Honoring Skip Miller and the Sales Function for Which He Stood
Wow. I came to work this week ready to blog about so many topics. OpenAI and news licensing and lawsuits? Data licensing drivers and to-dos and tactics we are sharing with clients right now on how to protect yet open up their data and content assets for training in general. The Private Equity doldrums of 2023 and what they portend for our industry in 2024? So many topics and so little time.
But then on January 2nd I received this and was and am gutted.
From: M3 Learning Team leadership-team@m3learning.com
Date: Tuesday, January 2, 2024 at 4:17 PM
To:
Subject: Important News from M3 Learning
Dear M3 Learning Friends, Fans, & Clients,
We are saddened to inform you of the passing of our esteemed founder and friend, Skip Miller. Skip left us recently following a valiant battle with pancreatic cancer. His departure marks not only a personal loss to those who knew him, but also a profound professional one for the entire sales industry he so passionately nurtured…
The email went on. Tributes started pouring in on LinkedIn. They say it all.
Skip Miller and M3 Learning are Outsell corporate partners. More than that Skip was a long-time friend and colleague. Someone Greg and I met in the mid-80s. My note went out to the team:
Dear Colleagues –
It is with great sadness I send the following note; just received from our friends at M3 Learning. Skip was a longtime friend and colleague of Greg and I — our working relationship going back as far as our time together at Dataquest where he was a then head of sales and a close friend of both of us.
After I left there in 1992 following a 10-year stint in the D&B family; I would coincidentally run into Skip again when he became a highly regarded sales trainer for the American Management Association. It was during those years we founded Outsell in its prior incarnation and I represented AMA as an independent agent in northern California focused on their corporate training offerings. Skip was one of the most popular trainers in both AMA public seminars and private on-site training courses. It was serendipity we connected.
He went on to focus on his own business M3 Learning, his publishing, and his amazing pursuit of the sales profession. He was a well-regarded author, very well-known and respected in Silicon Valley especially in the field of SaaS and worked for brands that are household names including Tableau, Google and hundreds more. I’m told he trained over 300,000 professionals. I bet that’s understated.
Skip not only trained our sales team and each inbound sales exec here, but also came to several all-hands meetings to put us all through our paces and improve our skills for listening, challenging, quantifying. His sales methodology is firmly ensconced in Salesforce, our probabilities, and in the way we mirror the buying cycle he coached us to ‘match’ which today is still in the Outsell Grail.
And of course we have him to thank for our lexicon (BTL and ATL though we can’t say Russians and Greeks anymore!) no talking about the dog (aka feature-speak!) and in the way we ‘quantify trains’ to help our clients understand ROI from Outsell membership. He remained a coach to our team and to me and became a corporate partner, benchmark partner, and just an all-around friend of the firm. Since Covid he has worked with us each quarter to benchmark sales and share his analysis with our clients — a suggestion he came to us with for providing much-needed guidance when most sales leaders were flying blind.
But more so, Skip was a great guy, a father, a friend. We stayed in touch as his illness emerged and it was just before Christmas, we connected the last time. At that time, he was spending time with family; had turned over the business to his colleagues, and celebrated the wedding of his daughter over Thanksgiving — a backyard affair he was thankful to witness knowing his illness was winning.
I am immensely saddened by this news and knowing what a special part of the Outsell family he was I wanted to share it with you as soon as this came across the wires. Please join Linked In tomorrow — forward whatever tributes you care to. Not all of you were fortunate to know him — those of you who did would call him friend and colleague as G and I have for so many years.
I hope you all had a magical break — and your gift of experience provided respite and time with family and friends to celebrate all that matters in life and the good blessings we are so privileged to have. I wish you and yours nothing but the best in 2024 and look forward to a peaceful, prosperous, and healthful year with you all. My very best to you as we head into the new work year and stay focused on that which matters and gives meaning to our lives.
With kind regards and gratitude,
Anthea
I cannot tell you how much this one hurt and so today’s blog is going to honor someone near and dear to my heart who we lost too soon. It is also going to honor the sales function for which he stood.
Skip was a consummate professional who believed in the professionalism of the sales function. He dedicated his life to it and took risks to start his own business in the process. Far too many people treat sales like a ‘less than’ function. One we must deal with, tolerate.
At the end of the day sales is where the rubber meets the road and companies are built or lost. Oh, sure it’s easy to blame product or marketing or need/solution fit or pricing that isn’t right and, and, and.
But at the end of the day, it’s in the sales function where truth prevails, and a lot of boats are lifted. We all sell. We have been doing it since we were born and began advocating for what we want. And anyone who denigrates the sales function probably can’t do the hard work that brave men and women get up and do every day to feed their families and the families of their colleagues.
Sales is the oxygen for the body and blood for the heart. Skip put his soul into it every day and we are all better for it as a result. Do yourself a favor today and thank your sales team. And when you do, please nod your head to Skip. The SaaS industry lost a champion and God knows we will miss him so very, very much.
