In this podcast episode, Scott De Long and Vince Moiso discuss the evolution of the sales process in response to changes like remote work and shifting customer expectations. They highlight the challenges and efficiencies brought by virtual interactions, emphasizing the need for effective communication and adaptation.
Transcript | Season 1, Episode 10
Scott De Long
Welcome back to the CEO podcast. I’m Scott De Long. I’m here with Vince Moiso. We’re enjoying a glass of beer from Artifex.
Vince Moiso
Yes, it is. Cheers.
Scott De Long
Cheers. Today’s topic is going to be about the sales process and the changes that are going to be in the sales process with the new remote workforce, customers’ expectations, and all that. I know you’ve got a lot of experience in dealing with external salespeople. What’s happening over at Oceanside Glass Tile? And how do you guys handle the sales process?
Vince Moiso
It’s a strange new world we’re living in. And when you think of the sales process and dealing with many customers across the country, we deal with international customers too. You know, the whole thought of getting back to whatever the new norm is going to be. Here’s the number one question: is travel going to come back right for us? Is there going to be this need for face-to-face as much as there has been in the past, especially with the last 18 months when we’ve been able to be very effective virtually? We’ve had to pivot, of course, everything from email to changing your website to changing how you deliver sales tools, to going more digital with your sales tools, to all these things that we did to pivot what we could provide to customers to sell the product. I think the number one question is whether there is as much of a need for that face-to-face touch as there has been in the past.
Scott De Long
I want to separate it between existing customers who know your product and the look and feel, and they had it in their hands before. And new clients? Wouldn’t a new client need to touch your product? Forget the face-to-face the human but the product itself.
Vince Moiso
What we’ve experienced is yes and no. As an answer to that question, I think that the same company, while they’re new to us, has experienced the same thing that we’ve experienced in the last 18 months. They’re seeing how powerful the virtual setting can be. In many instances, our initial meetings have been virtual.
Scott De Long
They’re not only seeing how impactful they can be to protect themselves a little bit from a good salesperson. And when you think about it, you know, if I fly into town, spend a few hours with you, kind of feel obligated to take me to dinner, as a good salesperson, I’m trying to make a relationship and get you to feel a little bit like not really, but a little bit like there’s some payback, and I asked you here, therefore I owe you something, they’re not going to have to feel that as much.
Vince Moiso
Certainly, as I think of it in terms of, that’s the courting process, that’s the courting of the sales process. There’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. And I think of it in terms of the onboarding process. Let’s think of the onboarding process. We’ve got an example of a few new customers that are already on board. Now, how do we board them? Well, we’ve done a lot of virtual training already. We’ve done a few live training sessions. And then we recorded those trainings. And we put the recordings out to their team at large rather than this traveling circus. Now, okay, I got to get on the road with all my salespeople, and we’ve got to get my technical people involved. We’ve got to go on the road, we’ve got to go to all their locations, we’ve got to physically train all these people, but we don’t have to do that. We did one live physical training, recorded it, it went out to their locations at large, and they got the recording, and we followed up with actual Zoom training; I may have been on the team, one or the other, but my point is like that has been it for an onboarding process for a new customer has been equally as effective as what would be the old traditional process of really having to spend a lot of money and time to get out in front of a customer to completely onboarded.
Scott De Long
I’m going to question whether it’s effective or just efficient. But is it effective? I put a training course out there, you know, these people don’t work for me; they’re my customers; I cannot make them watch it, take a test, and do all the different things that you might want to do with an employee with that kind of training. I wonder about the effectiveness; it’s good; they want to learn, but not everyone is going to dig in and do the work. But if you’re face to face.
Vince Moiso
I mean, I can’t answer that question. The feedback would have to come from the customer directly. The feedback we’ve received so far, of course, is efficient. I think you’re right about that. And the feedback so far is that it’s been effective; how effective will the sales results that we get when we get those replenishment orders only be?
Scott De Long
There’s a KPI that I think would be wise to look at. And that is the number of customer service calls that you must take for that same customer onboarding that way. Because if they didn’t do the training properly, if they didn’t do the things that they’re supposed to do, guess who’s going to get the call? You are, hey, how do I do this? You can’t just say, go look at episode 12. There, he answers there.
Vince Moiso
Well, I welcome that. I’m going to tell you why I welcome that. I would say having for the last two decades done so much of that level of traditional training, on-site, and in that traditional onboarding with customers, I would tell you, that’s a clunky process. And it’s a one-and-done process. It’s so expensive to go out to somebody and send your team out to train. It’s one and done. And we weren’t really recording it; how much were they really retaining? And what ends up happening is they don’t call you all that much because they feel like, oh, you came out and did all this work. And we don’t want to bug you. We should have retained it.
Vince Moiso
We want more touches; we want more touches. And I think the way that it’s going right now. One is there’s a cost efficiency to it. There’s a time efficiency to it. Then, we get the benefit of more contact with the client. I think when we get feedback, we want feedback from Great. I didn’t understand this; I didn’t completely retain this. Can you help me with this? We want that because they’re engaged with the product, they want to sell the product, they want to see it be successful, and we’re going to help them get there.
Scott De Long
It’s an economic thing. The customer service people genuinely are a lot less expensive than the salespeople anyone. Rather than paying the salesperson’s time to answer these questions, the Customer Service time is a little less expensive.
Vince Moiso
I’m going to just throw this out there. I think if you’re in the distribution business at this point, or if you’re in the manufacturing business, this is the new norm. I just think it is more efficient. I think it’s more cost-efficient. And to your point, I think the people that are going to follow up, you know, are less costly to the process. Now, I have just as an example, you know, I have a few reps that have taken some time for them to adjust. I mean, they’re old-school reps, and they’ve done very well with their respective careers. And they’ve made a career out of being just travel junkies and just getting out in front of their customers, being face to face all the time and being road warriors and just doing the rounds, doing the rounds, kissing babies, shaking hands, doing all the stuff that they need to do going to dinners buying drinks, and you know, the old expense budget? Well, I’ve cut that budget down to 25% of what it was.
Scott De Long
Or even more than that. It takes three days to make one appointment. As opposed to four appointments a day. That they could do virtually or remotely. Seeing more people for less expense. Again, I’m a big face-to-face guy. It’s important to get together when we could be doing the Zoom call and a podcast remotely. This is more fun; it is how you build relationships by being close to people. We’ve mentioned in an earlier podcast that I didn’t touch on this, but he said something about humans like touch. One of my favorite analogies is this in the medical profession: you know, what do doctors do, and what do nurses do? Doctors diagnose and prescribe. And nurses heal. And you know, a nurse heals. How’re you doing today? All right, put your hand on the guy’s shoulder. How are you doing today? That touch, that human touch? Nurses heal through touch. I’m hoping, even though it’s less expensive, but I’m hoping that doesn’t go away.
Vince Moiso
Well, really, it won’t go away because it’s a hybrid model. We just in our last episode, if you tuned into our last episode, we talked about the new office. And we talked about the impact of this, you know, the concept of working remotely and the flexibility of having employees that are working remotely in certain positions. And I think when you think of the sales process, it’s true here as much as what we talked about, you know, offering that remote possibility for workers. It’s a hybrid model; there’s no way I don’t believe in a million years because just the human intimacy of what you just talked about is a basic need. It’s a basic human need. And the power, which I don’t want to diminish, the power of face-to-face contact with a customer and the relationship that you can build from that, and shaking somebody’s hand, and it’s looking in their eyes and saying, we have a deal, you know, that’s a big deal, my word is my bond, I’m going to shake her hand, I’m going to look you in the eyes, nothing takes the place of that, you can’t replace that, Scott. I think that’s still important. The frequency of that is what we’re talking about. What may have been in, you know, month after month of having to do the rounds, is now half the time potentially of doing that, or what you may be able to accomplish at your typical trade show, where you know, you’ve got a lot of people in one place or something like that, where you get that face to face. Then, the rest of the year follows virtually. To me, here’s what I’m just going to go out and say: the sales process has changed, it’s changed, it’s changed, it’s not the same anymore, it is not the same anymore. And I will tell you, it’s driven by the customer, not by us. Forget about what I say. The customer is demanding something different. Why? Because time is money. And their time is as precious as your time. And their reality is they don’t want you to come out and spend four hours and feel obligated to do all that they don’t want to have to do the dinner and the drinks and this, you know, this weekend-long thing because you said, hey, I’m coming out for a few days. And now they feel obligated to do all that when they can accomplish it in half the time or less; they can get all of that onboarding, all of the information that they want on your product, everything else that they need, they can get it virtually from you, and they can see you at the tradeshow shake your hand, go have a beer and still have a call.
Scott De Long
Let’s go back to the communication hierarchy, which, face-to-face, we agree, is the best form of communication, and the next one is the video call. Below is a phone call, and below is an email. Are you training your salespeople? Then, when someone says, let’s call me, set up a Zoom call, set up a Google Hangout so they can get face to face?
Vince Moiso
Absolutely. Maximizing those communication components.tilizing email; we talked about this in our communication podcasts utilizing email for what it needs to be utilized for, which is informational purposes; you’re not having these long, memorialized a conversation provide information. That’s it; you’re only using email for that. Otherwise, if you need a quick answer, something like a text or phone call is sufficient; great phone calls are always better than text messages. And then when you’re having a meeting, we okay, I need to go over products, do product knowledge, and do a presentation, it’s got to be Zoom, Teams or Webex or whatever the format or platform you’re using. But the video conference call is that second tier; it’s as close as what you’re going to get too face-to-face without having to travel expense the time.
Scott De Long
Your shipping costs are going up, and the travel costs are going down. Are we now shipping Federal Express or are we getting products in people’s hands so that we can have that? Spend 20 bucks instead of 400 bucks to do the same thing? And then get on the video?
Vince Moiso
That’s an example of somebody in the manufacturing and distribution world; let’s talk about if you’re in consulting or in a service-based business.
Scott De Long
What did we do in that same scenario? We had a client that was a big deal for us. This was a big client, potentially a big potential client, and so what I did was spend extra money on printing and customizing their booklets for them. We sent out 11 executives for a major Fortune 100 company, and each one of those was customized. I found a printer that was able to do that for me and ship them out individually. And it was still cheaper than flying out there. Did it make an impact? I don’t know. Did we get the business? It worked out, okay. But even if we didn’t get the business, it was a cool thing to think about what to go do, how are we going to do this because they’re not going to be sitting in an office where I can go make a presentation in a board room, which is what we would normally do. They each got their customized book, which was made for this person. They got a Zoom call, okay, to answer all their questions. I can see it working. I see it working. And not only saving money but saving a lot of time.
Vince Moiso
Well, certainly, one-on-one meetings are very effective; Zoom calls are just fine. And you can be incredibly effective. I have found that you know, there are some people that just prefer it, you know, when it’s a one-on-one, in fact, to say, hey, I just don’t have the time; I’d love to meet up with you. But you know, my schedule is so tight. And, you know, I don’t want to let a week or two go by just so we can find the time to be face-to-face. It’s like, okay, great. If it’s urgent, and it’s important, okay, let’s just get on a video call and just make it happen because we can be equally as effective and productive in a video call. Just make it happen.
Scott De Long
I got a client just a half-hour 20, 20-minute to 25-minute drive away. We’ve been making Zoom calls. Just because it’s easier for him and easier for me. And we already have a relationship. What I’m concerned about is establishing those relationships. I’m old school; I like pressing the flesh and kissing the babies, as you say, and making a relationship with people for them to see. I look at it like this. I want you to look in my eyes, the telephone if you think I’m giving a bullshit answer or not. And you can do that face to face; you can’t do that on Zoom as much.
Vince Moiso
It’s harder. I would say, here’s the thing: there is etiquette to a video call; there’s a lot of etiquette. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up some of that when you’ve got somebody that’s looking down. Let’s say you’ve got four people in the meeting, and one of the people meeting is sitting there looking down; you know that they’re on their phone, or the other one that I love, too, is the dual screen as if everybody can’t figure out that there’s a dual screen and this guy’s got his email up. And while everyone else is looking at the camera on engaged, and you can see both hands, you know, you’ve got another guy that’s over here like this, and he’s looking at a completely different screen.
Scott De Long
What do you do in that scenario? We should zoom out to help Zoom meetings, especially with multiple people because there’s a different technique than in a conference room. It is called out. How would he say? Is this a customer? A customer is typing away doing all that.
Vince Moiso
What I’ll say is something like this. Let’s say it’s a customer. And I’ll say, hey, if we can do this another time. I know you’re I know you’re a busy guy. If now is not a great time, let’s reschedule. I’ve got time later this afternoon or later in the week if that’s better.
Scott De Long
I do this a little bit differently. I’ll say, hey, Jim, what do you think? Just as simple as that.
Vince Moiso
I do that internally. When it’s a customer, I call them out by just saying, hey, I realized that this is a busy time, this must be a busy time, because I don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable. And I find that when you just give them respect, that time is the issue here. Then they’ll say you know what, I’m so sorry. I’ll get I’ll get one or two responses. You know what? I’m so sorry. I had to answer a quick email. I apologize that I wasn’t paying attention there. Can you repeat what you just said? The other answer I might get is, you know what, you’re right. I’m slammed with this issue. I should have rescheduled the call. Can we reschedule for later? No problem. I’ll reach out to you. Let’s go and move on. And I don’t think my feelings are hurt by that. I couldn’t care less like great. We’ll just reschedule and move on because I’d rather reschedule and get 100% of their attention now when it’s internal. Because this happens. It’s an internal meeting; I will call the guy out exactly. Like you said, like, hey, you know. I’ve got a question for you.
Vince Moiso
Sometimes, the response that I get right is that they then try to jump in with the answer. And you can tell that they’ve missed the last five minutes. Like, you know what? We just spent the last five minutes on that topic, and it’s very clear that you are not in the game here. Can I get you engaged for the rest of this meeting?
Scott De Long
This is a topic for a whole other podcast because I love this topic, but I want to get back to the sales process as well. And make sure that we’ve tied this up. Your belief is that it changed because of COVID. And it’s going to stay in that mode. We better get good at it.
Vince Moiso
That is what I’m saying. And, in fact, I would argue with you that, you know, yes, we can do a whole other podcast on Zoom etiquette, whatever you want to call it. It’s important in this podcast episode, and this is why. Let’s just talk. Forget about the internal meetings; let’s just talk for one minute to continue the conversation around etiquette. And when you’re with a customer, you should require attention. And I do think the number one etiquette is great, whether it’s a 30-minute meeting, a 20-minute meeting, or an hour meeting, that you know your time is as valuable as your customer’s time. And you need to ensure that you’re going to get 100% engagement during that call. And you need to have an agenda. Don’t schedule a Zoom call or a video call for the sake of having a video call; have an agenda; this is what we’re going to do. One of the best practices is being immediately on the call, which is great. Hey, guys, I know your time is critical here. And I just want to make sure that we accomplish what we want to accomplish in the next 30 minutes. And let’s get it done sooner if we can. Here’s the agenda. I just want to get this this. I’m hoping to get this this and this; what are you hoping to get out of this meeting? And they’ll say, you know what, we’re totally aligned. Or they’ll say, you know what, we’d also like to get this great, let’s make that happen. Okay, now we can just stay focused because, like in a video call, like face-to-face calls, what happens every time? Now I’m out there. And I spent the first hour talking about bullshit. That’s great when you’re face to face. And I think that’s important when you’re face to face because they’ve already committed the time to you. They’re going to go out to lunch or get away with you, and you’re going to build that relationship. And all of that is important. I don’t want to diminish the importance of that. But in a 30-minute Zoom call that you scheduled. That’s this, this and this. This is the agenda, guys. Is it? Okay, I asked the question I asked for permission. Is it okay if I jump right in? Yes, I get 100% of the time. Yes. Because they don’t want to waste time. They don’t want to waste time. Number one, they do it because I’m bad. I’m as bad as anybody else. Scott, I don’t give that 10-minute time. I’d like us to ours.
Scott De Long
In this context, you’re talking about the same thing. I’ll start every meeting with the purpose of this meeting, and the expected outcomes are as follows: What do you think? And have an agenda? And following. Now, can things go off-topic? If they’re important, great. Let’s get off-topic. If they’re not, let’s bring them back. And if they’re important enough, and not, if they’re critical, if they’re big topics, but not critical, then create a parking lot for it. That’s a great thing. Let’s set up another meeting about that thing. Let’s get back to this right now. We have half an hour; let’s get to it.
Vince Moiso
Great point. Absolutely do that. I just said, hey, can you know if this is something we can take offline? Is that something that we can do another time? I completely agree.
Scott De Long
Absolutely. Hey, this has been fun. I think there is a lot to this: what is this new sales process going to look like for your company, for your company, for your company, and they’re going to be different, and they’re going to be different. Give us a holler if you think that we’re off-mark here. We want to hear why this remote sales process won’t work for your company. And we can get you to sit in the middle of us and have a conversation about that as well. Because it’s important without sales, nothing happens. We better figure out how to get this done right.
Vince Moiso
It’s a whole new world. It’s just as it is, you know, and the ship has sailed. What are you doing to adjust? What are you doing to adapt? And you know, what have you incorporated? I’d love to just hear that from you. Do you know if you wanted to give us some feedback about what you are doing to adjust your sales process? What have you already done to adjust your sales process, and how are you adapting?
Scott De Long
And how do your salespeople adapt? That’s another big thing; It’s not just for the company to say, here’s what we’re going to do. But these are humans; they’re the people, and people resist change.
Vince Moiso
Not everybody embraces change regardless of what the market is doing. Regardless of what your customers tell you, not everybody is quick to embrace change. I’d love to hear what the reaction that you’re getting from your sales folks or even from yourself is. How do you feel about it? Good, bad, whatever. The good, bad, and the ugly. Let’s hear it, you know, check out our website. And stay tuned for more hot topics like this.
Scott De Long
Alright, till next time. Cheers
