🎙️Transcript: Loopicon 2020
Loopicon (by Loopio)
"Human-Centric Sales at Scale"
Jafar Owainati (Loopio), Jennifer Franklin (League), DeJuan Brown (Fringe), Robert Flint (Seismic), Ralph Barsi (Tray)
September 15, 2020
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Summary
This executive panel, moderated by Jafar Owainati (Co-founder and CRO at Loopio), brings together sales leaders from diverse backgrounds to explore the concept and practice of human-centric selling at scale.
The panelists - Jennifer Franklin (VP of Sales at League), Ralph Barsi (VP of Global Inside Sales at Tray.io), DeJuan Brown (Advisory Board at Fringe), and Robert Flint (Global Account Sales at Seismic Software) - share their perspectives on what it means to sell with genuine human connection in an increasingly digital and automated world.
The conversation explores both the philosophical foundations of human-centric selling (appealing to both heart and mind, thinking outward rather than inward) and the practical challenges of scaling such an approach across growing organizations.
The discussion reveals a fundamental tension in modern sales organizations: how to maintain authentic, personalized connections while achieving the consistency and scalability that businesses require.
Through real-world examples, including DeJuan's grassroots transformation effort that started with addressing sellers' self-perception issues and Ralph's mirror technique for getting obsessed with target logos, the panelists demonstrate that human-centric selling isn't just feel-good philosophy - it drives measurable results including shorter sales cycles, larger deal sizes, and improved team morale.
The panel concludes with practical advice for organizations looking to become more human-centric, emphasizing that this transformation must extend beyond sales to include marketing alignment, leadership commitment, and the thoughtful use of technology to enable rather than replace human connection.
BIG Takeaways
• Human-Centric Selling Is Simply Human-Centric Living Applied to Business – Ralph Barsi's insight to remove "sales" or "selling" from the phrase and focus on being human-centric, period, fundamentally reframes the conversation.
This approach means thinking of others before ourselves, being of service, and developing long-term relationships rather than transactional interactions. When sellers adopt this mindset, they naturally create win-win situations because they're genuinely focused on solving customer problems rather than hitting quotas.
This philosophy extends to how we write emails (always include a question to evoke response), how we present ourselves virtually (invest in good audio/video as a sign of respect), and even how we connect on LinkedIn (personalize those invitations).
• The PAR Framework Provides Structure for Human Storytelling – Ralph Barsi's PAR acronym (Problem, Activities/Actions, Resolution/Results) offers a practical framework for maintaining human connection even in formal contexts like proposals and RFPs.
Like the storytelling structure of evil versus good with someone in distress who gets saved, PAR helps sellers stay mentally on track while crafting narratives that resonate. Start by clearly articulating the problems personas encounter in their day-to-day operations, then outline the specific actions and activities needed to resolve these issues, and finally paint a picture of the results you'll achieve together.
This framework helps teams feel pulled toward goals rather than pushed, making it especially valuable for proposal teams trying to inject humanity into formal documents.
• Sellers Must Overcome Self-Perception Barriers to Connect Authentically – DeJuan Brown's revelation that many reps saw themselves as "below" executives created a critical breakthrough in understanding why sellers default to product-centric pitches.
This inferiority complex leads to fear-based selling focused on features rather than human connection. The solution requires deliberate level-setting: reminding sellers that executives are humans who love their kids' baseball games, get frustrated at video games, and throw things at the TV when their teams lose.
Once sellers internalize that "who they are is very similar to who we are," they gain the confidence to have genuine conversations. This mindset shift alone led to increased activity, more meetings, shorter cycles, and larger deals in DeJuan's team.
• Technology Should Enable Human Connection, Not Replace It – The panel demonstrates how platforms like Seismic can actually enhance human-centric selling by automating the mechanical aspects while preserving the human elements.
As Robert Flint explains, technology can help sellers tell their unique stories while providing data on engagement and effectiveness. DeJuan's perspective is particularly valuable: sellers should be able to use technology to quickly assemble their story based on who they're speaking to, maintain their personal storytelling style, and capture data on resonance.
The key is using technology to handle standardization and scalability while preserving the seller's autonomy to be authentically themselves - like how everyone tells Goldilocks differently while keeping the core elements intact.
• Scaling Human-Centric Selling Requires Organization-Wide Alignment – Jennifer Franklin's critical insight that human-centric selling can't exist in a sales silo highlights a common failure point. If marketing tells one story and sales tells another, the customer experiences a "tale of two stories" that destroys trust.
The entire organization - marketing, product, leadership - must embrace human-centric principles. This alignment is especially crucial during the transition from startup "doing" mode (where human-centricity comes naturally) to scaled operations with defined processes.
Some original team members may not survive this transition, but with strong leadership and organizational commitment, it's possible to maintain human connection even at scale.
• Virtual Selling Demands Heightened Attention to Human Details – The pandemic has made human-centric selling both more challenging and more important. Ralph's investment in professional audio and lighting isn't vanity - it's "common courtesy and respect for the listener and viewer" that demonstrates care for the customer experience.
Simple acts like offering a phone call instead of another Zoom (acknowledging Zoom fatigue), asking about preferred communication methods, or suggesting walking meetings show consideration for the human on the other side. As Robert notes, when customers are in their fifth Zoom of the day, your presentation needs to make an impact - treat every interaction like gold and aim for an A grade or risk a missed opportunity.
• Grassroots Transformation Can Drive Enterprise-Wide Change – DeJuan's success story demonstrates that human-centric transformation doesn't require top-down mandates.
By starting with one team and focusing on mindset shifts (how sellers see themselves and their prospects), measurable improvements in morale, activity, meeting rates, deal sizes, and cycle times created a "groundswell" effect. Other teams wanted to know the secret, leading to organic adoption across the organization.
This approach is particularly valuable for individuals in organizations where they "deeply desire this type of change" but lack executive mandate. The key is to start with willing participants, demonstrate results, and let success create demand for broader adoption rather than forcing change through corporate decree.
Transcript
Jafar Owainati (00:22):
Hi, and welcome everyone to today's exclusive executive panel. My name is Jafar. I am one of the co-founders and the Chief Revenue Officer at Loopio, and we're going to be talking about human-centric sales at scale.
We have a really amazing group of panelists with us today. I'm going to kick things off by first getting each person to introduce themselves. I also want to highlight that we do have a Q&A portion noted specifically in the platform.
So if you have any questions at all, please go to the Q&A section, pull some up there, and we'll do our best to get to your questions and really drive a dialogue. I'll also kick things off with some questions of my own to just get us warmed up as well.
Maybe we'll kick things off with Jen. Do you want to just introduce yourself and your role and then we'll go around with the rest of the panelists?
Jennifer Franklin (01:19):
Hi, thanks Jafar. Jennifer Franklin and I'm VP of Sales at League.
Jafar Owainati (01:25):
Thanks. And Ralph?
Ralph Barsi (01:28):
Hello, this is Ralph Barsi. I am VP of Global Inside Sales at Tray.io and an advisor to Loopio.
Jafar Owainati (01:37):
Thanks, Ralph. Robert? Looks like we may have lost Robert temporarily, so we'll go to DeJuan.
DeJuan Brown (01:48):
Hey, my name's DeJuan Brown. I am currently on the advisory board for Fringe, where I served as VP of Sales for almost a year as well, and doing some contract work outside of that - consulting with sales groups and sales teams of organizations.
Jafar Owainati (02:04):
Awesome. Well thank you all for joining. And the fun thing about a virtual conference is we're always going to have some form of technical difficulties. Robert looks like he's back in action. Robert, do you mind giving a brief introduction to yourself?
Robert Flint (02:17):
Yes. Robert Flint and I run the global account sales team at Seismic Software, and thank you for having me. Looking forward to this conversation.
Jafar Owainati (02:28):
Awesome. So now that we've gone around through the introductions, I want to start off - when we hear the term human-centric sales, what does that even mean? And I think it would be great to just ground the conversation and just getting each of your perspectives on how you would define human-centric sales. And we'll go in the same order. So we will kick things off with Jen and then we would love to hear your thoughts on human-centric selling. What does it even mean?
Jennifer Franklin (02:53):
Sure. For me, I think human-centric selling is really getting to the core of understanding not only the way that you sell and the way that your customer needs to buy - it's really about that connection point, right? It's about ownership, it's about empathy, it's about bringing your whole self to be able to really be the most successful you can based on what your own personality is, your own strengths are, and not having it so far outside of a process and having to fit into a box.
So for me it's really around knowing yourself and bringing empathy to the whole sales process.
Jafar Owainati (03:38):
Awesome. Ralph, how about yourself?
Ralph Barsi (03:41):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with Jen. And just to add to what she said, I tend to remove the word sales or selling from the phrase and just keep it human-centric, period. I think it's the way we need to conduct ourselves through life in general - thinking of others before ourselves and being of service to others.
So if you're going to include sales in the term, know that you're here to serve the marketplace, and our roles in sales should include really developing long-term, long-lasting relationships with our customers. And when you're thinking about them and the problems that you could solve for them and the things that they're trying to achieve, then you create a win-win situation.
Jafar Owainati (04:31):
Awesome. And Ralph, it's always interesting that there's the concept of inside - sort of like an inward-looking perspective and an outward-looking perspective. And maybe we can dig into that at some point. DeJuan, sorry to cut you off there.
DeJuan Brown (04:46):
Oh no, no. I was actually audibly agreeing with both Jen and Ralph. And so for me, I would think that human-centric sales is like this mindset and attitude at the top of and throughout the sales process that takes into account that we all live at this intersection of heart and mind, and not separate one out at the cost of the other.
And so when we're standing at the intersection of heart and mind, both count because we're all holistic and whole humans. So it's sort of the opposite of, "Hey, I'm going to talk to you about what you do with no consideration for who you are that's doing what you do." And I think when we do that, we're not doing human-centric sales. And in order to actually say we're doing human-centric sales, we have to be somewhere living within that tension.
Jafar Owainati (05:44):
And Robert?
Robert Flint (05:45):
Yeah, well, I couldn't agree with DeJuan more. In fact, I think he might've seen my notes. I very much have always believed that selling and selling to people is about appealing to both the heart and the mind, just as DeJuan said.
And there's been a lot of studies and books written on how people make buying decisions in that it's critically important to appeal to both the rational side and also to the emotional side. And I also view selling as when we're thinking about the problems that we can solve for our customers, that we need to think of the problems that people have and the impact that solving those problems will have on people.
And I ask my sellers to focus on those criteria. Most people when they're thinking about things they do around the revenue side are concerned about their own customers, and I ask them to think about the customers of their customers and the problems that they can solve that those people would have serving their customers.
Jafar Owainati (06:50):
Awesome. So sort of thinking - always thinking one layer beyond. It's not just about the customer you're selling to, but you need to think about who their customers are as well. And it's funny, even we think about that at Loopio because what we do is we help organizations respond to RFPs. So we have to think about who are our customers' RFP issuers. And that's a really interesting perspective and just sort of thinking all the way through.
Just to contrast some of the thoughts on human-centric selling, would love to get basically an example of what you would think is not human-centric selling. And maybe we'll start with DeJuan. If you have any example where you've been at an organization or seen something that you would deem not being human-centric?
DeJuan Brown (07:38):
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. And I'll leave the name of the organization out of it. They shall remain nameless. But ultimately it wasn't wrong or evil or bad - it was just the way things were being done.
And so I came into the organization and there was a lot of - I think that the attitude was just volume. We just need to get - we know what we do to fix this set of problems. And again, it was focused on just mind and logic and the problem that exists and how do we fix that problem with what you do. And so emails were going out, even the phone calls and the voicemails that were being left just really revolved around the product and the problem as opposed to anything that had to do with the people who had the problem, as Robert was just saying.
DeJuan Brown (08:27):
And so some of the changes that we made - the organization was huge. So you just can't come in and say, "Hey, we need to really change the way we're selling. Can I speak from the C-suite down and let's just go ahead and roll out some new processes?" It doesn't really work like that.
And some people are going to find themselves in organizations where they deeply desire this type of change from that product-centric, inward-facing to a more people-centric, outward-facing sales approach. And my encouragement is that it happen from a grassroots perspective.
And so what we did was on the team that I led, we started to think through: what is the mindset of a person who would actually engage in human-centric selling? Well, the first thing is you have to actually believe that there's this holistic human - this human psyche that's at the end of all of your engagements, whether it's a phone call, whether it's an email or otherwise.
DeJuan Brown (09:17):
And one of the things I found out, which was very, very interesting and disheartening at the same time, was that many of the reps that I was working with actually saw themselves as below someone with a C-title or below someone with an executive title. And that mindset to begin with led to some of this really focus on product, focus on actions, focus on the things that you do as opposed to focusing on who you are because there was a fear that was there at the beginning. And so we needed to deal with that of course.
But aside from that, just the idea that, listen, there is a person who was doing this work that you're trying to help with - how would you actually engage with that person? And we started to think through: what do emails look like that are actually personalized? What do phone calls sound like that are actually personalized? What does it mean that you're doing research before the call? What types of things are you trying to find out and how can you actually leverage those things in the calls, in the emails, in the videos that you send and leave?
DeJuan Brown (10:03):
And over time, the team just really embraced this and started to confirm that, man, when I speak to a C-suite inhabitant or I speak to an executive, if I come from a human perspective and have really human conversations, guess what? These are people who love their son's baseball games as well. These are people who sometimes will go and play a video game and get really, really ticked off if they lose as well. These are people who are really, really throwing socks and shoes at the TV when their football team loses. These are humans.
And so that kind of level-setting was really, really helpful in driving that change on the team. And then the results started to show and other teams wanted to know what that team was doing, and then it kind of spread throughout. So there's this groundswell that can happen from a grassroots effort if we start to address the mindset of how our sellers are seeing the people that they're dealing with and making sure that we level-set - not because what they do isn't different than what we do, but ultimately it's because who they are is very, very similar to who we are. And so that was super helpful.
Jafar Owainati (11:16):
And when you think about scaling something like that, what I love is that it was a grassroots effort and you had a team that you enabled to think about things differently and have that sort of outside-in approach and really thinking about that buyer. And from there the results speak for themselves. You started seeing the wins come through and then all of a sudden it's - whenever you see teams winning, and especially in a sales organization, you're always like, what are they doing differently? And then hopefully being able to scale it from that perspective.
DeJuan Brown (11:49):
That's right.
Jafar Owainati (11:53):
Jen, did you have something you wanted to add on that?
Jennifer Franklin (11:56):
I was just thinking about that in terms of - it's really about getting people together and if everyone is different, right? Yes, we are all human, but the way that I'm motivated is very different than the way that perhaps Ralph is motivated.
And so when you have a team that has to come together and really drive success, you have to understand the individual. And so if you don't manage to the individual and you don't understand how they're motivated or how they like to be given feedback, then it's really hard to get the most success out of your team. So I was just thinking about that team dynamic and you have to have it, but the only way to really do it is through that individualism as well.
Jafar Owainati (12:41):
Awesome. And Ralph, I would love to get your thoughts on this and I would - percent agree. Oh, sorry about that. No, please. After you, DeJuan.
DeJuan Brown (12:48):
No, I was just going to say I hundred percent agree with that. I think really what was just described - what Jen is describing is the same thing: human-centric selling. She brought it down to human-centric leadership to actually bring a team that's involved and willing to do the human-centric selling piece.
Jafar Owainati (13:07):
For sure. And I wanted to go to Ralph for a second here. You may have seen this in other roles, but thinking about getting deals through the door or maybe a more transactional side of selling, what's your perspective on that when you think about selling that is not human-centric?
Ralph Barsi (13:27):
Sure. Well, let's go back to the inward versus outward-facing concept. So the way I see it is when you are facing inward, you are intently focused on all things you and what's going to serve you, your business, your number for the month or the quarter or the year. Whereas when you're thinking and facing outward, you're intently focused on your prospects and your customers.
So if you want to break that into what that looks like tactically, let's just say you're responsible for outbound prospecting into named accounts, and you have a list of prospective logos that your company would like to do business with. Sometimes it means getting obsessed with those logos. So maybe you need to print out those logos and paste them on the mirror in your bathroom so that you see them every single morning. You eat, breathe, and sleep what's going on in that company.
Ralph Barsi (14:33):
To DeJuan's point - who is it that they're trying to serve? What systemic impact could your offering have in a positive way on their entire ecosystem? So when you secure a first meeting or when you close that first deal with one of those logos, you then replace that logo with another one on your mirror.
But the bottom line is you are facing outward and only focused on serving that logo. Does that happen at scale? Not so much. Sometimes you have to get very focused on your logos in bite-sized chunks. But when you're employing methods and practices like that, you're going to move the needle much faster and with much more impact.
Jafar Owainati (15:19):
For sure. Whenever we think about human-centric selling, we always think about it requires a ton of people, and it's all people-related in terms of how you make it happen. And curious to get Robert's perspective on this is: how can technology actually support human-centric selling?
Robert Flint (15:46):
So Jafar, at Seismic, the core value prop of our product set is to do exactly that, which is to help sellers communicate a unique value prop to their customers and to improve the engagement that their sellers and customers have together and to actually measure that engagement.
So making it easy for a seller to tell and share their story and make that connection with the customer and to ultimately serve the customer. And so Seismic provides a technology platform to do exactly what you just said.
Jafar Owainati (16:29):
And so when you think about being able to be more human-centric in the conversation, can you walk through any examples that come top of mind in terms of how you've been able to enable that within your sales team?
Robert Flint (16:48):
Yeah, absolutely. So with my sellers, being able to tell - the central story of storytelling is what we've, from a technology standpoint, been able to allow them to do. And just as importantly, the data in terms of how that's working is important to me as a manager of sales resources to know: are my sellers actually connecting with their customers and are the customers themselves engaging with that message? And having the data to actually do that is really enlightening and allows much better control and clearly better understanding of how the conversation is going.
So all of my sellers are empowered to be able to do that. We use the Seismic platform to do exactly that.
Jafar Owainati (17:42):
And you mentioned storytelling, and whenever I think about being human-centric, for us as humans, you can go back to - we are raised on stories. That's how we operate, that's how it is when we spend time with our families and friends. And sometimes it's important to remind ourselves of what is the story that we're telling as part of the conversation and making sure that story is really connecting with that end buyer.
And I love how an example with Seismic - you can actually use technology as a way to empower that storytelling, which I think is huge. Just to bring it back to Loopio for a second, it's something very similar. I think about the early days where we used to talk about automation and efficiency in RFPs and people would just talk about time saving, time saving, time saving.
But a lot of the times my positioning, especially when we think about empowering proposal teams and proposal managers, is how do you take the time you saved in answering perhaps functional requirements - to the point of being product-focused - and then pivot to be more tailored and personalized in your approach so that you can actually position a really great story and a pitch that is thinking outside-in and hopefully brings things across the finish line? So that's huge.
Jenna, I know that you've worked at organizations small and large and have seen processes being implemented, and I'd love to hear from you if you have a story to share around how you've seen a human-centric approach perhaps not be able to scale.
Jennifer Franklin (19:23):
Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting when you start an organization and you're building up the sales team outside of the founders. So it's a matter of people going out and really trying to figure it out. And there's a lot of doing versus a lot of process at that time in the early days. You're trying to figure out what's repeatable, what is going to work in the market, how do we scale? Eventually we have to get there, but if you don't do and if you don't go, then you don't survive.
And to me, that's really the epitome of human-centric selling - you're doing. You're figuring out. You're able to be who you are as an individual and you don't have a lot of people questioning your approach, trying to figure it out, and you want that silver bullet.
Jennifer Franklin (20:30):
So I think it's probably one of the biggest challenges as an organization is growing and they're trying to figure out, okay, we have a process or we think we figured it out, we think we understand our approach to the market. Now we can hire more people.
But then you start to lose the "do" a little bit. Now you have a process in place and you want people to sell a certain way and you want them to follow your sales cycle, you want them to follow the certain infrastructure that you've put into your organization. And so some of that just doing naturally falls away and it can hurt in the short term because not everyone who started in your organization is going to be able to continue.
Some of those people just naturally are the "let's grow and let's be part of this team" up to a certain point, and then they're just not well suited for that kind of structure. So I think that's it. Again, it goes back to understanding the individual and growing from that smaller-stage startup into the point where you do need to have that ability to be able to have a repeatable process.
Jafar Owainati (21:29):
So how do you make that repeatable process still - I think this is the thing that's really interesting - is you can have a sales organization that is a handful of account executives, especially when you're in the same office together, you're able to share stories and try different things, and obviously that drives a different type of connection.
And then to your point, as you scale, the business is looking for consistency and messaging, a framework. Are you thinking about value selling? What does even value selling mean? Some people use what you'd call cookie-cutter frameworks, others try to structure their own out of, call it a Frankenstein of a bunch of different frameworks. Is it possible to scale a sales organization while still truly being human-centric?
Jennifer Franklin (22:22):
Yeah, I do. I think - but you have to understand the people on your team, though. As I said before, I think there's certain individuals that won't be able to scale and continue in that type of structure. But if you get the right people and you get the right leadership in, then absolutely.
And the organizations that I've been a part of that do bring human-centric selling and have an appreciation for the individual and have an appreciation that we're understanding the customer's problems and really looking outward - to Ralph's point - that's where there's really huge success. But it does mean you need to have strong leadership and then it needs to be supported throughout the organization.
Jafar Owainati (23:03):
Awesome. I'd love to get additional perspectives on that lens, specifically on scaling human-centric selling. How does one do that? I know that it looks like Robert's having some challenges in terms of the technology side, but Ralph or DeJuan, do either of you have some perspectives? I'm sure you've both seen some, both small and large teams.
DeJuan Brown (23:28):
Yeah, I think from my perspective, I think I love what Jen was saying there in terms of leadership having to be strong and having to think through other aspects of individuality amongst the team and how you would approach personalization, how you would approach human-centric selling.
I think a part of that, again - and this is to borrow from Ralph, right? I mean we're just human-centric everything in terms of the way we think about our customers and their customers and their lives and their families outside of the workplace. They are not what they do. And then it's also the way that we think about the teams that we lead, right?
So yes, we absolutely want to know who our teams are - who the people that make up our teams are - so that we can lead well through this type of thing. One of the things that I think is really important also in the whole mix of this all is: how do you empower people to just be who they are?
DeJuan Brown (24:24):
So we keep talking about human-centric selling. There's a lot of literature out there. You can look at the blogosphere and so forth around human-centered this or human-centered that. And ultimately we have to remember that even when we try to think about ways to scale something, even that has to have flexibility, freedom, and autonomy for the people that are actually going to carry that scaling out. And that's again, to Jen's point.
But I think that one way that we can do that is to say, okay, hey, you know what? There are certain concepts and elements to Goldilocks and the Three Bears, right? That's a story. So there's a story and there's certain elements in that story. There are three bears, there are these various houses - and I may be conflating stories, but you get my point - there's certain elements to that story.
DeJuan Brown (25:18):
But when I tell the story to my six kids - I don't know what happened there - when I tell the story to my six kids, it sounds vastly different than when my dad told it to me, than when my best buddy tells it to my godson. We tell the story differently, but we don't leave out elements that are important to the story.
Now, why I'm saying that is because it's extremely important for us to know we have products that solve problems. There are certain things that are in our value prop that we want to remain there, but what we don't have to dictate is how do you convey that story to the person that you're speaking to? And it's going to depend on both sides. It's going to depend on who you actually are speaking to, and it's going to depend on who you are. So how do I tell the story on the basis of who I am and how do I tell the story on the basis of who I'm actually speaking to?
DeJuan Brown (26:13):
Now where Seismic can come in - and I'm not here to plug Seismic, I don't work at Seismic, I have - but where Seismic was able to come in for me as a seller when I was working at Seismic was like, listen, I want to tell my story. I know our value prop. I know that we basically are selling, honestly, clean water and fresh air, right? This is the thing. And I want to be able to convey that in a specific way, and I have a way that I tell that story. I have an order in which I put these things in. Can the platform that I use to actually convey that story serve me to quickly put that together based on who I'm actually speaking to?
Further than that, once I actually say that and tell my story to this person based on who they are and who I am, is there any way for us to capture data on how well that went over, right? Did it resonate? Was it something that captured their attention? Those are the types of things so that marketing can then help me continue to tell that story in my own way.
DeJuan Brown (26:59):
So there is a way to scale human-centric selling, but we again, first have to start with the mindset that every human is going to tell their story in a different way. And there can be elements that are common, even though the direction that we go when we're actually telling that story - Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Yellow Brick Road from the Wizard of Oz, whatever the story is - we all tell our stories differently and we don't leave elements out.
But is there a way to operationalize that? I'd say yes. Start with human, enter machines and processing through something like a Seismic, and then the output will be a human at the other end receiving something that they feel very, very close to and that addresses both heart and mind. I know that was long-winded, but I hope it helps.
Jafar Owainati (27:41):
No, it does help for sure. And I know Ralph, I wanted to get your thoughts on this, but I'll throw something in the mix as you think about your answer. And Robert, would love to get your perspective as well.
When we talk about the lens of, hey, you're getting on the phone with a prospective customer, you know who you're speaking to, I think there's an ability to really tell a great story there because again, you're selling to another human and you have a chance to connect with them. I'd be curious to get a perspective here on how does one become human-centric when your method of engagement is a proposal or a response to an RFP? So just noodle on that for a second, but I'd love to get Ralph's thoughts. And Robert, I know we've had some technical issues here, but I'd love to bring you into the mix.
Ralph Barsi (28:33):
What's typically worked for me is the acronym PAR, just like you would hear or see in the game of golf. So always start with the problem. In light of storytelling, there's always evil versus good. There's always someone in distress, and then some great magical mysterious thing happens and everything works out in the end.
So if you could stay on track mentally with that acronym in mind, you could tell better stories that are going to resonate more with the people that you are selling to and want to work with. So be mindful of the personas you're engaging, make sure you're using their language and make sure that you're surfacing problems that like personas are encountering in their day-to-day operation.
Ralph Barsi (29:32):
And then when you segue to the A, that's when you're talking about the actions and the activities that have to be implemented in order to start resolving the problem. And then that in turn segues into the R, which is resolution or results.
So maybe when you're talking about a robotic framework of a proposal in a business meeting, you can tell that story using that acronym saying, "Look, based on our conversations over the last several weeks or months, we understand all these problems are at hand. And we also understand how many problems can surface if we don't take action. So what this proposal frames up is what those actions and activities are going to look like and by when they're going to take place. And then the result the two of us are going to realize together is A, B, C, D. So we can ride off into the sunset together and begin this long-lasting relationship between our businesses."
So that acronym I use on a regular basis, and it tends to help me with storytelling. It tends to help me inspire teams to feel pulled towards the goal and the mission versus pushed towards it. And it's always made a difference for me. So hopefully it helps the audience today.
Jafar Owainati (30:37):
For sure. And I just put that in the chat as well just to remind everybody. So PAR - it's the problems, it's the activities or the actions that you're taking to resolve that problem, and then R is the resolution or the results. Great framework to think about, responsive even as you think about an RFP or proposal.
Robert, how about yourself? How involved is your team in even responding to RFPs or how do you think about the problem when you are abstracted a little bit from the actual sales conversation, that one-to-one connection?
Robert Flint (31:11):
So a couple things, and if I can just go back to the previous point that we're discussing on scale and how do you scale a personalized, human-connected sales organization? And I think...
Jafar Owainati (31:31):
We lost your audio there. Is everyone else having audio issues? Oh, we lost...
DeJuan Brown (31:43):
Yeah, I lost them. They probably popped back in.
Jafar Owainati (31:45):
Oh man, just that was a cliffhanger. I was like ready to hear - how are we going to do this? We've solved it all. But hopefully we'll be able to at the very least get some of Robert's input out there, whether he's able to provide us some notes afterwards as well.
I'm just looking at the Q&A as well. I know we have our listeners out there who are active in the chat, so thank you so much for participating. If you have any questions at all as you think about human-centricity and selling, please put them in there. There's no question that would be too far out there if you want to bring it into more general selling or if you want to bring it into the realm of proposals or RFPs or security questionnaires. I'm sure there's ways to be human even when we talk about security. So please put them out there.
So I wanted to bring it back to a few more topics here. When you think about the impacts of human-centric selling - so DeJuan, you mentioned in your example that you had a grassroots effort that actually had driven some results. Have you seen real hard metrics on - did you see win rates actually go up? Are sales cycles shorter? What are the true, call it the business metrics and results from embracing this kind of selling? And I'll open this up to everybody as well.
DeJuan Brown (33:19):
Yeah, that's a good question. And obviously the metrics are going to depend - as you execute against these things and these strategies, there are going to be various metrics that matter to different levels.
So for us in the team that I was referring to, part of it was: what did it feel like for the reps to actually prospect? And again, so I'm going way back - this is before we get to actually outcomes and metrics - is do the reps continually dread picking up the phone and making dials? Do they continually dread call blocks, so prospecting days? And the answer to that was no. It was a resounding no. People are starting to enjoy their work on my team. That's the first metric that's really not quantifiable in any numeric way except that activity went up.
DeJuan Brown (34:13):
And then what we started to see was just more meetings happen. And then what we started to see was, yes, there were shorter sales cycles, there were larger deals that were being sold and bought in that space during that time.
And again, there's just the overall morale and attitude of the team because I was trying to be as human-centric in my leadership toward them and the autonomy that I gave them to be able to craft these stories and tell them in the way that mattered to them, as I was trying to get them to do the same thing to their customers and their customers' customers.
So there's this morale boost that led to greater productivity that led to greater efficiency, which led to more confidence. We talked a little bit about that level-setting where "I'm going into this meeting with all of these partners at the law firm and I'm feeling like I'm the low guy on the totem pole or the low young lady on the totem pole" - where we can level-set that and try to fix that mindset just on a basis of humanity, not like title, because again, none of us are what we do.
And so doing that, the confidence that our people were going into their meetings with changed drastically, which again led to larger sales, shorter sales cycles, and better voice of the customer in terms of net promoter score. So all of these things were impacted by that one grassroots effort.
Jafar Owainati (35:26):
Awesome. So we were just talking about metrics and how more human-centric selling actually has real impact on results. Robert, you were chatting a little bit about the topic of scaling human-centric selling, especially as we talk about process and frameworks. Our apologies about all the technical issues we're having here, but let's give it a shot. Let's see if we can make it happen.
Robert Flint (35:50):
Alright, I'm crossing my fingers. So hopefully... The point I was leading to in terms of being able to scale that type of selling model was in the past, it really was a challenge to do that because to scale it really means can you do more with the resources you have, which leads you to, can you automate and can you get to a place where you're having a much larger set of individuals following a model that is focused on the customers?
And you can do that today. You can certainly have training programs and process, and we now have systems - and plug for Seismic again - part of what it does is automate the process of the personalization of the interaction that sellers have via the content that they share with their customers.
And that helps a seller because sellers traditionally spent a lot of time doing those things themselves as individuals. And that really doesn't scale because you have no standards that are set and you're relying on the seller to choose what they're going to do today and what they're not going to do today. And when you automate those processes, then you can have the standardization and the seller doesn't have to turn down doing some of it in favor of other customers, so all your customers can be served.
So my point is, I think the technology - in fact, I know the technology now exists to allow you to scale a human-centric selling model.
Jafar Owainati (37:33):
Awesome. Thanks for sharing. So we were talking about hard metrics and results. Jen, did you have any perspective you want to add on that? I do have another question I would love to also move on to, but I would love to get some additional thoughts.
Jennifer Franklin (37:48):
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with DeJuan. You really get that ability to increase the speed. So with human-centric selling, you see results quicker. So nothing else really to add. Completely agree with what DeJuan shared with us. So you can move on, Jafar.
Jafar Owainati (38:07):
Thanks, Jen. In terms of the environment that we're in today - and even let's take the pandemic out of the equation - a lot of people are selling and have been selling virtually for a while now. And so how do we think about injecting human-centric selling in an inside sales motion?
And I know like Ralph, for example, he's got that next-level microphone, and you may not even know this - you can't even see it in the reflection in his glasses - but he's also got one of those really amazing circle spotlights that all the TikTok kids are using. So how do you think about such an...
Jennifer Franklin (38:52):
Influencer!
Jafar Owainati (38:53):
You are an influencer, Ralph. So how do you think about being human-centric and actually leveraging that human-centricity in a virtual world and just how we can think about the next frontier in a lot of ways?
Ralph Barsi (39:08):
Yeah, a couple ways. Number one, we're all in this together. That's number one. Number two, don't meander through the marketplace thinking that we're all separated because we're all in fact connected. If you do a little bit of homework, you'll understand the power behind platforms like LinkedIn. It's because we are all connected by one, two, or three degrees, but at the core, we all know one another or know people who do know us.
With respect to the cool microphone and the light and all that jazz - that's really just common courtesy and respect for the listener and the viewer. I want to be seen and heard clearly. I don't want any disruption whatsoever because on the macro scale, I am representing my company's brand. I'm representing my team's attitude and disposition. I'm representing myself, and we want to do that with the highest standards so that we can convey and illustrate what world-class looks like at every level. And so we pay attention to the details because we understand that little things make the big things happen.
Jafar Owainati (40:26):
That's really powerful, Ralph. And even for us at Loopio, one of the things that we've recognized as a differentiator for us as a business - it's not just our product or our service, but it's also the experience that we provide in engaging with the organization holistically.
And engaging with the organization doesn't start when the prospect becomes a customer. It starts when they're first talking to you in the sales cycle because that sales cycle is a reflection of what that will look like afterwards. And so if the conversation is very much about us, like, "Hey, we want to win this deal, how are we going to make sure that you buy our software? Can we give you a better deal so you can move forward with us?" - that's all very inward-looking and it doesn't create a positive experience overall.
And so that's huge. In terms of the mic, I have a little lapel mic if you can see. So I'm trying to get to Ralph level, but I think...
Ralph Barsi (41:32):
You sound great. I definitely have...
Jafar Owainati (41:34):
Some ways to go.
Ralph Barsi (41:35):
I can hear you great.
Jafar Owainati (41:36):
It's the glasses and the hair. That's what does it.
Ralph Barsi (41:39):
It's beautiful. It's not easy. But I'll also tell you that it translates also to the conversation flow that you're establishing or not in your initial calls, even in your calls and meetings throughout each stage of the pipeline. Also what you're choosing to put in your emails really counts.
So make sure that you're writing well and that you're including a question mark so you can evoke a response from the people you're writing to. Otherwise it's just you giving them information that they don't need to respond to. So just be mindful about those little details because they really do count.
Jafar Owainati (42:18):
Awesome. And we actually have a great question here from the audience, from Andrew: "The world has changed a lot in the past few months. People are working from home and we're all getting a glimpse of how human we all are. For companies that haven't already adopted human-centric approaches to sales, what are some good starting points for them to think about without disrupting their sales team too much? It feels more important than ever."
And perhaps we'll start off with Robert and get your perspective on that. I'd love to get a few other perspectives as well.
Robert Flint (42:54):
Yeah, I think the point you were making just a minute ago, or pointing to Jafar and that Ralph pointed to, in terms of this new environment, the format that we're in - this is a selling environment and thinking about our customers. We're on Zoom meetings all day, as are our customers, and I do think it's critical for us to reexamine how we present in this format.
And Ralph, you did inspire me. I did go out and get a microphone after being with you, because you came through very clear and it made an impression on me how much clearer I could hear you. And our customers - if you're talking to a customer who's in their fifth Zoom meeting of the day, they're really going to need to hear you. In fact, your Zoom and the visual presentation and the story that you tell - it really needs to make an impact on them.
Robert Flint (43:52):
I tell my sellers every interaction that you have with a customer, you need to really treat that like gold. And if you're going to score yourself and grade yourself, you should really look at it as getting an A or it can potentially be a missed opportunity.
So for the question of how does an organization make that type of switch, I do think just looking at the realities of where we are and how we now have to engage our customers in the selling motion. And when the human part is - when we get in conversation with our customers, whether it's on the phone or on a video call - that we really examine from the customer's perspective, what are they experiencing and how can I make that experience better for my customers so they can understand the message that I want to share with them?
Jafar Owainati (44:47):
Awesome. I would love to get additional perspectives as well on things that we can do.
Ralph Barsi (44:53):
You there, Jafar?
Jafar Owainati (44:55):
Oh, can you hear me okay or is it cutting off?
Robert Flint (44:59):
I can hear you. I can hear you.
Jafar Owainati (44:59):
Okay. All right. Maybe Ralph can't necessarily hear me. I think just having audio issues.
Ralph Barsi (45:05):
Let's go back to one of the initial questions about a story where human-centric selling is not at hand, and that is with the request to connect on LinkedIn. If you're going to request to connect with somebody on LinkedIn, always, always, always include a personalized note.
You can do it on the mobile platform and you can do it on the desktop platform, but blindly sending an invite to somebody just assumes they know who you are, assumes that they understand why you want to connect in the first place. And that's something that puts most sales professionals in a pretty bad light. So please stop doing that.
Jennifer Franklin (45:53):
Hey, Ralph...
DeJuan Brown (45:55):
You know what? This is a respectful pushback. I actually wrote something on LinkedIn about that very topic. For some reason it was one of my most well-received posts.
Listen, if you want to connect with me and you send me a connection, and then I look at your profile - because I look at everybody's profile, I think that you deserve that, right? If you send me a connection request and there's no note, and I look at your profile and I'm the VP of Sales of a company that deals in HR and people, and I found out that you're an HR director, I just assume that that's why you wanted to connect. I don't have a problem if you don't leave me a note. I just want everyone in the audience to know...
Ralph Barsi (46:39):
It adds no value.
DeJuan Brown (46:40):
I understand completely. Yeah, I understand completely Ralph's perspective. I just disagree from a human-centric perspective. If you want to connect with me, I appreciate you. And if I can clearly see based on what you do and who you're speaking to and what your reach is that there's a connection - at least in terms of a thread that is connecting us - I'm fine with that.
I usually will include a note myself, but I don't require it or feel any sort of way towards those who don't when they want to connect with me. That's just my perspective.
Jafar Owainati (47:18):
And that's what I love about panels like this is they're supposed to have differing opinions. We can't always have to... And I actually find it interesting. I think sometimes your, call it your influence, changes your ability to be - or the exceptions, I guess, on being personal.
So when I get someone who is inviting me to connect on LinkedIn and they don't add a note, well, let's say hypothetically that it's a CEO of a great company that I know that I've engaged with. I'm like, I actually want to connect with this person. I don't give a shit that they didn't put an invite.
But as we think about our sellers who maybe have not developed a brand or influence, I think providing that human touch and that context is powerful. And I know on LinkedIn, on the mobile app, before you couldn't even personalize your note. You'd only be able to connect. And I think it's important to highlight that you can actually do that now.
So I know there's also a question on what brand is your mic? So Ralph and Robert, if you want to put that in the chat whenever you have a chance, I would love to share that. I guess I'll take it to Jen. What do you think that sellers can do? Going back to the question from the audience in terms of a good starting point to be more human-centric in the approach today without being too disruptive?
Jennifer Franklin (48:49):
I think actually, I am going to take it a little bit a different way, Jafar. I think about the fact that an organization has to really be human-centric across the organization, not just in the sales organization.
So if you don't have marketing on board with human-centric selling, then it's going to be really hard to get that influence. So if you're looking at implementing a human-centric approach, you really do need to get the whole organization on board.
You need to be able to have the marketing team and your product team and your leadership team to really understand what you're trying to accomplish with human-centric selling. Because if marketing puts out a message that's not aligned to the solutions that we're really delivering, or a customer expects exactly what marketing has put out there and then the sales team does not take the same approach, it becomes a major disconnect.
So for me, it's really about getting the whole organization on board as a stepping stone - the first approach. If you try to do it just in a silo, you probably won't have the same success.
Jafar Owainati (50:00):
That's great. And I think that's a very critical reminder, and I don't think we spend much - I'm surprised we didn't talk about this enough, but the sales and marketing alignment. Sales and marketing alignment's huge. DeJuan, why don't you close us off? Any additional tips?
DeJuan Brown (50:21):
Yeah, I think one thing is when we're thinking about empowering sellers is just really just empower them to operate in some ways as they do in their normal lives.
So one example is we're talking about all of these Zoom calls and how it might be a customer or a prospect's fifth or sixth or seventh or eighth Zoom call of the day. Yet for most sellers that I encountered, they don't even conceptualize the idea to say, "Well, hey, you know what? I'm pretty sure you've probably had a lot of Zoom calls. It's Friday. You've had a lot of Zoom calls. What are your thoughts around making next week's call on Tuesday just a phone call?"
And just that small piece of consideration of what the day, the week, the month might look like. It's the end of the quarter - what does that look like? And they've agreed to meet with you. Let's do it on your terms. You want a phone call, you want a Zoom, how do we do this?
DeJuan Brown (51:13):
So that's a part of it - it's just like interact with people like you care about what might've been happening in their lives outside of the things that they're doing that might be contributing to your selling a product, right? That's the first thing is: how do we do that? How do we practice that? How do we think about that?
I've been on phone calls and things like that with folks where somebody might say something about a tragedy that's happened in their lives, right? Or something. How would you respond to your cousin if they just said that? How would you respond to your aunt if she had said that?
The human aspect of it extends far beyond how we present our product. And this is extremely important - how marketing and sales, if there's cohesion there. When I was at Seismic, we definitely called that the tale of two stories. Marketing is telling one story. The buyer comes in expecting to hear a continuation of that story. It's totally disjointed by the time the seller speaks to it. So I love what Jen said.
DeJuan Brown (52:03):
But at the bottom of it, let's get mindset and consideration of humans as humans as we are interacting with them. And I think that's going to drive just these little tweaks in behavior.
I've had people say - I'm not talking about myself personally - but people have said about themselves, "I speak very much way better than I write." And so we're going to work on the writing. But ultimately, if you can convey your message to a prospect by speaking it in a way that you think is better than writing, shoot the video and send the video. I love it. It's effective and at your hands and at your fingertips. And the way...
Jafar Owainati (53:07):
I think we're having a bit of audio issues.
DeJuan Brown (53:10):
Last is what Ralph said to the... where we stopped, but hopefully some of that was helpful.
Jafar Owainati (53:17):
It was. I think we lost some good golden nuggets there with some audio issues, but really appreciated - you mentioned about looking at someone and thinking about how you would treat your cousin in that situation if they're going through it.
I think one of the challenges that happens, especially with junior sellers, is when they're talking to someone who's more senior within an organization - you go up more senior, that becomes more and more disconnected, and you almost dehumanize the person. If you're talking to an executive, they're just like, "Oh, they don't get nervous. They don't have challenges."
It happens all the time though. Even for us - as a founder, there's times when I'm presenting to the entire company, and obviously there's tough questions, but it's also important to note that I also get nervous when I'm standing in front of a team or I may have had a bad day or anything like that.
Jafar Owainati (54:51):
And so it's important to remind ourselves of what does this person's day look like? And that's something even when we were in the office, I would actually challenge and say, "Where does this person sit? Can you picture their desk? Where does their boss sit? How do they interact? How do you think that they're actually having a meeting in a conversation? What does that meeting look like? What's the culture of the organization? Can we learn more about the culture of the organization?" So those are all really critical parts to humanize things that I always encourage.
DeJuan Brown (54:53):
And I've got just as a quick - I have six kids. So there was a point when I was reaching out to an executive who I found out had four kids and had to travel way more than I traveled on a normal basis. And that matters. That gives me some context. That's hard. You have four kids, they're young. How do I approach you when I reach out to try to get a meeting with respect and honor? Right? You're doing a hard thing, and I understand a lot of it contextually because of my own life. And then connecting there is really something that we would do everywhere else except for some reason at work.
Jafar Owainati (55:28):
Amazing. And the one last thing that I actually really, really loved is the idea of giving the prospect or the other person... That's huge for sure.
Ralph Barsi (55:40):
It's something that we don't pay close enough attention to. One is the other responsibilities that everybody has outside of the workplace. And to try to connect with them at that level, I think is such a huge advantage.
Jafar Owainati (55:56):
Absolutely. And so we went through a bunch of topics here together. We spoke about what is human-centric selling in the first place. We discussed how you can scale human-centric selling, what isn't human-centric selling, of course, how technology and efficiency can actually enable you to scale it.
And at the end of the day, just always remembering that there is a person on the other side of the line, and they're going through things that you may have gone through and are maybe going through things that you may not necessarily be aware of and that you may have to be empathetic towards. So it all comes down to empathy at the end of the day.
And when it comes down to the world that we're operating in today, remember that people are going through Zoom fatigue. Offer up the option to do a phone call instead of a Zoom video call, or ask them if they want to have a walking meeting so then we have a chance to step outside as well.
Jafar Owainati (56:48):
So all really, really great suggestions and some great frameworks. Also introduced with things like PAR and thinking about problems, activities, and resolutions, and remembering that as humans, everything that we do is sort of baked in stories and remembering to storytell as well.
So thank you all so much - Jen, Ralph, DeJuan, Robert. It was an absolute pleasure to have this conversation with you all. I've taken some great learnings, some things that we do today that I think we can do even more of, and really appreciate the audience for the time and the conversations in the chat and the questions.
Just to let everybody know, we actually have a closing keynote today. It is at 4:30 PM Eastern Time. It's called "How to Steer Relationships, Deals, and Your Career with 10 Simple Questions." It's presented by Alexandra Carter, who's a professor at Columbia Law School and is a bestselling author of "Ask For More." So please join that session at 4:30 PM Eastern Time, and thank you all again for your time. Looking forward to continuing the conversation in the Slack community.
Ralph Barsi (58:06):
Thanks, Jafar. Thanks everybody.
Robert Flint (58:09):
Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.
Ralph Barsi (58:10):
Enjoyable.