Meridian Fastener Group… a $42MM distributor just closed their biggest year ever. 18% growth. The CRO does something almost no one does after a good year. She asks her top five reps to write in one paragraph each exactly why their best customer bought from them instead of the other three distributors that were bidding the same job.
She gets five different answers. Four say some version of they trust us, or we have the best relationships, and not a single person can name what earned that trust or hand it to a new rep with no history on the account. Two of the five reps are over 55. One is retiring next year. Meridian just had its best year ever and still can't tell you why they won a single deal.
That’s how Adam Jay opened the conversation when I joined him and his partner, Dale Zwizinski, on the GTM Uncensored Podcast this week. It’s a hypothetical situation, but a pretty good one, and I’m working with several companies right now who feel like they’re staring down the barrel of their best reps retiring.
Side note: Adam and Dale were among the best-prepared podcast hosts I’ve ever been with. Their expertise paired with their Odd Couple schtick makes for a very engaging show. They’re great, and the infographic they created to support the episode is so cool.
Something came up on the show about AI, and I said something worth digging a little further into.
“The cost of knowledge is going quickly to zero, and the value of expertise is going through the roof.”
Information asymmetry is no longer a competitive advantage. Everyone has access to the same tools, and it’s very difficult to know something other people don’t. Good prompting can get you all the data you want, and it’s usually the same as what everyone else will find.
On the other hand, what you do with that information is exactly where you can separate yourself from your competitors. It’s the judgment and context developed over years that lives in your best reps’ heads. That expertise is the foundation of the experience you give your customers. That’s a big part of what makes them choose you over your competitors, especially when you sell similar solutions at similar prices.
Few companies have found a way to consistently transfer that expertise from veterans to rookies. So those rookies are turning to AI prompts to help them instead, and the knowledge isn’t the wisdom they’re looking for.
In my experience, as many as one in ten LLM responses make a lot of sense until I compare them against my earned experience. Some of them are just wrong, while others would be abject disasters if put into play. A rookie doesn’t have that experience to use as a filter, and they deserve a better mentor than the aggregated mediocrity of a chatbot.
I remember a sales call early in my career. I was really struggling to get any traction, and I had my manager come in with me. Twenty-some years later, I still don’t know exactly what happened, but he came in and moved the deal forward.
On the way out to the parking lot, I asked him how he did it.
“You'll get it. Just get out there, keep swinging, keep doing the thing.”
He saw it in himself, but couldn’t explain it, and I didn’t have the wherewithal at the time to press him further. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have replayed the call with him, asked about specific things he said, and dug into why he said them. What was his thought process? How did he approach the meeting? What goal did he have in mind? What cues did he read along the way that guided his words?
These all feel like intangibles in the moment, but as you tease them out, you'll recognize how many can be recorded, discussed, and used to dramatically shorten learning curves.
Your Monday Morning Move
Adam closed the main portion of the show with a call to action to everybody listening, and I’d like to echo it here.
This week, sit down with your two best reps separately and ask them one question. “Name the specific moment in your last closed-won deal where the customer decided you were the safer bet than the competition.” Don't let them answer with something like “they trusted us.” Push past it. Then find 15 minutes with that customer and ask the same question. If the rep's version and the customer's version don't line up, you have just found the gap between what your team thinks it does and why the customer actually bought.
You’ve got time for this, and you probably already have those meetings on your calendar. You just need to ask the extra questions. The only thing I might add is a third, less-tenured rep to the conversation and have the conversation as a group. When you get four executives in a room, you usually come out with five or six opinions.
When I describe the Meridian situation to VPs and Directors of Sales, they nod before I finish. Almost every one of them has a rep like that in mind, someone whose instincts the whole team leans on and no one has ever written down. If that's you, you're not alone, and you're not behind. A lot of sales leaders are staring at the same retirement calendar and wondering how to capture what's about to walk out the door.
Who's the rep on your team that you'd most like to sit down with and talk about why they win before they retire?
The Shoutout
Nobody would have blamed me for not liking David DeYoung. My daughter was two weeks old when my manager told me, almost in passing, that David was starting next week and taking part of my territory.
After that awkward introduction, David caught on quickly, grew the business, and I ended up with a trusted confidant and a friend. Years later, he leads a sales team that, from what I've seen, trusts and adores him.
I got to have breakfast with him this week, and he proved again that he'll always be younger, taller, and better-looking than me.
Cheers,
JB
PS: There's no better time to understand why you win than when you already have everybody in the room. Sales Kickoff season starts for me this week in Savannah. If you're looking for a speaker or a workshop facilitator for this fall or Q1, and this week's piece resonates, let’s talk.
