Behavior Hacking, Episode 1: The New Job Description for Sellers

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What Memos Can Teach Us About Decision Making

Gray Hardell: 

So Nate, I've got your book here, "Selling With," and it opens with a quote from Jeff Bezos on internal memos. Can you tell me what's the significance of that?

Nate Nasralla: 

Yeah, so it's a bit of an obscure quote maybe to weave into the book, but it comes from one of his shareholder letters where he's unpacking the process they use to make big decisions. Essentially, what he's talking about is how over a series of conversations, they're writing to clarify their point of view on the direction they need to go. 

He's talking about how people come together inside a large organization to communicate internally and pick a direction to solve a problem or address a certain priority. I think it's a fascinating read for sellers to understand, because ultimately our job is to influence the outcome of a decision. We have to start by understanding the process that large companies use to make decisions in those internal conversations.

Buyers Close Deals, Not Just Sellers

Gray Hardell: 

That makes a lot of sense. And in the book, you say that buyers close deals and not sellers. What do you actually mean by that? Because do sellers serve no purpose?

Nate Nasralla: 

No, we're rewriting the job description for sellers. Buyers, more specifically champions, are the ones who are closing deals because they're actually in the room when a buying decision is being made. If you look at that point where all the meaty debates, decisions, problems, priorities—where that's happening behind closed doors—how can the seller be the one getting the deal closed if they're not even there? Then the question is, okay, if the champion's closing the deal, what's the job of the seller? This is where we shift to a two-part, very simple job description. 

First, create a champion in every deal—like, if they're the definition of an inside sales rep, the person who is selling, then one, you need to get them in place, and then second, you have to enable them. We're kind of shifting from just a sales enablement point of view where sales enablement is enabling the seller to go sell in a sales meeting, to now the account executive, the account manager, they're actually doing the enabling — helping that champion clarify their point of view to bring a really crisp message into those internal conversations where the decision will be made.

What is the Ideal Seller Profile?

Gray Hardell: 

You have been a multiple-time sales leader, you are a leader of an organization, you've written a book. What is now the ideal seller profile then in this new way of selling?

Nate Nasralla: 

Yeah, I think about a couple of different traits or characteristics. For example, if I'm writing out a job description, I'm interviewing, what am I looking for in the candidate? The first thing I'm looking for is creativity. As we begin to have a world where sellers are working with AI more and more, the way I would define creativity is the things that aren't in a training data set that AI can't produce. 

In a way, it's almost making the seller even more human because we want somebody who can create and think and partner with AI, of course, but to do the things that only they can do. It's not just somebody who has made a career following the average middle-of-the-road process. They're creative. Okay, so that's the first thing. 

The second thing that I would think about is thoughtfulness. When I say thoughtful, I don't mean, like, "Oh, they make kind gestures, you know, they send gifts." It's more about spending a lot of time in deep thought really trying to understand the nuance of what's happening inside that customer's organization and being able to connect the dots and weave a pattern between all these different conversations, contacts across a number of different business units in the buying team. They're able to put that all together in a really cohesive way where somebody is like, "Wow, I wouldn't have thought of it like that."

And then the last thing that I think about is attention to detail, especially over time and the typical arc of a seller's career. They're going to start working in more complex deals, larger organizations over time, and that's where there is a premium for somebody who does the little things really, really well.

On Skills Machines Can't Replicate

Gray Hardell: 

You said, "I want to hire people that have skills and qualities that machines can't replicate." What I'm hearing now is this sense of self-awareness that they can be wrong, this sense of empathy that they actually want to dive deep, and curiosity that they genuinely want that feedback and it's a two-way street. Is it hard to find those sellers?

Nate Nasralla: 

Yeah, it is. What I found is that, for example, I never went through a formal sales training program. I started my career building valuation models to put a number on the value of technology, and I've always been fascinated about how you can take product skills and knowledge from different domains and then, by analogy, learn to apply them to selling.

You start to unpack and get people with different skill sets that are broader, and that's where things like creativity and empathy come from because they've exercised them in different domains and environments as opposed to like, "Well, how does the playbook go? Let me know, how do you script empathy in a conversation?" That's counterproductive. You can't actually do that, right?

You will find these traits if you look outside your traditional profile of who a seller should be. And I'll give you some of the famous examples: Arnold Schwarzenegger learning how to pose in a bodybuilding competition by taking ballet classes; or Kobe Bryant working on his footwork by taking tap dancing classes. 

Because they knew there are things outside of different characteristics outside of my field that I can take, adapt, and apply here. And I think it's the exact same thing when you're looking for the right profile of who you want to go out and hire and bring in. Take a slightly wider view.

How Can You Tell If You Actually Have a Champion?

Gray Hardell: 

Nate, I've been a seller, and I'll say that there have been times—early in my career—where I thought I had a champion, but I wasn't even in the deal, right? So, we know that building champions is incredibly crucial to winning. How can you tell if you actually have a champion?

Nate Nasralla: 

Yeah, it's a good question because I think the word "champion" or the term is thrown around very loosely. 

Let's rewind back to high school physics. So, in terms of how we think about building champions, potential only becomes kinetic energy when it is put into motion, right? 

So, forward progress. Now, when you think about what is a potential champion or somebody who has the profile of even could they become a champion at all, I think about it in terms of three I's: influence, incentive, and information. 

Influence, like, can they change and shape that internal conversation? Incentive, like, do they want to? Is there something in it for them that's tying them to the deal? And then, lastly, information—like that hard-to-find kind of deal intelligence. Are they in the know? If you see all of those things, you have the potential to become a champion, but being a champion is behavior-based. 

So, until there is evidence of moving the deal forward, making progress internally, then you're not actually a champion. And so, that's where the whole principle or practice of beginning to test for the evidence of a champion comes into play.