Interview with Byron Matthews at Showtime17

hi I'm Mike Fox from show pad and I'm honored to be joined by Byron Matthews who's the president and CEO of the Builder Hyneman group Byron you spoke at show time on the importance of training technology and talent into the future of sales and marketing could you share some of the insight so what's really driving the message there is the amount of disruption happening in sales organizations today right it's more than we've seen in decades and again what's really causing that is the amount of disruption that each industry is facing and that's putting a lot more pressure on sellers buyers today are better at buying and sellers are getting better at selling that's that gap is increasing and so what's happening now is a ton of innovation around sales enablement and there's a lot of people really trying to get in trying to help sales people become more effective one of the drivers underneath that is artificial intelligence that is starting to develop real applications to help your sales professional drive more efficiency and effectiveness in their process you know when I started my career I saw a lot of books and articles on the art of selling you know and then more recently I see more about the sciences so to give me your opinion it is an ardor science well that's a great question so I I've had fun with that question for the audience's for the last 10 years I used to ask everybody so is selling more of an art or more of a science actually used to ask it is it an art or a science I can't even get away with any more because everyone knows it's both but the hands would were always more art you ask it today you're gonna get a lot more science again that gets back to how much more discipline has been put in the sales process it's not looked as a black box anymore where you put a quarter you get a dollar back where you got compensation and training that's the only two things you can play with now there's so much more and what's more is all about the more data we can learn more about how we go to market when with what message what works what doesn't what behaviors and it's all that insight that's actually turning into sales effectiveness initiatives and ways to improve sales performance so the or we're getting transparency into how organizations are behaving and executing we're getting more science into the entire system you talk about technology what do you see is the technologies that are gonna have an increasing importance in the selling and buying experience yeah there's so many within sales enablement I think there's some basic stuff that will pick up so much more traction in the short term things around content right the big rush out there today if you think about the evolution of solution selling a solution selling born in the 70s quite frankly miller. time pioneered that concept the reality is that as a selling model has evolved it's not good enough just to show up and ask a good question everyone's doing that right I mean yes understand their needs are important but you now have to differentiate the way you sell is a differentiator so providing insights educating your customer that's what creates differentiation that's how you win well you need content what are you entertaining them on how are you providing insights so providing real-time content that's customized for that moment to the rep being able to use it that's the key a lot of innovation around technology that's really driving quite a bit of success right now sure and so it's really where show pad plays I don't what have you seen with show pad well just that I mean I think that I think there's a huge demand for this idea of again turning reps into content marketers I didn't show pad the technology the platform the user experience is a perfect way to do that so you know when I started my career salespeople the sales experience selling and buying was really a face-to-face interaction in the end and so now with buyers having so much more interaction with AI coming in new technologies is there still room for face to face yeah of course I mean there's a lot of technology out there today around even web conferencing app applications that have AI engines built underneath that to be your coach as you're actually having interactions you know remotely so listen I think the reality is if there's twenty six or seven million sales people out there today there's all this discussion on what they I gonna do and reduce the number of sales people actually don't think that I think it'll be a transformation placement I don't think I think there'll be you know 10-15 percent of jobs today that typically sales do they're no longer exists where technology will take its place but they'll get redistributed that human capital will get redistributed in other areas like deeper account management in a more you know deeper deployment of human capital to protect and grow accounts so I just think it's gonna be a shift with talent related to how AI is gonna impact

so we think about that with that shift coming how do sales and marketing people prepare themselves for kind of how to be effective in their career now and yeah future that is the question I mean I really believe that the profile of a sales professional today will not look like the profile that sells professional tomorrow part of that is such a technology rich environment will require different skills and different competencies around how you take use technology how you use data how you turn that into insights now if you look at the EQ IQ battle I think today your typical salesperson heavies more on EQ it's kind of a primary driver what of course IQ is important I think tomorrow that shifts I think you know the IQ becomes even more important how do you process data how do you add insights how you take this piece of information that's people's information bundle it together provide it to the customer now of course providing handling objections you know being able to influence all that's still gonna be important but there's gonna be a more emphasis on some of these other competencies that sales organizations don't need to start thinking about that now let me think about what is my sales look for stuff like in five ten years from now because when you talk about talent that is not an easy transformation sure certainly we want to thank you for being part of Showtime I appreciate your time with us here today appreciate thanks Mike