Eric Housh

Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast, where we discuss strategies, ideas, and insights about how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. Super excited today, guys. I’m your host, Eric Housh. I’m sitting down with a guy I met recently, Bryan Gray, founder and CEO of Revenue Path Group. Bryan has led two companies to the Inc. 500 list. He’s written a book called The Priority Sale, has a new book coming out called Your Seller’s Last Stand, and built a framework that’s helping B2B sales teams stop getting commoditized and start winning deals before the competition even knows they’re on the table. You guys are in for a treat today. Bryan, welcome to the show.

Bryan Gray

Mm-hmm.

Thanks, Eric, man. You’re selling me hard there. I appreciate that. Let’s have a great conversation.

Eric Housh

Well, you know, I saw your talk recently at a Vistage presentation. It resonated with me because I keep hearing this from business owners, right? The things you talk about — the pipeline looks fine, the team’s working hard, but something downstream is broken. Deals are stalling out, close rates are soft. Nobody can quite explain why, but you have diagnosed this. Tell us at a high level, what’s actually going on?

Bryan Gray

Yeah, you’re right, I hear that a lot. And what’s interesting is what’s going on is they’re not connecting to real relevance. I don’t question a seller’s efforts. I don’t question that they’re having good meetings, but what I think sellers are not able to do is enter at the right spot and really align with the priorities of the organization. So they’re having great conversations, and they’re not being told no, but when you enter a little low or too late into the buying journey,

you’re going to find yourself with endless conversations that never quite close. And to me, there’s no connection between the consequences you make go away and what the prospect organization is actually going to act on. Because we don’t buy all the good or great ideas that come across our desks, even if they have a fantastic ROI. What organizations do is act on their priorities — what’s most important and urgent to the organization.

And if you fail to align to something that’s both important and urgent, you’ll just be a good idea or a great idea — “we should do something about it at some point in time” — but you can’t get over that line to where a decision actually happens. I think that’s the fundamental reality of why pipelines are slowing down and we can’t get things to close.

Eric Housh

And did this change happen overnight, or is there a point that you can remember, industry-wide, when this shift happened and teams just didn’t catch it?

Bryan Gray

Yeah, it kind of caught me too, Eric. I think it all started around the ’08, ’09 economic collapse, when decision-making teams just started getting a little bit bigger. I don’t know if it’s because of scarce resources or enlightened management wanting to bring more people into the decision, but when we started bringing more people to the table and a seller was entering too low —

at the time, because prospects were now doing their own research, they were kind of shortlisting on their own. All of a sudden we found the seller having less access and influence, and then they’re put into a decision team that has nearly seven people on it. I think that’s when it started happening. And then all of a sudden COVID hits, we started going more virtual, and getting face time is even harder now. So I think these dynamics are working against a traditional human seller, unless we change how we approach

business development entirely. And if you don’t, you’re going to end up with a bunch of expensive sellers who can’t create the value they used to, and you’re going to make rash decisions, which could harm the organization.

Eric Housh

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s dig a little deeper here, into the meat of this. You’ve coined something — you talked about it — called the three deadly Cs:

commoditization, compressed selling time, consensus decision-making. You kind of hit on a couple of them just then. That’s a clean framework, but I want to get past the labels and really dig deep. Which one of these is doing the most damage to growing companies right now?

Bryan Gray

Yeah, I think two of them do real damage, depending on how a seller enters the equation. Here’s what I mean: if the prospect is on their own buying journey and then a lead shows up — a lead shows up at the point where they’ve already decided they’re going to do something, and now they want to talk to two or three similar organizations — the buyer’s nearly 83% through their buying journey at that point in time. So when it’s a prospect-generated lead,

then compressed selling time is your real challenge, because you’re thrown into an environment where they’re already evaluating you against two or three other capable and competent competitors, right? Sameness takes over, and then the race to the bottom kicks in. So if it’s a prospect-generated lead, I think compressed selling time is the real issue. If the organization initiates the sale on its own, I think consensus decision-making is the real battle.

And why that happens is that sellers, when they’re hunting for opportunities, rarely get to the level they need to reach. They tend to find those who will take a call with them, and that’s usually someone at the functional level of the organization — someone willing to take a call. And when you start there, they have to build consensus as they move upstream, right? That makes sense, doesn’t it? “I’ve got to get more people bought in, let’s roll this up.” But here’s the problem:

Eric Housh

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, for sure.

Bryan Gray

You’re now left addressing the priorities of others in the organization, who may not match the organizational priority. So while you’re gaining all this alignment and buy-in — “this looks good to me, this would save me a lot of time” and all those things — they eventually get up to what I call the commitment-to-solve line. I’ll talk more about that later. But if I bump up against other organizational priorities that don’t match, I get the stalled-out deal.

I couldn’t get it over the line — “we have something else more important.” All of a sudden you lose to another priority simply because you played the consensus-buying-team route and worked your way into something that, at the upper echelon, they’re just not going to act on. It’s just not a priority to the organization, even though it mattered desperately to you. You just couldn’t get the funding for it.

Eric Housh

I look at our own data, and it’s like we lose most of our deals to indecision. They just chose not to do anything.

Bryan Gray

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s a great point, because most people win more when they’re engaged — they win more than they lose against direct competitors — but indecision is still a loss. What we as sellers do is we don’t take full responsibility. We say, “well, whatever the reasons,” we give ourselves an excuse. But the fact is, I didn’t find the organizational priority that will get acted on, and I didn’t connect what I really, really do to that organizational priority. And what’s surprising, and both refreshing, Eric,

is that most sellers can’t really grasp what they really, really do. They can talk capabilities all day long, but they don’t really understand the consequences of not using them, and how that connects to an organizational priority. And when you can’t do that, you don’t get meetings at the right level to have real conversations. So you have capability conversations at lower levels, and then it can’t get over the hump. Indecision.

Eric Housh

I think right now we’re probably hitting on the aha moment. The folks listening are hearing, “we’ve always sold on pain points.” That’s how most sellers have done this — a lot of sales systems are built around finding the pain. You’re saying the urgency should be to find the priority. What’s wrong with selling to the pain point?

Bryan Gray

That’s it — because we live with most pain points, right? And here’s the problem: the priority sale is all rooted in this one premise, that we act on things only when they’re both important and urgent. There are a lot of important things out there that, yeah, we should probably do one of these days — that’s kind of a pain. But we only act when something is both important and urgent, and that usually shows up, Eric, as a threat to the organization — market share loss,

customer loss — the things that we will do something about, because they’re crucial to us. Those are our priorities. Now, the problem is we live with a bunch of pain. I was talking with a retired executive the other day, and we had a great conversation. Before the meeting started, he said, “Yeah, I’ve got to get my knee replaced soon.” And I said, “Yeah, my wife had hers done, you’ll appreciate it.” He said, “Man, I remember I couldn’t go on walks anymore. That’s kind of a drag. I couldn’t

stand up for long periods of time, but when they told me I couldn’t play golf anymore, that’s when I committed to getting the surgery.” Because it was only when golf was threatened to be taken away from him — that’s only when he’d get his knee replaced. Guess what, Eric? Should he have done it years before? Yeah — take my walking away, take basketball away, fine. But don’t take my golf. I know it’s a silly example, but the same is true in organizations. We’ll complain about things all day long, but we’ll live with it. And so

Eric Housh

Yeah. But we’ll live with it.

Bryan Gray

The real question is, what happens if nothing changes? And I’d like to hear that from a prospect. Because you might complain about something, and I’d say, “Eric, I appreciate you sharing that, but what happens if nothing ever changes about that? How would the company adapt?” And if you get an answer like, “they’re not going to do anything about that,” but here’s the problem: when sellers are trained to find pain points, they jump at what they hear. “Hey, they said they have a problem with this,” so we go into

hyper-proposal mode, asking more questions about the pain points, and I start proposing solutions to the pain points, but it’s not something they’re actually going to do anything about. So it ends up in my pipeline as an opportunity, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, because it’s not attached to any real threat or priority for the organization. Could it be? Absolutely. Does it? Not necessarily.

Eric Housh

Stay there for just a minute, because I think our audience could use some specific guidance here, since they’ve been trained a certain way for so long. How does a priority conversation evolve compared to a problem-solving conversation?

Bryan Gray

Yeah, that’s a really good question, Eric. Priorities are, as I mentioned, what people will actually do something about — what’s both important and urgent. And the key to this is you want to be in before they’ve even committed to solving something, which is where the human seller truly thrives — hence the name of my upcoming book, Your Seller’s Last Stand. If we don’t find ways in earlier, at higher levels, before they’ve committed to solving something,

the value of the human seller quickly diminishes. So how do you have those priority conversations? We first have to understand our real impact — what is it we’re really, really doing? Let’s not talk about capabilities anymore; I want to talk about consequences, right? We may have talked about that before. Most people communicate in terms of capabilities — “we offer great service, we’re highly responsive,” all the things we tend to talk about. The consequences are

Eric Housh

Right.

Bryan Gray

what’s experienced by the prospect if that didn’t exist. And that’s actually what executives want to have conversations about. Because if you believe, as I do, that a seller needs to be earlier, at a higher level, before the prospect even starts shopping for a solution, then how do you start a conversation when you’re loaded for bear talking about capabilities and how you’re different from a competitor? That’s not the conversation. If you want to be earlier, at a higher level,

before they’ve started actually shopping, you have to understand the consequences that you can make go away. So how do you start framing a priority conversation? We first have to understand what we really, really do — the consequences of not working with us — and then we have to find organizations that put a value to that, that make it a priority of theirs. And when you put those two together — kind of like chocolate and peanut butter, peanut butter and chocolate — then you can start a conversation with a complete stranger.

And it creates this idea of “I’m here because I believe something.” For example, ours: I believe, Eric, the biggest current threat organizations face is becoming a commodity in their prospects’ eyes. And what’s making it worse, decision-making teams keep getting bigger, and they’re ignoring your salespeople, Eric, until the very end of the buying journey, driving a race to the bottom, caused by the three deadly Cs. And we believe organizations are unprepared, ill-equipped, and underdeveloped to even fight back against it. That is how you start a priority conversation —

only with those who want to make that go away.

Eric Housh

And Bryan, I’m reflecting personally on where most of our leads come from, and they’re coming from the answer engines, right? They’re coming from the LLMs. That seems to me indicative that these companies are trying to figure out a lot of this on their own before they’re even engaging sales folks. So this seems like a really big challenge — creating this conversation before they’re asking the questions, right?

Bryan Gray

That’s well put. In fact, I was doing a session for a trade association the other day, and someone walked up to me and said, “You know, one of the things I picked up during your session is it’s not really what you sell, it’s when you sell.” This is all rooted in my fundamental belief that the sales function should actually be creating more margin for the organization, not more revenue. That’s a whole other conversation. But when you think about

Eric Housh

Right.

Bryan Gray

how valuable margin is to us as CEOs and leaders — it’s how relevant we are, how vital we are, how valuable we are. And if I can’t create margin through my sales function, guess what? I have to try to make it up somewhere else. And that puts stress and strain on the organization. So why does this really matter? There’s a difference between making a sale and creating margin. And when you think about

when a lead shows up, they’re already in the market, they know what they’re looking for, they’re well past that commitment-to-solve line, and they want to talk to two or three people who can do exactly what you do, Eric. And when comparison kicks in, margin compresses even further. And then you think, “why do I have all these salespeople when they’re already almost through the buying journey? What good are my great sellers doing anymore?” And the only real answer to this, Eric, is I’ve got to be initiating

Eric Housh

Yeah.

Bryan Gray

opportunities before they’ve even come to that commitment-to-solve line. And that’s where the most valuable human sellers will be, because that’s gold to all of us — not only do you win bigger opportunities, you win faster, but you protect and grow your margin, which is what I believe the sales function needs to become.

Eric Housh

I love that. That really resonates with me. We’ve talked a lot about sales, and I think for the true sellers out there, they must have seen this coming, but maybe we’re putting it in language now that’s a little more pointed. Let’s talk about how people always say sales and marketing go hand in hand. Do we need to be thinking differently about messaging and positioning, and how we position ourselves to align to this kind of priority-seeking conversation?

Bryan Gray

100%. We have to align, and here’s why. Traditionally speaking, marketing was designed to find people who are looking for what it is you do — I’m way oversimplifying — but when the prospect’s shopping, I want to be found; hence SEO, search engine optimization. When someone runs a search, I want to be found. By its very nature, that puts a seller in at, I think, the worst possible time from a margin perspective.

Maybe not from a sale perspective, but from a margin perspective. So when we live off leads — which to me means they’re well into the buying journey, they’ve framed up what they think they need to do to solve the real issue or the priority, and now they want to find competent, capable competitors who can bang it out and give them the best price — and what’s worse is when all three finalists show up, they don’t really sound any different from the others. So

why would anyone want to spend more when you can all do the work? You have great case studies. And all we do is drive sameness down further, which AI is going to accelerate, by the way. So that’s the problem of showing up when someone’s already shopping. So, to your point, and I’ll come back to the marketing alignment here next: we have to get really laser-focused on how we start a conversation at a level where they normally wouldn’t take a call from a salesperson. That’s the value of a human seller. So marketing needs to be talking about consequences,

not capabilities. I’ve seen so many product launches, Eric, that come out with a pitch deck talking about what a product does, how it works, and all its capabilities, but it doesn’t talk about any of the real consequences we’re making go away. That’s a complete mismatch. So I believe marketing and selling are all just one function to me — we’ve got to hunt at high levels before

anyone’s even thought about solving this issue. “I didn’t know that actually helps me drive greater customer satisfaction. I never saw that as a way of doing X, Y, and Z.”

Eric Housh

Yeah, I think it’s really leaning into that consultative piece of the sales process — “hey, I’m not coming in trying to sell you a thing, I’m coming in wanting to have a conversation about your business, showing you what I’ve seen out there, and some corners you need to look around, with my help.” Let’s talk a little bit about how salespeople are shooting themselves in the foot right now, from a commoditization standpoint.

Bryan Gray

Yes.

Love it.

Eric Housh

They think they’re helping. They think they’re differentiating, but they’re making it worse.

Bryan Gray

Yeah, it’s a rampant issue. And I think, even from a leadership perspective, we’re praising revenue, not margin. We’re praising activity, not when and where we showed up and at what level. We’re actually looking for more first appointments, at what level — we don’t even think about earlier access at a higher level. We just want to be pitching our product in front of someone, disregarding

that if I show up late, I’m inviting a long sales cycle that will probably never go anywhere, and indecision becomes my biggest loss. Or I show up when they’re already shopping and I get some revenue, but I don’t create any real margin the business can work with. So a lot of the metrics we’re using, a lot of the behaviors we have — because I’ll tell you, if you tell a seller, “I want you to go start conversations at the COO level, not the director level,” and they know the COO isn’t looking for a solution,

but I want you to go talk to him or her — they’re going to say, “my God, what do I say?” And then think about all the materials we’ve provided them in the past — well, that’s not going to get a conversation when they’re not actively shopping. So we need to lead with a belief statement, right? Because, sure, once someone reaches out, we like to ask questions — granted, they’re already in the buying journey. “Thanks for reaching out, Eric. Before I jump in, can I ask you a few questions?” That’s good business.

But when I believe I need to be earlier, at a higher level, before they’re shopping, I can’t lead with that. I’ve got so little time to get your attention, so I have to lead with a belief statement. “Hey Eric, I believe the biggest threat your organization faces is…” Now, what if you disagree with that belief? Probably not a prospect. How many times have you heard people say, “we’re not for everybody”?

If you don’t say why you’re not, you’re arrogant. “Hey, we’re not for everybody, Eric. We only work with CEOs who believe they’re surrendering too much, entering too low, and not able to hold the value they’re trying to achieve.” I don’t talk about what I do — I talk about what I believe and who I’m looking for. And that one thing I call your priority position — it’s the most valuable tool a human seller could ever have moving forward,

because it’s the only way you’re going to get access at a high level before they’ve even committed to solving something.

Eric Housh

And that positions you as the expert — the one with a unique point of view on this problem that maybe other sellers haven’t even caught up with yet. So Bryan, we’ve hit a lot of points from your first book, The Priority Sale. Any other huge points from that book we haven’t covered so far? I really want to talk about your new book here at the end as well, but anything else from The Priority Sale that we want our listeners to walk away with?

Bryan Gray

Thank you.

No, I think a proper recap is this: we have to start finding priorities. And I think once sellers realize they’re trying to reach the very primitive part of the brain that only wants to make its threats go away, they’ll understand that until I find and understand your priorities, you’re not going to buy anything. And I don’t know why we’re proposing things without understanding, at a deep level, what your organizational priorities are — otherwise, why are we proposing things?

I want to know what they’re actually going to do. So I really believe that understanding the truth, and having that type of conversation, is where a human seller can be insanely valuable. You’ve covered pain points versus priorities — I think that’s crystal clear, I’m glad you found that — and these three deadly Cs. I think that’s really what’s confronting the sales organization today. But what I find is organizations with 20, 30, 300 salespeople, and it’s one of their biggest line-item expenses

on their income statement, and I don’t know what value we’re creating, because we’re not meeting new people. We’re not growing. And all the things we started our conversation around are happening to us. And that becomes an expensive problem when you’re spending millions of dollars but don’t have answers to why things are happening to you.

Eric Housh

Man, that resonates. Thank you for that recap, and definitely thank you for discussing that. Let’s talk about your new book — Your Seller’s Last Stand. What’s the core idea you want someone to close that cover with, and who’s it really written for?

Bryan Gray

Yeah, thank you. You know, it’s funny — my wife’s like, “you’ve got to make sure the salespeople know this is not for salespeople.” I think it is, but I have a fundamental belief that the sales function, Eric, is not about making a sale. I know that sounds blasphemous and silly, but I believe the key responsibility of the sales function is to create margin. I call it above-the-line and below-the-line margin. Below-the-line margin is operating margin — let’s be lean, let’s cut costs, let’s do what we need to do to keep our margins right.

Above-the-line margin is the value the outside world places on your organization — how relevant, vital, and valuable you are. But what happens is, if your sales organization can’t defend your value or actually go create opportunities, the above-the-line margin starts compressing, racing to the bottom. And that has to go somewhere, right? So if I can’t pick up more margin below the line,

I just keep cutting and cutting, and all of a sudden I’m busier than ever and can’t keep up. By the way, when I hear CEOs say “I’m as busy as ever and can’t keep up,” I think they have a margin problem, because if they had better margin, they could pay their people more, they could invest more. So what they’re really saying is, “I can’t defend my margin above the line.” So I’ve got to keep cutting and squeezing below the line, or live with less margin. My fundamental belief is that your sales function, your revenue function, should be creating more margin for you. Okay.

Eric Housh

Mm.

Bryan Gray

If you believe that, then it’s like, well, how do I do that? What we do is show up earlier, at higher levels, before the buying journey even starts — back to The Priority Sale book. But the premise of the entire book is: if CEOs don’t see this change happening, and they continue to carry the high overhead of their sales organization, and AI is giving us more capacity but not greater capability, then all of a sudden two or three years go by,

and you’re like, “why do I still have these 28 salespeople?” And then we get rid of all of them, or we cut so close we’re left with two or three remaining, and they miss their shot. And their shot is: what if we took all 28, got them earlier, at higher levels, leveraged AI to make them more effective, and improved their capabilities? Now we can double and triple our business and our margins without having to add any staff.

So it’s a real dilemma for CEOs. And I want them to realize: if they don’t change when, where, and how their sellers enter the equation — if they don’t see their revenue function as a margin generator — they’re going to continue to run it as a cost center, say selling is harder, and keep discounting to win work, and they’re going to starve their business of oxygen. So it’s really a call-out to CEOs and leaders, saying: you’ve got this pool of very talented people who really need your support.

They need your help. They need to be developed. They need to be equipped, and they need to be prepared to sell differently in this new world. And if you don’t do it, and your competitor does, you have real problems.

Eric Housh

Yeah. Wow, that’s impactful. I love that we hit that punctuation point right there, because, again, sales is changing — sales has changed, right? And we’ve got to adapt, we’ve got to see these things coming, we’ve got to prepare our sales teams for what’s ahead. Bryan, one thing we ask all our guests on the show, and I’d love to extend it to you as well — what’s one piece of advice, one quote

that’s stuck with you in your career that’s had a lot of impact, that you think could be impactful for our audience?

Bryan Gray

Man, that’s a good question.

I’ll say this — my head is filled with movie scenes all day long, from The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, Fletch as well, and they all just run through my head all the time. But one of the things that stood out to me is one scene from A Few Good Men, when Jack Nicholson said, “You can’t handle the truth.” It’s such a dramatic scene, and it just stops you in your tracks. It forces you to think about what he’s really saying there. And I’ll couple that with a book I read

Eric Housh

Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry.

Bryan Gray

gosh, 25, 30 years ago — it came out of Stephen Covey’s organization, but it was a sales book called Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play. I read that book, and I thought this was really refreshing to me, because it talked about alignment. It was the first sales book I ever read that talked about aligning with someone — let’s not sell you something, I don’t want to close you or handle objections. By the way, when someone is closing or handling objections, Eric, that’s a sign of misalignment,

because when someone’s aligned with what you believe and what they want to do, you know what they say? “What do we do next? How do we get started?” And you’re aligned, right? So I’m going to mix those two together. And one of the things I’ve come to really, really appreciate is this idea of telling the truth earlier, both to yourself and with the prospect. So many sellers are —

Eric Housh

the next step.

Bryan Gray

I don’t say they’re afraid to tell the truth, but they don’t really own the truth. They won’t ask that real hard question that could unleash all kinds of opportunity, because they don’t want to be seen as overly aggressive, or whatever label they fear — “I don’t want to ask that question, I don’t deserve to ask that question.” And they don’t tell themselves the truth. And this goes back to: why is our pipeline still big and not moving? Because the truth isn’t in there, and we don’t know what the truth is.

We talked about them buying this, and they said it was important to them, but I don’t know the truth. And I believe as sellers, we have to own the truth. As a CEO, you’ve got to own the truth every single day — that’s the biggest issue with being an entrepreneur. So this whole idea of telling the truth earlier to ourselves and with our prospects is what’s going to help us be clear, but also get the access we want. If you want to get to a high level of a prospect organization, come in with the truth.

They’ll respect it, because you’re showing up with a take — like you said earlier — what you’re seeing and what you’re believing, and here’s some of the consequences. People will respect that. It takes boldness, but if you’re married to the truth, why wouldn’t you have that conversation and say, “I’m only looking for CEOs who have this very issue. If they don’t, that’s okay. Don’t waste the whole weekend putting a quote together, thinking you’ve got something when you don’t.”

Eric Housh

Yeah. Quit trying to sell and really try to solve — solve for the problems you’re seeing out there. That man, that just resonates with me so much. Your talk at Vistage gave me a lot to think about; it really inspired me. The way you’ve reframed what’s broken — obviously for me it hits very close to home — what’s broken, what it takes to fix it. And I hope that it’s been really

Bryan Gray

Thank you.

Eric Housh

impactful for those listening. I just really appreciate you being here. Thank you for sharing with our audience. For those folks listening who probably want to connect with you — what’s the best way to get to Bryan at Revenue Path?

Bryan Gray

Pleasure.

Yeah, so RevenuePathGroup.com is my website address. You can find me on LinkedIn, Bryan Gray, and also my email address, Bryan.Gray@revenuepathgroup.com. I love these conversations, Eric. I tell you, by the way, when you also tell the truth, it makes life a lot easier. I don’t want to make believers, I just want to find them. If you could spend the rest of your life just finding people who believe what you believe, life gets simple. So —

Eric Housh

Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Gray

I love it. I love these conversations. I appreciate you having me, Eric. It was a joy meeting you, it was a joy collaborating with you, and I hope this is the right kind of conversation to help your audience really think about, and not just be afraid of change, but embrace it. Let’s go back to some of the human principles as we see this acceleration going on around us.

Eric Housh

Amen. Amen. Well, Bryan, thanks for sharing all those resources. Anna’s tuned in here, our producer — she’s going to drop all those in the show notes, make it easy for everybody. But if this resonated with you, send it around, send it to your sales teams. If you want to reach out to Bryan and have a conversation with him, I know he’d love it. And if you want to talk to us, of course, we’d love a conversation as well. But thank you guys for tuning in. Bryan, thanks again for being here, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.

Bryan Gray

Yeah. Thanks, Eric.