Why Executives Ignore Your Sales Pitch | Ben Sizemore (Land Gorilla)

Carter (00:01.377)
Hey Ben, give the people a quick intro. Who are you and what do you do?

Ben Sizemore (00:06.542)
Hi everybody, I'm Ben Sizemore. I'm currently the Chief Information Officer for Land Gorilla, where we make the best in class construction lending software for the mortgage industry and other industries where construction lending is involved.

Carter (00:22.603)
I was told that you love building things, but you've always thought of yourself as a salesman since you're always selling internally. What is internal selling? Teach you that most external, know, SaaS, AEs, never learn or sales reps never learn.

Ben Sizemore (00:39.18)
I think one of my biggest clients are the executive teams, my peers along the executive as well as board members that require an understanding before they do budget authorizations. It's no different than if you're like buying a car. I mean, at the end of the day, you're trying to convince somebody that, hey, with this car, you can drive this fast and these are what the features that can offer you and this is the ROI on this car that you're gonna get. Despite the fact that you're spending money, this is how it's gonna benefit you down the line. And I think the message is similar.

in the sense that you've just got to be honest, you've got to make sure you have your facts right, you've got to be prepared, and you need to have, you you've got to make sure you've got the numbers. And I think at the end of the day when you have those three things and then the last part is the persistence necessary in order to get the approvals, it's no different than a sale. Like you're either getting an internal approval or you're getting an external sale. So those are really the two key things that I see are the similarities. So...

It's always amusing because I've always felt like I've been a salesman since I was a teen whether it was trying to sell something or try to get a date with a girl whatever it was and you know I just seemed to do that no matter what I what I've been doing especially in leadership so I think it's there's a lot of similarities there.

Carter (01:55.257)
That makes sense. You know, I've heard that is the farther you go up the chain, a lot of those roles tend to be pretty sales heavy.

Ben Sizemore (02:02.882)
Yeah, that's very, true.

Carter (02:05.773)
What does outreach from a vendor look like when it gets a reply from you? I'm sure you're getting tons of different messages, know, versus random 50 emails and LinkedIn messages you ignore every week. Like what are the ones looking like that you will actually reply to that are, that are good.

Ben Sizemore (02:20.366)
You know, I'll be a thousand percent honest and say that I don't reply to any one of them unless I've somehow made contact with them first. Just because in my role you got everybody trying to sell the widget and honestly, it's really difficult for me to go outside that box what I'm willing to do, you know? So.

Carter (02:35.129)
Yeah.

Ben Sizemore (02:47.502)
So I think it's really important that one, that I know the person that because everybody thinks they know what I need, right? And that's really not true. I think what I know what I need, I know what my business needs, I know what I need from a technology stack perspective. And a lot of times if someone's going to randomly hit me up, it's gonna be done in person, it's not gonna be done through a marketing message.

Carter (02:57.625)
Mm-hmm, right.

Carter (03:14.403)
Do you meet people in person though and then they get through to you that way? Like at conferences or just other random places or not really?

Ben Sizemore (03:25.63)
I think that one of the things I do appreciate about conferences is the fact that I think it's important that you do meet people. So I never say no to someone asking me to show me their stuff. I'll never say no because one, it's a learning experience. Two, you get the contact and it allows you to keep yourself aligned with what's going on. Because a lot of times the vendors that are there, they feel like they've got the latest and greatest and there's always trends.

Remember when OCR was a big thing. Remember when point of sale was a big thing. And everybody's got a flavor of it. Now AI is a big thing. now it's just a matter of let me take that call. Let me see that demo. Let me see what your flavor of it is. And if there's something there of interest, then yeah, absolutely. I'll figure out how to make it work within our pipeline of widgets in order to make our process better.

Carter (04:01.411)
Right.

Carter (04:19.641)
Okay. When a lender decides to buy new lending tech, what's really driving that? Like what's the thing underneath the stated reason usually.

Ben Sizemore (04:30.446)
The 35 years that I've been doing this, always comes down to operational efficiency at the end of the day. It always comes down to how can we do more with less? How can we save money? Because...

Ben Sizemore (04:50.958)
I paused because I was just thinking of Blend. I remember when Blend came out and everybody was like, my gosh, this is gonna change radically change the industry. We're gonna have the ROI on this is crazy. And what ended up happening was it became table stakes. So it didn't really do anything for us other than added an expense. So I was thinking about when you asked me that question, I'm thinking, okay, well, that's a bad example of ROI because that just added to the cost of doing alone. But

Carter (05:10.169)
Okay

Ben Sizemore (05:18.19)
I think when we think of like machine learning and macro type driven things where we can reduce the clicks of a processor or a post-closer or minimize review time of large amount of documents in order to come up with some sort of pre-approval or an underwriting decision, like all those things, those things make a lot of sense. And those are the things that typically drive us looking at widgets, operational efficiencies.

doing more with less.

Carter (05:49.269)
So you're saying it really comes down to ROI. Like that's the main thing that you guys are looking for. Yeah.

Ben Sizemore (05:52.098)
Yeah. Well, you said it a lot better than I did. ROI, return on investment.

Carter (06:00.249)
From the CIO side, what makes a software salesperson credible early and what makes you tune them out instantly? Although I know you were saying a lot of people you deal with are people that you know quite a bit or people that you're reaching out to.

Ben Sizemore (06:14.19)
What makes me tune them out? I think for me, I start tuning people out once it comes into a sales pitch.

Carter (06:26.265)
Mm-hmm.

Ben Sizemore (06:26.574)
I really like to, I really, really like to get into the meat of it. So if you're to sell me a widget, I want to understand how the widget plugs in. I want to understand how we can make things faster. But then if it goes into some sort of sales pitch where at that point they're just trying to get me to buy for the sake of buying, I think that's when I start getting shut off. But as long as they're answering my questions intelligently, as long as they're not being, as long as it's a conversation, like I feel like I'm not being led down a path.

I think that that's always going to be the best way to do things with someone like myself. And I would say that it's consistent with my peers. We all don't want to be sold. We all want to have conversations. We understand the value because the sale will happen if it makes sense.

Carter (07:12.491)
Interesting. Okay. Do you like people coming in and trying to build a bunch of rapport and all that? Or no, you're like, give me like, educate me, show me what the thing can do. And that's really like, get down to the facts of it really.

Ben Sizemore (07:21.742)
I think they're rapport. I think once I'm interested, once I find there's a good conversation at that point that allows me to let my guard down and establish a rapport.

Carter (07:37.785)
Do you think for you, it really just comes for most of these things, it really just does come down to the numbers. If they show that the numbers work, then pretty much you guys are going to do the deal or is there a lot more to it than that? Or is it very, very simple, like very black and white like that.

Ben Sizemore (07:53.966)
I think it depends on the organization. think across my travels, some organizations, it comes down to numbers. Like if you're working for a company that's driven by like a hedge fund or something, it's not going to be, it's going to be coming down to the numbers. Like I think at the end of the day. But I think if you go, depending on the organization, like I think, you know, some people will, if we can, if they value the people, if we can empower our folks, like from that perspective, but there's always a bit of numbers in the skin of it.

Carter (08:08.482)
Okay.

Carter (08:25.483)
You know, is there a way you would suggest people bring that up? Cause I'm just trying to think there've been some, like I was a mortgage banker, there have been some loans that I do that numbers wise, they make a lot of sense for the client, but they don't always go for that. Like, is there some ways that people should be presenting the ROI maybe in a certain way that you would tell them to, you know, how to do it.

Ben Sizemore (08:49.07)
I think it really depends on the audience, Carter. mean, you know...

Some people want the spreadsheet with multiple tabs, understanding at what point the ROI is going to be beneficial in the process. know, some guys are just going to want to look from an overall stake perspective, right? So I think, I think, I think it just really depends. And I think part of the salesperson's job is to really understand who they're speaking with. Are they speaking to, you know, the person who really wants to count the peanuts? Or is it the person who's the strategic guy who's really just concerned about the big picture and understanding how this plays

into the workflow and how it could benefit the organization. know, so I think it's really understanding the audience and making sure that that, from that perspective, they're able to tailor that message to make it work for them.

Carter (09:31.16)
Hmm.

Carter (09:38.655)
As a final question, can you think about a deal of vendor one with you that they probably shouldn't have or when maybe they lost when they should have won? Doesn't have to be land gorilla anywhere in your career. What did they do in that, in one of those two scenarios or both if you have both.

Ben Sizemore (09:54.542)
So I'm just gonna ask you to ask me that question one more time because I just wanna make sure I heard it right.

Carter (10:01.591)
Yeah, do you have any deal of vendor one with you that either a, they probably shouldn't have won and they did win or maybe one they lost, but they should have won because maybe their product had a lot of ROI, but they didn't maybe present it in the best way, for example.

Ben Sizemore (10:16.03)
absolutely. Yeah, I think that it's more along the lines that the product like I knew I knew that the product would work. I knew that the I knew that the ROI numbers worked. But a lot of times I find myself having to help them massage that message in such a way to get them across the door. I probably shouldn't be saying that. But yeah, that's that happens probably more often than not, where I'll be literally, I can be on a sales column, be texting them going, that's not

That's not the right message. Like you need to tailor the message this way. If you want this deal, this is how you should do this. So, you know, so just to be honest.

Carter (10:56.407)
Interesting, where do they usually go wrong? Is it just them not knowing their audience? Is that back to what you said there or different stuff they're doing wrong?

Ben Sizemore (11:03.084)
think a lot of times it's them not knowing the audience. And I think a lot of times people are so eager that, you I think you think of, you think of when you're trying to sell a product, you know, it's across a span of efficiency, right? So a lot of times they'll try to...

I think it's just a matter of just saying, I think that just matter of saying, look, they need to be very efficient and prescriptive of where the efficiencies lie, what's the ROI at each station and make sure they have a message that does it very, very intelligently. Like when you do a marketing presentation, a lot of times too much, they just need to, you need to kind of lay the breadcrumbs and kind of lead them to the promised land. You know.

Carter (11:47.041)
Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I think we got some good stuff here. I'll end it here.