Inside Sales Expert

My sales rep thought he had a "good relationship" with a client. But then he had a rude awakening when the client wrote: "Dance, monkey, dance." ?? He knew their favorite baseball team. Where they grew up. Knew the names of their kids. They laughed and laughed and laughed at each other's jokes...?? But then he accidentally intercepted an email from his potential client where the client was telling his peers "watch how I can get this rep to lower his price for me" and included a little "Dance Monkey, Dance" gif in the email. ?? My rep was humiliated. This is why I get passionate when I hear people say: ?? "KG, KG, you don't understand, sales is ALL ABOUT the relationships!" ?? "People buy from people they like!" This kind of 8u||$h|+ results in salespeople who think that in order to win business, they should be nice and make friends with their potential clients. This couldn't be further from the truth. ?? Learning Lesson: Teach your reps that it's better to be respected than it is to be liked. Teach your reps to look for ways to bring insights to their client and teach the client something they didn't know already. Doing that will develop trust and respect and THAT will be the basis for the relationship. Anybody else been in a situation like this? You thought you had a "great relationship" with a client and then you had a rude-awakening? Drop it in the comments

Agree or disagree: "Sell me this pen" is a good interview question to use to identify great salespeople? Why? Why not?

Hot take: you're wasting your time if you spend your time equally with all of your salespeople. I've been in sales leadership for >25 years & learned that leaders shouldn't spend their time equally with all of their salespeople. There's only 4 types of salespeople and you should spend your time with only 2 of these types: 1. The Eagles. they march to the beat of their own drum, never follow the playbooks, hate the training and for some reason, they still hit or exceed their goals. Leave them alone. Most of the time they want to be left alone. NEVER let new people sit with them for "call shadowing." They are not examples you want other people to follow. 2. The Unsalvageables: they don't follow the playbook, never take direction, rarely hit goals. Spend ZERO time on these people over the long haul. 3. The Try-Hards: they're following the playbook but just not having the success just yet. Work with these people for a defined period of time, like 90-180 days. Some of these people will make it through, come around and start hitting goals but many will not. But give these people attention because they're trying. 4. The Boy/Girl Scouts: they follow the playbook and training, they're highly coachable and they hit goals regularly. Spend the vast majority of your time with these people. It's where you'll get the best ROI of your time. What do you think?

If you could only pick one, what’s the most important quality you look for in a new sales hire?

Over the years, I learned that one of the best ways to figure out where the bottlenecks are in my sales team is to simply go on vacation and shut off contact. When I came back, I learned where the fires and problems are. I fixed those. That way my sales team could run without me. ?? And that's what great leaders strive for: a sales team that runs smoothly without them.

I had this "middle of the pack" rep who landed himself on a 90 day PIP and worked just hard enough to get off PIP but then when he got off PIP, he asked me for a PROMOTION! WTF? And it was at that moment that I learned: ?? the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect, in psychology, is a cognitive bias whereby people with limited competence in a given social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to the performance of their peers or of people in general. His argument was two-fold: 1?? he had hit goal a few times before going on PIP 2?? and then the ACCOMPLISHMENT of getting off PIP (and not getting fired) should earn him a promotion. SMH ?? But this was all my fault as the sales leader. ?? Learning lesson: Make sure you've documented exactly and objectively what it takes to get promoted on the sales floor. If you don't, your reps will come up with their own reasons for promotion and surprise you with their reasons. ??

I made such a rookie mistake. If you can believe it, I couldn't fire a rep, who missed goal 6 months in a row! ?? Here's why: The rep had missed their goal 6 months in a row!! Time to let them go right? So I went to HR to get the paperwork finalized to fire them and she said: ?? "Does he KNOW that he's not meeting your expectations?" My word....how could he not? They've missed goal 6 months in a row!!! ?? My mistake: I never TOLD the team that missing goal consistently was grounds for termination. I didn't have ONE conversation with the rep warning them what would happen. The learning lesson here is ? make sure your reps KNOW in writing what it takes to get fired from their job and ? if they fall short of those expectations have frequent, documented conversations with them when they fail to meet your expectations.

I inherited a salesperson who couldn’t sell his way out of a paper bag. And here's how I dealt with this train wreck. ??? Just like all the others I inherited, I listened to his calls, provided curbside coaching, provided personalized training. Still no improvement. But I noticed something about this rep. They were incredibly analytical and were very, very good working with our CRM and other technology. So instead of firing this rep, I redeployed this rep into a much needed sales operations analyst role. And since then, this rep has gone on to move into Product Manager roles and be part of TWO companies that went public or were acquired and he started his own business and sold it! ?? The learning lesson: before you discard a salesperson, look for the NON-sales skills they have that can add value to your company. ?? Then redeploy them. It will be great for them and great for you. Anybody else have great stories about redeploying salespeople into NON-sales roles?

As the SVP of Sales for a $400million co with >500 people reporting to me, I figured out that there are only 3 types of leaders at pre-IPO tech companies. Here's my story and I'm sticking with it: A handful of crushed up cashews were scattered on the floor of the kitchen. It really bugged me so I knelt down, picked them up with my hands and threw them away and went about my day. That's when I realized, there's only 3 types of leaders at pre-IPO tech companies. ?? The kind of leader that doesn't even see a mess like this and walks on by. ?? The kind of leader that sees the mess, and thinks that it's somebody else's job to fix the mess ?? And the kind of leader that sees the mess, rolls up their sleeves, and cleans up the mess right away. The crushed up cashews were real but they're also a metaphor for the variety of problems and challenges that happen at a pre-IPO tech companies. ?? Learning Lesson: If you want to be successful as a leader at a startup, keep your head on a swivel, look for problems to solve across the company, learn that no job is beneath you, roll up your sleeves and fix the problem. Don't you hate it when people say "that's not my job?"

Sales Manager: "How did that call go?" Salesperson: "Well, they're interested!" Don't be fooled by this. This is not a qualified deal. Teach your salesperson to find out: ?? What is the surface level pain/problem their facing ?? What is the next level business problem (deeper than surface level) ?? What is the PERSONAL pain the prospect is facing? ?? What is the cost of inaction? ?? They're interested but by why would they take action? ?? Is doing nothing an option? ?? Can they afford what we've got? Are we even in the ballpark? ?? Does buying this support a strategic initiative for the company? ?? Learning Lesson: Interest is the counterfeit of need. Improve the quality of your pipeline and forecast by teaching your salespeople to dig deeper with their prospects to really determine if they want, need, can afford and want to buy your product in a relatively short amount of time. Does anybody else have a visceral reaction when your rep tells you the prospect is "interested?"