Meet Lee Edge in our top salespeople interview series.
In these interviews, Clive Miller seeks the unique methods, knowledge, habits, and practices of top salespeople.
Lee Edge shares his sales journey and explains how he has achieved exceptional results in this interview.
Following more than a decade as a consultant at PWC and KPMG then as an independent GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) specialist, Lee transitioned into a sales role.
His experiences and results at RSA, SAI, and now start up, Acin selling non-financial risk solutions have moulded Lee's skills, habits, and methods.
Watch and listen to this interview to benefit from Lee's learning.
Note: Due to internet bandwidth issues, after about ten minutes the video becomes quite blurred however, the audio remains of good quality until the end.
Transcript of the Interview with Lee Edge
Clive:
Thanks for your attention my name is Clive Miller and this is our interview series for top sales performers.
Today I am interviewing Lee Edge.
Lee's sales experience stems initially from 11 years at PWC and then a stint at KPMG.
He's a specialist in GRC which is Governance Risk and Compliance.
Later, Lee spent a decade or so as an independent consultant and that can be quite challenging, selling yourself.
More recently, Lee has joined Acin, a start-up company that is helping financial institutions with non-financial risk.
I'm going to get on to the interesting bit. We want to hear from Lee about his sales secrets. So my first question to you, Lee is simply, what are the habits and practices that you consider to have had the most impact on your sales success?
Lee:
Thank you, Clive. It's great to spend some time with you this evening.
You got all of my background correct. It has been the last seven or eight years I've been working in IRM, Integrated Risk Management software sales or GRC software sales.
I made that transition from consulting for the big four, about eight or nine years ago now. It's been an interesting transition.
What I picked up through that transition and some of the core things that you mentioned was first of all, the pipeline.
Something I didn't really utilize as a consultant but aiming for three times or ideally four times your quota and getting that hopper as full as you possibly can and then qualifying the opportunities in the hopper as early as possible to really drive that down or choke that aperture down to some qualified leads and to ensure that's done in in the best way.
From a sales perspective it always helps if you've got a BDE or a business development executive or who does the outreach to those cold leads for you. As a sales individual, you're not paid to do that, in my mind.
There's usually a team of BDEs who do that and in this company, it works really well. In the last two, less so, because they were bigger behemoths' of companies and they didn't have that nailed down.
We really have at Acin. We've two graduates, one from Oxford one from Nottingham. They're doing really great work and have picked up a lot of the lingo very quickly which is helping the sales team.
That salesforce pipeline progression, upside commit and all that kind of stuff, that was hard learning for me at the start because I'm not a detailed person but ensuring that you have that information in there for the leadership team to understand where you are in your pipeline but also really to help you push and challenge yourself on MEDDIC or MED PICK depending on which one you use as a framework.
Clive:
Yes, you mentioned MEDIC. Some people watching might not know what MEDDIC stands for. Do you know it off by heart?
Lee:
I know it starts with Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria and process. Identify Pain is in there. It always just goes in my head as MEDDIC but it's really to do with driving you through, understanding the metrics, working out the economic buyer, who the key stakeholders are, the insights and the problems and the pain that they're suffering and ultimately, how you can address that.
If I asked anybody that question, almost everybody would have answered it as you did.
It's gone through so many variation. It's been MEDIC with one D, then it was MEDDIC with two Ds, then it became MEDDPICC. People keep adding letters on, so you tend to forget but it's handy.
To ask a secondary question, How did you learn to do these things?
It was primarily mentors.
In the big four there's a great development life cycle in terms of career path but there's a distinct lack, in my experience, of dedicated mentors. If you're in certain areas you may find a few and you're quite lucky but others, they've got so much on their plate. They're really dedicated to ticking boxes to get promoted and get that profile within the big four.
What I noticed in the sales industry is that because there's a collective drive towards sales, there's a little bit more time or desire for mentoring. Ultimately salespeople are driving the VP of Sales bonuses as well, so being able to leverage their understanding and their experiences from a wider industry - It was very much technology and information and communication in the big four and with the last 10 years iIve got into financial services - so picking up the lingo and leveraging others to learn from them, and not being afraid to ask stupid questions.
Now I'm working at Acin, it is very much focused at investment banking at the minute, and spinning out into retail, insurance, and asset management. When it comes to the details of investment banking with FICC, equity markets, debt markets, and all those elements, I've had to absorb those over the last few few months.
When I transitioned into the sales role, it's the mentor specifically, getting someone that you can learn from and respect.
That's brilliant thank you, so are there some things that you do every day that support your success?
It's the details. not my strongest area. It's something I've had to work at. I'm very much more strategic minded. I like talking about the clients prospects, challenges, and needs. When it comes to driving those sales through the sales life cycle, it's really getting into that detail, which which i found tough. Now it's become more ingrained in me that I actually go through that in the morning to find out where we are, what the next steps are, following up on those meetings, and those nuances, all those little nuggets that they gave you, and firing off some more information and emails internally to get additional information, externally and internally, and within the prospect's company as well, so that you can hang it all together.
I use a mind map to pull it all together. That's something that I've found helps me and I know a few other who people use them as well. It's quite an organic growth so you can leave it in salesforce, you can leave it in your quarterly report to the leadership board or whatever.
Ultimately if you've got one picture with all your notes and all your intel and all your prospecting and a key stakeholder map there as well, it all hangs together right on one screen and I can just pivot around that on calls, before calls, and after calls so that's key to me.
That's an application. Is it called mind map?
I use Xmind which is a software that I've used for the last three or four years. You can share the maps and have teams utilize them and build into them. It's each to their own. I've not really found that many team members dip into the same mind map so it has to be from a top-down kind of push if you want to utilize it across teams. I find it really easy.
Yes, that's brilliant. A lot of people do buy into mind mapping and perhaps some viewers might like to try that.
What mistakes have you learned to avoid in your sales career?
What have I learned to avoid, I think when i first joined RSA Archer as a subject matter expert slash sales, I was more of a go-to for GRC, as you mentioned before, Governance Risk and Compliance. The sales team around me had about five or six products they were trying to sell and if they got a sniff of GRC I would be the one to come in sell it, run it, they would handle the contract and I would move on. I kind of got spun into sales completely, the following year.
I think I was a little bit naive in running for everything so that one of the key things at the time. My strategic thing was, I want everything and I can see opportunity everywhere, even if a client wasn't right for us, there's a way we can utilize a partner and some of the software to create something. It took me a while to get out of that mindset. I was guided away from it by my mentor which was my boss at the time. It took me a while to really understand why. You may have good intentions, you may know what they're trying to achieve, and you may have the knowledge and the technology and people around you to do it but that's not what ultimately your core set of technology is about so stick to what you're good at and then hit your targets.
So that's one mistake I've learned. Stop trying to boil the ocean, shall we say.
Yes, less is more.
Yes, more qualified more focused, and hit your target early.
Can you tell me something about the knowledge that you have that supports your success and how you came by it, because being a specialist, how did you get to that level of capability and knowledge?
It's a really really interesting story and it's not going to be a long one. I fell into the the big four so my collective skill set, as I see it at the minute is in story creation, art, painting, illustrated photography, but I've also got the GRC bug as well because I've been working on it for 21 years.
It allows me to mould the two together which is what I've really been trying to do over the last three years through the creative element of the sales cycle and how you can engage people through various events. I mentioned the GRC supper club peer network that I run, so it's marrying those two together.
From my early days at PWC, I didn't really know what I was getting into because it was sold as global risk management solutions. It was called GRMS so I was expecting to go in and be traveling the globe looking at risk management from a strategic level and I ended up doing IT audits.
That wasn't me and still isn't me. It was a tough time for me, trying to keep in the detail and going out there and talking to people at the FT, Xerox, Time Warner around the world, about their systems and their processes. I remember being at the FT, auditing a revenue and receivables cycle and on a system that I'd known nothing about. Yet I'm interviewing somebody that's been there for 10 years, managing that system. That really was being thrown in at the deep end.
You were trained well but then you were just sent off and had to manage those situations so that, although I didn't enjoy it for the first six or so years, as I travelled around the globe, with time warner I was in the Asia and North America and South America, I did learn how to quickly understand systems, processes, controls, and situations and became able to chat to different people in the hierarchy.
That, over time, embeds itself within your DNA when it comes to selling, and as I made that transition via KPMG to Archer and then SAI and now Acin, it allowed me to create a consultative sales approach which is very much being a trusted advisor - a truly trusted advisor. I coined the TTA phrase. I don't think that exists so I'm going to copyright that. I'm selling stuff that requires a lot of time with a client and to understand their problems and also proof of concept, proof of value, whichever term you want to use, so it's more of a consultative approach to the selling side.
I know there are various styles of selling but I find within the GRC market the time it takes to sell is between 8 to 12 months. Usually, it requires a lot more openness and transparency in terms of the software and what they need.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense.
This is a journey. I wouldn't be able to say I did this to get the knowledge that I have now.
I work with two of the the BDEs now that are just out of university. They're quickly picking up the lingo and I'm trying to get them to make calls and hold conversations with CROs and they're doing a great job but I know they're a bit nervous because the knowledge behind that facade takes many years to build up. I know I can help them where they need it and I am helping them but I still feel that it will take them a while to to build up their knowledge. Experience comes with with time.
Yes, very much so.
I think it was Malcolm Gladwell who wrote about the the ten thousand hours to become an expert in anything.
Absolutely, yes and I think Beethoven had done that by the time he was 11, right? So he quickly ticked off those hours.
I think it was one of your earlier questions. I was trying to pull it up before the call but somebody put me on to Jeffrey Gitomer's audio books as well, The Little Red Book of Selling. I remember reading those, there's a few of them, I think a yellow book a red book and a green book. I found those really useful. Another tool or a book is the 48 Laws of Power which is a bit more Machiavellian but it's good to have the awareness of it because you can see the behaviours in people you're selling to. Also, you can see it in your competitors and you can leverage it. You might want to use some of it as well, so I'll leave that to the discretion of the listeners.
How many books do you read a year, professionally?
I don't keep track. It varies. With Covid, weirdly, being sat here means you have less time to read because the moment you're up you're sat here, which is a bit frustrating. As we're going back to London now and I'm having a bit more time to think I will probably read a non-fiction, more work orientated or behavioural change book. Probably about 10 a year, and then I probably read another 10 fiction titles. I flick between fiction and non-fiction. I'm currently reading The Flash Boys which is about e-trading in the financial crisis. I'm finding it really interesting. I just finished a couple of Dumas books. The first two in the Three Musketeer Trilogy. I like to mix it up.
Like you I like to use travel time or exercise time to to listen or read.
What talents skills and methods, I tend to talk about talents being something you have a natural ability for or a natural alignment with, skills to be something that you have to work at - just the same as in sport - and methods to be things that are procedural so that you can get repetition and consistency with them, so the question is, so it's three questions really, what talents skills and methods do you see us as being critical to success in sales?
I could boil this down to Myers-Briggs. TMS, Team Management Systems - Carl Jung research and all those models that are out there now. And if you're a green red yellow or blue in terms of if you're an analyst if you're a driver if you're more of a creative or you're more emotional. It really depends which, you can be one of all, it's just that you are dominant more in one. I'm very much the the creative slash driver side with an element of the emotional and not much analytical. It depends which area or you are in that sphere on each of those questions.
So talent wise for somebody that is outgoing creative or driver, it tends to be presenting skills or talents for speaking in front of people and it's something i always wanted to do and they do say that if if there's a desire for for you to do something you tend to be a little bit scared, so when I was at the big four I was always a bit nervous in big rooms, even though I knew I wanted to be able to conduct that room and manage that room but I would always put that pressure on myself so I think there was a latent talent there. Others may disagree but the skill set I had to learn was really just pushing myself out there and just doing it over and over again.
I heard that when I was young as well. Actually the best bit of advice to develop that skill that I ever heard was if you're asked in a room of 30 or 40, like we were, going around the table in the in PWC, and you're asked who wants to go first, just stick your hand up and you literally go first, and just go with it. Then because everyone else is thinking about themselves, they're not really listening anyway, until they've gone. If you go first you've got half an hour of not stressing about it and you know no one cares and you'll do a good job anyway so it doesn't really matter.
The more you do that, even in workshops, training or anything or being the sales individual, the lead sales person isn't there or doesn't want to do it, just go ahead and do it and just take the lead and you'll be surprised how quickly get used to awkward silences and just play on them, using them as a joke or building on that pause and being able to pivot in the conversation. That's the skill that I've worked on.
Methods wise, I've mentioned MEDIC or MEDDPICC. Force Management is a method that we use the RSA Archer which is understanding positive business outcomes and negative business outcomes. Although there was about 200 pages of information there, what I got out of it was a really interesting method in in how to manage conversations with stakeholders.
We've recently done another training internally at Acin, called Challenger. I think that's quite well known out there as well. It's all about challenging. The biggest thing for me in that method was ramping up the tension. I'm very much, as you as people listening may have gathered already, I like to play a soft approach, quite welcoming and make as many jokes as I can, whether or not they're funny, I'll leave it to the to the individual I'm speaking with. Tension is always something that is really difficult to build, especially over the new Covid webinar approach. But taking somebody at a prospect almost to the breaking point, that's not what I'm condoning, but just ramping up the tension a little bit by challenging them on whether they know what they're doing and if they've seen this in the market and then pulling it back. That's a difficult skill and method to to work on.
That's interesting. Many many years ago they had a programme at Intel called Management by Confrontation. It was somewhat similar. Yes, I know the Challenger approach. It's very good.
Well dialling up that tension bit, it was an interesting one for me because I'm still not completely sold it's the thing to do, but as it's a skill that I'd like to work on, it's something I've thought I need to give it a go, and I need to probably utilize it to a certain level, not to where they were saying but to my own understanding of where the level should be, rather than trying to be a friend all the time it's, I do think that's the best way myself but with an element of that challenge and that tension, it proves that you know what you're talking about and I feel it's a good thing to have in your golf bag.
Yes, it's about being able to make a difference isn't it, I think.
Yes, it is. I've always played the trusted advisor, like I mentioned before, which is the same thing but without annoying them or putting them in an awkward situation. I'm still unsure about whether you need to go that far but if you can add that element of attention to the consultative questioning, I think you can achieve that without making them sweat. I think there's a middle ground there that i'll be able to nail soon. It's definitely an interesting skill and method.
I guess it depends on how you interpret what the trainer says or what the training said.
Exactly, right.
This is a similar question, I'm trying to dig down, so what do you see as the character traits and qualities that you consider important factors for success in sales?
Character characteristics. I've worked and seen many many different characters over the last eight years in the sales roles that I've been doing and and all successful to varying degrees but the main three that I can think of, and I won't name names because I don't want them to know that I think they're successful. I'm joking but no, in terms of the the successful three I'm thinking about, it was that laser focusness, that they had and one specifically would ghost, as a new word from the streets, he would ghost a lot of the emails from internal admin and all events or requests for information internally and would now and again show up at internal meetings.
Meeting noise, internal admin noise really pains me because I think from the big four days, I'm all about efficiency so when I see inefficiency it really really riles me. So I think they did, the three of them, did really well about stepping back from that. Not annoying the leadership team but stepping back enough that they didn't get too wedded into the conversations and the email trails or the Microsoft Teams millions of chats that you have nowadays. That was one of the good characteristics that I saw.
Then they were always out with the clients, very difficult now, but one guy used to take a birthday cake when he knew people at his prospects and clients had their birthdays at various levels within the companies, only small cakes, but at least he had that personal contact. You could tell he was a sales guy. I'm sure they they saw through him a little bit but he he was really personable with it and very open to everyone within a company when he was there.
Then other characteristics vary but you have the the consultative, let's help you, also, I just sell software, so it's it's two different ways you know, I'm selling tin, I want to sell as much as I can and I don't care how I sell it but we're going to do a deal for you, deal for me and we'll just bundle it together and we'll get it over the line, whereas the the the opposite side is, we'll what problems have you got, let's demonstrate the value before you sell it, so it depends on the product, but ultimately i think it's tenacity and not being knocked back by people who mentioning negative things about your software or saying the competitors offer this, and then some people drop their price, it's all about holding that price.
So it's a belief in yourself and the product and a bit more tenacity I'd say.
That's a good answer.
If you had to distil all this into one piece of advice, I know that's quite challenging because you've gone you've covered an enormous amount of ground in the 35 or so minutes we've been talking, so if you had to distil this into one piece of advice for a newcomer, what would it be?
If they're from a background of consulting and they have that knowledge then the advice would be really just to to get your your head into the bonnet of the sales cycle and frameworks and really understand why, even if you think you've got it. Just keep asking questions about it for the first few months until it sinks in. more than you thought it already had. That's something that took a while for me to grasp. Probably about 12 to 18 months until I really got hold of the sales side. Then if you're not from a consultative background but you understand the sales approach where you can sell ice to Eskimos, my advice would be really understand the subject matter.
If you're a trusted advisor or pure sales, both sides need to come to the middle. You need to have a bit of that mixture to sell nowadays. I've watched a couple of movies on the financial crisis over the last few weeks. There was Free Fall by the BBC. Dominic cooper was in it and he was a mortgage salesperson when they were selling CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligation) wrapped up in all that kinds of stuff, and bad debt mortgages and he was just going out there and getting everyone buy and buy and buy. There was another chap in the office who was actually, what's his name? he's was in Game of Thrones. It'll come back to me. He's the singer's son. I can't remember. Alfie something, it doesn't matter, but uh he wasn't selling that many but he had more ethics so his conduct and approach was better but he was in the wrong industry at that time because they were pushing all these bad mortgages so he wasn't doing that well.
I think nowadays there's a middle ground with ethics on one side and sales on the other where a lot of, from what I've seen, prospects and potential clients can see through a lot of smoke and mirrors, so I think they're getting a bit more educated themselves. So it's understanding that. I don't think you're going to sell without being trustworthy.
I agree entirely. I think establishing trust is an important part of it.
That's brilliant, thanks very much Lee.
I think this has been a fantastic interview. You've covered lots of ground and offered some really good advice and given some details about the resources that you've used and the books you've read and so on. thanks for all of it.
Learn the success secrets of top salespeople from these one-to-one interviews.
There are many sales professionals who succeed well enough to satisfy their employers and a few who consistently outperform the pack.
Following more than a decade as a consultant at PWC and KPMG then as an independent GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) specialist, Lee transitioned into a sales role.
What are the skills that set them apart?
What do they know that others don't?
How do they consistently sell more than most others in similar roles?
In a series of interviews, I will ask these questions and more to reveal the keys to exceptional sales success, known and practiced by a few.
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