The Power of Listening: Blaise Bevilacqua's Sales Edge in Understanding Buyers

Celeste Berke [00:00:01]:

Hello. Hello. This is Celeste with Blaise. I'm on the Sales Edge podcast. I'm going to get his name right. Bevilacqua, his last name. Bevilacqua. We met at SaaSter, of all places, and I truly enjoyed my conversation with Blaise.

Celeste Berke [00:00:16]:

We didn't really talk about product. We started getting in deep, and I was taken aback when Blaise told me he is in a sales seat. Well, he can talk about his role, but that he comes up by being a teacher. So with that, please give us a little intro into who you are.

Blaise  [00:00:35]:

Yeah. Thank you, Celeste. It was awesome meeting you a couple weeks back. But, yeah, just by ways of introduction, account executive here at UserGems, but before the whole Sales world in a different life. Right after university, I was in English as a second language teacher over in Korea for 2 years. So that's That's kind of where I dip my toe in the water. And then once I moved back to the states, started the whole BDR life, and the rest is history.

Celeste Berke [00:01:00]:

Wow. What a story. There's, you know, a lot of parallels. I'm sure you can derive from your time being a teacher. Really, it's this process that we're taking people on where we're trying to understand my mother's an educator. Trying to understand their learning style, what's unique about them, English as a second language, and now turning that around and doing that with your buyers, educating them, but also truly listening to them and what their problems are. So, yes, I loved meeting you and the team. We had just chatted prior to the show about, holy crap, user gems is all over LinkedIn.

Celeste Berke [00:01:33]:

Right? A Small but mighty team. I'm loving the content that they're putting out, but really goes in-depth about real world environment and what is happening. So on the show, we like to ask individuals 2 questions. We will start with the 1st question. Please tell us, as it relates to your role and what you're doing. What is your sales

Blaise  [00:01:54]:

edge? Yeah. I think one thing that I've heard from Now customers is that I don't come off throughout the sales process as sales y. It's hard because it's it's like It's not a tangible metric. And I think one thing that has helped, like, shift my mind completely like, when I was in SGR, I was like, book a meeting. Get them on the book. I don't care if it's qualified. Like, I'm still gonna. Fine.

Blaise  [00:02:22]:

And now it's mostly, like, as Josh Braun always says, like, detach. It's way easier said than done, but I think if you truly can get into that mindset, it helps. And then it calms you down too, and it makes people feel comfortable sharing, you know, why why they're in the evaluation phase in the 1st place.

Celeste Berke [00:02:43]:

Sure. Oh, I love that. So I talked with Riley Blasdell in his episode, and he said it's this whole, like, stinky commission breath. Right? Most salespeople are So worried about especially today. We are recording this on the 26th. The 30th is looming. Right? People are looking at What is happening? When are things gonna close? And really detaching from that outcome so they don't come across as as you said. People can sniff that out a mile away.

Celeste Berke [00:03:11]:

When do you think that shift happened for you from BDR to AE to stop talking about Yahoo.

Blaise  [00:03:20]:

Yeah. I think my 1st boss sensed I had this, like, Significant rush of urgency. Like, okay. Come on. Like, the next step in the funnel is business validation. Let's get here. But I'm like, hey. Yeah.

Blaise  [00:03:32]:

Like, understanding the buyer journey, they may not be ready to take that step. And I think that took me, like, a year and a half of a very slow learner to To learn. So, yeah, it was early, thank God, within my career to, like, have this mindset change, and it's it's been helpful.

Celeste Berke [00:03:49]:

And kudos to that manager. I don't know if it was a mentor or manager who said, hey. I recognize this behavior. This is perhaps how it's coming across. And for you to take that. Probably that teacher student, right, part Yeah. For you to take that in and say, oh, okay. How can I change my own behavior so it is not looked at as?

Blaise  [00:04:12]:

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it it's helpful because For all the newer reps, it's difficult with this no new, like, remote work work style, you know, just Distributed teams. Thank god this all happened. Like, I was sitting he was sitting on a call with me Mhmm. And tapped me on the shoulder. So I I try to impart that with newer reps coming up because, it's difficult to read a room via Zoom, and That's, like, one of the most key things to do.

Celeste Berke [00:04:40]:

Yeah. Zoom has definitely made looking at, I guess, like, the buyer's behavior in the moment. Right? Is someone fidgeting? Are they on their phone? And you can't see, like, what their hands are doing. Right? So you don't have no clue. Are they typing notes? Are they on their phone. Are they really paying attention? Are they picking up what you're putting down, so to speak? So I would say that has definitely made it difficult for all of us, and especially if you're the person that has a discovery call or whatever you wanna call it, a sales call, and the other person isn't even on camera. And you have no clue. Like, you cannot read it at all.

Blaise  [00:05:16]:

Yeah. Then it just feels like it's a presentation if they're not Edge. But funny enough, I'm working a deal right now that's in the middle of the funnel, and it's with a publicly traded company. And The SVP of sales was just sitting there quiet the entire time, and it was Just was not reciprocating. And I finally and I think it's okay to do this. Like, call them out and say, hey. His name's not x, but Right. Hey, Dave.

Blaise  [00:05:47]:

Like, notice that you're you're pretty quiet. Like, is this any interest? Like, You know, you came to us, and I'm trying to, you know, have a conversation here. Thankfully, like, what I found out after calling him out, Which I normally wouldn't do, but it was just such an awkward, you know, first 15 minutes that he was like, no. I I really like I'm just thinking. And so being comfortable with silence is is another thing, which is, like, a great skill to learn, but I like, after 15 minutes of silence, pretty much, I'm just like, What are we what are we doing here? Do you, like

Celeste Berke [00:06:20]:

Right. Is this And especially when the indicators are they reached out to you, so there was some type of interest. Right? You weren't reaching out to them cold and getting that, I hate to say, like, temperature check or, like, hey. Are we tracking on the same page? And I think that is Totally okay. I know for myself a little funny story. I once was interviewing, and I was so bored during the interview. So I was in my Early twenties. I ended up getting the job, but I think I was so in I was so intent on listening that I probably had this, like, blank stare for forever on my face because I was just trying to soak in, like, a sponge what they were saying.

Celeste Berke [00:06:58]:

And then the next interview, which was the final interview, they took me to lunch where I was a different person. I was, like, lively, and it was more conversational. And then they told me later on, like, We thought you were gonna fall asleep during that interview. I was like, oh. But if they would have checked in with me during that, they would have seen like, no. I would I was just Really listening. And so I I think that is a skill that you have to be able to read the room and know a couple of those signals prior to making that assumption because, yeah, you could really piss somebody off. In your case, you didn't, and you went with that gut intuition.

Celeste Berke [00:07:35]:

So kudos to you on that. And You'll have to keep me posted if that deal goes through because we all know at this late stage of the year, Things are getting pushed to next year. Alright. So love that about The Sales Edge. Thank you so much for sharing that story, T shirt to your current role. Oftentimes, when we come up through sales, I have a lot of bad Practices focusing, like, 15 years on Bant without knowing it was Bant because nobody called it that. It was like a check the box order taking type of sale. And we don't know at times that we have bad behavior or we are, following something that maybe we shouldn't follow anymore because it's gone out the way of the window.

Celeste Berke [00:08:24]:

So I love to have guests talk about a sales myth that they want to either bust, exploit, or give us a new one so that others can learn from it and or take notes to enhance their own sales skills. What would that be for you?

Blaise  [00:08:41]:

Yeah. So I would say the the biggest myth that I would like to bust is just because the c level is excited about the project doesn't mean you have a deal. And what I mean by this, especially within, like, Medpick, like decision maker. Like, case in point right now, working a deal. The CMO is the final. It it's the budget's coming from him. He's the one that is the most excited about it because it'll benefit his team the most. However, after looping in his technical counterparts To evaluate, they're saying that there's too many fires to put out, and this is something that they're gonna table in 6 months.

Blaise  [00:09:25]:

The discovery that was involved really touched home on how they're behind in pipeline, where they need to be. So, like, he understands conceptually. But because there's, like, this there's other technical fires that need to be put out first before addressing his needs, this is something that's That's going to have to be stalled and then put on the back burner. So it's it's a tough thing to know that just because you have a c level Interest doesn't mean the deal is gonna come in at the time that you forecasted. It's not a matter of if, but when. But, Yeah. There there are a lot of landmines these days given the economy of, you know, buying committees getting larger and larger. So Making sure that if there's 1 bad egg in the buying committee, address their needs up front early.

Blaise  [00:10:14]:

Make sure that they're on your side As well. And then

Celeste Berke [00:10:17]:

And it and it's hard to you don't have a front row seat into what's going on inside the organization. So you can look at problems, but a problem that's impacting a CMO, like you said, from the technical side. May not be a problem to that technical team, and you have no clue what else is on their plate and what is coming up or some type some type of urgency. I had a call within the last week that's very similar. Right? They they know they're severely behind in pipeline. They've gotten a lot of funding in the past couple of years. Like, they are not tracking at all to get to where they need to be. Now our team could come in and deliver a kick butt training and align the whole sales team, but we thought, you know, we need to take a step back here because this is there's company wide issues that are going on that just working with 1 department isn't gonna solve, and it kind of sounds like you're in that place.

Celeste Berke [00:11:07]:

It's It's not a no. It is a there's some other things that are going on that either take precedence, have to be fixed first before your team can come in. You know, this, In most cases, tech or a solution is no longer a check the box. It's really to enhance the performance of the team. But as sellers, we always put our blinders on, and we think, like, oh, it's just about the sales team. It's just about the marketing team. We don't realize, like, how intertwined all of these teams are. So thank you so much for sharing that.

Celeste Berke [00:11:38]:

I think new reps often don't see take a holistic approach to what else is going on within the organization, which is a whole another topic. So thank you for sharing that. And I will say but anything else to add to that?

Blaise  [00:11:55]:

Yeah. I I mean, just to to wrap it up, it does make you think like an executive because you have to think at an organizational wide level on, like, And all the risks involved within your deal. So I'll I'll leave it with that. But

Celeste Berke [00:12:07]:

We love that. I would, you know, give a plug for the gap telling that really it we need to talk about big business problems. We can't be looking at, okay, how your feature benefits one part of the company. Like, there's So much going on within an organization, and oftentimes, it allows us to have a PhD within the organization, which means we have to go out and do our research. I talked with my brother yesterday. It was my 44th birthday, so he called me, and I said, thank you. Thank you. It was like another day in the life.

Celeste Berke [00:12:38]:

When you get older, you're you have to really go out of your way to celebrate, I'm realizing. But I was talking to my brother, and he's a junior partner, Ernst and Young, and he was talking A lot of technical jargon. And I looked at him like, I have no clue what you're talking about. And I realized A lot of the times, our buyers, even if it's like, this is our ICP, that can span across many industries. And if we don't take the time to do some research and really understand what is their language, what matters to them, we are doing ourself a disservice because we're just trying to push the sale along, not understanding what's going on within the organization, not thinking like a c suite. So this is why I connected with you at SaaSter because I was so blown away by first of all, you were one of the few people that really knew problems that you solve for that were tech on the technical side that were more of these big business problems and wanted to bring you on because I think a lot of people can follow and learn from you. I love the content that you and your team are putting out there. And I will say, Give Blaise a follow on LinkedIn and user gems.

Celeste Berke [00:13:46]:

And if you'd like to connect and talk to him about running, he also is in the big the big apple, so I can't imagine all the stops you have to opt in while you're doing your your run race or your run races your run routes, but also the content that you're putting out. We were talking about real world scenarios, what's going on within a buyer, what's going on in the process. People can really learn from your journey. So I appreciate having you on here today. Take care, and we will see you on LinkedIn.

Blaise  [00:14:17]:

Yeah. Celeste, thank you for everything. Awesome meeting you. And, yeah, when if you're ever in New York with the team, hit me up, and we'll we'll, Hopefully, we can we can cross paths

Celeste Berke [00:14:27]:

again. Thank

Blaise  [00:14:29]:

you.