Episode 1: When Lives Are On The Line
When lives are on the line, you don’t want a person who “attended a seminar”. You want someone who has honed their skills to perfection. And you don’t worry about how comfortable learners are or how much they enjoy the training. You worry about what they learn and how well they are able to apply it when the critical moments come.
Charles:
Welcome to the Win Spectrum podcast. I’m Charles Moreton. With me is Dan Leymaster. We’re the creators of Win Spectrum. What we set out to do is create a podcast that talks about how to create true sales excellence. With our 35 plus years of creating big sales teams, turning low performers into the top performers, we wanted to create a space to be able to share opinions and share thoughts on how to actually create an environment where your sellers can be successful day in and day out. Now on this podcast, in the coming seasons, we’re going to talk about topics like why skills matter, sharing insights, storytelling, and a whole lot more. But for the first episode, we thought we’d start with something really exciting, and what we call “When Lives Are On The Line”. And we’re going to examine today how the best of the best train, how it applies to sales. And the unique thing about this is we’re going to make sure we leave today with actionable steps that you can take to get started right away. So Dan, without further ado, let’s get into it.
Dan:
Thanks Charles. Good to be here. Man, we have so much to cover today. Charles and I are on a mission. We want to change how companies think about training their salespeople. And over the next few weeks, we’ll talk about what you can do to really turn sales enablement into something remarkable in your organization. And very specifically, we want to help you define what good looks like for some of the most important conversations you’re asking your reps to have. We want to help you deliver training that helps them build the skills to execute those conversations, and we want to help you with your programs so that your new hire onboarding, for example, becomes a factory for producing high-performing reps and your ongoing training keeps your reps sharp and engaged at the top of their game. And Charles, I think it’s important for the audience to know that we’ve been planning this podcast for a long time. We’ve discussed hundreds of potential topics, and the one that rose to the top, the one that we felt would best rattle a few cages, maybe shake things up a little bit and really set the table for future sessions, was this idea of: “how do organizations train when lives, when careers, when the futures of individuals and companies are at stake?”
Charles:
Absolutely. So it seems like a pretty intense topic to get started. That’s kind of why we chose it. So when we talk about “lives are on the line”, what do we have to start thinking about, Dan?
Dan:
So I look at organizations around the world that train where results matter. At the highest level, you look at the US military, you look at sports organizations, you and I are both basketball fans, for example, you look at NBA teams and you look at the medical world. The results of the training matters so much that they have it all mapped out. They know exactly what “good” looks like. They know what the exit point needs to be, and they know how to people to that end. And so they train and they don’t worry about what people think and what they feel during the process – and we’ll get into some of that – and they focus on the outcomes. So a new recruit to the army goes into boot camp, for example, and they know that they need to get that person combat ready from whatever point they’re starting with. And so the training is not designed to make that person feel great. It’s not designed to be a cushy ride. It’s designed to condition them to learn the skills they need to be combat ready on the other side of that training. Same thing with the NBA. When the season opens up… when the training camp opens up, they begin immediately with conditioning and drills and practice. And it’s hard. They put these guys through the ringer to make sure that they’re in shape and they have the skills to perform at the highest level.
Charles:
Can you imagine being in the military and getting into, getting deployed and realizing, wow, I don’t feel prepared to go save lives, I don’t feel prepared to be in the situation I am about to be in. I mean, that just would never fly. Right? And that’s where, that’s where we start, you know, we start delineating from our sales world where we’re putting a lot of people into positions where they’re just plain not ready, but because you know, the three weeks of onboarding is over because we need them to be productive now because there’s quotas to hit and revenue milestones to get after. We’re sending soldiers to combat that that are not going to fare well, and we’ve got to change that. We just have to.
Dan:
Yeah, we absolutely have to, because it’s unfair to them. There are so many.. I mean, we’ll get into the onboarding programs that companies put together. But it’s like they put these people on a luxury cruise during onboarding. Pre COVID, they would bring them into a nice place where they put them up in a nice hotel. Everyone would welcome them. Everyone would cheer. They’d get swag for showing up. And all they’d have to do is just sit and listen. They don’t have to lift a finger during these trainings! And it really is almost like a vacation resort. And then the craziness continues because at the end of that training, rather than testing them on what they learned, they test the trainer. Like literally there’s a survey that goes out to the participants to say, Hey, now that you’ve been trained for 30, 60, 90 days, whatever it is, how do you feel your instructors did? How do you feel that the people that were teaching you… do you feel like they were capable of doing their job? Do you feel like they gave you what you needed to perform well? I mean, you see how backwards that is? Instead of testing them on their skills, you’re asking them their opinion of the people teaching them.
Charles:
Yeah. It’s hilarious because you don’t know what you need to know when you’re starting a new job or getting into it or revamping your skillset until it’s tested in the field to say, Hmm, I was ready or I’m not ready. But, you know, we all want to make, we want to make everyone internally feel good about the 45 slide PowerPoint deck they delivered on discovery or a negotiation or whatever it might be. And we don’t want to rock the boat internally because our political equity means so much. To me, I’ve always been focused on revenue, right? That’s how that’s I’m measured, Right? If I hit revenue, people are happy. If I miss then they’re not, and then I’m probably looking for a job. And so it seems to me that there needs to be a shift in perspective. And so why do you think leaders have such a hard time, you know, shifting the focus from the revenue results they need to achieve to a focus that is about the skills their reps need to actually help that leader achieve those revenue results.
Dan:
It’s a great question. I think there’s two sides to that question… or two sides to the answer. Part of it is human nature. I enjoy the game of golf. And it’s very difficult for me when I’m golfing, not to watch where the ball is going. And I have messed up so many drives and so many chip shots because just before my club makes contact with that ball, I want to see where it’s going. And so I lift my head up and my shoulder follows and the club follows and then I’m taking a big chunk of grass out. And that ball is going nowhere. It’s human nature to want to look where… to look to the end, like in revenue attainment. And even though we know we should be looking at the ball, we know we should be looking at the clubhead making contact, we don’t. We take our eyes off of it.
Sales leaders do the same thing. They probably know they should be looking at what their people are doing in each stage of the process; diving into how capable they are of executing those stages. But the revenue is so sexy and it’s so tempting. And it’s so easy to look at that and make that the central focus for everything. So part of it’s human nature. Part of it… the other part is baked into sales culture. I mean think about it. You’ve been a CRO multiple times. You’ve been a CEO. Numbers mean everything. And the more responsibility you have for those numbers, the more they become all consuming for how you think about affecting the business. And that trickles down to the salespeople. Sellers are compensated based on numbers. They are evaluated based on numbers. The conversation is around numbers. And you can mess up most of the steps in between. If you happen to get great numbers at the end, you’re still a hero. It doesn’t matter how bumpy it was to get there. And conversely, you can be a great seller doing everything right in a tough patch and get to the end of the quarter and your numbers aren’t great, you’re in trouble.
Charles:
Yeah, exactly. It’s funny you mentioned golf. I was playing last weekend and it was cold and the sun was right in my eye on the first hole. And the only thing I could do, because I couldn’t look up to see where that ball was going, was to focus on keeping my head down and making a good swing. And that ball went right down the middle. It was beautiful. And it kind of made me start thinking about this conversation and say, man, you’re right. The revenue is sexy. That’s what we want to look at. It’s what matters. Right? But what’s sexy is having a team that can repeatedly hit that number and not just get lucky or have to pull these deals in from next quarter in, for this quarter, right. Sacrificing future results to pacify the results you need this quarter. And it starts getting really hairy. I mean, it also goes up all the way up to – I just thought about this the other day – all the way up to the investor level. Where, when was the last time you were in a board meeting and investors were like, all right. Revenue looks okay. Renewals look good. Uh, how are your people doing? What, what skills are you teaching to make sure that this business has continuity and the ability to scale?
Dan:
Think about the beauty if they did ask that question. Like when people start… this is… your change of perspective question is a really provocative one because a lot of times people think they’re looking at the right things by looking at numbers. And they are. I mean, in a sense. You can’t not look at that. But the challenge is, if you’re looking at it to the exclusion of what creates those numbers, that’s when it becomes a problem. And just like with golf, there are mechanical things that need to happen for that club head to connect with the ball right for a great shot. Same with sales. There are things that need to happen prior to revenue attainment that will generate revenue attainment. And if you take your eyes off those things, if you’re not watching how your people are performing in each of the most critical conversations they’re having, then you’re crossing your fingers that they’re doing it right.
Charles:
Yeah. This is where it starts getting interesting because in today’s world, I’m sad to report that the way that we help reps get better is by stuffing technology down their throats. Right? And it’s by saying, well, I guess in order for you to get better, we just have to find a way to automate getting more meetings and putting you more in position. And then what they… what ends up happening is your reps are now practicing with live prospects. Right? And you are creating… you’re actually making the problem worse because now you’re creating more opportunity for them to fail as opposed to taking a step back and filling them with the actual attributes that make a seller good to create that long-term sustainability so that they can achieve quarter over quarter. And this is, this is something that is just getting worse and worse and worse. And at some point somebody’s got to take a stand in these organizations and say, Hey, let’s stop this over spending on things that are short-term and let’s invest in the long-term of our organizations. And that’s really by looking at: how do we get our people consistently great?
Dan:
Well, and Charles, there are organizations around the world that get this. So this is why that theme was so important for us, “when lives are on the line”, because there are organizations that understand; we will not put someone in a situation where so much is at stake until we know they’re ready. So I’m not going to put a soldier into combat until we know they’re ready. The basketball teams aren’t going to put a player into the lineup until they know they’re ready, physically, mentally, that they have the skills locked in, that they know the plays. Doctors don’t get to perform surgery until they have proven their ability in every aspect of medicine that that surgery is going to require. For some reason in business, it’s like, we think, well, you know, this guy has a resume. He says he’s sold before. We gave him our deck and he sat through three weeks of training. So that’s good, right? I mean, he’s got to represent us well.
Charles:
You know, last time I checked, it’s not another company’s responsibility to do our jobs. Right? To get our people game ready. And I think we’re using some hiring practices to try to make our lives easier, um, to take the burden off of us by hiring what we believe to be superstars or who on their own created resumes of the bullet points where they’ve achieved so much and been the best of the best. Well, there can’t be the best of the best at every single company coming to interview with us. Right? So we’ve got to create an infrastructure that allows them to become great our way with our methods, our process. And we’ve got to own the success and the failure of those programs. So why are we here? Why is this crippling companies?
Dan:
There’s a lot of answers. Some companies feel like sellers are just going to churn and the strong ones are going to make it and the weak ones aren’t. And they feel like that’s just part of the environment and part of the way it has to be. And I think some are okay with that. And I think compounding this issue is they have survey results telling them that their training is great. And well, this will come up many times. I hate surveys. Cannot stand. I think they are so detrimental to a training environment because they’re usually taking… they’re usually given at the wrong time and asking the wrong questions to the wrong people. And so you get these onboarding programs where new hires have gone through. They’ve had their luxury cruise. They’ve had good food. They put on 10 pounds while they’re sitting in class and being talked at. And now they’re on zoom, so they’re getting virtual coffee and they’re being talked at virtually. But the same thing is happening. They’re not really out… they’re not doing anything. And at the end, they’re asked to rate it. And they’ll give it their score. And so the company looks at this and says, hey, we just graduated 15 new people. We have 4.5 out of five stars on average. Some of our sessions really got great reviews. This must be an amazing training program. I can’t figure out why people aren’t selling better when they hit the floor. And so you’ve got a lot of factors contributing to this. And in many ways it’s turned on its head.
Charles:
Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, so if I’m a new rep and I come to this company, I’m excited. I go through this onboarding. And now you’re asking me to rate it. If I didn’t like it, I can’t give that feedback because I’m new. I have zero political equity. I’m just somebody who is new this organization, trying to get their feet wet, trying to figure out who’s who in the zoo. So I give high marks. Maybe I had a good time. Right? I had fun. You know, the virtual coffee was good. They sent me a little care package on my first day. Awesome. You know, I may be feeling good, but I’m certainly probably not feeling prepared. And then you take that to maybe a seller that’s doing some refined training, you know, two years into the role at this company. Maybe they have some equity built up. They’re looked upon as valuable to the organization. And if they start giving that feedback, well, then the organization might turn on them. And I’ve seen it happen where, you know, we’re putting sellers into rooms they don’t want to be in, with trainings being led by individuals who are unqualified to give those trainings. And then we’re asking for… do you like this human being? And we forget to ask about the actual purpose of the event, which was to make these sellers better. And it’s amazing how this continues to be a problem and how organizations seem to be relatively okay with it, because, well, that’s the way things are done. Right? And I’ll tell you what, the way you hate surveys, I echo that. And it grinds my gears that we’re not more focused on actually wanting the feedback that’s going to make our organizations better when it comes to trying to make our sellers better.
Dan:
Yeah. And the things they’re giving feedback on, the things they like, have no substance to them. It has no long-term value. Who cares if they liked the class they were in, who cares if they felt that the people that were talking at them were genuine and nice and liked them. If they can’t perform better as a result of it, then those people failed.
Charles:
So on that note, when we’re focused on the right results, what do we have to do differently?
Dan:
The big thing you do differently when results matter, you invest in your people not around them. And this is one of the things I see in the world of sales that there’s this trend over the last decade or so to surround people with more and more software, more and more systems, more and more programs and support that is (you would think) designed to make them better. But really what it does is it adds a lot of noise and headache without making that individual any more capable of doing their job. And in some cases, it makes their job much more difficult. And I think companies have this view that has to change. Right now it feels like most organizations view their sellers as temporary. The seller is filling a role for a short amount of time and then will be gone. So we’ve got to make everything around that role as permanent as possible so that we can just plug the next person in when they come. I’m sure there’s some great reasons behind that. We can talk about those. But if they viewed them as permanent, then they’d be looking at; what can we do to make this individual better? What can we do to make them feel like they’re growing here, like they’re learning here, their skills are developing and they’re accomplishing more? That’s what I mean by investing in people versus around.
Charles:
Yeah. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat with clients and they say, you know what? We’ve got a new class coming in and, you know, we’re really hoping that we can get a really good 18 to 24 months out of them. Well, okay. Why so little? Are you going out of business in 18 to 24 months? And they’re like, well, that’s just the average tenure of a rep. I’m like, well, you know, you control that, right? That’s your decision. It’s not… The market doesn’t dictate how long a rep stays with you. Right? Unless I missed something, unless there’s a finite, you know… you got to fire this person after X time, or they’re going to leave. I mean, it’s… the environment we create is what makes sellers either stay or go, right? The famous line is you don’t, you don’t quit your company, you quit your boss. Right. So I think more people should take that to heart and start saying, Hey, am I the boss that they’re gonna quit? Or am I going to start investing in them? And maybe that means you have to have some uncomfortable conversations inside your walls, right? You probably have to manage this culture. You want to build up potentially if your organization hasn’t fully bought in, but darn it take a stand. Because it’s a viral. If you get these… if you get this culture building in one, just small part of your organization, it creates a ripple effect because everyone’s going to want to work for that team that they can see investing in their people. But if organizationally, you don’t buy into that concept, then you’re right, it’s going to be a revolving door. And you’re going to be having the same trainings over and over and over. We’re going to have the same corporate problems over and over and over. And if you start thinking about what that does to your customers, if you start thinking about what that does to your pipelines, it kills it because buyers are smart these days. In fact, I don’t think we’ve touched on this yet, but buyers are smart. They’re going to look at LinkedIn navigator. They’re going to look at other places… How, you know, if I want to do business with this company if we’re going to partner with them how has their employee balance changed? Does their sales team dropping 25% at the end of every year and then going back up? How does that ebb and flow? Are they consistent or do people want to stay and work there? Because that tends to be a direct reflection of how that product performs in the market. And I think that’s an important point for people to consider is like what are the optics of our organization? Right? If the people who are in charge of delivering… of selling this to our customers or our prospects, and they don’t stay very long, what does that say about our company and our product? Ooh, scary stuff.
Dan:
Yeah. Well and it certainly has an impact on the perception in the marketplace, the perception of new hires coming on board. And think about this, think of how much of that is a self fulfilling prophecy. We plan on an 18 month life cycle with sellers because that’s what we’ve seen in the past. And maybe we have good data to show that. So now we build programs around getting the most out of them during that 18 months and getting new people in to take their spot. So that just leads to more and more investments that do not make them feel like this is a place they can grow more and more investments that, that aren’t in the person to make them better and more skilled and provide opportunities for them to grow. And so at 18 months, they’ve got to go somewhere else because they’re not growing. Your very best people are going to want to break the shackles that are holding them back and morph into something bigger and better than they are right now. And if you’re not providing that as an organization, your best people are going to find somewhere that will. And if that means a new job, they’ll happily take it. And you will have lost out on someone that could have been a great long-term asset because you decided that they’re only worth investing around for a very short period of time.
Charles:
Yeah, it is really amazing. I see so many people on LinkedIn and these are, these are smart entrepreneurs. These are ex-sales leaders that are consulting now and all these things. And I respect them. But one of the common themes I keep hearing is, Hey, invest in yourself, go outside of your company and learn and take classes. And I don’t think they’re saying that to kind of get people out of their companies and learning somewhere else. I think they’ve realized and haven’t been able to change the paradigm that’s within a lot of these organizations. And so their basically saying, Hey, if you want to get better and you kind of liked your company and you like your product, just go find help somewhere else and try it. And to your point, this is what’s causing so much loss of loyalty from reps. And it used to jam…, if you think 15, 20 years ago, people were staying at companies for a years and they loved it and they grew with it. And the career development… the ladders… they were going all the way up. Which is now… I mean, the common consensus as a rep, especially good reps, they go to markets that are hot. They stay for a couple of years. When that cools down, they go somewhere else. Right? And I don’t know about you, but if I had a company, if I’ve got a rep who’s hungry and is crushing it, I’m going to do everything I can to keep them there. And I’m gonna start communicating with them and asking them; Hey, what do you need? And I think the only way you prevent yourself from getting into that conversation with somebody (what do you need to stay? What do you need more from us?) is by starting in auditing; what are the things that they actually need from a results/a metric standpoint? But also, you know, let’s look at stage conversion. Let’s look at all these things that are important, and let’s start breaking down where it is they’re falling short here and there. right? And you kind of marry their successes with what they can do to get better because is so many people are talking about, Hey, get better outside of work and do all these classes. Then it’s a businesses opportunity. And quite frankly, their requirement, in my opinion to say, okay, well, what learnings are they going after? Where are they feeling short? But the only conversations we have with our reps these days is; what’s your pipeline? What’s your forecast? How much did you close? You going to club? Or it’s PIP time. Right? Like, what are the conversations we are having with them? It’s great. In fact, maybe one of these episodes, we should talk about how to structure the right one-on-one. ‘Because I think a lot of leaders are getting that wrong. There’s an opportunity for them to win back some of the reps who may be falling out of love with their current organizations,
Dan:
This is something that people are hungry for. You CROs that are listening – your employees, your sellers want to be trained. They want to grow. They want to be better than they are right now. That’s one of the wonderful things about human nature. So often human nature works against us in sales. Sometimes it works for us. And that need to improve is something that you can capitalize on and give them what they’re looking for and make them feel great about what your company offers for them.
Charles:
Yeah. If told you that the average NBA player spends 99% of their time practicing and 1% of their time playing… and what if I told you that a sales rep spends 0.6% of their time practicing? both of those stats are true. And so, if you look at a 12 month, 20 days …20 business days or so a month, 240 days, you spend 0.6% of your time practicing. Well, guess what? The good news is your reps are practicing more than 0.6%. The problem is, they’re practicing with your customers, with live prospects. right?
Dan:
And you mentioned earlier that customers are smart. They can tell. They can tell when you’re using a line that you have never used before. They can tell when you are talking about your company in a way that’s coming of a PowerPoint, like bullet points, instead of what you know about the industry, you know about the company. And you can not build those neuropathways, you cannot create that muscle memory without spending time saying those things and doing those things. We talked about the things that companies do differently when results matter. Right? We talked about investing in your people and not around your people. Defining what good looks like is a huge part of that, which most companies don’t get right. They define only what good looks like in terms of outcomes. They know what good quota attainment looks like. They know what good stage conversion rates look like. But they don’t know what good looks like in that conversation with the client, defined to the point that a new person can say; ahh, I know why that sale didn’t go as well as it should have, because of the six points that I’m supposed to make, or of the eight questions I’m supposed to ask – whatever the number is – I only did a percentage of those. And I missed these elements that are clearly defined for me. The other thing that companies that understand (when results matter)… the other thing they do differently is they monitor abilities, not feelings. They monitor abilities and they value the performance of the people in their organization more than the comfort of those people. So this manifests itself in all their training programs. In onboarding, for example, they have people engaging in the conversations are going to have to engage in with clients very early on. As they’re telling them, “this is why our company’s great”, they’re also saying, “now, I want you to show me what that would sound like in a first call. And here’s an example of what good looks like for that.” So they’ve explained it, they’ve demonstrated it. Now they say; “now you’re on stage. You’re in front of a client. You tell it back to me and I want it to sound good.” And they’ll put them in that situation where they can see whether that person is able to do it. And that, even that one moment that is infinitely more valuable, that one little bit of data that in their first time, they did pretty good struggled with these areas, but got through it and told a good story that is infinitely better than a survey that says, I felt like my instructor knew what she was talking about.
Charles:
Yeah. I mean, there’s no substitute for making your… for putting your people in a vulnerable position to get better. We talk, I mean, the concept of vulnerability and allowing that to take place and creating… it’s creating a safe, really, it’s creating a safe place for your reps to get it right, no matter how many times it takes.
Dan:
So that’s the thing. Companies will dedicate time and resources to practice. That becomes part of the culture of putting people in a situation where they can learn. They can make before they’re in that high-pressure environment in front of a customer. And it’s sometimes tough for customers – I mean – for companies to do, it’s tough for them to dedicate that time because there’s such an urgent need to get sellers in the field, but they’re tripping over dollars to pick up a dime. They are missing out on opportunities because they’re doing that. And that’s a shame in a lot of ways. It doesn’t do any good for the sellers, nd it’s certainly not helping your customers.
Charles:
There’s a report that came out, I think it was 2018 or 2019. I forget if it was either Topo or HubSpot that did it, but they measured the impact on, uh, if you could increase your discovery conversion by 5% in equal to 26% in revenue increase, deal over deal. So if you can increase it 26%, that means every four deals you’re going to get a free one. And how long does it take to get 5% better at something? I mean, you just got to practice the thing.
Dan:
People understand that principle in concept. They know they have to invest in their people. But I think oftentimes they get confused on how to invest and they get turned around on what investments are going to have the biggest impact. And there’s a couple of things that they seem to avoid at all costs that are tough, maybe, for companies to understand, that this is what you have to do. And I’ll give you an example. We’ve talked about practicing and there are different kinds of practice, by the way. There’s lots of ways to practice the wrong thing. There’s lots of ways to do easy practice that really doesn’t get you results. So when we talk about practice, we’re talking about putting yourself in a situation where you are doing the things that you will do with customers. You’re learning the key conversations. You’re learning how to have them in high pressure environments. And what this all comes down to is you have to make people uncomfortable. You have to, if you’re going to train them, you’re going to teach them to be better. You have to put them in that situation where they are stretching themselves a little bit. Otherwise they’re not going to learn.
Charles:
Yeah, I think you nailed it. I think one of the, one of the big things are getting uncomfortable is I think those leaders are gonna have to get uncomfortable too, by telling that rep, Hey, as you’re practicing a constructive way of saying; that wasn’t very good. We gotta get better. Right? You know, sales is kind of so inherently negative, right? We lose deals and, and all the things, and we get yelled at when we lose deals and all the things that go along with it, which is what we signed up for. It’s fine. But we have to be able to tell our reps that wasn’t good enough. We have to be able to say, do it again, do it again, do it again. Right? And, and personally, I love getting uncomfortable because that means to your point, I’m growing, I’m stretching my limbs, I’m getting taller. I’m going to feel good because if you leave a practice session or training, and you’re not tired, you haven’t… you don’t feel like you’ve been through just this experience of just like, Whoa, this was rough and hard and challenged me, then you didn’t grow. You didn’t actually learn anything. And this is why we, you know, you and I talk about this all the time, In fact, we should put on our t-shirts: training is a lifestyle, not an event. Right? And this is where you see, you know, big fitness buffs. They push themselves so hard at the gym, and on the runs, and as they’re scaling walls, and jumping over things, and all these things… is because they’re making their bodies uncomfortable so that they can create change. They get lean, or they can get stronger. They can get that six pack (that one day I will have). Right? But in that case, we got to say, no, you got to do it again. You got to get better. You gotta get strong. You got to push harder.
Dan:
Every seller started out awkward, every great seller without fail, they did not start as a great seller. That was a process. Selling is a learned skill. And as they gained experience, and as they practiced, and as they were put in uncomfortable situations, they built skills and they became more capable. And they became that person who is an exceptional seller. And now they sound authentic. Now, every time they talk about the product, they have a level of expertise and credibility that just makes them sound like they’ve been doing this their whole life. Well, that’s not by accident. That came through a lot of hard work. And if you’re not willing to do that hard work, you can’t reach that point.
Charles:
Yeah. I mean that’s the thing. And it’s funny. And you mentioned it earlier, reps are dying for this. They want this. And, I think, you know, they also know that the hardest people you’re ever going to present in front of are the people you work for. ‘Cause you want to be perfect. Well, let’s make it easier for them. Let’s say it’s not about being perfect. It’s about getting just a little bit better today, just a little bit. And we’re going to make it fun. We’re going to make it… immersive. You’re going to work hard. You’re going to sweat. It’s going to be uncomfortable. But we’re doing this together. Right? And I think it’s a great way for companies to take, to do this… is to have the sales leader be involved, fall on your face, too. I mean, just, just do it right. Get in the trenches with them and practice together. And you’ll build loyalty. You’ll build trust. You’ll have some fun. You know, people will see you as a human and someone they can relate to a little bit more than the scary person that yells at them about being at 80% instead of 200% of plan and all the things. And you might learn a little something too about your people. What makes them special? The environment’s not hard to create. It’s the, desire for you to want to create it. And I would challenge people out there to do that, to try it.
Dan:
We want them to shift their focus a little bit. We want them to shift the focus to what’s right for their people. I think about, you know, change is never comfortable. It’s never easy. It is worth it. And that’s what you’re enacting. I mean, if you’re a good sales leader, you are a change agent. You are taking someone who is less than perfect in their sales ability and moving them closer to perfect. They’ll probably never be perfect, but you can keep moving them closer and closer and closer. And we had talked the other day about this concept of path versus destination, and that most organizations are so focused on the path. They’re so focused on rolling out the red carpet for their people, that they actually lead them to the wrong destination. It was a wonderful, easy-to-walk path and they get to the end and they look back and they think, Hey, that was comfortable, that was nice. But they’re no better for it. And you contrast that with the organizations that say, Hey, we’re going to identify the destination we want people to arrive at. And then we’re going to build the program that will get them there. And by the way, that path will not be as comfortable. It will not be as easy. It’s uphill. It’s hard. But if you ask people at the end of that path and you compare that… you ask them how they feel, and you compare them to the people at the end of the red carpet path, the people at the end of the difficult path who arrived at the right destination are more skilled, they’re more capable, they’re making more money. This is why in the NBA, I don’t know… I’m not, look, I’ve never been close to an NBA player, so I don’t know, but I don’t imagine they do a lot of surveys asking how people liked their daily doubles and how they liked hitting the gym after a long day of practice or how they liked running lines. But if you ask them after winning a championship, how they felt about the coaching staff that pushed them early in the season to get in shape, that continued to push them throughout the season, to be better, to reach higher… you ask them that… you survey them at the end, and I guarantee you, they will be singing the praises of those people that they hated just eight months earlier. Because it made a difference in their lives. It changed everything about how they perform.
Charles:
So Dan, we’ve talked about when lives are on the line. We’ve talked about the things that we have to do differently when results matter. So what should our listeners do next? What do they need to do here?
Dan:
Yeah. So we’ve spent some time covering the things organizations do differently when results really matter, when lives, when careers, when individual results are on the line. And here’s what it boils down to… Here’s maybe the biggest gap that companies have to have to cross. There is a big difference between knowing what to do and understanding how to do it. And there’s just as big of a gap between understanding how to do it and being able to do it well. And that’s… so there’s this chasm that they need to cross. And most trainings – and I’ve evaluated a lot of training in my day, everything from startups to some of the biggest companies in the world – and very few get the “how” right. They’re heavy on “what”. They’ll outline all that in detail, the things people need to do, but they offer them very little in the way of helping them be great at doing those things. And that’s what people need the most. That’s what takes a seller who is struggling to a person who can be a top performer – is understanding how to execute those individual elements. And so what it really boils down to; it’s building the skills to make them better at the job of selling and everything that, that entails in your organization.
Charles:
Yeah. And I know we’re, we’re going to dig into skills in one of these subsequent episodes. In fact, we may even do it on the neck as the next episode, but I know I’m curious to see if you want to share the story about some of the discovery sessions you’ve done on some of the skill evaluations that we’ve done around just that particular topic. You want to share that with us?
Dan:
So this is a fun one. I chuckle because Charles and I have had a lot of conversations around this. You’ll find in later episodes that we view discovery very highly. That in… for most companies, that’s the crux of the sales process. So if you get discovery right, everything else tends to fall into place (if not easily, at least much more easily than it would have otherwise). And so we do a lot of evaluations on how well people execute the discovery process. Now a little context, this is funny because when you interview sellers and you ask them what they’re best at, this is also the number one answer they give. They think that they’re fantastic at building relationships. They think that they’re amazing at uncovering client needs. And they think that they have all the right information before they would ever proceed to give a recommendation. Our evaluations tell a very different story. When, when you actually map out what information they need to get, and then you put them in even just a very easy simulated role-play environment where they have to ask the right questions to get that information, you find that it’s lacking. We had a company a while back where I came in and I did evaluations on discovery for a group of 18 people in one particular area of the country. And of the 60 data points they were supposed to find in discovery, the average among these 18 reps was eight. Eight out of 60 data points. There was a skills gap. The discovery conversations that they thought they were having were not the ones they were actually having. But then, once we identified how to do that the right way, what’s holding you back from asking those questions, what are the good questions look like, and how do you make sure that you’re getting all the data points… It only took a matter of days to turn them from averaging 8 out of 60 to averaging 42 out of 60 in that class. Because we focused on the skills. And we made people uncomfortable. By the way, it was uncomfortable when they found out how bad those test scores were. It was uncomfortable as they had to unlearn the wrong way of asking questions. It was uncomfortable as they got in front of their teammates and messed up and practiced and messed up again and practiced and kept doing it until they got it right. But at the end, when they’re asking questions the right way, when it’s making sense, when they’re having so much more of an effective conversation with clients – I almost said they were walking on cloud nine – I mean the truth is, they were pretty exhausted after all of this. But they felt great about where they were in terms of their new skills that they were starting to build.
Charles:
In every kind of evaluation that we’ve delivered back to our clients, here’s always that moment of… when we, when we show them that score, there’s always a moment of like, they kind of get a little, I’d say they get a little upset because they felt like it went better. It felt okay. It sounded good. But if you’re open to be shown the level of improvement that these reps not only need to make, but actually can make, and you kind of extrapolate for them what that can mean for those metrics we are all in love with… the revenue and things like that. Then it provides an incredible opportunity for you to look and say, wow, if in just a couple of days we can go from 8% to 80, I wonder what I can do with my team.
Dan:
So Charles, you know, I have four kids and my kids are in sports. They’ll all play club soccer. And it’s interesting because at the club level they have professional coaches and these coaches push them hard. The expectation is very high because they’re expected to be future collegiate soccer players. And so the way they do training is so different than the way the sales world does training. The coach doesn’t sit them down and talk at them for half an hour. He doesn’t show them a ton of videos. There’s no PowerPoint presentation. He may take a minute at the beginning of practice. And then for the rest of practice, they have the ball on their foot and they’re running around and they’re bumping into each other. They’re tackling each other. The coaches calling out when they’re doing things wrong and making adjustments. But they’re continually in that learning zone. And it’s continually uncomfortable. They away from practice tired because they’ve run fast. They’ve pushed hard. They’ve been knocked over and had to get back up. They’ve had moments where they’ve been called out in front of the whole team for something that they screwed up, and then they’re expected to do it better five seconds, ten seconds later. It’s a high-pressure environment, but it makes great soccer players. And that’s the thing that people have to understand when you’re coaching salespeople; sales is an unforgiving environment. If you coddle them leading up to that moment where they need those skills, they will be incapable, unequipped for those moments. And you will have done them a disservice by not giving them what they needed at the time when you had the chance early on in their training. And instead, you’re going to put them in a situation where they’re going to embarrass themselves because they don’t have the skills. That’s why they turn over. I mean, it’s part of it. So that’s the thing. You got to look at this… Oh, and, and the reason I bring my kids up is I love them. They are my world, and I’m willing to put them through those uncomfortable situations because I’m not looking at that practice. That practice is not the destination. That is a moment in time. And I want them to learn the skills that come along with becoming an excellent soccer player, not just the physical skills, but the teamwork skills, the people skills, the competitive drive, and all of that stuff is hard. And it’s uncomfortable. They’ve come home crying at times, and yet they’re stronger for it. I want them to go through that.
Charles:
Yeah. I mean, you know, if you can apply to your kids, I mean, I can’t tell you the teams I’ve led those, those reps then managers, those are my kids. You know, I mean, I’m, I’m responsible for their fate, for their careers, for when their lives are on the line. And they are every single day. But the best way that I can help them get there is by letting them skin their knees. It’s by it’s by letting them fail. But the way I can also protect them, which we have to do with our kids as well, is by letting them skin their knees and fall on their faces in a safe environment where we’ve curated it for them to get better. Controlled environment so that when they get on those phones, when they get on that zoom, and when they’re in that pressure situation, that they’re working off muscle memory. It’s ingrained. They’re not looking at notes. They’re executing on learned habits and skills that have become second nature to them because of the work we did in advance of that situation.
Dan:
Absolutely. And I think you have to love them enough to let them skin their knees. And there’s an interesting thing that happens when you do that, by the way. One of the reasons why people want to roll out the red carpet for new hires is because they understand that the very best salespeople have options. They can go work anywhere they want, and if you happen to get them, now you’ve got to keep them. And so one of the things you want to get out of any onboarding or any training programs is a conversion. You want them coming out of that program in love with your company, in love with your product, converted to the message, and ready to go out and in and tell it to the world. But that conversion does not come when you treat it like a four-star hotel. Conversion doesn’t come with better food or more entertaining speakers. Conversion comes when they learn and when they grow and when they’re better for it. And conversion really comes when they hit the field and they realize that these tough situations that they are going to face… you’ve prepared them for it. You’ve equipped them to succeed. And that changes how they feel about your organization.
Charles:
Yeah. I mean, you’re exactly right. I mean, imagine if your reputation among your peers and I mean peers in terms of other companies in your space or other companies that are courting your potential new hires. Imagine if they came to you, not just because of how great your product is or what list you’re on or what your glass door says, but if they came to you knowing that they’re going to get better, that they came to train and learn. And that was instilled in them through the interview process, through the vetting, through the… all the things. And when they came up, they came in saying, I’m, I’m ready to get, I’m ready to get a little skinned up. I’m ready to get great, because we know that they want it. Yeah.
Dan:
Yeah. W where else are they going to get that? Where else are they going to get that kind of consistent learning, the consistent opportunity to consistent growth?
Charles:
Yeah. I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re in a world where, where, uh, the growth that they’re going to get is in that, that match that they get you in the 401k or those great benefits, but it’s like, listen, throw that all out the window, keep you, keep your benefits. Show me how to make money. Show me how to create success. Show me how to gain skills that have been lacking, right? Because the reality is, and this is something important for, for people to understand is when there’s a rep that you’re hiring, I don’t care where they came from. If they’re looking for a job, something happened at the last company. And so what was that? Right? They weren’t, they weren’t getting the support they needed, they missed their number and they, they, they left before they got fired, whatever there’s a shortcoming somewhere. And instead of glossing over that, let’s, let’s embrace it, figure out what it is and let’s train to it so that they don’t leave. So, uh, we promised at the top of this, uh, of this, of this podcast, that we were going to make sure that you leave every episode with some actual next steps. So Dan, what can leaders, heroes heck even the one to tell their boss?
Dan:
So there’s, there’s four things. The first one is you want to identify the three to five most important conversations that your sellers have. And that’s, that may seem like a really simple ask. Charles, you’ve seen it. We consult with so many customers that can’t tell us what the most important conversations are. And so they prepare people for anything, any number of conversations, don’t do that to them identify one, two and three. That’s probably a good place to start. What are the three most important conversations that you’re asking your sellers to have? And then number two, define what good looks like for each of those in detail and make sure that that you’ve as part of that, you know, what skills are required to execute good for each of those conversations. Number three, start measuring your team based on performance. And I don’t mean end result number performance.
Dan:
Cause I know you already do that, measure them on the performance of those conversations. That means you’re going to have to do shadows. You’re going to have to use maybe technology to record their calls. You’re going to have to have people watching what they’re doing so you can see them in action. And if that doesn’t work, at least create a role-play environment. So once a quarter, you can see that person deliver a, a first call live or a discovery call or a demo or whatever live. And then lastly, the toughest one practice incorporate practice into everything you do. And I don’t mean practice with a client. I mean, practice before you get in front of a client. And the reason these things are so important is these are the things that organizations do when lives are on the line. They identify the most important skills.
Dan:
They define what good looks like for those skills. They measure the team based on their ability to perform and execute those skills. And they practice until those things become second nature. And once you do that, by the way you raise that bar for what good looks like in your organization, you take people from just being competent to extraordinarily capable. And, and, and this does wonders not only for your organization, but for the individuals who feel themselves getting better and can take pride in that accomplishment of performing at a higher level than they have before. I love it.
Charles:
I love it. You know what? Let’s come on. Where’s listen to this. Just challenge yourself, spend the next couple of days, take a weekend, take an evening and bullet out these steps for yourself and take a shot, right? And most importantly, let us know how it goes, right? So we covered a ton of stuff today. Dan, great job as always, uh, we’ll see you on the next episode. If you want to get in touch with us wind spectrum.com, w I N. spectrum.com [email protected]. [email protected]. Look out for our next couple episodes that are going to be fire like this one, happy, solid out there and good luck. See you next time. Thanks. Hello. Thanks everyone.
