The New ABB w/Guest Anand Jha

Welcome to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast, where every week, your hosts, Mark LaCour and Matt Bertram share proven strategies and real-world tactics to help you connect with customers and close more deals. Let's do this. Hey, welcome back everybody, Mark LaCour here with the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast.

Unfortunately, Matt is in Boston, so he cannot join us today, but I can make up for it because I have Anod with ABB on the other side of the microphone with me. Welcome to the show, Anod. Thank you, Mark. So Anod is VP Global Head of Sales for Oil and Gas for ABB, and if you don't know who ABB is, I don't know why you're listening to this show.

Everybody in Oil and Gas knows who ABB is. Historically, I think of you as the process control company, right? Every process controller, every valve automated, you know, all that stuff has ABB plaster on it, and I've known your company for a very long time. And yet, something's changing. The ABB is changing in what y'all have to offer your customers, right?

Yes, yeah. ABB has changed a lot. This is like more than 100 years old company, so you might have seen big generators and big motors, but ABB does more than that. Yeah. Before we get to what ABB is doing now, let's kind of back up a little bit.

So traditionally, ABB has sold a lot of things in Oil and Gas, and y'all actually have a very strong traditional sales team, right? You have existing relationships. You work really hard to keep your customers happy. You have master service agreements with all the major players, and that's how business has been done for a very long time, but now things are a little bit different.

There's people worried about the environment. There's other factors coming in. You have new younger buyers. So can we talk just a little bit about your experience with, you know, let's say the old legacy ABB from a sales point of view, and then what have y'all changed to kind of catch up in 2024?

Yeah, lots of things have changed, or I will say like lots of things are still the same, but it's changing at the fast pace. When you talk about the industry itself, as you could see after COVID, things have changed a lot. There's lots of focus on electrification, new process, and digital industry. And on the other side, there are new new applications that are coming, hydrogen, carbon

capturing, SAF, which is Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or RNG, Renewable Natural Gas. So as you could see, there are conventional applications, and there are also new process applications. With ABB, I think we are in good space where we had a really good relationship with all the conventional or big major oil and gas companies, but there are many new companies are in today where we are not there, you know, and maybe they are also hesitant to reach

out to us because they think ABB is too big to approach. So I just want to make sure like we are catering, we are here to cater everybody from big major oil and gas companies to any new startup. Yeah, y'all actually play, I see y'all a lot in places I don't normally expect to see the ABB logo. I've seen you in a railroad, I've seen you in brewing.

I've seen you in solar. And so, you know, that ABB, you know, expertise gets around, but I agree with you, most people think of you as the old process control oil and gas company, but y'all have to change that because now there's so many new customers out there that have some of the same needs, but also some new needs. And definitely, definitely.

As I said, as you mentioned, ABB is everywhere. Like from almost every industry you can think of, you will find ABB process controller or any of ABB equipment there. But as I mentioned, like ABB is very strong with the major players in this industry across all the segments, either it's water, infrastructure, oil and gas or mining. So we have a good relationship and we do have account managers to take care of those big

accounts. And because the market has changed dramatically after COVID, you know, there's lots of demand for electrification that keeps us busy. And so we are doing really good work on that side, but also I have started to see, as I mentioned, there are many new application. And also we as a ABB, we are changing ourselves.

Now we are taking different approach than what we have done before. Now we have a segment approach. Segment people, they go and map out all the industry. What are the new application? What are the new trends? They feed back to the organization.

And then it goes back to sales. Salespeople pick qualified accounts or opportunities and they take it to the next level to close those opportunities. I will say it's perfect. It's not perfect because it's new. Like that approach is new, but we are making progress in this direction of taking segment

and sales approach. All right. So I want to back you up. So are you saying that in the past, ABB did not have a verticalized sales approach? Was it name companies or geographic region, but it wasn't verticalized? It was verticalized, you know, but there was no different roles, you know.

So like there was sales role and account defined and they were taking care of those accounts. But now there was another layer called segment. And then it goes out and try to map out whether new trends are happening. They normally look for three to five years ahead, you know, and then they feedback that information to ABB, you know, like either we need a new product, you know, or we need a new way to approach those new customers.

I get it. So in the IT world, it's sort of like an enterprise architect. So an enterprise architect in IT world should be looking ahead to see what new opportunities, new technologies, but also to make sure they don't make a mistake and buy a technology that will be worthless in a year or two. So that's really cool.

So in your sales organization, you now have a role where they go out and they're looking to see what the futures bring in so that ABB can kind of get ahead of that and be ready for that opportunity. Yes. Yeah. And that's fascinating.

And it's not new. Like that role was there, but now it's getting more and more traction. It's more and more defined going forward. Yeah. Those men and women, number one, that has to be a really cool job. But number two, that has to be a bit frustrating because there's so much change going on every

day. How do you pick what is going to stick around and what's not going to stick around? I don't know. People that are into social media, if you remember Periscope, Periscope was all over the place. Now it's disappeared.

The same way speaking, the pandemic was, God, what was the audio chat thing that was everywhere? And I can't remember the name of that app, but it was at one point it was valued as much as Chevron Corporation. Now it's totally disappeared. So that's actually cool.

So that's actually ABB's invest in money and resources to look into the future to make sure you can meet your client's needs. Definitely. Because as I mentioned, our client is changing. You know, like now if you see either they are acquiring new companies to go in that direction of energy transition or they're transforming their own business to focus on

low carbon business. So as I said, like ABB is there because we know those big, big customers. And also we are trying to come and help any new startups or any new company which were not there before. Yeah. We'll get to the startups later in the show because you and I had a great conversation

before we turned the microphone on and I was a bit surprised. But so I want to come back to your sales organization. So are you now training your salespeople differently than you did before? Are you trying to make your sales force more nimble and quicker to respond? Yes, actually. It's not just about sales.

I will say it's the whole process of sales. So as I mentioned, we're starting from the segment perspective, which is looking far ahead and trying to qualify accounts, qualify trends and qualify opportunities. Then we have also in sales. So also we are differentiating sales between day to day business or also long project business. Again, in some of the ABB groups, it used to be common.

So common people were looking for day to day business and also long term business. But now we're trying to have two different teams because it needs two different mindset, two different approaches. Yeah. It's 100%. It's two different personality traits and experiences.

The people that have the longer term projects have to have heightened time awareness. They have to understand that whatever actions they do today affect their ability to close a sale or make a commission a year from now, maybe even two years from now, right? And they have to understand that it's steady as you go. They can't lose track of what's the day to day stuff that's going on in the deal. Whereas the shorter term deals, it's almost the opposite, right?

You got to get it done now. You got to get it done today. You don't wait 10 minutes to call the customer back. And then as soon as you finish that one, you got to go to the next one. So that's good that y'all recognize that it's two different skill sets and traits. I'm just curious.

Right now, so this is July of 2024, a lot of companies that are selling All In Yes Space are starting to struggle a little bit to hire salespeople. I'm just curious. Are y'all seeing the same thing? Is it harder to find good salespeople now? Yes.

Yes. Actually, it's really hard to find good salespeople with a good background. And also, we are looking for more attitude, you know, like the person, which attitude, who can talk to the customer, who can close the deal, which is different than knowing your product. Right.

You know, I will share one example like almost five years ago, you know, like we had one individual, he was very good technically, he knew our product. But most of the time, he was become a scientist in the conversation, you know. So instead of telling customer how this solution will help, he was more focused on how that solution might not work. You know, so that's why I'm just sharing like, so you are hiring people, yes, they should

know our product, you know, that's always advantage. But also it's more about how they deal with the customer, how they connect with them on the personal level. Yeah. The biggest thing I've seen, because I have the same, I struggle hiring salespeople too. Biggest thing I've seen is I need somebody that can take what we do and turn it into

a business conversation. Yes. Not in my case, not a podcast conversation, in your case, not a, you know, automation conversation. Not a solution. Yeah.

Not immediately talk about the product. Right. Like, it's more than that. Yeah. And I know ABB well, y'all have some amazing product specialists and I'm sure any of your salespeople can pull in if the technology conversation gets too deep.

Yeah. And the one, as you, again, again, you said, right, you know, like, we need to aware about role of each individual in the organization. The problem comes when everybody tries to do everything, you know, and that's what we are doing. ABB, we're trying to, trying to differentiate one role from other role, you know, so everybody

can do their role efficiently. So the message to all the salespeople, if you're listening to me, when you go to or meet your customer, open that door for all other colleagues in the organization. So you have a technical specialist, you have product managers, you have factory managers. Don't try to do all the work by yourself. Bring them in front of your customer because they can only help you.

Yeah. That's one of the great advantages of work for big companies. You have all these resources behind you that you can bring in at any time, which by the way, if you're listening to this and you're a young person still in school, because we know we have several of y'all that listen, remember ABB when you graduate and you're looking for a sales role, reach out to them because they're a great company to work for

and like, like Anand said, they're looking for sales talent. All right. So this is great. I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing. The culture of the company, but you know, the world is changing.

The world is, is whether rightly or wrongly is moving toward a more low carbon focused way of doing business, looking more at things like net zero. That's something that ABB isn't known for. And yet by looking at your portfolio of offerings, you actually can help that. Actually we are leading from the front, I will say, you know, like I am because if you know ABB, ABB started a forum called energy efficiency movement almost three years ago.

And that is just to promote like what we do and what, how we can help our customer, you know, to be carbon neutral. And since we started that forum, now we have more than 350 members joined globally. That's great. Honeywell, Microsoft, Alfa Laval, like many, many, many big companies that you have heard about it.

So that's one we are doing. And so that, that shows you like how, how serious we are about this climate change and net zero or carbon neutrality going forward. Yeah. I want to stop you before we keep going there. So you've built a community of like-minded people.

That's not the ABB I knew. ABB would have never built a community. ABB would have told you if you're part of the community or not. And I'm joking a little bit, but seriously, that was a cultural change to do that. It's a big cultural change. It's a big cultural change, I will say, you know, like in the past, because companies

that old, you know, like everybody knew, you know, like sometime you become complacent, you know, how you approach the market. But this forum, I just mentioned, you know, that just shows you we are not the same company anymore. We are agile, we are fast, and we are there to serve you like in which, which of the direction you are, you're going towards.

I love the fact you built a community because now, besides with your segment specialties, looking forward, you now have your own customers sharing conversations with you about the things they're struggling with, what they see coming in the future. That all just has to help you figure out what your clients need and be able to, to meet those needs and solve those problems even better. And just to add on this thing, and I think the trend on other side as well, like customers

are, they become very open today to discuss their problem. I can share like five to six years ago, like not, not that long ago, even to five to six years ago, like they were telling you what they need, you know. And when you say like, Mr. Customer, this can be done better. They always say, no, no, follow my spec, you know, like there's no other conversation. But what I have seen in five years, they're very open to discuss their problem.

They're open to discuss their spec. They're open. What else you have to offer? And if you can, as a sales, if you can offer more than one option, they will be very happy. Yeah, I've seen that too. And I actually love it because you're right, especially the super majors not picking a new

ex on mobile, who I love to death, who I hate to do business with, but I love to death. For years, not years, decades, maybe even longer that they would come into a vendor and tell them what they wanted. They had their own, own engineers designed their own systems and they would just say, this is what I want. The problem with that is those people, even though they're super smart, weren't on the

cutting edge of what was going on because they bought the solution. They didn't design the solution. Whereas the companies that designed it may have had other options. And it wasn't just with technology, it wasn't just process control. I see them do the subsea trees. They would go to a company like Cameron FMC and say, here's the tree I want.

Instead of asking Cameron or Technique FMC, here's my specs. Can you, what tree should I build for this to save me money or ensure production or whatever else? So I love the fact that our industry is finally opening up and we're, we're, we're stopping and asking our vendors, hey, can you help me? Here's my problem.

Instead of me telling you what I need, you tell me how you might want to fix this. And I love that shift in perspective because it makes it easier for all of us to actually do really good business. Definitely. And, and I think industry become smaller and smaller and now there is no customer and the vendor relationship is more like we are in one team, you know, and I really loving

this approach because now you can have a very open conversation. Yeah. And that includes things like pricing people. Once again, this is not an excuse to not talk pricing at the very beginning because quite frankly, if you're a good salesperson and pricing is the issue, you want your customer to know that immediately.

You don't want them to waste their time exploring an option they may not be able to buy. So, you know, we have a couple of things that are big on this show. My one is that we think sales and marketing only actually be connected to hip. Number two, we think a lot of sales people let emotions dictate them just a little bit too much. They're too worried about the deal.

I'm worried about making my commission or about closing my deal. And sometimes you need to walk away from a deal. It's not good for me. And that includes things like pricing. God, we've covered a whole bunch of stuff and there's so much more I want to talk about. So with this new shift to low carbon carbon solutions and with your new products and

offerings and the fact that, you know, you're hiring and training sales teams and you're even shifting the culture inside of ABB a little bit as a leader of this organization. Number one, it must be fun because it's changing. But that's a lot of work that's a lot of things for you to stay on top of. Do you depend on your people to help you run this organization or do you spend more time, coaching and mentoring people?

I'm just curious your own leadership style. I love working with people around me, you know, because as a loan, you can have a vision, but it won't be accomplished if nobody's supporting you. And especially in my global role, I have to deal with people around the world, different regions, different cultures, you know. And I think slowly, slowly we have developed that culture, you know, that bringing ideas

on the table, you know, and whatever we start from global or sometimes it happens other way around. When we see something happening good in one region, we try to replicate on other regions, you know. So there is like a strong team that is helping me, supporting me to grow different mindset and also how we can be more efficient and productive going forward.

The different sales teams in ABB share best practices and wins and stuff? Yes, it does. It does. And like again, it's never enough, you know, like we can be better, you know, but we are moving in that direction. So we are also sharing best practices.

Also we started to see more and more discussion about losses. That's important. You know, because it's not about blaming somebody, but it's about learn from those losses. Like why are we lost? Did we lose because of technical challenge? Did we lose because of our customer relationship or did we lose on prices?

Yeah, so as part of this podcast, Matt and I are starting a mastermind group early next year. It's going to be a peer-to-peer group of sales and marketing people all in gas. And that's one of the first things we're going to talk about is loss reviews. There's so much good information in there, especially if you disconnect, blame exactly what you said.

You don't do a loss review to point the finger at the salesperson that lost the deal. You do the loss review to figure out what your company did do to support that salesperson. And it could be you had the wrong salesperson there. It's not their fault, right? It's your fault as leadership to make sure you have the right salesperson lined up with the right deal.

But loss reviews are great. And the other thing about loss reviews, if your audience, is it actually better to get a third party to do it? Because if you get your salespeople to do it, a lot of times your clients actually personally like the salesperson. And so they won't tell 100% of the truth because they don't want to get anybody in trouble.

So if you get a third party to do it, you get the real information on why you really lost the deal. I love that y'all are doing it. That is one of the best ways as far as customer satisfactions. I think loss reviews are the best way to keep customers happy and keep them spending money with you.

And definitely, definitely, because you should celebrate your wins. But don't forget to learn from your mistakes or losses. 100% and sometimes you'll see trends in losses. If you do a bunch of loss reviews that may uncover something you didn't even know about your own company. I saw a company that ended up losing a lot of deals because their contracts were written

in annual terms one year and the buyers really wanted less than that, like six or three months. But the company didn't know until they started doing loss reviews and they start seeing over and over again the reason they lost was their contract terms were unacceptable. Once they fixed that, which cost them no money, no margin, they went back to winning deals and they would have never discovered that if they didn't do loss reviews. Yeah.

All right. So big company, a lot of changes, the environment you're selling in is changing. It sounds like you're doing a lot of really cool things with your team as far as leading the team. What is the future bringing for ABB and specifically for you and your sales organization? Like future I see the industrial growth will remain like the way it is or it will be more.

I think it's going to be more. It will be more because their new energy transition will bring new application, new processes, new demands. Those were not there before. Yeah. Look at carbon capture and sequestion.

Look at moving. Who would have even thought that would be a business? And I think that's going to be an enormous business now in the future. Definitely. So it's carbon capture, the hydrogen. Yeah.

Hydrogen. There is a green or blue hydrogen. Like there are many other colors, but like green and blue, which is started to take over. Then there's a SAF sustainable aviation fuel, RNG. You can generate gas from the waste. So who could think of those processes and applications before?

So what I'm saying, there will be enough demand for ABB or any other company who are in this space. And on the sales and marketing side, like as I said, we need to be agile, like we need to understand what customers are looking for. And as I already mentioned, we are taking segment role, we are taking sales role, like or maybe dividing sales into project sales and day to day sales.

And also I will say like any other startup, if there is a small market, you know, like then maybe hire somebody with the focus approach. Because if you are expecting your one sales guy, like who's closing multi-million deal and also you expect him to focus on $10,000 order, you know, that's not going to happen. So you have to understand if you want to play in that space is better to hire somebody new to focus on that space, which might not be that mature today, but it might mature in

coming two to three years. Yeah. So it's really important to match the sales person's desire experience with the sales role you want them have. If you put a farmer in a hunter role, they're going to fail. If you put a hunter in a farmer role, they're going to fail.

And if you put a transactional sales person, like inside sales rep and outside role, they're going to fail immediately unless they have somebody to coach them, although they can eventually learn how to do that. So I love that. I do want to kind of cover one more thing before we wind this showdown because we talked with this before we turn the mic on, we talked about the startup space.

And I said that, you know, years ago, Chevron and Exxon Shell wouldn't do business with the startup because it was a risk because they were small. And then fast forward to now and they all have venture capital groups because they know that the startup space is where they could get their next competitive advantage. So now they're looking at startups and out of nowhere, you sprung on me that ABB has a venture group.

I did not know that. Can we talk just, I know that you don't deal with that on day to day, but can we talk just a little bit because that tells me that ABB also sees the advantage of working with smaller companies. Yes, definitely. So, so as I said, like in my role, I don't deal with that group on a day to day basis.

So I cannot comment much, but I know what they're looking for. They're looking for new startup companies who are serving the industry. And that group can help you to grow because we already have industry connection. So if you have a good solution that can bring benefits to the industry, you know, that group can help you that can mentor, they can provide mentorship and also they can support you to make some relationship in this industry.

And keep all of y'all startups that are listening from bugging and nod. I'm going to go do the research and find the link to the venture capital group inside of ABB. We'll put that in the show notes. So if you're interested in that, only hit up the startup group. Do not fill up the nods inbox with your startup requests.

He's doing something much bigger and better. All right. So before we wind this thing down and we get to like the LinkedIn fail tip and all the stuff that we normally do, what is a nods philosophy on sales? And the reason I ask you that is that a lot of people don't think sales is a good profession because they think sales is trying to make somebody buy something they don't want.

And I say just the opposite of salesperson when it's done properly is an asset. So what is your philosophy on a salesperson? Sales actually in our life, everybody is doing sales. You know, like sometimes you don't know you're doing sales, you know, like even your kid is trying to sell something to you or you are trying to sell something to your kid, you know.

That's what we're doing, knowing or unknowingly. So my philosophy is to connect with customer on the human side, you know. Because you connect with them, they feel comfortable to work with you, you know. And also don't try to be pushy, you know. Sometimes if customer is giving you indication, like, you know, they might not want to work with you, you know, give them space, you know, there's a bubble around all the individuals,

you know. Don't try to step in somebody else bubble if he or she doesn't want you to step in that bubble. So keep that space and try to connect on the human side of that era that individuals are dealing with. I love that.

Now, Nod, you're in sales leadership for a big company, so I have to ask you this. Each month or each quarter, I don't know how your sales cycles run here, but somebody above you is asking you for numbers, is asking you for predictions, right? And they want it to be accurate. That's how enterprise sales works. How do you balance telling your reps to not bug the client, right?

But at the same time, making sure they know what's going on in their account, like, there's a balance there. I think there's a balance there, you know. But what I have learned in my career, if you have a good relationship with your customer, you can be very polite and very open, you know. So sometimes I reach out to my customer and it's like, I'm working on my 2025 plan.

Can you please tell me, like, what are your priorities, you know, and that will also help me, you know, like to put a better plan for you and also for ABB, so we can win together. Dude, the entire audience, you need to replay the last 10 seconds and listen to that again. Do you understand what he just said? He has developed such a high trust relationship with his customers that he can literally be honest and go, look, I'm developing my plan.

I have to get this done by the end of the week. Can you tell me what your priorities are? And they trust him over time. They trust him so much. They give him what he needs and they help him. And at the same time, I bet if they call you at 10 o'clock at night and say, hey, I need

this, you get it done. Definitely. That's a beautiful sales relationship. It goes both ways, you know, like, if you again, I go back, like, if you connect on the human side of that individual, you know, and if you help that individual or he helped you, you know, that relationship goes for long, long time, you know, it's not transactional

or also I will say I will go one step further. Even you change your company, that relationship will go with you. Yes. We've all seen that we're somebody that we had a great relationship, leaves their present employer and they go somewhere else in your phone rings or you get an email and they bring you back in because they trust you and they know that you can help them.

I think that is the probably the best definition of a good sales person is when your client leaves their company and they go somewhere else and they call you because they know you can help them. What a great way to end this conversation. I literally can talk to you for hours. We're going to have you back on.

I wouldn't do a lot of stuff with ABB, which will be in the works. However, unfortunately, speaking of sales, we got to pay the bills real quick. Sign up for our Tuesday newsletter. We have our Sunday update, which if you saw the last one, those guys managed to morph my face on Taylor Swiss body. Not sure I like that or not, but the audience loves it.

Check that out. We also have an oil gas events newsletter. We take all the oil gas conference and expose put in your inbox once a month for free. We never spam you. Matt and I's social channel links are also in the show notes. Our insider's group is actually getting ready to launch.

By the time you hear this, you should be able to go to the show notes of this show. Click on the link to check out our insider's group. It's a peer to peer group of sales and marketing professionals in the oil and gas industry. All right. Matt, now it's time for our LinkedIn fail or tip of the week. Do you have a tip or fail for our audience?

I think nothing new to add, but as you are using LinkedIn, as you might have seen, people start posting their personal milestones, like marriage anniversaries, birthdays, or I would say like keep this platform professional and don't try to spam with these kinds of messages. Yeah, I agree with you. I'm okay with a little bit of personal stuff if it connects to work, but I don't want to see what you had for dinner yesterday.

I appreciate that your kid graduated kindergarten, but put that on Facebook. Definitely. There are other social media platforms. Yeah. So I agree with that. It's a great fail, so audience, take note of that.

All right. This has been fantastic. Like I said, I can keep you on for hours. We can definitely get you and the rest of ABB on our different shows, but Anand, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having me.

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