82: Intentional Selling with Neil Ashford

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. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Neil Ashford. Neil is the top strategic account executive at Dun & Bradstreet in Canada out of Calgary. Welcome to the show, Neil.

0:35 Neil Ashford: Excited to be here. Thanks for having me on, Scott.

0:37 Scott Ingram: So I'm personally excited to dig into your story today because I don't know much about it. And Neil is… for those listening, Neil's another of those who've been a longtime fan of the podcast. He came to the Sales Success Summit last October and was super reserved about letting me know that he's actually the top performer at D&B. So Maybe we'll get to figure out what's going on with all of these super humble top performers. But first, let's start like we always do, Neil, with the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success.

1:06 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. So the first is genuine curiosity and creativity. I think that learning about other businesses is the coolest part about sales. If you want to experience different industries, if you want to learn about different problems, if you want to learn about different technologies and complications that come with them at different companies, There's nothing you can do except sales. And I think it's so incredibly fun to have the opportunity to go in and learn about these different problems and learn about how businesses are tackling them and different personalities at different businesses are tackling them. So I think from there, it stems from myself a need to want to listen and learn. I took a… as part of my organization, we did an active listening course about a year and a half ago, and one of my colleagues made a point that I thought was absolutely spot on the nose, is is that active listening concepts can be kind of silly because if you actually are listening and you want to listen, you don't need to go through a lot of those tricks or concepts. And when you truly listen to understand and truly listen to understand exactly what kind of problems a company is facing and how an individual wants to approach them, from there you can find new approaches on your own and ideas to tackle them and help them out. And so I'm a big fan of the Challenger Sale method. And when they talk about tailoring, teach, tailor, take control, That's how you tailor, by really deeply understanding what they're trying to do. And that comes from a base of genuine curiosity to find out exactly what their challenges are.

2:22 Scott Ingram: You know, I think it's funny, your opening comment about just the curiosity and the exposure to so much different, just different, right? And I think that's part of a big reason why I almost have to be in sales, because I can't… I would get so bored doing the same thing, talking to the same people every day. I love the challenge of different organizations, different structures, different challenges, you know, all, all of that is, is fascinating, right? And you can't help but to, but to be curious about what's going on with all that stuff.

2:56 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. Even in the same industry or across different industries, if they're, you know, using similar technology and getting different results, why is that? Is it part of the organization structure? Is it the personnel? Is it the market that they're approaching? And depending on what you sell, how can you approach to help them be successful? And if you've seen it at other companies, if you've seen other companies be successful and other companies not be successful, you can take some of that experience and bring it to the company and say, hey, here's what I think we can help with, help you with. And it's just such a… it's a really cool part of being in business.

3:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

3:26 Neil Ashford: Yeah.

3:26 Scott Ingram: You know, it's funny, I was, I was looking in on myself having a conversation just this last Friday, and I was talking with an executive that had moved from one client to another company, and we were kind of getting up to speed on what was changing. And it was just so much fun to have a conversation about perspectives about a lot of different things, right? I've been in this industry a long time. He's been playing with these same technologies and in this executive marketing role for a long time. And just to be able to talk, you know, it's just a really incredible conversation and where that leads. And, you know, that's what makes this for me so much fun. I mean, and here I am doing it some more, right? Talking with people that fascinate me in terms of how are you achieving greatness in your role in sales, right? I think it's just such a powerful way. And to your point, it's not hard if you're actually interested. You don't have to leverage too many tips and tricks if you just want to know.

4:22 Neil Ashford: Absolutely.

4:23 Scott Ingram: So what's the second thing?

4:24 Neil Ashford: The second thing is differentiation and value. And it's my approach and understanding of how to understand those concepts. So differentiation is where you create value, understanding your own company's unique capabilities, And then from the curiosity point, your customer's unique needs is where you can create opportunities. It requires a lot of work, like genuine, like university-style study of your own capabilities and features, functions, product-market fit, and that sort of thing, as well as with the customer and actually sitting in deep thought about what their genuine challenges are and how they're approaching them. And once you really understand product-market competition, customer needs, you can bring genuine differentiated proposals and ideas to them that will help solve their challenges. And when you think about differentiation of your company, the one thing that I really don't think you can include is price. It's your capabilities, it's customer outcomes, it's how your business approaches problems. And a lot of time you think and hear about people talk about how sales is something you do. I think I've heard you say this, Scott, sales is something you do with someone, not something you do to someone, something you do for someone. And if it's helping people in that way, that's fantastic. Differentiation is where you help someone in a way that only you can. And when you help someone in a way that only you can, you're creating real transformative change. And so my approach to understanding differentiation and value is something that I think has really helped me be successful.

5:50 Scott Ingram: And when you say only you can, do you think of that more from a my company and my offerings perspective, or do you think of that more from a Neil perspective?

6:00 Neil Ashford: I think both. So from a company perspective, you know, you do have different capabilities from your competitors. And if you don't, you're selling a commodity. And if you can explain those differentiators, and you can go to a company and say, hey, here's what makes us different, here's how we tackle your problem in a way that will… that only we can… that will make you be successful. That's how the company and the business can do it. From a personal perspective, though, absolutely, I agree, because some of the differentiators The same thing. Maybe it's instead of being not price, because everybody's going with the same prices in the company, perhaps it could be not activity levels. You know, if you set an activity level as a baseline, say it's table stakes to have a certain amount of activity, then what are the real differentiators you bring as an individual salesperson, an individual contributor versus some of your teammates? And it can be your approach, it could be your ability to close, it could be your ability to create, you know, fantastic proposals or business cases. Or to understand an entire sales cycle. And hopefully it's all those things. But if you do all those things, then yeah, absolutely, you can differentiate yourself in that way as well.

7:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, so for you, I'm sure we'll get to this, but I'm going to jump ahead. Like, what's, what's your superpower? Like, if you could pick one of those things, which, which one are you doing the best?

7:12 Neil Ashford: For me, it's the business case and understanding the business value. So understanding, again, going back to that understanding of the unique customer challenges If you're going to solve a big problem, you have to have a deep understanding of it, like a really deep understanding of it technically, conceptually, business process-wise, what your individual champion is trying to get out of it, what some of the other companies or personnel inside a company are trying to accomplish. So I think my superpower from that perspective would be like a deep understanding of that and then turning it over to business value and explaining that value. And then from there, everything kind of falls together in my mind.

7:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. Awesome. So what's the third point?

7:48 Neil Ashford: The third point is proactively asking for help. I always want to ask, what don't I know about a product, about a prospect, about everything that we're working on? I, and I have absolutely no shame about it. I want to ask this. So internally, talking to other reps on my team, other reps in… so I'm in Canada, other reps in the United States that may be facing similar challenges, or, you know, similar markets to what I play in, talking to leaders at my company, talking to the product teams, talking to process and project, post-sale, pre-sale. And, you know, always asking that next question of like, hey, I kind of don't understand, can you walk me through it maybe one level deeper? And I've so rarely been turned down from there. And even when it's asking other reps who, you know, may be competing with me for advice or for help, have you seen this before? Have you… how did you approach it? What did you do that was successful and what wasn't successful? And if you're actually going willing to learn, open-minded with a growth mindset to say, I'm not asking just to ask, I'm asking because I want to be better and I'm asking for help genuinely, everybody is willing to help and set some time aside and say, yeah, throw 30 minutes on my calendar, I'll talk you through it. It's almost like at a party, if you ask somebody what they do, people will open up entirely. And they'll tell you everything. And so you can ask people for help and then from there, taking it back and doing the work on your own to say, okay, well now I've learned all these things, how should I integrate it into my approach? So it takes that second step, but asking for help entirely has been transformative for me because people will be very supportive of you if you ask for help.

9:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, going back to your point of the willingness, if that weren't true, this podcast would not exist, right? People would, and my ask is extreme, right? 'Cause it's like, can we schedule 2 hours for an interview. I mean, that's excessive, but it works. And again, people generally are, unless they're just an uber jerk, which I don't meet very many of those, right? I think everybody's willing to, hey, if you want to hear about the way I'm doing stuff and it'll help you and you'll actually act on some of this stuff, that's awesome.

9:53 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. And sometimes I've approached it, you know, on larger deals or larger sales, like proactively building it into my process to say, I need to find someone else who has encountered this before or someone who's dealing with it regularly and set time in their calendar to say, hey, how does this work? How have you done it? And it's not a school thing where you're cheating. It's not anything like that. It's a business and we're here to create value for the business. And if you go in with that approach, there's no shame or problem in doing it. You're doing the right thing by asking for help.

10:25 Scott Ingram: I love this idea. It's not cheating to steal the best ideas from the rest of your organization, right?

10:32 Neil Ashford: No, absolutely not. The right thing to do. If anything, if you're doing the right thing for the business and you're doing the right thing for yourself, you should be doing it all the time. I should probably do it more.

10:40 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. Now, how do you think about mentors? Like, because I'm going to preface this and maybe send you off the wrong track, but you are approaching this in much the same way that I do because I very, very, very rarely have truly formalized mentoring relationships. Instead, it's much more situational as I'm dealing with a particular issue or challenge, I'll go find somebody who I… oh, I, I've got a business case issue, so I'm going to reach out to Neil, or I'm going to reach out to David Weiss, or I'm going to reach out to people who I know are absolutely brilliant at this and have them help me through this particular challenge. And they're all my mentors. I, I mean, I, I feel like I get mentored in virtually every conversation I have, and they're less formalized. Do you think that way too, or, or do you also have quote-unquote, you know, more officialized mentoring relationships?

11:30 Neil Ashford: No, I'm, uh, I'm glad you went down that path because I… when you started the question, I was going to say, well, actually, I don't really have much of a formal mentorship approach. Exactly. I couldn't agree more. I think in some ways you can build more of an active mentoring approach. Maybe in, for example, my sales leader is absolutely fantastic. One of the smartest people I've ever met. He is, you can see it. He's destined to be at the top and is someone that everyone in the business should get behind and they do. And so maybe in more of a general sense from him, I'm asking questions about careers, and but also about opportunities and also about sales process and internal politics and everything like that. So from him, it's more of a general approach from, but from, you know, another rep that I know is particularly strong at closing or going through procurement or something like that. To them, I can ask more of those specific questions, get more of that general or more of that specific mentorship or advice. So absolutely, I 100% agree.

12:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What's interesting is, as we're talking through this, I actually have somebody in mind that I think I actually would like to develop a more formalized mentoring relationship with, and just because they've been down almost exactly the same path that I'm considering, right, at a very macro level, right? And that's one where it's maybe less situational and more about, hey, would it be okay if we just plan to talk once a month or once a quarter or something like that? Because again, he's jumped over a lot of hurdles. Years ahead of me, and I think there's a lot that I can learn from. But by and large, I'm with you. I think many of us would say, you know, I don't know that I've ever really had a mentor yet. At the same time, everybody's my mentor, even the people that I'm mentoring. I'm in a couple of formal mentoring relationships where I am, I am a sort of designated mentor. And I'll tell you, I learn more from those relationships than I think they do.

13:21 Neil Ashford: Yeah, it's almost like when you get asked something specific and you need to you need to really be thoughtful about your response, you almost learn more than if you have just fired out a response or asked somebody for advice in the first place. So it's something that, you know, good leaders will ask, well, what should you do? What have you tried? And from there you have to think, well, shoot, I better actually think about this. And from there you can actually come up with the answer yourself. So I totally see that. Yeah.

13:45 Scott Ingram: Well, let's, let's put this in context a little bit. Just talk to us about your role and your territory and what is the world of Neil and what you sell.

13:53 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. So I am a strategic account executive for Dun & Bradstreet in Western Canada. So I cover our enterprise and mid-market territories for the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, as well as a couple… anybody familiar with Canada… a couple customers in the Prairies. As far as what I sell, so Dun & Bradstreet is in some areas it's a household name, to others people really don't know us. We're a 178-year-old company that really has transitioned into the 21st century in a really exciting way. So Dun & Bradstreet is a, at a conceptual level, It's a database of hundreds of millions of companies globally, everywhere in the world. And then from there, who they are and what they do, and a whole bunch of other different data attributes about those companies as well. Everything from the basics of revenue, industry, employee size, and stuff like that to some really crazy off-the-wall analytics that can define, you know, financial risk as well as buying propensity. And in a giant corporate hierarchy, where different buying centers are located and that sort of thing. And all kinds of other stuff related to data about companies from there. And so from a couple different perspectives, we sell financial risk data, we sell sales and marketing prospecting data, we sell software to make these… to make this data sing. We sell… so we have our own standalone software sets to make this stuff work and for individuals to use it as well. We have applications and integrations into other different software suites like SAP, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and that sort of thing, as well as a suite of APIs to integrate into other systems as well. So we sell all different kinds of data related to businesses. And from a conceptual level, companies will also use this to master their own data and understand their own world. Because if you think of the generic problem of IBM, there's hundreds of IBM locations. You could also call it International Business Machines. You could also call it IBM Corp. And how could you tell the difference and how can you tie all those other attributes together and how can you tell what part of the company you're working with? It's very difficult to do unless you are using some kind of pre-mastered data content like we offer. And so we help companies solve pretty huge challenges around understanding their customers, understanding their suppliers, understanding their whitespace and how they go to market. And I think one thing I hopefully touch on later is differentiating that from a more commodity perspective into really creating value through something that's not really tangible.

16:10 Scott Ingram: Well, so, and you're selling All of that. So you're, you're probably touching a lot of different parts of the, of the organization when you're speaking to clients and prospective clients.

16:20 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. Everything from a chief financial officer all the way down to a marketing analyst and everything in between.

16:27 Scott Ingram: Amazing. Well, before we talk about Neil's results, let me tell you a little bit more about outreach. Ever feel like you can't really connect with prospects or have an organized workflow to get deals closed? Outreach is the number one sales engagement platform that streamlines effective playbooks for high-touch revenue organizations so they can focus their time, effort, and resources on driving better customer engagement and repeatable success. Revenue teams choose Outreach because it's designed to fit the need of every workflow, role, and team. It's dependable, secure, and scalable, and applies machine learning and AI to power better engagement and rep efficiency. You can check them out at top1.fm/outreach to chat with them and receive a free copy of their new book, Sales Engagement: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale. All right, Neil, let's dig into the numbers. Quantify your results for us and help us understand kind of what it's taken to be the number 1 seller there in Canada.

17:28 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. So in… I started with Dun & Bradstreet in the middle of 2016. In 2017, I came first overall in Canada, hitting 127% of that new business target. In 2018, I hit 162% of that target, including a deal that was 11 times my territory's historic average. And I also came first overall in 2018 across all of North America for Dun & Bradstreet in terms of number of new business sales. So that's new logo and new projects or cross-sell to existing customers, and first overall in terms of volume there. In 2019, right now I'm top of the leaderboard And at actually at 162% right now at the time we're, at the time we're recording this, hopefully a couple more things will come in and I'm working on a couple other things to get over that number. So that's my kind of the general percentages there.

18:16 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. And you got a little ways to go. So it'll be a little bit before we release this episode. We are recording this on a Sunday morning in the middle of November. So Neil's got about a month and a half to go past the 162 number of last year. So let's go back and talk about, because I know this is a very sort of varied adventure. And just talk about your origin story, how you got into sales, and kind of the journey from there to D&B.

18:43 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. So my origin story, I came out of university with a degree in economics and psychology, a double major, and it's a perfect fit for sales, but I didn't really know it at the time. I was thinking about, you know, what to do from there. I took a couple of, a couple of interviews for a variety of positions, everything from working as a business analyst and kind of doing a lot of coding and spreadsheets and stuff like that to potentially working as a land negotiator for an energy company that would go out and negotiate land rights with ranchers and the government and stuff like that. None of it really fit with me. I ended up taking a role as a proposal analyst with a company called Telvent, which about a month after I started there was purchased by Schneider Electric. I worked there in our industrial software group selling working with the sales team to sell industrial software that manages pipelines, factories, electricity grids, and has a whole suite of applications related to that. And these were massive proposals, everywhere from a couple hundred thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars. We would, you know, have to design licensing and professional services and hardware and all sorts of other customization. And so my role there was working to complete the proposals and also the costing packages related to them to make sure that the company was making a profit and hitting our profit margin minimums from there. Really cool industry and really cool role. And after a couple of years there, I left to go work for a company called ATCO Electric in our… one of our electric utilities here in Alberta where I live. The role there was pretty unique in that we have a lot of interesting regulations around how electric utilities are related to energy companies and how they build their infrastructure, especially in northern Alberta where we have a lot of very intensive energy mines and stuff like that. I liked it, but after a couple of years, I really got the itch to get back into technology, back into software, back into a bit more of a broader application and where I would deal with… to go back to that curiosity point, where I would deal with more industries, more companies, and maybe more 21st century cutting-edge problems, to put it that way.

20:49 Scott Ingram: Rather than the issue you're having in your mine?

20:51 Neil Ashford: Yeah, exactly. From there, we made the jump to Dun & Bradstreet about just over 3 and a quarter years ago, and it's been absolutely fantastic. I have a fantastic local team. I'm supported very well by the company, and I've got to absolutely love the territory and stuff that I'm working with. It's interesting in terms of the origin story of how I kind of decided to want to be number one, because it was a conscious decision. In late 2016, my sales leader had… I wasn't on every email chain yet, every email distribution list for whatever reason. And one had come out about the President's Club that was happening the next year. And he sent it around to myself and a couple of the new hires, said, hey, have you seen this? And I absolutely didn't even really know it was a thing. Didn't even know it was a concept. One of my colleagues in my office though said, hey, don't get too excited. It's very difficult to win out here. It's There's a lot more business in Canada, in Eastern Canada, in Toronto and Montreal and that sort of thing. Everyone has bigger territories. Everyone has more targets out there. So it's cool, but don't get too excited. And I kind of said, well, I get where you're coming from, but there's no reason I can't do that. I consider myself… I think very highly of myself in terms of my capabilities and my skills and my ability to develop into the kind of seller that I wanted to be. And so in 2017, when we were doing our annual business plans, I put it right on there. I want to come number 1. My plan is to come number 1 and aim high. And I've had it on there every year since. So that's kind of the origin story of how I decided to take that approach and really put the work in to be number 1 from there. Once I started with Dun & Bradstreet, man, I love that mindset piece.

22:30 Scott Ingram: And, you know, not to call out individuals, because fortunately we didn't name them. I would imagine that the person that had that mindset and sort of waved you off of the opportunity, they probably haven't been to President's Club.

22:40 Neil Ashford: No, I don't think so. And it wasn't a mean thing. It wasn't a thing where they were saying, by the way, you can't do this, or don't get too excited because I don't think you can do this. It was more of just a general attitude of, well, it's really hard to do. And just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing. And just because it's hard doesn't mean you shouldn't try your best. Because if you try your absolute best from there and you come number 2 or number 3, I know the podcast is about Sales success stories, people come number 1, but I'd still call it a sales success story for someone to take themselves from, you know, number whatever or new to a company to number 2 or 3 or 5 or 10, as long as they're genuinely trying their best and bring value to the company when they do it.

23:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk about this a little bit more though, right? So you basically started with, with the mindset and the goal, right? Like, I believe it's possible. I'm going to be number 1. How did you get from that decision to kind of figuring out the actions or what it would take to actually make it happen?

23:39 Neil Ashford: So in terms of how I began approaching that, it was actually funny. That year I had this big ambition and I started off doing well, building a big pipeline. But at the end of the first quarter, I was actually a bit behind. I didn't have the close rate I expected or should have had, definitely not to hit my, hit my number and definitely not to hit that ambitious goal. So I did take… at that point, I took a step back and I said, well, what am I doing well? I'm doing a good job getting in front of people. I'm not having trouble getting meetings. I'm doing a good job understanding where I think there's an opportunity. I'm getting the customer to agree that there's an opportunity in general. I'm getting numbers in front of them. And they seem to, for the most part, agree with them. So what am I missing? Where am I, you know, where am I struggling from here? And at this point is where I started to start building the kind of the skeleton of a more formal sales process. I started doing that by asking for help. I spoke to our Director of Business Development. I spoke to the fellow who runs our global accounts. So some of our 5, 6 largest customers in Canada, a couple others as well. And I said, hey, here's my challenges. Here's specifically what I'm trying to struggle with. If you think it's something different, please let me know. But can you talk me through how you approach it, how you are doing these things? And it was a very proactive thing to say, hey, I need help here. I'm not where I want to be. I think I can do it. What specifically do you think I need to do? And there was some stuff around more formal understanding a decision process and understanding a business case and understanding a budgeting cycle and stuff like that, that was definitely very important. And now, I'm a big fan of David Weiss's MEDDPICC strategy. I've got it pinned up behind my computer at my home office desk. I follow that pretty closely. Definitely need to do more of that. But, at the time, I hadn't heard of something like that. So, I started stitching out the more bare bones of a skeleton of an approach pretty close to that. And, from there through the year, I definitely started seeing results. Stuff that maybe I shouldn't have called so early, that was a longer sales cycle. Some of it did close eventually as I kept doing a good job with a high level of activity and meeting lots of customers and getting in front of customers and understanding their challenges and, and going through the rhythm of the business with existing customers to understand what are your challenges, what are you planning for this year, what's going to be different and that sort of thing. I saw an increase in, in dollars coming in and dollars for the business and that sort of thing. So it was definitely an approach of putting a bit more structure around what I was doing, asking for advice and asking for help. And that was probably the first time I did it so intentionally rather than just saying, hey, can you help me with this? Actually putting time in the calendar and saying, this is what I want to talk about. If it's something else, that's great, but this is what I think I want to talk about. Can you help me with this? And then as well, continuing the good activity. I wasn't having trouble getting in front of people. I was doing a good job of understanding where I thought there was an opportunity and getting customers to mostly agree with that or come back with, well, actually we think it's this or that sort of thing and starting to build partnerships. So I don't think that was never really where I was having that challenge. So continuing that good activity so that good things started coming up and obviously in the end it paid off.

26:57 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like it was really just that lack of a process in the middle because you were going from, I can get in front of people, I can have conversations, and then maybe going back to what you were great at, going straight to proposal without, without really telling the story and maybe doing enough discovery, especially around, around their buying process and things like that. Like, is that a fair assessment of kind of what was happening?

27:23 Neil Ashford: Absolutely, 100%. And not meeting other people in the business. So if you're talking to a marketing manager, not meeting with the marketing operations or the salesperson, or even his boss or someone beneath him to say, well, how would you actually do this? If we sold you this software, what would you do with it? How long would it take you to get this rolled out? If we sold you, you know, this specific data element, you know, it's all well and good conceptually, but can you actually do what you think you need to do with it? How would you do that? And so understanding more deeper on the business side, and then as well, absolutely understanding the business process and building the business case versus jumping to proposal and saying… they say, yeah, I mean, however much sounds great, let's go. And then you both kind of just sit there twiddling your thumbs waiting for something to happen. That's, that's not the way it works, unfortunately. I wish it did.

28:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly, exactly. There's a little bit more shepherding that has to happen at that point. So is there anything… I mean, if you could start your career progression over again, is there anything that you would have done differently knowing what you know now?

28:25 Neil Ashford: I'm very happy with where I am, and I think I'm on a very great career trajectory. There's lots of opportunity at my existing company. There's lots shifting that can create some very interesting opportunities. And I'm obviously doing very well right now. But I think in terms of where I started, I think I would've been more proactive about asking for mentorship and more specifics instead of saying, hey, this is great. How can I get where you are? Which is a good question, but a very generic question, which is what I think I was asking a lot of back then. Thinking about back then instead of, you know, do I want to be exactly where they are? Do I want to be somewhere different? You know, do I want to be somewhere different entirely? So maybe asking more specific questions and thinking more broadly. But I think, you know, I got lucky. I started a very interesting company doing some really interesting, really interesting work, great exposure to very complex sales and very complex sales environments, and have had a good trajectory from there. So I've been pretty lucky, but I think being more specific around when I did ask for advice or think about a career path or think about the options that were in front of me, maybe being a bit more specific instead of just, okay, well, this is the natural next step. How do I do that? Maybe think a bit more broadly, if that makes sense.

29:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it does. And it reminds me of on the, on the bus at the summit, I was having a conversation with an individual who was in more of a sales engineering type of role. And was thinking about moving into regular sales, and it's kind of like your proposal role. I mean, what an awesome place to be to get some great exposure and and see all this stuff. And and what I told him was, "Look, this is just such a great place to be in terms of seeing a lot of different styles and approaches and developing sort of a framework of of what you think works and what doesn't work." The challenge, though, is. There's a lot happening behind the scenes that you don't see. And not knowing that is really challenging, right? So again, if you're on the solution consultant or solution engineering side of things, you're seeing the meeting and you're working through the demo and those kinds of things, but you're not seeing all of the little steps that are happening in between, all the emails and quick conversations where we're maybe confirming little pieces of data and we're reaching out to additional people and and finding more stakeholders. There's, there's a lot of stuff. And I think this also happens when you look at, you know, the top performer in your sales organization. You don't, you don't always see all of the extra little stuff that's happening. And that's, that's the part that's kind of hard to get and hard to ultimately figure out as you work to round out that sales process for yourself and figure out like, oh, I had no idea that these other things were happening.

31:16 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. I think like a great example of that was I was working with a, one of our account executives, account managers at the time, and he was working on a really big project to competitively displace one of our biggest competitors to one of the main California utilities in the, when I was working at Schneider in the proposals role. And this was a, you know, a massive sale, multimillion dollars, very, very, very complex. Myself just working on the licensing and understanding the structure and stuff was taking me weeks at a time, a very deep, pretty complex work. And we went down to Los Angeles to do a demo and kind of talk through a bit of the contract negotiations and stuff. And I had about 4 different dollar volumes I was juggling because we weren't sure where we were going to land and what we were going to do. And I remember thinking, well, it's only 4 options. It's not that difficult. And obviously very wrong when we walked into a meeting with about 30 different people, everyone from super, super technical to the… I can't remember the title, but Director of Business Process or something like that, and everyone in between. And seeing how the account manager who was running the sales cycle was ultimately responsible, how he juggled that and how he already knew lots of the questions that were coming because he'd spoken to most of these people already. When I was sitting here thinking, well, You know, I've spent all my couple of weeks here heads down in some deep licensing and margins work and stuff like that. And coming up and seeing, oh, well, there actually has been a lot of very deep sales activity at the same time was a great eye-opener for me from that perspective. Yeah.

32:50 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. So you had a lot of success and I'm curious about what you're most proud of.

32:57 Neil Ashford: I'm most proud of… it's not even actually my the largest sale. I'm proud of… it's one of the bigger ones. It's a medium-sized one. And it's actually something that really solves a pretty unique challenge that I think is pretty important. So I can't name the institution, but it's a semi-public institution in Western Canada. And a couple of years ago, another institution was hit by a pretty serious instance of fraud. Someone had called up to this company and said, hey, I'm Joe from Joe's Plumbing or something like that. I've changed my bank account. Please send all payables to this account now. So the person made the change and next day an invoice came in for, I think it was a couple million dollars. I might have that part of the story wrong, but it was a significant amount of money. And institution paid the money and it turned out it was fraudulent. It was a scammer who had called in and had created a fake vendor and had put in a fake invoice and end up getting paid on it. And that, you know, obviously that's terrible, you know, just terrible news to hear. You feel terrible for the person involved. You feel terrible for the institution involved. And I was thinking, well, I work in data. I work in business data. I work with, you know, my, some of my customers use it for supplier risk. So they use some of our financial data to analyze our suppliers in trouble. We must be able to do something here. And I, I sat down and I thought about it for a bit and I I came up with a use case to use our business data to authenticate that vendors exist and authenticate some of the financial details they're providing to you and use that to prevent this specific fraud use case rather than just a generic risk case. So something very specific, hyper-targeted, and has like an actual value to… like actual tangible value to people so that they're not, you know, potentially getting in huge trouble when they make an innocent mistake like that. By building a process around it. It provides value to the institutions, it provides value to, you know, people as a whole and the community as a whole in my mind. And I brought that to a couple different institutions and one of them went ahead with it. And it's been a couple years now and they're still going. They use it actively and it's a unique use case. And it's, to my mind, being creative, thinking outside the box and creating value for everyone, both for myself, my company, and the institution I was working with to make a difference. So to me, that's something I'm very proud of because it's thinking outside the box. It's something creative and it still creates value to the company. And that's probably the one I'm most proud of. In general, I'm proud of where I've gotten to. I think I've got a long way to go in terms of a career, in terms of building more rigor, more success, moving up the chain internally. So I'm proud of where I am, but I think there's a still a long way to go.

35:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What does moving up the chain internally mean for you in terms of your future?

35:43 Neil Ashford: I'm kind of evaluating between a couple of different options. And it's interesting to really think about it because everybody has very different… when you talk about career paths, everybody's very, how to put it, very… it matters to people. It's very personal, obviously. So when you ask something like, oh, should I move into a pure enterprise role? Right now I still deal with a fair amount of mid-market. Should I move into sales leadership? Some people love it and some people absolutely hate it and want to And in terms of how they hated it, they end up wanting to discourage a lot of people from doing that. To me, I think my ultimate goal is sales leadership, probably like senior sales leadership, not just a first-line manager, but second or third line running a sales organization is really where I'd like to be. And not from a numbers perspective, but from a culture, go-to-market strategy approach. That's where I think I ultimately see myself. But obviously there's a bunch of different paths and It's both understanding where the opportunity is right now and also how to create and understand that opportunity. That is a bit of a challenge from, from my perspective, but it's an interesting problem to work through. And it's a… I'm in a great organization and a fun place to be working towards it right now.

36:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Were the conversations we had at the summit around that stuff, were they helpful for you in thinking through some of that stuff?

36:54 Neil Ashford: It really was. So I think about the 2 of the panels specifically. So the first was the obviously the sales leadership panel where a couple of folks who have done that and stayed there and what they liked about it and then where they were going to go from there. It was very interesting to me to think about and to see how they approached it. Because typically when you talk about sales leadership, the first response from everybody is, well, you lose all the power and you're actually going to make less money and it's very difficult. And I 100% believe all that because I haven't done it and everyone says it, so I believe it. But at the same time, people must do it for a reason. And if you care about people and you care about strategy and you care about, you know, more than just an individual deal and stuff like that, I think it can be a very interesting and exciting path. And obviously the second step from there is very interesting. Now I'm saying this as someone who hasn't done it, but it does look appealing and looks interesting to me. So to get that perspective at that panel was very interesting. And then the career pinball panel, talking about just like things can go in different directions. You can want to make a move and you can make a move here and it can be totally different because even my career, if you think about it, I've been at 3 organizations and all very different industries, very different roles. The core around them has been the same, but they're all very different. And that's been really fun. But I mean, if you'd have talked to me a decade ago and said, is this where you're going to be? I'd be surprised if I had said yes because I wouldn't have even known it existed. So thinking about it and those panels at the Sales Success Summit in Austin were were very valuable to kind of just keep thinking about it. Everybody has their own approach. I'm someone who gets a bit stir-crazy if I do something for too long. Other people want to spend a longer period of time just spending time and developing a territory and working in it for a while, and they enjoy it. And that's great. And you kind of, as a business, as an organization, as a society, you need all kinds. So you need people who want to move up. You need people who are very happy where they are and want to keep doing a better job of it. So It's an interesting thing to think about. Yeah.

38:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Good. Well, I hope… I'm glad that that kind of served its purpose, right? Because it's not one where we're going to have all the answers necessarily, but hopefully just opens up some different ways of thinking and different perspectives. And I sure got a lot out of it. It was, it was a lot of fun to, to host those and talk through some of those questions. Let's talk about… now we've talked about lots and lots of success. Let's talk about the other side in terms of you know, what, what you have found to be the most challenging parts of your journey or a time when you were really struggling and what you did to get through all that.

39:26 Neil Ashford: Yeah. So when I was working at the second position I had, that I was working with the electric utility, I was in a bit of a tough spot career-wise. Just at the time, the organization was going through a lot of change. At the time I was there, the oil price had crashed and that was kind of doing a lot of damage to the Western Canadian economy at the time. We had decided to put all our eggs in that basket and it didn't really work out. So I was in a tough spot. It was an organization going through change. That meant layoffs, that meant significant challenges. And the attitude on my team was certainly not the most positive. And that was where I was doing a lot of thinking about what do I want to do in my career? Do I want to stay and try and work my way up? Do I want to go somewhere different? If it's somewhere different, where do I want to go? What kind of opportunities exist? And what am I good at? What do I want to do? Even if it's something I'm good at, does that mean it's something I want to do? So I was very intentional about trying to find the right position. And even though I was in a bit of a tough spot at the time, I ended up turning down a couple of positions just because I didn't think they were right for me. It might get me out of this immediate jam, which really wasn't that much of a jam, but it might give me a less immediate one. But would it have me 5, 10, 15 years where I want to be? Or if I went there and I stayed there for 5, 10, 15 years, would I want to do that? And it wouldn't work for me and it wouldn't work for the organization if I did something like that. And so it'd be kind of a no-win proposition. So I was very intentional about, you know, what do I want to do? Where do I want to go? I, you know, spent a lot of time thinking and writing it out. And in the end, I ended up making a jump to Dun & Bradstreet, which has been absolutely fantastic. So I think I did the right thing. So that was kind of where it was the toughest, when the organization was in a really tough spot and I wasn't sure what to do and probably missing a bit of, you know, to keep going to that theme, mentorship and guidance. At that company, they're just on the team at the time, for whatever reason, there just wasn't as much of it. And so it was a bit difficult to be asking for that advice internally. And that's where I had to really be thoughtful and spend a lot of time thinking on my own about what my next move would be. And in the end, it worked out very well.

41:31 Scott Ingram: So I think the patience piece of that is really interesting to me, right? Because especially when you're in, you're in that pain, right? You're in this wrong role. It sucks. And you just want to be somewhere else. It's easy to pull that ripcord on the first one. Or, I mean, I also see a lot of folks jump to the higher dollars. Without giving thought to the broader implications and recognizing that actually that's just going to be a great deal of suffering and they're not going to enjoy it. And in most instances, the dollars never materialize because you can't… you just can't perform. How were you able to just think through that process and make such a deliberate step?

42:15 Neil Ashford: Well, it was challenging because it's hard to turn that down when you see something like that, when you see those dollars floated in front of you, and it might be realistic. You know, it might be real dollars that are out there and are available, and someone's making it. But would you make it? Would you? And you would… would you be happy doing it? And, you know, 1.5, 2 years down the line, would you still be happy there? Would you be looking to make a jump again, whether you're hitting your number or not? It's very… it's a real interesting challenge. I think the value of patience can't be understated. You need to be thoughtful. These are very big decisions you're making, right? It's your family, it's yourself, it's your career. It's, you know, maybe one wrong move is okay, but one or two or three in a row can really hurt you for the long term. And it's hard to know from the outside, which is why it's so important to be very thoughtful about it. I think I, again, you know, got a bit lucky in terms of being able to be a bit patient, knowing to a good extent the area I wanted to land and being able to be a bit patient there because other people might not be in a position where they're able to financially or career-wise where they maybe have to be a bit more not patient. I don't want to say impulsive because I think not patient is a bit more correct there. So I was, you know, again, a bit lucky in terms of financial position, point in my career and stuff like that. So it's something I had the capability to do and I'm definitely glad that I was that thoughtful. And, you know, back to that point about the, the career path from here, I'm kind of in the same position now, and I'm definitely making a point to be very patient and deliberate about whatever the next step might be.

43:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, the other part, it's really funny because I am… and again, apologies to folks listening to this because it's really hard to forecast the timing of, of all of these pieces, both in terms of when this episode drops. And I don't remember the timing. Sales Hacker is doing kind of a virtual summit. That I'm participating in and then talking specifically about this very topic. And just so many of the things that you're talking about in terms of the intentionality and thinking a couple of steps ahead and just running a meaningful process. I mean, at the end of the day, I always think of it as you're in sales, you should be expert. At running this process because it's a sales process. The only thing that's different is that you only have one product to sell, right? There aren't 2 Neils. There's only one Neil. So, you know, you develop a good strong pipeline and you qualify that pipeline and you're really looking for the right fit and developing the right solution. And then, you know, I mean, we can continue the analogy, but it's exactly what it is. And it's one that It's, it's life-altering, right? If, if you… the way I always think about it is if I'm joining a relatively small organization that's say 100 people, I'm 1% of that company. And yet I'm going to be devoting 100% of my working hours to that endeavor. So the order of magnitude there, this matters to me 100 times more than it does to that company in terms of getting the fit right and making sure that this This is, this is exactly the right thing. So at the end of the day, I think it's really incumbent upon us to be thoughtful through that entire process and, and know this is ultimately where I'd like to go and thinking a couple of moves ahead and, and just going through and doing a really great due diligence process to make sure, is this being represented correctly? Is this really the right fit? Is, is the leadership and the culture right? Is my direct manager going to be somebody that's going to help me grow? Or are they going to be a hindrance that like makes my life miserable? And just the process that you go through to, to figure all of those, those things out so that you're not taking a lot of steps. It's funny, I went through work. Well, I don't want to… I'm not going to share the specifics of how I saw this, but I was just looking at a variety of LinkedIn profiles and just saw like, oh my gosh, this whole group of people have been in account executive roles and have made lateral moves every 1.5 to 2 years. Yeah, that's worthless. I mean, you're, you're, you're going nowhere because you're not productive for 1.5 to 2 years. Like, you don't really totally hit your stride for at least, you know, probably 6 months or a year. And again, depends on the industry and depends on the complexity and depends on a whole lot of things. But there's no reason and there's no value in making moves like that if they're not leading you towards something bigger and you're not there because you're learning something or you're developing some skill set that's going to take you down the next progression in your career, whatever you want that to be.

47:04 Neil Ashford: I could not agree with you more, Scott. My sales leader and I have talked about that a lot in terms of people that he came up with, like his original… call it like his original class of salespeople when he started in his first role, and just seeing some of the different career paths and stuff like that. Some people have, you know, gone on and stayed somewhere and done very well. Some people have made a few moves, some people moved into leadership, and some people have, you know, made those 1, 1.5-year, 2-year jumps. And it's just, it's a pattern. And it's one of those things where you think, you know, if you were a bit more intentional about it, would you have to make those changes? And for some people, they might want to, maybe it works, probably not on the whole. So you, you know, you definitely want to be very thoughtful and intentional. I think it was your book in the original, or your story in the original Sales Success Stories book, about be intentional about what you want.

47:53 Scott Ingram: Yes.

47:53 Neil Ashford: And spend some time write it out. And it doesn't have to be super detailed. It doesn't have to be I mean, it's great if it is, and then go look for that. But for someone like myself, I don't know down to the specific, I want to sell a $5 million territory in Wisconsin selling this specific item. I don't know that level, but I do know I want to be in technology. I want to be in software. I want to be leading a team at some point or leading a global account structure at some point doing really interesting work that solves big problems. And from there, at least it's a starting point and you can be specific and intentional about what you're looking to do.

48:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and maybe the biggest thing in the position that you're in, when you perform right, when you're nailing the numbers, lots more doors are open to you. Whereas if you're just underperforming or at a mediocre level of performance, you don't have nearly the same types of options, right? So that's, that's another thing to really consider. Is it comes to me, it comes back to the patience, right? I think there's, it's, it's so easy to make a change. Sometimes it's harder to stay, it's harder to perform, it takes work. But, but when you do those things, the, the doors that open are, are multiple.

49:06 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more.

49:08 Scott Ingram: All right. So let's, let's get into the, the routine side of things. And I, I love just digging into how folks are, are structuring their days and, and tackling things. So, you know, just walk us through a, a day in the life alarm goes off, what time, all the way through to the point your head hits the pillow. What does that look like, Neil?

49:26 Neil Ashford: Well, for me, I like my sleep. If it was possible, I was sleeping as late as I possibly could. At this point, we just got a puppy, so we're getting up a bit earlier. So, for me, it's 7 o'clock-ish getting up, taking the dog out for a walk, taking the dog outside, and spending a bit of time with my fiancée before she heads off to work. I work from home. So, It's basically from there, putting the dog in the crate and closing the door in my office and getting to work. And from there, I'll start by reviewing emails from overnight or from the end of the day at the previous stages to see if there's anything critical going on. If there's anything from a sales cycle that needs immediate attention or from an implementation or project, something that's been sold that needs to be addressed or needs to be routed to somebody else. And then from there, I'll kind of build out my day from there. I, you know, very active in terms of prospecting and, and meeting with customers and kind of going with the rhythm of the business for existing customers and stuff like that. So likely every day I have at least 1 or 2 customer calls scheduled or more. And from there, I'll kind of build my required prospecting or outreach activity, my required check-in activity with existing customers, check in on existing projects and checking on existing sales cycles or proactively moving an existing sales cycle. I'll kind of build it around those meetings. If I don't have any meetings, that's a sign that at some point I, in the recent weeks, I wasn't doing enough. So I'll put a bit more focus on that, moving along a sales cycle or outbound prospecting, but I'll kind of build it around there. I'm not someone who… I've tried building intentional blocks of from 9 to 10, I'm going to prospect from 10 to 11. I'm going to push along sales cycles. From 11 to 1, I'm going to meet with customers. I've tried that and it just doesn't work for me as much. Maybe I have a bit higher volume than people who are able to block it off that way, or maybe it's just a personality thing. But I'll, you know, I'll try and fit it in along with those existing customer meetings towards the end of the day. You know, maybe, you know, last couple hours, if I don't have any customer meetings booked in, then it's really following up on on the existing meetings I've had that day, making sure that everything from that to-do list gets checked off or put onto the calendar. So when I have a lot of follow-ups, I'll push them to a Thursday or Friday and just put them as a, at 10 o'clock to 11, 10 o'clock I'm doing all these follow-ups and I'll make sure everything's put there on the calendar as a to-do list. And then throughout the day on that day, I'll make sure that those get completed. So it's intentional in terms of understanding exactly what activities have to get done, but I don't particularly put them at a certain time. And then, at the end of the day, I've got my to-do list. I'll make sure that everything is written onto the next days. And then, I like to spend a bit of time reflecting on making sure that I accomplish something, making sure that I did move something forward, whatever it is. And that way, I'm able to say, okay, well, I accomplished something today. If I didn't, well, then there's a problem of some kind and I need to look at why. There's days where you're at a full, you know, back-to-back-to-back internal meetings for whatever reason, and that does happen. Some project meetings, then a product update, then a team meeting, and, and you just don't get as much prospecting or sales cycle time as you'd like. And then you just know the next day you have to, to move it along and focus more on that. So really spending a bit of time to reflect on it. And then from there, you know, that's the end of the day, a generic day. Shut it off and my fiancée gets back from work and either go to the gym or I play rugby, so go to rugby practice or go to a game or something like that or spend some time with the dog or watch some TV and hang out or something like that. And then, at the end of the night, I kind of purposely don't check my phone because I work from home. If I spent all my time checking my phone or carried my phone with me, I'd probably go crazy. So check it again just to make sure nothing crazy came up, or just to kind of let that anxious side of the brain take a look and say, okay, everything's okay, or I know what I have to do tomorrow, so I don't need to think about it, and shut it off again before the next day.

53:34 Scott Ingram: Nice. Now, with, with the prospecting piece specifically, are there metrics or things that you're holding yourself accountable to, whether that be around a certain level of activity or a certain level of meetings? Like, how do you measure that?

53:47 Neil Ashford: I focus on the meetings rather than the activity. I think in the market that I'm in, where I kind of handle both an enterprise market for a territory as well as a mid-market territory, and there's not as much… there is a fair amount of transactional deals, but it's not entirely focused around that. So for me, I don't really focus on number of activities, outbound emails or outbound calls. I certainly still do them. But what I measure in the end is the amount of meetings that I've got. And the way I track that is basically just, do I have a… I've got a separate spreadsheet that I track on my own of my existing pipeline, and I track it by quarter of existing open opportunities. So Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, and then I've got closed, I've got them colored in green, and then open, just no color at all, and then dead in red. And as long as I've you know, got a fair amount of open opportunities in each quarter, as well as a fair amount of dead to prove that I'm disqualifying enough, you know, that I'm not just taking whatever comes across the board, that I am disqualifying, that I'm going through a sales cycle, even if they said originally, okay, it's a Q4 thing, now we're not going to do it. In some senses, it's actually a good thing because that means you're actually going through a sales cycle and you're actually getting to a decision point. Now, if you have too many of those, that's a problem. But to the point of, you know, prospecting, that's kind of how I'm tracking it in terms of active opportunities, active, and then making sure that I've got daily customer meetings of some kind to be moving things along. But I don't track like outbound volume of emails or something like that.

55:21 Scott Ingram: Got it. So, so I think what I heard is you've got a pretty nice visual process to just kind of check in on overall pipeline health and you're making sure that you've always got a nice full pipeline and you're, you're recognizing that you're not going to win every deal that you, that you engage in.

55:38 Neil Ashford: Yeah, absolutely. I wish I do that in a spreadsheet and it's actually not that complicated, but I really wish that Salesforce had something like that as our CRM. Like it doesn't, I don't know if any Salesforce product people that are listening, it doesn't seem that difficult. I'm sure it's more difficult than I'm making it sound, but I would love if that was available there instead of having to do that on my own.

55:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, or some type of sales ops wizard. Salesforce will do anything. It's just a matter of getting it to do it. That's not always so easy, especially for, for those of us that that aren't super steeped in that skill set. Are there other habits or routines that are really central to your success and the way that you operate?

56:15 Neil Ashford: I think, you know, one of the big ones is I love being in front of customers on days where I, you know, where I'm back to back to back in internal meetings or even project meetings like, hey, the next thing we need to follow up with is this, or we need to understand this about our own solution before we can go to the customer. You know, we need to go through these things. That's great and it's important, but I love to be in front of customers. So So for me, like habits and process, I need to make sure that I'm in front of customers regularly or else I'm going to go stir crazy and I'm not going to get what I want in terms of results. So I'm very intentional about making sure that I have at least a couple customer meetings a day. And I love when I get the chance to do them in person. So for me, there's a couple main cities in Western Canada, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, kind of the big ones. I do travel regularly to make sure that I'm in front of customers in the different areas. And to me, that makes it very, again, I think intentional about being in front of customers to make sure that, you know, you have enough activity. So I think it's a habit to be in front of customers to make sure that it's happening. In terms of other habits or processes, I can't really think of any others aside from that, that general idea.

57:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So what, what percentage of your time are you on the road?

57:27 Neil Ashford: Probably 25 to 33%, you know, a quarter to a third. You know, I'll spend… Edmonton and Calgary are very close, so it can be a… it's a couple-hour drive. So it can be a thing where, you know, you head up for a night and you spend the next day having meetings, and then you stay overnight and you have a couple more meetings, you come home. Vancouver is somewhere where, you know, lots of our customers are, so want to be out there. They're out there just over every month, every month and a half, and it kind of keeps things moving along to say, hey, I'm in town. When you say something like that, you're means you're not in town regularly. It means you're not there all the time. So people are, in my mind, are more apt to take those meetings. It's actually harder to get a meeting somewhere where you are regularly, in my opinion. So when you say that and say, hey, I'm in town, can we meet? It also forces follow-up activity to say, hey, well, we talked about this, I'm going to be back, we should talk about this, and moving a sales cycle along and creating an opportunity. So travel in that sense to me almost creates opportunities. So I like to do it because I like to have opportunities. So kind of that general amount, but at the same time, you know, can't travel all the time.

58:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's funny that you call that out specifically. I mean, that, that is probably, if I, if I'm really honest about it, probably one of the core tricks in my book, right? I always start with an anchor meeting, right? I'll rarely go someplace completely on spec. Instead, I'll get one meeting. And then once I've got that meeting, then, then you're playing the I'm in town card. And, you know, you define your dates like, I'm in town these 3 days, you know, let's, let's try and find some time. And to your point, it tends to be just a good forcing function that, yeah, I guess it's just scarcity, right? There's, there's only so much Scott and he's only here these days, so we better find a way to make this work.

59:03 Neil Ashford: Yeah. And it's, it's crazy how well it works because if you, if you call up a random customer in your town today and say, hey, are you available for lunch, you know, Tuesday next week? They'll say, well, Maybe, you know, what's it for? What's the point? If you call up a customer or a prospect and say, hey, I'm in town, I'm in town next Tuesday, can we make sure to get together at some point during the day? How does lunch work? They're gonna be like, yeah, absolutely. It works so well. And then as long as it's a legitimate meeting and there's actual opportunity and you're, you're working towards something, you're likely to come out of that with something. So it's… and then you're almost forced to come back and have that as your anchor meeting and then you just keep building from there.

59:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Any other travel tips and tricks that you've, that you've picked up? Because, you know, I You're on the road enough for that to matter.

59:47 Neil Ashford: I think the hardest thing is seeing, you know, emails that you normally would be routing somewhere or something coming through throughout the day. And, you know, you're driving, you can't be looking at your phone. You're, you're sitting out in front of an office where you head in for a meeting for 20 minutes and you're, you're talking to the person who traveled with you or you're, you know, going through your slide deck or something beforehand. So it can be, it can be very challenging to, to do because you do fall behind. It's the fun part of sales is to you know, be in front of customers. The challenging part is to do all the catch-up work that happens when you're in front of them. And when you travel, you're in front of customers so much more, and it's a good thing, but it does mean there's more work to be done. So I make sure when I'm traveling that I'm spending time catching up but not going crazy with it, because you do want to, you know, you do want to relax, because it's hard to be on that much. You… it's hard to be, you know, lose your routine, be away from the family, not going to the gym, whatever. So at the end of the day, spending… before you go for dinner, making sure to spend that time and just hammer stuff out. People understand, your support teams understand that a quick, hey, can you look at this? Instead of maybe if you spend a bit more time, usually, hey, I think this is the issue. Can you look into this? Give me a call if you need help. Just, hey, can you look at this? People understand. But making sure that you get it out so that you don't have that anxiety, that you don't have that backlog, And that you can still have time to relax and create what kind of enjoyable environment you can, maybe hitting the hotel gym or whatever when it's not your typical environment. That's kind of the biggest thing to me is making sure that at least gets done or triaged so that you're not… I'm not in a position where, you know, feeling anxious about it or behind or kind of struggling from that perspective.

1:01:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I have… I think my approach is similar. And the one thing that I've changed here recently is I'm using out-of-office messages a lot more than I used to, right? I used to just be like, I don't want people to know that, you know, I'm not always there for them and I'm just going to let this go and I'll try and stay on top of it. I've actually found it's a little bit better to have something automatically set the expectation that things are going to be a little bit slower. And then if I can, you know, still respond quickly between meetings or what have you, that I'm essentially overdelivering, right? It's, it's sort of a way to set that expectation that, look, there's going to be a delay, right? I'm, I'm in the air. Who knows whether or not I'm going to have Wi-Fi? I'm going to be in onsite meetings. Who knows whether or not I'm going to be able to peek at email in those periods or if I'm going to be just, you know, sequestered for hours on end and just setting expectations around that and then, and then managing out because you're right. No matter what, you're going to fall behind.

1:02:26 Neil Ashford: Yeah, it's a fact of life. So whatever you can do to manage it and make it better definitely helps.

1:02:31 Scott Ingram: Awesome. What about your information diet? What are you listening to, reading, watching, and when does that happen?

1:02:37 Neil Ashford: Yeah, I'm a bit of a, a bit of a nerd for some of this stuff. I love it. I read The Economist weekly. I subscribe to a website called Stratechery that is like technology analysis and news on how the big tech companies like Google and Apple and Facebook, how they're approaching their markets. It's really interesting. I read TechCrunch and then I read another blog by a fellow who was a CEO of a software company in Silicon Valley called KellBlog. The guy basically writes about a bunch of really interesting software as a service metrics and revenue metrics and from a CEO's perspective, how you create territories and And what he measures VPs of sales on and what the knockoff effect of that is for numbers for individual sales reps. For a sales nerd like myself, it's so interesting to look at those metrics and that stuff. And then as well, a bunch of industry newsletters, so data newsletters, sales newsletters, marketing newsletters, because that's kind of the area I play in. For podcasts, I love podcasts. I listen to them all the time. I probably drive my fiancée crazy with how when I'm cooking dinner or whatever, I'll be listening to something rather than listening to music or whatever. But obviously, Scott, your podcast, the Sales Success Stories and Daily Sales Tips are the number one. I absolutely love them. I pretty much binge on pretty much everything. Brian Burns has a really good podcast, The Brutal Truth About Sales and Selling. Harvard Business Review is very good. And then from my market data and software, I also listen to a couple of podcasts focused around those. So we do a lot of work in the Salesforce ecosystem. So I actually listen to a couple of Salesforce podcasts just to see how people in that world think, because it's different than how I think. So I listen to a couple of those. I listen to a couple of big data podcasts and then one called CXOTalk, which is where senior leaders at different companies will talk about the different challenges they're facing and how they're approaching business trends. So I, I try and get a lot of different information. And I build it into my day. You know, I spend some time intentionally reading this stuff. You know, some would call it taking a break. I go, I spend my breaks reading a lot of this stuff and trying to focus on these things so that I can be more informed when I, when I do go to customers. And then I also just find it genuinely really interesting.

1:04:51 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And selfishly, I'm super curious because we started talking about this a little bit before we hit record, just kind of your, your journey with Sales Success Stories, because I know it informed a lot of kind of the development of your process?

1:05:05 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. So I, when I started with Dun & Bradstreet, I, you know, had a, I came from a very different market. So I was coming from software originally, but industrial software and a very different market in general. And then I was working obviously in a physical infrastructure, a very, very, very different environment. And I ended up where I wanted to be, but I had a lot of learning to do in terms of both the industry and as well as like the actual process of of running that full sales cycle and a very unique one as well on its… and running it on my own. So I was looking for content like this. I was looking for interviews or for books like this. And there just wasn't that much out there. There was the classics, you know, SPIN Selling, Fanatical Prospecting, Challenger Sale, Challenger Customer. Like, I love that stuff. I'm all about all of that stuff. But there wasn't the deep just individual-level content for people doing what I was doing. And when I came across this podcast, it was just like the light opening at the end of the tunnel. And I'm not just saying that, I genuinely mean it. So I consider some of the people I've listened to on this, and now that I've got the chance to meet many of them and speak to many of them, it's just, it's absolutely fantastic what you've created here, Scott. And I really do owe a lot of my career success to listening to this and then from there applying it.

1:06:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's so exciting to me that we're at this point, right? Because that was, I mean, certainly a lot of the initial vision, right? That people that were big fans of the show would ultimately be able to come on to the show because, because we, we helped elevate their performance and their success and what they were doing. So it's, it's a blast to me that this is like really starting to happen and, and, you know, that the summit is what it is because of exactly what you just described, right? These, these people are like my virtual mentors. Which was the goal, right? I always think of these conversations and the value to you as you know this is your opportunity to mentor at scale because so often, I mean, I'm like this, right? Like we have the same conversation and we're talking about the background and some of the ways that we do certain things over and over and over again. It's like gosh, if I could just record this once and send people to this, we would have much more powerful follow. Conversations, assuming they're willing to do that level of, of, of work and spend yowzer, lots of time listening to, to us talk. So, I, I appreciate you, you sharing that and, and being a part of this community. It's, it's super exciting and, and gratifying for me, certainly to, to see that. What, what about the, the tools and apps that in your world, what is, what is the, your personal tech stack kind of look like?

1:07:43 Neil Ashford: Yeah, I, I don't use probably as many, maybe as many as some other people do. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is, is pretty much the number one to me. It's, it's a game changer in terms of being able to look at the person you're speaking to, look at their background, look at organization as a whole and understand who some of the, some of the players might be in the different roles. I think if you're in any kind of technology sales, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a no-brainer. I do have to give a shout out to Dun & Bradstreet. Our sales tools I think are absolutely fantastic and I actively use them. There's 2 specifically. First is D&B Hoovers. So prospecting information and companies, understanding, you know, our company hierarchies and industry and analysis and stuff like that. And then the second is our first research product, which I actively read, which is industry analysis, trends, questions to ask decision makers in different roles. It's, it's really cool. They're integrated together. So I spend actually time before meetings, even if it's for an existing customer, just having a quick refresh and seeing, okay, well, what's hitting this industry in general? What questions should I be asking a decision maker in this role in this industry? So I think those are, those 3 are kind of my main intelligence sales tools. And then as well, I have those Excel spreadsheets tracking my pipeline, tracking my opportunities by product, line of business, volume, my close rate, and then my gap to target. And basically by tracking those, you can understand, okay, well, am I, am I really overleveraged here? What happens if I What happens if I don't have my typical close rate there? I better make sure I'm continuing across all of our lines of businesses, continuing to create enough volume and create enough opportunities that I can hit these close rates that I can make the number that I want to make. So spreadsheets and then a couple of sales tools, but it's not that many.

1:09:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Again, you'll hear this in, I think, the episode that'll go live before yours, which is another interview from another individual from the summit. Oh, cool. There is a massive theme emerging around like the lack of technology that the top performers are using, right? It's, it's probably not helpful for me if I want to continue to work with technology sponsors that are selling sales tools. But man, it's, it's, it's really, I think, becoming a pretty consistent theme in terms of what that looks like. And interestingly, I have a bit of a personal connection. It feels like more of a virtual mentorship because I don't know that he would remember who I am, but Gary Hoover, who started Hoover's, is… I think he's… I think he left, but he was in Austin for a really long time, built some pretty significant businesses here, Hoover's being one of them, and is just an incredibly brilliant business mind. I mean, this, this guy has consumed more information about business probably than most anybody in the world, and I've taken a couple of classes from him and And kind of followed some of his stuff. And it's fascinating, fascinating stuff. And obviously Hoover's was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet some many number of years ago.

1:10:37 Neil Ashford: Yeah, that's, that's cool. That's such a small world. That's, that's really interesting.

1:10:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So what about your sales philosophy? Like, what, what is that? Do you, do you subscribe to sort of a particular idea?

1:10:50 Neil Ashford: I've mentioned the Challenger Sale a couple of times, and for the most part, I I agree with most of the concepts. So the Challenger Sale, for maybe people who don't know, is basically the concept that you need to challenge your customers, bring insights that they might not know, bring specific business insights to them, tailor it to their business, and then take control of the sales cycle. It came out of some research that I think Gartner had done maybe 10 years ago that basically examined the different kinds of sales archetypes of a lone wolf, a relationship seller who just wants to be more of your friend and and focus on that, a challenger sale who's more of the archetype I just discussed, and then a couple others as well. And I subscribe for the most part to that concept. In every situation though, to the tailoring point, you do need to treat it differently. So if I come across one where someone does want, even if it's a larger size, they want more of a relationship sale, you do need to adjust. But for the most part, I I like the challenger idea. From a business process, I subscribe to the MEDDPICC philosophy. So kind of if you… and then at the top, if you think of it as a pyramid, so at the bottom, you know, you're talking through the business process. So MEDDPICC, do I have my business case aligned? Do I have my metrics, economic buyer, decision process, decision criteria, paperwork? Do I know, identify pain? Do I have a coach or a champion? And do I know the competition? So those are the MEDDPICC. Do I know those things? And do I… have I had a sales process? If you think of the next layer up the pyramid of challenger, have I, you know, brought unique insights? Have I built a business case? Have I challenged them to do something differently to avoid being a commodity? And then at the very top, that value, top of the pyramid value. Have I… am I bringing unique value? Am I bringing differentiated value through all these items? And if that's the case, if you can align all those things, most of the time I'll probably close that deal. And when there's gaps there, when I haven't done those things, I probably won't. So that's, for the most part, the sales philosophy I subscribe to.

1:12:51 Scott Ingram: Nice. Well stated. So what about your style? How do you really approach and tackle that pyramid?

1:12:58 Neil Ashford: Very consultative. I want to, you know, to go back to those original points, I want to understand, and I genuinely want to understand because every business is different. I work with a couple of financial institutions and they're very, very different. And you from the outside, you wouldn't think they would be, and you kind of wouldn't think they should be. It doesn't seem that they should be that different. But the same with energy companies. You wouldn't think they would be that different in terms of how they manage their suppliers, and they use our data to do some of that. You wouldn't think they would be that different, but they are. And there are legit reasons for it, just in how they've built their company and how they want to be successful and how they've structured some of their organizations. So very consultative to understand that upfront. And then from there, you know, do that tailoring and say, okay, well, here's how I can help you because I've seen it elsewhere. And yes, it's different. And this is why it's different. But in the end, you want to get here, I can help you get there. And this is how. So I think that consultative approach, I'm not sure if that is the classic solution selling or not. But like, that's the, that's the kind of style and approach I take. I want to learn upfront, do that deep discovery, targeted questions, not generic questions like, hey, what's, what's up today? Still very targeted questions, still very very, you know, deep targeted discovery. And then from there, you can start building that business case. And people want to help you because they want to solve these problems on their own. And if they believe that you're capable of doing it, if you, if you walk the walk, if you act like you can solve it and you genuinely can solve it, and you walk the walk and you can talk the talk, people will, you know, they'll open up to you and they'll let you help them. And from there, you know, you can act like a consultant and go in and use that sales philosophy to solve their problems.

1:14:30 Scott Ingram: Love it. Again, well stated. So let's transition and talk a little bit about kind of mindset and motivation, really starting with like, how do you think about motivation and what ultimately drives you?

1:14:43 Neil Ashford: I'm not sure. I want to be very successful. I come from a pretty high-achieving family. I'm the only person in my family without a secondary degree. My brother's a lawyer. My sister has a Master of Chemical Engineering. My dad has an MBA. My mom has a degree as well. I'm in some sense academically from a very high-achieving family. So I kind of have these expectations for myself that I should be achieving big things. I should be doing cool things in business. I should be doing cool things outside of work. I should be working hard to achieve these things and in turn providing for my family in the way that I have the opportunity to because of this skill set and because of the industry that I'm in. From another sense, and I don't really know why, and I'm not sure if this is the right thing or not, but I've kind of got a bit of a chip on my shoulder at work where not in an antagonistic way, but in a… I want people to know who I am. I want people to be coming to me for advice. I want to be known as a thought leader in my company and in my industry. And I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about that to make that happen. I'm not really sure where that's coming from because it's not an antagonistic way, but it still exists. So that's how I approach the motivation piece. I've got high expectations. I want to have high expectations. And I I want to make that known.

1:15:55 Scott Ingram: What about the mindset side? Like, how do you think about that? How do you manage that? Like, where does that come into play in your world?

1:16:04 Neil Ashford: I think from a couple of different perspectives, there's… if you have those high expectations, you almost… you have to have a positive mindset because if you're, you know, positively wanting to approach it from a growth mindset perspective that you can achieve more and I can do more and I can learn more. So I've got a positive mindset around it. I want… I have this vision of where I want to be and what I want to achieve and kind of what motivates me from there. And if you have that growth mindset, maybe back to that asking for help is kind of where I'm thinking in my head right now to say, hey, I can do more. I need to help myself do more by asking people for advice or learning this on my own or spending my downtime reading a newsletter or listening to a podcast that can teach me more. So I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but maybe that growth mindset to, to get to where I want to go.

1:16:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes sense.

1:16:52 Neil Ashford: Awesome.

1:16:52 Scott Ingram: So, Neil, is there something you believe that the average sales rep would think is crazy?

1:16:57 Neil Ashford: I think the structure, and I'm not sure if it's something that maybe they don't think is crazy. Maybe people are just… they don't know it or they don't want to put the rigor around it. But it was something I really saw at the Sales Success Summit in Austin, and it was something I really realized I need to do more of, is putting that rigor and intentionality around the sales process. So it's something I do, but a lot of the people I met there, they do it to the nth degree more. And putting that rigor, doing these things intentionally, specifically asking, what is the decision criteria here? To me, that's a scary question to ask because what if they say, oh, well, it's something you can't influence or you can't ask that. It's like a lot of questions in sales. It's a scary question to ask, but you need to ask it. And so putting that intentionality and rigor around Okay, I asked it, I've checked it off, I understand it. Looking at something like Trey Simonton, that joint action plan that he developed, I think that's such an interesting concept and such a fantastic idea. That's the level of rigor that I want to get to and I'm going to get to. I think the average rep would probably think that's crazy because maybe not because the concept is crazy, but because getting over that hump to do it can be pretty intimidating.

1:18:07 Scott Ingram: Right, right. So it's going to require work. In other words.

1:18:09 Neil Ashford: Yeah, exactly. But just put the work and put the rigor and, and the, you know, the focus on it. I think the average rep might think that's crazy, or at least too intimidating to do.

1:18:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, what about the flip side? Is there something that the average sales rep believes that you think is crazy?

1:18:23 Neil Ashford: I think this is totally off track from what we've talked about, but I'm, I'm not the biggest fan of social selling, even if it's more for your organization, you know, just getting the brand name out there, stuff like that. I, from what I've seen, I don't know if it's worth the time that people put into it. Or if it's worth the effort that people put into it. And I think a lot of it could and should be done by marketing. I see the value in the idea of it, but I think for the average rep, I don't think it would have the payoff that a lot of people think it might do when a lot of other activities can have a higher return on investment.

1:18:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, it's… I tend to agree with you. I think that it is a very, very, very long-term play. Right. And it's one of those things like the amount of investment that it takes for it to show returns is a lot. And there's probably other things that you could be doing in the, in the near term that are going to show much more impactful near-term results. I mean, there's, there's even a couple of things I'm thinking about testing and maybe putting some metrics around it. And it's a little bit different, right? Like my world is, is slightly different, especially in, in terms of this quote unquote social selling that I would do around this this podcast, right? Well, that's, that's kind of different, right? I'm not looking to generate deals. It's, it's really impacting the community and growing the audience and things of that nature where it's a little bit more correlated. But even that, so as we're recording this, I think it was Friday, it was Friday. So 2 days ago that I shared the, the, I was kind of celebrating that we had done 300 episodes on Daily Sales Tips. And tons of comments, tons of likes, tons of activity on that thread, on that post. And yet when I look at my stats, the number of people that consumed the podcast didn't really change. And so that leads me to believe in, and again, that's a very, there's a very low level of effort required to do that in comparison to starting a sales conversation, right? That's a, that's a much, much higher bar. And so if folks aren't even willing to take that step and go, oh, this is interesting, I'm gonna go check out this podcast, how on earth are they gonna think, oh, this is interesting, I'm gonna reach out and, and begin a sales conversation based on this? So I'm, yeah, I'm starting to get a little bit more and more skeptical. Not that I'll necessarily stop doing it because I think for where I'm at and some of the that I'm doing, it kind of makes sense. But to your point, for the average rep, probably comes pretty close to making almost no sense. But the value of social, I believe, is, is much more in what you described. It's more figuring out and beginning to know the other person and what they're sharing and what they're finding to be important and what their company is putting out there, that, that has immediate value. And you don't have to, you don't have to post for years to see that value.

1:21:14 Neil Ashford: Yeah, for sure. Like the learning and research you can do from it, 100%. I just think a lot of the time putting out a lot of content when… or stuff like that, when perhaps if you're… the rest of your activity is online, well then great, go for it. But, you know, maybe it's a, it's an extra instead of the actual work that needs to be done.

1:21:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah. When you think about the most important decisions you've made or the most important lessons you've learned to get where you are today, what, what are those? What have those been?

1:21:42 Neil Ashford: The most important decision I think is the intentionality to write down what I wanted to do when I was in a bit of a tough spot like we talked about earlier, and not even really that tough of a spot, but in a spot where I didn't want to be. I took the time to say, okay, well, where do I want to be? What do I want to do? And really spend some time thinking about it. And that allowed me to make the important choice to end up where I am today. And I think from there, the second thing, the important choice to want to do a really great job. To not being okay being middle of the pack. And I mean, I do take it personally when I lose a deal that I think I should win. I do take it personally because it's important to me and it matters to me. And I think I'm doing the right thing for myself, for my business, and for the customer as well. And so when I lose, I think it's very important. So the, you know, the most important decision I made, I think, was once I ended up where I am now, to want to do a great job and to be at the top. And it was a conscious decision. And You know, when I see someone else winning a big deal, I want to beat them. I want to be at the top still. And it's still every day it's a conscious decision.

1:22:41 Scott Ingram: I love that. That's where we're probably reusing that segment. That was, that was really good stuff because, because you don't accidentally end up number one. I don't, I don't know that I've talked to that person, right?

1:22:50 Neil Ashford: Like, yeah, you could with a bluebird or something, right? But a bluebird is not a…

1:22:54 Scott Ingram: right.

1:22:54 Neil Ashford: It's not a repeatable process. So.

1:22:56 Scott Ingram: Well, and that's the other reason why I look for that consistency, right? To your point. It's one thing to be number 1 one time. It's a whole different thing to have been number 1 the last 3 years running and likely to continue.

1:23:11 Neil Ashford: Yeah, absolutely. It takes that, it takes that work. And I think it is a decision. And I mean, even if you decide and someone else has a great year and you come number 2, I mean, great, you're still in a great position. It's not like you've… I mean, it's not… what's that Will Ferrell movie where it's like, if it's not first, you're last? Well, that's not true. You could come second, you could come 3rd, you could even come 4th, as long as you're choosing to, to do well and, and putting that effort in. If someone beats you genuinely, well then say, great, like, I'm going to beat you next year. But, you know, let… we both did great. It's a win-win game from that perspective.

1:23:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, and, and Trey Simonton was, was one of those examples. I mean, when we did his interview, he'd never been the outright number 1. But here's what's interesting: when I asked his head of sales who's the number 1 person on the team, without reservation, without qualification, immediately pointed to Trey because he'd consistently been like number 2 or number 3 for years, whereas any of those other number 1s, it had been like, well, that one time.

1:24:07 Neil Ashford: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:24:08 Scott Ingram: So again, it kind of comes back to, well, what's your definition of number 1 exactly?

1:24:12 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. Consistent success comes from consistent work and a consistent decision to put in that work.

1:24:17 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what advice would you give to somebody that's just starting out in their sales career today?

1:24:24 Neil Ashford: The advice I would give to someone who's just starting out is, you know, think about where you want to be. And it's hard to know that. So spend a lot of time looking at LinkedIn. It's not a, you know, people see that you look at their LinkedIn, that doesn't matter. It's completely fine to do it. It's out there for a reason. So spend the time looking at LinkedIn at people across different industries, different companies where you think you might want to be and look at the paths that they came through and say, would I want to do that? Do I think I have the capability to do that? Does that interest me? And just spend the time learning about it. The other thing I think would be call up the top rep at your company and, and ask for advice. Say, hey, can I put 30 minutes on your calendar to ask about your career, where you came from, how you got here? I'm new and I want to learn. And I'd be shocked if people said no to that. I would, I would be genuinely shocked. Even if you're a junior salesperson at a couple hundred person organization and you call up the person who sells to Microsoft and Google at your company, I think they would give you 30 minutes to sit down and say, hey, can you, can you help me out here? And I think that would inform so much about understanding where you want to go. And then from there, you can decide on the activities and the metrics that you want to put in place around your own career to build that path.

1:25:28 Scott Ingram: I love that. And one of the things that I will share, I think I've made this offer before, and it's still not gotten to a point where I don't think I can handle it. Maybe it will soon. We'll see what happens. But if you are that person, right? So, if you're joining a new sales organization, you're super intimidated by the number one person, but you want to be able to reach out. If you're wired the way I am, you sort of think about, well, what value do I have to give to that person, right? Because you want to be able to find a way to reciprocate. I'm your way to reciprocate. So what you can do is say, hey, I know this guy named Scott Ingram and he's got this show, and I think it would be amazing if you had this conversation with him. And just to make that true, if you want to send me an email to scott@top1.fm before you do that, so you can say, I actually know this guy. I respond to almost all of those emails whenever I can, unless they're like super cheesy generic sales messages and I ignore those like everybody else. You leverage that, right? And that's, I mean, that's what this podcast is about. And a couple of folks have done that. It's been really, really cool. What's fascinating is one of the people that did that was Evan Kelsay. So Evan introduced, Evan was a fan of the podcast, introduced me to the number one sales rep at Seismic. I interviewed him and then lo and behold, Evan comes back a few months later and it's like, Yeah, I'm the new number 1 guy by like 8 miles.

1:26:52 Neil Ashford: That's awesome.

1:26:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So you never know where that's, where that's going to lead and what that outcome might be. And that is an open invitation. I hope you'll take me up on it because it's just a fun way to kind of connect those dots and a fun way for you being a fan of the show to add that kind of value for the top performer in your company. And like I said earlier, it really ends up being for them. It's that mentoring at scale. Because imagine that organization, right? Imagine 200 people. There's the number one person. Lots of people want their time. Here's the reality. I would guess if I were to put a number on it, I would say that 5% or less of that organization, so 10 people, are actually gonna, are gonna take that on and reach out to that person and ask for their time. So they're not nearly as overwhelmed as you think they are. The vast majority are intimidated or They think it's a good idea, but they just don't act. So don't be intimidated by that fact. And if you are thinking along the lines of how can I add value, you're, you're miles ahead of, of the other 9 that are, that are reaching out.

1:27:55 Neil Ashford: Absolutely.

1:27:55 Scott Ingram: So, I mean, what about, what is it for you? I mean, how many folks at Dun & Bradstreet have reached out to you to hear your story and to get your advice to date?

1:28:02 Neil Ashford: Well, I think it's what you're saying. It's, it's less than you think. There's been a couple. I've had a couple of people reaching out from our internal team, more for specific deal advice though, not to ask, okay, well, how are you doing this repeatedly? How are you doing this consistently? And it's, you know, to someone who does that proactively, I'm surprised by how rare it is. But I guess that just goes to show that it is something that's more out of the box and a bit more different than someone who does this thinks. I mean, I'd be more than happy to talk to anybody, absolutely anybody. And I would love to do it. I'd be excited to do it, but it's surprisingly more rare than you think.

1:28:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah, totally. And I mean, I have the same thing. I mean, truly thousands of people listen to this show and listen to Daily Sales Tips, and I get a very manageable amount of people reaching out. It's, if I'm honest, a little less than I'd kind of like. So, you know, and I've got a pretty visible platform, right? Folks that are just doing their thing and number one in their organizations don't typically have nearly that visibility. The point of all this is don't be intimidated. Don't overthink it. These folks want to hear from you. They want that opportunity to give back and help somebody else grow in their career. It's super, super gratifying stuff.

1:29:16 Neil Ashford: Absolutely. I think everybody… I would be shocked if you reached out to someone at the top of their game in your organization and they just blew you off entirely. I would be completely shocked if that's the case.

1:29:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah, they do exist. Oh yeah.

1:29:30 Neil Ashford: But it would be, it's rare.

1:29:31 Scott Ingram: It's happened to come. It is very, very rare. So, and if it happens, awesome. You have just validated that they are a giant turd and you don't need to worry about that anymore.

1:29:39 Neil Ashford: Yeah. So go talk to number 2 in that case.

1:29:41 Scott Ingram: Exactly. Exactly. So what advice would you give to somebody that is a little bit further into their career? So maybe they're at that point that you've inspired them to make that decision and they've decided, you know what? I am going to be number one. What would you suggest that they do from that point?

1:29:59 Neil Ashford: I think the thing I would suggest for someone like that is to, to be very honest with themselves about 2 things. If they're at that point and they've decided, hey, this is the place for me, this is what I want to do, great. My question for them there would be, you know, 2 honest questions and to be very honest with themselves about, do you understand what you sell enough at a deep enough level to really bring transformative value? And the second is, do you have enough activity from that point to have enough meetings to bring enough value there? And both are solvable. If you remember back to… I would bet most people who listen to this show have done some studying in university or something like that. When you did an all-nighter or when you spent from 4 o'clock in the afternoon to midnight at the library just researching one topic, odds are that you have some kind of manual or feature functionality or demo set or product set that you can spend some time exploring and understanding? And if you can spend enough time there, you know, it doesn't… it can be during the day, but, you know, do you understand what you sell at a deep enough level to really understand the value and then bring that value to another… to someone else? And then do you have enough activity and are you just not doing it well, or can you do it better? I think those are probably the, the 2 biggest things I think that would take someone from average performer to a top performer. Because when you… when I talk to people who maybe more average, they, they can talk about features and functionality and stuff like that. But that then knock-on question of, well, what does that mean? Or what about someone in a different industry? What does that mean to them? They more struggle with those kinds of questions. So challenge yourself to, to think about it and to understand those things and then to think about in practice how you could bring that value. And I think that would take someone pretty quickly if they put in the work from an average to a, to a higher level performer.

1:31:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, it's, it's interesting. I was having a conversation with a… this is hard to describe it at this point. It'll become much more evident soon. I will call him a friend and mentor right now. And we were talking about there's a particular skill set, and he initially described it as translation, and that didn't quite resonate with me. I think of it in terms of transference. And the idea is, the heart of this is, can you take an idea? Can you take a story from a guy that's, that's telling us about how he's had success selling data solutions. And can you apply that to your industry and what you're doing, even though it's not even close to apples to apples, but it's, it's that ability to transfer that, that knowledge and those learnings and those insights and make them applicable to a completely different sales cycle. You know, it might, might be the, the ideal kind of applicability there. And we were talking about that really in terms of essentially interviewing and qualifying salespeople and looking for particular skills. And obviously another huge skill that he looks for, having hired many, many salespeople, is their own curiosity and investment in their own personal growth. And, you know, one of the things he was saying is that he'll ask, you know, what are the last 3 books that you read? And then it's not what they were, it's more what did you take away from them and what have you applied?

1:33:11 Neil Ashford: That's a fantastic point. When you think about like transfer… yeah, exactly, transferring from one situation to another. And it can be anything like reading a book, researching your own product, listening to a podcast. How are you going to apply that to your own unique situation? How are you going to transfer that to your own situation? I couldn't agree more.

1:33:27 Scott Ingram: And let me ask, because you gave me the opening earlier and I forgot to take it, you… the books that you mentioned were what I would consider sort of the, the classics, right? They are kind of foundational books in, in this space. If you were to call out a single book that has impacted you the most in, in your sales journey, what was that book and why?

1:33:49 Neil Ashford: I think it was… I think it was The Challenger Sale. It really was, because SPIN selling is very foundational. I think I read a couple others… Sales Bible, by Jeffrey Gitomer. I'm sure there were a couple others as well, kind of drawing a blank right now. But, you know, I think the applicability of the Challenger Sale, to be able to take it and say, okay, well, if I've done, you know, if I, if I understand all this stuff, here's how to actually apply it. And then putting it into practice, I definitely saw great results from it. And when I say that, I think I sound like I'm all or nothing on it. I'm totally not. But that's the approach. And then the success that I had from doing that totally totally applied and totally worked, and it really resonated with me. So I think that's the one that most applied to me. And if someone hasn't read it, I really do recommend taking the time to read that book.

1:34:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it is.

1:34:34 Neil Ashford: Take what you… take what you can from it, transfer what you can from it. But I really recommend reading that book.

1:34:38 Scott Ingram: It is by far and away… we're working on a resource right now that by the time this episode is out, I might actually be done with. We're working on basically a consolidated resource of all of the sales books that have been mentioned on this show and how often they've been mentioned and by who, and just sort of this giant cross-referenced guide, the Challenger Sales Book is orders of magnitude more than anything else. I mean, it is, it is by far and away. I think partially because there hasn't been anything else as, I don't know, like to go back to an '80s term or '90s term, like paradigm shifting as, as that book. I mean, it's It really was the only massive mindset change book in the space. And it's, gosh, it's probably been 10 years since that stinking book came out and there hasn't been anything else yet of that level. And so therefore, we've all kind of read it and I think it's influenced all of us. But Neil, you make a really important point that is, I think the way that you consume this information, whether it be these books or it be these interviews or the sales tips or any of these things, is it's not that you do… you just take it as gospel and you execute it exactly as written. It's really being thoughtful about, okay, what part of this do I agree with? What do I not agree with? What parts of this apply to my process and the way that I act and what can I incorporate? And over time in doing that and taking these ideas wherever they come from, whether they come from the books or they come from these conversations or wherever else, You develop your process and what fits you and fits into your style and your approach and, and all of, all of those things. So clearly this has gone on long enough. I have basically been waterboarding Neil to the point where he had to take a break and, and excuse himself. But this, this has been fantastic, Neil. Thank you for, for taking the time. I, I wanna ask 2 last questions. One is, I mean, again, we covered a ton of ground. Is there anything left kind of unsaid? Is there any point or observation that you were hoping to make that somehow or other I didn't… I haven't gotten to yet?

1:36:54 Neil Ashford: I think the biggest thing that… and I've really been reflecting on it recently, you know, getting ready for this conversation and just thinking about a lot of that career stuff that we talked about and reflecting on a lot of it… is to be intentional and ask for help. And if someone's listening at this point, they're at the point where, hey, they want to learn more and develop more. I'm going to keep listening to the show and keep listening to Absolute and learning from everyone I can because I don't think I'm where I can be yet. And I think a lot of people are likely in that same point. But to me, stuff like spending the time writing out where I want it to be or intentionally relistening to a podcast where I feel like I learned a lot. Specifically, I think of like for some reason, both of Evan Kelsay's podcasts with yourself, Scott, really resonated with me. And I've listened to them a couple of times. And so, you know, putting that time in, putting the intentionality in, going to the Sales Success Summit and, and, you know, learning from people and then rewatching the sessions that resonate with me and really spending that time reflecting. I think to me, that's, that's really important. And then finding a way to put it into action. You know, if it's something you're you're nervous about, if it's a technique or an approach, starting with a low-stakes meeting. Who cares if you lose a small transactional deal? Nobody really cares. So you should try and win it, but it's not the end of the world. So try something new. Try and build these skills from that perspective and just keep building it as you go. That's what I've done. That's what I'm going to keep doing. It's something I'm intentionally going to keep doing, and I hope people will take that away.

1:38:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's fantastic. And along those lines, broadly speaking, there's some things that, that we've got in the works, and I hope to be making some announcements here soon in the next kind of month or 2. The best way to get in front of those, obviously subscribe to the podcast and keep listening because I'll share a lot of those details here. But if you get on the listener list and go to top1.fm to get those details, the other thing that'll be there, and I can't believe I forgot to call this out earlier, I meant to, if you go to this episode's show notes, so top1.fm/the episode number or top1.fm/neil-ashford, that will take you to all of the details. So every book that we've mentioned, every podcast that has come up, all of the… well, there weren't very many, but the different apps and all of that stuff will be linked up there. So easy reference. You also mentioned some great newsletters that I'm excited to kind of dig into. So there will be some good little nuggets for me to go back to. All those details are going to be there. But again, if you join the listener list at top1.fm, I do send an email about once a week. So it's not meant to crush you. It's not going to be daily or anything like that. And I do try and give those folks, that core of the audience, some advance notice and some advance insights into some of the things that I'm working on. Even before we, we release stuff on the, on the podcast. So, Neil, let's wrap up like we always do, right? So again, we've, we've covered tons and tons of ground, but I want to make this actionable. So what would you challenge the listener to do over the course of the next, say, 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:40:00 Neil Ashford: The challenge I'm going to suggest is something I've done, and I, I think it's really important for closing opportunities and understanding the value that you can bring. And it's focused on differentiation. So I would challenge people to spend… take 30 minutes to an hour with a blank piece of paper, computer shut off, phone shut off, and just spend some time thinking about the value that you bring as an organization and as an individual sales rep to your customers. Write it down. You know, start with marketing and the features and the functions. My software does this, my technology does this. You know, start from there and then write how you're different, how it brings value, and you can't include price. Then from there, you know, write down your last 3 to 5 good sales that you made, ones that you're proud of and they're good enough size and you're happy with, and see how that maps across. Did you communicate it well enough? Did you close those by bringing that differentiated value? If you did, great. How can you expand on that? And if you didn't, is that value what you brought or what value did you bring and how was it different? And spend some time reflecting on that and actually writing it down and mapping it out. And at the end of it, I think you'll come away with a really good understanding of where you fit in the market and how you can bring value. And then from there, think about how you can bring that as an individual sales rep to the opportunities that you're working on right now and intentionally do it in your next meeting, intentionally bring up these points. I think that would be the specific challenge I'd recommend, and it's something I've done. It's something I'm doing for my existing deals I'm working on for the balance of the year right now. And I think it'll have big results for anybody who tries it.

1:41:30 Scott Ingram: Well done. I think this is, you know, I don't know, we're over 70 episodes. I think that is the single greatest challenge I've yet heard. I'm gonna do that, and I would love to hear your results. So if you take on that challenge, send me an email. Share, share what you came up with as your differentiation. scott@top1.fm. Always love hearing from you guys. Thanks for listening, Neil. Thank you. For all of, all of the time holding it for me and really just, just again, being such an active, engaged part of this community. It's folks like you that are, that are making all the, all the difference. I appreciate it.

1:42:07 Neil Ashford: Well, thank you so much, Scott. I would want to close out by saying, you know, thank you for the effort and community building you've put in here. I genuinely have learned so much. It has meant so much to my career and to my, to my life even. And I, you know, I can't thank you enough. And it's a real privilege and something I'm very proud of to to get to be on the podcast. It's really cool and I appreciate it.

1:42:28 Scott Ingram: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.