“Never Get Too High, Never Get Too Low”: Matt Butler on Sales Mentality

“I think a true sales professional is somebody that prevents themselves from getting caught up too much in one emotion versus another.” Meet Matt Butler, who has been in sales for seven years—in addition to the seven years he spent at Bank of America in various capacities, including consumer products strategic analysis, project design consultant, and relationship manager. To him, this balanced mentality is not just an observation, but also a piece of advice for young sales professionals starting out in the field. “If you’re going through a stretch where everything’s going easy, you’re closing a bunch of business, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking, ‘It’s gonna be like this forever,’ and it can make you less alert to risks and deals further down your pipeline.”

There’s both danger and missed opportunity in this kind of complacency. The way Matt sees it, a robust set of wins right now implies a period of high activity that came in at the top of the sales funnel earlier in the year. “Does that flow look the exact same? Because if it’s not, you’re going to be headed into some lean times.”

Just as important as avoiding complacency, though, is sidestepping despair. “If you do sales long enough, you’re going to go through down periods.” But there’s work to be done during those periods, according to Matt. He suggests “work[ing] aggressively to build your pipeline, so that six, nine months down the line, depending on what your sales cycle is, you can start to build yourself back up.” It’s about not leaning too far into either state of mind. “It’s sort of that never get too high, never get too low mentality. And making sure that you are maintaining an even and steady pipeline.”

IT’S ONLY A NUMBERS GAMES

Okay, so howdo you ensure an even and steady pipeline? This is a question Matt answers with a question (or three) that sales professionals should be asking themselves. “Are you identifying not just new targets to reach out to, but new ways of engaging them? So, if you’re finding that a sales target doesn’t respond to a certain type of outreach—you know, maybe they never respond to emails—that should lead you to start asking questions of, ‘Am I sending the right type of message? Are my emails clean?… you know, a lot of the stuff that [Maestro founder] Will [Fuentes] teaches. Are you putting the right message in front? Do you have a balanced cadence? Not everybody wants to get bombarded with 50 emails in a month. Maybe they need to be hit with an email with some relevant industry information that shows you care about yielding a win for them, and then you call to follow up on it.”

The second category of question is, “Is this the right person that I’m trying to reach out to? Has somebody moved roles? Trying to use whatever opportunity you can to figure out the structure of that organization and finding out the best person to contact.”

The third: “How are you leveraging other sources to get into an organization? Do you know people that know people? LinkedIn. Social media connections. Essentially trying to find whatever means you can to drive engagement at your sales target. And people… they’re more likely to respond if you know mutual people, so trying to find those contacts can be very, very effective in getting your foot in the door.”

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY PIPELINE

Matt is the first to admit that he leaned heavily on dollar signs when he first started out in sales. “I would simply rank order deals on potential revenue and then work accordingly. And that’s the kind of mentality that leads to an over reliance on chasing the whale deals…You know, when you get them, they’re great, but they’re super hard to close.”

Another question Matt considers vital is, “Are you missing low-hanging fruit because you’re going after the deals that aren’t going to close?”

This is the first difference that comes to mind when Matt compares the salesman he was at the beginning of his sales career to the professional he is today. “I’m not perfect at it, but I would say that I’m much better at systemically identifying what are the deals where we have the DRIVE elements identified better [check out Maestro’s DRIVE course], and can we focus on those, so that I’m more comfortable allocating time and resources to what might seem like a small deal.” Sometimes a small deal whose owner is involved and on board can be incredibly valuable, “whereas I might be talking to some multimillion-dollar deal where we haven’t really scratched the surface with procurement. Those are the types of things that in the past I probably didn’t use my time as well as I could have, and with coaching, time, and experience, I’ve gotten a little bit better at how I allocate resources.”

THE SALESPERSON TYPE THE TRUE SALESPERSON

In the past, when people learned what Matt did for a living, a portion of them responded with something along the lines of, You don’t strike me as a salesman.

“The biggest misconception about sales, in my opinion, is that you have to be this turbo extrovert…” Instead, Matt feels, the best salespeople are people who “take a genuine interest in what their clients and sales targets are trying to accomplish, what’s important to them, and what adds value. And that doesn’t necessarily require the super bubbly outgoing approach. It certainly can work in certain scenarios.” But, says Matt, in sales, listening is sometimes more important than talking—or screaming.

Matt’s advice for new salespeople? “It’s as simple as hang in there. You’ve got to get reps. You’ve got to have a thick skin and be okay with people saying no to you.”

That and recognizing the difference between a no that indicates divergent interests and a no that indicates that you’ve failed to communicate value as a salesperson, as Matt will tell you. “If there is a true mismatch between what you’re trying to sell and what’s important to that client,” it’s probably time to say goodbye. “But the best salespeople are going to be able to find out where are the deals that might not look like they’re there because there’s a disconnect between how the client is defining where their value comes from and [what you are offering]. That’s real sales right there.”

Matt is currently the VP of Enterprise Sales at Finvi, a healthcare revenue recovery software provider. You can learn more about Matt here. Be sure to congratulate him while you’re there!