1.fm/QuotaPath. Awesome. And when you think about kind of the conversations metric that you have for yourself, do you have sort of a daily or weekly target number that you're after there?

7:05 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, my daily goal is 10 conversations a day. I'd say I'm hitting that 3 out of 5 days a week.

7:11 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. That's actually my very favorite metric. I think there's, there's, you know, you could do dials and you could do all these touches and other things, but it's the conversations that actually move things forward, right?

7:24 Haylee Taylor: Exactly.

7:25 Scott Ingram: I love it. I love it. And I'm curious about, you mentioned you went from software to services, which is a transition that I have made in my past. How has that been for you? How do you think about those 2 different things?

7:36 Haylee Taylor: I'm very happy. I'll say that. I always struggled with software as like this foreign product. My mind is naturally drawn to solving problems. So, when it came to telling prospect or an existing customer that this product is going to check all of their boxes. It just felt very artificial to me for some reason. I think services feels much more natural in the way that it's fully tailored, or maybe the word is customized, but it doesn't necessarily have an end goal. It has an end goal, but it's not like an end state as if it's defined. It's for me much more about the results we're achieving and what we're going after and where we're going to go next. So it's, it's exciting.

8:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. It's similar, right? I mean, product oftentimes is not super adaptable, right? If it doesn't meet the customer need, you kind of have to disqualify that opportunity, right? There's probably a better product for them or a different solution for them to use. Whereas when it's, when it's services, you know, a lot of times there's still ways you could bring that together. I mean, I'm working on an opportunity right now. Where we're partnering with another services firm for a portion of what we'll deliver. It's not a skill set that we have on our team, but I can go find the additional expert. You can't usually do that with a software product.

8:53 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, or it complicates the deal. I think like everyone's biggest fear is, oh, I don't want to slow down my own process, which is kind of selfish, but in software it's what you're taught and it makes sense. But in services, you do have that opportunity, like you said, to go out and actually find the expertise. That the person needs that you're talking to.

9:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Let's talk about your origin story. How did you get into sales in the first place?

9:15 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I was in city planning, which at the time felt really exciting to me because it meant I would take part in a grand scheme of change. Because when I looked around at places that I had traveled to, I wanted to make a difference and I didn't know what that meant as an 18-year-old. But I quickly realized that pace for me was top of my priority list in what I wanted to accomplish. And I was shocked when a city takes, maybe a building takes 40 years to go up and actually be somewhere that you can go visit that you spend all this time planning. And I just needed, I needed something faster. So I worked in that career for a year or 2, and then I found a software company that was trying to connect city planners with economic developers, which got me much more into the sales mindset of like, what's the ROI, finding out how this project matters and who's going to be impacted. And I was getting asked these questions and then I was like, oh, you know, there's actually this whole realm of different types of companies that are doing this, selling different types of software products. And I just kind of fell into it that way. And I've just constantly been attracted to the software companies that I see as people wanting and having a real need for. So followed that. And then of course, came into ClozeLoop, as I mentioned, from using their stuff and having read their books. So, that's what brought me here.

10:37 Scott Ingram: That's the ultimate when you can have this opportunity. I mean, I think it's so important that you sell something that you believe in, and it's kind of that transference of trust and passion around that product. But if you've actually gotten results from that solution beforehand, that's even better.

10:56 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I really appreciate that. I think it's the biggest selling point, even though I don't talk about it that much, as to Like why I have so much to stand behind when I'm talking about what it is that we sell. So I'm really happy.

11:09 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. If you were starting over today, knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have thought about or done differently from a career perspective?

11:18 Haylee Taylor: I don't think I would have not done sales. I think I always somehow knew I was going to be down this path. I have a lot of family members in sales and people that I look up to that are kind of indirectly in sales. So I don't think there's anything I would have done differently other than maybe ask more questions, but I'm pretty happy with the way I landed here.

11:35 Scott Ingram: Very good. Very good. So, I call the show Sales Success Stories and, you know, it's really your story, but the other, the other way I like to think about this is the story of a sale. So, do you have a favorite sales story? Maybe it was a big one. Maybe it was an epic fail and there was just something that you learned from that experience.

11:56 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I'd say my favorite sales story originated from a cold call. I think there's something really special to be said about talking to someone who has no idea why you're calling or what it is that you do, but liked the way that you spoke or said something, or that you said something that resonated with them. And that person has now been a customer for the last 8 months, I think, from the first point of contact. And they've done sales training. They've now joined on as kind of a customer success. We meet with their team weekly. I do coaching with some of their reps. It's just gotten to be a lot more personal and the, I hate to say relationship selling, but it's really just come down to us having established so much rapport with these folks that I don't know why they would do anything else other than want to work with us. So I think that's really special from having them been completely unaware of who we are, what we do, to now being raving fans.

12:50 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. Now, do you find cold calling salespeople to be easier or harder?

12:55 Haylee Taylor: Hmm, I love it. I think, I mean, the best part is the pattern interruption with calling sales leaders because they're getting cold-called. Like most people I talk to say that they've already gotten 50 other calls just like me today trying to sell what I'm trying to sell, which I doubt is true all the time, but it makes sense. So I think it's easier in that they're expecting it and I have to do less of the Well, this is why I'm calling. It can go much more straight to the point and be less formal.

13:25 Scott Ingram: What is that pattern interrupt? How are you managing your cold call that you're, you're breaking through?

13:31 Haylee Taylor: Oh, I'm sharing my secrets. Do you want to role play with me?

13:34 Scott Ingram: Sure. I will be happy to actually pick up the phone and take your call.

13:37 Haylee Taylor: Okay, let's do it. You answer the call.

13:40 Scott Ingram: Hi, this is Scott.

13:41 Haylee Taylor: Hey, Scott, this is Haylee from ClozeLoop. I doubt that name's familiar.

13:44 Scott Ingram: Maybe I've heard of you, but no, I don't think so.

13:46 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I know. It makes sense. Would it be all right if I asked you a 30-second question and then let you decide if we should keep talking?

13:51 Scott Ingram: Sure.

13:52 Haylee Taylor: That easy. That's the pattern interrupt.

13:53 Scott Ingram: There you go. There you go. Right into it. I like it. I like it.

13:56 Haylee Taylor: Yeah.

13:57 Scott Ingram: And so, you know, and it's so good, you know, just to get those, those real examples and for people to hear that. I think too often we overthink a lot of this stuff, right?

14:06 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. And if it just flows, right? I mean, the last thing you want to do is mumble jumble at the start of a call. So, if you can get something that works, just stick to it.

14:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, greatness, greatness. From an accomplishment perspective, what are you most proud of?

14:19 Haylee Taylor: I think I, I don't like to use the word proud, but I am really, really happy with what I've been able to learn in the amount of time that I've been given to like build out a go-to-market at my first company, to then taking that experience to the next company. So I guess just evolving my skills and oftentimes not having any formal training. I would say is a huge accomplishment.

14:42 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like there's a little bit of a theme emerging. It goes back to kind of the pacing with you. So you want to be in a place where things move quickly, but it sounds like you also want to be able to move quickly yourself and grow quickly. Yeah.

14:54 Haylee Taylor: I mean, I talk to people and they're like, you know, I'd love to be where that guy's at in 6 years. And that always just shocks me because I'm like, I want to be where that guy's at in 6 months. I definitely pace myself to move quickly and to be challenged a lot and then to, of course, take a lot of feedback as a result. But I'm always putting the thumb on myself to improve quickly and make adjustments and push myself.

15:18 Scott Ingram: Well, speaking of being challenged a lot, what do you find to be the biggest challenge or what do you struggle with the most?

15:25 Haylee Taylor: I would say positioning. I'll often struggle with certainty of not always knowing what it is that I should be selling. Of course, when you sell a product, it's much more defined, but like we've talked about, if you sell services, sometimes things can go off rails in terms of level of expertise or a level of discomfort, which I've now gotten more comfortable with saying, I'm not sure, but I can get back to you on that. But for a long time, I wasn't comfortable with that. So learning to be comfortable with that and not always being able to position yourself just perfectly has been probably my biggest challenge.

16:00 Scott Ingram: Where are you starting with the positioning, right? I mean, is that hypothesis? Because that is, I think you called out a really appropriate challenge that happens when you're selling services is, I don't know, we could do any number of 1,000 things for you. How do I pick?

16:16 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I think you really have to just get confident with the one thing. So I think by saying, you know, we've got 70 different items we can pull off the shelf and talk to you about and brainstorm some ideas or do a scoping call. Like, I've just pushed myself away from that because I need to ultimately understand problems, challenges, and goals, and then figure out a solution that ties to that, and then just stick to it, sell it, or disqualify it for the conversation we just had. And I can always circle back and have another conversation, but not having certainty around what solution can be possibly the right thing for that customer, I think has hurt me in more ways than it has helped me. So sticking to it is my new model.

17:03 Scott Ingram: And sticking to what? I think we're actually on a really important topic here, so I want to dig into this.

17:09 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. So, I mean, the product itself, I just, we refer to it as ClozeLoop Core. So I stick to that. And it's of course, like we've talked about, You can edit or tweak components of it, but talking about the goals and the challenges that someone's faced and then tying it specifically to what ClozeLoop Core can do versus talking about the product as a solution to those things. So I'm actually just weaving in the challenges, the goals into the product and talking about the product in such way.

17:43 Scott Ingram: I think that makes sense. So what I'm hearing you say is it's really being confident in a direction that is applicable to most people and then just doing enough discovery, having enough of a conversation to really understand how that is directly applicable to the challenges and the goals that they have. So, it's really selling to their specific things, not the specifics of your solutions. Am I getting it right?

18:12 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. Or I was thinking about the psychology of like a call I've had with a life coach who's a friend of mine, and she moved herself from saying, you know, I've heard people say this before and we've done this and it doesn't work for everyone, but it might work for you too, into saying, would it make some sense to talk about what I think could be a great resolve for what you've told me today? And just hearing that pivot from like, oh, you're like a lot of other people and they saw some success with this, but you might not, but like we can talk about it, into, Does it make some sense for us to talk about this? It just adds this whole extra layer of confidence that someone who's trying to look to you as an expert advisor, it just builds so much more trust.

18:55 Scott Ingram: So that's an interesting call out too, right? I mean, especially if you're trying to position yourself as an expert, you have to have that confidence. You can't be using this weak language around around your solution.

19:08 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, and you can't be. I mean, wishy washy is the best way of saying it for me. Just like you can't be going back and forth like oh, I asked a question. Question, they didn't have the pain, so like, let me pivot to this one. I think that's acceptable on a cold call or, I mean, an initial conversation, but if you're just not checking boxes immediately, you should probably just spare both of you, both of you the time and let them go find the right thing that's not exactly perfectly going to be the solution that you happen to be selling.

19:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's dig into your routines and, and sort of the way that you are structuring, I don't know, your life. So, the way I like to do this is, you know, first let's go through a day in the life, if you will, right? So, your alarm clock goes off. Tell me what time that typically happens, and I want the blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow.

20:00 Haylee Taylor: Okay, that's fun. Fun fact about me, I don't use an alarm. I don't know how, but for the last year and a half, I've woken up consistently at 7:00 AM, like on the dot. So, I've got that natural alarm built in. I start my morning with a dog walk. I have a dog named Goose, love of my life and keeps me sane. And then usually after the dog walk, I'm thinking about coffee. I go into meditation, I'll do yoga, something that gets my blood flowing. And then I'm instantly into cold calling. So I love to start my mornings. We use this really awesome software, PhoneBurner. So I'm usually having my first conversation of the day by around 8 o'clock. And then my meetings, I try to reserve on my calendar from 9:30 to 2 o'clock. And then I like to reserve any, any afternoon time for awesome podcasts like this or team meetings or training hours. We do a lot of internal team training, so we usually reserve the afternoons for that. And then wind down with dinner. Activities I like to do on the side, I've gotten really into watercolors. So, I'll do painting or I'll do something that just relaxes me. And then, I'm usually in bed pretty early and head hits the pillow. That's it.

21:20 Scott Ingram: Very good. So, what kind of a dog is Goose?

21:23 Haylee Taylor: So glad you asked. She's a Yorkie-Shih Tzu mix.

21:26 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And what does your meditation practice look like? Is there structure around that or is it guided? How are you doing that?

21:34 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, it's guided. I haven't had as much, I would say, like eye-opening awakening type of moments from meditation, but what it's done for me is it's gotten me able to just think about breathing in the morning. I think a lot of times when you wake up and you're feeling rushed to jump into whatever it is that you have to do, you're just not like inhaling and exhaling, as simple as that sounds. So, for me, meditation is just about that and then setting the tone for drinking water and breathing.

22:01 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. You know, sometimes it's the simplest stuff that works the best, right? Yeah.

22:05 Haylee Taylor: I mean, if you're a busy person, it's hard to remember to do those things.

22:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And then it sounds like you are just So kind of eating the frog, right? Prospecting first. Sounds like you're, you're doing that for an hour, hour and a half, and then really just dedicated, really focused. Like these are my golden hours is that 9:30 to 2:30 window. Is that a fair assessment or understanding?

22:28 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. I consider those to be my hours where I'm kind of like at my prime. So I like to schedule my meetings accordingly. I like to usually have a calendar that's booked up with 4 to 5 meetings a day, and then I like to give myself 15 to 30 minutes to prep in between each one.

22:44 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. I like it. Are there any other kind of habits or routines that are central to your success and just the way that you operate?

22:52 Haylee Taylor: I think working hours are something that people talk about a lot, like not working a traditional 9 to 5. For me, if I'm having a day where I just can't make any more calls or I just can't have any more conversations, I'm totally comfortable with unplugging and getting back to it. I'll also find sometimes like list building, or if I'm thinking about something that doesn't need to be done during prime business hours, I'm comfortable doing that later at night or earlier in the morning. So building a schedule or building a routine that's extremely flexible has been probably huge for my own confidence and my ability to execute on the stuff I enjoy doing.

23:31 Scott Ingram: And so that connects to that kind of adaptability thing that you were talking about at the beginning, right?

23:35 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of the opposite of a routine, but in a way it's like accepting that the routine you… I see as being ideal of having perfect 9:30 to 2:30 and prospecting hours in the morning, like sometimes other appointments or life gets in the way of those. So ability to adapt to that and make the most of it.

23:54 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And then what are the tools and apps that are central to all of this?

23:59 Haylee Taylor: Google Calendar. That's it.

24:02 Scott Ingram: Only Google Calendar? You're not using any other tech?

24:05 Haylee Taylor: For project management, no. I mean, PhoneBurner is my lifeline for having conversations. Other than that, I'm using email. I use my calendar to organize my day. We use, of course, like sales engagement tools to send emails and communicate with people. But yeah, those are my go-tos.

24:26 Scott Ingram: Simple and easy.

24:27 Haylee Taylor: Yeah.

24:27 Scott Ingram: What about your information diet? So you mentioned podcasts. What are you reading, listening to, and watching?

24:33 Haylee Taylor: I'm obsessed with Chris Mullins right now, watching all of the YouTubes, all of the podcasts, everything I can find. And then I reread…

24:42 Scott Ingram: I don't know who that is. Who's Chris Mullins?

24:44 Haylee Taylor: Oh, Chris Mullins is great. What he's most well known for is he does like terrorist negotiate… negotiations. So you'll have to look into him. His strategy and his psychology is just breathtaking. I mean, I just want to emulate him. I want to meet him and be in a room with him. Whatever he's saying, it just makes sense. So I look up to him in a huge way. And then books that I reread constantly are Triangle Selling. And I'll look into, I'll look into podcasts. Like I listen to podcasts probably 2 or 3 a week. I also try to go out of the sales realm for that. I'll often listen to things that marketing leaders have to say or Oftentimes like prison negotiations. I think those are really fascinating. And then I'm, I'm your average Netflix binger and that creative side of me, like I can get totally enveloped in a series and that can be my weekend.

25:43 Scott Ingram: Very nice. Very nice. What's your best Netflix binge of late?

25:47 Haylee Taylor: I'm kind of embarrassed to say it, but I just can't stop watching it. It's In the Dark. It's about this blind woman and she has these like really crazy things that happen to her and she ultimately finds herself drug dealing. And I think I'm just amazed by her, so I keep watching.

26:03 Scott Ingram: Awesome. In the Dark.

26:04 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, In the Dark.

26:06 Scott Ingram: So hopefully the opposite of In the Dark. Do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

26:12 Haylee Taylor: I do. I use ours, which is Triangle Selling sales methodology.

26:16 Scott Ingram: Well, easy enough. You're self-referencing there.

26:19 Haylee Taylor: Well, I don't want to be too biased and just hop into a sales pitch about it, but I use what we preach.

26:24 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. That makes all the sense in the world. Now, in that approach, right, in Triangle Selling, how would you describe your style?

26:32 Haylee Taylor: I would describe my style as invested in asking direct questions and getting truthful answers and also being willing to get out quickly if the conversation doesn't make sense. So, By asking direct questions, you can often hear out pretty quickly if there's a fit and if there's not a fit. And I also am a huge fan of, like we talked about, making referrals. So I would say that's my style.

26:59 Scott Ingram: Awesome. We're going to come back to the referral thing because you've mentioned that a couple of times and I'm not going to let it go again. But do you have like a favorite question?

27:07 Haylee Taylor: Well, I like to ask my list of questions exactly in order, but Probably the most important question I ask is, I mean, what could happen in 6 months or a year if this problem gets worse?

27:22 Scott Ingram: Interesting. And so you say list of questions. I mean, does it kind of lead someplace? Like, why, why is the list and the structure so important?

27:29 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I think it's all about getting someone to buy into the conversation you're having. So by calling out that it is an informal conversation, you're instantly recognizing that this isn't a sales call. So by talking through what goals and challenges are, the level of priority it is to fix them, and then kind of like the consequence of what could possibly happen next, it just goes in that order. So you can't mix it up too much, but having that consistent process also makes it really easy for me to, me to be a great listener and be focused on what is it someone's saying versus just having a script.

28:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like that. Now, what about the motivation side of things? Like, what drives you?

28:14 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I wake up every day with the motivation that, like, I've got a family to feed. So I think of it like that. And then I'm extremely driven by travel and opportunity. So I just want every paycheck to be bigger, if I can be that direct.

28:30 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Absolutely. And talk about the rest of your family because all I've heard about so far is Goose.

28:35 Haylee Taylor: Yes, I have a boyfriend who I live with in Nashville, and then I've got a mother and father and sister who all live in California. I moved from San Francisco during the pandemic, and then both of my grandparents and my aunts and uncles all live within 10 minutes of my parents. So the whole family is very tight in California and doesn't understand why I would ever leave, but we're all very close.

29:00 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Yeah. Is there something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy?

29:07 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. One-call close.

29:09 Scott Ingram: Say more.

29:11 Haylee Taylor: I mean, I think people have this assertion that if you're selling something that's over $20K, you can't one-call close. And so I'm on the opposite end of that and saying that you can.

29:24 Scott Ingram: And how often are you able to do that?

29:26 Haylee Taylor: I would say 1 in 7 deals.

29:30 Scott Ingram: Okay. Is it just mindset, right? Is it just being open to, you know, this is possible and I'm not going to close myself off and draw out a process? I mean, we did, we did talk about that earlier, right? Of kind of extending your own sales cycle because of the complexity. Is it that or is there more to it or less to it? Yeah.

29:48 Haylee Taylor: I mean, I would think it's preparation. Like I really think people that excel with Like, I have great short-term memory. So if I can spend a lot of time preparing for a conversation and kind of guessing what someone would say and like having a hypothesis coming into a conversation, I can be that much more prepared and be that much more present. So I would say preparation is what allows me to one-call close.

30:15 Scott Ingram: And what does your prep typically look like?

30:17 Haylee Taylor: Well, we've got really great Salesforce built out, our great Salesforce fields built out, thanks to me as the Salesforce admin. So I'll take all the credit. 'Cause no one else wanted to do it. But having that structure for pre-call meeting prep, I think I use like 18 different fields. I'll spend anywhere from like 5 to 10 minutes filling that out. And then I'll either role-play with myself or role-play with my teammates.

30:41 Scott Ingram: And give us an example of some of those fields. Like what are you kind of populating as you go through your process?

30:47 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I'm after what market are they in? Who do they sell to? What would be their agenda most likely? What would be my agenda? What are the discovery questions I should ask? What should next steps be? Expected resistance. What am I going to come up against or possible? Like, I wouldn't, I don't know. We use the word resistance in replacement of objection handling because resistance can be managed, whereas objection handling is kind of more reactive, but that's the language we're using here. And then just ways I can create velocity. So I've got a couple of statements and questions written out for that as well.

31:21 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it. Well, and that sounds like, you know, the velocity piece is what gets you to the one-call close, right?

31:26 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, you're on to me.

31:28 Scott Ingram: I got it. I got it. What about, is there something that the typical sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

31:37 Haylee Taylor: No, I mean, I think whatever's working, you should keep doing. I think the craziest thing I've heard is people not hitting quota for 6 months and being happy. Like, I just can't imagine being a salesperson and not being motivated by your number. So, that's crazy to me.

31:51 Scott Ingram: There you go. There you go. As you have gone through your career and are on kind of your rapid growth plan, what have been the most important decisions you've made or lessons you had to learn to kind of get where you are today?

32:06 Haylee Taylor: Lessons learned, I would say probably asking the right questions. I think depending on the company size you work at, you feel sometimes boxed into what's appropriate for your level or for where you're at in your career. But I had to get comfortable with asking questions to the people who I knew would actually make a difference in blocking me or unblocking me from getting that career progression. So, that entails going to the head of product when you're just a BDR or when you're not sure exactly what's going to happen at a meeting that you booked for your AE or that your CSM is taking from you as a handoff. So, just like keeping really open communication style, I would say, is critical.

32:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. What advice would you give to somebody that is just starting out in their sales career today?

33:01 Haylee Taylor: I would advise them to look for a mentor or a coach. I think if you don't have that early on, it can be hard to stay motivated. And when I talk to young salespeople in their career, they're saying that, how do I stay motivated? I think that's the top question I hear. So, look for a coach or a mentor. If you can't find one, feel free to reach out to me. I have a lot of great people around that would probably love to talk to you. And then, also, probably, like we've talked about, build a routine that makes sense for your lifestyle and don't have it be something where you feel boxed in. So, keep your schedule free-flowing or make… have it make sense.

33:37 Scott Ingram: That makes sense. That makes sense. What about somebody that is a little further into their career, but maybe they're either struggling or they're doing well? Like, okay, I'm 100%, but they haven't yet found that next gear and they want to go from good to great.

33:54 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I think you have to invest in yourself professionally and whether your company's kind of giving you permission or encouraging you to do that, you've just got to find a way to do it. And I think it's like 3 to 4 hours a week for me is modest of investing time into getting better and improving. And it's not always sales, like I talked about, like sometimes it's true crime podcasts, other times it's just developing the skills that you need. But for someone that's struggling, I would say it's find some type of new motivation and don't have it be tips and tricks you read on LinkedIn, like actually invest some serious time into it. And if it is sales training, then find the right one that makes sense for what it is that you're selling.

34:34 Scott Ingram: Nice. Is there an argument that true crime podcasts would maybe help you figure out how to ask better questions?

34:40 Haylee Taylor: I mean, I'm not saying it, but I'm definitely hinting at it.

34:45 Scott Ingram: And I'm just trying to help justify. That's all I'm trying to do here. Do you have a favorite true crime podcast? I mean, I know that is a very popular genre.

34:53 Haylee Taylor: I probably do, but I can't say that I know it off the top of my head.

34:56 Scott Ingram: All right. Well, you can email it to me later and we'll put it in the show notes and that That way, if somebody goes to top1.fm/this episode number or top1.fm/haylee-taylor, you can find a true podcast recommendation. How about that?

35:14 Haylee Taylor: Oh, that's so fun. Yes.

35:15 Scott Ingram: So, we will get that for you, and it's in the show notes. Go check it out, and then you can connect with Haylee on LinkedIn and do all the cool stuff.

35:21 Haylee Taylor: Love it. Thanks, Scott.

35:22 Scott Ingram: Of course.

35:23 Haylee Taylor: Of course.

35:23 Scott Ingram: Now, what would you want to know about the top sellers in other organizations?

35:29 Haylee Taylor: Probably a lot of the questions you asked me. You had some really good ones like workflow or habits, and then probably line of questioning as well.

35:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Anything else in just your own line of questioning or tips to help people develop their line of questioning that might be helpful?

35:47 Haylee Taylor: I mean, I think knowing your buyer personas is something that's really underrated. So I spend a lot of time studying my buyer personas. Like I almost think of them as a book that I should be studying and constantly knowing because it might be different and maybe you sell into multiple industries. So getting really tight with those and then also having a place that's documented for where you pick up on things in certain calls that you can constantly go back to and say, okay, I heard this person say this. Is this an edge case or am I hearing this come up more and more? Mm-hmm.

36:20 Scott Ingram: That's really good. And I think you've called out something really, really important, right? Is this… I believe That it's more important that you understand your buyer than even understanding your own product. And I think we tend to put, especially early when people are coming into roles, we put the emphasis and the time in that absolutely backwards. So how are you, what, I mean, what does that study look like? How are you going about really understanding your buyer personas?

36:48 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I think that's a great point you brought up too with how folks are coming into like their first company or their first sales job, like there's so much emphasis put on product in the first few days that you arrive, or like you get into basic product training instead of building out like your buyer personas, as an example. So sadly, I think it's a lot of times a habit that we're built into to be thinking about talking about the product instead of be talking about your buyer. So I mean, how we build that into our model is talking about buyer personas daily. Like, I'm talking about buyer personas in our daily sales huddle in the sense that I heard this, have you guys heard this? Has this come up before? Is this new or am I crazy and I heard this wrong? Because sometimes it's that different and other times there's no surprises at all, but taking note of it is huge. And then for my actual process and how it gets done, I have a matrix where I've got every single person written out that could possibly buy from me or refer me. Or recommend me. So right now that list is about 45 different job titles, and then I've got their job to be done written out, pains they most likely have that fall into our winning zone. So pains that we could possibly solve for with products that we offer. And then also like where I would rate our impact for being able to help that person.

38:09 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. That's really good stuff. And you said the magic word again, and I almost forgot to ask. Talk about how you're thinking about referrals, how you're getting referrals. What is that part of your process and approach? Because it's again, another thing I think we don't talk about or think about enough.

38:26 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. I mean, I'm often asked, and this is kind of crazy, but when it comes to a deal closing and signing, I'm asking for the referral in that conversation. Like, is there someone else that I should be talking to that you might not have thought about for some of the challenges that we're going to work through together. And having that conversation then versus after they've seen a result has been huge. I'm usually getting 2 to 3 names from that initial ask. And then during the engagement, people love to do nice things like write G2 Crowd reviews or talk about you on LinkedIn or make their own commentary. I'll often talk to those people then when they're, they're still in that mindset and ask for referrals then as well.

39:10 Scott Ingram: I like it. I like it. So, the answer seems to be ask, number one, but ask early and often.

39:15 Haylee Taylor: Yes.

39:16 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Anything else that you're doing around that? And I think I also heard you say you're giving referrals as part of your process.

39:26 Haylee Taylor: Yeah. I mean, it's not something I'm able to do with software oftentimes, right? Like, I'm not going to say, this is what we use, this call recording software, you should check it out too. That's not something we do. But referrals that are more specific to, we're struggling with hiring the right types of people, and it's not a sales hire, it's like an engineering hire. I might be able to recommend some people that I know personally, but not really any brand partnerships. But refer… direct referrals out like that, I think people always appreciate. And then you can also make referrals to like your public audience, whether it's LinkedIn or Twitter or wherever you might know someone that actually has a need for your client's product. I make referrals out like that all the time.

40:09 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. Great stuff.

40:10 Haylee Taylor: Yeah.

40:11 Scott Ingram: Well, we've covered a fair amount of ground. Is there anything that you were hoping we would talk about that somehow I didn't get to or forgot to ask about?

40:19 Haylee Taylor: I think you asked some really great questions. Yeah, I think we're set.

40:22 Scott Ingram: All right. Do you have a question for me?

40:24 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I want to know your day in the life.

40:27 Scott Ingram: So, the easiest way to get the super deep dive on this is if you go to top1.fm/62, you can hear my much longer interview as the guest. Guest on my own show. We turned the tables on that one. And so all these questions that I've asked Haylee, you can, you can listen to. This has actually been evolving for me a lot in that conversation. And a lot of the times I'm a very early riser. Sometimes I am wildly consistent about getting up at 4:30 in the morning. And that does take an alarm.

41:02 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I would guess.

41:03 Scott Ingram: But, you know, lately, Thanks in large part to the influence of Brandon Fluharty, I have been a lot more mindful lately about how much sleep I'm getting. And in order for me to maintain the 4:30 in the morning thing, it requires me to go to bed quite early, and that doesn't always happen. So I've been a little bit less consistent about that side of the approach. But the other question that everybody asks me is, Scott, how the heck do you do all of this, right? How are you managing a multimillion dollar quota in your day job and hosting these podcasts and putting on events and doing all this other stuff? And so there is also deeper dives that I have done around that. I think if you go to top1.fm/4p, you can see one of my presentations about that, cuz I, I do have a pretty comprehensive productivity process that I have been working on for the last better part of 10 years. But the core of it is there's a morning process that I go through that is kind of a giant triage, right? I get to inbox zero. I'm looking at everything that I have on my calendar that day and making sure I'm prepared, and I'm confirming my meetings and just really making sure that I'm ahead of everything. I know what the most important things I need to get done are and prioritizing those given how much time I know that I have available, right? Because sometimes It's wall-to-wall meetings and the best I'm gonna be able to do is making sure that no big fires spread. And other days I have fewer meetings. I've got a little bit more white space on my calendar to work with and like, great, this is a crank day. So what are the most important things? What is the priority? How much can I really get through and, and crank through? So my days very rarely look the same, right? They're always different. I do try to keep my mornings. More open. I like to do my meetings and conversations in the afternoon because that's when my energy will wane. But if I'm talking to somebody, my energy won't drop. So I try and have most of my meetings in the afternoon and reserve the morning to really just get a lot of stuff done. And then it just, I don't know, it kind of never ends. I do take my daughter to school every morning and she's made her JV basketball team in high school, which has her needing to get to school earlier for practice, which is actually helping me a lot with the way my routine likes to work. And then, you know, once the official kind of workday wraps up around 5 or 6, I'm often moving kids around, right? So I'm picking kids up from school. I'm taking them to tennis, cheer, basketball, piano, you know, all the stuff, all the stuff you get to do as parents. And then, you know, depending on where my energy level is, a good amount of the time I'll get a nice second wind and burn through another hour or 2 in the evening before I, before I call it a night. Oh, and the other absolutely critical component is I have to have… I need to work out almost every day. And I learned through Q3 that walking, even if I'm incorporating very large hills, isn't enough. I need to punish myself harder to keep my head in the right place. So I'm back on the Peloton.

44:23 Haylee Taylor: Oh, great.

44:24 Scott Ingram: So that's…

44:25 Haylee Taylor: are you a biker or treadmill?

44:26 Scott Ingram: I'm a cyclist. I'm an indoor cyclist. So I do almost all of my riding on the Peloton. I'm very rarely actually riding a bike outdoors.

44:34 Haylee Taylor: Have you found that having someone else like race against you has been motivating for you?

44:39 Scott Ingram: Oh yeah. So I actually used to teach indoor cycling. So I used to teach spin classes for years at the YMCA downtown in Austin. And Peloton does everything I always wish I had, right? I always wish I could know like the metrics of how hard everybody was actually, you know, how much resistance do they have and, you know, how many watts are they burning? So all of the leaderboard and those metrics, they just push all of my buttons. So, you know, I'm competing with myself, I'm competing with other people, and it causes me to do more than maybe I even should.

45:12 Haylee Taylor: Yeah, I think that's what had me on Peloton so long was the competitive aspect and racing against friends. It's fun. Yeah.

45:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, it's a great tool. I appreciate the question. So, let's wrap this up. I always try to make this actionable, right? We talked about a lot of things. We talked about referrals. We talked about questions. We talked about kind of the drive and some other really great themes. But what would you challenge our listener to do right now for themselves over the course of the next, you know, call it 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

45:45 Haylee Taylor: I would challenge you to time block your calendar and use the word chunk when you think about it. So chunking meetings together so that you can, like you said, describing your day, find that extra hour or that extra 2 hours or whatever it is to either work out for yourself or do something that's going to impact your workday. But calendar.

46:05 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Do you like your peanut butter chunky too?

46:08 Haylee Taylor: Oh, of course. Chunk, chunk, chunk.

46:11 Scott Ingram: Very good. Very good. I'm a smooth guy, so we'll end it up on that. Haylee, this has been a blast. Thank you so much.

46:18 Haylee Taylor: Thank you so much for having me.

46:21 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.