PODCAST 32: Why Curiosity and Passion are Superpowers For Sales Leaders w/ Scott Schnaars

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak to sales veteran, executive, and leader, Scott Schnaars.

Scott has a long background in sales and has experienced the highs and lows of a long career selling different products. Scott has a great attitude on success and is one of the top leaders in SaaS, now overseeing global sales at Dynamic Signal.

If you missed episode 31, check it out here: PODCAST 31: How a World Series of Poker Winner Uses ‘Bets’ in Decision Making to Improve Outcomes w/ Annie Duke

What You’ll Learn

  • Why there’s no such thing as a bad call
  • Navigating from big company to small company and how to think about career development
  • Why “fake it till you make it” is terrible advice
  • The importance of pricing strategy and how to sell value
  • Using your customers to fund your growth strategy
  • How to develop your team into all-stars

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Show Agenda and Timestamps

    1. Show Introduction [0:10]
    2. About Scott Schnaars: An Introduction [2:59]
    3. The Four Skills That Make An Exceptional Salesperson [19:11]
    4. No Salesperson Has Ever Had a Bad Call [23:22]
    5. Keeping Watching Activity In Addition to Revenue [28:54]
    6. Three Unpopular Beliefs Scott Swears By [37:23]
    7. Sam’s Corner [46:29]

    Sales Hacker Podcast—Sponsored by Aircall and Outreach

    Sam Jacobs: Hey everybody, welcome to The Sales Hacker podcast. Today’s episode features Scott Schnaars, SVP of Worldwide Sales at Dynamic Signal. He’s a talented and experienced sales executive, and we had a great conversation. First, I also want to thank our sponsors, our wonderful sponsors.

    The first is Aircall. It’s a phone system designed for the modern sales team. They seamlessly integrate into your CRM. They eliminate data entry for your reps and they provide you with greater visibility into your team’s performance through advanced reporting.

    Our second sponsor is Outreach.io, the leading Sales Engagement platform. Outreach triples the productivity of sales teams and empowers them to drive predictable and measurable revenue growth by prioritizing the right activities and scaling customer engagement with intelligent automation.

    Without further ado, let’s listen to my interview with Scott Schnaars.

    About Scott Schnaars: An Introduction

    Sam Jacobs: Hey everybody, it’s Sam Jacobs. Welcome back to The Sales Hacker podcast. I’m terribly excited today to have as my guest Scott Schnaars, SVP of Worldwide Sales at Dynamic Signal. Scott’s a long time veteran of the sale industry and of start up land and we’re going to chat with him about his background, his experiences and all of the ways that he helps build great teams. So Scott welcome to the show.

    Scott Schnaars: Sam it’s great to be here, thank you very much.

    Sam Jacobs: We’re excited to have you. You’re SVP of Worldwide sales at Dynamic Signal. Tell us about Dynamic Signal for those not in the know.

    Scott Schnaars: Sure, so Dynamic Signal is a company that is a SASS organization. Our real focus is on helping large organizations, think your Fortune 1000, helping them to communicate to their front line workers, workforce communications.

    All of these people are helpful employees to these large organizations and, in a lot of ways, they make up the entire company. But, historically, organizations have had a hard time communicating with those people and we make a platform that makes it easy to communicate to those people on the supercomputer that everybody carries in their pocket.

    The Four Skills That Make An Exceptional Salesperson

    Sam Jacobs: When you’re thinking about the elements of your personality that you think have led you to be successful, what do you think are the most important skills or qualities in an exceptional salesperson?

    Scott Schnaars:

    • Empathy
    • Curiosity
    • Problem solving
    • Ability to ask for money

    If you are a curious person and you ask smart questions, and you can be empathetic, and put yourself in somebody else’s shoes, I think those two things go a long way.

    RELATED: The Straightforward Truth About Effective Sales Leadership

    No Salesperson Has Ever Had a Bad Call

    Sam Jacobs: We were talking offline and you said, “No salesperson has ever had a bad call.” Tell me what you mean by that.

    Scott Schnaars: It’s just something that I’ve always found funny. As a sales manager, someone always comes rushing into the office, like:

    • “I just had the best call with so and so.”
    • “Well, why was it a good call?”
    • “Well, we talked about their kids and our kids play soccer together… It was just such a good call.
    • “Well, are they gonna give us some money or what’s gonna happen next?”
    • “Oh, well, I haven’t figured out that yet. But they’re so committed to doing this project.” It got to the point where I said, “I don’t want to hear about your good calls anymore unless there’s a clearly definable next step action item to it.”

    Keeping Watching Activity In Addition to Revenue

    Sam Jacobs: Give us some metrics that you’re looking at on a very regular basis–obviously you’re looking at revenue, but what else are you looking at?

    Scott Schnaars: What I’m looking at is more tactical. I’m really looking at overall activity. Are people staying on top of these deals? I feel like if somebody shows up to your house with a big bag of money and says, “Hey, I want to give this to you, Sam.” You should be able to take that. But if somebody says, “Hey, if you jump through some of these hoops there might be a big bag of money at the end of it.” I want you to continue to probe that. When was the last activity? When’s the next step? How big is the next meeting? How many people are involved in these conversations?

    All of those things tend to lean towards a better deal for the company.

    Three Unpopular Beliefs Scott Swears By

    Sam Jacobs: Walk us quickly through the list of things that you believe, that you believe others don’t believe. ‘Cause I think it’s a great list.

    Scott Schnaars:

    1. I don’t think the demos sell. Too often salespeople go through every bell and whistle and knob, and they try to show everything off, and what most people want to do is have a business conversation.
    2. I believe that you can’t sell over email. I think email’s too easy to ignore. Just pick up the phone and call these people. Like, if you’ve got a good relationship and you want to sell to them, just pick up the phone and call them, and have a conversation.
    3. I think that most people can push harder. It’s amazing like, when you just say, “Hey, can you help me out?” or, “Hey, could you do this for me?” When you ask it like that, it is pushy, but it’s not belligerent.

    Sam Jacobs: That’s fantastic. Scott, thank you very much. Congrats on all success at Dynamic Signal, and over the course of your career.

    Scott Schnaars: I appreciate the time today. Thank you.

    Sam’s Corner

    Sam Jacobs: Hey folks, it’s Sam Jacobs, and this is Sam’s Corner.We talked about a bunch of different things with Scott Schnaars. I really enjoyed speaking with him.

    The main tidbit I would encourage everybody to sort of focus in on is the act of sales is not the act of taking orders. And it is not the act of providing information requested, in sort of a one-way, unidirectional relationship.

    It is the act of discovering whether the prospect’s pain, whether their interests and priorities, are aligned with the value that your solution can create.

    And the way that you do that is by having and engaged business conversation, where you ask lots of questions. And it needs to be an equal conversation. They may view you as a service provider, or a vendor, but that’s not how you should view it. You should view it as an interaction of equals.

    Don’t Miss Episode 33

    So, this episode, as always, was brought to you by two sponsors. That’s Aircall, as we know, they are the advanced call center software, complete business phone and contact center, 100% natively integrated into any CRM. And, Outreach, a customer engagement platform that efficiently and effectively gauges prospects to drive more pipeline and close more deals.

    If you wanna find me or check out the show notes, see upcoming guests or play more episodes from our incredible line up of sales leaders, visit gtmnow.com/listen/. You can also find the Sales Hacking podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. If you want to get in touch with me, find my social handles in my bio below.

    Thank you so much for listening.

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