Innovative Sales Strategies: Pierre Hulsebus on the Future of Tech Selling

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Pierre Hulsebus is a passionate technology educator. Whether he is in rural Ghana teaching school kids about programming, writing and curating curriculum for Fortune 100 technical sales engineers, or leading envisioning and planning sessions with customers and consultants. He leads the efforts to educate and train technologists interested in Service and Sales Operations from all over the world.

Pierre comes with over 33 years of technology sales leadership and consulting. He has worked on the Microsoft Dynamics Platform since it was released. He is a Board Member at Ferris State University Marketing and Sales Advisory Program, and a Board member at Expanding Boundaries International focusing on delivering STEAM education programs in rural Africa and Baltimore Public Schools. A four-time Microsoft Titanium Award winner for Sales Excellence.

He hosts a Bimonthly LinkedIn Live stream called Field Service Live, and an Audio Podcast called "Hustle Is The Hack" - Insights and Ideas for Sales and Business Semi Pros.

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Host: Hello, hello! I’m going to introduce you a little bit. So, sure, this is Pierre Hulsebus. He’s a former business analyst consultant, Senior Solutions Architect, and right now, he is the Sales Activation Director for Microsoft. So welcome!

Pierre Hulsebus: Welcome! It's good to be here.

Host: Good to be here. I mean, that's great. At least you're not here... Well, you know, it's always a good start.

Pierre Hulsebus: Yes.

Host: Well, I have a few questions for you. Yeah, I’m gonna do a little bit of a softball thing here.

Pierre Hulsebus: Okay.

Host: Then do the hard questions come afterwards? Is this going to be like The TikTok CEO this week getting in front of Congress?

Pierre Hulsebus: I saw that poor guy. He was really trying his hardest, and they were like, "No, you’re not the best ever."

Host: And near the end of that, they said, uh, he just really tried to answer their questions, and then near the end, you're like, he didn’t answer a single question. He’s like, "I really kind of did, but, you know, it’s a tough... He’s been put there to... I don’t know if he’s been put there to fail or not, but we’ll see."

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah, we’ll see how that whole... Good luck trying to shut a company down that basically does what every other social media company does. I mean, how is it any different than Facebook or any... Anyways, there were a lot of stupid questions and the way that... Very like, "Just I want a yes or no answer," which is really a trap because they’re under oath, and you know, so he... You know, you’re coached to avoid, you know, that kind of thing and then mischaracterizing. "Do you have the ability to spy on American citizens?" It’s like, well, with the other ones... You know, like, kind of, yeah. Like, I think Congress has forgotten about Snowden and that whole debacle, so it’s nice to have someone pointing something in a different direction.

Host: It is, it’s really interesting. And it, yeah, it’s always interesting.

Pierre Hulsebus: Then, um, it’s like, you know, I’ve been in that meeting. You like... I’ve been in this guy’s shoes. Have we? Anybody in IT has been in that kind of... Like, you have? You guys have no idea how this works technically, and so you’re asking super technical questions, like the one senator who was like, "This was my business and all of that," and it’s like, no, fair enough.

Host: And because you’ve had experience in technical sales and because you’ve had experience in technical sales, yeah, a lot of people just understand salespeople as salespeople. Yeah, and you’re, I guess in a way, a perfect... If you were in those shoes, you're probably the perfect person to answer because you actually understand the technical side really well and the sales side, right?

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah, so I guess one big thing is, like, from your experience, what really is the difference between technical sales and...?

Host: Sure.

Pierre Hulsebus: It really is a good question. I started a podcast about a year and a half ago, just as a side hustle, really, so to speak. And it really is, it’s called The Technical Seller, and it’s trying to explore that idea: What is the difference between sales, quote-unquote, and technical sales? And generally, you know, as I really consider this, generally, it looks like to me what is... If I look at like a general business-to-business selling model...

Host: Sure.

Pierre Hulsebus: First, technical selling generally involves a proof stage that is generally lacking or not required or as complicated. So when we’re selling something that has a technical kind of bent to it, the proof stage of saying like, "This actually works, and here is like evidence of it working in your situation or something like that," and that’s usually the biggest thing that I think is a big distinguishing difference between the two. Now, there’s different ways to prove things out, but... And like, if I’m selling, you know, laundry soap or something like that, it’s usually a testimonial or something like that. Or there’s a low cost to trying something like, “Here, we’ll send you a little box of soap, you can try it out yourself.” I remember I used to get those in the mail when I was, you know, a little kid. We’d get little soap boxes in the mail or something like that to try out something new or... But the proof stage becomes more complicated. Congress is a really great example of decision makers usually in technical sales. There's different decision makers, so anytime you can kind of turn onto selling tech into a business scenario, it automatically is a complex sale. In the very traditional sense, when we talk about complex selling, you have multiple decision makers. So, you have a business decision maker, and you have a technical decision maker. So it's usually multiple people that now are automatically involved in the decision-making process. So, you know, if we're selling, let's say, warehouses or something like that, space, you know, there's usually just one buyer, so to speak, for that or paper. There's really not a technical process that has to go through or multiple buyers that you have to influence and kind of walk through. So, those would be the two things I think: multiple decision makers, technical decision makers, a business decision maker distinguishing, and the proof stage, which doesn't always exist in traditional selling. So the proof, like sort of resume, that I would assume the proof is sort of nested in that, in the multiple decision maker stage, I guess, you know, I mean, there are different ways to prove that something.

Host: Right, absolutely, yeah. The best is that you give it a try, and they like it, which would be, you know, if it's that good of a product. But, you know, what I guess, what's your experience with that? Like, how has that been for you? What are the nuances within that?

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah, so, um, sometimes it's impossible for a company to completely evaluate. You know, you think about it like, uh, you know, marriage or dating or something like that. You cannot completely evaluate that experience until you sign the, you know, on the paper, on the DOT bind and move in together and share finances. And, you know, you truly get into, you know, a partnership where you have equal risk. Some of the stuff is the same way when the bigger the company gets, the more proof is required because they can't fully evaluate the solution until, you know, until they are married to it, right? It's very... So it becomes very difficult to, you know, so when you think about selling something into a factory floor, you know, where you've got a 24 by 7 operation, you know, if I'm going to say, "Hey, we're going to make your, you know, machine operators five percent more efficient," in something like Automotive, where they've squeezed every, you know, um, literally the physical motion of people and time studies and all this, and we're coming into making some sort of claim that we could, you know, really improve productivity. Well, you know, in order to evaluate that, you actually have to put the software in, you have to interrupt production. You know, there's lots of risk that's associated with that. You may be absolutely accurate in that some of your customers have had that, you can point to testimonials, but until it gets evaluated, you know, the proof of that is very hard to find. So, you know, it becomes complex. That's where it gets, you know, that's where it becomes very interesting, you know, so to speak, and very kind of complicated and, you know, a little more sophisticated requirements than just straight up, you know, hey, selling techniques that, you know, you learn as a salesperson when, you know, if I'm selling a, you know, an individual, let's say I walk into a Best Buy or a retail store and I'm just, I've got, you know, Mom and Dad buying a computer for the kid and it's, you know, that experience of selling is very straight up. You know, features benefits type of discussion and, you know, hopefully you catch them on the right day, and the price is right, and you apply some, innovative sales strategies in terms of you know, asking questions, finding the right thing, you know, doing your discovery work and then, and then going in for the clothes. You know, you know, would you like it on Tuesday or Wednesday or, you know, the blue one or the green one. You have all these different kind of techniques that, you know, help you as a salesperson, let's say, gain an advantage or maintain some sort of control in the sales process. But once you get into, you know, that kind of corporate side, like a company like Microsoft, that's a big difference at any level.

Innovative sales strategies in the corporate world require a deeper understanding of the client's needs and a longer-term approach, where the evaluation of a product isn't as simple as a one-time interaction. It's not about selling on features alone; it's about showing how the solution will add value over time and help the client meet their specific goals.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine. So, what does that process look like for a company like Microsoft? I mean, that’s a huge shift, right?

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah, when we have, you know, a win wire, a win wire is like, hey, we just sold this deal to, you know, look at any one of these giant customers that are, you know, customers of Microsoft, and we make a big announcement, you know, right wire, uh, we... I don't know why they call it a win wire, but it's a traditional name for like an internal announcement of, "Hey, we just won this deal with Walmart." And so, you'll see a win wire and it gets like, it's an email that gets sent out and it's kind of a braggy, like, "Hey, the team did great." But you look at the team and it's never just one person. Literally, there's 50 people that are involved, you know, in this process. It's a large amount of individuals that have to work together. To coordinate, you know, for that customer, everybody's got different skill sets and they're, because there is all of those buyers that the customer, you know, um, there's, you know, security specialists and database analysts and, you know, all the people that are involved from the technical side. And then there's also, you know, business organizational people that help address things like risk and what is the business value and what's the support plan after, and, and so it's, and, and the license and there's negotiation with pricing and how, you know, how the pricing and costing, you know, is going to be and over a period of time too. That's the other part which is really interesting. It's never just, you know, it's 14 million dollars, it's, it's like it's a million dollars this year for x amount of users. Then, you know, six months later we're gonna add, you know, there's a growth plan so to speak for those transactions. So it is, it's way more complicated than most people would think, uh, and it's kind of shocking actually when I came over to Microsoft to see it to this degree. Uh, it's really amazing. And so that, you know, that's the part of it that's really fun at the same time. Like it's the, it's a team effort. It's such a teamwork kind of a component and, and you, you need to have a mindset of, you know, you're working together as a group and you have to have really good collaboration tools and, you know, to really align your messaging so that you kind of are able to, you know, not cause a lot of doubt into the customer about what your intentions are and what, you know, who is you, you know, from the, the customer, you know, it's a bunch of people and at the end of the day it's, it's not that monolithic group, it's, it's a bunch of individuals that are, you know, making connections and, and whatnot. So that's, uh, that's the, that's the fun part actually of what we do from a sales kind of perspective. 

One of the, for me, it was something that was, that's interesting is I guess there's several things, but how does, how you know, what is there a point you can say that companies feel that now is the time for us to make, uh, make that jump or take that risk? It's hard to sort of, you know, have some like an individual point. It's probably multiple points of where, pure period of time, one different groups and each group has different points within that where they kind of justify it and you're sort of trying to, you know, slug that along and coordinate and make sure that you're always going forward and not backwards, but is there, there is a point where maybe there's an accumulation of these things where it's almost inevitable for that company? Yeah, what is the inflection where it's going and going, you know, the trust is going up not down? 

Host: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that it is. That's, that's the art of a lot of what's being done, and, um, what you're doing is ultimately, you know, nobody's going to buy anything just because it's got cool features, you know, in our business anymore. Like, that's not usually what it is, and a lot of research has been done. Like, if we look at things, something like CRM systems, for example, just generically, like CRM is such a highly competitive, mature business, right? In fact, our Microsoft Dynamics CRM system is turning 20 years old this year. Many of us that started our career on that platform, you know, in the CRM Consulting space, you know, we've been doing this for 20 years now, and I think we were about two or three years behind Salesforce at the time. So, you know, this is not a, uh, you know, uh, just a startup kind of business anyway. This is a, you know, these are billion-dollar businesses now at this point. So super mature, lots of research has been done about the effectiveness of those solutions. Do they raise sales? Do they, you know, reduce cost and improve the, you know, do they deliver on the promise, you know, and what are the ingredients of that? Often what it is, is not actually the technology or the software specifically. It has a lot more to do with the program that you surround that solution with and, um, we kind of know this really when you think about it. Like, if you look at the cars as a market, like, pretty much all the cars can go 100 miles an hour. They can all, you can get in and go fast. Like, that's, it's not a question of that, really. Features, functions, that type of stuff, like, there's nuances in that, that of course, you know, companies leapfrog over each other in terms of attack and abilities and stuff like that, but a lot of it in terms of success is really ultimately about delivering on the promise, not just the specific application or tech that's being done. It's really, is the consumer able to use those functions?

When implementing innovative sales strategies, it's not just about the product's features, but how well those features align with customer needs. By focusing on these strategies, companies can move beyond the technology itself and demonstrate true value to the customer, which is what ultimately drives sales. It's not always the specific application, but the broader program and support that help customers succeed.

Pierre Hulsebus: So what I'm trying to say is, you know, it comes down to business value and knowing when that business value is able to be realized. And, you know, that's the art of this discussion often is trying to figure out what that motion, you know, is for the customer and not just, you know, hey, we got this tool and there you go and just buy it, and but if, if the customer is not ready to do it then. You could have all the greatest value and close a sale if you were really good and go, "Aren’t we awesome?" But if the customer… like this is the interesting part about the business we’re in now, it’s a subscription, so it’s not a one-time thing anymore. Like we have to… that thing has to continue to deliver value over and over again. Every month a customer is voting whether we’re successful or not with their dollars. We are very tied into that metric of monthly active users, customers, and how... what's the Delta between actual users and paid users? And so if a customer has lots of, "Oh, we closed the sale, that’s awesome," but we don’t have any actual users in the system using and engaging in the application, well then, you know, it’s only a matter of time before that customer is going to go, "This isn’t even working for us."

We surround those customers with a whole group of people that help customers realize value in the types of investments they’re making and track those along the way. So yeah, it really has to do with understanding business value and then making sure that the customer is able to deliver value. A good salesperson is able to help manage that expectation internally — when is the customer ready for that? The way we approach this is based on customer centric selling, ensuring that everything we do is aligned with the customer’s needs and goals. By integrating AI in sales optimization, we can provide more personalized recommendations and solutions, ensuring that we are maximizing value for each client. Additionally, we emphasize data-driven sales strategies to make more informed decisions and drive growth, relying on analytics to shape our approaches. We also understand that in today’s market, omnichannel sales approaches are essential to reach customers wherever they are, offering a seamless experience across platforms. Ultimately, all of this feeds into the future of sales technology, where we continue to evolve and innovate, ensuring our solutions are both effective and scalable for our clients.

Because, you know, the cost of a sale for us is super high. When you have 100 people involved, and it's literally millions of dollars that you're investing in a large sales motion for a customer... right? And so you have to make sure that customer is going to return that at some level. And if that doesn’t happen, and they get rid of the software... you know, you can oversell, as a term we like to use, because a lot of, you know... when you have a strong brand and when customers are enamored with technology, all of that, then it’s awesome. You know, that’s great. Sometimes the sale is easier, not like that congressional testimony we saw earlier this week. Sometimes it’s just like, "Oh, we just love you. You're awesome," and you have people in the customer’s world. This is another thing that’s really interesting: customers, and you know this as a developer and working with developers, customers' careers are often like individuals. Like we say it’s teams of individuals. You know, if you’re a quote-unquote Microsoft shop, that means your customers' IT department is invested in their careers in your tech.

If we go into a shop where there’s Oracle there, and you know that everyone is Oracle-certified, all of their dev work and consulting backgrounds… they're all Oracle people, if we don’t have a good story or aren’t able to work with that, we’re perceived as some sort of threat. That’s not good for us. It’s not good for the customer either, because that means a lot of disruption is going to happen. Now, some companies, that's their strategy, but there’s that nuance where sometimes customers have "Happy Eyes," what I like to call it. They look at it and they’re like, “Oh, that’s the best thing ever!” and we can just really do that, and they oversell that capability.

Their ability, as a team, to deliver that result. And sometimes, as a team, you have to step back and go, "This is probably not the right fit." So, it’s probably not the right fit for us. How do you massage that experience?

Host: So, you're saying it’s about making sure the customer really understands the technology and how to use it effectively. Almost like navigating through a space with a map instead of blindly?

Pierre Hulsebus: Yep, exactly. And that has to happen among different departments, especially in large companies and large deals. Different departments, skill sets, and people who’ve invested in that. But you're still going to always get pushback. You know, going back to the original statement: How do you massage that experience? When the customer might be a little bit hesitant... and then, you know, you’re trying to convince them to adopt the solution.

Host: Right, so it’s more about making them feel confident about using the technology and overcoming any hesitations?

Pierre Hulsebus: Exactly. Even if they’ve tried other solutions before, you're still walking them through the process in a way that doesn’t feel like a huge leap. It's a gradual onboarding experience where they understand how the technology fits into their operations and solves their problems. You have this spider web of all the places you need to make it happen, but then there's a one-on-one interaction where you're trying to encourage something. In other cases, like the ones you spoke about earlier, people are particularly invested and not getting it right. They have a different skill set, and another technology is something like Oracle, like you spoke about.

So, you know, just to summarize, how do you make that happen? What is the one-on-one relationship you're building with each individual? Maybe this person has this skill, and because of that, you engage in this way, while another person has a different skill and you engage with them in a different way. Everybody has to go to their own jargon, and the way they value things, right? Engineers are a bit more like, "Is this or is this not working? Is there a shortcut?" And then the other skill set is a little bit more soft in their perception of information—it's more about an emotional relationship and emotional labor to engage.

This ties into the growing importance of customer centric selling, which focuses on understanding each customer’s unique needs and adapting the sales process accordingly. By embracing AI in sales optimization, you can offer a more tailored and effective approach, helping to predict customer behaviors and enhance interactions. Additionally, data-driven sales strategies are becoming crucial in making decisions based on actual customer insights, leading to more targeted and successful outcomes. A truly effective strategy also embraces omnichannel sales approaches, ensuring that your customer experience is consistent and seamless across all platforms. Ultimately, all of this contributes to the future of sales technology, where innovation continuously reshapes how businesses engage with customers.

Host: Right. So, it’s almost like understanding not just the technical skills, but also how to manage the emotional and personal dynamics between individuals in the workplace.

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah, I mean, broadly it's discovery, design, and development. Doing a really great job at discovery, right? So, the classic application deployment or development 101: Discover, Design, Develop, Deploy. That framework has been around since the 70s. There are more modern and agile methodologies, but that's really a big part of it.

What we train our sales teams to do is to facilitate design thinking and human-centered design workshops. We really focus on persona mapping and designing based on that type of methodology. For example, we put ourselves in the mind of an individual, like a machine operator. We're working with a team right now that’s trying to encourage collaboration in a factory setting. You have foremen, but when you think of a factory, you think of the front-line operators—the people assembling or operating machines.

Host: So, understanding how these different roles experience technology?

Pierre Hulsebus: Exactly. The ability for these machine operators to realize the technology—like, “Oh man, we could have teams and all these cool capabilities”—but when you start looking at it, that machine operator can’t be distracted. They have to stay focused on the machine they’re operating or the job they’re doing. Technology is a distraction for them. But when they go on break, that’s when they pick up the culture of the day, like what’s the training program, what’s available to them, and what’s their career path. They might ask, "Am I always going to be a machine operator or can I go into supervision?" Or, "Where do I ask about this other machine?"

Host: That’s interesting because it sounds like you’re tapping into a kind of hidden potential.

Pierre Hulsebus: Exactly. The company wants to build a culture, and maybe there are other experiences they can have. This is where a solution like Microsoft Teams or a collaboration environment can provide value. But, you know, at first developers might think, "Oh man, the operator could really benefit from this," but you realize that it’s not just about the tools. It’s about understanding the customer better—because that customer is not just one big entity. It’s a set of individuals, and using personas to guide what you're selling is crucial.

Host: So, you're essentially using personas to guide the design of solutions, making sure they're specific to each individual’s role and needs.

Pierre Hulsebus:  Yes. So, we try to understand the customer's environment and how the systems are working together. This helps us build a program for the customer. When I say "program," I mean a project plan or a deployment model that delivers value, so they know what to expect. We partner with the customer to help them realize that value. We even hire external consultants to help, and Microsoft sponsors and pays for design workshops. We have Technology Centers (MTCs) where we bring customers from all over. They spend days with solution architects and business value architects. We even have economists and business value specialists who don't sell software; they focus solely on doing ethnographic studies. They get into the day-to-day work of individuals, understanding their tasks and what the business value is if we can help change their workflow. Behavior we could get a little more productivity out of that person or that group of people or you know, we're making some—we're coming in with a point of view from our perspective, that's often tailored to a particular customer. We start with an industry perspective often and then it's nuanced because not every, you know, manufacturer is the same as let's say General Motors or something like that, just because they build something, you know, their business models are often so nuanced and different.

Host:  So is that the same sort of—what I want to ask is like, I guess what is the reusability of this, right?

Pierre Hulsebus:  Yeah, yeah, that's a fantastic question because that is—that is the—that's the customer innovation work that teams like mine are often doing where we have industry specialists or we, and we're looking for patterns. We have customer innovation like our team. We have, I'm on what we refer to as activation, but I work on a team with business analysts, customer innovation specialists, and insight specialists, data scientists. And what we're often trying to do—well not often, every day this is what, what our mission is—is try to come up with hypotheses of sales motions for the company and then kind of trying to identify those repeatable, let's say, patterns of behavior that a customer may have and then try to come up with a solution play that we then can train our sales organization on to say, you know, this is a pattern. Let's just use energy as a thing. So right now there's a big transition that's happening in the energy industry right and growth in the use of renewables, of wind farms, solar, those types of things. So now, all of a sudden, that kind of how those customers build service management programs for those large, you know, wind farms, is very different. It's a new business generally.

Host:  So you’re identifying industries and trying to see how you can fit your solutions?

Pierre Hulsebus:  Exactly. So, trying to identify these industries in sub-industries or mega patterns in industry like, for example, something where manufacturers or companies are trying to have a low asset business model where they were, we don't own any of the stuff, we just Uberfy everything like that. So that's a certain pattern. So like when you walk into a customer and you see, "Oh, they're trying to Uber-fy," it's like, all right, I have a kind of a solution pattern then that says you need to have a portal and you need to have, you know, legal compliance across every state. You know we know that's going to be a blocker. And so in some ways it's—it's like, and that's why a lot of us on these teams have come from consulting, you know, because it's kind of a consulting model that you need to do to be able to do that. So, yeah, we call them sales plays or solutions if you will, patterns, and we have industry teams and then we even nuance that more regionally because manufacturing in Germany is very different than manufacturing, let's say, in India. You know the whole value—

Host:  How does that work across, I guess, because you talk a bit about ethnocentrics or plays, yeah, and sort of how does this—because you have industry, you have, you know, granular ATM industries, you have changes in industry, you know, relative to like—and then sort of like different degrees of ownership of, you know, sort of operation.

Pierre Hulsebus:  Yeah, now you're talking how you do it across countries. Yeah, you know, many countries are nested, have nested sort of sub—called, you know, everybody thinks every country is one thing, but every country is really like multiple cultures. Yeah, multiple social behaviors and, yeah, just so much granularity and help in human groups that...

Host:  And then I guess my second question is like, how do you manage all this—all these intellectual models?

Pierre Hulsebus:  Right, yeah. Yeah, so the first one is a good—is a really good question because that is, you know, this is one of the kind of the secret sauces of a company like Microsoft, is that understanding and building understanding that the solution is consumed and valued differently in different—or in different countries and different regions. So that the same model that we use for, let's say, automotive in Germany, in that industry, let's say, Mercedes, is very different if I deploy that similar solution for service management in a country—in a different country like India, and those are maybe two opposite sides or China, two opposite sides where the labor value is different, right? So, um, I may be a manufacturer, but if my manufacturers' individuals are super low-skilled and highly abundant, uh, then, you know, the need to highly make people super productive or address turnover or something like that is very different. That calculus—that all of a sudden, that business model that you had for, you know, selling something super high-tech in an industry or a market where labor is super tight—that kind of value proposition changes.

And so, you have this, at least my philosophy, coming at it from, you know, a sales perspective having been a salesperson and trained salespeople for years and years, um, is that you really have to trust your front line. You have to, you know, I work for a corporate team and we're here to support them. And so, what you have is industry, you have, you know, in-market people like we have, um, like 20 different, you know, regions at Microsoft. So, the German team, they kind of take what we put together, and then we work with them individually, their leadership in Germany to help shape that message and to do things over there. And then, when we're over in, you know, Australia or, you know, Japan, it's totally different. It's totally different.

They’ll take the same basic patterns, but then may emphasize one thing over another or, you know, and so, you know, it’s just work. That's part of, you know, that's the work, often to kind of dial it into different regions, um, to, um, to help, you know, support them. This is why customer centric selling becomes so important—it allows you to tailor your approach based on the unique needs and values of each region. Understanding cultural integration is key, as the way a solution is perceived can vary greatly across different countries and industries. By utilizing AI in sales optimization, you can better understand these regional nuances and apply data-driven sales strategies to refine your approach. Additionally, omnichannel sales approaches help ensure a consistent experience, regardless of where the customer is engaging, be it online or offline. Ultimately, this adaptability is central to the future of sales technology, where solutions must be flexible enough to cater to diverse markets while delivering value.

Host:  Oh, yeah, right. The concept of like cultural integration, because it's not different than it used to be. Like, you could immerse yourself in a completely different culture. There's a group of absoluteness that isn't true there, but if you have people on the ground, um, and they're mostly working remotely, then you'll have to start having people whose purpose is to observe that culture a bit more, okay? If you need someone doing that, or is that like osmosis enough? Do you know what I mean?

Pierre Hulsebus:  Yeah, is that— or if you already have people whose job is already to do that, like you're here to sort of, uh, coach, uh, players entering into your market and having to behave right? And, you know, so how is that? Is that formally managed? Is that informal? It sounds more informally managed than formally managed, right? But now it's just, inhuman interactions like that surface area reducing, has anything had to change? If not, that's probably great, right?

Host:  Yeah, if it doesn't, here how so. Um, for us, the COVID impact on selling, um, when you look at the COVID impact on selling, it really had more to do with travel on job sites. Um, most of the sales organization at Microsoft works at home anyways. They're, you know, they're rarely going into the office, and that's not unique to Microsoft. I mean, salespeople generally are not productive in the office, generally speaking, unless there's some compelling benefit for them, you know, usually it's like— I remember when I was a sales director, I tried to model this behavior too when I was a sales manager. I had a—I had a, um, I would tell my guys and gals, "Guys, I do not want to see you in the office. Go, you know, there’s a reason you have an expensive account, go take people out for lunch, go, you know, go build relationships with people, and, and, you know, so, if you're in the office, come in for a meeting or something like that, but, you know, that's— you’re not being super productive when you're in the office." So, anyways, um, and I would— what I would do, uh, from time to time, I had a con, uh, back in the day, it was cool to have what they don't even sell these things anymore but conversion vans, they call them conversion vans where you take like a big like, uh, Econoline van, like a 40-pound line van and you put carpet in it, and it had, almost like a camper, um, you know, it's like a camper, and, uh, but, uh, you know, it was, uh, you know, now we have like big Suburbans, but, uh, you didn't have those back then. So, anyways, I had a conversion van and it was basically like a little mobile office. I had a desk in there and like, I could chill out, I had a fridge and all this stuff in my van, and I literally would park that in my parking lot at work in the back, and nobody would know that. And so, they would call on my cell phone, then I would come into the office, but I was trying to show them like, "You don't need to be in this building. Please don’t be up here." Not available, he's out right now and he's out in the field, and I really was sitting in the parking lot in my van doing, doing work. I was just working in the van, but it was funny. But anyways, to answer your question directly about the, uh, we—we are people that are in-market, like, I would say 80–90% of, you know, the people. Let’s say, for example, if I'm in Japan, we have a Japanese business unit with Japanese people that live in Japan selling to Japanese customers, you know, in China, same thing. Chinese employees in, uh, China selling to Chinese customers, so that you get that perspective naturally. Now, of course, people get to do whatever they want in terms of, if I'm an American and I decide, "Hey, I want to go, I want to go work in Italy," um, you know, then you could go apply for it, and so we have that certainly, people move around, um, you know, and so we're super ethnically diverse since, and we have— we do have certain, let’s say, call centers, so to speak, for some of our sales, where, let's say our entry-level salespeople work on what we call digital sales, which is like outbound calling and lead generation and some of those do exist, but they do exist in countries, so to speak, in different regions. When I’ve trained, I did a big training program for those folks last year and audit, you know, and a bunch of them—let's say there’s one we have in Dublin, Ireland, and uh, they’ve got people from, um, all over the world that were young people that, you know, just out of college or just getting a job at Microsoft, and they would want to move to Dublin. And so, that, you know, there’s a super diverse group of people from all different ethnic backgrounds, um, all living in Dublin, you know, as a team, so it's interesting. But we try to have, you know, people are in-market to give that perspective. Otherwise, it doesn't really work. It’s not, uh, you know, that's the international sales. You know, you can't just, uh, you know, take an American-centric group and try to, just take that team and go, you know, go sell them in Pakistan, you know, and show up with, you know, a bunch of, you know, I live in the Midwest in a, in a very, uh, non-racially diverse area of the country. Um, we don’t have a lot of diversity here. And so, um, I, I have had friends that have worked for some of the companies that are local here that have, have tried to do that, you know, when you go to India and you show up with, you know, um, a bunch of Dutch people, uh, you know, it's then that gives you a certain identity as a, you know, a Dutch company or something like that, and, and you know, this is part of, you know, the, the push for the tech companies like us to try to make sure that our folks really understand the benefit and value of diversity, and it’s not just like this kind of, you know, kind of woke liberal idea, it’s like a business strategy. Like we need to be diverse because you've got to have that kind of, all these different perspectives, and that ability to be, be able to speak in the customers, not just physical, literal language, and localized like French people in France that our businesses want to do business in French. They don’t want to do business in American English, and it's just a cultural thing, and so, it's just, you know, um, it’s building empathy. One of the most important skills as a technical seller is, if you haven’t picked it up, is trying to build empathy. Like, I want to listen and I want to understand the customer's viewpoint, what those individuals are, who they are, what they do, what, you know, what gets them, why are they motivated to do that work, and all of those things are very individualistic, and the values that those individuals have are different in Africa than they are in, you know, in Silicon Valley, and they, than they are in, you know, the pride of work, and you know, the reason you

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Pierre Hulsebus:  So, I sold my first computer in 1989. It was at a company similar to Best Buy, a local computer and appliance store. I got really interested in computers when I was driving a high-low and working in a warehouse after college. A guy showed up to our place – we were an automotive supplier – and we had to connect to General Motors every day. So, we set up a computer in the office in '86, an old IBM PC, very traditional. It was probably a two-thousand-dollar computer with an eight-megahertz processor, and a 10-megabyte hard drive or something like that. No color monitor – just a gray-green monitor. It was to send what's called Advanced Shipping Notices to General Motors to let them know what we were shipping, with serial numbers, boxes, all of that.

This guy travels from Detroit, about three hours, shows up in a fancy Volvo. It took him like 15 minutes to install this fancy modem, and I had to sign off on the purchase order. I'm looking at this invoice, and this guy charged two thousand dollars to install this modem. It was a 1200 baud modem, which is ancient by today's standards. It's so slow, you can't even imagine. I was just intrigued – this guy showed up, made two thousand dollars, and I wanted to know how this worked. I grilled him for as long as I could, and I thought, "That’s the career for me, I need to figure out how to get into that." I was just courting my wife at the time, and I was thinking I was going to start a family soon. Driving a high-low was a fun job, but if I could do something like this and get paid what I got paid, I would do that. I loved that job, but anyway, that was my inspiration.

I bought a book on how to become a computer consultant. It was one of those books that gave me the vision, like, "I could do this." I had already understood the value of computers back in high school. In the late 70s, I took part in a high school trade school program, learning data processing. It was literally card punch machines, physical work, like cleaning the machines, changing the tapes. I didn’t get it. I failed at being successful at that, but I did figure out that computers had value in the market.

Host:  That’s an amazing story. It sounds like you had a vision early on. But when did you start to seriously transition into selling computers?

Pierre Hulsebus:  I had that vision, and I was persistent about it. The first thing I did was go sell computers. I found a job at Highland Superstores, which wasn’t quite like Best Buy, but we sold computers there. Computers back then were like three thousand dollars for a home computer. You got paid a couple hundred bucks for each one you sold in commission. I learned how to sell them, and it was really interesting. I eventually transitioned into business sales, which was a hard transition for me, going from selling computers at a retail store to selling computers to businesses. But I was able to make that jump. I became what they called an inside salesperson. My job was to work with the purchasing department at a large national bank. This was in the early 90s when companies were transitioning from mainframe computers to PCs on the desktop, and that put me in the right place at the right time.

Host:  How were you able to get that relationship with the bank? That must have been a huge opportunity!

Pierre Hulsebus:  It was through a distributor. At the time, there was a company called Intercom, which was an early distributor in the business. Companies like Ingram and Tech Data exist now, but back then, Intercom was doing the same kind of thing. I found that company through reading ads and sending applications out, just networking. It was a grunt salesperson job. I didn’t get paid on commission at first; I just had to learn the business. As an inside salesperson, I worked with account sales reps who would go out and sell the products. They’d bring back paper orders, and I’d use my computer to shop for all the items we needed, like 300 computers, then coordinate delivery to a bank branch or data center. It was grunt work, but I learned so much from it.

Host:  That’s an incredible journey. And as you were learning all of this, you were also involved in setting up the computers for customers, right?

Pierre Hulsebus:  Yeah, that's right. Back then, we would unbox computers for customers. We had a small computer center in the store, and we would set up the computers before they left. We added extra value by putting menus on the computers, which was a big deal at the time. This was before Windows had really become a thing in '89. We’d create menus with just a couple of programs like a word processor and a game. Looking back, it was kind of hilarious, but it was a great way to add extra value for customers. We were basically building these little user interfaces for them.

Host: That sounds so different from the tech setups we see today. You mentioned earlier that someone going into technical sales needs to be grounded in the tech. Is that still true today, and why is it so important?

Pierre Hulsebus: Absolutely. In technical sales, you need to be grounded in the tech because you’re selling something complex. Whether you’re selling high-pressure valves or computers, you need to understand how the tech works. A lot of technical salespeople come from engineering backgrounds because they already know the products inside and out. You can’t fake it – you need to have a passion for the tech. For me, that passion came naturally. I was a total nerd about computers, so it was easy for me to get into that world. The enthusiasm comes first, and the rest of it just follows. Experience like working for the different, uh, for, uh, working with different industries. Well, that's what that's really like on a more sort of, more granular level. Yeah, it's, um, so that when I was, um, started at Microsoft that was my initial role was we called them Global Black Belt. So, um, you're, um, for our, so yeah a knit like a ninja kind of black belt kind of a person. So, uh, anyways we had that, uh, sales engineering experience. Um, you're basically building demos and getting into the, you know, you're part of that team that's actually going in and doing the work of building. It's like a consulting project, you know, because you're building that proof stage, uh, so you own that. I owned that proof stage basically for lots of different opportunities. So that was so much fun because yeah every day, you know, um, you would be working on different industries, whether that was, so I had a long stint where I did energy, oh, so I just did oil and gas, um, customers like the Chevrons and Exxons of the world. So down to Texas every couple of weeks and down into the Houston office. We talked about our MTCs, our Technology centers, going into that and doing demos and doing Discovery workshops and stuff like that and learning all about the business. Like, so this is from a technical sales perspective, this is the, let's say drug if you will, uh, um, of that is the learning of those industries and just kind of just getting into the meat and potatoes of, you know, what their operations are, learning their language and all of that.

And so for me, I was able to, after about a year and a half of working on that one industry, I was able to produce a, um, an industry what we refer to as a reference architecture and those are those kind of slides you see Microsoft and everybody that to produce a, um, like, these are the different layers of the application solution and how, you know, for your industry this is that perspective that Microsoft is starting with and that becomes, we call those, um, those called reference architectures. Reference architecture says, you know, like for if you're in the oil production business and you have oil wells out there, um, that you have to manage a fleet of equipment out there, you know, so you figure we figured out all of the different jobs that are there on the job site and what's the whole, how do they dispatch the different people and how do the vendors that they hire that come out and let's say deliver water or cement, you know, to the job site, how is that all done and coordinated. So you get the perspective of the industry and then you start to kind of understand, you know, what the underlying I.T capabilities you need to support those different business values, you know, so you know they have subtle nuances and so like, and so that oil and gas. So that was like a big feather in my cap that I like, we got to, so the reference architecture was published and then you, um, then there's a demo that now becomes the demo that all the MTCs around the world can work on. They just now can re-like turn your demo on and, uh, so I had that, the demo for how to do scheduling for maintenance for, you know, that industry and so you learn all about that and then a year later I moved on to just, um, to doing heavy equipment manufacturers. And now, embracing innovative sales strategies was key, as it allowed me to tailor our approach for each unique industry, ensuring we could effectively meet client needs with precision.

By continuing to develop and refine innovative sales strategies, I was able to build lasting relationships with clients, ensuring they recognized the value we were offering through both the technology and the tailored solutions we provided. The integration of these strategies helped us stand out in a competitive market, ultimately boosting sales and customer satisfaction.

So large companies like we just had a big announcement with John Deere recently, uh, where we have a dealer program for them and how their, how their dealers are going to leverage a Microsoft solution. Well, that was just announced like this around December I finally can talk about it. I pitched that solution back in 2018, like this is how long it takes sometimes for those things to develop. So, same thing, you know, you go out there out to, uh, out to, um, there are different locations of business and you kind of just do all that work and present a reference architecture and help them pull together the technical solution, try it out in a couple places, get the partners in there, lots of meetings, lots of stuff back and forth, um, you know, with different organization parts of the organization to kind of pull everything together and then, you know, and then the development phase. It took a, you know, quite a period of time, uh, for them to, to kind of build it and now launching it, they just are, just are launching it now and so then, you know, so I got to learn all about the, the industry which I, I love which is the heavy equipment manufacturers, um, in being in the Midwest it's just amazing, you know, uh, some of the customers that you'll see on our reference account like Caterpillar, um, International, um, Komatsu, you know, these are all within 150 miles of where I live, you know there is pretty really interesting like why, who knows, it's just the, you know, this is. Henry Ford or why, you know, being around the Mississippi River or whatever, you know, made this kind of industries all like spin up here. But like when you go to the Komatsu Factory, which makes these ginormous cranes and road graders, you pass right by a Caterpillar Factory. Like they’re literally within, you know, like... so it’s like Detroit somehow became, you know, Ford and General Motors or Pittsburgh is where all the steel companies are. Like it’s just really interesting in the Midwest we see, you know, these heavy industries. 

Host: So anyways, do you know... you know a company called Bethlehem Steel?

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah, yeah, it still exists, I don’t know. I don’t know, but that's a... I was gonna ask a question. I saw it on an episode of... uh, oh man. Yeah, that... The Rust Belt wasn’t like... yeah, Bethlehem Steel was a big... it’s out of Pennsylvania, some of the big steel. Yeah. That's one of the things that I find interesting. For me, you know, when I'm kind of very retrospective and look back at my life, and you know, once you get old, I just had my birthday and get very... yeah, I made it through another year, you get retrospective. But, uh, Bethlehem Steel is one of those companies I believe is no longer in existence.

Um, as a company in the Midwest, a lot of us have run through and been part of, some people disparagingly call it the Rust Belt, you know, because you had all these heavy industries that have kind of gone away, and um, globalism has really changed the world that we live in. Literally, I was at a customer or a friend's house the other day and right across the street is a ginormous empty lot that’s been there for 25 years, and it is, um, where a General Motors factory used to exist. And that factory got shut down, four thousand people worked at that place every day. And, um, but you know, we, America decided, you know, hey, we’re going to have free trade with Canada, which is where you’re at, and Mexico, and it’s, you know, overall been great. But the impact of that is, you know, 4,000 families in the city that I live in, you know, lost their job as a result of that.

And so, you know, you have, uh, the social impact of modernization, and that’s one of the themes that I’ve always tuned into, one of the reasons why I love talking about and studying and having a passion for frontline workers, people that are out there punching the clock every day, making sure that there’s that digital divide, it doesn’t impact them as much as it did with the generation that I grew up with. You know, uh, where they’re, you know, people were making really good money in the tool and die industry and then, you know, all of a sudden, you know, the tool and die industry moves to Taiwan, fun and, uh, you know, the quality over there is just as good as it is here in West Michigan and the factories move out of West Michigan.

So, the need to have local, you know, tool and die shops is gone, it’s not as important anymore. So, it’s really interesting. So, that is a big part, kind of a theme that I’m very attracted to. And the other part of the kind of picking industries and knowing the different industries a lot of it has to do with that individual’s passion, and that’s something that really at Microsoft, I and a lot of companies are like this. Um, when you’re in a big company like this, you get to actually, you have a big say in that kind of stuff. That technology move over into other areas I guess in the world as a consequence of globalization and to some degree you know globalization is really a derivative of Network Technology. It's becoming more powerful. So I think that big way that you experience and, and some, I mean sort of the outcome of your career as a consequence of that, I think that rotation has the opportunity happening in maybe in a different way with some of the new technologies like, you know, ChatGPT or machine learning in general and, um, a lot of people are nervous. I actually saw, oh yeah, you know, I watched a video of a lady who's been, um, an artist for a decent amount of years, and summer before ChatGPT is able to do in the second is, can be a little bit debilitating for her skill set, and she was sort of talking about that and, and sort of their pros and cons to that. You know, at the end of the day, technology has to move forward; we can't be Luddites. But, um, there is a real effect there. So I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on. You know, it's interesting what sector it now affects. It's sort of like, it's sort of like the snake is eating his own tail a little bit, uh, and sort of technology is accelerating up the ladder of skill sets. Um, so it's interesting to see what is it, it's eaten up, and it'd be great to hear what you think about that because I guess you're seeing something happen again and seeing how people are reacting versus how people reacted then, and, you know, are there similarities or differences, and since you've seen it before, you're probably seeing something else from it too, right? It is an easy question?

Host: Yeah, it's an interesting time, put it this way. I'll talk about it from two perspectives. First is maybe a framework. I think that's, to me, what I... uh, I'll give you the perspective first, and then maybe talk about some of the specific examples of how you apply that perspective, because what I have learned, um, you know, as an old dude now, having, you know, witnessed all of this stuff, I'm changing people's lives, and, and impact is... it's a very simple, um, simple solution, and it's encapsulated in a book called Who Moved My Cheese. I don't know, it's kind of a... there's a book called Who Moved My Cheese and it's by Stephen Petty. He's the guy that wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Pierre Hulsebus: Oh, really?

Host: So, it's a very simple little book, but it tells a story of, um, rats in a maze, um, trying to find the cheese, and the cheese moves, and the... and everybody has different responses to when things change. And so, um, his advice there is move with the cheese, you know, follow the cheese. So, look for... they keep inspecting the cheese all the time, where that value is, what that source of your happiness, if you will, is, or your source of sustenance, whether that's a job or, you know, even in relationships. And actually, he wrote it because his, uh, he was getting divorced, and he wanted to come up with some sort of tale for his kids that, uh, Hey, things are different, and, and give them some strategies. Anyways, you have different characters, and some of them are like, oh, despondent. The cheese moved, why did the cheese move, and, you know, trying to understand all of the societal impacts, and we certainly see that happening today where people are just, you know, it's that TikTok, um, in front of Congress where it's just like, dude, the cheese has moved, you like young people are socializing in a different way than you did, okay?

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah.

Host: And they don't feel this is a threat, and somehow you're thinking this is a threat. This sounds like, you know, people watching, um, Elvis Presley's hips, you know, or rock and roll, or hip-hop, like going, "That's not real music," and, you know...

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah.

Host: You guys, you kids, young kids today don't know what you're doing, and it's like, you know, that's kind of like what happens with a lot of this, like you said, there's a certain level of inevitability. Like the tech is going to eat itself because it is, there's no conspiracy. Like somebody's in charge of it; it is on you. You know, it's gonna find value, and then people vote with their dollars and attention. And so unless you can somehow interrupt that, you know, you're just standing in the middle of the train track, um, you know, that line in, in The Matrix, where he's, the agent Smith holds Neo's head to the train tracks and he's like, "You know what that is? That is the sound of inevitability." And it's like, that's what this kind of, these moments are, that sound's a benefit ability.

Pierre Hulsebus: Yeah.

Host: So part of it is like, you're not gonna... you can't control people, so you, you know, you have to, the best strategy is just to figure out where the cheese is going and move with the cheese and, and, and do it as quickly as you can and don't own, like, like remember the legacy, think about it, and appreciate it, and kind of go, that was great, but you know what? I'm going to be an early adopter and I'm gonna...You’re trying to figure out how to leverage this and be at the forefront before anyone else is. So, you experience the shock and awe of it, right? 

Pierre Hulsebus: When ChatGPT became available, for us, it was around December, you know, around Christmas time. That’s when they opened it up, and everyone could get an account. I got my Bard account from Google as well. You’re just trying to get into it early, understand its implications. I had a project about a week ago where I had to reverse-engineer a business case study, specifically an application. In a class, we were talking about methodology, and a teacher has to create resources to teach the class. So, I needed a business case for a discovery workshop, but I didn’t have any available, and I thought, you know what? I’m going to use ChatGPT for this.

I took an application that had already been developed and started at the beginning. I worked with ChatGPT for about three hours, and we had a fantastic design thinking session. I asked questions like: “What are the IT capabilities we need?” and “What are the risks associated with this?” These would have been the questions a whole team would have discussed in a workshop. In just four hours, I was able to create a board that would have been the result of a design thinking workshop. Normally, this would take a whole team a day and a half to create. I didn’t tell anyone that I used ChatGPT for this, though. I kept it to myself.

I know enough about that industry to have facilitated the workshop myself, but ChatGPT was like my Greek chorus. I could ask it questions and have it take on different personas. It could pretend to be a supervisor, a stakeholder—really anything, offering different perspectives. By the end, I was able to deliver a one-page pitch to executives, just like you would after a design thinking session. I presented everything to the class, and they were blown away. They said it was the best workshop they had ever seen. The level of detail, the way everything came together—it seemed incredible. And the whole thing? I did it with ChatGPT.

Walking away from that experience, I realized, “Holy smokes, this is a game-changer!” It made me think about how I can capitalize on this. Now I know I can really deliver. I’m using ChatGPT all the time to ask complex questions, comparing business models, asking about risks, strategies. It’s a powerful tool. And you start to think, “What are the implications for different people?” Computers always disrupt. We saw that when Expedia disrupted the travel industry—suddenly, no more travel agents. If my job is just listening to someone, typing it into a computer, and repeating what it says, then that job is at risk. That shift is happening to information workers. Embracing innovative sales strategies could be crucial in this transition, enabling businesses to leverage AI in sales optimization and other tools more effectively in their operations.

I mean, if I had a million bucks right now and five developers, I could literally create a consulting workshop in a box that asks all the right questions. Questions I asked the thing and it spit out a business analysis of, you know, any industry, and this could be completely scripted. What I did could be completely scripted, like there's a business right there. Like, so that's the thing, it's like, you can look at that as a threat to me or I could say, "Oh boy, I could capitalize on that. How could I make, you know, this really work for me?" And that I think that's the thing too. You know, get out of the way of the train and try to get on the train, like trying to figure out how to get on the carousel.

Um, I have this conversation all the time with a lot of folks that are in that digital divide space. Like, um, folks that don't have access to technology, folks that, you know, are older or because of their economic status and situation don't have that. And we have this inequity in our society that is awful. And we have to figure out how to address that. But the worst way to address it is, you know, to throw stones at the robots. You know, like that's not the right thing to do. It's like, how can we change that mindset and go, yeah, if you're on a factory line, you know, yeah, you're being replaced by robots, but think about it. Somebody has to fix the robot and install the robot and, you know, oil the robot. They're not self-maintaining. Somebody has to invent the robot. You know, be that person. Figure out how to get there.

Um, get on the train and don't let it run over you. So, that's kind of the framework that I've used for this. That no, I'm not going to judge ChatGPT and go, "It's good or bad." It's like ketchup. It's a benign technology that has no brain. There's no grand conspiracy here to take over the world. It's going to have its own thing, and I'm just a, you know, a peon in the universe, so I just, you know, I'm just gonna accept it, you know, at the storm and just, I'm gonna figure out how to find a shelter in the storm and, uh, you know, ride it out. I'm gonna figure out how to, you know, harness that wind and, you know, go as fast as I can, you know? In the future of sales technology, it's crucial to adapt and implement data-driven sales strategies that allow businesses to navigate these changes efficiently and ensure they can thrive in this evolving environment.

Host: Well, speaking about voting with your dollars and your attention, where can we...

Pierre Hulsebus: Well, for me, like I said, I have a kind of a thought experiment that I'm doing. It's called thetechnicalseller.com, and that is a podcast that I'm starting, and I'm, I'm trying, you know, it's a side hustle, so I'm trying to do my best on trying to be super consistent with that. I've got, I think, about 30 episodes in there, and we've morphed it a little over the year and a half or so that I've been working on it. So, yeah, we're just going to continue that kind of conversation. I'm just really fascinated with, um, what are the skill sets that somebody that's either starting in sales or somebody like yourself that's in an organization that's very driven by, like, we don't maybe have dedicated sellers, you know, we're... We don't have a lot of resources just to go do sales. We're gonna take our people and do sales. So, if I'm an entrepreneur or a small business, you know, I basically have to figure out how to sell now and run my business at the same time. So, what are some of those foundational principles, uh, that you, you know, we can adopt and use? And so I try to break it down every week, but with, you know, one of the, uh, I have about 50 core principles, the Pyramid of Trust kind of thing, you know, I have like 50, uh, underlying principles, and so, uh, for sales that I've, um, garnered over the years. And every episode, I'm trying to dive into one or two of those, um, different ideals. So, things like, you know, knowing your product or, um, what does that really mean? What does that really mean? Or, um, empathy, those types of things. Like, what are those? How do I practically deploy those? Then also do, um, sales book reviews. So, what are books that are part of our career path that, you know, hey, just read this book and you'll learn something? And what have I learned about it? The goal is to incorporate innovative sales strategies to transform the way sales teams operate, applying techniques that are new and more effective. So, it's more or less a book review kind of like it was good or bad. It's more like these are, and you know, before YouTube, uh, came along, this is how, you know, as a salesperson, you, um, you kind of honed your skills. You would go to what seminars or you would read books from salespeople and learn about different methodologies and, and different techniques and things like that. So, there's a lot of foundational ones that a lot of the older dudes like myself, you know, um, have, have, you know, and you garner little tidbits of each one of them, and you could incorporate them into your, you know, kind of business model and your, your framework that you like to use. This can all be part of an overall approach to innovative sales strategies, blending the old and the new for greater success.

Host: Well, Pierre, thank you so much for joining us.

Pierre Hulsebus: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Host: You know, my pleasure.

Pierre Hulsebus: Absolutely. Thank you. Anytime.

Host: All right.

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