The Sales Transformation Podcast

#188 – Best of Q4 2025
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George: Hi everyone. George here, the editor of the Sales Transformation Podcast. First of all, let me wish you all a very happy New Year, and I hope you've enjoyed your Christmas break. If you've managed to have one for 2026, first episode, we're taking a look back at some of the highlights from Q4 of 2025. We'll be back next week with a new episode, and we'll also be releasing recordings of the talks from Global Sales Transformation 20 as podcast episodes over the next few months as well.

For now though, please enjoy the clips.

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Ofer: So just setting up the scene, um, 25 years, uh, of, uh, doing revenue operations in various roles in various companies, big and small, various growth journeys.

What I've seen, um, in my experience is, um, pipeline is a really hard problem that people try to get away with. Um, unfit simple solution. Um, the conversations often revolve around coverage. Because it's the easiest thing. What is coverage? Three x four x? I have a number and I need to cover it. I have a few balls in the air and I need to end up, uh, throwing them and I need to end up with one.

How many balls do I need to to have in the air? You pick your, uh, analogy. The dashboards that, um, um, spun off this, uh, theory, focus on coverage in many ways, and they have really scary colors with, uh, green, red, and, and you name it, and yellow. And we often, uh, see leaders fall into the trap of trying to manage KPIs.

Um, it's quite scary when you, um, as a CRO, as a leader, uh, want to, uh, make sure that you have enough going on in the business, especially when sales cycles are long. Uh, you want to know that, uh, you have the cover to make the numbers that you, uh, are being held accountable for. But there's going, uh, and it is pretty easy to take the pipeline and divide it by the number, but it's also pretty easy to gain the system, so to speak.

If you apply enough pressure, you know, nobody wants to look red, it's pretty easy to game the system by adding stuff, inflating pipeline by, um, letting deals that are already dead to stay in the pipeline because nobody asked me and it's there, or somebody else could basically, um, uh, lost that deal and now it's showing up in my territory.

I don't want to lower my win rates. Uh, so you feel like folks prioritizing, looking good. Over being good because it, it's pretty, the, the metric is simple. It's pretty easy to, I don't wanna say game, but I will say game, um, the, the, the, the picture that everybody's looking at.

Phil: I think the, you know, one of the interesting things of, uh, that, um, you've been able to, to look at with the way in which you look at data is the connection between data and behavior. And I, I just remember, uh, doing a project with one of our clients in Australia and they were having a bit of a tough year.

And, um, there were a number of deals, you know, quite large deals going through the pipeline. And I remember that the CEO was under so much pressure in this organization that. That he was circumventing the activities of the sales team, uh, speaking direct to the customer to see if he can pull off a deal in order to, to reach the number for the country.

And of course, when you have that sort of behavior coming from senior management, it doesn't make you wanna share data, does it? To your point of earlier on that, that what is in the pipeline, you wanna sort of manage the expectations of senior management so that they don't interfere too much in the data that they're seeing and sort of inter intervening around, you know, the sales team.

Um, but I think what I found interesting, uh, through the past, you know, 10 years of beginning to beginning to understand how you're approaching pipeline health and management is the way you've started to link. A deep understanding of the behavior of salespeople and sales managers with data. I think that's, I think that's quite unusual.

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Phil: So for, for the benefit of the listener, Sherry, would you like to explain how you see the difference between mentoring and coaching?

Sherry: Yeah, of course. So from, okay, so from a, I think from a mentoring perspective, we, I've had so many mentors and they've been amazing in my career. Um, mentoring is almost, I would say is quite advisory.

So I, I could be speaking to my mentor, getting advice, getting inspiration. It's, it's back and forth. Um, but when I, when I think about coaching, it's heavily question based, and it's not me raising the question to my mentor being like, oh, I'm a, like, if, well, I'm a bit confused with this or that, but no a in a coaching conversation, you have a coach and they are asking you the questions.

could be a magic question, it could be anything to get the answer or the clarity to the problem that I've come with. And that to me was, is such an interesting way where you are actually as a coach, you are empowering someone else to create their own answers, right? So, so, and actually a coach does, I think with a, we've always had the stereotype for me, like a mentor, someone who's, um, inspires me, someone often, a lot more senior than I am.

To, to give me that kind of direction, to keep in contact from a networking perspective, all of this great stuff, but from a coaching perspective, who is really going to also be conf, like, have the confidence to ask me the questions and give and give me the safe space that I can answer it. So I think as a coach, I think you need, I think you need to really, when you select a coach or when you have that, are your characters meshing that you can both have that, can I, do I feel safe?

Am I gonna answer this question? Will this person ask me the questions that get me to that kind of, that, that destination I need to go to without them giving me the answer? And that's the kind of, to me, the, the main difference, um, of what a coach does.

Phil: Yeah, and I guess there's a place for both mentoring and coaching.

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Max: it's not necessarily the CFO him or herself. Uh, we see companies that, uh, sell to, let's say, finance teams as part of their sales cycle. So it could be a VP Finance or somebody else on the finance team.

And then oftentimes what they would do, they would have an internal conversation with the CFO if needed. But it's not necessarily that The expectation is that you as a salesperson have direct contact with the CFO. It's not always necessary. We do see that, um, more and more of course, but when we talk about CFOs, I think the assumption here is we're also talking about finance teams in general.

Jesus: Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure you'll help the business unit team to prepare whatever is required to make the request to the CFO and win the, and win the budget they, they need for Right.

Max: Absolutely. And this is, uh, a very important thing to clarify at the beginning of this process. 'cause every company is different, like every CFO or every finance team, uh, even though they care about capital deployment, generally speaking, and they wanna the best program, the best product for their company, they may have different metrics, different priorities, the way they look at their business.

So when you. And by the way, this conversation starts not only with the finance team. Yeah, it might be a little too late when you get in front of the finance team to initiate this conversation. This conversation starts with your other stakeholders. That you're normally sell to? Like what's important for your company?

Is it unity economics or is it the TCO or is it something else? So how should we as a vendor be thinking about it? And we see that companies and sellers that are better at discovering those kind of insights and capturing them, they're more successful later on with their deals. 'cause they are prepared, they understand what the finance team that they're talking to cares about.

'cause again, there is no one size fits all. It's like, okay, here's my TCO model. It's, it's supposed to work because it for you, because it worked for somebody else. We see less and less of that.

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Will: why don't we start, start off by, you know, we've announced our partnership with Aviso.

We've heard a lot from Heus on sales frequency about the partnership, but I think. It'll be great to hear from you, you know, your, the CEO of Consalia to get your thoughts about the partnership. Um, and, and really why don't we just start with why, why have we entered into a partnership with an AI company?

Phil: Um, yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a great question, um, in that I think a lot of this initiative around. AI has been, uh, driven by Hazer actually since he, he joined us in this role of, of, of, uh, head of consulting. We knew, we knew that we needed to go into it and, you know, it's been quite an interesting journey to my partner with Aviso.

Um, the reason why we knew we needed to go into it was because, you know, we have this, um. New technology that's emerging. We went through quite a lot of introspection about how to leverage the incredible research and data that we've done around the sales mindsets, all the student projects. And you know, we looked at the process of creating the, um, what we call the Consalia brain at the time.

Um, and then it was. I guess by chance or serendipity that we met offers Berman to share the thoughts we had to share the digital, uh, account planning tools we're starting to build and unbeknown to us at the time, of course, um, offer had been, uh, offered the job of, uh, chief Product officer of Aviso. And for those of you that know Consalia well or Will, will know that we've had.

A 10 year relationship with offer over the years since he was at SAP ServiceNow board and other companies, and in my view is probably one of the world's sort of leading experts on the link between data and behavior and the way that offer has interacted with us over the years. Presented at GST himself, you know, the fact that he joined Aviso was a, a real.

Also, what's the word? A real, um, influencer in the way we've ended up partnering with Aviso now at a strategic level. I've known about Aviso for a year before offer joined Aviso. Um, and so was aware that offer held them in very high esteem. But of course when offer then turned around and said, why don't we, why don't we develop a partnership?

Now we've got the Aviso, this amazing AI company that knows how to, uh, sort of work with AI agents. And I think we could see that this would be very much an accelerated, um, pathway that we could get into beginning to explore how we can. Leverage the incredible content we have with an ai, uh, sort of driven company.

Um, I think, I think for me, the underpinning, uh, driver for this is a, is a desire to. Do what we can to help improve sales performance, whether it's through education or training or consultancy. You know, we, we need to address that topic holistically, and I've always felt that there had been a piece of the jigsaw that we hadn't put in place, that we hadn't quite kind of worked out.

How do we start to look at the sales operations side of the business? Leveraging some of our research that we've got in that space, uh, with technology. And I think the combination of offers insights into behavior and data analytics, the link up with Aviso kind of has made this a really incredible partnership, um, from, from our point of view.

So. We're very excited that we're now in the build phase, I guess, of the Avis relationship. I'm very much hoping that we can share some of the insights we've got at GST, but um, we shall see

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Shakeel: I think, um, you know, we are all seeing this global shift across the world within all societies of a refocusing on. Um, making sure me and mine are, are protected and cared for first, and we're just seeing this all over the world. It's not a bad thing, it's just the nature of what the needs are of human beings.

Yeah, and we spend a lot of time over the years, um, you know, value-based selling, value creation. Selling has always been about how do we understand what the other's issues and problems are, and how do we then figure out what we can bring them to, to help them solve their problem. That's still valid. Still true.

That's still the only way to deepen relationships. But, uh, personally I'm seeing as we are seeing some of this happen in the world, there's a bit of a tension on that fundamental notion that is perhaps spilling a little bit over into the business world where we just need a reminder that in order to add value and create for others, it starts with a, a real.

A centered focus on actually caring about the other's issues and problems and challenges.

Phil Styrlund: Yeah. Uh,

Shakeel: so that's why I think this is so important right now to help marketing be more relevant to sales. So sales can therefore be more relevant and helpful to the people they serve.

Phil Squire: Uh, and what do you see, uh, what do you see, uh, marketing doing or needing to do in order to, uh, become more relevant?

What sort of things? You know, what do you, you know, what do you think is important?

Phil Styrlund: Well, Phil, let's go back to our discussion around where we see sales going, and then I'll kind of give my view on where I see marketing fitting into that. And I think it all begins with marketing needs to be the keeper of the ethos of business empathy, which is what Shakeel just got done talking about.

And we just described that as business empathy. It's this, it's not about what you have, it's about what your CA customer cares about, which sounds embarrassingly simple. Yeah, but that's an epiphany for many companies. But as you know from our discussion a couple weeks ago, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what the future of selling will look like, and then we'll hang our marketing discussion on that.

And I've come up with three pillars and let's test them, is the first time I've kind of articulated them. Okay. Number one, I think is the notion of insight enabled solution development. So it's taking your products and services. Bathing them in insights, wrapping them with insights around what you sell.

Because increasingly what customers are looking for is not just the product, but all of the insights that surround that. And that's a whole different thing. And that's, that's very much a marketing based acumen. I think the second. Sales fluency for the future is what I call orchestrated sense making. So let's unpack that one for a minute.

That the sales professional now will need to be what I would describe as a virtuoso level orchestrator between their customer and their own company on one axes. And between their human sales team and their digital sales team on another axes between, we could call it the human agents and the digital agents on another axes, right?

So if you think of that, that diagram, it's really going to be this new level of, of being the master orchestrator and to make sense of all of that for the customer, but also. To make sense of the tsunami of information that's coming from ai, because no longer is sales struggling with a lack of information.

Now we're drowning in it. Yeah. So the real work is the so what? What do we do with all this? What does it mean and how do we execute that? And that's what I call number two, orchestrated sense making. And then the third is what I call value storytelling. It's really value articulation wrapped in a narrative.

It's this ability to tell structured stories and in that, embed your value proposition, but do it in a way that's compelling. That's interesting. And that also shows how you're incorporating what's working in other places. 'cause one of the things we go back to that customers. Continually want to know, and I know it's validated a lot by your research.

Phil, tell me what's working somewhere else. Mm-hmm. And that needs to be the center of the story. So I think the, these three pillars of insight enabled solution development, orchestrated sense making and value storytelling are kind of the three pillars of where things are going. So now back to your question, where does marketing fit in all of that?

Marketing needs to be the partner for insights, the orchestration partner and the storytelling partner. They need to be the story makers, so stor, so sales can be the storytellers because marketing now needs to be kind of the epicenter, the fuel rod, if you will, for sales. So they're better informed, they're more strategically persuasive, that they're involved more earlier in deals.

And they can bring insights to differentiate themselves. Now that's a mouthful, but that's why marketing matters more than ever right now.

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Will: And going back to your research, when you, again originally did it, one of the key findings was that only 10% of sales professionals sold in the way that clients want to be sold to.

are we working with the same kind of minority? Sales professionals getting it right, or has that figure shifted? Um, can you share some insights from the research you've done? Yeah,

Phil: so, so I think there's some good news on that front will, which is that. When we did the first round of the research, 80% of all the respondents that we interviewed and there were sort of 89, I think that took part in the original research we did, said that less than 10% of salespeople sold in a way that they really want.

The figure that we've got now is less than 30% sell in a way that they want. So my sense is that there has been definitely a marked improvement in the perceptions of how sellers sell compared to those years ago. Um, and I, I, I think this sits quite well with me because I've always felt we sort of bashed poor salespeople over the head for that figure.

And it, it's still not good enough. You know, it's still not where it needs to be, but there's definitely been an, an improvement according to customers. and the buyers that we've interviewed, you know, range from, you know, heads of procurement right through to, you know, even the chairman of fairly large PLCs.

Um, so yes, there's still room for improvement, but, but the standards to us have definitely improved over the last 15 years. And, you know, that makes me feel that yes, the sales profession or sales enablement is, is moving the needle in the right direction. Uh, but it still still needs to move forward.

But there has been progression.

Will: And I think that was one of my key takeaways from GST. Yeah. Um, was that with all these AI tools and, um, training that's now available, the. Standard of a sales professional is going to rise because they are being coached, they're being sort of monitored in a sense.

So. You will see a rise in the sort of sales behaviors that customers wanna see.

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Ofer: Oh, also from Dego, how are the mindsets connected to the choice of sales methodologies? Good question.

Phil: Doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. It's, it's methodology agnostic. That's what I love about the mindset. It doesn't matter whether you're using medic or spin or whatever methodology you use. The methodology is, is just a process.

You know, for me, for me, if the mindsets are right, then it doesn't really matter what methodology you have. They're all good. They all serve a purpose. Uh, but you can have a great methodology, but if you've got people with the wrong mindsets it won't take you anywhere. And so, you know, for me, uh, you know, the, the other thing I just like to mention is culturally what we found doesn't matter which part of the world you're in, whether you're in Japan or whether you're in.

America, you know, the mindsets are, are still statistically relevant. The difference is, is the way in which they're embellished in terms of behavior. The way you earn respect in Japan is very different to other countries. The mindset is still important, is just the way you, you, uh, convey it. And so, um, so I think what's interesting about approaching sales behavior from a mindset point of view, it's geographically agnostic and it, and it's also methodology agnostic.

And I'd ask you a question, Diego, what would you rather, would you rather a sales team of people with the right mindsets, but with the wrong sales process? Or would you rather a sales team with the right sales process but with the wrong mindset?

Ofer: I think it's a rhetorical question, and I think we're, we don't have time.

We're outta time, but I'll, I'll end with the story like linked to, to this very short one. Um, I say, I always say there's a, the different business, Salesforce, uh, sorry. Sales process and methodology, um, is, um, my wife, the process of washing dishes is always the same. You go to the kitchen thing, you, some of them go in the dishwashers, some of them you wash, uh, by hand and, uh, put away the request to wash the dishes for my wife, if it comes at 7:00 PM. Now I'll just go and do it. If it comes at 11:00 PM there's gonna be a very different outcome. No dishes washed, and I'll be, what were you waiting for? And she will be, what were you waiting for? Didn't you see them in the sink? So the timing here is very different. Define a very different, different outcome, and obviously having the right mindset, um, um, helps to avoid it all to altogether.

So, you know, the, the, the difference between uh, a smart person and a clever person is that, uh, a spouse, a smart person, doesn't walk into, uh, a trap. A clever person knows how to get out of, ​

Phil: the poll result was quite interesting that you kind of referred to it, uh, right at the beginning about, um, uh, about how much coaching do people receive. And I, I think, you know, the majority had not received coaching. Um, so you, but obviously when you had your one-on-ones, you realized actually there were people here who had received a lot of coaching and there that there was a lot of coaching that was being done at a certain level.

Sherry: Yeah.

Phil: Um, part of this is about creating a culture around coaching. And so this workshop was, it, was this done at a point in time that people had. Agreed with you that coaching was important and we needed to create a culture of coaching. Um, or, or, um. Or did you use the workshop to, if you like, sell the idea that coaching is a culture, it is important, and how are we going to sort of promote it?

Or was it a bit of both? I'm not quite sure.

Sherry: Yeah. So I did the, so I did the initial discussions and like testing the water and letting them know, because people don't need to really give me time to do this because obviously they can be like, well, it's not your day job. Yeah. What are you doing? So yeah, I, when I spent time with the leaders, including our director.

Which was amazing because he was really open to it. I almost got him bought into what I'm trying to achieve, and that's what allowed me to then create that session. And then I needed to also get Brian from a team I had never spoken to, which is that coaching HR team that I didn't even know Yeah. To buy them into my journey right at the beginning.

And they were, they were convinced that the value it would bring and therefore we do it. But I think there was no one that was like thinking, okay, it's gonna be promising, but I am the objectives of the HR coaching team. Luckily, which was great for us as well, is that they were, yeah, they were also having the same challenge.

And I showed them how actually I'm gonna support, we're almost going through the same, like, it's the same clause. I'm gonna help you create the education, see if it's worth also opening up to the other bands, which you are considering. Yeah. Yeah. So it almost became like, okay, we're on that same team, almost like, okay, it's a win-win.

And that's how li like, I think that's how things have to be, isn't it? It's like how can Yeah, we both. Also benefit. Um, and um, I remember the lady, her name was Claire. She came in and she was supportive and we did the session. I think it was interesting for me 'cause when, I think when they, when we first, when we first kicked off the workshop, everyone was like, probably thinking, oh, it's another workshop.

But by the end of it, it wasn't like that because Yeah. Um, like I said to you, like it, the, the, when I had the director come and he opened the meeting, the workshop, 'cause I wanted to make sure that knew. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, this is the way how life is. I think hierarchy is somewhat important. So when I had someone at the level of our director going, I'm supportive of this.

I wanna achieve this, this, this coaching is important for me because of this, you can see people started to be like, okay, I'm gonna be a bit more open. And then we did, we did the session. People actually went split. They split out into like separate teams. Um Okay. And they were even saying it was quite like.

Emotional to like actually like have some time with someone and like get that question time, which they don't do with people they wouldn't usually do with. Yeah.

Phil: Yeah.

Sherry: Um, it was just so rewarding.

Phil: So you got them doing sort of mini fishbowl type exercises, Sherry, you know, such as the ones that you did on the, on the, on the program.

Um,

Sherry: yeah. Hundred percent. By the way. I loved him. I also loved, I remember I did, um, when I was first on the program and I was still like a client sales manager and. I had learned, we had done some exercises in, in session with your, with yourselves. Yeah. Um, including like, okay, what do you see of yourself versus what do people see of you?

And I, I could see there was always like things hidden that none of us even knew about each other. Even simple exercises like the shield exercise I remember doing. Yeah.

Phil: Amazing. Isn't, it yeah. And actually when we did

Sherry: that shield exercise. With the wider team. Um, people got, yeah. Honestly, people were emotional 'cause they were like, I've been working with these people for years and I didn't know what motivated them or what was going on in their world.

Like, why do I come work? Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just really, I think it's really good to, even just as a trigger of reflection these projects, it's, it's, it's really powerful.

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Max: Typically what we see is, um, if you are trying, um, if, if we look, if we look at the engagement pattern, um.

It's not like on day one, suddenly you wake up and you have connections to all the senior stakeholders in the company. Of course, just like, like that. Now what we see is it's an evol, it's a process, and the way it evolves is you touch upon different topics with different stakeholders that you're currently talking to, and then gradually over time it opens doors to others.

The very basic stuff. The trick is, mm-hmm. Are you good at managing this process? Are you managing the process or is your buyer. Managing this process for you, and then you are in his or her hands. It's like if they're good, if they know what they're doing, if they like you and your solution, then you're making progress.

Otherwise you are just, you know, you're there probably. So that there is a column on their slide. We have, we evaluated this solution, uh, we passed because to the key question in, in the response to your question, will, is what is it in in it for me as a finance person? Like why would I talk to Max? I know Max wants to talk to me because again, it's part of this pro his process.

Somewhere it's written like, okay, go talk to the finance person. But if I, as a salesperson cannot explain to my decision maker, to my buyer, like, Hey, here's why we want to talk to finance. We want to discuss CapEx versus opex, or, I have two options. I can give you lower price, more savings, um, but longer term or something else.

How should we be thinking about it? If your buyer has a, an answer, good, you got the answer. So there is no reason for you to talk to finance, but if you are at the point where the buyer says, look, it's a legit question. I, it sounds like it's an important question and it will have impact on whether the business case is successful or not.

So let me help you get in front of the finance or let me talk to finance team and get back to you or let me arrange a meeting. With finance team. That's, and, and this is how you get also coaching for the meeting. One of the best meetings I had was with the CFO of a Fortune 100 company. We got specific coaching as to what this person was looking for.

Guess what? It had nothing to do with the financial metrics because the assumption is like, yeah, okay fine. I have my team. They're working with you. The metrics will be fine. He was testing for something else. And this something else was not in a spreadsheet. Yeah. It was like, okay, how can you do what you are claiming you can do?

Explain to me what your solution does. Explain to me how it's different from what we already have today. And then let me pressure test this logic. Let me ask questions. So that's what this finance person was focused for, focused on. It had nothing to do with what you would normally expect. Well, I can save you this much money, or I can add this much gross, nothing.

The assumption was this is stable stakes. It has been covered. That's why you are here in the room with me. So if you show up for a meeting like this and you're like, okay, let's, let me take you through the, you know, NPV numbers, and then they're like, yeah, that's not exactly what we want. Okay. And I'm simplifying, of course, but it's not like you just show up and say, okay, what do you wanna talk about?

Like, you get coaching from your champion, from your decision maker before that so that you're well prepared for this meeting. Not every CFO is gonna think the same way. I had recently A CFO who spent 45 minutes out of a 60 minute meeting, um, demoing testing, trying the product. It is like, again, the logic is like, guys, the numbers.

Yeah. I can read the spreadsheet and my team says the numbers make sense. Okay, got it. Like I can validate and all of that. I don't need 60 minutes for that, but I want to understand the product. I want to understand why your AI solution is different. Like show it to me. A lot of them surprisingly have this appetite and when you run, if you run a, let's say, personality analysis of this person before the meeting.

Hopefully, even if you got no input from the decision maker, from the, from your champion, hopefully you will be prepared for this kind of conversation with them. So it's just does not have to be limited to numbers only.

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Will: So we're just one, well, just over one week to go. Um, to, to G-S-T-G-S-T is the global sales transformation event.

This year's theme is winning the right way, human connection in the age of ai. And I, over the course of the year I sort of, I've heard through client conversations. How, although AI is, is sort of everywhere and it's top of mind for everyone in parallel, the importance of this human to human, um, approach is, is still of real significance.

So, um. Yep. Perhaps Phil, I think you are the one that, uh, back in probably January, January, February time it was, um, identified this theme as what we should be focusing on. Um, maybe if we could hear from you why you chose this theme.

Phil: I think that, I think that, um. In some respects, we're living in a slightly dystopian world in which we, you know, the, the reality of what we see in the news or what we read about, uh, um, some of which may be AI generated, um, it, um, is making people nervous and question about, about what is the truth, you know, what is the truth out there?

How do we, how do we know that what we are being. Uh, what information is being shared is based on fact how much of it is made up. So there's an element of, of, um, sensing, I guess, in the marketplace that yes, we know this revolution is upon us and we need to embrace it, but how do we do that in a way that, um.

Kind of speaks to authentic data, authentic information, authentic coaching, whatever it might be. And so, um, and it's been quite interesting actually through the global research project that we've been doing, is to get the perspectives of buyers, um, to get their sense of how they are seeing, uh, sort of AI and technology playing into the buyer seller relationship.

And, um, I think that of course we'll be sharing the results of the research, you know, at GST or I will be doing it, but I'm absolutely a hundred percent convinced that the theme of the human connection and AI absolutely has to be addressed in parallel, ​

Shakeel: when I think about, if I was in a marketing role right now. Um, the one that really, um, strikes it for me is when you talk about sensemaking from a philosophical, intellectual perspective, before you get to sensemaking, you have to get to curiosity.

So much is changing for our, uh, for customers in general, um, for their salespeople that they support on an ongoing basis. So, um, just to support all the engines and pillars that Phil, Phil just talked about, marketing has to remind themselves that they have to build processes for structured curiosity so they can stay on top of what is changing.

For the customer segments and industries that their salespeople serve, uh, we've got three language dialects. We've got the customer language dialect, which is relevant to whatever company and industry they're in. You've got the sales dialect and you've got the marketing dialect. Marketing has to take ownership of translating all of that into common language, and that common language has to be centered on the customer dialect So marketing can own a process of ongoing curiosity of asking questions from sales and from their own market research. What matters to customers in this segment, in this industry right now? Bring that in through the organization back to say, based on what's important right now in the customer's language, what do we have that's relevant?

Product insights, capabilities, all of that. Let's turn that into the value storytelling that Phil talked about, and then give that back to sales so they can tell the story to the customer and put that in our brand communication, our messaging, so the dialects are aligned and we're speaking the same language.

Um, that's, that's my view from a mechanical process standpoint.

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Phil: when I go back to my doctorate, it was just a framework at that point. based on the research, this is now sort of being able to evaluate the business impact of the sales mindsets as well as are there any new mindsets that we should take into account?

Will: And, and were there? Were there any kind of sub values that you were surprised to emerge through the research?

Phil: There was one that I think is quite transformative in the sense of, really making us think more deeply about, one in particular the mindsets, but a lot of the thematic analysis themes that came from looking at all the research data pointed to the relevance of the mindsets that were developed all those years ago.

So integrity. You know, um, client centricity, um, curiosity, collaboration. You know, these were outputs of the thematic analysis, courage, and it, it's quite easy to take these words that came outta the thematic analysis and put them within the, uh, four mindsets construct that we'd built all those years ago.

Um, but there were some interviews that we did that really provoked some deeper thinking around the topic of authenticity. Um, which is, I think, influenced by the artificial intelligence wave that we're currently sort of surfing, if you like, and so we've come up with this, um, this description of authenticity being intellectual authenticity as being the first of the four, defining mindsets. And, and I think the reason why this word intellectual has surfaced is because buyers have used this word themselves. You know, they were saying in some of the interviews, they're looking for intellectual honesty.

And they didn't want intellectual dishonesty, you know, and these were different people making some sort of commentary about what they really sought from relationships with salespeople. Um,

Will: but what, what does that mean? What does intellectual authenticity mean?

Phil: Well, they're, they're looking for original thinking.

so if we focus on the word authenticity to begin with, you know, that's very much connected with acting, with integrity, uh, honesty, transparency. So, uh, the word authenticity is very much linked to, if you like, a, a moral code of conduct, which is. giving customers the perception.

They're dealing with someone who's not talking from a script that someone who is, who they seem to be when they turn up. But the word intellectual, is something that says, yes, we want people to be authentic when they turn up, but we also want them to think. To use reasoning skills to reflect critically on problems that we have and therefore come up with solutions.

it's a word that kind of really resonated when we started to do the thematic analysis because we've often said with our academic programs that what we're doing is we're teaching people how to think on these programs, which is reflective practice, if you like, and to hear customers use this word, intellectual honesty sort of made us connect this, dimension of a toolkit that we think is very important for salespeople to have with the academic programs that we also run.

Um, so this word intellectual. Authenticity is a counterbalance balance to artificial intelligence. So we've got intellectual authenticity being the human side, and we've got artificial intelligence being the technology side. How intellectual authenticity connects with artificial intelligence is where you're gonna get magic happening.

So for us, it was a rather beautiful way of connecting the research from buyers. With this new wave of technology that we're now embracing from an AI perspective.

Will: so this is, I mean, it is definitely an, an evolved value that we've seen. Yep. So with what we are from your research, it's safe to say that fundamentally the values.

You know, they're still relevant, but authenticity is evolving.

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