20: Cvent's Top Enterprise Sales Rep - Barry Womack - Leverage Your Resources

0:08 Scott Ingram: 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.

0:26 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I'm joined by Barry Womack. Barry was the annual top performer in his regional sales manager role at Cvent, where he focuses on enterprise solutions and achieved 208% of his full-year number. Welcome to the show, Barry.

0:42 Barry Womack: Hey, thanks a lot, Scott. Great to be here.

0:44 Scott Ingram: So we're going to start like we always do with the top 3 things that Barry believes allowed him to get to the top. And the reason we do this is typically these conversations go rather long and really, really want to front-load the value. So rather than starting with all the backstory, which we'll get to. Want to get straight at some really meaty content so that you can have some immediate takeaways. And the other thing that's nice about this is it's a great way to go back to previous episodes and listen just those first 5 or 10 minutes and remember what were those top things that the other top producers that we've talked to have brought to bear. So, Barry, start us off.

1:27 Barry Womack: Yeah, so I thought maybe just go through and list the top 3, and maybe we can dive a little bit deeper into each. But first for me, I think, was leveraging resources. So we'll get to that in just a second. Second, maybe one of the most important for me, was preparation. And then finally, mastering my industry. So going to, just kind of diving right into leveraging resources, I think this can mean different things to a lot of different people. Obviously, I work for, well, I work for a company called Cvent. That's about a 3,000-person company, so I'm lucky enough to have, I think, a lot of great resources at my disposal. And I kind of break down or classify resources to me into kind of 3 categories: people, technology, and content. So just when I look at people, right, I could look at anybody from the CEO of our company all the way to my direct boss to subject matter experts across our platform. So just kind of knowing when and who to engage with on our side and pulling them in at the right times, I think, is critical to my success and probably to a lot of other sales reps out there. I think leveraging technology is critical and leveraging content, right? So content that your marketing team might provide, whether that's assets that they produce about your product, your platform, your value proposition. To me, a big one is success stories. So I love to either put my own success stories together around customers that I've worked with in the past and what they've gotten out of our solution. And our marketing team is also great about providing those success stories. So just, I think, leveraging those resources, really knowing what kind of is in your arsenal, so to speak, how to use those and when can be really powerful to anybody's sales cycle.

3:16 Scott Ingram: And Barry, from an executive using those types of resources, I know we've talked about that before. How are you typically doing that?

3:25 Barry Womack: Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the more powerful resources somebody has at a company, right, is when executive leadership or somebody higher up in the company is able or willing to jump in and actually speak with customers. You know, I think that provides a lot of value, right? It makes it look like, you know, you're… the highest up at your company is willing to take the time and effort into having a conversation with your folks, hearing them out. You know, a lot of times we'll speak to, you know, main users of the system, and if they're having challenges, they want to see progress, products developed or want to be able to be heard by our top senior leadership, I love to pull them into those conversations and they enjoy being in those as well. So that's one way. A lot of times we'll bring in senior leadership when we're closer to close and you want to have a conversation really about where the future of the company is going, right? Nobody's able to better, I think, kind of display and visualize that to a customer rep, you know, other than our senior leadership who are talking about this, having higher-level strategy conversations than me as a sales rep that I'm involved with, right? So really getting them and making them part of that strategic vision is, I think, a tactic that I use and have used very successfully in the past.

4:45 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And I want to circle back. We'll talk about it a little bit later around some of the marketing assets and maybe how you collaborate with marketing, but I'm more interested in your preparation. What does that look like? Maybe give us the detail on how you would do prep for a variety of different scenarios.

5:02 Barry Womack: Sure. So, you know, like I said, preparation, I think for me is one of the most, uh, one of the most important for me. And like I said, how I think I was able to get to number 1. Um, and it comes down to really just understanding my personality, kind of who I am as a person, as well as a salesperson. Um, and for me, um, I'm, I mean, truly I'm an introvert. I think that preparation helps me be confident going into a lot of these meetings and presentations that I do on a regular basis. So for me, preparing, obviously there's a lot of different scenarios that we come across. I actually work with existing customers and an existing account base, and part of my role is to help expand and grow those partnerships. On the other side, as part of my role, I'm bringing on net new logos and creating new revenue for the company as well. So I wear a couple different hats under my regional sales manager position. So I'll prepare for these meetings, you know, very differently if I'm going into a meeting with an existing customer, right? My preparation really goes into more of how they're currently leveraging our existing platform, right? We'll already have that relationship. We have a lot of data around what they're doing with us currently, so I might be able to utilize a lot of that to be able to make recommendations, to work with our account team, to, you know, to be able to be prepared going into a meeting about what we want to discuss around challenges they may have or things that we might want to propose to make their overall solution better. So from an existing account base, I think a lot of that is just preparing with the data that we might have. If I'm going into a brand new sales position, obviously preparation really comes down to the discovery that we're able to do ahead of time. Discovery is obviously one of the more important pieces of the sales process, is just taking the time to understand who you're speaking to from a persona perspective. Getting into their challenges, their pain points, and really being able to then propose a solution that's going to meet their requirements. So preparation for me is just really being able to take all the information that I can possibly get from, you know, online resources that we may have or about customer data that we have and being able to provide the best solution possible.

7:12 Scott Ingram: Nice. And we'll obviously get to when and how you're doing some of that prep, but your last point was mastering your industry. So how are you going about that? And for those who aren't familiar with Cvent, What is your industry?

7:24 Barry Womack: Sure. So Cvent is a meeting and event management technology platform. So we provide software and services for meeting organizers. And so when, you know, when I talk about mastering my industry, it's really about trying to become an expert in not only the software and technology that we provide, but, you know, also, you know, really getting involved and putting myself out there into, you know, the actual real challenges and, you know, goals that my existing customers have. So putting myself out there, where are my customers? So that could mean becoming involved with industry trade associations, right? There's a lot of them out there for the meeting and events industry. So just getting out there where my customers are and hearing speaking engagements and content where they're actually discussing what challenges that they're having as an industry or as an actual meeting and event organizer. So that can be part of it, getting involved and just staying on top of content that's coming out related to the industry. But then I think it also comes back to experience. I've been in the meeting and event industry now for going on 7 years. So I've had a lot of experience, a lot of fails, a lot of successes, but a lot of learning opportunities to just see, you know, what my customers are doing, how they respond to certain things, and again, just taking a lot of what they're giving me from a discovery perspective and being able to incorporate that back into my conversations. So a lot of it, I think, comes down to not only putting yourself where your customers are, but also the experience that you get from working in an industry for 5, 6, 7 years plus.

9:00 Scott Ingram: Well, and how big of a factor in your results do you think that just longevity in the industry has?

9:09 Barry Womack: I think it has a lot of impact. Like I said, you can do as much research and fact-finding as, as you possibly can, but a lot of it truly just comes down to the experiences that you have, especially when you sell, right? And different use cases and scenarios that pop up. Um, there's, there's nothing that really teaches you that, uh, from, from research rather than, you know, being able to actually have those conversations and, and go through those experiences with your customers. So I think it has, uh, I think it plays a lot of part.

9:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And, and I know kind of those customer stories are a big part of what you're doing. Talk about that and maybe some of the ways that you collaborate and work with your marketing team since you talked about, you know, the content being one of the resources that you leverage?

9:59 Barry Womack: Sure. I would say I'm more actively involved than most when it comes to marketing. I love to be, you know, kind of that hand raiser that says, you know, I'll be involved with how we develop the deck and the PowerPoint and the presentation, just because I feel strongly, you know, especially with the success that I've had and where we've gone, you know, just in different areas of our platform. I like to be heavily involved. So, you know, a lot of that is just providing, you know, a lot of teams, a lot of the times marketing teams, you know, love to get sales involved to figure out, okay, what success stories do we need to put out there that's going to resonate with your customers? And those are things I like to volunteer and carry up and, you know, make introductions to my customers that are experiencing success to talk through, you know, what they achieved and how they're achieving it. So part of that is just raising your hand and trying to get involved, because I think a lot of people are reactive and you get content from marketing that might not be applicable. And if I can help avoid that and make it benefit me and my customers, then I'm all over it.

11:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah, nice. It's interesting you call that out, right? It's one of those things like if you feel like the content from marketing is irrelevant, that's partially on you for not communicating to marketing what you need.

11:15 Barry Womack: Exactly.

11:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Kind of the specifics of your role and how you got to number 1?

11:22 Barry Womack: Sure. So, you know, as we mentioned earlier, I'm a regional sales manager. So on the enterprise sales team, I manage about 150 named enterprise accounts for Cvent. Those companies are what we classify as enterprise companies, about $1 billion in revenue annually or above. So that's kind of my classification. And from a revenue perspective, you know, we We kind of break it out, about 70% of the revenue that I'm bringing in on a regular or annual basis is from our existing install base. The other 30% is from kind of net new logos that we're bringing on. So last year, as you mentioned, I did 208% of my annual quota. My annual quota is $1.6 million. So I did about $3.3 million in annual contract value. We also look at TCV, or total contract value, which was just over $8.2 million. And that was across, so, When we said top performer, that was across a team of about 12 folks, give or take, on our direct selling team that I would be technically competing against.

12:27 Scott Ingram: Perfect. In that enterprise space, obviously.

12:30 Barry Womack: Exactly. Just on the enterprise account teams. Correct.

12:33 Scott Ingram: So, and what's your origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

12:37 Barry Womack: So sales actually started for me, kind of funny enough, I'm from a smaller town in Southern Virginia. So I actually started selling tractors at Sears in high school. So kind of funny enough, got my first taste of commission there and was excited about it. It's kind of funny too. So management loved it because I was excited about it and I was pushing actually quite a bit of tractors, but we were competing against a Tractor Supply Store that was across the street that had a lot of tractors in stock, and Sears didn't really carry a lot of inventory. So everything we were doing was kind of selling them on this tractor, and then it would take a couple of weeks for them to get, and I ended up losing a ton of business because of that. But I found out that not only could we discount the floor models, but people wanted to basically take what they could and have some instant gratification. So I started actually selling the floor models and started pushing tractors at a pretty crazy rate. Management didn't love the fact that I was pushing the floor models, but they couldn't argue with the results. So it was kind of funny, but that was my first first step into sales. And post-college, I actually helped start a company with a buddy of mine and was involved with that. And just, you know, I learned the importance, I think the importance of sales at a, you know, at a younger age, I guess, right, right in college and post with just really everything that you do, whether it's personally or professionally, especially at a startup, right? Everything that you're doing is really selling. You're selling people on your business, your idea. Even if you're not in a direct selling capacity.

14:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, so the seed for sales was, was planted early.

14:24 Barry Womack: Yeah, absolutely.

14:25 Scott Ingram: Sorry. Listen, I'm… that wasn't funny. I just heard my listener groan. So I'm curious. I mean, if you were starting over today, that's, that's not a very common career trajectory. I don't hear a lot of tractor sales folks move into enterprise B2B SaaS sales. Is there anything that you might have done differently from a, from a career perspective or things that you would have tried to learn maybe a little bit earlier, earlier on as you went through that journey?

14:54 Barry Womack: I don't think so. I think the experiences I got both from the startup that, that I helped found into, you know, getting into B2B, you know, starting as an SDR at Cvent, you know, I've had an interesting trajectory at Cvent. I mean, we were a company that when I started, we were about 500 employees. We grew, you know, pretty rapidly to become a publicly traded company, so we IPO'd, and, and just recently we were acquired. So I've been and seen kind of a lot of transitions in a corporation that not everybody gets to live through and see, especially in their, you know, a lot of times short tenure. So, you know, I think it's been an exciting journey. I think I've learned a lot through the process and jumping to enterprise and figuring out that this type of sale, which is much more strategic, long-term, really about relationships and partnerships, and, you know, it's something that I really enjoy.

15:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah. How is, I mean, are there things that you do differently now in the enterprise space that was maybe different from the way that you were doing before? How do you think about that differently for those who maybe don't have the experience of enterprise?

16:04 Barry Womack: Sure. I think, you know, I did mid-market sales for, you know, a couple of years. Obviously, it's definitely a different sales process. The, you know, the deal sizes are a lot smaller in mid-market for probably most technology companies. I think what's just, what's mainly different is you don't have as many at-bats, so you really have to be strategic about how you approach especially potential new customers. You know, we have a limited universe. I have 150 accounts. A decent percentage of them are already existing customers, so my pool of new prospective customers is not huge. So when I have an at-bat or when I am able to speak with somebody for the first time, I have to make a great impression. I have to provide a lot of value for them to take the next step, and I have to win, you know. So it's… that's one thing I think that was just a very different mindset is, you know, it's not about volume in enterprise space. It's not about how many calls and phone calls can I make. It's a little bit more quality. What's the quality of the phone call that I'm making? What's the quality of the email that I'm writing to capture somebody's attention? I think that was the biggest shift and adjustment.

17:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great, great distinction. So, Barry, switching gears a little bit, is there a favorite sales story that you have, maybe a deal where whether you won or lost that you learned a lot from?

17:26 Barry Womack: Yeah, I think the ones you lose are always the ones that stick out the most. So I definitely have one kind of deal in mind that I can talk you through. So not able to name the name, but this was a company that I started working, really, it was one of my first accounts that I was targeting, probably the largest account on my territory list when I first started on our enterprise team. And it actually started off with a cold call, which You know, not as common these days, not as easy, especially in Fortune 500 companies, to be able to cold call and actually get somebody on the line. But I was able to cold call into this lady. I actually forget her name. This was about 2 and a half years ago at this point. But she sat in IT and procurement at a large company that I knew we had had traction with maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I saw that Cvent was involved with an RFP process that this company had went through. I saw from the history in our CRM that they had gone with a competitor that was no shot from a technology requirement standpoint either. So it didn't sound like we were a great fit at the time either. But I called her anyway and ended up catching her on her cell phone and had a long conversation. We spoke for about an hour, the first conversation from a cold call. She had remembered our company a little bit, and it just so happened I called at a time where the renewal for that RFP was coming up that year. So I spoke with her, and obviously she wasn't the traditional Cvent user. She wasn't a planner, organizer, or even somebody in marketing, but she sat in shared services IT, and she actually introduced me to a couple folks via email, like she said she would on the phone. I wasn't sure if she was gonna hold true to her word, but she did, and we basically kicked off a series of conversations, some discovery, to figure out if, you know, several years later, if we could be a better technology fit, and it turns out we were. So we had about 4 or 5 discovery meetings I mean, things were seemingly headed in a great direction. We were breaking things out into different topics, looping in different stakeholders as it related to different parts of their program. So really just, I think, a great process of just gathering a ton of information from them before we ever proposed a solution, talked about Cvent even at all. So we then moved from those discovery meetings. We started getting everybody involved for virtual demonstrations, which we hosted a number of those as well. Basically, it all boiled down into a final business meeting that we had that was going to… they were having the same meeting with 3 other vendors, excuse me, 2 other vendors and ourselves. So 3 folks were… 3 groups were in the mix. And during that meeting, I mean, it was strictly business discussion, pricing, implementation, next steps, contracts, what does it all look like, answering questions. And honestly, we all thought we nailed it. From myself to my vice president, we thought this was a done deal, and this would have been probably the largest software deal in our company's history. So we were looking at about probably a million-plus dollar deal. I pulled up in the morning, I pulled up TechCrunch, which I typically do every morning, and funny enough, I saw the company that I was working with had just gone through a major acquisition. So they were purchasing a company, huge deal, massive amount of money being invested. And I shot my contact an email kind of jokingly, hey, are you going to be able to afford Cvent still after this? And she kind of gave me a little chuckle and said, yes, this should not impact the deal. And so we were told actually that they were going to be recommending us to executive management as the provider moving forward. So not necessarily a verbal, but a great positive response that, hey, we're going to recommend you guys as the vendor that we go with for our meetings program. It turns out we had scheduled a conversation after they had met with their executives and just were taken aback. It was basically decided by the executive team that they wanted to renew with the old provider, and it came down to just the uncertainty of the acquisition, not wanting to make a new investment and go through a whole implementation when the other company that they're acquiring could have numerous different technology platforms in place. Huge disappointment. So I think one of the biggest things I learned from it, obviously, that I think we controlled everything that we could control, but nothing is set in stone. I mean, anything can happen throughout the deal, whether it's all the way and you're working through legal. I mean, we've had issues and I've had issues in the past with legal. It's just, I think the lesson learned is just that the deal is never done until it's done. I think the second lesson though is, you know, never give up. This was something that I didn't let go even after we were told no. So it was something I followed up with, you know, periodically over the next couple months, just kind of light touches, some content, some more drip kind of campaign material just to stay in touch, keep the relationships that I had. And I think that that's paying off. So it's almost a year and a half later and the acquisition is completed and we're picking up conversations and the opportunity is twice the size, right? So nothing formally done and that's still in process, but, um, you know, it goes to show also that, uh, that, that, you know, the deal is also never done or you should never quit on it either, just because, um, you know, a decision was made based on, on, uh, kind of an unforeseen circumstance.

23:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. And that's one of those times, that's why I have a personal thing where I never calculate my commission until the deal is closed. Closed because that will really screw you up.

23:19 Barry Womack: And that was a mistake.

23:22 Scott Ingram: So, Barry, I'm curious, like, beyond the challenges that is acquisitions in the enterprise space, which seem to be more and more frequent these days, what's, what's the next biggest challenge that you face?

23:36 Barry Womack: Next biggest challenge I face, you know, the technology landscape is, is just always changing. So, for companies like Cvent, we provide a platform kind of end-to-end for meetings and events. Technology is, like I said, it's always changing, it's always evolving. Planners and I'm sure business owners of all types, business users of all types, excuse me, are always looking for the next big thing. And a lot of times, in my experience, don't trust kind of a one-stop shop, right? We have specialized specialty needs for specific use cases and business requirements, and I think one of the challenges that that we run into a lot is that, hey, we can go out and we can find a point solution for something that handles this particular requirement. And because in the enterprise space, budget isn't always a limitation, sometimes is, but a lot of times groups have their own budgets and are able to go out and do that. So when you're trying to sell a global centralized technology platform like Cvent would be, sometimes it can be difficult, especially when it touches something as important as a key conference or event that your team is putting on.

24:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

24:44 Barry Womack: And I think just… oh, go ahead. Sorry.

24:46 Scott Ingram: I was going to ask, how are you typically positioning against that? How do you overcome that challenge?

24:52 Barry Womack: I think it's just knowing the most about your competitors and potential competition as possible. Right. It's understanding your value proposition. You know, when… especially when large enterprises look at software and technology, you know, and these point solutions, oftentimes, you know, they're 50, 100, 200-person company and don't have half the security review and requirements and things that, that a large company can provide. So it's really just, you know, knowing your value proposition and being able to combat the, you know, some of those, those challenges that might pop up from a, from a smaller tech company.

25:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned TechCrunch and you mentioned kind of keeping up with your competitors and just understanding the way that that landscape is changing. What does the rest of your information diet look like?

25:41 Barry Womack: So my information diet, I, you know, like you said, I love to, to read articles, you know, really big into TechCrunch, as I mentioned. I'm also a big audiobook and podcast. I have about a 30-minute commute to work, so typically I like to fill that up with learning opportunities and that type of thing. But obviously love Sales Success Stories, great podcast. But This Week in Startups, one of my favorites. I don't know if you've heard of that, but run by Jason Calacanis. He's an investor. He did some early investing in Uber, Thumbtack. But what's cool about his podcast, he just brings on on a lot of founders and groups that are raising capital and just has them kind of pitch their idea, puts it out there as potential investment opportunities, and just fun to hear kind of all the new startups and things that are popping up in different industries, whether it's robotics or AI or all the different cool things that are coming out now, and the conversations that he's raising about some of these things and the impact that it has on economy, jobs, and And again, just technology as a whole. That's a really fun listen. I'm big into financial independence podcasts, things of that nature. Listen Money Matters is a good one. A lot of great content that they put out. A couple audiobooks that I've listened to recently, Pitch Anything. I'm still kind of in the middle of that, but it's a pretty neat book about really framing conversations. It's about a gentleman who helps broker deals between venture capitalists and companies and groups raising money. So yeah.

27:21 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And then from an app perspective, what are kind of the core tools and apps that you're using throughout your day?

27:29 Barry Womack: I travel a lot. TripIt is a great app. Cvent is a Concur user, so Concur owns TripIt. So it integrates with, you know, all my flights and hotel reservations and things that, you know, everything that I'm doing kind of when I'm traveling. Concur Expense, so I can easily track my expenses, get my money back. From a business perspective, DocuSign, I think, is huge. So especially if you're working on the road a lot, you're sending out proposals, contracts, DocuSign can be just a lifesaver, helping you to put out signatures and get that back, be able to implement while you're on the road. So those are some of kind of the more business apps. Box is another great one, so just documents that you can access. Whether you're logged into VPN or not. So just being able to access all of your information anywhere that you're at or on your personal device.

28:25 Scott Ingram: So those are the business ones. Anything interesting on the personal side?

28:28 Barry Womack: Personal, I love Evernote. I'm using that daily for sure. Dashlane is actually a really cool one as well. Dashlane is a password automation app, I guess you'd call it. So it helps store and save all of your passwords. You can log in really anywhere, so from your mobile app or within, you know, on your desktop. You can save and integrate it there as well. So pretty cool time saver. And I forget all my passwords, so it's pretty helpful on my side. Financial, like mint.com, Personal Capital is really fun. So just a couple others.

29:05 Scott Ingram: Good stuff. And then you mentioned travel, so why don't we start there? How are you typically structuring your travel and staying productive and healthy on the road? Yeah.

29:15 Barry Womack: I typically try to structure travel. I mean, this obviously will stem from in-person meetings that we need to schedule. So a lot of times these are quick-hit trips, one-nighters. So we're going to visit a customer, have a kind of a quarterly business review or success review with our customers, or maybe it's meeting with brand new prospective customers. We're going out to meet face-to-face, present our solution, things of that nature. So, you know, a lot of different types of in-person meetings that we do, but we try to meet with our customers face-to-face as much as possible. So for me, it's really just about trying to stay as organized as possible and still be productive while I'm on the road. I live and die by my calendar, so really just having everything built out there from things that I need to do on a personal level, things that I need to do from a business perspective, even mapping out when I should take time to send out emails versus make phone calls. So I try to live and breathe by the calendar so that I'm staying organized. I take notes in my calendar integrated to Evernote so that I have everything and can follow up as quickly and productively as I can.

30:23 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like kind of the core of your organization process there is just that combination of the calendar and Evernote. Are there other pieces to that?

30:32 Barry Womack: CRM is obviously important, just tracking if I'm on the road, I speak to somebody, obviously I want to get that information over to Salesforce so that especially if I need to follow up with a proposal or anything like that, I can quickly do that. But yeah, I think it mostly comprises the calendar, Evernote, and probably Salesforce.

30:51 Scott Ingram: Cool. And then when you're not on the road, are you a morning person or a night owl?

30:56 Barry Womack: I'm definitely a night owl. I'm trying to change that. I have a lot of territory that's Midwest, so from a phone call perspective, I'm not really able to speak with a lot of people until about 10 o'clock Eastern. So generally, I'm getting into the office around 8:30 to… excuse me, 9 to 9:30, so a little bit later. Typically stay a little bit later as well. But trying to change that a little bit. My fiancée's a cycle instructor, so I've been trying to go to her class about twice a week in the morning now. Trying to change things up a little bit, but definitely more of a night owl.

31:31 Scott Ingram: Nice. Well, so let's start there. Let's start with kind of the evening process and then walk us through kind of the next day and how that all comes together.

31:40 Barry Womack: Yeah, I mean, evening is definitely where I settle, kind of settle down, regroup. You know, oftentimes I think a lot of people in my office especially get in early and kind of leave a little bit earlier. So evening is kind of my alone time, my quiet time where I'm really able to digest everything that I've done throughout the day. So a big practice I'll have is I'll go through my calendar. Every single meeting that I have, I'll make sure that I regroup and have, you know, trued up the right notes for everything, made sure I've logged it all in Salesforce, and just make sure I know my action items. What were the next steps for each one of those meetings and calls and conversations that I have? Did it require pricing? Did it require some follow-up, prep for another meeting that's coming up. So just making sure I really recap my day so that I feel confident kind of going into the second day that, you know, I either know what I need to do from a follow-up perspective, or I try to get it done that night. I'm a big believer of, you know, just a matter of getting things done. And so, you know, if it's something that I need to get over quickly as possible, I'd rather get it done, stay a little bit later, and then you know, enjoy my evening. Yeah.

32:49 Scott Ingram: And then as you get into that next day, I mean, you said you use the heck out of your calendar. Is it sort of a time-blocking type of approach, or how do you typically structure the rest of the next day, I suppose?

33:01 Barry Womack: Yeah, I definitely use the calendar to block off time. You know, I think it's easy, especially if, you know, you need to make phone calls during the day, it's easy to get distracted with emails that are coming in, customers are blowing you up about something, right? So it's easy to kind of drop the phone calls that you need to make to respond and get back to people. So yeah, I think to work effectively and efficiently, you need to focus on the task at hand. So I try to use my calendar to block off time slots where I can really focus on what I need to get done, because a lot of what we do is long-term strategic-type pricing or working with marketing to customize a presentation for one customer that we're going to in a couple weeks. So a lot of these are really, you know, time management and making the time to prepare for something that might still be a little ways off. So I think, you know, being able to block it off on your calendar is, for me, the most effective way to get that done.

33:58 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I'm glad we came back to kind of your preparation point. So how do you allocate time and what is your prep process for some of these meetings?

34:11 Barry Womack: You know, like I said, it can be… it definitely varies on each different use case and scenario. And what kind of what we have coming down the pipe, right? So if, you know, if it's an introductory meeting, it's probably 30 minutes of diving into the website, their website, financials, you know, what can I learn about the company that will help me in my conversation? So maybe for a very introductory, they've never spoken with us before, and I'm kind of the first line where I'm having a discovery meeting. I just want to know as much about that person who they are, probably what they care about and about their company that I can. So something like that might be a 30 to 45 minute process before a conversation, before a call. For demonstrations, right, it's working with whoever else might be joining me. You know, we have technical sales consultants that will do a lot of kind of the deep dive into the platform, but we also have presentations where it will be truly, you know, kind of the introductory component. So we'll spend an hour just really talking through the value proposition, discussing customer success stories, Right? So I want to make sure for each customer demonstration presentation that we're doing that it's tailored to that group and to what we're trying to accomplish on the call. So to your point, it's, you know, the preparation time is going to be different for each group, and a meeting that I might have on-site in person for a business discussion is going to be very different than an introductory kind of demonstration. So I think it really varies.

35:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And are there other habits or routines that are really core to your success throughout the, throughout the day?

35:49 Barry Womack: Um, you know, I think exercise is a lot of times, you know, something that I try to keep important is whether it's before work… obviously that's a little bit new… but before that is taking a break at lunch, really, you know, really taking a break and going downstairs. Luckily we have a gym in our office, so if I'm actually working from the office, I I can take a break, take an hour, go downstairs, get a, you know, do a little breather and, you know, be able to take some time. But I think that's, that's pretty critical.

36:25 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then switching gears yet again, is there a particular sales philosophy that you subscribe to?

36:32 Barry Womack: I don't know if it's a philosophy or, or an approach. I think, you know, one, one thing that I try to do is really act like a consultant or mimic kind of the consultant consultant approach where one of the first things that you need to do, especially as an introduction to a new customer, a new prospect, is to really sell yourself, right? Separate yourself as a sales rep. And I think by doing that, and when I say sell yourself, I mean talk about your experience. So my experience in the industry, talk about the successes that I've had with other customers. So I think a consultant has to sell themselves first to to really convince the customer that there's value that I can provide and value that you can receive from just working with me. So I try to take that approach, and then obviously the second part of that is really just listening. So listen, you know, a consultant is going to have to listen to current pain points, challenges that that customer has, and the final stage is to be able to propose a solution, right? Simplify what can oftentimes be a very complex platform and pricing model and different components. So simplify that, provide a solution that makes sense to the customer and achieves everything that they were hoping for and that they discussed during that process.

37:52 Scott Ingram: Cool. And then any other unique or really important parts to just the way that you approach sales in general or related to a specific deal?

38:03 Barry Womack: I think it just comes back to trying to really know your customer, right? And that even goes back to obviously being prepared. So You know, the more you can know about the company, what they do, what they care about, how they make money, is just an approach everybody should take above and beyond, you know, selling themselves, selling your solution. So know who you're speaking to, the role they play, and, and, you know, the way they benefit from your platform.

38:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Is there something that you do in your approach or that you believe that the average seller would think is maybe a little bit nuts?

38:43 Barry Womack: I think that's tough. I think maybe one thing that the average sales rep would believe is that, you know, and I think I'm guilty and maybe a lot of people are guilty of this, especially earlier on, right, is thinking that when I cold call somebody or I have a discussion or, you know, I call somebody out of the blue, that I might be bugging them or annoying them, right? And I think it's easy to think that, especially early on in your career. And I think you really have to have a mind shift, and I think I've had a big mind shift over the years where I truly believe that when I'm speaking with my customers, when I call somebody out of the blue, that I have value to provide and that they could benefit from having a conversation with me and benefit from leveraging our platform. So I think that's one thing, you know, an average rep could think is that I'm calling somebody out of the blue, I'm bugging them, when really it should be a mind shift of, you know, you should want to talk to me and you'll you'll value or you'll get value from it and benefit from having a conversation.

39:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I like that. So Barry, what motivates you and all of this success and how do you think about motivation in general?

39:50 Barry Womack: You know, I think from a sales perspective, folks that are in sales, salesmen, saleswomen, you know, I think you're driven by a couple of things, right? Competition. A lot of people in sales are competitive. They want to be number one. I think a lot of people love kind of the praise praise and the acknowledgement that you could get from being number one. I think really for me though, it comes down to financial. I'm really financially motivated. I love the fact that the results that I produce directly impact my bottom line. So I think that's what keeps me motivated and keeps me loving what I do. I mean, I think in sales you truly have to enjoy what you do. It can be very tough. There's a lot of failures that you have that are very visible, especially in enterprise, you know, our executive management team has a lot of visibility into what happens with our accounts. So it's tough and there's a lot of ups and downs, but for me, what really motivates me is what the potential is, the possibility is for my bottom line.

40:47 Scott Ingram: Cash is king. So what have been some of the most important decisions you've made or lessons you've had to learn to get where you are today?

40:55 Barry Womack: I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned was that sales is really, I think, a learned skill, right? I think maybe I even came into sales thinking that people were just naturals, yet, you know, you had to be just a great smooth talker. And I think I learned pretty quickly that this is… sales is something you can learn. Sales is something you have to learn. It's something you practice, something you have to have a lot of patience with. But at the end of the day, it is a learned skill. So I think that was one of the biggest lessons that I've had to learn on my side to be successful. I think also just kind of learning or deciding when customers or prospects are also worth your time. I don't think everybody's created equal. Obviously, you want to have as much opportunity as you possibly can when speaking to customers or prospects, but it's important to start figuring out when you should disqualify somebody and stop the conversation. I think it's equally as important as continuing down a path that ultimately ends up in failure. So that was another big thing that was tough for me, I think, to pick up early on, as you get excited with these conversations, you have new opportunities, and you want to take it to the end. And then, you know, there's some white flags you probably could have identified early on to maybe stop that conversation and not waste your time. So I think it kind of comes down to those 2 things.

42:19 Scott Ingram: Nice. And whether it's related to getting that learning and learning that sales skill or something else, I mean, what advice would you give to somebody that's just getting started in their sales career so that they can build a really strong foundation for themselves?

42:34 Barry Womack: I think one of the biggest things is listen to yourself and take feedback. I'm a big… even today, 7 years into my sales career, I always ask for feedback. I ask for feedback from my customers, from my prospects. Prospects, especially the ones that I have or feel like I have a good relationship with, I'll always ask for feedback. What did you think? How did we do as a team? But also ask your colleagues, ask your executives and people that are involved in these conversations that you have. So just ask for that feedback and I think you'll find that people are very willing to give it and are there to actively help you improve. I'm a big advocate of listening to yourself, so I record almost every meeting demonstration that I do on Webex. So, I'll fire it up. I'll always ask for permission from the customer and kind of use it as a, you know, I'll send this over to you afterwards and you can share it with colleagues or what have you, but it's really also a great opportunity for me to go back and listen to the conversations that I'm having, see how I sound, see, you know, what I can improve on, help with objections as they come up. If I don't like how I respond to something, come up with a way to, you know, know how to respond to that better the next time. So just ask for feedback, listen to yourself, and, and I think that'll be a great start.

43:55 Scott Ingram: Well, and that's such an interesting tip, right? The idea of recording yourself and listening to it and the way you're doing it also adds value to the customer, right? You're sort of being proactive and saying, hey, you know, maybe there's some folks that aren't able to join this call or you want to be able to go back and reference this, and I'm happy to record this and send it to you. And then at the same time, that's something that you get to use after. Do you ever ever ask for additional help in reviewing that? Is that something that you're reviewing with your manager or with peers or with others and listening into that?

44:23 Barry Womack: Not as much anymore, but yeah, absolutely, especially when I first started out. So, you know, a lot of that was just practice, you know, especially as we're getting like signed off on a presentation or a deck or a talk track, especially when, you know, we did a lot of presentations like this in the mid-market when I was mid-market. So yeah, it was asking for feedback, asking for people to take a look. Ask people close to you who may not even know what your product is. I mean, it doesn't really matter. People know what sounds good, and if you can't explain it to somebody who doesn't know, there's a good chance that it's coming off in a weird way as well when you're talking to your prospects and customers.

45:02 Scott Ingram: Nice. Great, great idea. What about somebody who's a little bit further into their career? So, they're starting to get established. They're, they're doing well, but they're not at the top. They're not in that number one spot. What advice would you give to them to take it to the next level?

45:18 Barry Womack: Sure. I mean, I think if you're deep in your career and you're still struggling, I think it's really a matter of what action can you take to change? Really, I think it's as simple as that. It's what action can I take to make a change to my process, to, you know, to how I'm presenting, to whatever the case is? So, you know, maybe you've been take it higher than that or at a more macro level, do I enjoy sales? Do I have a passion for what I'm doing? And do I believe in my product or company? Because I think a lot of times those also really impact how you do and how you come across when you're selling. So kind of think through those. I mean, if you're answering those in the wrong way, obviously there's a direction you can go. If you're answering them in the right way, meaning I love sales, I love what I do, and I'm just trying to improve it's down to process. How can I change my process? You know, what am I doing right, wrong? Am I building the right relationships? Am I positioning my product or company the right way? And a lot of that can be learned. A lot of that can, you know, can come from shadowing other reps or speaking with other reps that are doing well and that are number 1.

46:24 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So I know you've been listening to the show. So what's the question that you would have for others who are in that number 1 spot?

46:34 Barry Womack: I'm all about efficiency, and I love to learn how other people are being efficient. So how are they spending their time? How are they allocating their day? What tools are they using to, to do their job more effectively and efficiently? So I think that would be number one for me.

46:48 Scott Ingram: Cool. And anything that we haven't talked about in the way that you're being efficient that you'd want to add?

46:56 Barry Womack: No, I don't think so. You know, like I said, it… to me, efficiency comes down to being organized. If you're not organized, it's really tough to, to do your job day in, day out in an effective way. You know, notes are all over the place, action items aren't laid out. Um, so to me, it's just being as organized as possible, mapping out everything that I need to do, uh, preparing and that type of thing.

47:17 Scott Ingram: So Barry, to summarize, what I try and do is create some type of actionable challenge, uh, for the listener that they can take away from this conversation and implement right away, uh, and something that they can work on for maybe the next 2 weeks, because we release new episodes every 2 weeks. So why don't we make this a 2-week, 14-day challenge, what would you have the listener do to improve themselves and their own sales results?

47:44 Barry Womack: You kind of hit the nail on the head. I think always be improving is something that you should strive for as well. So kind of going back to what we talked about with listening to yourself, asking for feedback, I mean, that's the quickest, easiest thing to do in order to improve on yourself and figure out where your weaknesses lie and address them. So I think that could be number one. One is just figure out, you know, how can I improve and go take action on that? I think another is, you know, learn about your resources. Taking it back to what I think made me very successful is just understanding what's in my tool belt. What options do I have? What people can I leverage? What technology can I leverage? And more importantly, what assets are available to me from a content or marketing perspective? So really create a playbook for yourself. Understand what those resources are, map out when and how you should leverage them, and start doing it. And pull those resources in now or during conversations that you have coming up here in the next couple of weeks. Who can you loop into those conversations that will help escalate the conversation above where you're at today or help accelerate the pipeline? Who can you have make a call on your behalf that will sound better than you doing a quick follow-up call? So leverage those resources, create a playbook for yourself, and know how and when to leverage them accordingly. And then I think it's just, it's so easy. Get involved with your industry, figure out, like I said, where your customers are, be there, get involved, listen, whether it's networking or not, just listen to what the challenges are that they're facing and be able to incorporate them into your everyday conversations. So find where your customers are at, go there, learn, listen. And then finally, just prepare. Always be prepared. I think that's also, you know, for me, one of my key ways that I can be successful is I'll be the most prepared rep that, you know, that's speaking with that new customer and selling myself and knowing everything that's possibly out there available about them.

49:51 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. And Barry, you were kind enough to offer offline to share a couple of your templates and agendas and things that you use for that preparation. So we're going to add those to the Sales Success Community. And to get access to that Sales Success Community, it is a free resource for listeners of this show. All you have to do is get on our mailing list, and as soon as you do that, you'll get an invite to the community. So 2 easy ways to do that: either go to top1.fm, or if you're in the US, you can text TOP1 to 444999. So TOP1 to 444999 or top1.fm and get on that list. Barry, this has been fantastic. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and insights with us today. I think this is going to be really valuable. I can't wait to share it.

50:38 Barry Womack: Awesome. Thanks so much, Scott. I appreciate you having me. 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.