Modern B2B Selling - Are the motivations different today? - with Andy Paul, RingDNA

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Reich, CEO of RevUp Squared and the host of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of B2B SaaS industry thought leaders, executives, and people just like you to discuss how they use metrics, key performance indicators, and benchmarks to enable better data-driven, metrics-informed decisions that accelerate revenue performance and increase enterprise value. If you'd like to gain insights into how your metrics measure up to industry benchmarks, you can learn more at revopsquared.com. Now, on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics It Measure Up Podcast. Today, we are privileged to be joined by Andy paul. Andy is a top 50 global sales expert on LinkedIn. In fact, Andy, I think you're number eight now, author of two award-winning books on sales and host of the Sales Enablement Podcast. And one of the most interesting things I've learned over the last couple of weeks about Andy is how he consciously made the decision to stop being that enterprise sales road warrior, flying 300,000 or 400,000 miles a year, and really become an entrepreneur and start his own business. Andy, I'd love for you to take a minute and just introduce yourself to our listeners. Okay.

**Andy Paul** (1:23)
Well, Ray, thank you very much for having me on the show. Yeah. I mean, you sort of covered, I spent close to 25 years working for a number of venture-funded startups. Well, a couple of big companies at the beginning, worked at Apple in the very early days. But after that, sort of start-up journey throughout the Valley and Southern California. Before starting my own company, I was working for a company, the Salad Communications Company. We were selling large complex communication systems worth millions, tens of millions of dollars to major enterprises around the world. As you said, I missed my daughter's birthday one year. I think it was her ninth birthday. That just triggered in me that I needed to stop. It didn't happen immediately, but within about less than a year, I already started my own company. It's a deliberate step back, sort of off the wheel, if you will. I enjoyed eight to 10 years of being the dad who was at every single soccer game and lacrosse match, and theater performance, and so on. Then started my own company to really have control of my own time.
I've been working with small, well, for a number of years working for another small mid-sized businesses on a variety of sales challenges, and then I started my podcast and wrote my books in the last seven, eight years, and then earlier this year, my podcast was acquired. At this point in time, I'm mostly a podcaster.

**Ray Rike** (2:54)
Congratulations on the acquisition.

**Andy Paul** (2:57)
Thank you.

**Ray Rike** (2:57)
What was the airline's loss was definitely the industry's gain. Let's get into the topic today.

**Andy Paul** (3:04)
Sure.

**Ray Rike** (3:04)
We recently had a lot of talk about how B2B selling has changed and why the tactics measurements and even composition needs to change. I cannot think of a better person to speak with and discuss. Your performance measurements for B2B sales needs to change for today's modern seller. Before we go into that, I wanted to set it with the backdrop that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last four months, we've been doing research in our KPI benchmarking index. We've seen that overall ARR growth is down 50% against the first half plan. We've seen that new customer ARR is down almost 70% against last year's first half. Even with the 12% reduction in operating expenses, of which 35% of that was taken out of sales, that companies still are performing at less than 50% of the same net income growth. They expect it as they went into 2020 With that as a bark drop, the first question, Andy, is, how has life changed for the B2B seller today? Not just from a performance, but from a psyche and an approach perspective?

**Andy Paul** (4:21)
Yeah. Might as well start with a loaded question.
Well, I mean, I was in this conversation earlier today with someone, because a lot of people have been talking about this sort of fact nugget, quote unquote, fact nugget that Gardner dropped last week, saying that 24% of sales leaders said they're going to permanently change from outfield sales to virtual selling. It's pronouncements like that that sort of make me uneasy because, quite honestly, I think no one knows.
As ask me again in 12 months and we may have an idea of how things have changed. I mean, undoubtedly, for some companies such as our own RingDNAs, they're selling to sales teams to try to make that transition from more conventional sales to virtual or digital selling, and we're one of the fortunate few of the businesses we're really great for. But yeah, for a lot of companies, it's having to refocus on what they can accomplish in a way that perhaps is different than what they wanted before. To your point is, instead of looking at the big projects, hey, I had a certain quota and I have to have a certain ASP on the deals I sell. Yeah, you might just have to accept less. I was talking to a president of a company this morning who, yeah, they've scaled back. I think the average deal size has dropped maybe 40 percent on the initial contract. But they focused on those areas that are of the higher strategic urgency for their customers. They're actually closing a fair amount of business. They've changed their tactics a little bit, doing more of a paid trial instead of just going straight to implementation. It's in essence an implementation, but they're packaging it up a little differently. So it's a whole new change approach for them, but it's working. So you have to be very flexible. And I think, again, as highlight those areas within your customers, your buyers, that they just can't wait to change. It may not be the size of project you'd hope to get, but find the thing that has the speed outcome that the buyer needs.