Pillar Talk: Building Sales Leadership with Rick Smolen
Join Rick Smolen and other seasoned B2B sales leaders on the quest for defining great sales leadership. Learn the pillars of successful leadership, hear stories about what works and what doesn’t, lessons learned, and come away with specific tactics you can apply to your job or career right now.
Pillar Talk: Building Sales Leadership with Rick Smolen
Building People: How Leadership Rituals Transform Sales Performance with Colin Specter
Colin Specter, SVP of Sales at Orum, shares his leadership philosophy centered on building people first, believing those people will then build successful businesses. His approach balances high standards with genuine care for team wellbeing, recognizing that sales is fundamentally about energy transference.
• Zig Ziglar's principle: "You don't build businesses, you build people and people build businesses"
• Leading from the front and never asking team members to do something you wouldn't do yourself
• Using "Make it Happen Mondays" to begin each week with wellness practices and team alignment
• Implementing box breathing exercises and other mindfulness techniques to center the sales team
• Creating clear "standards of excellence" that define expectations across different roles
• Balancing the science of sales (activities, scripts, playbooks) with the art (personal approach)
• Leveraging AI to transform coaching through data-driven insights
• Addressing the challenge of increased manager-to-rep ratios (now typically 7-10, sometimes 20)
• Maintaining that people still buy from people despite technological advancement
• Building organizational rituals that reduce uncertainty and help salespeople thrive
When in doubt, focus on your people - you can never spoil your team with care, love, commitment and coaching. Pour more into your people and the results will follow.
Music by Ben Cina & Ayler Young
It's time to say something real.
Speaker 2:I've been waiting on you to tell me how you really feel. Just be honest. Hurts in me. You like to joke, I can't shake.
Speaker 1:I can't quit. It's never really what you say. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Pillar Talk. This is where we build the foundations of sales leadership success and attempt to create clarity for what good looks like for a current and aspiring sales leaders. Before we jump in with our guest today, I'd love to recap what the six pillars that I've created for sales leadership talent, identification and attraction so important, so difficult.
Speaker 1:I talk about operating rhythm, the way you run the business, which manifests in engagement of the team, motivation of the team, accountability on the team. Those are hard things to do. I talk about mastering the craft which is helping the team win. Business planning, which is really, to me, playing offense as a business, which is your cross-functional partnerships. Planning for the future rather than what happens most of the time, which is reacting to something that just happened to you, and how do you be good at the former and avoid the latter to the extent possible?
Speaker 1:Communication, that's really being purposeful on communication on three sides. This is communication with the team, which people are naturally doing. This is communication with peers, which is a little bit harder, and then, of course, communication up, and we all have a boss one way or another. And then, lastly, ownership the continuum between being about the business and being about your team, and how do you find balance across that continuum? And, of course, it's also about ownership in the like. Do you need all the directions of what to do, or are you taking ownership and like taking initiative to do the things, and what's the balance between that?
Speaker 1:So lots of learning that I have put together in these areas and lots that I want to learn from our guests. And speaking of guests, today we have Colin Spector, the SVP of sales at Aurum. Aurum is, I believe, the number one AI powered calling platform for revenue organizations. Now, colin has spent over a decade leading sales teams, evangelizing new products, building high performance teams, then basically rocking it in competitive markets. Colin's passionate about people development, about inspiring sales professionals to set big goals and then helping them achieve their potential. Beyond his role at Aurum, colin also does angel investing and advisory work, both in AI and in health tech. So, colin, welcome to Pillar Talk.
Speaker 2:Rick, thanks so much for having me on the show. Really excited to be here sharing any insights I can also to learn from you in the conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Colin, I started to follow your content recently on LinkedIn. You're definitely a guy that leads from the front. I can imagine that in a world where you're selling to sellers, which is kind of an interesting dynamic, so you've got to be willing to sort of put it, put you know, on the hat of the sales role. But you know you also sort of talk about inspiring sales professionals to set big goals and achieve their full potential, which is a quote I found on your LinkedIn profile that I really like. Where did this passion come from and how has that shaped your leadership style?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a subscriber of the classics and when I say classics, like you know folks like Zig Ziglar, for example, and he's got this core virtue and tenet that I say all the time that you don't build businesses, you build people and people build. You, build up people and people build up the businesses right. And so, taking that type of philosophy in my team and pouring my care and my coaching and commitment to my people and in turn my people pour that into the business right. When they feel the level of effort I put into their coaching and their development, I see that reciprocated through their efforts, through their inputs in in the business and and so, yeah, I guess, like from a tactical perspective, you know just just the level of effort you put into coaching and and developing your people and training and and and the type of feedback you give and the type of support you provide in your deals and prospecting and just daily workflow.
Speaker 2:And I'm happy to go deep on any one of these areas, but I do my best to really lead from the front and I'll never ask my people to do something I'm not willing to do myself, whether that be make 50 calls or 100 calls, or enter in forecasting into our forecasting system or, of course, sending follow-up emails after every customer meeting, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Right, all the little details. Because how you show up, how you communicate the actions that you do, your people are looking, you're constantly being looked at as the example, right, and so, as a leader like you, recognize that and I've evolved and matured to a point like in my leadership I can't say I was like this day one, but I've definitely grown to recognize these truths, these, these truths, and, uh, and just be more mindful of how I'm showing up in meetings. If it's a virtual meeting or an in-person meeting, the energy I'm giving off, my reaction to the person that's talking. Right, um, folks look to you, right, and so you want to set a great example and, um, so kind of a lot long-winded answer to the question.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love this term building people. You know, and you know what I wrote down was like it can be contagious when they see how much you're investing in them. But I always had this worry around how to build people and how to invest a lot of time and energy, but do it in such a way that builds people, like that actually has that result. And a highly engaged leader there has a risk of like coming across, as you know, like I don't know, do it my way. Or you know somebody feeling like everything they're going to do is going to be judged or evaluated, like how do you, how do you come across in a way that builds people and doesn't come feel like micromanaging in some way for the team? And again, I'm not saying that this is, I just like to think from my own experience the risks of active management and those is what comes to mind for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to set the standard of. You know to hit on the theme of this podcast what good looks like, like, what is the standard that you hold yourself accountable to, what's the standard that you're holding your people accountable to? And, if it's in your playbook and in your set of standards, how you're showing up on a Zoom call, how you're showing up in terms of your daily inputs and activity, how you communicate with your peers. If you have a code of standards that you've set and you're also living by and exemplifying those standards, then it's easy to point to something as like a foundational playbook right. And so having a standard around let's say you're an SDR, how many calls, how many prospects you need to add into sequence per day, could be as simple as this. And then, if you're an account executive, a standard around the way that we present our sales narrative and the specific type of follow-up that is expected of you after those customer calls, and how you treat a buyer, even when they may be disqualified on the surface, et cetera. Right to buyer, even when they may be disqualified on the surface, et cetera. Right, there's a certain standard that that you should set as a starting point and then, from there, build upon it and, and you know, going back to you know you asked me like around, how do you build people up, how do you get people to think big? And you know part, like I have this like reading list I give to folks as well, and one of the books I recommend is the magic of thinking big. It. You know, like I have this like reading list I give to folks as well, and one of the books I recommend is the Magic of Thinking Big. It's like another classic, so like again, I'm a student of the classics, so, but there's a book called the Magic of Thinking Big and it's all about setting big goals and like basically my goal for my people is to share with them the things that have worked for me.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't mean, like you have to do it exactly the way I do it. That's not what I'm saying necessarily, because sales is both an art and a science and the science is the standard. You set the activities, the script, the playbook, but the art is what you bring to that playbook. The art is your tone and your approach to the script, the way you're approaching your prospects that you've added to the sequence, the way you're connecting to that with them when you're on the calls career. There's many paths up the mountain, right, but showing you that there is a big mountain that you can climb and how to set goals to climb that mountain in the first place, are frameworks that others can be inspired by and really can take to a whole nother level.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, there's interesting, like when you ask about micromanaging versus leading. I think you do need to manage and hold people to an account to the standards that you've set for sure. You do need to manage and hold people to an account to the standards that you've set for sure. Like you need to be, be firm with those standards, but it's it's not about micromanaging them to do it exactly Like, like you don't want to take away their artistic and their authentic approach, because sales absolutely has. Like that's the unique aspect of it, right, that's the art of it. Is is the way I think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to like. How do you get the team to think bigger? So, beyond you know reading the magic of thinking big, are there practices or routines that you use to invest in the team's growth and development, like that's this. You know, let's get into the application of this in the wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have a weekly Monday meeting with the entire sales organization where we call it Make it Happen Mondays and we start those calls with some typically a self-improvement tactic or quote or inspirational moment. And so part of what I provide the team and what they expect each week is they're going to have a moment in that weekly Monday meeting that's going to ground them to start the week, because everybody goes into Monday with like the weekend and kind of dread, like a lot of people they go into Monday with with some sense of dread I'm not saying everyone, but a lot of people do and so just to ground the entire team with a starting point in the week of like hey guys, like we're here now, um, we might do, for example, like a breath work exercise on a Monday. And uh, we had a Monday not too long ago. We did box breathing as an example, like a breathwork exercise on a Monday. And we had a Monday not too long ago. We did box breathing as an example, right, and just did a breathwork exercise where you hold in your breath for four seconds. Like you breathe in for four seconds, you hold for four seconds, you release for four seconds, hold at the bottom for four seconds. And so box breathing as like one tool that we taught the team, and everybody did that for about a minute, right. And so box breathing as like one tool that we taught the team, and everybody did that for about a minute, right. And we're not talking like a crazy long wellness seminar, but it's Again going under the umbrella of building your people up.
Speaker 2:If I can arm my people with ways that they can take care of themselves, and that could be with box breathing, that could be with giving them a positivity journal.
Speaker 2:We gifted everyone at SKL a journal that they could write in every day.
Speaker 2:That has prompts just to get their mindset right, because sales is so much about energy transference, is so much about energy transference and, again, like one of my kind of classic beliefs is that when you sell, you're transferring your excitement, your energy, your enthusiasm for a belief you have to someone else and getting them to share that excitement and that belief.
Speaker 2:Right, I could be excited about going to the Yankee game and wanting to get convinced you to also get tickets and come with me, and I'm selling that idea to come to the Yankee game and wanting to get convinced you to also get tickets and come with me and I'm selling that idea to come, you know, to the Yankee game as an example, right, and I say this because Rick and I met at a Yankee game not too long ago, which is a whole nother story. But how can you maintain that energy and that vibe? Well, the salesperson has to take care of themselves and they've got to get themselves to an energy state that is going to be attractive, that is going to make a connection with the champion, that is going to have that emotional moment where the champion is going to want to do business with them.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting point that you're making where it's like if you can get the sales team's mind right, you can get improved execution. But I'm also hearing it's like I'm helping them beyond sales tactics and the like. So is that make it happen? Monday meeting a varied sort of list, but it's all about creating the energy and vibe. Is it a more heavily focused on personal development that should have a cascade down to sales execution, like how do you think about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's, it's part of it's, it's just a section.
Speaker 2:Within we have an it's an hour long meeting and it's essentially our, our meeting where we're going over pacing in the pipeline and activities from SDR.
Speaker 2:Essentially, each of the the managers report to the broader sales org how their team is pacing and doing, and so all of the reps are in there, the managers are in there, sales ops is in there, enablement and partnerships, and so each team lead is reporting a shout out on their specific team from the prior week big, big logos, closed behaviors that are worth shouting out Like somebody did a great job supporting a peer, et cetera. So it's, it's a really positive hype up meeting. But we always start with more of a holistic wellness exercise or tip or it could be as simple as a quote, Like maybe it's a quote around setting big goals or a quote from a book or box breathing right, and that like typically like that at most is a five-minute at most exercise. Typically pacing in the business, shout outs, any product updates, enablement updates, any calls we want to play live for folks to listen to some examples. So that's all happening on that one hour meeting.
Speaker 1:The preparation for that? Do you own it? Are you getting support from other functions in which to sort of set that up? Is that sort of like that's really the law, like, do you view that as like the launchpad for the week? Like, I'm just trying to like calibrate how much goes into the creation of this.
Speaker 2:So each, each team lead owns a part of that meeting. They own their section. So so if you're the enterprise leader, you're going to have your slide on your, your people and your pacing and shout outs from the prior week and meetings. Meetings said accounts that we've made progress in deals closed, same in SMB, same in mid markets, and then our SDR team. Very similarly, meetings that were booked by the SDR team are pacing scoreboard. You know who's in for who's, who's pacing for first and second place, et cetera. So each, each leader contributes to a running deck. So basically, it's like a running Google slide deck each, and then we break it. We break it up by what week it is Okay. This is, this is the week of, let's say, august, august 15th or what have you. Um, you would start on your section there, and so I, I personally, love to own the wellness side of it and then any additional shout outs, anything from that perspective, but each it's collaborative with your team leaders.
Speaker 1:So that's one thing that you do, which is a you know, a routine or a practice to try to foster growth and development. What else?
Speaker 2:try to foster growth and development. What else? What else, yeah, I mean from a growth and development perspective. It's a great question, I think. Let me think about that Like you work in a.
Speaker 1:You work in an environment that's like high action oriented right. It's a sales team that sales to sales. It's like a sales tool that accelerates sales. So, like this is a high velocity sales team from an action perspective, hopefully also from a deal count perspective.
Speaker 1:So, building this sort of stamina, building this sort of mindset of thinking big is really important, I would imagine, to like the success. So one thing you do is set the tone right for the week and give people visibility and news. And you know something around wellness there which I like, you know, I like there's also probably a lot of what that's in the standards that you've set and in the expectations and in the playbook adherence. You know those types of elements as well. But I am just trying to kind of get into the week of the life of Colin to sort of say what are the kind of key moments that you think foster that, that you know the foster the higher level of execution which ultimately builds people.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I think in the pre-show right we were talking about operating rhythm and part of this is the routine and the rituals that the team expects and what's expected of them throughout the week. Right, and so on Monday we're going to have our sales all-hands meeting. First of all, before that Monday meeting, I meet with my sales leaders where we're covering with them any areas of opportunity, any blockers, and then we're getting ready for the Monday meeting and we're ensuring that all of the right updates for the rest of the field are ready to go into that Monday meeting. And then we're stacking Mondays and Tuesdays with our one-on-ones and then on Wednesdays we do our pipeline meeting. And so by Wednesday you'll have met with each of your reps and each of the reps will have updated their forecast either on Monday or Tuesday. And then by Wednesday we've got the forecast put in and then we're reporting our forecast to the broader leadership in the company. We call it a weekly business review. So, from from just a routine and rhythm perspective, you know that Mondays and Tuesdays are for your one on ones. Wednesday we've got our company reporting and then and then Thursday and Friday tend to be Friday Usually we put a training and then Thursday and Friday tend to be Friday usually put a training. But in between all of that you're doing your customer meetings. You're doing your daily customer facing activities where they'd be prospecting or demos or discovery, et cetera, et cetera. So we have our preset meetings, that we know we're going to be touching base with our people each week and that keeps the pace and the tone throughout the week with our folks. So I think having rituals is incredibly important and it reduces uncertainty for your people and it gets them into your routine.
Speaker 2:And I think when salespeople get really dialed into a really strong rhythm and routine, they tend to thrive and the more you can get them just holistically feeling good about themselves, the better they're going to show up for your customers right. They're going to be in a good mindset. They're going to be feeling good about the product because we've shared customer success stories with them. And I guess, to answer the question before, like what else am I doing?
Speaker 2:Like on Slack, you know, for example, throughout the week I'm constantly like combing through, like LinkedIn and G2 and and just like anywhere that people are shouting us out. I'll paste screenshots to the team and share with the team. Hey, look like here's this, this great customer moment where somebody was delighted by the product. So, just like constantly reinforcing reminders to our leaders and to our people, the product's kicking butt. People are loving it, they're having a great experience. You want to bring others into this great experience. Go out there and keep that good energy going, getting people excited about coming into the fold with Aurum and jumping onto the platform and having this type of experience with us with Aurum and jumping onto the platform and having this type of experience with us, how has this routine and rituals evolved?
Speaker 1:You've been in your role for like six years, which in tech, is like the equivalent, I think, of like 40. You know anything new that you've incorporated in the last like 18 months. As you know, part on the back of just your continuous iteration?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. I've definitely evolved as a leader over the last six years and I've grown a few more gray hairs, but it's been evolution just naturally with the company as well. So I mean, when I first joined Aurum, we were a startup. We were it was the founding team and myself, like I was, it was founder led sales and I came on to build out the sales program. And so I mean, in the beginning I was a glorified SDR, again with a VP title and had to build value into my title.
Speaker 2:And so as we grew the business, naturally I was able to shed the skin of the different kind of levels of a business, from startup to being a frontline leader. At the beginning I was just managing AEs and SDRs and then being able to promote those people to be the manager, and now, okay, now I'm second line, naturally because the business has grown, and then get to a point where, okay, now I'm able to hire a director and has their own managers and their own remit, and so that's it's kind of happened naturally. So the business has evolved and I've had to evolve my game as a leader and throughout it all I've had to report to the board and to the CEO. And now we're at a transition in our business where we're offering multiple products and so taking on uh different lines of business for uh, for Orem, and getting to play that salespreneurial hat again within the company and kind of a startup within a startup keeps the kind of excitement and the growth happening as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the new products ones. Uh, that is a real interesting challenge, like how do you go to market with new products? Do you dedicate team to it? Do you use existing resources? There's a bunch of business decision making that's got to happen there, isn't it?
Speaker 2:where I know we had many mutual connections and friends and, like Aaron Melamed and others, for example, and at Namely, we took a similar approach where we started off as like an HR and performance management solution and then we added insurance Can you teach a bunch of HR tech sellers an insurance business?
Speaker 2:And so instead I said, all right, well, hey, colin, go get your insurance license and figure this out for us, will you? And it was cool because I got to sell to the install base insurance and I got to focus on selling a whole new line of business and that helped compound the startup very, very quickly. We would double our deal sizes, we would double the growth rate through adding and attaching insurance, which is a subscription business. So that really helped Namely's journey from seed to series D. And then here at Aurum, now we're doing something similar. We've got our calling product, which everyone knows Aurum for, and now we're layering on top of this our coaching product, and so it's taken a similar approach of like all right, let's go sell coaching to the install base, and let's also can we sell coaching as it's standalone in the market against some of these other kind of learning and enablement type of products as well.
Speaker 1:So who's doing the selling of the coaching?
Speaker 2:So I've got a little tiger team that is focused on this kind of the call-in selling insurance at namely time. We've got a coaching team here at Orem that's a hundred percent dedicated to selling to the install base of customers and then enablement focused sales campaigns Gotcha yeah.
Speaker 1:I always feel like a company like Orem, and you know being the sales leader of it. You're continuously engaging with other sales leaders, which is your primary audience, both from a sales standpoint and a customer standpoint, and you sitting in a. You're continuously engaging with other sales leaders, which is your primary audience, both from a sales standpoint and a customer standpoint, and you sitting in a leadership position where you know you're not doing the day-to-day sales, although I'm sure you're involved in many deals. I'm curious of what innovation you? I feel like you have a strong front row seat on innovation, on sales leadership, and I'm curious what you're seeing. What are you seeing folks doing? It could be from a technology adoption standpoint. It could be just from a process perspective. What innovation in sales leadership are you seeing? We see so much on LinkedIn and so on about innovation in sales AI, sdrs, all kinds of stuff to help sell better. What about on the leadership side?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you said this before and it's like I'm a sales leader that sells sales solutions to other sales leaders, so it's like it's this whole sales leadership inception world that I live in. Very cool to have a front row seat to some of the world's most successful businesses, and some of the world's fastest growing companies are our clients and customers here, and so I've gotten a front row ticket to see how they're operating their playbooks and taking advantage of our products and what other products they're using right and what are the trends. And and the biggest change is that you have access to so much more data than ever before, and now, with AI, you can actually get insights on this data, and so the change that comes with that is your coaching and your management doesn't need to be performative anymore, meaning like you're, not just like having a one-on-one for the sake of having a one-on-one.
Speaker 2:No like every single one-on-one you have everything you need from a data perspective, from an insight perspective, and so you know whether using not to plug our own products so much, but actually like Oram, like part of our vision and what we believe is that you can make every single sales leader a data-driven sales leader, especially when it comes to coaching on your live conversations and interactions with your target market. And so you click on a rep's profile in your one-on-one and you've got all the trends from your last one-on-one and today. Are they up, are they down? What should you celebrate? What should you focus on? Here's an AI generated playlist of their calls from the past week and key moments in those calls where you might want to review that tape.
Speaker 2:So in the past, like there was a ton of data but you didn't even know where to start, like most managers and frontline leaders are like buried in a call library, like what call should I even choose? Let me ask you to go bring a call to my one-on-one. Now the AI can generate a playlist for you. The AI is going to say hey, mr and Mrs Manager, mrs Sales Coach, here's the call that you should focus on this week. Here's the top objection, here's the new trend that's happening in your market and we should probably think about sharing across the team that this trend is showing up so enablement, coaching, development, management. It has to be more dynamic and it is becoming more dynamic than ever before. That's the biggest trend.
Speaker 2:So, like the playbook of the past, like you built a learning track, it sits in your LMS, you take a course, you get certified on it.
Speaker 2:Well, those talk tracks, those competitive insights, they've gone stale. The market, they go stale after a quarter and the market's changing so fast that you need to be more adaptable than ever before and you need to know what's happening this week, this month, what are my competitors doing, how are my people winning and how do I disseminate that information faster than ever before. And so we're big believers that the technology is here to support that level of enablement and that happens through live conversations. Like the data's there, but you just didn't have a way to toggle and ask that data and get that data served up in a digestible experience. You know, if you think about Gong Course, those things have been around for years and years and years, but it's just like a library of data. But like, how do you make it actionable? And that's the change we're seeing Making that more actionable, making it, within the workflow, easy for a manager to coach and give insight to on their business what's working, what's not working, where they need help.
Speaker 1:So I play that back to you. If he was to say one thing that you're working on that's making you a better leader, you'd say it starts with data orchestration. Now, when I have a coaching conversation with somebody, I don't need to go running around to try to figure out what are all the inputs in terms of driving that person's performance and where coaching needs to happen. I now can be fed that information, or we can be fed that information through technology, and so that the conversation is just about the coaching, not all the pre-work that needs to be done to figure out what coaching needs to happen, and so using technology as a way to accelerate coaching opportunities, you know is a particularly compelling situation because we do have a limited amount of time in the day to try to figure out how to be helpful to our team.
Speaker 2:Rick, you nailed it right. Think about how much prep work normally would go into your one-on-one like to really like, nail the one-on-one, and at the level of like rep to manager ratio, I'd say like, with the exception of like a whale hunting enterprise org, where maybe you've got like three or four reps to one manager, most of the sales organizations that we serve and that we meet with, that rep to manager ratio is only getting more challenging, meaning you're going from maybe five to six reps Now you're at seven to eight to 10 reps per manager, in some cases 10, 15, 20. We have some clients with 20 reps. How can you run an effective coaching session with 20 reps? You can't. It's not possible. You're just showing up to make sure that there's no, no, that's a.
Speaker 1:I mean we want to talk about a difficult job. Having 20 direct reports that all carry a quota is is sort of mind bending.
Speaker 2:Mind bending. But so, okay, how can you make it pot? So then it's like poses a question like how can we actually make it still somewhat productive and possible? Let's say you aren't in this challenging situation. Well, let's at least give you a superpower to give you the insights you need to have a productive conversation in that 30-minute meeting, because you're only going to have time for a 30-minute meeting each week. There's no way you can have more at that level.
Speaker 2:By and large, rep to manager ratio is still about like seven reps seems to be the magic number right now, but that number is growing up again. It's going between seven and 10, whereas in the past it was five to six. So, yeah, so using AI, having a product and being consistent with what you expect in the one-on-one when you implement your coaching management system, like, what do you expect of your leaders, your frontline people, to cover in the one-on-one? And if you are building a data driven sales organization and a high performing sales organization, what you're calling out that you're paying attention to each week in the weekly Monday, make it happen Monday meeting. And in the one-on-one, your reps are paying attention to the questions you ask your reps are the questions your reps are going to ask their prospective customers right when you're doing your deal, reviews, et cetera, and then in their pacing goals when it comes to pipeline forecasting activities, all of it.
Speaker 1:So you'd mentioned playbook a couple of times. Is expectations embedded within the playbook or is the playbook more the processes of action beyond the things that you're supposed to do, like how to run a right call or you know, like, how do you define playbook and how do you incorporate that into this discussion?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we use Notion for our intranet, and so we have a whole section around our sales principles that we hold everyone to. And then we have our standards of excellence, which actually includes things like Zoom Believe it or not things like Zoom etiquette and how you should show up on a call. You're going to be camera on, you know you're going to be. You're going to treat the buyer like a buyer, no matter if they're qualified or not. You're going to always give them a great experience.
Speaker 2:And so we have a list of certain standards that we expect at a minimum. It's like the minimum floor of standard, and then, based on your role, you'll have another set of standards. So if you're an SDR, you've got your prospecting standards that you're held to. If you're an SMB AE, here's your win rate standards. If you're an enterprise AE, here's your account planning standards that we expect. And so each leader then has their own playbook within the broader ORM go-to-market standard. And so the leader of their market, they may make changes and kind of fine tune it to their specific motion that they have, like the enterprise would be different than SMB, for example.
Speaker 1:How does that develop? Is that an iterative thing over time? Is that something that you did as an exercise at a sales kickoff one year, like how does that come into being?
Speaker 2:For us it's been more iterative over time. I'd say like it wasn't like hey, we're now going to bring in this new methodology, um and and train on it at kickoff. Like I, I, we, we, just I think have naturally evolved with this as as, like the evolution that we've gone through has been more market focused, if anything. So, like we like we in the beginning, we were selling to all markets. Like reps were kind of they had a mixed book where they had some SMB, some mid, some whales and a healthy mix. To get to your number was like yeah, you had a couple whales each quarter and mid markets like you know, you're old, reliable and SMB are going to be these inbound fund sales transactions to get the dopamine going.
Speaker 2:And then we made an intentional decision to focus our go-to-market org where we have an enterprise team that goes on a draw so they're not distracted by anything down market and they are 100% focused on whale hunting. This is the NASCAR slide of logos that we want to hit this year, and so we're willing to make a big bet on these players to go after these accounts. This is the resourcing that we're putting behind them. That was a big, I'd say, change. So maybe go back to like an RKO or SKO change Like. That was like a big change from like having a mixed bag, having a mixed book and kind of Segmentation. Yeah, so that's how we've evolved.
Speaker 1:And then you're like oh, now we have a segmented team. What does that mean from the behaviors of the team?
Speaker 1:You work with your leaders to figure out what that is, document it, evangelize it to the team, adhere to it, ensure it's incorporated in both. You know your, your rituals and routines, whether it's Monday morning meeting but definitely within one-on-ones and then performance management. On the back of that, what are you most excited about, colin, for the future? And not as it relates to your business, but you as a leader what are you most excited about as we look forward, gosh?
Speaker 2:I just you know I'm excited about selling. I believe that people still buy from people. It's still about the human connection and the markets. Yeah, the market could be scary at times. It's easy to get caught up in the the craze and and and the AI hype and, believe me, I'm like, but I'm also like this is an exciting wave to catch right now and I'm paddling for it and I'm going for it. So I'm excited to be riding the paddling for the wave, riding the wave and ensure and ensuring we're here to save sales and keeping salespeople at the at the center of of excellence here.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's what I'm hearing you say. Is that like, look, this thing is the real deal, it's everybody's thinking about it, everybody's talking about it. We have seen an acceleration in the capability set of AI tools, whether they're LLMs and so on, and this year, in 2025, it has been a like big step change. I think I've seen more in the last six months than I had in the previous four years of noise around this and so, being part of that, you know you feel part of that wave and so you want to ride that thing. Like we can unlock significant value for customers. Like let's go make that happen. That's very exciting.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. No, there's look, I think right now especially the market's hot, especially in AI, and so there's there's a huge opportunity. And, like I you know you brought the LinkedIn bubble and I think, if you just hang out in the LinkedIn bubble, yeah, like it's like, oh, like this is this is getting hard in the LinkedIn bubble, and but there's also, like different people have different LinkedIn's. Like I don't know, I have a friend that has a manufacturing business and a roofing company. His LinkedIn feeds very different than, like, probably, yours and mine, rick. So, just like, just know, sometimes we only see what's in front of us, but there's a lot happening in the macro level.
Speaker 1:So you know the audience here is current and aspiring leaders. Anything that we didn't cover that you want to share?
Speaker 2:Focus on your people, make your people better, believe in your people. You build up your people and they will build up the business like that. I know it's all easier said than done, but when in doubt, focus on your people. How can you like you can never spoil your people with with care and with love and with commitment and with coaching. So, when in doubt, pour more of that into your people and the results will come.
Speaker 1:I love it, Colin. I know we can find you on LinkedIn. Any other ways folks can get in touch with you.
Speaker 2:I'm on LinkedIn, I tweet or I X every once in a while, but yeah, I use my name, no hidden handles. So on any social platform, just type in Colin Spector and you'll see on X, on LinkedIn, on YouTube or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Well, I can feel your energy and can feel your excitement about what you do and I'm sure that's contagious to the team. Thank you for joining us today on Pillar Talk.
Speaker 2:Rick, thanks so much. Thanks for everyone for listening in. I'll see you at the top.
Speaker 1:Reflecting on my conversation with Colin Spector, you can just see that the man oozes positive energy, that he deeply cares about his team and focusing on their well-being is a big emphasis to him and his view. There is more about by focusing on well-being and being so people-oriented that the downstream effect of that will be enhanced business results. Now I think it's really easy to focus on the work, on the tasks, on the things that have to happen, and it was refreshing to see Colin's perspective on focus on the people and the downstream impact where that will be improved execution and work by the team. That doesn't mean that Colin doesn't set up accountability throughout the org. There's a playbook, there's expectations, but there's a people-oriented approach here that ties into one of our key pillars around enhancing engagement and motivation and it's just refreshing to see Colin's perspective on that. I love the operating rhythm that he started to describe. He talked about make it happen Monday and I tried to dive into what actually takes place on there and he described within that the activities, or examples of activities, that he uses to enhance the well-being of the team, to get the week started properly, to get people into the right headspace around it. But he also described a series of reporting and transparency as it relates to company progress, a forcing mechanism around recognition, or what he called shout outs, which I think is an incredibly underutilized tool to help a team perform. Recognition is free and it's meaningful when authentic and done right, and having that embedded as a way to kick off the week feels really effective. Setting up the team for what they need to know for the week ahead, what enablement's coming, what new drops on product or any other information sharing and getting people out from weekend mode to time to execute mode seem to make a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1:I think every leader has an opportunity to look at their operating rhythm. This is the rituals, the meetings, the touch points, the one-on-ones that happen throughout the week. There's often a lot of inertia on just how that happens and it's just sort of been building brick by brick over the years of how an organization evolves. I think a fresh look at that makes a lot of sense. Colin's description of Make it Happen Monday is forcing me to rethink our operating rhythm and it's a tangible thing that I think we can take away from the episode, and I like what Colin described about this adoption of AI as a tool to support coaching. I know we're in the early days of this.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of startups that are out there that are deploying AI in a way to enhance AE coaching and I find that concept very exciting and I can concede, as a leader that's been doing this a while. Coaching is really hard. You can give coaching, you can give feedback, but to have that received well by a person on the team, to have that then translated and deployed into improved execution the actual translation of coaching from its intention to reality it's a really hard thing to do. So the concept of technology enhancing that in a meaningful way is exciting, and I've yet to actually see it happen in moving the needle. So I'm very curious about this.
Speaker 1:After all I've said this a bunch of times there's no practice in B2B sales like there is in the arts and sports, and so we need to find ways to coach and improve the teams outside of practice like we learn by doing so. You know we're getting closer and closer to a reality where AI and technology are going to actually make it happen, not like the make it happen Monday, but make it happen for teams and coaching overall, and if you have an example or a use case where you're seeing this move the needle for your team. I would love to hear about it. I'm looking for real life applications to this. So thank you for listening to this episode. Thank you to Colin. If you haven't had a chance to check out my Substack Building Sales Leadership, check it out at buildingsalesleadershipsubstackcom. Would love your feedback as I write articles about these episodes. I want to thank Ari Smolin for producing Isler and Sons of Summer for the tunes and thank you listener, for listening.
Speaker 2:We will see you next time.