Dream Big with Mark Phinick === Mark Phinick: [00:00:00] most buying happens when you're not in the room. There's meetings that we just don't get invited into. So it, it's not about convincing, it's about equipping our champion to walk into, a meeting with our solution. Welcome to Dream Big with Big Dreamers, conversations for career growth, inspiration and insight. It's time to dream big. Donna Serdula (4): Today's guest is Mark Phinick, a renowned B2B deal coach, former IBM and HCL global sales leader and he's also the founder of Let's Make It Rain. Mark has a gift for helping teams turn stalled pipelines into closed revenue. Not with theory, but with real world execution. He's helped startups and enterprise sellers alike four times their pipeline velocity reactivate six figure deals and craft proposals so powerful they walk into the boardroom without you. Mark's mission to empower sellers to dream bigger by [00:01:00] helping their clients win too. Thank you so much for joining me, Mark. Mark Phinick: Thank you, Donna. Donna Serdula: Mark, when was the first time you remember dreaming bigger? And how did it shape who you are today? Mark Phinick: It was probably when I was working with IBM and learned that people just like me were closing a hundred million dollars deals. And it set me down a path to learn how to do just that. Learning from the executives that approved those deals, in terms of what they had looked for, when they approved them, as well as what they looked for when they were not gonna fund them. Donna Serdula: So you learn to read the room, read their body language and make things happen. But you've said most stalled deals don't die from price, but from weak internal alignment. How do you coach founders and sellers to fix that? Mark Phinick: So in B2B, one of the things I learned real early on was recognition that those that find [00:02:00] you are not the ones who fund you. I help founders as well as sellers, build forwardable business cases that sell themselves internally. most buying happens when you're not in the room. There's meetings that we just don't get invited into. So that starts and ends with, selling the hole, not the shovel, quantifying the cost of inaction, and ultimately equipping those that want us, those that are gonna be using us. equipping them to sell at the language of the C-suite. and help with these, proposals. Get to those who hold the budget. So it, it's not about convincing, it's about equipping our champion to walk into, a meeting with our solution. And positioning is that as a priority project where the business specifically finance, sees it as a good business decision over competing priorities.[00:03:00] Donna Serdula: And how are you making sure that they are equipped exactly with what they need? Mark Phinick: So if we, position them and their role as selling inside the company without us, these are people who. Probably don't buy our solution as much as we sell it. they understand the technology, they understand the acronyms, they understand what it does, but they don't necessarily speak the language of the C-suite, which is all about how do we increase revenue, how do we reduce costs, how do we mitigate risk? Once we've got support that they want to use our technology and partner with us, we help them monetize the business case, in terms of increased sales or reduce cost, or mitigate a risk, we, provide clear payback logic, and then we provide options, much like Radio Shack used to do with good, better, best. that gives them some flexibility based on budget constraints as well as, how successful they want to be. In the [00:04:00] context of a cyber product is literally how secure do they want to be? If it's a roofing contract, how dry do they want the building to be? But it's ultimately the customer's decision. We just want to make it available. We wanna make options available for them to choose. Donna Serdula: Yeah. Now you've helped teams four times pipeline velocity without hiring more reps. What are most sales leaders overlooking that you see so clearly? Mark Phinick: most of them, they're solving for volume, not velocity. Most organizations don't need more reps. They need reps who can drive, executive alignment, budget timing, internal momentum, deals accelerate when. Discovery processes reveal internal blockers, not just needs. Champions are armed to navigate procurement and, potential gatekeepers. And proposals speak to buyers, not necessarily [00:05:00] users. execution, in my experience, beats expansion. It helps teams close what's already in front of them. where I focus is not on pipeline generation. it's helping organizations who have already created interest in their technology, in their solution, in their service, and, closing those deals by turning them into good business decisions for their customers. Donna Serdula: You're not a chief revenue officer, you're not really even a sales trainer, but you Mark Phinick: Right. into live deals and you shift outcomes really fast. What's the first thing you look for in a stuck deal? So I'll look for a gap between who wants it and who funds it, and why, what's the business impact on, you know. Under current approaches, what's it costing the business in terms of productivity, in terms of resources, what would be the business impact of my client solution in most stuck deals, [00:06:00] stuck deals being defined as, you know, you've done a demo and everybody says yes, but you just get ghosted. in most stuck deals, the user or the technical evaluator is sold, but the economic buyer has no urgency, no clarity on value, doesn't even know the deal exists. I'll diagnose is there a funded pain? And if not, how do we get funding? What business justification do we need to create? How do we create a compelling event? is there a trigger to act now, can our evaluator or champion defend this to a CFO? If not, we don't need more meetings. What we need is a better internal case. Donna Serdula: Yeah, you talk a lot about proposals that can walk into the boardroom without you. What makes a proposal forwardable and powerful enough to close deals if you're not even in that room. Mark Phinick: Yeah. Well, it's interesting 'cause throughout my career I've [00:07:00] helped, I've sold directly and I've helped my teams sell lots and lots and lots of software to large organizations. I can tell you I've never met the CEO of General Motors. I've never met. I mean, I know who these people are. I never met the CEO of Motorola or Baxter Healthcare. But these are organizations that we have equipped to, speak the language of the C-Suite and then take these into meetings that we would never be invited into. Donna Serdula: Yeah. Mark Phinick: and that's just, we just have to accept that these proposals have to stand on their own. So a forwardable proposal does three things. It frames the business problem using their language of their C-suite. It quantifies the stakes, in terms of revenue, cost risk. It de-risks the decision. With, clear implementation proof and payback. it can't be a pitch deck because the people who are reviewing these [00:08:00] don't speak the language of the users. They're not talking about what these products do and the problems there. What they talk about is how do we increase the business? How do we improve the business? How do we increase revenue, reducement risk, and cost. So it's a decision making tool. Written for someone who's never talked to you. They don't know you, they don't know your brand face. They don't know how committed you are to helping them. This thing has to stand alone, for people who control the money so that they can determine, oh, for all these priority projects that are. Everybody wants my capital. I'm doling out capital to those projects that are gonna provide the highest ROI and the fastest payback, I need for this project to fit into that category. Donna Serdula: Can you share an example when this happened and it really changed the game for that rep. Mark Phinick: So, I'm going to choose my words so I'm not divulging, confidential information, but, I was working with a particular client. They had a [00:09:00] $380,000 deal, that was just not progressing. And this was going on for weeks, six, eight weeks. The champion was all in the team. they had done everything right in terms of evaluating the technology, but they just could not get finance to move. And we kind of saw through some smoke screens. Oh, it's in legal. Oh, it's in procurement. Well, when we started having some candid adult conversation, what we found out, they had just not built the business case, so, we helped them rebuild the proposal. Internally we showed, revenue leakage, that we were able to fix. We calculated a, three quarter. Cost of delay. We framed it as a strategic win for them, as opposed to a software buy. So we made it a good business decision. it just so happened to involve, some software. The CFO approved it literally within a week. That's what they needed to do to do their job. The CFO's job is not to say [00:10:00] no, it's to use capital, optimally. And we made it easier for them. So they approved it within a week. it was closed in a couple days. No discounting and, no additional follow up other than, implementation. Donna Serdula: That's a success story. Mark Phinick: Yeah. SaaS, ai, cybersecurity, even now, commercial roofing. What's the universal pattern in deals that close, faster, bigger, and more reliably? Well, yeah, it's interesting. I spent my entire career in technology, so I thought when I launched my deal coaching business, I stay in my comfort zone. It was SaaS, it was, cyber, it was infrastructure, software, and emerging, AI companies. And I did, well, I helped these organizations, convert a lot of business. But then I was contacted by a commercial roofer who saw a podcast of mine from about, a year prior to engaging me. And he said, Mark, what you're doing is, universal across all B2B. Companies and I [00:11:00] thought about it for a bit and I went to chatGPT and I learned all about commercial roofing. It didn't take long. So I would answer that. the pattern is a clarity of business impact using the buyer's language. does the deal clearly answer, what business problem? Are we solving? What are they trying to improve? What does it cost to wait, why now, and why us? And candidly, if the champion can't explain to the CFO, what this is going to do to improve the business in 90 seconds, it's not a real deal yet. it's just interest. And it is probably gonna get shot down. My job and what I love doing more than anything is translating that interest into a funded internal priority that results in a deal. Donna Serdula: Now, what do the best sellers do that others are missing? Mark Phinick: So I can give you a cop out answer and say that they listen [00:12:00] more than others, but listening is a real key. Element of this and it's, it's connecting the dots. once they've heard, what would be an ideal scenario for the client? When a client tells you, boy, if you're giving me a magic wand and I get to paint the next masterpiece, they're gonna give you their treasure map. They're gonna tell you exactly what they want to buy. Now it's a matter of can they afford it? And, how do you put together a proposal going back to Radio Shack where that's the best, Donna Serdula: Yeah. Mark Phinick: right? And then at a lower end, the seller is working more on budgetary constraints. So, you know, it might be the case we're focused on landing and expanding. We start with a tactical solution. We provide an option for in the middle of better, and then we provide an option that they can grow into. And if you were to visualize. It's almost like a maturity map where today they're starting [00:13:00] here and in a year they're gonna be here in terms of whatever they're trying to, Improve, maybe it's security, maybe they're looking at threat intelligence. Maybe they're looking at, faster meantime to remediation. Maybe they're looking at roofing and it's a matter of dry, drier, driest, in all cases, the top sellers and sellers that I work with, we just help them start speaking in that vernacular as opposed to, here's the things that our product or service does. Donna Serdula: Yeah. Mark Phinick: That's what websites are for. That's what Google is for. Go look. the customer will learn everything about your technology. The best sellers learn how to help them improve their business using that technology. Donna Serdula: And, I can vouch for you doing that for my business and really helping me understand to ask the right questions and, and to connect those dots to, what we're doing and how that really helps our clients be the [00:14:00] best that they can be. So Mark Phinick: Awesome. Donna Serdula: you for that. Mark Phinick: It's awesome. Donna Serdula: What advice would you give to someone struggling to dream big right now? Mark Phinick: Normally when I get brought in, it's from an investor who is working with a company or a CEO, whose company, needs to execute on revenue for a couple different reasons. Either they're a larger organization, they're missing quarters, deals are slipping, or they're a startup and they're not able to get another raise. Because investors need to see traction to cash. So it's about a priority to execute on revenue. And then I'll get a call every once in a while from an individual who works for a larger organization and just recognize they're self-aware. So they'll contact me and say, Mark, I saw you present. When we were both at IBM or Mark, I've known you for a while, working together in my previous, roles at IBM or somewhere else, and they say, Mark, I need [00:15:00] some help and I don't feel comfortable necessarily going to my reporting chain. I don't want it viewed as weakness. I don't want it. I don't want to be criticized. I just need help. I want to crush my number. I want to sell more. I want to help my clients more, and so they'll engage me It's so gratifying, Donna. It's so gratifying to watch somebody and help somebody go from an initial conversation with where they're self-aware and they are, struggling as an individual and some of them even ask, should I even be in sales? Right? the calls in some cases are as much of a therapy session as they are. A coaching session on a deal, and it's very gratifying to help these organizations or individuals increase their lot in life. Learning how to do many of the things that I've done. So, you know, I work with a lot of people who are self-aware and they tell me [00:16:00] right up front, here's where I am. here's what I don't know how to do, Mark, show me how to do it. Then I also work with a number of people who, when we start off, they know everything, but they're still not closing a hundred percent of their deals. And when we ask that question, all right, you're closing 70%, would you like to get to 75% of the deals? That's where I get the opportunity to help them. Donna Serdula: what's one big dream that you're chasing next? Mark Phinick: I'd love to be better at yoga. I'd love to be better at playing guitar. from a professional standpoint, it's helping one of my clients' reps close a hundred million dollars deal. it starts and ends with the same exact story. I get phone calls from. Former reps and former clients of mine three minutes before New Year's when they should be calling their grandmothers, they should be calling, whoever it is. But they [00:17:00] call, they a call and they wish me a happy new year. I just love that. it's because I helped them increase their lot in life, which helps them, their family, their kids, hopefully grandkids. So, yeah, there you go. Donna Serdula: You've, you've, you've made a difference. You've made a difference in my life, and I know you've made a difference in many other people's Mark Phinick: You're too, you're too kind. You. You did it all. I just kind of coached you along. Donna Serdula: Thank you. So thank you, mark, for pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to move from stuck to unstoppable. magic in sales and in life happens when we focus on helping others win. So to everyone listening, your next big breakthrough might be just one powerful conversation or one bold question away. So go out, connect deeply and remember, big dreams aren't just for someday. They start with what you do next. Thank you so much for joining me. Bye-bye.