Jason Lemkin: belief

Transcript context

…Okay. The one, really, the simplest one, and early in my career, I thought this was silly or hated it, this Glengarry Glen Ross. I don't know if it was Glengarry Glen Ross or that toxic Leo movie about sales, which is still entertaining. Yeah, one way or another, Lenny, it's got to be, "Sell me this pen." But it's not "Sell me this pen," it's "Sell me this app." So I don't like surprises, I don't like games. I like to do this in a second interview or whatever. Give them time. And I don't like to judge too harshly, but whether it's the first interview or the second, they got to sell you this pen. They've got to put in the 30 minutes of work and maybe it's two hours. But here's the thing, today's world, you can go on YouTube or someone's website... There's an explainer video for every product under the sun, isn't there? I am shocked how many salespeople I have met, Lenny, from SDR to SEB of sales that, by the time... And I'm doing an interview for a portfolio company, this isn't a screener interview, they haven't even watched an explainer video yet. I could be the fifth or eighth interview, and they don't know how the product works. They have not even gone to the effort of searching YouTube or the homepage and watching it. And forget about explainer videos enough. But so many companies do webinars now and they publish them on the... Really good stuff, customer testimonials. Right? If you're a sales rep, you don't actually have to know how the webhooks work or how to provision an API key, but you need to know the product as well as that webinar that's on YouTube. And 98 out of 100 folks won't bother in an interview. They won't bother. They're just going to click on "Apply" on the ATS and tell you, "Hey, I recently stumbled upon whatever. It looks like... Do you have time to discuss." Right? But that one that actually does enough work and watches the video, and then can sell it to you, and they're going to make mistakes. They're not going to get it right, but they have enough confidence with the core problem to be solved. Because here's the mistake that 99% of founders and sales reps make. We're not really selling in B2B. We're solving problems. And this is why so many people are struggling in 2024, because they can't... their products, as sales reps, as companies, they can't solve big problems anymore. Our job as sales reps in SaaS is to not sell a used car, okay? We are selling a Tesla Model 3 performance. It has competition. I might not need it this week, but it's pretty darn good. And I'm going to help you understand, Lenny, because you're in the market for the car, why this is the best one. I'm going to be honest about where it's not. I'm going to answer all your questions. I'm such an expert, and then I'm going to ask you, Lenny, when is that... You have 280,000 miles on the Civic? Let me help you get you into that Model 3 performance today. And I've even got a special discount for the end of this month. And let me just help you." is that... You have 280,000 miles on the Civic? Let me help you get you into that Model 3 performance today. And I've even got a special discount for the end of this month. And let me just help you." And I've spent four calls answering all your questions and I'm explained to you all the things and why the supercharging network is better than the regular one that doesn't really work at the charger near your house. And I've gone on Google and I've seen there's no charging network near your house, there's only supercharges. I got you, don't I? And that's the job of SaaS and sales, because we're not selling commodities. And that's why the best reps will also tell reps when not to buy their product. As painful as that seems in tougher times, in 2024, the best reps say, "No, we're not there yet. We're not the right... If you need this feature, if you need this integration, I want you back in six months when you use this big product that isn't that great. But today, we're not the right solution for you." That's, the best ones do that. They have the confidence to know to close it. And the rest of the world thinks this is some sort of adversarial transactional thing and it's not. Right? Software... I think hopefully all your audience would agree, when it's done right, software's magical. It solves incredible problems, incredible problems. What Airbnb does, what Uber does, what SaaS... Things solve... I can track my customers, I can manage, I can automate my communications. It's magical. You shouldn't have to use boiler room tactics and use [inaudible 00:39:30] tactics when you have something. But, it doesn't sell itself, except for a little while in late 2020, early 2021, that screwed the whole world up when products actually sold themselves. I feel like this is a separate podcast we should do of just how to get better at sales and how to sell. But, I feel like that's its own hour of conversation. I did a great episode with April Dunford where, I don't know if you follow her stuff, but she-…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.