Sales Reality Check: 5 Things CEOs and VPs Need to Address Immediately

“We need our salespeople to do more.”

?Have you found yourself saying this recently?

If so, you may not like what you’re about to hear. The key to selling is actually all about getting your salespeople to do less. We like to focus on getting back to basix.

We’ve worked with thousands of salespeople over the years, and never have they asked us for more “stuff” to do. They all want to know how to get better, faster, more effective, and primarily how to best hit their numbers. 

In this post, I will share with you the five key areas you can help your team win in, starting today:

• Key #1: Do less to do more. Complexity kills sales
• Key #2: Get back to fundamentals and just start selling
• Key #3: Let nothing fall through the cracks by having a complete process
• Key #4: Specialize roles for both people and systems: right people, right thing, right time. 
• Key #5: Make selling human again through personalized sales conversations

Before we dive in, keep this in mind:

Sales is not all about the numbers...but it is.

There’s a common misconception that salespeople only care about the numbers. The reason it may feel like they have this single-minded focus, is that their identity is usually tied to their performance, to that leaderboard, to your reports that are discussed every day, week, month, and year. If you’re being talked about every day in relation to a report, you will do everything in your power to make sure that is a positive discussion. No one wants to be spoken of negatively. 

This is why many salespeople will push back on new initiatives, roll their eyes when they need to attend another meeting, or not use the CRM the way you asked (told) them to. Most sales-tools ask a lot from the salesperson… We believe the tools should ask less and just be a natural extension of them.

It’s not that they don’t want to do those things; they just don’t see how it contributes to the goal. We work with reps every day who are hungry to learn more, are willing to invest time into honing their skills through coaching, love using new tech tools, and are innovative & strategic thinkers. We also hear from many salespeople that they want to develop leadership skills and be a part of the bigger picture. When we help salespeople win, they will help us win - now and into the future.

Key #1: Do less to do more. Complexity kills sales.

I know it feels good to have all the latest tech tools—fifteen well-designed spreadsheets with all the colors, and multiple screens open like you are Tom Cruise in Minority Report. The truth is that it makes salespeople crazy. They want to sell, and the twenty open Chrome tabs are making them insane.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t have complex and innovative systems. We want to focus on simplifying the execution of tasks, especially for your salespeople. If you simply just hand complex tools to reps to figure out for themselves, you set them up to fail and ultimately put your company at risk.

According to David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work, we are only truly focused on our work six hours per week. That’s crazy...but it makes sense with how much we all have on our plates. Life is busy and feels like it’s getting busier. When we speak with salespeople and do complexity audits on their time, many of them show us how they could accomplish their sales goals in at least half the time it takes them now if barriers and complexity were removed. 

This is why, especially now, we’re seeing reps requesting to stay working from home and build their schedules. Often, they know how they can sell more by doing less. 

Here’s what we could and should be asking our salespeople:

• What tasks take my time away from actually selling that I would be happy not doing?
• Which tasks support my ability to connect with my customer and actually sell?
• What tasks give me the highest return, and which ones give me the lowest?
• If I could spend my time doing only the things that matter, what would those be? i.e., How would I design my ideal day?

Ask them these questions, and you will be surprised at how easy it will be to optimize and motivate a sales team to start.

For example, the reps for one of our clients used to spend over an hour a day, switching all lists for different time zones in their dialing tool. Today that all just happens automatically. That’s five hours per workweek multiplied by eighty-seven reps. Think about how many more sales that becomes.

This is one of the key components of basix.ai. To create the most uncomplicated execution process, we built a complex system that supports best practices, finds hidden opportunities, and systemizes the highest value activities. And then puts the rep in front of only what they need to win.

“Productivity isn’t about being a workhorse, keeping busy or burning the midnight oil… It’s more about priorities, planning, and fiercely protecting your time.” — Margarita Tartakovsky

Key #2: Get back to fundamentals and just start selling

How many sales have you made today? How many dials?

“I haven’t done any yet because I’m still logging into the ten platforms, checking emails, and trying to figure out who I should call first.” 

This is normal.

We have some pretty awesome clients and love working directly with the sales reps in the trenches. One thing they love about basix.ai is that we get it. Everything we do is about putting salespeople in front of leads with the right information and as little extra to do as possible. They open the web app, and who they need to talk to is right there. They make their calls, set their follow-ups, and the next hot lead is right there. That’s it. It’s like their own personal assistant. 

While we don’t want to give you the sales pitch too early, I wanted to illustrate the thinking behind our system. Imagine if you just set your team up to simply open their computer and start selling? What’s possible? 

What would reps and managers do with the extra time?

• They would learn more insights about their customers and how to connect your offer
• They would have more time for coaching on sales calls
• They would do more personal development
• They would be the “team player” you wished they would be
• Managers would do less managing and more leading

If everyone would just get back to basics and start selling, you win the game. 

Here’s a dialogue on messenger we had with a client for rep onboarding (don’t mind the typos).

Jay (Basix) - “Hi Blayne...so how has Basix changed the time it takes for a new rep to ramp up for you?”

Blayne (Client Sales Manager) - “Before Basix, it took at least a week before a new rep made their first call. Now, with Basix, they’re making calls in two days.”

Jay (Basix) - “Lol, two days! I can’t put that on the site…”

We don’t want to over-promise our product but want to highlight that when you put the right tools to enable sales in front of reps, they can get selling immediately, even if they’re new. \

From our client:

"I can tell you as somebody who has used Outreach and currently uses HubSpot sales Pro with the sales team, that I'm dying to have fewer question marks in our process. My goal is for a sales rep to have in front of them the thing they most need to do."

Key #3: Let nothing fall through the cracks by having a complete process

Not all sales teams or processes are created equal. But for the most part, all sales teams struggle with almost identical challenges when it comes to their lists. 

Go look at your pipeline and ask yourself these questions:

• Are my leads just sitting in “buckets” waiting for someone to do something?
• Do we “cherry-pick” the leads we feel have the most potential?
• Is there a list of active leads or prospects who currently have no future actions scheduled?

We’ve worked with thousands of reps over the years and have never seen anyone who has an entirely dialed-in system with no one falling through the cracks. We get it.

What I want to challenge you to think about is the amount of energy and time it takes:

1. To get these people into buckets
2. To advance them through pipeline stages
3. To have them agree to a follow-up

...only to have either some person or system forget to do something. 

We don’t think salespeople purposely skip steps. 

We don’t think salespeople are resisting following up with hot prospects. 

We especially don’t think salespeople are lazy (yes, there are exceptions). 

We know that most systems allow for human error, and often, complexity or unnecessary steps cause missed opportunities. When you are a busy, high-performing rep in an incomplete system, you can essentially guarantee that 10-20% (if not more) of what you are trying to achieve will be missed due to lack of complete process. 

What’s possible for your business if you combine a high-performing rep with a high-performing system?

"Before basix.ai, we just called the same leads over and over. With basix.ai, the team is reaching out to a way larger audience and making thousands of new sales we would never have made before."

Key #4: Specialize roles for both people and systems: right people, right thing, right time. 

There’s a myth out there that being busy and being able to multitask is what makes you successful. In truth, when you multitask, you end up losing about 40% of your productivity. 

Let’s face it, selling-has-changed. Why? Because buyers have changed. Heck, the world has changed. 

It used to be that being a sales generalist was good enough. Being able to list build, network, cold prospect, warm-up, set appointments, close, and manage accounts was essentially all part of being a complete salesperson.

Today, we have some pretty cool options. You can automate much of the lead-gen functions to get your team more ideal clients to focus on, rather than a “spray and pray” method. You optimize people who are amazingly proficient at creating something-out-of-nothing and generating curiosity to book appointments. And you can win with insightful and influential closers who can take warm, qualified leads and get the highest customer value possible.

When you help individuals focus on one specialty, they will always outperform generalists. When you combine specialized roles with specialized tech, you change the game in your industry. 

Food for thought: The Bridge Group’s 2014 SDR Metrics Report, showed that, of 222 companies polled, nearly 40% had implemented role specialization.

The challenge we have for you here is to take a real look at your teams. Do you have highly trained, effective players who focused on very specific activities? Or do you have some people you like who do lots of stuff well and keep things comfortable?

You’d be surprised to find that when you specialize sales roles, you awaken things in reps that make them hungry to be specialists because they can see clearly how to win. 

Key #5: Make selling human again through personalized sales conversations

Let’s try to bring it all together here. While each of these keys may seem separate, they all connect to each other very specifically.

When you make it too complex, salespeople have a hard time just selling or finding the time to sell, which causes them to start skipping steps, with prospects falling through the cracks. This makes them juggle tasks (and personalities), work backwards, and causes them to have little time to hone their best skill—their human conversations.

If you’re with me on that, then let’s talk about sales conversations.

Your reps don’t want to blow sales calls. They want to have great conversations with people who are interested in talking to them with the possibility that they will become a customer.

What gets in the way of that? Time. Complexity. Meetings. Tech. Stuff. Everything else.

There is not a salesperson you will meet who would not be excited about asking better questions, leading conversations from insights, objection-busting frameworks, or subconscious communication. They eat that stuff up! 

But what happens? They get on sales calls and turn into salespeople. They have so much on their plate that the human connection is just one more thing that suffers. And guess what? Your customers sense it. 

They know this is a sales call. 

When you equip your salespeople with:

1. Tools that reduce complexity
2. Processes that support their goals
3. Roles that take advantage of their unique skillsets
4. A focus on just selling

...I guarantee that their conversations will be exactly what your clients want and will influence them to buy. 

We asked a sales rep to describe their day with our system:

“I start my sales day, open basix.ai, it tells me who to call, and about what, I have time to prepare mentally so I can have my BEST conversation, I rock the call, basix.ai does the rest and sets up the follow-up, and I’m on to the next contact.”

Ask your salespeople if this sounds right. Then set up a call with us. 

Next steps: Let’s share our sales values and best practices

We love to talk to sales leaders about their people, systems, and goals...regardless of if we work together.

Our entire team believes that selling today needs an overhaul. And it needs to go backwards to go forwards. 

If you feel this anxiety we’ve seen with countless clients, don’t you think it’s time to get back to basix? 

Since we launched in 2017, we’ve realized one major thing...the biggest challenge sales teams face, big or small, is that complexity kills sales. We have found that by doing these deep dives, we’ve uncovered that whether you are a two-person team or 27,000 people, setting yourself up to sell consistently to the right people at the right time is all that matters. 

• basix.ai is trusted by salespeople. It helps them sell.
• basix.ai is trusted by managers. It helps them manage and coach.
• basix.ai is trusted by CEOs. It helps them grow.

The key to basix.ai is that it turns your sales team into a predictable asset you can use to create new opportunities and explore unique business models because you don’t have to think about sales anymore.

Let’s connect and at the very least find ways to share values around selling. We are happy to share what we’ve learned with you so you can get back to basix for yourself. 

You’ll probably want our software, but we’ll see.