E317 | The Power of Owning the Flow of Information with Ted McKenna

Summary

The conversation explores the concept of high-performing sales behaviour and the challenges faced by sales professionals in the current market. It delves into the importance of understanding buyer indecision and the four key behaviours that help overcome it. The conversation also touches on the role of persuasion in sales, the need for sellers to adapt to changing buyer behaviours, and the potential retirement of salespeople who are not effective in their roles. In this conversation, Ted McKenna and Dominic Monkhouse discuss the importance of establishing trust and expertise in the sales process. They emphasise the need for sellers to own the flow of information and demonstrate their knowledge and experience to buyers. They also explore different profiles of business developers, with the activator profile being the most successful. Ted shares his thoughts on success, the most significant risk he’s taken, and the worst business advice he’s received.

On today’s podcast:

• Trying to be all things to all people is not effective in business.
• High-performing sales behaviour is defined as the top 20% of performers in a company, and it is important to study their behaviour to replicate their success.
• Buyer indecision is a common challenge in sales, and it is driven by fears such as options overload, analysis paralysis, and fear of failure.
• Sellers should be cautious about using persuasion techniques when buyers are indecisive, as it can backfire and make the situation worse.
• To help buyers overcome indecision, sellers should focus on understanding the depth of indecision, making firm recommendations, limiting excessive exploration, and managing risk.
• The sales profession must evolve and keep pace with changing buyer behaviours and preferences.
• Salespeople are still needed, as buyers rely on them for guidance, assurance, and personalised recommendations. Establishing trust and expertise is crucial in the sales process.
• Sellers should own the flow of information and demonstrate their knowledge and experience to buyers.
• The activator profile is the most successful in business development.
• Success is measured by doing right by the people you love and finding joy in your work.

Follow Ted McKenna

• Website – https://www.jolteffect.com/about-the-authors
• Selling Innovations Website – https://www.sellinginnovations.com/tedmckenna
• Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-mckenna/

Who is Ted McKenna

Ted McKenna is an accomplished sales and customer experience researcher whose work has appeared in the pages of Harvard Business Review. He is a founding partner of DCM Insights, a customer understanding lab focused on using data and research-backed frameworks to help companies attract, engage, retain, and grow customer relationships. Prior to co-founding DCMi, Ted held numerous executive leadership positions in product, strategy, research, advisory, and enablement for Tethr, Russell Reynolds, and CEB (now, a part of Gartner).

Ted is an expert in analysing behaviours – of customers, frontline sellers / service agents, leaders, and board members – and applying analytics in various forms of content, products, and services. At Tethr, he worked on mining unstructured conversational data using advanced data science and leading AI/ML tools to build models, scores, and behavioural frameworks (the most well-known model is the Tethr Effort Index). Previous roles called for deploying syndicated research methods to mine more structured sources such as surveys, diagnostics, demographics, and jobs data (including research contained within the bestselling book, The Challenger Sale).

Ted is also a co-author, with Matt Dixon, of the upcoming book, The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision, and is a sought-after speaker and advisor to sales and customer experience teams around the world.

What you’ll learn from Ted McKenna

00:00 Introduction to High-Performing Sales
02:53 Defining High Performance in Sales
06:04 The Role of Salespeople in Modern Buying
09:05 Understanding Buyer Indecision
11:48 The Jolt Effect and Overcoming Indecision
18:00 Key Behaviors of Successful Sellers
24:11 The Activator Advantage in Sales
29:56 Professional Services and Selling Dynamics
36:00 Books and Resources for Sales Professionals
41:49 Personal Insights and Closing Thoughts

Quick Questions

Q: What drives you every day?
Ted McKenna:
On a personal level, it’s about doing right by my family and my faith. Professionally, I love ideas and growth. I started my career at CEB (now part of Gartner), where I embraced the ethos that “ideas have economic value.” I find it inspiring that an idea can create opportunity and economic value for others. I’m passionate about discovering new insights and sharing them in ways that help others. As a co-owner of a couple of small businesses, I also love the challenge of creating new opportunities for growt

Q: What’s your genius?
Ted McKenna:
I was fortunate to be trained as both a qualitative and quantitative researcher at CEB. I think my strength lies in analyzing large data sets and identifying the two or three key insights that really matter. It’s about finding those newsworthy bits and making complex things simpler to understand and act on.

Q: What unpopular opinion do you hold?
Ted McKenna:
This one’s a bit quirky, but I believe we should be saying the year as “twenty twenty-four” instead of “two thousand twenty-four.” Back in the 1900s, we didn’t say “nineteen hundred seventy-nine.” I think we’ve been saying the year inefficiently since the early 2000s, and I find it odd that we’ll likely continue doing so for the next thousand years!

Q: What’s the most significant risk you’ve taken?
Ted McKenna:
Co-founding a couple of businesses was probably the biggest risk I’ve taken. On a professional level, I also moved my family from Chicago to Washington, D.C., for a new job at CEB. At the time, it felt like a significant career risk, especially being newly married and not knowing many people in the area.

Q: How do you measure success?
Ted McKenna:
Success is subjective, but for me, it’s about doing right by the people I love and being able to provide for them. And, importantly, having fun along the way. I’ve worked in jobs where I didn’t laugh much, and I realised that if I’m dedicating my time to something, I want to enjoy it. If I can laugh and feel successful at the same time, that’s a win.

Q: What’s the most recent thing you’ve learned or skill you’ve acquired?
Ted McKenna:
I’ve been dabbling with Gen AI tools like ChatGPT, trying to get better at writing prompts. It’s still very much a work in progress, and I’m definitely a novice, but there’s a bit of magic in figuring out the best way to interact with these tools.

Q: What’s the worst business advice you’ve ever received?
Ted McKenna:
Trying to be all things to all people. If you can’t clearly define your target audience and are trying to create something for everyone, it leads to all sorts of problems. Focus is key—it’s much better to concentrate on doing a few things really well than to spread yourself too thin.

 

 

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