If you're looking for a tactical way to get more out of your team and recognize your top performers along the way, this episode is for you! Steve has a great approach to recognizing the strengths of people across his teams and putting them in the position to coach their peers...making everyone (and the company) better along the way.
If you're looking for a tactical way to get more out of your team and recognize your top performers along the way, this episode is for you! Steve has a great approach to recognizing the strengths of people across his teams and putting them in the position to coach their peers...making everyone (and the company) better along the way.
Welcome to the Sales Management Podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host, coach, crm co-founder, corey Gray. No long intros, no long ads, let's go. Steve Waters, vice President of Sales from Zoom Info, is joining me today. Steve, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm excellent. Great to meet you, Corey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great to have you on. So it's funny. People rarely reach out to me and say, can I be on the podcast, and I usually say yes if it's a good pitch. Steve pitched me last week and here we are, so thanks to you. Well, I'm going to start with this. So what? What motivated you to say, hey, I'm going to reach out to Corey, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I think you know we have several copies of several of your books in our break room, you know, and we are a very sales driven organization, from discover org to zoom info, and now people know who you are, and I think some of these ideas are really valuable and it's one way to give back to the community. And you know uh, some good ideas that some of these are the ones where it's just like, oh man, why didn't I think of that? Or how have I not come across this idea, you know, five, 10 years ago? This is such a no brainer, such an easy tweak for such a big lift, and so that's why I think it's stuff that if leaders or individuals can implement, it just can have a massive impact. And that's the stuff that I love, where, you know, it's not this whole crazy, you know, paradigm shift of mindset, but rather really tactical, practical kind of stuff that's easy to implement and get a big lift. So I thought your, your audience and mine and everybody else could benefit from this.
Speaker 1:Well, we appreciate you giving back and taking some time with this today. Let's jump into it. You had some ideas around identifying rep superpowers. I'd love to hear what that means, what that looks like and how you go about it.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, so I'll try to make it as simple as possible. It's again, you know it is really easy. So each rep is better or worse at certain parts of the sales process. You know, you think of an analogy like Damian Lillard as, like a basketball player, like incredible in clutch, 10 out of 10, right On his stats, but defense, you know not a 10 out of 10, you know probably less than that. You know great point shooter and, yeah, you know whatever. Right, you can think of everybody as good at the different parts of sales and nobody's a 10 at everything. We're all trying to up-level. You know our strengths and our weaknesses and try to get better all the time, and you can break the sales process down into all of those different skill sets. So we all know people that are incredible at objection handling, are incredible at creating urgency and closing. Some that are really good at asking questions or discovery, others that are good at prospecting and conviction. You go on and on on and all of these you can like rank the team against one another or give someone you know a number out of one out of 10 as to how good they are. Well, when we identify what those are, the trick is to let that rep teach the rest of the team how to do what they're really good at, and when they do that, the benefits are really, really significant. I'll talk about more about how to identify that and do it.
Speaker 2:But the rep one. They feel incredibly confident and I don't have to tell you, corey, how important confidence is in sales. It's probably the most important thing. It's tough to get out of a slump if you're in one right and some people say sales is the transfer of enthusiasm from one party to another and confidence has a lot to do with that. They feel like an expert, they get respect, they get also really good at that thing. So if you want to know how to do something, you try to teach it. That'll tell you if you can do it or not right.
Speaker 2:The second thing that it does is it levels everyone else up to that person's. You know at least a little bit, maybe not as good as that person is at that one thing, that aspect of sales, but it does in a way that iron sharpens. Iron teaches everyone else how to be close to as good or the techniques or the mindset that that person's in when they execute that thing, like urgency or you know, we could just stick with urgency as the example. The other thing that it does is it creates all of these experts on your team at certain things and then you can sort of like Mr Potato Head together the best rep, you know this person's urgency, that person's follow-up, this person's, you know pipeline management and you put that all together and it's really really impactful so that they don't have to come to me or my directors, my managers, to ask about all this stuff when they're struggling at, say, urgency and creating it. They can go to that rep and then it creates this culture of collaboration and coaching between the reps.
Speaker 2:That's really really, really valuable. So I can try to get every rep as good as that person at that one thing, or at least better, and then I don't have to come up with the content. I don't have to teach everyone, I don't have to hear my voice, you know. The other last benefit is that if they want to be in management, this is a good like training ground to see just how good are they at this kind of thing and teaching it to everybody. So we do that every week at a meeting called 1% that's part of the DNA at Zoom Inflation week at a meeting called 1%. That's part of the DNA at ZoomInfo. You try to get 1% better every day and have that compound and over time you see these massive benefits. It's an hour and we just love it. It's really really fun. The team reacts really really well to it.
Speaker 1:So an hour every week. I love this for a lot of reasons. So one of the reasons I love it the most is that you're taking bandwidth off of the managers, back back, and one of the I see managers get just they're drowning. You look at manager's calendar completely packed, and then all of a sudden you ask him well, what are you doing? Well, I'm helping this person with this, and this person with that, and this person with that and this person with the other thing, and all of a sudden, what you're doing is you're taking the individual contributor, who often has a much emptier calendar than the manager. Let's be honest.
Speaker 1:There should be nice prospecting blocks in there, but they're not booked back to back to back to back with meetings all day, every day, and you're taking that one little piece that they can be responsible for the nose of the Mr Potato Head, if you will and they own that within the team. So now, all of a sudden, the team's getting better and they own that within the team. So now, all of a sudden, the team's getting better. And I also love what you talked about where, by taking ownership of that, the reps are getting a crew development but also a really positive feeling of reward and they feel like they're winning because they're contributing something material to the team outside of just putting points on the board with respect to deals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a thousand percent. So you know what I do and how I decide. What we should focus on is I just look at the data, right, and you know, we, we all have way too much data. But I'm like we're winning or we're losing the ASP and the sales cycle and the industries and the size, and you know the personas and everything else, right, it's just like we're all drowning in data. But you got to look at it and I see, okay, let's say, the team is struggling with average sales price. It's going down. You know it's materially different, okay, well, you try to diagnose why that is. But you can impact the behavioral aspects of it, certainly, right. And so I then go look at what reps have the highest ASP. And then I just ask them hey, you know, do you feel like you have something to contribute to the team as far as, like, how you hold ASP? You're in the 95th percentile across the team for the best ASP. Like, how are you doing that? Do you feel like you have something to teach the team? And sometimes they go no man, I'd rather die, you know, than than teach that. And you go, okay, that's fine. But other times they go oh, yeah, no, uh, especially someone who's like improved dramatically, in that you used to be in the 25th percentile and now you're in the 90th percentile across the team. Like, like, what did you change? And that is a great story. We all love the. You know the glow ups in sales, so it's whatever the team needs.
Speaker 2:Then I just go back and look at the data and you know, we use course, we own course. It's like this, you, you know, incredible thing for us to diagnose that stuff. And then, uh, so I start the meetings by saying, okay, this is what we're going to teach on. Here's the special guest. People get stoked. Then I show the data and I'll go hey, I'm not blowing smoke, because the last thing is you know all sales reps, they have a healthy ego, sometimes a little, little too much. Yeah, I go, I'm better than that guy. Like come on, man, you know what I mean. Or like she doesn't know what she's talking about, like I could sell circles around her and then they just kind of check out. But if you show the data, then they go oh, wait, hold on. Yeah, susie is wiping the floor with me when it comes to ASP. Like, hold on a minute, right. And so then I show the data.
Speaker 2:I will show three to five clips of them doing it in action. Then I will let that person teach tactical ways of how they do it. The more tactical it is, the better. It's very, very seldom conceptual, cause you know, like I want salespeople to have arrows in their quiver that they can use. You want them to go do it as soon as they walk out of that room. Right, exactly, say this, not that, show this, not that. Respond this way out of that room. Right, exactly, say this, not that. Show this, not that, respond this way. You know, like that, here's a template for how to do it in a follow-up and, you know, in your sales engagement solution. So, yeah, it's like a very tactical, we do that.
Speaker 2:And then 15 to 20 minutes of Q and A so that the reps can actually clarify hey, why didn't you do it this way? What were you thinking when you did that? You know, in that clip I noticed the certain thing. You know, why didn't you respond this way? Or why didn't you respond with a question there? You know, like, then they really get into the mindset, they understand it, and then they go, oh, okay, and those little clarification pieces are pretty valuable. And then you know the next week or the next month, however often you want to do it you just pick something else that the team needs improvement on Right. So in SAS, one thing that we saw a massive lift from was getting two and three year agreements, like getting that TCB instead of that ACV, and how to ask for it and how to position it, and that was just a massive, massive, immediate lift across the team and it was really simple change. So yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean it helps the confidence. Everybody gets better. And if you start with the data, you leave with the data, you show it in action, then you let them teach, then you do the Q and A. It's such an easy, repeatable process. It takes a little while to find the clips but you know it's not that hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So here's what I want to do let's compare and contrast this approach versus having someone from the sales enablement team put together a training and deliver it what I think there's some pros and cons, so I'm going to, I'm going to throw out a couple of pros and a couple of cons and I want to hear, hear, your thoughts. So I think the pro is that the person did it. They've got the credibility. I think the pro is that it's very tactical, it's specific, it's actionable.
Speaker 1:I think the con is that a lot of people in sales haven't been trained on how to train. They haven't been trained on how to teach. They're not familiar with things like Bloom's taxonomy, going from remember to understand, to apply, to analyze, up that ladder. But at the same time, I don't think that many people in the sales enablement org are either. And so it again everybody's different, everybody has different experiences. So I think the Enablement Org might have the benefit of more theory around how people learn, maybe around having some more time to prep, but I don't know that you need a whole heck of a lot of that. As long as you're creating an environment that's conducive for people to learn. All the other stuff sounds like it might just be extra. That's not necessary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that the you can combine some of that so you can have sales enablement run the meeting and then have special guests or you know a panel of salespeople and show them do that thing that they're really good at, right.
Speaker 2:That that is one thing that we've done sometimes and I've seen that work.
Speaker 2:You know the advantages like, yeah, sales and even what knows how to create a compelling presentation with the visuals and you know the followup and all that stuff and they'll create like a quiz or something you know to make sure people are certification, to make sure people are doing it. But in my experience, what makes salespeople great the great ones are great communicators, right. So like that's what we do all day long at the end of the day, and we sell the salespeople here for the most part. So we have to be very direct and that is an advantage for teaching to. You know the screen share tools with the remote sales teams and stuff that just has a way of like compressing all the ideas and then people multitasking doesn't help and and with salespeople teaching, they just cut all the fat off of it and they just get to the thing you know, and so that is a. It's a big lift. Honestly, you know, um, if the worst part of it is that there's not great graphic design to it.
Speaker 1:You know, don't care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nobody points and say it, you know. Yeah, I don't make slides cares. And say it, you know yeah, I don't make slides.
Speaker 1:People ask me for slides all the time. I said don't have any, so here's. Here's some bullet points. Or if you want to hop on a whiteboard, I'm happy to do it with you. I think making slides is a complete waste of time. If you're paying your sales enablement team to make slides, then just tell them not to make slides anymore. Tell them to draw something on the whiteboard, take a picture of it and paste it in a PowerPoint slide. Yeah, question for you with salespeople leading the sessions, how do you make sure people are okay saying things like I don't know, I don't understand, I'm not getting it, and so they're not the person leading the session? But the people in the session are vulnerable and open to really pushing themselves and exposing their weaknesses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean a handful of ideas there. It's mostly just a cultural thing, you know, and I do firmly believe that if you don't know the answer, a lot of other people in the room don't know the answer, and so you know it. It's just making sure that that's okay and and never like ridiculing someone for asking. You know those kinds of things as a leader, just making sure everyone knows that that's okay. I'll also facilitate all of these, right? So I'll ask the really dumb questions that I think people are wondering about so that I, you know, take the the weight off their shoulders.
Speaker 2:We also specialize by tenure and segment within teams. So we'll have all of my, you know, sellers who are selling up market. They've been here for three plus years. They'll be on one team. We'll do more specialized kinds of training, but the same kind of model within the teams. So if one person is really really good at one of those aspects, then it's just within that team and then you get like a higher caliber. They can teach. You know the nuances better and you know. So sometimes if it's over people's heads and you feel like it's going to slow everybody down, then just don't invite them to the meeting if it's not appropriate for them.
Speaker 1:So those are the ways that I get around that. Got it, got it. And then, how's this fit into career pathing for folks that want to go into management? Is it a requirement, a trial, something you look at? Do they know that you're looking at their performance in these sessions?
Speaker 2:I think it's just more like does the team react to them?
Speaker 1:and did they?
Speaker 2:crash and burn or not. You know it's like it's not a formal kind of a data driven thing. I just think that, uh, yeah, we all just kind of get an idea of like, okay, do they seem like someone that the team would follow and look up to, right? Uh, so yeah, it's a lot more anecdotal just asking the team what'd you think. But you know in the meeting if it's, if it's landing or not, right, we've all been in, especially like third party enablement trainings, where it's just not landing and you could just feel it across the team. You know it's just a what's the engagement? Like you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've all been there.
Speaker 2:Yes, many, many, many times, like like. The other thing I love about this is like, on that point, we all want to be better at negotiating, right? It's like this thing where it's just like probably one of the sexiest parts of sales of just like, oh, this person's a good negotiator man, that's awesome. That person's just, you know, stout or whatever. And if you have a third party, come in and try to teach you how to negotiate, it's always just so general. It seems like you know you have to want it, but not too much or never split the difference. And you know the Chris Voss stuff. It's like that stuff's cool.
Speaker 2:You can get little tips and tricks, but it's very rarely tactical. And that's where salespeople live, right, and if, If I can have someone who's really good at holding price, you know, teach that in the context of what we're selling across all the different products that we sell, then it's specific to what we do. You know, give that product, not this one, or ask for this specific thing that we want. Right, this is how we built your comp plan, so this is how you get the upfront payments, or you know that kind of thing. It's a very specific and tactical to the team and that's just so much more valuable than this high level general third party stuff. You know, when it comes to negotiating is such a bigger lift across the team. You know to see that. One other thing is. One risk is if your team's small, you don't want to like always show Susie if she's the best seller, like, oh Susie again. You know Susie's the, you know Susie if she's the bestseller.
Speaker 1:Like, oh Susie, again, you know Susie's the. You know, oh Susie, the person that also, by the way, has the best territory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, Yep, Right. Oh, she's got California and I'm stuck in you know wherever. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wyoming Selling sass in Wyoming is really hot these days. Right, it's super hot. If you're selling, you know antelope. My ICP is antelope with prongs at least six inches long.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. Yeah, that's hot. You know, as long as it's AI driven, you'll be fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, big risk. You don't always want to highlight the teacher's pet every time. You've got to be cognizant of that, but you know that risk is so small. The only other risk is like oh, I'm the urgency guy. You know, steve thinks I'm the urgency guy, so all I have is this hammer. I'm going to swing it at every opportunity. I'm going to go into the enterprise and try to close them in one call. You know that's a nice hammer.
Speaker 1:I'm holding a physical hammer in my hand for everybody listening on Spotify.
Speaker 2:And so it's like yeah, man, like you don't want to be a one trick pony, right, If you could have one trick, you know? I mean closing is.
Speaker 1:Well, if discovery, if discovery is your one trick, you're going to be a good one trick pony.
Speaker 2:That is yeah, if you could do one thing, yes, that would be the best one. Yeah, be a one trick pony in discovery, for sure. But yeah, I mean, you can't use it all the time, you can't over-rotate on those things. So keeping everything in check, but that's just, with like the humility that comes with knowing you're not the best at everything. And when we do the next two, three, four, five, 1%, that all these other aspects where you're maybe the same way as Damien Lillard is to defense, you know then, yeah, you'll see that. Okay, I am not God's gift to sales. I do have opportunities to improve and I want to sell like John and Muhammad and Joe and all these other people you know. So, uh, very little downside to this kind of approach to coaching.
Speaker 1:There is one downside that I'm thinking of, and I'm sure you found a way to overcome it. I want to. I want to explore this a little bit. One of the things I always caution people against is tips and tricks, and I always the analogy I always use is standup comedy. I say have you been to a standup comedy show lately, or watched a special on Netflix? And everybody says, yeah, I've been there, whatever. Okay, can you tell me a joke you heard? Can you tell me a joke you heard and perform it?
Speaker 1:Well, get the timing right, get the setup right, get the punchline, and you just can't do it. If you went to a comedy show tonight, tomorrow, you would just be, uh, yeah, it was funny, I remember it, and maybe be able to eke out a little bit, but wouldn't be able to get on stage and get laughs. And I think that this is the risk, especially the folks that scroll LinkedIn for their sales skills development. You just end up with this bag of cheap tricks that don't work and if it's not founded in fundamental skills and frameworks, it's not going to be something that works together as a toolkit that you can apply over time. So how do you with a world, a culture of weekly sessions, make sure that you fall back on the fundamentals that your team has already developed and mitigate the risk of driving towards tips and tricks that aren't going to be able to be recalled by the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good one. I think it's up to the rep to decide what they want to adopt and what they don't. And if the rep knows their voice, they're going to know what works and what doesn't right. It's all about reminding the team about authenticity. It's like it has to be you and within your voice and all of those things. And we've all met salespeople that are incredible, that you cannot emulate. They just have their own style, especially those that are like great challengers. That's one example of you. Take someone who tries to be a challenger and they just can't pull it off and they end up just being an asshole. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like it's it's rep by rep. There is and I have seen this with just one or two reps only but this over-rotation of, oh, it's all about this thing I got, it's all about this, and then they go, oh, it's all about this other thing. And those people just you know, probably shouldn't be in sales.
Speaker 2:I think. I think that you have to own this idea that is this in my voice? Is this in my style? Is it me being authentic? If it's not, you know, then you'll learn it, and I think role-playing is where you uncover that stuff. So having that culture of role-playing with the managers or with peer to peer, and actually trying that stuff out, and then you know, the last thing you want to do is try out these techniques right, or these tactics, live on a call for the first time and fall on your face, and you know.
Speaker 2:So I, I view it rather than tips and tricks like, um, you know, like a guitarist with different licks that they can use, and sometimes that's going to work in your style. If you're, you know, jeff Bonamassa or Clapton, you get these bluesy licks but you're not going to be able to play, you know, like Eddie Van Halen and do that kind of stuff. It's just not you Right, and it's. It's the same kind of thing. You go oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Is where you determine is that in my voice or is that not in my voice? Because, yeah, there is a fine line between between tips and tricks and tactics. I just think you have to own it and practice it and then it can either become part of your voice or not. The other side of that, corey, is creating a culture where it's OK to fall on your face if your heart is in the right place. So, if we like try something out, or like push a prospect too hard and they get really upset and then I get looped in or you know the manager, the director. It's like making sure they know that growth happens at the edge of your comfort zone. Some people say life happens there, right.
Speaker 2:At the edge of your comfort zone and you're saying that's okay, I have your back as long as you're not you know, being a jackass that you're you're trying to help them get out of their own way and try these different techniques and approaches to selling, I'll have your back. In fact, I'll just close the deal and put it back in your name. That's what we'll do to support you. But having that culture where we're saying I trust you, you can push the envelope, and that's okay, and try out some of this stuff, but yeah, it has to be authentic and your heart has to be in the right place for it to work stuff.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it has to be authentic and your heart has to be in the right place for it to work Well. And that creates a great life lesson for them too, because you have to take risk If you're going to find success. You can, you can be mildly successful while taking minimal risks. But anybody that really wants to go for it, if you don't take risks, you're not going to get there.
Speaker 2:Amen. One way to do that is, after these kinds of sessions, when the reps buy in, they're like, all right, I'm going to do that thing, you know, to coach forward to the upcoming call, usually like 20 minutes before the call. So if we're working on, say, storytelling, which we work on quite a bit, to have them practice with their manager three times telling the story before the call that they're going to open the call with or tell at some point in the call, call with or tell at some point in the call, and that way it's like okay, if I'm going to fall on my face, I'm going to do it beforehand and get it down. And then sometimes we'll go, nah, let's just not do that. But other times, you know, you prep, you do it, you don't do it more than three times, and then getting into the call, a hundred percent chance you're going to tell that story. And then the five minutes afterwards you're like that was incredible, like I know you were so good. It's like, oh man, and you're like high fiving and you know that is awesome to be able to do.
Speaker 2:And so one thing that I could talk about way more we could do it on a different one is coaching forward instead of reactively. You know, call coaching and just listening to the calls Cause, like if I'm coaching forward with one of these things, we've covered in 1% and we're prepping for 20 minutes. In the five minutes afterwards we recap how did it go, how didn't it? Um, if I'm retroactively coaching like, let's say, they bungled an objection, you know I have to then pray and hope they come across that objection again Right, you know, and they might not for six months Whereas if I'm coaching forward, a hundred percent likelihood that they're going to cover that thing on the next call and it's just a better use of everybody's time. You know the retroactive stuff still important, but it's not nearly as applicable as to like implementing these techniques that we learned from our 1% meetings coaching ahead of time and then like implementing right afterwards. That's just such a better way to get more bang for your buck in terms of the time that we spend.
Speaker 1:Well, a hundred percent, I think. That's if you look at sports at a competitive level. Coaching happens in practice much more than it happens in the game. It's constantly happening in practice. I played basketball and so we'd have three hour practices and after warmups. If coach had to coach you during warmups, you probably were going to get cut.
Speaker 1:But after warmups you're getting coached on things nonstop, the entire, from individual drills to group drills with you know, I was a big man, so I played gun fistfights with tall guys and then to doing scrimmages and even conditioning and weightlifting constantly, and then during the game there might be three or four things you get coached on, but during practice there's much more, and I think that practice in a practice setting is absolutely the right move. And it's the other thing I always say is you can't coach somebody on something they haven't been trained on, and I think that coaching forward is another way of really solidifying that. If you've trained them on it, if you coach them forward on it, the coaching after the fact A has more credibility, and the coaching after the fact A has more credibility and then B it's going to probably be minimal, just to tweak here or there, not something that's a wholesale change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I agree with all that. You know, I think when we see that happen and we share that stuff with the team, the camaraderie, the positivity that it built, you know, hey, grant and I we did this, we prepped, he tried, he did it, that deal just came in. I'm going to tell the whole team about it, grant, whether that feel like, oh my gosh, it was so amazing. And then you know it's just like after you, you know work this thing, you know it's cool. And then that positivity, that confidence, it's just so contagious. You know, and you know, if you can land it in the game, then that's just cemented in there. So, yeah, I mean, um, the morale is just a reflection of whether the team's winning or losing, right, you know morale is good when you're winning.
Speaker 1:Winning solves those problems.
Speaker 2:And we need to, like, just focus on the wins. What's working, and you know, then it's this trust in leadership and they'll look up to you and trust that you're doing the right things and it's pretty, pretty great. So, yeah, man.
Speaker 1:Do you guys work out of the office or are you?
Speaker 2:remote. We have both, but we're only hiring remote three days a week. So like hybrid remote and then really high performers that have been here a while only have to come in one week a month or one week one day a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a hybrid moving forward. Here's my question how do you create that energy when people are on their hybrid days or when they're on their hybrid weeks versus when they're in the office and they can high five and all that type of stuff?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Slack channels GIFs. You know it's hard. I mean Slack channels GIFs, you know it's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't really gotten pumped up about a.
Speaker 2:Slack channel. Yeah, like you know, we uh we do a huddle every morning, you know, and I'll shout out wins and I'll let people talk about the wins and what did you learn and how did you get that price point. And we like highlight that stuff and try to be as contagious as possible. You know we try to do like fun contests and stuff, but it's hard, you know, like one thing we did was a speak with conviction challenge where the winner, you know, got dinner for me for a week, you know, and stuff like that, where you can have people, it doesn't matter where you are, you can speak with conviction and tell the Zoom info story.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, I'm not an expert on solving that, I'm trying, you know it's uh, I would say that if attitude reflects leadership, it's a big on the leadership to be able to do that and involve people. But it's hard. People either want to participate or they don't, and I'd much rather have the people that do. So, cord, if you have an answer to that, you have another guest that does. By all means, I'd love to know if someone's cracked that code.
Speaker 1:I haven't figured it out yet.
Speaker 2:Slack channels.
Speaker 1:I think that hiring remote's great for people that want arbitrage and just get the. I think, as a hiring manager, what do you want to do? Well, you want to get that role filled as fast as possible, and if you can fill it anywhere, then it's a heck of a lot easier to fill it than if you have to fill it in Southwest Washington, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we have an office in Boston, we have an office in, you know, portland, vancouver, yeah.
Speaker 1:You've got the luxury of of uh, some geographic diversity now that you've grown, yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know the market in Boston like come on, you know you got all these companies over there. And then in Portland, you know they call it Van Tucky over here, which I'm trying to rebrand it as Van Hatton, but they don't want to come across the river to Vancouver, and so it's its own challenge. But yeah, when you're remote, you know, when you're a dispersed workforce, somebody be anywhere. Right, I can get people out of San Francisco or Cheyenne, wyoming, if they're good, you know, then we'll get everybody. So yeah, it's its own challenge. We did fall on our face a little bit trying to do that in the pandemic and our remote hires didn't thrive like our in-office hires, which is why we're doing that. But yeah, big challenge for anybody in management, but particularly sales.
Speaker 1:I want to pick on one thing you said, because I think this is something people are struggling with a little bit, is huddles, so daily huddles. I've seen them work really well when people do them really well. I've also seen it turn into just a complete disaster when the manager doesn't facilitate them well, doesn't have a clear purpose and turns it into something that is disconnected from what it should be. What are you seeing in terms of people running effective daily huddles to get the team motivated and drive progress?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a repetition on the things that need to be measured and managed. So, as an example, self-prospecting is very important. Show it every single day, show the numbers, show pacing, like whatever it is that you're trying to focus on every single day. Everyone sees it right. Then we just have to make it valuable.
Speaker 2:So we typically have a play of the day of like some like email template or a case study or a technique or whatever we're working on, and we tried that and it ended up being two, you know, just all over the place, like Tuesday it's one different thing and Wednesday it's a different thing and Thursday. So then we said, okay, let's align with sales enablement. So we're reinforcing the you know, focus of the month and of the week. You know that's kind of stuff. So we're focused on medic here, right, as a sales methodology and really beating, marching to the same drummer.
Speaker 2:When it comes to that stuff, the last thing is just like vary up who's doing it, as long as they're all again marching to the same drummer. So every day of the week I have a different person do it for directors or managers and people like that. Um, so yeah, it can go sideways, but I'd see just like the repetition of focusing on the right stuff, um, recognizing and trying to create that hype and buzz around success and what's going well and what's not. And then, yeah, just doing it in a repeatable way and adding value so that people know that it's worth coming to. The last thing is, you know and my favorite part is just being a DJ for those huddles and always coming with the vibes you know, people love that and that's the most fun part is just trying to set the mood with the different tunes at the beginning of the huddles. People love that.
Speaker 1:That's great. Yeah, people are just drawn to this new stuff. Oh, let's look at this today and that tomorrow, and that's one of the ways it definitely goes off rails. The consistency is absolutely huge. Plus, one of my favorite sayings is you've got to inspect what you expect, and if the team knows that I'm going, to be looking at something.
Speaker 2:The team's going to be paying attention to that and preparing for the fact that I'm going to look at it, yep, and then telling stories of success when the people adopt it. Because some people won't and our lone wolves are great sellers, right, but they're not going to do what you tell them to do. And so if I can get someone that's very coachable to implement the things that we're working on and say, look, yeah, there's close to a hundred K deal and they did exactly what I told them to, right, and they're like, oh man, I should do that Right, like that's a that's also pretty valuable, so everybody buys in. And making sure that ahead of time, when I'm doing that, that my, my key stakeholders are all bought in, yeah, yeah, that's one of the ways to get the lone wolf.
Speaker 1:I'm just, I love this. I'm just digging on all these things. You're bringing up so many good points. I want to ask you this one now how do you know when a lone wolf has become a problem and not just somebody who's somewhat annoying to?
Speaker 2:management to a certain degree. You know, we all know people. They're going to sell a lot and you know if their performance suffers. That's the obvious one. But the next one is just how quickly does your company change? If you've got a lone wolf in insurance, they're never going to become a problem, right? It's like that industry doesn't change at all.
Speaker 2:I sold insurance for 11 years. Like, come on now it's like it's not any different. But if you're at a highly competitive you know, like you're in like information security and things are changing all the time, right, or cloud or whatever, like you got to stay up to date. And if they're singing from the wrong hymnal, cause we've got a new one now. That's like if they just don't know the new things and they're and it's hurting their performance, that's when I've seen it really, really, really like backfire. The other is if they're your top performer and they don't put notes in Salesforce ain't nobody putting notes in Salesforce? Because like hey, you know Jane doesn't do that, susie doesn't put it in there, well, and Jane's the top performer because she doesn't put notes in Salesforce, says my brain.
Speaker 2:As yeah, as if that were the right thing, right, like, oh, yeah, but you know what I mean. Like oh, yeah, uh, but you know what I mean Like, so, yeah, I feel like, uh, if they're a bad example, you can find ways to get around it. For sure, you can just go hey, you owe it to the team to be a good example and, like, make them do it. But, um, when things change and they're still old fashioned, that's a big, big, big problem. The other is like when there are changes and, let's say, they don't show up to the morning huddles and they're just doing their thing, you don't really actively manage them. And like someone's been gone for six weeks and they don't even know it, right, and you're like, wait, hold on.
Speaker 2:Right, you know it's like that stuff that can be really, really, really problematic and that's a red flag for sure that they're going down the wrong path. And then just having that radical candor and respect with them just to be like, hey, you know, when you got the jersey on you play hard, you're part of the team, that's important and you know, here's why it's important to you. So yeah, I mean. But again, if stuff never changes, they can just be a lone wolf forever, and that'd be great, you know, as long as they don't cause problems internally.
Speaker 1:Put up the numbers. They're not sitting there begging for a promotion to some other role. I know I always, I always think it's funny when the, the woolen wolf that doesn't do the operational stuff wants to be a sales manager. Well, what's your team going to do when you get that job and your expectations are for them to be like you when you were in IC. That's going to be a tough, tough spot to be in.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, corey, what they'll say is no, everybody already looks up to me, like everybody respects me because I get it done, you know, and just the leadership, like my presence, like everyone looking up to me as an example, that's going to carry the, it's going to carry the weight of the whole thing. You know, like I'm the man, they already respect me, I, I'm already leading this team. Yeah, I would just say that sales management is like 80% science and 20% art, and they're probably all art. You know what I mean. So, but yeah, that is has been a counter. When one lone wolf wanted to go into management, I was just like no, that's, that's not going to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go, go close deals and make money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, be an IC out, out earn me, please. Like I would love nothing more for you to out earn me, you being an IC like, let's do it.
Speaker 1:And some of my ICs do, and I just you just make peace with that, you know, and I love it that way. It's funny, as people are hesitant. So I agree with you. Sometimes people are hesitant to adopt that, especially certain managers, certain people in enablement or operations. I can't believe that so-and-so we're going to make them do this. I was like no, you're not. You're going to either make them quit or you're not going to make them do that. There's no way on earth you're going to get recall plans, post-call reports, mutual action plans and perfect CRM notes for that individual. It ain't happening and they're at 130%. So put a smile on your face and go do the rest of your job.
Speaker 2:That's so hard, man. The room for lone wolves like we have 270 AEs now, right, Wow, the room for them is just like it's harder. That lone wolf isn't going to be more than 1% of our new business revenue.
Speaker 1:What did Phil Jackson always say? He said there can only be one Dennis.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yes, there could you imagine a team and Dennis on the bulls, not Dennis on the pistons, correct, yes, yeah. Dennis on the Bulls not Dennis on the Pistons, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dennis on the Pistons was a little wild, bulls was wild, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2:But yeah, a lot less. Fewer tattoos, less hair, fewer wedding dresses when he was on the Pistons, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, he would play dirty.
Speaker 2:I remember when Sean Kemp dunked on him right In the postseason and then, like dennis, went under his legs and then like tried to get him to sit on his shoulders so he couldn't get off the rim and we just like provoke people, like that, you know, and he kicked the cameraman and but yeah, dude married himself and then went to north korea.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't watch that documentary. That was like I watched his hall of fame acceptance speech which, by the way, if you haven't done this, go to YouTube and watch all of them. They're incredible. Just binge them one night, you know. Yeah, that was like watching therapy. It was like he's just a sobbing up there.
Speaker 1:And I was like I'm not watching the North Korea documentary was he was supposed to. He wouldn't play basketball and then he was supposed to go skiing with Kim Jong-un but he got so drunk Kim Jong-un's people wouldn't let him go meet up with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, I don't know. Ain't no party like a North Korea party from what I've heard? Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:That's one place I'm going to avoid. I don't think there's there's no upside. You can go on tours.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, like you're, you're seeing the real North Korea. Yeah, that's funny, corey, you did want to ask me about, like, all the different products that we sell and how we like keep that organized.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about. Let's talk about that a little bit. So your company sells how many products?
Speaker 2:I mean quite a few if you consider the add ons, but it's four main ones. It's Sales OS, marketing OS, talent OS and Operations OS. You can include a fifth which is Data Cubes, which are just huge data files. And then there's Chorusai and then a bunch of variations, for you know Form Complete, you know and Chat on the websites and you know a bunch of others, but those are the main five.
Speaker 1:Any salesperson can sell anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the new side, yeah, certainly, we have SCs that help and then some overlays that get comped when they get brought into deals for the more complex upmarket ones, and the way we do that is just like the primary thing is just to get a one pager on all of them. These are the personas that you should at least bring this up to right. So, marketing OS you get a marketing title on there. You need to bring up marketing OS and the way you qualify them is you know, are they over 50 employees and how much do they spend a month on advertising? Right, you get those things, that's all you need. Then you bring in the overlay and they just basically sell the deal for you. And so that's how the motions worked here.
Speaker 2:Now we don't have to bring in an overlay if we don't want to like some of that want to control, but, yeah, in order to demo it or to get in the nuances of how that works and you know some of the technical stuff, they're not S E's. Like you know, none of our products are really that complex. Sometimes we have to show integrations or different things. We'll bring them in, but pretty rare that we have to rely on that team. It's more so the just understanding the buyer personas and then having that bell go off in their head. But like, ooh, vp, demand gen. I have to ask about this thing and luckily, you know, we're all good at the sales OS, which is what people think of when they think of zoom info. But then you know, marketing OS, isos has an ASP of two and a half times that right, and then opsOS is like three or four times that and data cubes are, like you know, 10 times the amount. So the more that the reps do the homework to understand that, and sometimes this is what we cover in the 1%. It's not necessarily a rep teaching that, although I'll highlight reps and let them talk about it, so we'll get buy-in.
Speaker 2:But the analogy that I always used is like not knowing how to sell those products. First of all it's on you. But second, it's like working for the Mercedes dealer and not knowing how to sell a G-Wagon because you didn't learn how it's like. No, it's the highest you know like. Why wouldn't you want to sell the highest ticket item just because you're too lazy to learn how? That's crazy. You know. Just go sell the. You know the entry level models constantly. And it's just you holding yourself back from getting a big paycheck, like I thought you wanted to work smarter, not harder, right?
Speaker 1:So are they? Are they owning the accounts through the initial sale or they own the accounts for another 12 months? Like when does the new business rep lose the account to account management or customer success?
Speaker 2:As soon as they sign, we pass it over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, got it. So I have one shot at selling as big a deal as I possibly can to this customer as a new business rep. Yep, so I imagine that you've got some folks that really take advantage of that and some folks that put points on the board and say, yeah, I sold something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a culture of like hey, bring them in, don't slow it way down. And you know common to believe that time kills deals, you know. But I think it's like you have all these forks in the road for different deals where you're like okay, I have a 20k deal now and there's probably like a 20 chance I could get a 50k deal. I'm just going to take the 20k deal, you know, and you're like, because the 50k deal is going to take two more months to in order to do into a proof of concept and everything. And we just, hopefully, in the handoff notes which all salespeople do terrible handoff notes We've had that be AI, generated by chorus now.
Speaker 2:So it's super cool to pass those over so you don't have to bother with the rep filling a handoff full of nonsense or, even worse, nothing. So we've made AI do all that for us and it's really bitching. But, yeah, it's like when you get to that fork in the road, what do you want to do? I think you can manage your pipeline to say, hey, these are four deals that I know are coming in. Here's my long shot where I'm shooting for a six-figure deal, and you know, but then it's a matter of telling the prospect no when they want to get 20 users instead of 200. You could just say no and having the courage to do that. So we like to give reps autonomy, but sometimes we say no, you're just going to take that deal and hopefully we've earned the respect from the rep to be able to do that and just explain why them trying to go after this, this crazy white wheel doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:Got it. So it sounds like there's a stepped path towards competence across all the different product lines. So you've obviously got some kind of training we didn't talk about that, everybody knows exists and you've got some kind of one pager and you've got an overlay rep and then if the rep really wants to become a complete subject matter expert in each product, they can go deeper and own that process themselves. Do I get that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's right. The thing that they all have in common, luckily, is the data asset from ZoomInfo makes it all work. And if you can tell that story, then it's just a different interface into the data, a different user experience. And you know, you don't have to know that backwards and forwards, but that fear of not knowing where to click all the buttons and the product and you know, being an expert in that, it's like that's the least important part of any demo is, you know, when you actually show the thing right, it's all fueled by the same stuff and that's our differentiator. So, yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:It's really a matter of getting them to know like ding, oh, this is an opportunity for a data cube, and I know that because of these one, two or three things. And getting them to recognize that, getting the managers to recognize that when they're doing pipeline reviews and stuff like, why isn't this a marketing OS deal? I don't know. And then you know like next time, right, we need to get that. And then again, coaching forward we look every week to see the meetings people have on the books and we're always watching that so managers can be a little more proactive with that stuff.
Speaker 2:And if we're like hey, this is an 80 person company with a director of demand gen. Like are you prepared to talk to him about marketing OS? Like no, I don't really know. Okay, well, you need to learn it, but I'm going to do it this one time and then next time. Right, so be a little more proactive about when they should be bringing that stuff, giving them the training wheels and then uh, you know, trying not to be the old super rep bail them out every time, but have a plan to learn it.
Speaker 1:That's the hard part, but you know it is what it is when it comes to that I'm the enemy of rep, because I tell all the senior executives I work with that your super rep should go watch game, film and coach and stop being super reps, because people are good at sales, they get into management, they like selling, they want to sell. I get it. I love selling. I love closing deals, I love doing discovery, I love disqualifying people. It's so fun.
Speaker 2:Dude, what's my best job? Just to be a closer. Everyone just brings you in at the last minute and you just close the deal and don't do any follow-up, don't update Salesforce. You know what I mean Just close, close, close, close, as like a pinch hitter, almost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds incredible and I think I've got. I mean, I've worked with companies that do this. I mean there's a lot of companies that are outside of the super fast growth space, that are more private equity, you know, grow 20%, 30% a year and they've got one or two killer salespeople and their calendars are just loaded up and they just go, go, go. So there's, those jobs are out there if people want them. What's not out there is a time machine to create more time. I'm working on my segues.
Speaker 1:One of the things, one of the things I want to touch on real briefly and this is more for the audience than for you is when, when you're talking about things like recognizing patterns or recognizing opportunities for bringing in other folks or to selling different types of deals, one of the things I've found tons of success with is putting together scenario-based exercises, and so you'd say here's a scenario, what do you do, here's a scenario, what do you do?
Speaker 1:And maybe even here's 10 different deals For each deal. Everybody lists all the different products that we could sell to each one of them. So this is the brain dead, dumb, simplest sales enablement exercise ever, and you don't need slides and you don't need a bunch of staff to do it. It literally take real things that exist. You take the names off of them, you go back in history a little bit so it's not something everybody's been talking about the last two weeks and see if everybody can come up with good answers to those questions. And if they can, great. If they can't, no, because you got to know what to do to be able to do it. You can't do something you don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's incredibly valuable. That's like that ding in the head. Should I bring this up? Should I? What three questions do I need to ask?
Speaker 2:What I found Corey like is doing both sides of that scenario. So being the prospect is really illuminating, because then you're like, dude, just ask me the damn question. I want to tell you the answer. You're just not asking me the right question, and so we instruct and we did this the last two Fridays. Actually, I hadn't done it for like six years. We did it like way back when at SKO in like 2018.
Speaker 2:And then we dust it off this one, which is like it was so illuminating for me to be a prospect and know I want to say really good stuff, but the person asking the questions is in control of the conversation, right? So it's like you know, like if they're not going to ask me the right questions, I'm not going to volunteer the information. And then afterwards I'm like man, dude, I had this super solid nugget. You just didn't ask me the right thing. And like that really teaches us to ask big, open-ended questions and give the prospect the space to be able to say what they want, you know, rather than like always like hunt and peck for these little niche things and lead them to our product, rather the big questions. To give them the space and elaborate on that stuff is like so valuable doing both sides of those mock scenarios. But yeah, I totally agree with you, those are valuable.
Speaker 1:And at this point I'm going to give you the space to say what you want, Anything to plug before we wrap this up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, two things. One, zoom Info is launching co-pilot. It's not Microsoft's co-pilot, it's our own, but it is an AI driven version of Zoom Info and it's going to be a total game changer. We just announced it when we rang the bell on NASDAQ last week, so that was incredibly dope and then so watch for that That'll come out in Q2. And then, yeah, if anybody wants to talk about this more, they want to get in touch with me. I'll respond to everything on LinkedIn. They can just send me a message like oh, at least respond, unless you're annoying, but that rarely happens. And before we started this, we talked about how little people reach out and take the initiative, you know, over that stuff, but how we appreciate it when people do. So you know. If you want to talk about this stuff, or if you disagree with me or whatever, I'm open to it. That's the easiest way to get in touch with me.
Speaker 1:I love it. So if you're annoying, don't reach out to Steve and don't listen to my podcast anymore, because all my listeners are amazing. We appreciate it. Free offer for today If anybody wants our coaching salespeople course 90 minute course on a coaching framework for salespeople, senior leadership, if you need to uplevel your team, if you're worried about how they're coaching their team, or, hey, if you're a manager and just want to sharpen your ax a little bit, send me a note. Freestuffatcoachcrmcom. Freestuffatcoachcrmcom. It's been great chatting with you today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, corey, it's been awesome. Thanks for the last.