💥 Pitch slap come back
Amelia Taylor navigates a comeback from pitch slapping to managing a full deal cycle via slack.
Featuring social selling where your prospects live and leveraging internal relationships.
Learn to manage a deal cycle, not just the information, but how to communicate back & forth.
See if Amelia's tips will work for you by being relevant, personalized, and blamelessly human.
Guest Feature
Amelia has been in sales for 10 years. Mainly Enterprise and Strategic Growth roles.
She’s got a chapter featured in a book called ‘Heels to Deals’, among other amazing sellers.
She runs training for TrainYo, and is a Pavilion Chapter Co-Head over Tampa.
What problem does Carabiner Group solve?
Often times sales & marketing leaders are overwhelmed with the number of strategies to deploy.
To remove success barriers, Revenue Operations was created.
Wedging the gap between sales, marketing, and the systems needed.
Carabiner acts as a fractional extension of your current sales and marketing teams.
Deal details
What are you selling?
- Fractional Revenue Operations services.
Where did the prospect come from?
- They posted in a slack group that she had joined.
Company type
- Series B company growing fast. Have a RevOps team, but they weren’t specialized.
Prospecting method
- Multi-channel approach incorporations Slack & LinkedIn messaging
Barriers to Overcome
- With the market shifting, they were doing budget restrictions
- The decision Maker was traveling at peak time.
- Poor initial first impression
Buyer type
- Users: Non-specialized RevOps team
- Champion: RevOps slack group operator
- Decision Maker: CEO
Episode Highlights
Note: timestamps correlate with the full conversation
Research: Know where your buyers live (8:43)
Deal Management: Managing a deal via Slack (26:30)
Objections: Meeting buyers where their at in down markets (30:25)
Watch the full conversation
Full transcript
Taylor Dahlem
Welcome back to How I Deal! where we discuss past closed one and lost deals, how they played out that way, and hopefully provide some useful actionable sales of tips for you all to use in your deals today. My name is Taylor Dahlem, full-cycle account executive turned content guy and always joined by my partner in crime, Junior Lartey, our sales brain here at Pickle. June, what's going on, man?
Junior Lartey
Good! It's episode eleven. I'm just wondering when we're going to get our first closed lost deal, right? So if you're listening and you're bold enough to share a closed lost deal with us, hit me up. And don't worry, we can also get you on the pod further down the road for a close one to kind of provide some balance and all things.
Taylor Dahlem
Yes, balance in anything. And I think we would learn a whole lot more from a closed loss deal, but we always enjoy the closed one drinking from the champagne of the sales gods. And I think we've got another awesome episode teed up for just that today. A quick refresh in case you're joining us for the first time as well. Each conversation and how ideal we chat through. Like we said, I pass deal. All names, places we want to fictionalize anonymize. That way we can dive really deep and take you from the first time they saw that prospect, whether it be on LinkedIn, other channels in particular with this conversation, all the way to getting kind of that deal signed via DocuSign or PDF or Fax or wherever you might get your deals completed.
Junior Lartey
Today we've got Amelia Taylor. She's been in sales for ten years in various Ae, enterprise Ae and strategic roles. She's a coach at Traino, which does SCR training, she's Pavilions, Tampa Chapter Co-head. She's got a chapter written in a book called Heels to Deals, alongside some really other notable amazing saleswomen. We're really excited to have you on. Amelia, tell us about Heels to Deals because I personally think more people should be aware about this.
Amelia Taylor
Amazing. Hey, you guys. I am super pumped to be here with you all. Thank you for having me. So, yeah, it heals the deal. It was definitely an adventure not knowing that I was going to jump into writing anything. I always love to write, but I received a message on LinkedIn saying, hey, would you want to partake in this book that has XYZ XYZ all these amazing women that I'm like. I don't get intimidated, but they're intimidating women, right? So I'm thinking, wow me, seriously. But I've always had a goal of writing a book at some point in life, so I thought, this is my end, this is my time to make something happen. So it was kind of my sales journey of how I got into sales, my life, my background, my two daughters, my wife, and how I failed and failed forward, failed fast, but didn't have an option to do otherwise and really grateful that I was able to do so. It opened up so many doors for me and I've met so many amazing people through it. But a little bit about myself. I'm an Ae over at Carabiner group. We do rev up as a service and I am currently loving what I'm doing. And I fell into it. Did not mean to at all, but learned how to strategically sell in a way where I got really hunted on exactly who it was I was talking to. I fixated my eyes totally on this. The person who had the pen in hand or who's that champ who's going up to the top with me and nurtured that. So, yeah, excited to be here and just dive into this closed line. I'm happy to share close loss anytime too.
Junior Lartey
We'll get you on for a closed loss. Then we got volunteer number one. So what problems typically does Carabiner solve?
Amelia Taylor
As I mentioned, we do Revolves as a service. So it is from start to finish and full totality of marketing, sales, CS, finance, everything. There's alignment across the board. So breaking down all silos. And we work as a fractional revolves team to where we're an extension of those partners that we have with our clients. So we want to go with them for the long haul. And Taylor, as you mentioned, something about the champagne, right? We'll say over here, we want to drink the champagne and celebrate with you through the win long term. We've got our salesforce people, in-house, HubSpot people, revolts people, all this with the industry knowledge galore and then some for decades that have just completely changed the name of the game when it comes to Revolves.
Junior Lartey
That's awesome. I know. So myself and Amelia have actually recently chatted about Revolves for Pickle as we plan for future growth. What that looks like, what it is. To be more frank. Help me understand what this is. But Amelia, what deal are you walking us through today?
Amelia Taylor
Okay, so we are walking through and I'm name-dropping because this is a good one. I'm name-dropping League App. Big shout out to you guys because this is a hard one to snag. But it was a really fun deal to work.
Junior Lartey
And tell us why this deal? I guess you kind of mentioned it, but anything specific about this deal that you really felt like you had to share?
Amelia Taylor
It was the most unorthodox deal that I've ever worked before. And I also, to preface all of this, I was in a flat community and the guy that I had been working who ended up being the final decision maker on this when I first started in the revolt world, join the black community, I get a big slap on the wrist from this guy, like, do not pitch in my community. And I'm like, Oh, shoot, I did not know. These people are so smart. All right, back up, back up, back up. So months later, down the line, I see that he posted things in Slack saying, here are some of the top consultants, you know, out there. So I'm thinking, redemption time, let's go. I'm ready. Hell yeah. All in. Let's play. So I leveraged this IQ EQ thing, right? So I'm thinking, how am I going to position this in the very best way to where he's going to like me again and not remember me as the girl who just showed up and showed up and he wanted to kick me out, basically, but didn't, thank God. So he posted that I just sent him a message right on clock and said, hey, I'm absolutely no consultants that are going to be the best fit for you. He knew what our company did, so he knows some people internally, which helps. So I didn't need to go through, hey, this is who we are, but I did my due diligence. Prior looked on his LinkedIn, checked out that he was really into hockey. Go Rangers, apparently. And I'm in Tampa, so go Lightning. Really? But didn't know they were playing each other at the time either. That would made it a little more fun. But I just went through Go Rangers, saw that he had posted pictures, all that. He has kids. I leverage the kid things. I've got my kids, my two daughters. So I thought, okay, let's have fun with it. Opposed to being fearful of it, I.
Taylor Dahlem
Guess walk it back a little bit too. Like, obviously it was a very unorthodox approach. I'm curious kind of in the terms of an unorthodox approach. You saw this person on Slack or join the Slack community. Other than that, how did you specifically find out about whether you had some alerts set up or something like that, or ultimately how you go about researching this company and then from there gaining all that information that you were just talking about?
Amelia Taylor
Yeah, if you don't qualify the people you're talking about, you're running in circles and you're wasting your time. So I'm big on the whole qualification thing. Without fail, I will go research that person. I will go connect with them on LinkedIn, won't send a note, but connect with them. I'll go research the company and make sure that it's something that I can actually help them with. I'm not going to waste my time with theirs. I saw that they were seriously they recently got funding. They were growing big time and I thought, this is exactly what I can help. Like, these are my people. This is exactly like a gold mine sort of thing. So with it being that they already had this core team of RevOps people within because I could go and research and find that out for myself. If you're looking at their website, all that combined, it was where they had their own specialties. They had certain things that projects they were working on. So with him asking, already improving, saying, hey, looking for the best consultants, the way I found that backing up a bit too. I have my keyword set up within Slack, so I'll get that notification saying So and so did this, whatever it is. But he specifically mentioned Hub spot consultant, so he had that in there. So boom, two keywords of mine. And so I get the notification right then and there. Jump on that. So that is one of the biggest plays for me right now. And I would say ninety percent of my pipeline is via slot through the keywords.
Taylor Dahlem
Wow. What type of tool do you use to, I guess, get those notifications? Or is there a specific process you have set up that maybe others could emulate you?
Amelia Taylor
Just go to your preferences and you're in the Slack community. So find your buyers where they're at, right? Find the people that are going to buy from you, your potential customers. Figure out where they live. So if they're in different Facebook groups, great, go join those. I don't know, go talk away with them. I'm not doing that, but go do it if you want. But I know where my buyers live, so I'm going exactly where they're at. Also, I'm going to leverage LinkedIn tremendously just because I could see their activity, go to their activity, look how active they are, and show up so they see who you are. Like three things. Just put your name out there, set up your keywords, and black. Go to Preferences and it's right down there at the bottom. Just put the things in and apply to your ICP and it'll automatically just pop up.
Junior Lartey
So you got to love when the regular cadence kicks in. The email, the call, the LinkedIn email call, email, whatever it may be. But sometimes when you meet outside the cadence, it can be a really unique experience. In this case for you, that was a Slack group that you would join. There's lots of Slack groups out there, right? There's lots of keywords that you can track within the Slack groups. There are keywords that you can track on LinkedIn. That's what I personally do for hashtag sales enablement. I am all over that, especially for zoom meetings as well. Note-taking, right? These are things that apply to me in my world. I track those for sure. In my social life. I say social my LinkedIn life because that's where my people are, right, right. But this person, or you joined the Slack group you mentioned when we were chatting, a quick pitch slap and then they were like, hey, don't interact that way in my Slack group. So now you've got a little bit of friction there. So how did you overcome even just that little aspect?
Amelia Taylor
Completely being myself through and through. Knowing you already know who our company is. You are. I'm researching you. I know you're big into hockey. I know our VP of revenue has been hockey. I know you guys both are up north. And I asked my VP of Revenue, hey, who's this dude? Can you give me any insights? Oh, yeah, we played on some lead together at one point. Great. He's really big into Rangers. Great. Let's go Rangers again. Whatever. Or lightning. Then it's where I'm looking at his LinkedIn and he's like posting pictures about that. So hockey. And I'm thinking, okay, this guy's using it like Facebook. I love that for him. But I'm going to just dive in and I'm going to just go for in the best way possible, the jugular with it being that human touch. So leveraging the human aspect of hey, go Rangers. Promise no pitch block, don't need the wrist flap back sort of thing. Joking around because it was a straight-up wrist slap, but verbally total wrist lap. And I got over it real quick. But I had to redeem myself, right? I mentioned that before. I had to redeem myself in a way to where he saw me as someone who knew what I was doing, imposed to someone who just showed up and didn't know what they were doing within this community, being one of them, being one of those leaders in this black community. So with having certain things that I knew that I could just run with and just build this trust back and create a relationship, everything goes down to that core component. If you don't have a relationship, if you don't have trust, nobody's going to buy from yourself. They don't want anything that you've got. So I had to build that back.
Junior Lartey
I think this is a perfect example because almost every account executives somewhere in their cadence is add to LinkedIn and as soon as they click connect, there is that urge to drop some type of message. In the past I've dropped like, hey, just an FYI or like full transparency. I am prospecting you. I'm not saying that was the best thing, but it was like a little bit of a wedge between me just jumping in and pitching and me also doing my due diligence on my sales end and just trying to build some awareness, I guess. But that doesn't mean that later down the line if they're posting something that you see you can personalize and use that human touch. Like there is redemption. Even though you've reached out once and maybe it didn't go well, maybe there's no response. Whatever. Use, you know, future post, use what they're talking about today to like tap into that. Be yourself. A lot needs to be said about just be yourself. Get in there and drop messages that you would drop. Not that account executive Junior would drop.
Amelia Taylor
Right. Which, you know, Junior, I reached out to you and just said, hey, we're running in the same circles a lot and I'm seeing your name all over the place. Here's my calendar link. If you feel like it would be worth your time. Let's think up because I've seen your name all over LinkedIn and I'm thinking, all right, I should know this guy. And here we are, which is the cool part, right? You don't know what's going to happen unless you put yourself out there, so you might as well take chances. And it's going to be a lesson or it's going to be a reward. You're going to learn the hard way, but you're going to know what not to do, which is going to help you know what to do, which is equally as important. Right. So that aspect of really figuring out how in the world am I going to get through to this person? Well, you've got to have that what's going to be relevant to them, what's going to matter to them is it CRO and they're caring about marketing attribution leads, whatever. No, that's not going to match up. Right? Like, let's talk money to CRO, but let's not go into this. Here's what I can do for you. XYZ. No, it's, hey, great to connect. Love the growth you guys are having. It gives them that compliment.
Taylor Dahlem
I know. Obviously, we talked about the vulnerability, sense of how we started off on the wrong foot, let me be vulnerable, approach it as a human. And then all of a sudden it's turned around. You're having an awesome dialogue, but at some point, you're alluding to this like you've now booked a meeting, right? You have to have that first conversation. In a lot of ways, we talk about this all the time, but it's the most important part of the process, aside from the initial outreach, to me, the most important part is this first meeting, this first impression and dedicated time to figure out what's going on. That one, piqued their interest to even meet. But then two, what problems can you actually solve as a consultant, as a partner, or as somebody that wants to build that partnership? So what does that look like for you? How did you keep it organized and what did you learn ultimately?
Amelia Taylor
Yeah, that's a really great big question. It's a deep, wide question where there's a lot of things I can say. But let me narrow it down to I leverage the people that I knew that he knew already to build that credibility. If I didn't have that credibility first and foremost with them. So knowing my CEO knew his CEO, so they were going to the same conference. I guess this is maybe a week after I originally talked to him, prior to that first meeting being set, but I had already known they were going to the same conference because I sent this black message over to my CEO saying, hey, check this out. He said, Let's go get it. He goes, by the way, I'm going with their CEO. We're going to be at the same conference. So they were sitting next to each other when the steel closed back forward, which is pretty cool. But it was where I had to stay on top of my game because I was not about to get this wrist flap on the other wrist, too, because then I know hands, right? So I would never touch in there again. But I was very organized in the sense of let's do this in the most strategic way possible with the right people on board, the right hand and the cookie jar sort of thing, because this is a deal. That is our sweet spot. This is where I know we can help. Based on what he said, I picked this interest with really leveraging those within that have that credibility. Roswell and Santa Lana is amazing within the revolt community. He has known her for a while, asked her about it. So I think the big thing is asking people within, hey, what do you know about this person? We're looking at LinkedIn, who's connected to who? Figuring out who this person is. Leveraging those namedrops is huge. Hey, we've already been in engagement with you guys. Sort of thing. We've chatted. You're looking for this, is that right? Yeah. You mentioned this, so I know it's right. And then going into, you know, about us, I don't want to waste your time, my time. Let's hop on a call and let's just discuss what the exact needs are. If it's a fake grade. If it's not, we part ways with friends. I'm happy to be a soundboard anytime. Here's my calendar link. For the sake of simplicity. Makes sense to chat. Let's do it. Boom. And then this is kind of funny part. I get a text from my CEO that has a screenshot from Dan, who I'm working with. Dan CEO saying, hey, something along the lines can't remember exactly what it said. Something along the lines of, Hey, Carabiner Group, I think, would be someone that we could work with base of our needs and maybe we should check them out. I'm talking to the CEO, so it was kind of funny because my CEO is talking to his CEO without even knowing the damn thing. Okay, do you have enough experience to begin with? Like, can I trust you guys? Well, that's being worked on that side without even knowing mine was trying to work this one on this side. Working through Dan being a head of rent. So us working in sync together is a big thing. Building that relationship with him, while that credibility through my CEO and his CEO.
Taylor Dahlem
During that conversation, maybe what were some of the finer points of what problem did they have? What were ways that you would kind of approach the conversation to say, here's how I can help you solve these? Or ultimately, how did you steer that conversation?
Amelia Taylor
Yeah, it was very much so let's make this all about what your needs are. So what is it you're trying to tackle? Like, let's just talk just like we've been friends forever, let's laugh about whatever in the past and let's just be normal. Go Rangers again. But let's hear what it is going on under the hood. What are you all struggling with? What has been the biggest pain point for you guys thus far this year? Because we're going into Q three. How are we going to make Q three, Q four look way better than the past two quarters? What's working right now and what's attributing to that, that is working. What happens if this doesn't work? What you've got in place and asking the right questions because I don't have all the answers, but I do have the right questions. I can frame to make that next step a whole lot easier because it piqued the interest of I didn't think in that perspective, I didn't think in that sense of shoot, like, now I've got fear instilled in me, basically, of like, what does happen if this doesn't work out for us, what we're currently doing. But we were on a call for a reason and so therefore there was help that was needed. So knowing that there was already help needed, let's just break it down to what that help actually is.
Junior Lartey
The one-to-one conversation I think is very helpful too, where it's just you and this other guy, you're learning as much as you can. Ultimately you're able to come to a conclusion that, hey, there looks like there's a lot going on, looks like we can help. So you're able to build some next steps with him and ideally build the whole process. This is who we need to bring in. This is what the conversations are going to look like here's. Who on my end you're going to want to connect with? I think all of those are really great to have in the first conversation. So in Gap Selling, written by Keenan, he talks about sticking to six features in a demo. I haven't quite figured that out perfectly because features have layers and sometimes there's functionality and stuff and I'm like, I don't know if this is a single feature or not, but I try to look at what I show. So trying to start the demo with their object, like what they need to solve first. But here you're selling services, not so much a product, so there's not really a demo or features to show. So how do you shape further conversations from Discovery? What does it look like moving forward now?
Amelia Taylor
It's selling trust, right? It's selling that trust factor here's. The experts we've got within that are going to be that part of this core team that will be an extension of your team that you can say, hey, help me with XYZ. And you know that there's that credibility there. You know that they have been doing this for years. And leveraging those experts, the expertise that they're going to bring to the table that's one of the biggest things I think you can do. I'm an Ae, they're going to trust me so far as far as they can. But what am I going to do? I don't do the tactical hands-on keyboard work, but we've got a team of experts that do. Some people want case studies. Some people want to call somebody who we've worked with, all that sort of stuff. But really my play was I knew that he already knew Roslyn, who is our CRO, I believe Chief Revenue Operating Officer. Big title, but knew that and then knew that. Shane is my CEO friends with his dan CEO, and then also my VP of Revenue. Cliff, he is up north, he's in New Jersey and Dan's in New York. And they played hockey together. So I'm like, okay, let's leverage all this kind of stuff together because there's that friendship, there that aspect. So I'm getting this trust built by leveraging other people, then adding them into the call. Next steps are with them. Kind of bait, if you will, having Rosalind beyond that fishing line of, hey, let's get her on this next call because she's going to give you more of that layered expertise when it comes to exactly what we can do to solve this and then let's go from there. Sounds good. Great.
Taylor Dahlem
Tell us, I guess this probably lasted over a few meetings. You might have mentioned this lasted over about five meetings, I believe. So throughout that process, I'm curious. Mentioned this was an unorthodox sale. Where did the deal management come from? How did you keep everybody kind of in the same place and keep everything organized throughout those conversations?
Amelia Taylor
So I created a slack just group messaging thing for all of us. It made the most sense because that's where we met to beginning in with. So let's keep communication where we originally were at. Let's not try to complicate things by emailing back and forth and waiting for a response and looking to see, oh, you've opened it four times but you're not responding. You all get anxiety, right? Like everybody like, why are they not responding to me? They don't want to work with me. So I thought, okay, let's just do this. I'm going to grab the people that know each other and let's just all think together to where it is easy, but let's not add the CEO. That doesn't make sense. Let's just add the people who are going to be those beneficial factors that are going to come into play that are going to help me push this further to that next step. So, yeah, I want to say five calls we had, but actual like calls zoom. But there was a lot of slack going on. I mean, eleven thirty at night, we're slacking back and forth going over a grade term, which is funny, but at the same time he had budget cuts. He had things that were going on. He's like, hey, can we do this, we do that. I'm needing to help you guys, our vendor of choice like, yes, no, I'm jumping on that because why would I not? I'm not waiting until tomorrow. If he's ready to start talking right, then, yeah, I'm doing that. Save your sanity, people, right? Don't ever think you have to be on Slack defense, like eleven thirty at night. But if you're at this point where you're talking terms and you're saying, hey, can we do this, we do that. I'm reaching out to my CEO, texting him saying, can we do this? Yes. If they sign by this time, boom. Perfect. So I'm just relaying stuff and we're just working kind of in this carabiner, if you will, way where it's a hook, right? Yes, there's a whole play on that. But that was really the big thing is just grabbing the right people and putting them in the same place.
Junior Lartey
We haven't talked deal management before, I don't think. Have we tailored, talked specifically about deal management?
Taylor Dahlem
No, not specifically.
Junior Lartey
I mean, there's entire platforms out there just built for this purpose of getting you and your buyer in the same room, right? Like sharing resources and all this. Whereas you've got Slack that you probably already use today. They probably already use today. It's great that you also met there, that makes a big difference. But if you're listening today and you haven't thought about it, start thinking about deal management. Think about if this is applicable to your sales cycle or if it's applicable to specific deals. That might not be your average deal, but if you're working something that you feel like, hey, it could use something like this, start thinking about it. Slack is a great way. Also, originally, Amelia, you said you met him in Slack, and I think going back, if you've scheduled, you started this whole opportunity via cold call. Don't be afraid to pick up the phone. Don't feel like email has to be the only way to exchange information back and forth. Obviously the texting level is great, but Slack, she's got all of our champions. She's got all of her coaches and experts on her side in one room. That's pretty freaking powerful. So Amelia, what are three things that oh wait, sorry, I'm skipping forward. Any major barriers or objections through this process that you had to overcome? Because right now it just seems like, man, this is smooth sailing. Aside from a slight pitch slap, what do you got?
Amelia Taylor
It wasn't a slight, it wasn't slight. With the pitch slap, I went full force. I'm not going to lie. I went full force. And he went full force on the wrist lap. But no, but it was big time. The market has changed, and we all know that the markets changed big time. There's layoff floor, there's people who have budget cuts, and that was a big thing for them, that they were getting their budget cut. And they were trying to figure out where in the world to allocate money in the very best way they knew they needed the help. But it was, how can we do this? How can we structure that our end to meet their needs? Because selling is helping selling. So let's figure out what that looks like. Not everyone can do that, though, right? Like, you can't just shift around your pricing or whatnot. We didn't do that. We just structured it to where there's a way for them to leverage this, opt in for six months later. So let's start and show the ROI that they're going to get, then let's go from there. So it's all about meeting them where their needs are at, and then ensuring that they feel safe with what it's going to be. But budget, a big thing. Travel another thing. So it was a long weekend. I don't remember when the slides, but it was where my CEO and his CEO, they were both traveling out of town, which ended up being in my favor. Did not know. But ultimate signer was not Dan. It was the CEO. He was the ultimate. Yeah, let's do it. So I'm texting shame with my CEO. I'm like, Hey, I'm in a huddle with Dan right now. He's annoyed, and he just wants to get this done. Not annoyed with us. Annoyed with the fact that finance is saying, hey, can we do this on our paper instead of theirs? So it's all I had to go back and figure out how in the world to even do that, which I learned a lot. But we accommodated and did the contract through their paper and put our clothes and all that kind of stuff, intermingled and stuff. But with that, with the travel aspect, James was like, Hey, I'm sitting next to his CEO right now. Literally. We're in a conference. We're sitting here. What do you want me to tell him? I was like, Okay, here we go. I was like, Ask him if we can do this, or just tell them we are going to do this. Okay. And here's what gives him these two options. He's like, I'm going to just give him one option. So then he slacks me back, and he says, Yes, I'm with it. Tell him we'll do it on his paper. Let's go ahead and get it done. Get his finance guy to send that over. I got that maybe three minutes later after I told Dan that. And then we just kept rolling. But the travel was tricky because it was our finance guy for a week. He's the one who is going to be actually pen to paper, giving the go-ahead the full-on, Here's the money. Go run with it, but go fix our problems. So it's tricky right now. A lot of people with these budget, they don't know where their budget should go. One, two, they're getting a lot of cut so where to allocate that is so important and throwing a bunch of bodies in and calling it growth is not gross. So I'm tossing that one out there for everybody to hear because it really is not that will not if you don't coach the people right to know how to use the tools or everything you've got in place, how in the world are they supposed to be successful? You're going to have to cut them instead of being able to allocate your money in the right places. So that was starting to happen a little bit with Lake apps to where some people were being hiked, all of that. And so playing on that was, okay, that's cut. So let's think about what's there, how much their salary basically was. All right, let's do an average. Let's look up on sale now what the average salary is, cut that in half, and let's just play around with those numbers and see if we can group that together to make a good sum of what maybe they can work with. Because budget was up in the air with travel.
Taylor Dahlem
Got you. Well, like you said, you didn't lie. This is an extremely unique deal. All of it managed through slack, several meetings back and forth, but for the most part, it seemed like a pretty efficient sales cycle and deal cycle, that a lot of AE’s I think can look to and apply to what they're working on today, I guess ultimately wrapping things up. Amelia, what three things could you provide to account executives, other sales pros listening today to kind of inch closer to a closed one, whether with this deal or really any deal you've worked?
Amelia Taylor
Yeah, I know. Great question. I mean, don't give up wherever you think you've lost touch of things, if you think that you've lost some deal, you keep up with who filled that role. If somebody left the company, you think, okay, I can't work with this company because I burn bridges along the way. Somewhere, something, there's going to be somebody else still in that role. Keep that in your pipeline. Figure out keep track of all those things because you don't naturally try. So there's redemption in these failed attempts if you just bring the human aspect to it. Don't try to be something you're not. Be as human as possible, because we are human. So, yeah, you can be human for sure. Don't be intimidated by titles. It would be the second thing. I'm talking to the C Suite people every day, and I'm an Ae, but it doesn't intimidate me by any means just because they don't fall asleep with their title. Neither do I. And it might be that they have created these companies, organizations that they've got funding, all of that. And I'm like, okay, I'm learning revolves right now, right? Like, I'm learning how to sell a service as opposed to a product, which is so different. But I can't let that intimidation factor get to me. So whatever you say between your two ears, I will oppose. I can is such a big thing. Like, I will get through to this person. I'm not going to be intimidated by them. The third thing that I can share is if you match the relevancy with whatever matters to this persona specifically and put your personal little twist on it with that personalization, you read the room with that EQ, you bring that knowledge with that IQ, put those things together, kind of literally make a ball great. Toss that out there, see what happens. Because those are the things that sell. If you're leveraging EQ, IQ and relevancy and personalization, don't ever personalize there's no need. Relevancy matters more than anything.
Junior Lartey
It's really great advice. Amelia. It was great to have you. If you tuned in today, go connect with Amelia Taylor from Caribbean Group on LinkedIn. On top of today's tips, she's also post great content about Revolves. In fact, we probably would have had her on our podcast sooner, but I actually thought she was a revolt leader for Candy Group. That's how good the posts are.
Amelia Taylor
Amazing.
Junior Lartey
Yeah. Again, really great to have you, Amelia.
Amelia Taylor
Hey, thank you all so much. It has been a total pleasure. And I'm coming to see just the robots world kind of continue to grow and scale, and you guys are doing amazing things to keep it up.
Taylor Dahlem
Yes, I appreciate you for coming on. And just like that, another episode of How I Deal is in the books. Thanks again for tuning in. If you enjoy our content, as always, please let us know whether on LinkedIn, on whatever podcast platform you listen to. And if you really like it, please drop us a couple of stars here and there and we'll keep cranking these things out. But until then, we will see you next time.
