This is an interview with Richard Harris, founder of The Harris Consulting Group, a sales training and coaching company based in Los Angeles, California.
Richard, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey to becoming a leader in the sales industry?
I’ve been an SDR, AE, Sales Manager, Director of Sales, Head of Sales Operations, and a VP of Sales. Additionally, I’ve been training and coaching founders’ sales teams since 2011, including start-ups, mid-market, and enterprise organizations such as Salesforce, General Electric, Zoom, Gainsight, Pandora, and Visa.
I recently wrote a book called ‘The Seller’s Journey,’ highlighting the need to bring humanity back into sales, as well as teaching people how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask, and when to ask them.
What key moments in your career led you to specialize in founder-led sales and working with start-ups?
Having worked for several start-ups, some failed, others had positive exits, I learned early that it’s not about ‘what you do,’ it’s about the pains you solve in relation to your potential customers. Nobody cares what we do unless it addresses their specific pains.
I have been told that my experiences from my jobs and having coached dozens of founders at the early and mid-stage of the company have shortened their own runways to success.
Specific experiences include:
Gainsight – I started working with them in 2012, and at that point, they only had 15 employees.
Zoom – A sales team that already existed, and they needed to get everyone speaking the same language, using the same sales process, and following a consistent path to revenue growth.
The creation of N.E.A.T. Selling – The selling paradigm began shifting, and so I created a sales process and methodology that aligns.
Need – Yes, need still matters. And specifically, the need must be centered around the specific use cases your prospect and customers feel on a day-to-day basis.
Economic Impact – ROI is meaningless because nobody ever believes a salesperson when they ask for the ROI. NOBODY! It’s about establishing the Economic Impact of the need. What are the current needs costing the prospect presently, and because of that, what is the economic impact of those inefficiencies because other projects are delayed or simply cannot get done fast enough.
Access to Authority – Aside from there not being a single buyer, there is no longer a single buying committee. There are many committees. Knowing the decision-maker is worthless. We need to ask about the skeptics. Who are the skeptics on the committees? What are they skeptical about, and what information do they need to reduce their skepticism? Once you figure this out, then you can best determine who the final decision-makers truly are.
Timeline – This is not about when the prospect or customer wants to implement. It’s about knowing the economic impact for them if they do not meet their own deadlines.
You mentioned identifying areas for improvement and seeking advice from others as key tips for becoming a better salesperson. Can you share an example of a time you applied this advice and the impact it had on your own sales performance?
Like many founders, we sometimes let our egos drive our decisions. Here is one example I faced specifically.
When COVID hit in 2020, my entire business stalled. I never had a mentor, and to be honest, I resisted seeking mentors because of my ego.
So, in 2020, I reached out to a former client, and I asked him to help mentor me as I needed to shift my business model. He was kind, gracious, and helpful. With his guidance and support, I revamped my entire go-to-market strategy, and 2020 became one of my most successful years as an entrepreneur.
You’ve spoken about the importance of challenging your own beliefs in sales. What’s a belief you had to overcome to achieve greater success in your career?
Impostor syndrome is one of the biggest recurring challenges and belief systems many in sales, and life, struggle with.
When the opportunity for me to start my own business came along, I was very nervous and did not think I had the credibility necessary to create and run my own business. Reaching out to several people who explained to me that I was actually perfect for running my business was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome.
I have never been more successful in my career than I have been running my own company. I simply needed a little kick in the pants to get me going.
Your approach to sales emphasizes understanding the ‘Buyer’s Experience’ and prioritizing the concerns of skeptics. Can you walk us through a specific instance where this approach helped you close a deal that might have otherwise been lost?
I’ve built my sales process around making sure that a prospect has a great experience throughout the journey. People will often choose to work with someone based on the experience they’ve had, not just a price comparison.
A recent deal closed because I made sure to include all the proper stakeholders, not just the executive team. I told the prospect to have a few of the sales team members, particularly the ‘Grumpy Gus,’ speak with me before signing a contract. A ‘Grumpy Gus’ in this instance is the salespeople who have been doing sales for years, have been through multiple sales trainings, and tend to sit in the back of the room wondering why they even have to come to the sales training. Ultimately, these people are the biggest skeptics.
I let the prospect know that it was in their best interest to let the sales team give any trainer the ‘sniff test.’ After all, if the sales team doesn’t like the trainer, then the training will not be utilized. I also explained that by engaging the sales team, it will only improve the sales culture. The team will feel respected. They will feel like their opinion matters. And when it comes to salespeople, they want to be seen, heard, and understood.
When the final negotiations happened, I was priced slightly higher than my competitor. I was told by the client it was this specific approach, understanding the skeptics and being open to a conversation with them, that ultimately led to the deal closing.
You’ve highlighted the power of AI in various aspects of sales, from leadership to negotiation. Can you share a specific example of how you’ve personally used AI to improve your negotiation skills and the outcome of a deal?
Specifically, AI can help me reduce my own biases around sales conversations and negotiations. I use AI to help me understand my buyer’s personality, not just their actual persona, at their basic human level based on their emotional intelligence. AI has helped me understand how to craft messages to them in a way they like to receive information, not simply the way I want to say it. I have used this when negotiating with large and small companies, people with a lot or little buying experience, as well as figuring out the best practices for negotiating with procurement departments, in addition to a particular individual in that procurement department.
Transitioning from a peer to a manager can be challenging. How did you navigate this shift while maintaining positive relationships with your team, and what advice would you give to new managers facing a similar transition?
There are two answers to this question. One is if it is an internal promotion where you are now managing your former peers. The other is where you are getting a promotion at a new company where you are not managing anyone you know.
For this answer, I will focus only on the internal promotion. Here are the steps I encourage new managers to follow:
- Get a mentor as soon as possible, someone either internally or externally that you can get advice from when you need it.
- Create a structured plan. Be sure you understand how you will conduct 1:1s, pipeline reviews, personal conversations, the interviewing process, etc.
- Communicate your plan(s) with your team.
- Lead with vulnerability. Let your team know you are aware of the transition and that everyone is going through it, not just you; they are too. Let them know there may be disagreements with decisions, or perhaps you will make a mistake, and that no matter what, you are there to support them. When you make a mistake, you will take accountability and rectify it. When there are disagreements in the way of doing things, you will keep an open mind and listen to their points of view and work towards a resolution that works for everyone. That may not always happen; you simply want them to know you will listen.
- Communicate with upper management about their expectations of your role and your team. Even if discussed in the internal interview process, you want to make sure everyone is still aligned.
- Communicate with your team the expectations and share with them how you arrived at these expectations through working with leadership or by the responsibilities of you in your new role.
- Lead with vulnerability even more. On a regular basis, ask people on your team, “What’s the one thing I could do better to help you accomplish your goals?” This lets your team know you are open to feedback, and it gives them an opportunity to be seen, heard, and understood. This will build massive credibility and trust. It will also permeate the sales organization and create a strong sales culture.
You’ve emphasized the importance of accountability in leadership. Can you share an example of a time you held yourself accountable for a mistake and how that impacted your team?
There was a time when I was a new manager and had to create a compensation plan. I thought it was perfect, and upper management went along with it. When I delivered it to the sales team, it went over like a lead balloon.
After the meeting, I called in two of the senior salespeople to ask what happened. They explained to me that I was so focused on accomplishing the creation of the compensation plan, I neglected to realize a massive hole where commissions would be overlooked in the compensation plan.
In reality, it was something so simple, and I just overlooked it.
I thanked them for their feedback and told them I was 100% at fault for not catching that. I asked them what recommendations they would make. They made the recommendations, and fortunately, the executive team agreed, and we were able to make the changes before the compensation plan was implemented.
Ever since then, any compensation plan I’ve created, I’ve asked people on the sales team to help me find any holes or challenges with the plan so we can get it right the first time.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who are hesitant to embrace sales, particularly in the context of founder-led sales?
There are several things that founders would be wise to understand early on. This question implies that perhaps the founder is a technical founder. They are very smart at building something and simply don’t have the experience or desire to handle the business decisions, which is okay.
Early during founder-led sales, the sales process is only partially about getting customers. A big part of the conversation is about getting market feedback to make sure the pains you are solving are the right pains, and that the way you want to help solve those pains are the same ways your customers want to solve them.
This is the essence of founder-led sales. The buyer is buying the founder and the trust that the founder will get the job done. Understanding this mental shift is what will help a founder begin to understand sales.
If a founder is truly hesitant and simply not wanting to handle sales, they need to find a co-founder who likes the business side. This has to be a co-founder; it cannot be a ‘head of sales.’ Someone has to own the business side of the business with equal opportunities in the outcome. If a technical founder cannot find a business-minded co-founder, then the company will fail. This is not a hypothesis; it’s a fact. The world is full of great ideas that never became a business because a technical founder could not properly delegate, let go, and often, truly see the value of sales as more than a coin-operated vending machine.