"What’s Actually Breaking Sales Teams" - The Fast Slow Motion Podcast - Ep 057

In this episode, Eric Housh and Michael Johnson talk with Steve Heroux, founder of The Sales Collective and author of The Sales Contrarian, about why many sales teams struggle even when they have capable people. The conversation explores how pressure for outcomes often replaces the process, leadership, and coaching that actually support consistent performance.

Steve challenges common assumptions about quotas, forecasting, sales methodology, and leadership promotions. He explains why many sales teams lack clear playbooks, why sales managers are often unprepared for the role, and how stronger systems and coaching can improve long-term results.

This conversation is for founders, executives, and sales leaders who want to build healthier sales organizations and more sustainable growth.

For the full episode video, show notes, and related resources, visit https://loom.ly/XsNieMo.

Fast Slow Motion has a new book out that's all about how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. To get a FREE copy of "The Scalable Business Framework," learn more: https://loom.ly/iAfjzpw

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

One of the uh events I was at two weeks ago, someone goes, Hey uh, so what what what do you wake up in the morning for? What gets you excited? You know, what's your you know purpose and mission and all that stuff? And besides my nonprofit, which you I shared with you, right, helping these veterans, right, teaching a million veterans how to sell, the sort of flip side on the other side, the the you know, commercial side is ending the abuse of salespeople. Um, if if I can do that, I will have done something, you know, great.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

This podcast is brought to you by Fast Slow Motion, a team of expert consultants that have helped thousands of growing businesses build scalable systems on the HubSpot and Salesforce platforms. To learn more, visit www.fastslowmotion.com. Hello and welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast, where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. My name is Eric Hush. I'll be hosting today and very special guest, uh, Fast Slow Motion Strategic Client Director, Michael Johnson. MJ. Good to see you today, man. Good to see you. It's good to be very special. And we've got a special guest, Steve Haru, uh, is with us. Steve's the founder of the Sales Collective and author of the Sales Contrarian. Uh, at the sales collective, Steve and his team work with organizations to improve how they build, enable, and support their team, their sales teams, including recording, recruiting, onboarding, training, and coaching. And in the sales contrarian, Steve challenges traditional sales practices and offers a modern perspective on how sales leaders and teams think about performance, leadership, and growth. So today, we're going to explore what's not working in modern sales, why it matters so much to business owners and leaders, and how to build sales organizations that support sustainable growth instead of constant stress. Steve, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you, man.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Good to see you, man. Well, you know, I'm really interested in your brain today, your knowledge, your experience in the sales world. Um, and so I want to start off at a high level, Steve. When you talk to founders or you see a company, founder, CEO is frustrated about their sales results, maybe confused a little bit. Uh, what do you think is the most often misaligned in the sale in how sales is being approached for them?

SPEAKER_03 2:25

If I have one, I preferably would just hold up a mirror and go, here's the problem. Uh, but usually I don't have one. So uh I have to really do some deeper discovery and learning about what's causing the problem. Um one of the uh events I was at two weeks ago, someone goes, hey uh, so what what what do you wake up in the morning for? What gets you excited? You know, what's your you know purpose and mission and all that stuff? And besides my nonprofit, which you I shared with you, right, helping these veterans, right, teaching a million veterans how to sell, the sort of flip side on the other side, the the you know, commercial side is ending the abuse of salespeople. Um, if if I can do that, I will have done something, you know, great.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

I love it. You're you're singing to the choir over here, Steve, for sure. Let's talk about the sales collective because it's fascinating. Obviously, you helping sales teams kind of bridge these gaps. What are what were you seeing out there from founders and exec teams that really pushed you to build the sales collective and and and offer that service uh to the um your your customers out there?

SPEAKER_03 3:33

Yeah, we I had originally started it wanting to just be like a training company, but and as you guys know, there are 50 million in one, you know, sales training companies out there, right? Who, you know, have their you know magic selling methodologies that predate moon landing, right? As if that works. Um what we found was the training is almost like third, fourth, or fifth. And what I saw was we go to to football for a second. Um, and yes, the Patriots lost, I get it, but whatever. You never see more people take pleasure out of someone losing, right, than me and my, you know, Patriots um pandemonium. And yes, we lost, I get it. But even the Patriots and the Seahawks and Sam Darnold is incredible. They have playbooks. The coach doesn't just arbitrarily assign them how many yards they're supposed to throw for today based on last year's game. Uh, that's not how they do it. So we saw an incomprehensible amount of companies with no sales process defined, no playbooks to practice, no updated verbiage language discovery sequences. Like they don't even exist. And so we're like, well, this is why your salespeople don't do well. You're out here in the locker room going, hey, just like go long or something and uh like score a lot. Okay, that doesn't work. So we sort of transformed to now the thing we do the most, right, is build or rebuild uh sales processes. And so without that, how do you even know who to recruit? Right? If I don't know, I've got to know the selling motion. Do we need a hunter? Do we need a farmer? Do we need a biz dev guy? Do we need an SDR? So it's hard to know that. And you can't just train people arbitrarily on uh getting better at football. That type of training doesn't work. So that's kind of how it all started.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yeah, I love that. And you know, you you detailed that really well in the book, The Sales Contrarian, which I would recommend anybody listening. If you really want if you really care about improving sales, uh the right sales, not even methodology, just mindset. And in that book, you challenge a lot of kind of long-held assumptions about sales. And we just talked about one, how the outcomes matter the most. And we can just take last year's outcome and just throw 10% on top of it, and it'll you'll hit it by magic. Or that there's special techniques and tricks to paths to success. You know, there's like a recipe you can just mix up and make a magic salesperson. I think my favorite is that maybe salespeople, um, maybe they shouldn't be treated like mushrooms, you know. And uh I love the I love that chapter, love the analogy there. So which beliefs, Steve, do you see owners and leaders holding on to that quietly work against their growth?

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Eric, by the way, do you know the mushroom analogy?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Because I would love just for the sake of the podcast for you to unpack it for this.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

I forgot about that. Well, that's right. Uh in my opinion, again, most salespeople are treated like mushrooms, right? They're kept in the dark and they're fed, you know what. Yeah. So a lot of salespeople, they they have no concept, right, of any of the real numbers related to what they're selling. They don't know where the cups came from. They don't know what they're made out of, they don't know the cost to build the cup, they don't know the margin they should be like they they don't know any of this. And so they're just told go sell a lot of coffee cups. And so again, if you don't involve your salespeople in the process of the business, how could they take ownership in it? So that's that's one thing I think is like really super crucial. Um and uh Michael, your second point you wanted me to elaborate on, which one was it?

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah, well, I mean, which beliefs, I mean, so you you speak with business owners and leaders all the time. What do you see them holding on to that's actually preventing them from growing?

SPEAKER_03 7:34

It probably is that is that arbitrarily assigning some magic number is the thing that's going to get them to produce that magic number. We all saw the Olympics. The the figure skating, if anyone saw um the quad god, okay, this kid, talk about pressure, right? Like, like heaps and heaps of pressure on winning gold, heaps and heaps of pressure on an outcome. And guess what happened, right? This this poor kid, although he's handling it really well, he just crumbled. Then you have Alyssa Liu, no expectation, no nothing, right? And she said this when she won gold and it's flawless performance. She goes, I didn't even, I don't care about metals. I'm just gonna show my art to the world and whatever happens out. And she skated the program of her life. Like that's what it's about. And that is what's killing these companies because they don't have salespeople like Alyssa Loop, and they don't have salespeople like Eileen Gu, who also was incredible. They just go out and execute the best they can. And if someone outskies or outswims them, then so be it. But this is destroying companies because they are so attached to these ridiculous numbers. A company could have some idiotic goal of 500 million, they could do 499,837,000 um and go, boy, what we didn't hit our goal.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

Like that's yeah, that is what could happen. So that's the belief that listen, we can't change a lot of people. So we just look for the clients that already understand this or that are willing and open, right, to thinking differently, which I guess is is really good for us that we don't have to take on clients that don't share and align with our values.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah. And you one thing I've heard you say, Steve, that uh I thought was always thought was really insightful, keeping with the Olympics, is that you know there's like 10,000 Olympic Olympians that come to compete and try to get a gold medal. Yeah. And they only give away 300 to 350s. And so it can't be the outcome that drives success, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:51

And this year for everybody, right, in in Milan, so roughly 2,500-ish, right, competed for 116 medals. So they don't all win gold, but they all want to win gold, right? So it's like, what is the determining factor between winning gold and not?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

For sure. Uh Steve, circling back, because a lot of owners just get frustrated with this. They want sales to be predictable. They they buy the tools, they buy the processes, they invest in the people. They want to know what that number's going to be. Where does that come from? Childhood. Yeah?

SPEAKER_03 10:28

Unpack that. Like this country, at least, right, is just obsessed with outcomes. And this is why some of y'all, listen, I don't have kids. I can't ever tell anybody at a parent or any of that stuff, right? But the the giving away participation trophies thing, okay, that's not helping. Okay. You don't get a trophy for 11th place. Like, that's not helping. And the way that kids are taught about grades, like you, you guys know this, Michael. You know you have kids. I don't know, Eric, if you do, but like if if there are kids who are smart and kids who are not, and that's just how it is. And some kids can get A's. And some kids, no matter how hard they try, can't get an A, right? They could get a B. So instead of rewarding the child, right, for putting in the effort and the work and the homework, they only look at the outcome. So your kid did her or his best, and now you tell them uh you're a loser. Uh, that's not good for kids. And so they get obsessed with if I don't win, if I don't get an A, if I don't meddle, if I don't get a ribbon, it really hurts them down the line. And that's why I'm such a believer, you know, in stoic philosophy. And I just wish that was the stuff, you know, that kids were taught. But parents could teach their kids anything they want.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yeah, I love that because what you're what you're essentially saying is that focusing on that outcome doesn't necessitate the right process. No. Long term, the right process is what you need to build a successful, like scaling sales organization.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

It's the process. It doesn't focus on outcomes doesn't develop skills, it doesn't build good habits. It lets you hit this month's numbers, this year's numbers, and who cares about next year? And so that's not the recipe for success.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Um it's all it is, man. And Kobe believed it, Bill Walsh believed it, Belichick believed it. Oh, John Wooden, what does he know? Like all the people who are really successful, Tom Hanks, right, when when he learns his lines, like he follows the same process. So Tom Hanks doesn't care if he wins an academy or why he does it, right? Um so we just have to work on helping people realize that when they finally do, you know, it's this like epiphany, right? It's like, what have I been doing all these years? But it's really hard. It's not easy.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Yeah, and it gets challenging as companies grow. You know, it companies, as they grow, growth creates complexity, and complexity can often kill growth. And you know, you point out in in chapter 10, most leaders are accidental. And leaders, they're assigned leadership. Uh and so they uh they it's it's an leadership is really kind of a learned skill. And so I'm wondering from you, Steve, you know, sales leaders especially, that are trying to step out of the day-to-day. Um, how can leaders introduce that simplicity into complexity through decisions or structure or anything else?

SPEAKER_03 13:34

So this came up too last, or maybe two weeks ago, when I said um, airlines don't promote the flight attendant to pilot. Like that's not how it works, right? Oh, you've been so great with your role here at the company for six years. How about you just land the planes? Right. They're completely different job titles and roles. And so in sales, the least trained person generally is the sales manager, right? They they weren't apprenticed, right? They they weren't taught, they didn't have training leading up to this promotion, which by the way, they think it's a promotion. Then after the salesperson takes the job, they think it's a prison sentence. And many of them want to go back to sales. So without training and coaching and supporting them on the role of sales leader or sales manager, they have no chance, right? And so they great salespeople, many of them just want to sell, right? It's it's like in football, if anybody watches football, there's an offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator. And many of them get promoted to head coach, and many of them fail miserably because they're good at the role of running a defense, not an entire team. So if you don't know if this person even has a shot, you are just relying on hope and guess and prayer, all the other things that will really backfire. And that's why we we love sales DNA so much. You already, you guys know what it is, but if you don't DNA test your people for the role you're considering putting them in or the role they're in now, how do we know if they're even in the right seat?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, and an offset of that is you know, you you put people in leadership, maybe they're ill-equipped for it, uh, and and then they they end up actually creating friction in the sales process, even when they think they're helping. I just thought of this. I might use this now.

SPEAKER_03 15:52

Let's say, Eric, you're gonna go in for a root canal, because we all love those, and the person at the front says, Hey, Eric, we'd love you to come to our practice. Um, 80% of our dentists have had no formal training on working on the human mouth. Would you go?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

80% of people in leadership roles, 80% have had zero formal leadership training. 80%. Yeah. And we wonder why we have problems.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Right. Yeah. Right. And it's just, it's just uh it's kind of a law, not even a law of averages, it's kind of a Pareto principle of why someone's really great. And that most aren't.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Yeah, we just have to get lucky that you find someone. Of course, I'll use a Boston reference, the one ever, right? Larry Bird, right? Hall of Fame player, Hall of Fame coach, hall of fame executive. Like there's just him, there's no one else. It's almost impossible to do that, right? Magic was Hall of Fame player, hall of fame businessman, not a Hall of Fame coach. It's just not his thing. So you've got to understand who you have and in what role. And another thing, and then we'll continue. We added a service we never had before, right? Which is sales manager training. So we have amazing uh teammate Sean, and all he does all day long is work with our clients, sales managers, one on one. Like that is what he does all day long. And the clients love it because they've never given a sales manager someone to coach and train and help and teach them. You know, all the CEOs and executives, they're in Vistage or running on EOS or Pentagon or whatever, right? Well, what about the sales manager? What do they get? Hey, why's the team suck? Thanks. Very uplifting.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Um so yeah, it's uh it's quite quite the epidemic. What's what's the biggest realization coming out of that sales manager focused um training?

SPEAKER_03 17:56

So so there's probably several, but to me, it's the will to manage. So we talked about before and Eric when we were in our time together with Frank, there's something in the salesperson DNA called the will to sell. And if a salesperson does not have the desire, the commitment to doing the things she doesn't like to do, thinking positively about uh her situations, right? Versus, you know, versus I hope they buy something. Okay, not that, right? Taking responsibility for their actions, all of those things make up something called the will to sell. In a sales manager, we have something called the will to manage. Like you have to want to lead others. If you are begrudgingly promoted because there's no one else. So why don't you do it, Eric? Okay. They don't want to be a sales manager, they don't like being a sales manager, they're not good at being a sales manager. We can see that before they make this mistake of getting promoted. So it's sales DNA, in my opinion, is even more helpful to prevent disastrous hires or disastrous promotions. It's not a magic elixir to fix someone, right, who doesn't have the skills, mindset, um, or heart to do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Yeah. Tell us for those that don't know, tell us more about sales DNA.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

So, sales DNA, um, an assessment, and uh many of y'all that are listening know you've probably taken an assessment before of some kind. Um, there are about 2,500 different assessments that you can buy. And unfortunately, um many of them are not predictively valid. And it's interesting because yesterday I had lunch with my friends, and for some reason, this restaurant here in San Diego had poutine, right? Do you guys know what poutine is?

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

So if you don't know everybody, it's like the best food ever. It's basically a pile of fries, then with like three gallons of gravy, these curds, and then pulled pork. We could put whatever uh you want on it. It's like 73,000.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

It's healthy, it's good for you.

SPEAKER_03 20:04

So it's your meal for the next six weeks.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

But I was in Quebec City a couple times, and they have that's where poutine is famous, right? In Quebec City, in Canada. So every restaurant I would drive by or walk by had a sign out front that says Canada's best poutine. Okay. Um, that's not predictive validity, right? That's not real data. 96% of assessments do that. What the reason that I like sales DNA is because it's one of the 4% who actually goes and talks to the clients that have used the assessments and says, is this person taking butt? Is this person gone? Is this sales manager doing well? Are they doing poorly? And so it's predictive of future success in a role, not a hundred percent predictive, roughly 72. So salespeople generally, when they get hired by a company, about 23% become top half performers within a year. When companies use sales DNA in the hiring process, that number jumps to 72. So I mean it is triple, but it's still not a hundred, but it's better. So that's why we use it to help evaluate existing salespeople and sales managers, and then used in the hiring process before you ever talk to a prospect, they would take sales DNA.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And shoot, I'll take 3x results.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect, like we get it wrong too, but I just get it wrong less.

unknown 21:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Well, you know, there's no shortage of sales tools and frameworks out there and methodologies. And from an executive standpoint, how should leaders decide what truly supports the business versus what adds noise, or or does any of that stuff even really matter?

SPEAKER_03 21:48

It doesn't matter. I was at Riviera on Saturday, so it's a PGA tour tournament in LA. And um, it's pretty awesome to be that close to the players and just see them play. You know, they're just playing, it's a totally different game. I am unfamiliar with and I'm marginally adequate at golf, but they're just they're just on a different level. Um and so what I saw, and I followed a couple players and we sat at a couple holes, me and and and some buddies. Let me ask you. Guys, how many of the players that I saw had the same swing?

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Oh, none.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

Oh, what a surprise.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

Why? Yeah, because they do have works for them. Well, why not just make them all swing like Ben Hogan? Yeah. Like that. This is literally what companies think. And they go, We'll just teach them all this magic sales methodology. What no, that doesn't work. You have to let people sell like them, right? That's the key. And that's why I'm so adamant about all my one size fits none stuff. Because there is no magic way to sell. Like you have to develop your style, um, your ability, your purpose, right? Your philosophy. Now, do we still have to follow processes? Yes, of course. Playbooks and all that stuff. Of course. Um, I don't think I don't know if I had this, Eric, when you were there. Um, Michael, have you have you seen the um greatest night in pop documentary? I haven't I haven't seen that. Have you seen it, Eric? Yeah, but watched it after you talked about it during our business session. So this is because Michael doesn't know. Um you remember We Are the World? That song? Yeah. So that's what it's about.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

And so it's amazing. And how they put this together, it's incredible. But they had to get 47 of the world's greatest superstar singers in one studio in LA on January 28th, 1985, literally had overnight to record it, 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. That's when it was recorded. So they got all these amazing people there, and Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie got commissioned to write the song. So Stevie Wonder was also supposed to be part of it, but he wouldn't return Lionel's phone calls. So they just did it themselves.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

So they wrote the song, and when Quincy Jones was there, he was the producer. He put a sign on the front of the studio that said, Leave your ego at the door. And a really cool, unique thing, and you guys know who are listening, the way the song goes, right? There are people that have their solo parts, right? Then the chorus, and then people have a solo part and the chorus. Well, what Quincy Jones did not do, right, is say, hey, Springsteen, um, I'm not sure that's gonna really work for this song. You know, that might work in New Jersey, but uh, can you sing this like Steve Perry? Okay, that didn't happen, right? And he didn't go to Bob Dylan and go, hey Bob, annunciate. Like, I are those words. What are you saying? You didn't do that. And the coolest part, maybe Eric, this is my favorite part of the documentary, Bob Dylan is having imposter syndrome, like many of us. And he can't even deliver a lie because he's so intimidated by all these amazing people, right? And so Quincy Jones puts his arm around him, and it's probably the first and only time I have ever seen Bob Dylan smile, right? And he's just like, Bob, do your thing, bro. Like you're amazing, you're incredible, just be yourself. And he sort of loosens up and then he delivers a great line in the song. That sales, right? The lyrics to the song, like they're still lyrics, right? They've got to be sung in a certain way, they're still lyrics, but how you sing the lyrics. Like Quincy Jones didn't care. Cindy Lauper did it her way, and Daryl Hall did it his way, and Paul Simon and Willie Nelson, and that's why the song's amazing. Not because he had them all sing in a methodology, right? It wouldn't have been the same.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

When you talked about this, uh, Steve, I I recall speaking of sales cultures, cultures that are effective and human, right? We we don't want to deprogram someone's individuality. Uh that's crucial. Yes. I the human aspect, and uh Eric might uh might like this because he saw it.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

Do you remember a picture I put up of my favorite human being by any chance?

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

Bob Ross. Bob Ross, yeah. Yeah. So I was in Orlando last week for a bunch of vistach talks, and I talk about him all the time because again, he's the epitome of how you teach a system is what matters, right? Not the system. How you teach a system. So uh everybody's face lights up when they talk about Bob. So one of the members was like, hey, you know his studio is like an hour and a half away. I'm like, what? So literally the studio they certify Bob Ross certified painting instructors was an hour and a half away. So I drove there. So I canceled the meeting. It wasn't with you, luckily, but I canceled some meetings. I moved them because this is way more important. So I went there, met the new owners. There was a class going on, and there are all these original, you know, Bob Ross paintings there. You just will never see. And so I had some conversations with some of the people there. Bob's been gone for 30 years. Okay, and he still has an impact. So I asked where he was buried, right? His final resting place. I go, oh, it's in Orlando. I'm like, what? Where? They go, you know, Woodlawn Cemetery. I'm like, I'm going. So I went. And I didn't really post much of this on LinkedIn. I think I put one small post, but I went to the cemetery and asked where his plot was, and they sent me there. And it's just me and Bob. Just like it was amazing. The most impactful guy in my life, practically. And he taught me so much about how we teach. And this is sales, and this is leadership. And this is what a woman said about Bob in one of these documentaries, just a stranger. And she said, Bob didn't teach to show you how good of a painter he was. He taught to show you how good of a painter you could be. That's the definition of leadership. You've we as leaders have a responsibility, right, to put people in their position to win. That's what sales is about, teaching people about how good they can be, not how much premium they write or how much software they sell. And that's what's missing. And the companies that do this, their salespeople are unrecruitable, right? There is no amount of money that will get them to leave an environment like that. And that's why I say a lot of times, great salespeople, great salespeople are easily recruitable because they're in environments they don't want to be in, because they're just treated like a number. They're very rarely fed, right? The top salesperson in companies is often the least recognized.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Because they take them for granted. And they just think, oh, well, Michelle's just gonna do another 18 million. And by the way, let's say Michelle does sell 18 million bucks worth of stuff. You know what she gets for a reward next year? A higher photo, a higher number. A pay cut. Boy, sounds awesome. Who would sign up for this? But companies think that salespeople like this or that it works. It's like we're in the bizarro world, right? It's like one, like I was looking to want a shake CEO sometimes, like McFly. Anybody home like, is anyone you think that salespeople care about this stuff? Like, salespeople care about two things, and world-class salespeople care about four. Most salespeople care about themselves first and then their families together. And world-class salespeople care about those two, their company and their customers.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

As owners, there is a lot of sometimes they feel a lot of like revenue pressure and growth pressure, you know. And so we're talking about kind of assumptions with sales and things of that nature. What's one assumption that folks that leaders that feel that, what's one assumption they just need to reconsider to get rid of in that situation?

SPEAKER_03 30:19

So let's say you've got a leader who's getting pressure from a board, right? Because they're all outcome-based, don't even realize if they eliminated that, they'd get better outcomes. Okay. These again are the guys and gals who were on the first T and go, I'm gonna hit this thing 350, right down the middle. Oh yeah, it ain't going 350. So when they put pressure down, again, where do you think that pressure goes? Well, right to the sales team. So if a leader gets pressured, they're gonna pressure the sales team. It's very much like unfortunately, in human behavior, people grow up abused, they tend to abuse. So why do some not? Like not everyone who was abused abuses their kids or spouses. What's different about them, right? So you have to realize even though something happened to you or is happening to you, does not mean you have to foist that onto somebody else. So the leaders almost have to be uh like a filter, right? They get pressure up here, but what comes out here better not be pressure, right? Like a like a desalinization, right? You got to take the salt down. So how you do it, again, are all the things we talked about. Investing in people, getting them coaching, mentorship, support, not only talking to them when they do something bad, right? Recognizing your top performers a lot. Those are the things that will get the numbers you're getting pressured to achieve. So they've got to realize that they have to translate that somehow.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Yeah, and there's a lot that senior leaders are expected to do and expected, you know, when it terms to when it comes to sales and sales management. You've seen a lot of this. So thinking about those expectations that kind of get foisted on these senior senior leaders, if you could give the that audience permission to just stop doing that thing that's expected of them, what it what would you advise them to stop doing and why?

SPEAKER_03 32:30

I uh in that same s section of Florida Vista stuff, and Michael knows, and Eric has hurt my talk. Um when I talk about DPI so much and daily performance indicators, how they are way more important, right, than KPIs. And one of these guys, we had this conversation about goals, and I Michael knows and Eric probably knows how stupid I think goals are. But this guy like he couldn't even comprehend life without a goal. We have to have a revenue goal, or else how do we know? And he can't even fathom that you don't. Like the that crap didn't exist a thousand years ago. Like they merchants in the street in Athens didn't go, you know what the goal is today, everybody? 42 wicker baskets.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Okay. That's like an industrialized BS. So there are companies, and I know some of y'all are listening to this, can't even fathom this. There are companies without revenue goals. I'm just letting you know, because we have some of them as clients. If you want to read a great book, read the infinite game. Okay, by time at Cynic. It's not really his necessarily his idea, but the idea of if we're gonna be in business, how about we just like take care of the customers and do awesome stuff for them? And then guess what? Um, they'll tell people, and then more people will buy stuff from us. Then we just add it up at the end of the year, and then that's what it is. They can't it's it's they it's like a drug. It's like they're addicted right to metrics. And so when it's been perpetuated for the last 200 years, it's not exactly easy to release that. Uh but that's why they do it, because they've been told to do it. It's almost the abuse thing. They've been brought up with I need metrics and KPIs and we gotta go forecasting and all this stuff like forecasting. Forecasting? Really? Last week it was supposed to rain all week in San Diego. It rained for, I don't know, 12 minutes. I wish I was a weather forecaster.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

I'd love to get paid 400 grand to be wrong all the time.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

As as if there is some science behind forecast. Like it's an oxymoron, sales forecast, right? Jumbo Shrimp, right? Intelligent Yankee fan, right? They're they just don't match. Um, so they spend more time with forecast and business plans and all this crap than they do role-playing with their people who will, you know, make that number higher. Like spend the time and the money on the thing that drives the revenue arbitrarily making up some metric-driven equation and from some spreadsheet jockey, okay, who's never made a call in their life. Like, do the things today that matter, right? But just so rare, they can't even see it.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

Yeah. Well, you you you just you kind of mentioned this a little bit. I want to dig in on this uh as we move forward. But um, we talked about the thing to stop doing. What should they invest in for long-term sales-driven growth? What's the one thing they should invest in?

SPEAKER_03 35:45

If I had to pick one thing, right, it would be build a custom playbook for your salespeople and role play the crap out of it.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

If it were only one thing, nothing else, give me two teams of salespeople, and one has a playbook and role plays all the time, and one has goals and quotas. Yeah. I'll pick in the first one. Yeah. Right. But they don't do it. So that'd be my number one thing.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Steve, as we're drawing uh close to our time here, one of the things we like to do on the podcast is uh ask our guests to share a meaningful quote or a piece of advice that's had an impact on you personally and how you show up as a leader. So uh I'd love to just pass the mic to you one more time um to give you an opportunity to share there. So that's an easy one.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

It's um attributed to Marcus Aurelius, but we can't really be sure. But it's from Stoic philosophy. The only way to truly be happy is to be free from any outcomes.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Amazing. Steve, this has been really helpful. I love the way you challenge uh sales leaders. Uh, you know, obviously in the in the vistage presentation, so much gold uh coming out of that. Uh encourage everyone to go out, pick up a copy of the book, um, uh reach out. How could someone uh find you on the internet, Steve, if they were interested in learning more uh about these these resources?

SPEAKER_03 37:09

LinkedIn's probably the easiest way, right? Steve Haru, H-E-R-O-U-X, and then um our company, thesalescollective.com. Those are probably the two easiest ways. And one last thing for everybody, I want to make sure I get to share this is my number one reason why I do what I do is helping our heroes. And I may have only shared this a little bit with you and Michael, but I have a nonprofit called the Million Veteran Mission, and I'm gonna teach a million veterans how to sell. So they get access to all my contrarian selling content that I built for free for life. And it's pretty awesome. We just had, I have an active Navy SEAL, right, who's going through training. And he is so uh thankful and grateful, and it's so humbling for me because he's seven months from transitioning and wants to go into sales. And a buddy who's already in training with me told him about it. So if anybody's listening would love to help our heroes in any way, the million veteran mission.org. It's really simple. It talks about all the things they get. And so as many of these amazing people we can help. 200,000 transition, right, from the military every year. That many of them don't know what they want to do. So I'd love any connections, um, contacts, right? Introductions would be uh amazing.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Absolutely. And for our listeners, we'll put all of this information in the show notes. Anna always does a wonderful job of gathering up the resources. So we'll make it easy on you if you hit fastlowmotion.com slash podcast. You can see all of those notes as well as transcripts and past episodes. So we encourage everybody to go check it out. And would love uh, you know, we we have these episodes, we produce this podcast every couple of weeks. Anyone that's listening out there, if you have a question or topic you want us to dig into, just drop us a note at fastlemotion.com slash podcastfeedback. Steve, thanks again. MJ, appreciate you. We'll see you guys next time.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

Thanks, Eric. And now I know MJ, apparently.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

He did a good job.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

Thanks, guy. Thanks everybody for listening.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Yeah, thank you.