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Welcome to Inside the Funnel by durhamlane. I’m Richard Lane and I get the chance to speak with some brilliant sales and marketing leaders about what’s going on inside their world. What’s working, what’s not, what we’ve learned along the way. 

I see this being sales and marketing one guest at a time. I’ve always believed that better questions lead to better conversations and that’s exactly what this show is all about. So let’s get into it. 

Today though is slightly different because today is a celebration of two things. One, our 50th podcast episode. Thank you for the huge congratulations I can hear about that. 

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But secondly, it’s 15 years of durhamlane. So we thought we’d do something a little bit different on today’s podcast. We’re gonna take 15 lessons from 15 years and I’m joined by none other than my business partner Mr. Lee Durham. 

So Lee, welcome to the hot-suit. Thank you very much for having me. AKA Piers Morgan. 

Piers Morgan. My interview techniques will be fine. Alright, okay, now I’m feeling challenged. 

So what we’re gonna do is 15 lessons from 15 years. I’m gonna hand over to Lee who’s going to cover the lessons and then I’m gonna give a go at answering them. I’m sure we’ll have some some banter as we go backwards and forwards. 

But really hope you enjoy it. Thanks as always for joining us on Inside the Funnel and here we go. 15 lessons from 15 years. 

Great outbound starts with mindset, not tools. What’s your view on that? Well I think that is absolutely true. So a couple of things there. 

Sales mindset is key. This is really the power of our selling at a high level methodology. I always say to people I believe I could do a great job no matter where you put me and that is really down to mindset. 

At durhamlane we teach all of our SDRs from day one about the belief equation. The belief equation in our world is that belief plus knowledge gives you confidence. If you times that with understanding you achieve high performance. 

And belief is so important and belief and mindset go really well together. So we’ve really got to believe in what we’re doing, who we do it for and why we’re doing it. We’ve got to be knowledgeable so we’ve got to know the products of our customers, the solutions and the stories. 

That gives us confidence which then enables us to listen. Listen really hard to what our prospects are telling us and then if we’re really trying hard to understand what they’re looking to achieve, how they can be successful then that makes us a go-to person. So yeah mindset absolutely comes first. 

Very good. I think lesson number two then. Sales is a profession and a profession to be proud of. 

Act like one. Yeah again selling a high level was created to help raise the bar of the sales profession. I think for too long people were hired into sales roles. 

Frankly sometimes it felt like if they had a pulse. So what was once the domain of someone that could sell snow to the Eskimo has definitely changed and you’ve now got in many many many places now a much more professional environment where what you do and what you say matters. Which is where we want it to be. 

There have been, I think we always talk don’t we Lee, about just trying to sort of not change the world to sales but put a dent in it in a positive way. And we’ve sort of really tried to achieve that. Mantra number two is professional, humble, courteous, proactive, hungry, ambitious. 

So again be professional, act of humility and always be curious. Great stuff. Lesson number three then. 

Activity alone is not a strategy but boy does it help. What’s your view on that? Yeah so you know and we see this a lot in our world. Unfortunately that sort of dialing for dollars tends not to be successful. 

So you can put all the activity in the world in but if there isn’t a strategy behind it then you’re going to be challenged. So you’ve got to know where you’re headed and why. Otherwise you risk being a busy fool. 

We come across customers that have had that experience when they’ve outsourced with other providers previously. So we always start with the end in mind. Thanks to Stephen Covey. 

And onboarding is a critical piece of our jigsaw in terms of how we get started well with our customers. So understanding where we want to get to and why is is critical. And I always sort of come back to a Dwight Eisenhower quote, a General Eisenhower quote which is one of my go-to’s but in preparing for battle I’ve always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable. 

So when you have a plan that’s when the activity needs to kick in. So both important but you’ve got to start with the right one. Excellent. 

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Lesson number four then and you can never have enough of them. Better questions beat better pictures. Yes so again we’ve you know one of the things I think we’ve achieved over the 15 years with Durham Lane is we’ve taken a consultative mindset, a question-based methodology and brought it down into a phone call. 

So just because you’re having a top of funnel conversation doesn’t mean that you can’t think strategically and consultatively and and that’s really where the rubber hits the road for us. And mantra number three be interested to be interesting. The more you are interested in other people the more interesting you become to them. 

It’s just one of life’s givens and we find that really really works for us. So yeah definitely spend more time questioning than pitching hundred percent. Lesson number five if I had a pound for every time I’ve heard this I’d be a very very rich man. 

Cold calling has died about a hundred times yet still it works. Yeah I mean people are scared aren’t they of cold calling. It’s the thing we want to get away from as quickly as they possibly can. 

Yet it’s still our best too. Our best channel, most effective channel is the telephone. I do think there’s something in there around warm calling rather than cold calling. 

It’s just not a great phrase is it and and actually now with the amount I know we’re going to talk about tech but now with the amount of opportunity to have tools that serve you up the right people at the right time cold calling should be warmer. But I know of SDR teams that never pick up the phone. Omni-channel has to be the way you go but I mean I think we’re happy that people say it’s there don’t we because we know it works. 

We keep rocking the funnel. It works for us so yeah let them let them say that if they want to. Awesome. 

Lesson number six, sales and marketing has been a disparency in corporate world vis-a-vis enterprise since day dot. We’ve definitely booked that. Sales and marketing work better together than apart. 

Agreed. 100% a passion project for us here at durhamlane and definitely really where this podcast came from. So inside the funnel was born out of the need to connect these two worlds of marketing sales which which ordinarily do spend a lot of time perhaps with different aims and ambitions and and that is definitely changing. 

So we’re seeing those worlds come close together. I always described durhamlanee as the middleware that connects the worlds of sales and marketing together. We help to drive value from those connected efforts and those shared goals and the best teams absolutely work together. 

The best teams make sure they’re heading for the same objectives and learn from each other and work together and we help make that possible. So yeah that can only only get more close. Lesson number seven then, you wrote our sales methodology. 

It was your brainchild of yourself but let’s focus on training. Training isn’t a one-off it’s a growth system. Yeah and our friends at my sales coach have sort of on a big drive with with this. 

Ever since 2011 when durhamlane started we adopted the 70-20-10 learning model. That says that 70% of what we learn is sort of on the job as we’re doing the do. 20% through formalized coaching, something companies still struggle to execute on and only 10% through formal learning and whereas all of the L&D budget used to get spent on the formal piece I think that’s now flipped and as I said my sales coach are changing that. 

I think sort of a broad umbrella brush always be learning. If you’re always curious, if you’re always looking to be inquisitive and understand why and how to do something better then you will be successful but we’ve made that sort of the heart of our business 70-20-10 and that coaching support is invaluable. Yeah. 

Lesson number eight in a world of technology and AI in particular. Technology as a sales accelerator. Yeah how long was it gonna be before the world AI got into into the conversation? So technology absolutely accelerates reach and drives performance. 

I think that’s you know 100% but I think it has to be part of the plan and it has to deliver to the strategy. So we said before around you know having having a plan having a strategy there is so important. So however technology cannot be the strategy and I think where we get lost sometimes is that we buy the tech before we’ve really thought why we’re buying the tech and why we’re gonna use it and then we end up using it because we bought it which is the wrong way around. 

Which I think brings us on nicely to another kind of pausing question around AI. AI won’t replace great sellers but it will expose average ones which I think is very true. I’m gonna disagree a little bit on that because actually you could argue that if AI can put average sellers in front of the right person at the right company at the right time and they have a need then even the average seller will be able to perform. 

So you know we sort of think that it’s only gonna domain of the best but actually could that really big sort of middle middle portion of average performers suddenly become really profitable for you as a business because if you can get them in front of the right people at the right time obviously we want them to be the best but not everyone will be the best but if we can get them in front of the right people with a need with all of that Intel and triggers and buying insight and the signals then perhaps there is an opportunity for even the average ones to be more successful. I think back to when we started the business you know the word blend is a word that we’ve used always since day one and I think it resonates now more than ever in the world that we live in with a blend of AI technology and human interaction in terms of services in terms of what like we provide. I think that’s the way to go. 

Lesson number 10 then the best downbound partners act like part of the team. Partnership with a capital P it’s what I always talk about with prospects before we sign any customer I say you know you really in for this and my challenge to every durhamlane customer team is get on the org chart and whether that’s formally more likely informally if we get on the org chart then we’re hitting that partnership button and that’s when things really start to work well. Yeah awesome lesson number 11 then it’s not about booking meetings it’s about creating opportunities. 

Yeah really important it’s probably part of the reason why our industry hasn’t always got the best reputation what sets durhamlane apart from other SDR agencies is our magic 35 qualification framework it means that we don’t just set meetings we create meaningful engagement it’s why our customers trust us and why they stay with us and why they come back to us it’s where we create opportunity with the right people in the right companies at the right time and with a need our customer can solve. Again back to that point earlier no one wants to be a busy fool they want to be meeting people that have a need and that they can serve and create a relationship with and and that’s what we really pride ourselves on on achieving. Lesson number 12 then and we’ve always prided ourselves in the process that we’ve developed within this business process drives performance. 

Yeah mantra number five quality times quantity times consistency equals high performance I think that consistency the C word is the hardest. Selling our level absolutely dead simple in in terms of its approach which is why I think it still works after all this time it’s an umbrella mindset that’s got a set of ways of thinking and ways of working that allow people to be successful allows people to follow a process that enables them to achieve great results. Lesson number 13 the best sellers are the most curious. 

Always be curious the ABC I made that up. Mantra number three is be interested to be interesting I think I’ve said that before I say that all the time and mantra number eight estimate and validate never assume so you know too often in life we make assumptions our objective as a professional seller is to do some research to understand the situation to do that discovery to make estimates to go out and validate those by asking great questions and not to jump in with assumptions and think that we know the answers before we’ve we’ve spoken to our prospects and customers about what they’re looking to achieve so yeah the more curious we are the more successful would be. Curious to be confirmed. 

Wonderful lesson number 14 then and one we’ve really built you know with really resonates with both of us over the last 15 years great sales leaders build people not just numbers. I mean we’ve always been about the people from the beginning I mean part of the reason Lee and I got together was because we were both running our own little consultancies and felt like we had the opportunity to do something bigger that was gonna have some legacy around it so always been about the people we like to empower our people and we have amazing people in the business and and perhaps as a founder one of my most treasured experiences when we see people who join our business sometimes with very little clue about sales about what they want to do with their career they knuckle down they learn they get coached they get supported they work with some amazing customer brands and then they transition into those organizations and and I often think that we have people that ordinarily wouldn’t get an interview with the recruiting agency that’s recruiting on behalf of an enterprise global brand and they move straight into a job with them so we’ve had some incredible experiences like that people process technology it’s what we built the business on and it’s just the most important thing yeah and last but not least lesson number 15 and we’ve kind of touched on this through all of these 15 lessons but the future of outbound is human and technology yeah our strapline is revenue growth accelerated by AI so you know we’re very much in the camp of people first so it is still a human endeavor there are lots and lots thousands of AI first companies that frankly failing because it’s proving out that isn’t working so whilst as we said before technology can absolutely support us to get in front of the right people to make ourselves more effective more efficient then you still need the person that can build rapport can ask great questions can have some emotional intelligence can start to build a bond with that individual to be successful and AI can do lots of that journey that AI can do and technology can get us into the right space first time it can give us the insights and the signals it can do a lot of the work for us but ultimately I think the human power piece is still fundamental will it always be that way I don’t know I’ve never met an Amazon salesperson when I’m on an Amazon website and I use Amazon all the time so B2C behavior tends to come before B2B and we are seeing it change but I think at the moment there’s still a massive role for the right people to play a important part. Closing comment from Piers Morgan should I say aka Lee Durham. 

I’ve enjoyed today because we don’t often get a chance to do this actually in fact we’ve never done this you’re the podcast lead in this business but I just like to close by saying I’m proud of what we built I know we both are and I’m proud of having a business partner like yourself and over 15 years and I think it’s testament to what we really have built and like we said before people and culture are really at the core of that and who knows where we’ll go in the future but this the future looks bright and we’re getting back to growth again which is even better so it’s been a strong 15 years and long may it continue. And what a lovely way to end so thank you yeah well 15 lessons 15 years as Lee says it’s been an awesome journey to this point where it sort of feels like we’re just getting started. I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to this special episode of Inside the Funnel I’ve been your host Richard Lane I’ve been joined by the one and only fabulous Lee Durham my business partner so Lee thank you for being here and if you found this useful or even just thought provoking please feel free to follow or share it with someone in your world and if you’d like to know more about how we help organisations build pipeline just head over to durhamlane.com until next time I’ll see you inside the funnel.