35: Trey Simonton of Bazaarvoice - Consistency is the key to success

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.

0:24 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Trey Simonton, who is the top global accounts director at Bazaarvoice. Welcome to the show, Trey.

0:33 Trey Simonton: Good morning.

0:34 Scott Ingram: So what's happening here with Trey is a little bit different. First of all, Trey was nice enough to sit down with me in person here in Austin at 5:30 AM on a Saturday. And this is actually interview one of two, as we'll be doing a live interview at the Austin chapter of the Enterprise Sales Forum later this week. What I don't know yet is whether this recording is going to become the public episode, or whether the enterprise sales forum interview and live Q&A will be the primary episode. More than likely, this will be the traditional public episode, and we'll probably dive deeper in the live interview and Q&A, and that will become a bit of a bonus episode that you can get to one of two ways. It will be available on the Sales Success Stories app. So if you're an iPhone user, you can get that directly at top1.fm/iOSapp. And if you're an Android user, you'll find the app at top1.fm/androidapp. Easy enough. The other place you can always look for this kind of bonus content, and I know Trey's got a great leave-behind for us as well that we'll chat through at some point here, is in the Sales Success Community. So to get an invite there, all you have to do is join the mailing list at top1.fm. So Trey, let's start like we always do in an effort to front-load some serious value and talk through the top 3 things that you believe have gotten you to and allowed you to stay at the top?

2:05 Trey Simonton: Yeah, good morning everybody. So one of the things that I have found is you have to take the opportunity to set your goals significantly higher than your quota. All too often sales reps get very focused on their quota, and my number one recommendation is set your goals 150 to 200% of your quota and build up your pipeline goals, your daily and weekly activities surrounding achieving those very high lofty personal goals. Even if you come up short, you're well above what the company is expecting of you. And then finally, believe in the process. Believe in those goals that you've set on a weekly or daily basis. If you set them high, you're going to be successful.

2:44 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And we're going to come back to, to all of that here in a little bit. Again, Trey's got a nice kind of leave-behind process that, that he uses from a territory planning perspective to really color in the detail, it looks like, beyond, I set the number high, now how do I get from here to there against that type of a goal? But give us the context now. Talk about your role and how you've gotten to the top.

3:10 Trey Simonton: So, it's ironically here at Bazaarvoice, I've never been the number 1 rep. What I like to think has made me recognized, be recognized as a top performer, is a level of consistently. Every year, I'm number 2 or 3 globally. And it's because I've set high goals. I have a longer-term view. A lot of my planning goes out past a quarter, out past a year, to a 2-year look at my territory.

3:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah, perfect. And we talked about this before. So, my intro to Trey came from the VP of Sales at Bazaarvoice. I suppose I should insert here, I used to work here before the IPO, so many, many years ago. And when I asked the VP of Sales who the number one was, without hesitation, he said Trey. And I think what's behind that is, number one, always just the, the numbers or, or, you know, achieving for the full year I was the guy. It's also that consistency. So, you know, it sounds like number 1 maybe hasn't repeated, um, in, in the other things, but you have been always at the top, always well, well above your number. And in the eyes of your sales leadership, that's number 1. And I'm gonna go with that recommendation.

4:20 Trey Simonton: You nailed it. That… and it feels good to be recommended as a top performer.

4:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So for those of us who aren't quite as familiar as I am with Bazaarvoice, I mean, talk about what this company is and what that's about.

4:31 Trey Simonton: You know, Bazaarvoice is one of those companies that you may not know as a consumer, but you actually interact with us each and every day. Bazaarvoice, I describe as the 800-pound gorilla in the digital word-of-mouth space. We're really good at getting consumers talking about our clients' products and services. And so what Bazaarvoice does is if you shop online, if you interact on walmart.com, bestbuy.com, Home Depot, Nordstrom's, and you read ratings and reviews, Bazaarvoice powers those ratings and reviews platforms for about 5,500 of the world's largest brands and retailers.

5:07 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Good. So talk about, um, just maybe quantify your results for us a little bit, right? You talked about being consistently at the top. What does that mean exactly?

5:16 Trey Simonton: So we talked early on about setting your goals high, about targeting being 150 to 200% of quota consistently. I'm typically about 140 to 160% of my number year over year. I watch as other reps will land a big account, land a big opportunity that's a bit opportunistic in a year. What I like to think I do well is by setting goals very high, I'm consistently 150-plus percent of my annual quota.

5:43 Scott Ingram: And when you do that, are you thinking… are you ever thinking beyond the 1-year time horizon?

5:48 Trey Simonton: I think you have to. I think when you're young, you get so caught up in your manager looking at you and what you're going to do this quarter. I think you lose the concept of what you're really playing for, especially when you look at a comp plan that has quota accelerators. What you're really playing for is getting through the end of the year, being well above your numbers, and executing throughout the year versus any one given quarter.

6:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So let's go all the way back to the beginning and talk just a bit about your origin story. How did you get into sales in the first place?

6:20 Trey Simonton: So my father actually had a software company and he was a software engineer, uh, did very well building a software package that was sold in the public sector. And I would see as he would go on the road and as a software engineer, he would tell me, I never realized how important sales was. He would say, no matter how good your product is, It's got to start with the revenue. Companies can't survive without money coming in. And I watched how hard he worked to become a sales rep when he was actually, uh, schooled as a software engineer.

6:49 Scott Ingram: Interesting. So, so what… how did that manifest in kind of early roles?

6:53 Trey Simonton: So essentially what I realized early on was the value that you had to find in working with other companies. If you look at my background, it's in corporate or business development. I did a lot in the alliance management space. And I learned how important it was when you're working with large-scale alliances like Accenture, like a PwC. These folks care first and foremost how they're going to make money on your product, how they're going to literally drive more services revenues based on a client buying your product. So I got very good at understanding where the value was to clients, and I would build those annuities and build those long-term alliances. Over time, I've had the opportunity to switch into direct sales. And that's really impacted my approach to engaging clients. I spend a lot of time focusing on their priorities versus what's in it for me. I feel that I spend a lot of time trying to key off conversational cues on what their priorities for the next year and see if I can ensure that our software, our solution is going to be able to help them meet those priorities for the next year.

7:51 Scott Ingram: I love that. And that… what's interesting about that background that I've been dying to talk to somebody about is in the 30-some mod nearing 40 episodes of the show, I've never talked to somebody in business development, right? I try and be broad in terms of the types of different roles in sales that we bring to the picture. Biz dev is a really hard animal, especially when you think in terms of trying to quantify who's number one, right? Typically, it's 1 or 2 people in an organization. It's really hard in a lot of ways to see their results. So, I get to cheat here a little bit. And if you're listening to this and you've got an absolute rockstar business development, uh, professional that you've seen in action. I'd love to talk to them, and you're always welcome to reach out to me for that or any other reason. You can email me scott@top1.fm. But Trey, talk a little bit about how that role is different than, than direct sales and, and how it relates.

8:54 Trey Simonton: Yeah, absolutely. In corporate business development, alliance management, whatever the title is, there's typically 2 types of people. There's relationship managers that are literally focused on just managing a long-term relationship with a key alliance partner. More importantly, I like people, and I really gravitated to roles where you carry a number. You want to make a certain contribution to the company, and key alliances, key channels that take you into the market can scale in a drastic way. You start to look at over multiple years how this can become an annuity that's going to help you meet your numbers year after year. When you look at selling, that's a little bit different. You eat what you kill. You start out every year at zero. And yes, you got to build out your territory. And we talked earlier about a long-term view of that territory. But in sales, you absolutely get very focused on managing your own personal space and executing against driving sales and driving revenue in that territory.

9:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I mean, that's, that's the other part that makes just understanding business development challenging is there's so many facets to it, right? It can be I mean, just ways that I've seen it over the course of my career. I've seen folks in roles where they were building almost kind of a platform play, right? So we're bringing in application providers and things like that that are building out an ecosystem. You're connecting with other professional services organizations. But sometimes on the other end of the realm, it can be about marketing automation or not marketing automation, Freudian slip there. Mergers and acquisitions, the other kind of M&A, where, you know, we want to grow through acquisition. And that's one of our plays. And business development professionals often do that. I'm curious, for just given the variety of roles that you've held in different organizations that you've worked with, if you were starting over again today, is there anything that you would have done differently from just kind of building out your career and getting some of that early experience?

10:55 Trey Simonton: Yeah, I think when, when you're young, and certainly I was there too, you have a big ego. And especially the alpha-type personality that really makes you good in sales, it makes you passionate about being successful, makes you not want to listen to proven processes, proven methodologies and strategies that have been successful for everybody else in the past. You want to create your own. I wish I would have taken a step back I found a couple of good mentors and really focused on some key processes to make me very, very good, very structured in an area like sales or in an area like corporate or business development, and strictly hone those skills at a very young age based on proven processes versus trying to do it all myself.

11:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think just getting away from I've got a better idea and the cowboy approach, there's, there's absolutely something to this process. And if you are interested in the process side of things, I think the best process conversation I've ever had on this show so far, uh, was with David Weiss of ADP. So if you want to go back and listen to that, that was a fantastic episode, one that I frequently find myself going, going back to because there's just some great, great insights in that. Trey, give us a… tell us a story. You know, this, this is a place I, I, it real… I realized after quite a long time running the show, we call it Sales Success Stories, and yes, we're getting your story, but there There's also so many great stories that we experience on a day-to-day basis just in the trenches. What's one of your favorites and something you came away with from that?

12:33 Trey Simonton: So, when I think back, especially over my last 6 years at Bazaarvoice, I guess it was about 4 years ago, we got a call from Luxottica. They're an existing Bazaarvoice client. They own Ray-Ban. They own Oakley. They also own a series of optical stores, including LensCrafters. And a number of others. Very big, very pervasive company with multiple brands and multiple go-to-market opportunities. So really a great prospect for Bazaarvoice. But the call we received was that we had not been responsive and that they were going out for RFP for ratings and reviews on products and store service and a bunch of facets of their business. And at the time, I was not the rep. I was asked to step in and go into the account. So I was going into a losing situation. I think honestly, a woman named Julie Lecky that was in charge of procurement was really just asking us to come to the table so she could have one more person to participate in the RFP. Rather than do everything over email or over the phone, I got on a plane and I said, if we're going to respond, I need to meet the people I'm responding to, and hosted a large group from multiple brands for lunch. And rather than try to sell them on Bazaarvoice, I asked them what they were setting out to do. I just posed the question, you guys actually have an initiative, and shame on me, I'm your global accounts director and I know nothing about those initiatives, so clearly I've failed you. Uh, help me understand what you're trying to do in the year. And an hour-long meeting turned into a 2 and a half diatribe about what their goals were, and they literally gave me everything that I needed to respond to the RFP. And it was very little about our features and more about the opportunities that we had to deliver value to the client. Now, it was a long cycle. It was 4 months of incredibly hard work, but it's probably one of the largest deals I've put together while I've been at Bazaarvoice. And what I liked is I had the opportunity to see the solution with one brand and then build off of it. I listened to the client and they said, look, between now and the end of the year, we have $100,000, but next year we'll have a million. So taking the time to really hear what they needed really changed the dynamic. It gave them confidence in me, and through me, it gave them confidence in Bazaarvoice.

14:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and I love that it started as an RFP process, right? Because I think we so often get into those types of things and it's, you know, line up to answer all of the questions. And the reality is, I don't think I've ever seen an RFP that even close to articulately described what they were really trying to accomplish and what was underlying that. So the fact that you were able to put yourself in front from a clearly a losing position and, and take that time and get in front of them to really understand that, because once you understand that, that's the way you really start to answer it and start to paint that kind of a vision, right?

15:26 Trey Simonton: Yeah, absolutely. You sometimes we want to sell some people, sell, sell somebody something. In a sales role, you want people to buy your products. And I think we forget one of our best roles is really just as a listener and really taking the time to understand how we're going to align with the client's goals. And literally, you don't have to sell them a product. You can look at different parts of your products or even bundling your products to provide a solution.

15:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. Good, good story. I'm glad I asked. So, Trey, what are you most proud of from an accomplishment perspective? Because you've been at this a little bit.

16:01 Trey Simonton: Yeah, my style's changed a little bit over time. Once you start to hone your own process, once you start to create your own style of interacting with clients, one of the greatest things you can do, in my opinion, for yourself is start mentoring some of the younger salespeople around you. Coach them on the real numbers. You know, a lot of sales is math and it's a bit intimidating until you create really good habits, really good muscle memory surrounding conquering the calls, the emails, and the pipeline building. So when I look at some of the things that I'm really proud of now, it's mentoring some of the young sales reps and watching them go from being completely, you know, caught in the headlights, scared to death, to managing their own business and building out their own territory. And a number of the young reps that I've worked with have really elevated their careers and done great things while they've been here at Bazaarvoice.

16:51 Scott Ingram: Well, and I had an epiphany on the drive here along the lines of those that I think have been some of the most consistent producers Um, that have been on the show here, they're big believers in mentors almost across the board, but I think that they are doing the most mentoring as, as well. So talk about, I mean, is it something that you seek out that you keep yourself open to? How, how do you get yourself into that mentoring position? Because I'm sure it impacts you as well.

17:24 Trey Simonton: Uh, I think you hear a lot of people, especially if you're consistently performing at a very high level, You hear about these people being very gracious. They want to give back. They want to share. And if you sit down with somebody and you coach them on how they can be a better salesperson, you can't help but take your own advice, but hold yourself accountable to actually do the things you're telling them to do. Suddenly, a Sunday will come along and I'll think back to a conversation I had with a younger rep earlier in the week. And I see, wait, I'm falling behind on my pipeline building. I'm falling behind on some of that consistent muscle memory. And you can't be a hypocrite. You actually have to take your own advice. I think you also need to be humble enough to go out and realize no matter how well you're doing, there are people in this world that are just flat better than you. Maybe they're making more money, maybe they're more consistent. And one of the best things you can do for yourself is reach out and identify people that will be certainly complimentary of you. But I think the best thing you can do is have them be critical of you and tell you how you can hone your craft even more.

18:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, I mean, along those lines, what do you think the best mentoring relationships look like? Like, how are they structured? Are they formal? Are they informal? What, what works best in the real world, both on either side of your experience being mentored and also mentoring?

18:44 Trey Simonton: So let's start with being mentored. I think if you want somebody to mentor you, you want somebody that'll be honest with you. They won't tear you down, but they'll be honest with you about where you have weaknesses and where they see opportunities for you to be better. They'll be constructive, but they'll also be direct. And let's be honest, you know, you want to get back, you want to focus on selling, but making that time to have them give you honest feedback and hold you accountable for your own personal goals is a big opportunity. When I was young and I looked at sales managers, I'd be scared to death to go into a QBR, right? Because I was scared to death on what they would strip down as far as my territory. Now it's one of the things that I relish the most. Because I want somebody to take a look at what I'm doing, tear it down.

19:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, where's that thing I'm missing?

19:28 Trey Simonton: Where am I falling apart? Yeah. Then on the mentoring young people, people are scared to ask you for help. In fact, they see how busy you are and they assume that you're too busy to work with them. You have to proactively reach out and say, hey, can I help you? You'll see reps just struggling. You'll see them missing their numbers. You'll see them in QBRs struggling mightily. Offer to meet them for coffee, but I would say hold them accountable too. Tell them you want to meet with them at 5 or 6 in the morning. Don't make it during your normal workday because you don't want it to necessarily be a distraction. Let them earn the right to get your advice on a regular basis and then commit to them to meet with them on a regular basis. Because remember, you're helping them with that longer-term view and those longer-term goals that we're talking about.

20:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, it's, it's interesting. I was, I was in a position here in Austin many years ago because I ran a business networking organization And so I would get an extraordinary amount of outreach and people wanted to pick my brain and wanted my help. And I was just in kind of that position where, where I was sought after in that way. And what I did to manage the overwhelm, and I did it intentionally, I don't know if others do it quite as intentionally, but I think there's some, there's something to this idea. The first time they'd reach out, I would just blow them off. But in a way, I mean, it was always true. It was always, look, I'm really busy right now. Almost always a true statement. But looking at my schedule, I start to open up in whatever month, you know, and, you know, this is weeks or a couple of months down the road. Follow up with me. Let's find a time then. That took care of 70 or 80% right there, maybe more. Right. It's because I was interested in building relationships with those who were going to hold their commitments, who were going to follow through and do that stuff. So I just put that simple test in place to kind of make that happen. And then Um, just as you described, I'm an early morning person, right? If you want my time, we can make that. I need you to make some effort here, right? Come to me. I'm not going to drive some crazy way out of my way to go see you. Not true this morning. I made a bit of a drive to come see Trey here in the Bazaarvoice offices, which is great. But again, just be mindful of those things, whether you're putting that in front of other people and doing just a bit of qualifying to find people that are really going to fully invest in that process and realize that perhaps they're challenging you a little bit and it's just something that you need to get through and move fast.

21:58 Trey Simonton: I like the way you're thinking there. And to be honest, you're going to offer to mentor some young folks that aren't as engaged. It's just not that time in their career. They're not ready to make that commitment. We all know the commitment it takes to be successful and the level of hard work that goes into hitting your numbers. So don't be afraid if a couple of them don't step up and don't really take that opportunity, but relish when somebody does. And honor that commitment back to them.

22:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

22:22 Trey Simonton: Yeah.

22:22 Scott Ingram: And the biggest advice I always get is the, the best thing you can do to maintain and keep that mentoring relationship going on is just report back. You know, tell them, hey, of all the things that you shared with me, this was the most impactful. Here's how I'm working to act on that. And here's the results that I'm seeing. That's, that's the secret formula to meeting again and again and again and again.

22:45 Trey Simonton: I think you nailed it.

22:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So we talked about kind of your accomplishments. What about the flip side? What's, what's been the biggest, most impactful failure in the course of your career?

22:59 Trey Simonton: So it's funny, it's… I think it's the same failure over and over again when I look back. I think you start to get a little success sometimes and you start to get lofty and you start to get focused on things like the big deal. And it's easy, it's exciting. That's where the fun stuff happens. And I think every once in a while you have to come down to the basics. Whenever I start to struggle, starting with very small achievable goals and taking my larger goals and backing them down into something very basic makes me feel good every day. It's funny, at home with my wife, I'm the one that makes the bed every day, and she's happy to leave the bed completely unmade, but I like coming home every day and seeing that bed made. My failures typically come in sales when I'm not focused anymore on the number of calls it takes, the number of emails it takes each and every week to build out the pipeline. If I have a goal of driving $150,000 in pipeline that week and I go 1, 2, 3 weeks missing that goal, I forget how much that mounts up and how much that is absolute. I mean, it's just sales is math. It's just absolutely going to impact you over time.

24:07 Scott Ingram: Well, that's, that's about the perfect transition I can imagine into just the habits and the routines and the structure that, that you have. So, uh, talk first about… I know the answers, I'm just… that's why I'm chuckling… um, whether you're a morning person or more of a night owl.

24:23 Trey Simonton: So it's changed for me over the years. Uh, before I was married, I loved the evenings. I loved about 8:30 to sit down with a glass of wine and just bang out some emails and follow up with clients. And I love that waiting for them when they arrived the next day. Since I've been married, since I've had children, that's had to change. And the reality is time is a finite asset, but the demands of you hitting your numbers is not going to change. The demands of building that pipeline is not going to change. So I've had to find earlier morning, morning out, earlier hours. I've had to find that time. And it's just a fact that I get up earlier now, uh, 4 or 5 in the morning I'm up and banging out emails so that I can get up with my kids and have breakfast and then hit the ground running by the time I get to the office.

25:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's such a, such an interesting observation because I think it's a pretty natural transition for a lot of folks. So if you're young and early in your career and you're like, Scott, I just don't identify with all these crazy morning people you have on your show, let me just say, just wait. You know, I think, I think in a lot of ways it sort of comes with just the way that life evolves. And one day you'll be, you'll be waking up in the morning with us going, okay, they were absolutely right about all of this. So what is, what does that morning routine look like today?

25:35 Trey Simonton: So for me, I realize I have a precious time with my daughter. Our routine is I take her to school every day, and that happens from about 6:00, 6:30, where she has breakfast, we go over her homework, till 7 o'clock when I drop her off. You back, back into that, if I'm gonna get an hour in emails, means I got to start at 5:00. And so by the time it's 6:00, 6:15, and she's getting up, then I can focus on her. I got some really good advice from a sales leader here at Bazaarvoice, a guy named Kelly Connery, when he said, look, if you're gonna be good to your kids, kids and be successful in your career, you have to focus on time in the moment. You have to carve out the time with the family, and then you'll feel great about focusing on your career.

26:16 Scott Ingram: I, I love that. And not just carving out the time, I'd say it's one thing to have the time on the calendar and you're physically there, but a lot of times it's hard to be fully mentally there, especially when you've just got a lot weighing on your mind with the pipeline that you're managing and everything else.

26:33 Trey Simonton: Absolutely. And I think you need to give back to yourself too. I mean, for me, mentoring is giving back. We had talked about that earlier. For others, it's running. Whatever you need to have that outlet to get your head back in the game, that time to literally decompress and focus on other priorities makes it good and puts you in a healthy… healthier place to come back and focus on your career.

26:53 Scott Ingram: Perfect. So walk us through kind of the rest of the structure and kind of core habits once you've dropped your daughter off.

27:00 Trey Simonton: So as the day gets started, I typically have tried to get out a bulk of emails for that day. If I know that I'm going to try to have… it's pure pipeline in the morning. It's all thinking about how am I going to get to those 6 calls with new customers in a day? How many emails do I need to send out? How much follow-up do I need with different customers? And that kind of starts the rush of the pipeline building. Typically, by the time I get into my day at that 9 or 10 o'clock range, now I'm actually trying to close business. I'm talking to clients that have progressed past the discovery phase, and we're starting to structure solutions that meet their needs. We're starting to align with their business processes, and we're really getting into that kind of med-pick sales process that we, we identify with, which is understanding who the decision makers are, where the budget is. I find those conversations take place during the day from about 9 or 10 until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. So all that time is going to be focused on closing business, which is great. That's the exciting part. That's what we all work for. But the real grind of building pipeline usually takes place early in the morning.

28:09 Scott Ingram: Okay. And, and MEDDIC… so I'll go right back to the David Weiss episode because we dove pretty deep into, into MEDDIC, and he even added some some letters, kind of. There was an extra C or something in there in, in his process. But you went… you talked about earlier that you had to really learn the importance of process over the course of your career. Give us a sense of what is your process. I mean, whether that's, whether that's med pick or how you think about med pick and beyond.

28:37 Trey Simonton: So Bazaarvoice, we're a med pick shop. And I remember when I was young, I would see these wildly successful salespeople and they're taking home 7-figure W-2s. And I couldn't imagine. I couldn't imagine how they got there. But what I always recognized about them is their sales leaders just in the hall would ask them, all right, who's the CMO at this company? Who's your day-to-day? Who's the VP? And they knew all these names. It blew my mind how they knew so many people at so many companies. And they knew so much about the logistics of how those companies made buying decisions, what their initiatives were within the year. I never really processed when I was younger that this is a proven process. This is understanding the metrics of why your company buys. This is understanding that your day-to-day probably is not the one making the buying decision. They're probably not the budget owner. And what I think a lot of times that you get as you get further in sales is a lot of wisdom that comes from failure, a lot of wisdom that comes from committing a deal that's going to close in a quarter And you've absolutely missed the 90-day process that it takes to get through a legal review and a technology risk assessment and all of these things. You've, you've skinned your knees. So the wisdom that comes with that process with MEDDIC is really identifying all the things that could possibly go wrong and holding yourself accountable to have all the right answers. That becomes like muscle memory. And that's what made those reps that I would look up to in the past so great. Literally, they could just… they were audible ready with who were the key decision makers, with what was the sales process. And a lot of times you would hear doubt in their voice because they took approach a lot of times as almost doubting themselves. Did they have all the answers? Not for their boss, but for what it took to get that deal finalized and to do so on the timing that they committed it would come in.

30:30 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And again, I think the process thing at the, at the end of the day… I mean, heck, you asked me, Scott, how the heck are you doing all of this, right? You're, you're managing a territory yourself, you've got, you've got 2 girls, you're staying healthy, you've got this podcast, we've got this interview later, later in the week. How are you, how are you managing this? And to me, I believe that my, my biggest asset is just being organized, right? You have to stay on top of all of this stuff and have a process, right? If you don't have a process to go to and you're just making this all up, it's really hard and you're really scattered and you don't know sort of how to, how to make that all come together. Just the way that you're organizing your calls and those conversations and the prep and everything else that goes into that.

31:20 Trey Simonton: So my style has evolved over the years, and a lot of it's based honestly in that background in corporate and business development. When I look at why people would get on a call with me, I recognize that I'm a busy person. They're probably really busy as well. I don't feel like people jump on a phone call with Trey Simonton to answer a bunch of Trey Simonton's questions. I believe they get on a call to understand more about the value I can drive and honestly how I can help them. If I can't get there quickly, then I have an issue with those calls. So I try to do some research before, and I'm known as not being a slide guy. A lot of times I'll get into an hour-long meeting and I'll show one slide, 2 slides. I'll show more client examples. But I… what people don't realize is the hour, hour and a half that goes into… I actually prepare a 30 or 40 slide presentation more to do my research, more to think about where certain solutions might fit with the challenges that they're facing. And I label my style… I'm a storyteller, but I label my style kind of a give to get. If it's a discovery call, I'll ask them a little bit about themselves and their role. I'll ask them what they were expecting when they came to the call. And then I'll give them a little bit of background on Bazaarvoice. Then I'll ask them what their marketing goals, their digital goals are for the year, and then I'll give them a little bit more about our solutions, not necessarily naming our products because nobody cares about what our products are called. They care about how our products have helped other people in their industry. And I feel like when I give them that information, now I've earned the right to ask a few more questions. And then I try to be very cognizant of their time and how we're driving value for them. If I get to the end of the call and I haven't been able to find an area that we can drive value, we typically… I just ask, can I follow up with them down the road and see if I can literally find a way to align with your priorities? But that give to get is how I try to interact and really understand that these individuals are going to need something from me if they're ever going to buy something. I need to show them where they're going to get value if they're ever going to make a purchase.

33:29 Scott Ingram: You know, I'm still stuck back on not using slides because I share that philosophy a lot. I think slides too often are a crutch and they force you into a certain path that is maybe not the path that the conversation is going. Much like I've documented all the questions that I want to ask, we're not going in the order. We're going to go where the conversation goes. I don't need to be locked into this structure that I had planned on, on going through. However, what, what is your… what is the follow-up to a good meeting? We talked about what we do when it doesn't work out, and you ask for the right to kind of follow up and figure out what that fit might be afterwards. But if it was really solid, like if, if there was a lockstep connection there, what is that next step? What does that follow-up path look like?

34:19 Trey Simonton: Uh, I try to take notes on conversational cues. What are their key priorities? And Immediately afterwards. Now remember, if, if I'm on my game, if I've done my right preparation, at this point I should already have a set of slides that I can very quickly boil down into the top 6 or 8, PDF it, make it very simple. But more importantly, I'll send them as quick as I can after the call an email that says, hey, thank you for making the time. Here's what I heard during the call, and here's the action items that I took. And immediately I try to show them that I listened, that I understood their goals, and that I'm going to give them something. Let's be realistic. These guys probably are never going to click on that PDF and see those slides. But the reality is, by giving them something and by including a couple of bullets to confirm that you heard them, you've earned the right to follow up and call them again.

35:12 Scott Ingram: So you've talked about the, the day-to-day and the way that you're managing that. I know that you're also on the road a fair amount. So how are you managing the travel? What do those days look like and how do you keep that organized and just the process around that?

35:27 Trey Simonton: So one of the things that was a big change for me was really taking a long-term view of the year. And honestly, when I approach a territory, I try to take a 2 to 3 year outlook. I think that that's made me a lot more consistent and it's helped me to manage not only my travel but also my goals for the year and how it aligns to being 150%, 200% of your number. I've realized, you know, we all think of budgeting taking place in October and November. The reality is most people are making a lot of where they want to focus in the next year. They're making a lot of those decisions during the summer. They're making those decisions in July, August, September. So I literally try to do a lot more travel during those months. And I tell the people I'm coming… I tell the people, excuse me, I tell my prospects that I'm coming to see them. Because I feel like we need to think about what they're going to do next year now. And ironically, that earns me the right a lot of times to ask for business in the fall as they're ending out the year, to catch up as they're getting rid of some budget. I've also learned early in the year… I've worked with a number of these clients now for 3, 4, 5 years, but I try to send out an email to say, hey, it's January, I would love to just have a 20-minute call and understand more about what your goals are for the year. You just got budget, you just secured budget. What are you doing? I'm not worried whether or not that budget's associated with Bazaarvoice, but if I'm going to be your consultant, if I'm going to help you reach some of your goals, I need to know what those goals are and what you're setting out to do. And a lot of times that call, that outreach early in the year really aligns with my travel. If I have started to develop that cadence, if I'm starting to look out 12 months, Suddenly travel doesn't become opportunistic, it becomes very strategic. And then a lot of times if I'm headed to Atlanta, I have a number of clients in Atlanta and I'll let them know that I'm going to be there and I can add on a day before or day after. So I become much more efficient with my travel. I will say, in the day of social media, and LinkedIn is invaluable and all these tools are invaluable, but at the end of the day It's hard for somebody to tell, tell you no when they look you in the eyes and shake your hand. And if you haven't done that with the client… calls are great, emails are great, accountability is great… but I still am a true believer that people buy from other people. And you need to get in front of clients. You need to show them that you're committed to their success.

37:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, I, I'm a believer. I mean, but I've, I've been also been an outside sales guy, you know, nearly my entire career. So I think that But not just that. Let me, let me say yes. And coffee drinks.

38:10 Trey Simonton: Yeah.

38:11 Scott Ingram: Meals, you know, just breaking bread together. And a lot of times even the stuff that I do now where we're trying to engage larger and larger audiences in these accounts, being that catalyst, right, to bring… I mean, a lot of times we're spurring dialogue that they need to have as an organization and they've just not had it because not everybody's been in the room. So having everybody in one place with a whiteboard where we can have a great constructive conversation, being able to add value in that way. What about the day-to-day of it? I love that you gave the, the broader, bigger picture of how you're, you're organizing it and being strategic about it and not chasing your tail like, oh, you'll meet with me? Great, let me go jump on a plane. Um, and, and I'll also reemphasize the, the point about what I've always thought of as the anchor appointment, right? So I've got a meeting with a client in this city. Awesome. Who else is in that city? Because there's something about the old joke. This is more in speaking circles. The definition of an expert is the guy with the boarding pass. And so there's just something about like, wow, you're flying 2,000 miles and you're going to be here? Oh, okay. Well, I'll meet with you. It's somehow easier. I don't know why, but I feel like that, that's always been possible. But in terms of the, the day-to-day, how are you managing a day or a series of days on the road?

39:36 Trey Simonton: So travel means you're going to have to really focus on one single client, right? Just about everything you're going to do when you go into a meeting, it's going to be on one client or 2 clients or whatever the meetings are in that day. That means you can't do triage and a bunch of email. That means you're out of pocket. I personally love a 2 or 3 hour flight because I can bang out a boatload of email. And I, I get when people decompress, and I certainly respect that. For me, time on a flight, you can bang out just a ton of email. I try to be realistic about how the day is going to react differently when I'm actually going into meetings and my head needs to be in that meeting. Remember, I'm not going into a meeting to run through a PowerPoint. I'm running into a meeting to really engage with the client and show them how interested I am in their goals, what they're setting out to do, and how much I've listened to recommend our products to them. If I'm focused on a distraction, putting out a fire, that's an issue. So before travel, I try to rally the team. I'll tell our client engagement managers, I'm going to be gone and I need to make sure you can handle a bunch of the issues that are going to come up. I let them know that I will be focused on a couple of core clients, and when my head comes back up, I also hold myself accountable after we've broken bread and everything else with one client to make sure I get that 30 minutes at the end of the night to at least follow up with those that maybe I've missed throughout the day, close out the day. There's something about even if you can't solve a client's problem, if they've reached out to you, there's something about validating that you caught their message. Hey, I got your message. I apologize. I promise I'll catch up with you first thing in the morning. But there's something about ending your day. And again, typically for me, mornings are the big time now, but I try to at least just validate I heard you. I'll get back to you as quick as I can.

41:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. My, my interviews are going to be out of sequence here a little bit, but I did another interview here recently and the point there was he was all about responsiveness. Right? But responsiveness doesn't mean I have the answer. Responsiveness is an acknowledgement, and, and it may also be a validation of understanding how soon do you need this, what's driving this, so that I can now kind of queue up the getting of the answer and where that sits in that sort of a, that sort of a queue. So absolutely, uh, respect that. Any other kind of core habits and routines that we haven't yet talked about on the road or, or in the office?

42:10 Trey Simonton: Um, Sundays are big for me. I have this concept of, uh, I like getting excited about the week. I like taking myself through a thought process. You know, you see athletes listen to music before the game or whatever else. On Sundays, I have a 90-minute window that my family knows I'm going to check out and really get excited about maybe 6 accounts. I was watching the World Series one year and I saw an ad pop up for a bank and they were promoting their app. Well, what makes their app, their bank better than somebody else's? In my world, in the world of Bazaarvoice, it's what other consumers say about that bank. So I went through a list of 6 banks and during that 90-minute period, I put together an email that could go out to all 6 banks and say, wow, I just saw this ad on the World Series, and it made me think of you and your app and what your consumers would say that makes your bank better than other banks. Ironically, it was the same email to 6 different banks, but all 6 banks had the exact same challenge. But it made me efficient, it made me excited, and it kicks off that week. I try to give myself that 90 minutes every week because it gives me… it's kind of like making the bed, right? It's, yeah, it's that step to get involved in the week. It's a step to get in motion. Emotionally engaged so when I hit the ground on Monday, I'm hitting the ground running.

43:33 Scott Ingram: Well, and that's why they call it a routine, right? It's, it's if you are an athlete, right, you have that process that you go through, and it's probably the same every time to gear up for that game or that tee-off or whatever it is that, that you're doing. So it sounds like you've really got that in, in the way that you've got your routine to get set up for the week. Week, the day, everything else.

43:57 Trey Simonton: Sometimes it's funny, I think to my own detriment, right? Because when you try to check out on vacation, how do you get out of that routine? But I, I love the routine, and I love the fact that I can believe in the process. And then even when I've had a week… I don't… I like to think I don't lose many deals, but when I lose a deal, uh, I like to go back to that basic process, start making the phone calls, start sending the emails, start getting small wins. Knowing that they'll lead to bigger wins and actually close deals down the road.

44:24 Scott Ingram: Awesome. What about your information diet? What are you listening to, reading, and watching?

44:30 Trey Simonton: So I, I'm still a big fan of TED Talks, and a lot of times it's funny, uh, one of the things I like about your blog, about what you've done to tell some stories, is it's a lot of people from different areas in their career, and you can learn a lot from somebody who sells cars or somebody who sells HR solutions when I'm selling marketing enterprise-type solutions. You know, you can learn a lot from what they're doing there. My information diet is Google Alerts. You know, I'll set Google Alerts on all my different clients, on industry trends and words, just because I like to be audible ready. You know, I share that I'm a storyteller. I like to share those stories, kind of relate to clients as much as I can on a more personal basis. That helps me, uh, honing my craft. I like to look at people a lot of times that are even outside of my area of focus, maybe not enterprise salespeople, and see what they're doing to make them successful. If it resonates, it's something that certainly becomes part of my style and part of how I'm doing things.

45:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, continuing along that path, so, you know, kind of Google Alerts, are there other tools and apps and things that, that are core to your process?

45:41 Trey Simonton: So I, I'm still an Outlook zealot. I love when an email comes in, I can easily create a task for follow-up, and that creates a lot of my to-do lists throughout the day. I've learned that in the mornings, if I focus on those 3 or 4 tasks that are the most important for the day, I can knock those out quickly and know that there may be a bunch of other things that are added to the to-do list, but it can hold me accountable. It can make me feel good for closing out. So I use Outlook and the tasks very aggressively. In fact, my management would probably tell you I need more tasks in Salesforce. I've actually fallen in love with Salesforce and sales numbers. We talk about process, and insights about yourself are incredibly valuable. So I get caught up in what is my average sales price. When I look at my territory, I try to align where I want to focus with small, medium, large, and extra-large deals that I want to target for the year. Year. Well, learning what those real dollars are, not what I think they are, is really helpful in executing on a sales plan. Starting to think, okay, if I want to sell $2 million this year, uh, I need 4x on my pipeline. I need an $8 million pipeline. Well, divide that by, call it, 48 selling weeks. Now I'm looking at I got to drive $165,000 in pipeline every week. Well, those are real numbers that I feel good about. So Salesforce, I use for a lot more than just tracking and following up. I try to use it to have insights into my business, and that's evolved into a spreadsheet that I use called a deal horizon. And I try to plan out the year and drop in deals that can warrant, okay, this company is big enough, they have strategic initiatives to do a $300,000 deal. This company's smaller, I need to get a quick hit, I'll probably try to go and position a $25,000 or $30,000 solution. Those real insights to those numbers help me create what I call a realistic sales plan and something that I can start to execute against.

47:44 Scott Ingram: Perfect. So let's, let's go down that rabbit hole for, for sure, right? Let's, let's talk about kind of the, the territory planning, the goal setting, the, the document that you, that you use and kind of how that gets filled out. And this is perfect because we're, we're having this conversation in January, so there's a lot of us who are, uh, in the middle or the early stages of, of these, you know, folks that are on the, on the sales force first fiscal year who are starting in February. I mean, this is, this is all very, very ripe. So let's go, let's go top to bottom, uh, in terms of… obviously you talked about setting the, the goal, starting there at 150 to 200%. I assume the, the input of that is the number that you're provided.

48:26 Trey Simonton: That's correct.

48:27 Scott Ingram: So keep, keep going. Where does it go from there?

48:31 Trey Simonton: So again, remember, a quota is a quota. It's what the company expects of you. It's not what you expect of yourself. When you look at athletes, we all love to talk about athletes. A Tiger Woods competed more with himself than he did with other golfers. He had huge goals of what he thought he could do. There's no reason why each and every one of us, one of us can't be a Tiger Woods in the sales space. And the way you do it is really simple. You take your quota and you multiply it times 1.5, or you multiply it times 2, right? And if you suddenly get to a point where you're like, okay, my, uh, my personal goal is $2 million, million. My personal goal is $3 million. A big breakout moment for me was understanding that I can't think of that within a quarter. I have to think about the annual goal, and then I have to back into what are my daily, weekly requirements to get to those numbers. So back to the math, and let's just take an easy number like $2 million. If that's my personal goal and that's going to put me at 150% of my quota, Let's back into it. I'm probably going to have 2 weeks around Christmas where clients are not responsive, so I'm not going to call those selling weeks as far as generating pipeline. Probably going to have a couple weeks that I'm going to take off for the year with my family, so I'm not going to call those selling weeks. So I back into that number of 48. If I have a $2 million quota and my pipeline needs are 4x, that's $8 million. It's just math. It's very simple math in a spreadsheet. But it requires me to look out the entire year. And ironically, if you start doing that $150,000, $160,000 worth of pipeline a week, and that builds up to your $8 million worth of pipeline, even if you miss your personal goal, you've exceeded your quota for the year and you've built a heck of a lot of pipeline that's going to carry on to the next year, which feeds that consistency. So I think earlier in the year as far as your sales plan, being realistic about the numbers that you or counterparts that actually achieved at a very high level contributed, how many deals they closed, what was their average sales price, and putting that into a territory plan, that's hugely valuable. For me, that's become that spreadsheet that we were talking about, a deal horizon. And then I start trying to associate company names, company initiatives with those goals. What do I think which companies can do $150,000, $200,000 based on maybe an industry trend that's carrying a lot of excitement for them, maybe a conversation that I've had where they've had those marketing initiatives. And that gives me the numbers to measure my activities on a weekly basis. And it's… I think pipeline is one of the best indicators on whether or not you're actually going to hit your revenue goals. It's cliché. Your managers love to ride you about it, but it's like being in the gym, right? Your personal trainer will tell you all the time, the more you miss, the harder it is to catch up. And that's absolutely true. So if you set those realistic goals now, create that plan now to overachieve, and then you hold yourself accountable day in and day out, week in and week out, there's no way that you're going to miss. Yeah.

51:46 Scott Ingram: And you have other resources to, to work with in that. And, and I know in an earlier conversation you and I talked about the SDR team. How do do they fit into that plan? How do you work with them and leverage that? Because obviously you're not going to take all of this on your own shoulders.

52:01 Trey Simonton: So ironically, everyone will tell you you're accountable for your own pipeline, you own your own pipeline, but you're foolish if you don't look at every, every asset you have… marketing teams, lead gen, and everything. An SDR, an outbound calling rep, is a huge asset. I take a little bit of a different approach. I don't feel like an SDR works for me. I feel like I work for them and I commit to… we have a team of 3 SDRs here at Bazaarvoice associated with every AE, and they go across multiple AEs, but they're calling out to different people. I try to sit down with them and help them, just like we talked about mentoring young reps with hitting their goals. And my first question is, okay, how do you make money? What are your goals? How many leads do you have to get? All right, let's build a plan for you to call into a series of accounts. Let me show you which accounts are going to be rich. Let me show you where you can fish. You know, let's make sure you're fishing where the fish are.

52:58 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

52:59 Trey Simonton: And let me help you get there. Now, I'm a big believer in at-bats, so as many leads as they can bring to me, if I have invested to them, it's only going to help me, right? It's going to make so much of my process that much easier. So that 30-minute commitment to each one of those SDRs every week is big. And also sending them the message that I'm extremely interested in their success typically makes them want to work harder for the team. And I see that come back to me in spades.

53:25 Scott Ingram: So from a divide and conquer perspective, right, because I imagine with some of these kind of target accounts, especially as I look at your spreadsheet, right, you've… it's kind of a pyramid, right? You've got the bigger deals on the top. And when you look particularly towards the upper ends of that pyramid, how are you working with them in terms of here's what I want you to go after, here's where I'm focusing, that kind of work?

53:50 Trey Simonton: So different company sizes warrant different approaches. And the reality is, um, in a lot of companies that are going to do smaller deals, that you're going to target $25,000, $30,000 deals, those are quick-hit, easier conversations for an SDR, for an outbound calling rep. If you understand their goals, their metrics surrounding bringing pipeline, surrounding a number of calls that they set up for you. What you'll find is big enterprise accounts are going to give them a lot of calls, but a lot of times it's going to take a lot longer for them to build that pipeline, to build that revenue. So you… if you really have to understand their goals to give them the right direction. I am finding, and I've asked, I go back to our leadership team periodically and say, hey, for me to be successful in marquee enterprise accounts that have 20, 30, 40 brands. I need to literally have dozens of calls set up with each and every one of those brands to put together a large ELA-style deal. So I'll ask the management team to help me incent the individual to make those calls, to set up those calls within those different companies. Those are the big enterprise accounts. Those are where you get to those $300,000, $500,000, million-dollar deals plus. Certainly that's what I see in my world. On the other hand, for the smaller deals, it's block and tackle. Let's get to as many people as you can as quickly as you can and realize that there's going to be a lower barrier to getting them to make a decision. You don't necessarily have to be as strategic. There's a quick-hit pain that you can address, and a lot of times they'll make a quick buying decision just because the budget and the investment's smaller.

55:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and, and there's certainly a, an interesting theme developing here, which is I, I think you Your superpower to me appears to be really just tapping into the personal and selfish motivations of each individual. So just understanding that with your team and how to align those resources internally in terms of what you're trying to go out and do, and then certainly within your clients and understanding them and what they're trying to do and helping them get there creates natural alignment where it's not just, here's my product and why you need to buy it.

56:05 Trey Simonton: Well, it goes back to that corporate business development background. It gave me a very unique perspective. I would spend months working with these incredible leaders at Accenture. I would see how if we could crack the code on those relationships, how it could blow up and 1 1 could equal 20 in those types of relationships. But they didn't care unless our software solution made them money. And that was a big Aha moment for me. That translated into a bit of a breakout moment for me here. I had a manager a few years back, a guy named Stephen Gottlieb, and he was more of a drill sergeant. And he recognized I was so focused on doing the big deals that I was not doing the basics. I was not going back to the pipeline building. And he called me out, kind of broke me back down, and reminded me I had to go back and understand what it took to make me relevant. Relevant, what it took to build out that momentum. Well, when I saw what that type of approach, that type of a planning, that type of getting back to basics did for me, I got smart about how do I do that with my team? How do I understand what's going to make them successful? How do I help them? And a lot of times I'll ask them, what can I do for you? What, what else would you like to see? And 99% of the time the answer is no, I got it from But just the fact, hey, I'm investing in you, hey, I'm serious about what your goals are, gives them the motivation to bring me really what I'm asking for in the, in the first place, which is the at-bats, which is the leads.

57:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. So go, go back to the, that breakdown process though. I, I think that there's something interesting there. And how do you hold yourself accountable and kind of check in on the, the basics piece, right? Because at the end of the day there's all this amazing strategy and high-level stuff you can do, but to your point, like, sales is math. There's certain things that it's just about being consistent and executing on that basic stuff. How… where does that fit in?

58:06 Trey Simonton: So the clichés get old, right? Pipeline solves all ills, you know, all these different things that you hear, but they're clichés because they're true. And I look at younger reps that are hungry But more so, a lot of times they're desperate, and that comes across in their sales calls. I think if you break it down, I think if you go back and you give yourself confidence in the basics, if you're honest with yourself about the math… uh, earlier we were talking about pipeline building, and if I'm going to hit a $2 million number, I need an $8 million pipeline. Ironically, if you go back and look at my numbers, my close rate's about 33%. So honestly, if you start to do the math, if I have an $8 million pipeline, I probably should be not at $2 million, I probably should be at $2.5 to $3 Just math. The reality is, if I don't have the $8 million pipeline, it doesn't even matter, right? I'm not doing the basics. And I think the great thing about being a sales rep is whenever things start to go wrong, and you hear me keep saying, you know, you got to make your bed in the mornings, you can go back to those basic things and feel good about that day. And then when things go right for a couple of days, all of a sudden at the end of the week, you've got not $160,000 in pipeline, you've got $200,000 in pipeline. Feel good about that week. Even when the deals start to get sideways, even when you miss on one, you should feel good about the basics. And I think good sales managers sometimes tear you down to get you focused on that again. And that was a real breakout moment that really set me on a level of consistency for the last few years at Bazaarvoice, really getting down to the basics and You know, again, I had a drill sergeant that drove that into my head, but it, it did a lot for me to really put me on a good cadence, good muscle memory, good focus every day, every week to get to annual goals.

1:00:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now when it comes to the motivation and the drive to actually execute on, on that plan, right, it's one thing to… and it's January, right? This, this is, this is the thought process, like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do all of that stuff. Well, what you actually doing in April? What are you actually doing in May? How do you think about the motivation sort of long-term to take you through and make sure that you're being consistent in those activities throughout?

1:00:29 Trey Simonton: So for me personally, and one of the things, you know, a lot of times in sales we are always motivated, you know, you need to be number one, you need to win the trophy. Well, the thing that I see a lot of time in sales, the way I look at myself, is it's kind of an honor You're, you're the quarterback of the team. And no matter how big your company has gotten… it's 1,000, it's 10,000 employees… the reality is the company doesn't run unless you're driving revenue. So you can look yourself in the mirror and take pride in who you are and what you're setting out to do for the company. To do that though and deliver those numbers, you have to be accountable to yourself. And I think sitting down, whether you're asking help from your boss whether you're asking help from an analytics team to start to build out that plan to say what is realistic for me. Uh, again, you got to set your goals high. It's a mistake. Uh, take your quota number, use it as a baseline to build out what your personal goals are, 150-200%, and then take the quota and set it aside. Getting to the real realistic numbers to make those calls is a big deal. It's January for me. Ironically, for Bazaarvoice, our year end is in April. So it's not the beginning of the new year for Bazaarvoice, but it certainly is for our clients. I would tell each and every one of you, once you have a plan, send out an email to as many clients as you can, just reintroducing yourself. Even if you talked to them last week and say, it's January. I would love to have, and give them an odd number, a 5 to 7 minute call, a 4 to 7 minute call, you know, odd numbers that they don't see normally in an email, something that gets their attention and say, just to hear where your focus is in this year so that maybe I can make some recommendations for you, share some best practices, and make you wildly successful.

1:02:14 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. So this is the piece where we get into just the pure advice, and we've danced around a lot of this, but you want to kind of codify it a little bit. And I'm interested to know what advice… we'll start with the less experienced and go to more experienced, but what advice you'd have for somebody who's starting out in a sales career today?

1:02:36 Trey Simonton: So it's interesting, in sales everybody likes to paint the picture of how much money you can make, how great it is, and the nice cars you can have and everything else. Very few people sit down with you and talk to you about building good repeatable processes. You've heard us come back to it again and again, and I have a feeling as you talk to many, many top performers, they'll talk about the rigor that goes into building pipeline, the time that's invested. I think what I would tell somebody that's younger is find a mentor, somebody that can hold you accountable, that whether that's your manager or somebody else that you respect, somebody who will be honest with you and tell you where you're failing. Then share with as many people as you can your personal goals, because the second they're out there, people are going to say, hey, what are you doing to get to those goals? And then hold yourself accountable to that daily rigor. You know, we talked about some of the things that work for Trey Simonton. That's great. I think you have to define your own process. And when it's not necessarily going your way, you have to be realistic about the numbers and just the grind that it takes, because you'll come out of it. Usually takes a quarter or 2, but you'll come out of it. You'll have all that pipeline there, and now you can start closing a lot of business. I think if you're younger, I would really get into that rigor. As you're more advanced in your career, no matter how good you are, right, it's easy for us to coast. And when things start going south, you have to really take a look at yourself and say, what can I do better? What are the processes, the routines? It's good to have a drill sergeant every once in a while, a manager that maybe isn't your best friend, maybe isn't the person that's fun to go grab a beer with, with come and break you down and try to rebuild you. Now, at the end of the day, you're going to migrate back to all the things that have made you successful in the past, all the things that have gone well. But don't live on that historical success. Try to figure out ways that can make you even better. A LinkedIn can make you better. It makes you better at interacting with your clients. It makes you better at following up. A Google Alerts can make you better. It gives you an email you can send out to people on a regular basis and say, hey, I saw this news in the banking industry. Here's what I think you may want to be aware of. I saw this news in the grocery industry. Here are a group of prospects that maybe you haven't called on in 6 months. Now you have religion or a passion surrounding a trend that can help them. And all those… none of those things have anything to do with closing business.

1:05:10 Scott Ingram: They have everything to do with engaging your clients, developing your pipeline, and really that day-to-day that's going to make you successful long Well, and Trey, what's exciting about you that's become very evident through the course of this conversation is you've never gotten to a point where you're satisfied with yourself and your process and what you're doing. It's very clear that you have continued to grow and grow and grow and evolve in who you are and the way that you do this. One of the things I'm excited about is our conversation later this week at the Enterprise Sales Forum. And I probably should have called this out earlier, but I believe so much in community and surrounding yourself with other people and bringing in these influences. If you haven't checked out the Enterprise Sales Forum, that's not just an Austin thing. Actually, Austin's a pretty recent evolution as they have added chapter after chapter after chapter really around the globe at this point. So most of the big US cities, they're in San Francisco, they started in New York, they're in Toronto now. Um, check them out. Uh, we'll, we'll certainly include links in the show notes that you'll find on top1.fm and see if you can't find a local chapter, uh, to get involved in. And we'll talk about, uh, in a few minutes here, the Sales Success Summit, which is a, a new and different opportunity, uh, to get involved in, in that way. Trey, who in your experience is the is the best seller that you've come across that's carrying a bag themselves?

1:06:47 Trey Simonton: Yeah, Scott, you told me this question was coming, so I put a little thought into it. And ironically, there's, there's 3 reps when I first got to Bazaarvoice, and each one gave me a little nugget that I've held really close to my heart. Uh, there was a guy named Tony Capasso, and love Tony. All 3 of these folks have become sales leaders in other organizations now, which is kind of ironic. But I look back, and these are people that I They were part of the 300% Club. They had had quotas where they were over 300% of their numbers. And Tony had gone on a call with me, and afterwards he said, Trey, you know selling well. You know the value. You know how to take cues and conversations well. He said, I'm going to challenge you to be a better listener. He said, I'm going to challenge you to take your Moleskine, to take your notebook and set it beside you in a meeting. And over a 30-minute meeting, The second you're ready to tell the client something, bite your tongue. And I want you to do it 6 times during a 30-minute meeting. And I want you to target 11 times in an hour meeting. Now, this conversation was 6 years ago, but to this day, I try to do that because you'll be surprised if you just bite your tongue, how much more the client has to give you, how much more they have to say. And even in a negotiation, how silence will push them to say something and kind of meet you in the middle. So Tony really brought me that nugget, and I've kind of held on to it. Uh, there was a woman named Snowflake Rosen, again, very successful rep, but what I saw in her is she built teams around her, and those teams rallied. She was a project manager before she ever got into sales and earned the nickname Closing Rosen because she closed so much big business. And I watched as entire teams felt the success when she closed a big deal and she recognized all of them versus really kind of praising herself. What the power that that showed me is I'll go on the road and I'll have a solutions consultant. I have a team member named Allison Schreider, and I've watched sometimes as clients don't want to talk to the salesperson. They want to talk to the technology person, the implementation person, because these are the people that are going to help them solve their issues. So building that team has been huge. And lastly, Cheryl Donahue was a brief manager of mine, but I saw her when she was a rep and I got a lot of the inspiration surrounding the long-term planning from her. She didn't look at what she could close this month or this quarter. Everything she talked about was what she could do over the next year or 2. You hear the cliché about it's all about time and territory. Well, you got to make sure you've invested in that territory for a long time. For it to bear fruit. Cheryl taught me a lot about that long-term planning, about seeing what a client could be and investing in developing that client so that they could be big deals. All 3 of them have been wildly successful, but those kind of 3 nuggets from those 3 people really have inspired me. And I see some real… some things I've developed in my strategy and my approach based on some of those guidelines.

1:09:47 Scott Ingram: That's, that's fun. That was extraordinarily nostalgic having worked with all 3 of them. Absolutely. Uh, incredible individuals. And, and actually it reminded me, particularly as you were talking about Snow, um, I, I'm pretty sure I shared this story on a recent episode. I'd kind of forgotten about it and it kind of came back and was something that a couple of folks that I've been talking with have thought about, um, instituting. Do you guys still do How the Deal Was Done? We do.

1:10:16 Trey Simonton: We do.

1:10:17 Scott Ingram: Talk, talk about that. Give, give that kind of backstory and structure, because I think it's such an incredible tool and I've never seen it done anywhere else.

1:10:25 Trey Simonton: So, you know, Bazaarvoice is great at culture. They do it really, really well. And we have gongs. Everybody has bells they ring a lot when salespeople close it. But you got to remember those bells, those gongs, those celebrations are about you, the sales rep. The how the deal was done is telling the story of who the new client is that's come to your company, why they bought. But more importantly, and I think that's the biggest purpose, praising the team that contributed. The contracts people that stayed late, that went through dozens of redlines to get a deal done. The IT risk people that spent hours on calls getting a client comfortable with the fact that you're going to protect their data. The solutions consultant that traveled at a time and maybe missed out on something with their family. All those team members that were there to really rally and help you get the deal done. As the salesperson, you're the quarterback, you're the face of the team, which is great, and you should take pride in that leadership. The how the deal was done is Bazaarvoice's way of kind of calling out all the people that really, really made the deal happen.

1:11:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and, and it's a, it's a recognition email that gets sent to the entire organization. Um, and, and back in the day, I don't know if this is, if this is still true, still true at… well, I… it's a different, it's a totally different environment, but this was you know, getting shared with the board and our VCs as we were, you know, getting ready to go public. So just extraordinarily exciting stuff and allowed everybody to share in that energy and in the reward and the recognition and so many unsung heroes in any sales win that that really managed to touch.

1:12:09 Trey Simonton: It's a great callout.

1:12:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So what do you want to know from the top sellers in other organizations?

1:12:18 Trey Simonton: So it's funny, we all develop a style. And again, I talked… my style is not to show a bunch of PowerPoint slides. My style is give to get. I get really interested in other people's style. I get excited about their passions, about what makes them good. Processes are wildly important, but typically there's one thing that makes them wildly successful. I talked about Tony's ability to listen and Snow's ability to build a team. I think I look forward to hearing from more people and top performers across industry. I think you're going to find a lot of us have the exact same focus on regimen and muscle memory and process, but those kind of marquee things that make them unique, I look forward to hearing a lot more about those.

1:13:02 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. So Trey, the last thing we try and do is take all of this and make it actionable for the individual listening to us right now. And we try and turn these into 2-week challenges because that's how long it is between… they'll get… they'll have an opportunity to listen to the next episode and get a new challenge. So what would you have them do to improve themselves and improve their own sales results over the course of the next 2 weeks?

1:13:26 Trey Simonton: So nobody likes to talk about the hard stuff, and nobody likes to talk about the foundation of what it takes to be successful in the year. I'd encourage every rep to take some time, especially time outside of your typical 8-hour day, and do some analysis of yourself. Look back on the last year, understand what your close rate is, how much pipeline you need to hit those goals, and put those in a form that you can start execute on it. I'd encourage you to take your quota, throw it out the window, use it as a baseline, and set your goals for the year 150-200% of those numbers. And then start to back in again the simple math of what it takes day in and day out, week in and week out, to feel good about your progress as you're chasing that larger goal. If you can get that into a spreadsheet and report that up to your manager and honestly ask them to help you, to hold you accountable day in and day out and week in and week out, I think you're going to be wildly successful for the year. Love it, love it.

1:14:25 Scott Ingram: And Trey has offered to share his territory planning, uh, document, so we'll have that both in the Sales Success Community, or if you just want to send me a note, I always love engaging with the folks that are listening to this podcast and getting your feedback and And hear what's resonating with you. So feel free to just send me a note to Scott at top one dot FM and say, "Hey, send me Trey's spreadsheet," and I'll kick it over. So Trey, this has been amazing. I really appreciate you and your time this morning. I'm looking forward to doing our our encore round later later in the week. And don't forget that that encore round is going to generate a giant chunk of of bonus audio. Whether whether it's this one, this might be the bonus, but we'll see how that plays out again. Either subscribe. Subscribe to top1.fm, get that invite into the Sales Success Community, or, uh, or heck, and download the Sales Success Story app at top1.fm iOS app or top1.fm Android app. And finally, I've been intentionally holding off on promoting the Sales Success Summit here in Austin this May because I'm really only interested in bringing together those who are the most engaged and committed. Kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Where I'd set that challenge and kind of push people off because I want to find the committed. So that's why this plug wasn't at the front of the episode and it's at the back after we've spent well over an hour talking with Trey, because you've shown a level of commitment in your engaging with this content. I appreciate that massively. And this will be an opportunity to connect directly with the world-class sales professionals that I've brought onto this show. And others like yourself who are looking to take their own results to a whole new level. So check out top1summit.com. You can enter the referral code SSS for Sales Success Stories when you register. That'll save you $150. And the event just keeps getting better. I've confirmed with Trey this morning that he's gonna be there. So check it out. If you'd like to get just a bit more detail about what we're trying to do around this experience, go back into the podcast feed. Back in about November, I did an episode called, conveniently enough, Sales Success Summit, and just got into the details of what we're trying to create around this. Um, you've been in and committed and learning from this conversation. We would love to, uh, magnify that opportunity to the nth degree and see you there in that event. Thanks for listening and joining us today.

1:17:00 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and And for an invitation to our Sales Success Community, powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.