208: Brian Burns The Brutal Truth About Sales & a Whole Lot More

What brutal truths about sales today does the sales guru in Silicon Valley have to offer? On today’s episode, CEO at B2B Revenue, Brian Burns talks about his own brand of losery and serves some piping-hot truths everyone can learn from.
“The problem with sales today is everyone's doing what the dashboard wants to be viewed as opposed to what really accomplishes anything.” - Brian Burns

Three Things We Learned
Millions of dollars lost
Even the living expert on sales committed a few mistakes that cost him millions of dollars back in the day. When he turned down Web Logic, he “lost” five million; when he passed up a VP of sales position for a local company two decades ago, he lost thirty. But then again, do people who eventually become legends in their own right truly “lose” money?
Mistakes in pitching
People are taught many ways of doing a sales pitch. They have to know who their prospect is, reach out with a substantive pitch, and demonstrate that they know who they’re pitching to. But they must also ask themselves if they want to get pitched and the likelihood that their prospect will find something they need.
The problem today
People have grown so lazy and put so much focus on automation that they never really accomplish anything. Since the dawn of new technology like the customer relationship management software, salespeople have become so reliant on what the dashboard says. In short, no one pays attention to what matters anymore.

Sales has become a race of closures, more weight given on the importance of deals than their chronology, which almost always makes it more difficult to be productive. People try meet triple their quota, only to see the deals they spend long hours working on fall apart. Unless people realize how these “new” sales strategies are actually detrimental, then there’s no real forward development.

Bio:

Brian Burns is a sales leader, advisor and investor. He has spent his twenty year career creating, capturing and dominating early stage innovative markets. During this time, he has played key leadership, management and sales roles for nine venture capital backed companies, resulting in three IPOs and six acquisitions.

Through this experience, he has developed a unique and powerful sales method for bringing innovative products to market while marginalizing competitors. In his private practice, Brian has founded The Maverick Organization, a consulting firm specializing in assisting companies with their sales strategy, sales practices and in developing an effective sales team.

Links:

https://www.b2brevenue.com

https://twitter.com/briangburns

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianburns

We hope you enjoyed Brian Burns on this episode of Legends and Losers! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!