The Trust Problem in Scaling Sales Teams (Every CEO Faces This)

Transitioning sales away from the founder is one of the hardest—and most critical—inflection points in a growing business.

In this episode of The Scalability Code, Matt Haney is joined by Adam Boyd, owner of Trinity Training & Development, to explore the challenges of moving from founder-led sales to a scalable, team-driven revenue engine.

They discuss the psychology behind why founders struggle to let go, the risks of staying too involved, and how to build trust, accountability, and structure within a sales organization. The conversation also covers practical frameworks for pipeline management, objective deal evaluation, and developing sales leaders who can truly own revenue.

This episode is essential listening for founders, CEOs, and operators navigating growth beyond the early stages.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Matt Haney and Adam Boyd
00:24 Show Intro
00:49 Meet Adam Boyd
01:54 Early Hustles
02:53 Leadership Sparks
05:05 Sandler Origins
06:35 Cold Calling Grind
07:49 Cookbook Method
08:45 Rocks And Scorecards
09:57 Right Seat Flow
11:26 Trinity Overview
12:05 Frontline Leaders
14:37 Program Delivery
16:18 Toolbelt To Leader
18:56 Entrepreneur Fear Cycle
19:26 Billion Dollar Worries
20:45 Cash Flow Crucible
21:43 Handing Off Sales
23:20 CEO Role in Deals
24:56 Trust and Transparency
26:25 Better Prospects Not More
27:27 Owner Sales Leader Balance
30:18 Pipeline Review Blueprint
32:25 Objective Deal Scorecards
35:23 Ideal Client Profiles
36:29 Closing and Farewell

Contact Adam Boyd: https://thenorthwoodgrp.com/contact/

Feeling stuck in your business?

It’s ok. We’ve all been there… You simply don’t have time for vision and growth. You feel frustrated, anxious, and stuck because goals aren’t being met, processes aren’t followed, and your team isn’t on the same page. Time after time, you’re putting out fires only fast enough for the next one to pop up.

Get OUT of the Sh*t Show 

Let’s build your team and guide them to the next level.

Transcript

Adam Boyd 0:00

no one cares the way the owner does. No one understands the pain. When they go to sell the business, they have so much invested. And it's why if you're approaching a CEO or an owner for equity, you need to understand, you are asking them, like you're saying, Hey, I think I should be the godfather of your child. Right? Or, or like, you should write me into the will. Like you don't know the suffering they went through. You just see it as equity.

Speaker 0:25

Welcome to The Scalability Code, the podcast that helps you get out of the sh*t show and start growing your business. A few times each month, you'll hear stories and commentary from visionary entrepreneurs, EOS implementers, and fractional COOs about how they've taken businesses to Level 10. And now for your host, Matt Haney.

Matt Haney 0:45

How we doing folks? Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Scalability Code. Today we're joined by an old friend of mine, Adam Boyd. Adam, nice to see you again. Adam is the owner of Trinity Training and Development and, is one of my favorite sales ninjas and leadership development people I've come across. So Adam, thanks for joining me.

Adam Boyd 1:04

Matt, so good to be with you. I remember you working at Trigger.

Matt Haney 1:10

Yes. That was a minute ago. 2012.

Adam Boyd 1:13

and then there was, you were, you were with Denver,

Matt Haney 1:18

Yep.

Adam Boyd 1:19

right? But before you guys, I still have those sand bes. When you guys worked together on that and then you guys did the,

Matt Haney 1:25

thanks for coming on, Adam. We start this the same way, every time I ask my folks to go back and think of some of their earliest entrepreneurial memories And uh, I want to know if you can think back to when you either were impressioned by an entrepreneur or someone you know, lit a fire under you that said, Hey, you can do this whole entrepreneurial thing. so anybody come to mind? Any stories, any people, any times in your life where you're like, I can do this

Adam Boyd 1:54

I will tell you a couple stories, but I wasn't the kid who was trying to start a business. I wanted to make some money, but I always had a, like, I always had a, a use for that money. And when I was 12 I loved buying comic books. And by the way, back then it wasn't cool. Now it's cool. Back then you were kind of a dork. But I would work at this comic book store and I was there every Saturday. Finally, the people behind the counter who owned it said, Hey, do you just wanna come help us? Do this stuff like we'll pay you in comics. and I loved it. And I was there Friday night, all day Saturday and they would just gimme a big stack of comics and send me home'cause they had all this inventory that wasn't gonna move. I could price things. I knew what things were. I think I ran the register a little bit. And that was this really sweet season in my life. And then this isn't about money, but I then. Started and I'm learning who I am, kind of in my mid forties. I, I played high school football and I really wanted to be good'cause we had really sucked. We were oh and 10 my sophomore year we got shut out four times and as I kind of became a senior, I started saying, Hey, we are gonna organize our own practices outside of the coaches. And we started doing that in the summer and I said, our stadium looks like crap. We need to clean it up. So I started like. Galvanizing people around that. And I'm not necessarily the most charismatic. I just have a vision. I'm like, dadgummit, we're gonna do this, and what do I need to do to get it done? And then I did something similar in college with our fraternity. It was more like, how do we really build this thing? How do we raise more money? and then in terms of like really imp impressing me about entrepreneurship, the person who is really. Stamped me and I don't have anything close to his level of genius, effectiveness, or, or success, is Jeff Sandifer, who, guy who's done a lot in education, oil and gas and energy, and when I was at Acton, he just impressed upon me so much certain thoughts. That if you knew what he taught, you would hear it spilling out of me left and right, and I'm just trying to move our business in those directions.

Matt Haney 4:07

Well, I know Jeff, I don't know him as well as you do. Actually ran into Jeff in a hotel in Aspen 15 years ago, and I think it's about the time you were in, uh, the Acton program, which I still laugh about. I got denied twice. And then the next year is when Robin Weekly Bruce started. Do you know Robin?

Adam Boyd 4:24

Yeah.

Matt Haney 4:25

Yeah, so Robin and I laugh about this all the time'cause her kid and my kid are in the same grade at school. So she's like, Matt, you're not a failure. You're not. I mean, you didn't get an acton if I was there, you'd have gotten in. You're not a failure. She's hilarious. So anyway, I got to hear Jeff speak at one of your Acton events and then I ran into him at a hotel and we chatted for a sec. He's an incredible entrepreneur and a giver has done a lot of great things for a lot of

Adam Boyd 4:48

Oh yes. I, I think they brought me into that class just to kind of like, see if they could help make me get through it and just, they're like, how much hard work can one person do who

Matt Haney 4:58

Adam, he's like a passion project, you know, I mean, we're just gonna see if we can

Adam Boyd 5:01

I was, I think I was, I think I was. So

Matt Haney 5:05

Alright. So I first met you when you were taking, I think it was during the Sandler days. tell me about those times and sort of how that impression where you, where you are today. And give us some backstory on what is

Adam Boyd 5:18

Alright. So Sandler is a, worldwide sales training business and, they operate through franchisees. Started in the early eighties by a guy named David Sandler back then they were kind of a hotel business. You would show up whenever Sandler would come through and then it turned into weekly classes and then it's expanded. They went through an acquisition several years ago, and so they've updated their brand and some of what they're doing. But, Carl Siebel had come to Acton He had taught a session on sales and he had said, Hey, I do this assessment on people. If you're looking at sales as a career, come talk to me. I can run this assessment on you and we can give some feedback on yourself. And, I was at Acton, didn't know what I was gonna do. Everyone else was like, had a plan and a vision and I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I was just trying to understand the financial modeling. So I get out and I meet with Carl, and he runs me through the assessment and he says, you, you're not gonna, this is gonna be really hard for you. You shouldn't do this. You should go do something else. But he says to me, and I'm like, well, can I work for you? Like, I'll empty your trash and I'm about to sneeze, so gimme a minute.

Matt Haney 6:25

right in the middle. Adam Boyd, the trash emptier, but such a testament to you, for you to say, I'll do it all. I'll work harder than anybody else in the room. Just gimme a chance.

Adam Boyd 6:35

Well, and what he said, he was like, bear in mind I had an MBA at this point. He said, I'll pay you$15 an hour for everybody that you book. Every business owner you book into this event. I'll pay you, I think it was$200 or a hundred dollars. And he said, and if I close it, I'll give you I think 10%. And so I sat with him like by myself. Sat in a windowless room. I just had a book and a phone and there were some posters on the wall

Matt Haney 7:00

It's called a

Adam Boyd 7:00

cold called, it's what it felt like, and I just cold called for him. And so, that was brutal. And, but we, I thought I'd be there three months, maybe six months. I'd learn a lot. And you, that's sort of a misnomer I learned, but through pain and then. I ended up, not because I liked it, but because I'm too stubborn to quit. I just stayed nine years and we, we trained people, we sold to CEOs, we consulted and we, we got connected a lot of people in Austin, throughout Texas, and that was very formative for how I think about a lot of challenges in sales, probably similar. I probably have similar mental frameworks that you do to operations and working with CEOs, and I would love to hear about that at some point.

Matt Haney 7:48

Yep. One of the things I remember, you came in and helped us train a couple junior salespeople, at hyper wear, and it was the time I learned about the cookbook and I think that was a Sandler term or something around the fact that you would build your outcome and work backwards into what it took to get to that outcome

Adam Boyd 8:05

like a manufacturing

Matt Haney 8:06

It's exactly right. It's like, what's the end output? What are the ingredients required to get to that output? And I'm not gonna lie, I still use that technique today a lot on holding people accountable and managing expectations. It's like, I don't know how to get to the end. It's like, well, you don't start at the end. You get the end goal and then you work backwards into it.

Adam Boyd 8:23

what's an example? It's, I think it's really simple and sort of self-evident sales. How do you use that concept when you're working like below the CEO with a bunch of people on the operational side? What are some examples of how you get them operationalizing and measuring, like creating measurable activities that they need to engage in?

Matt Haney 8:45

So one of the things that I really enjoy doing is when we're looking at all of our quarterly projects, when I work with leadership teams, we develop these 90 day projects or goals or rocks, and then we establish milestones for each one of those. So if you look at the rock, is the end goal, the recipe, the cookbook that it takes to get there. Are the 10 milestones, five milestones along the way that says I'm on track to getting those. And if you can't get to two, if you don't start with one and you can't skip through it, and we meet on it weekly in terms of accountability that says, Hey, in 90 days from now, we're gonna have an end output. Okay, Good. What are the 10 things we need to do in order to get there? So that's one thing that I use, which is very simple, but it's effective. And then another thing is we do, scorecards or measurables for each department. We have three to 10 measurables per department. Every department has to have it that says, how do we know we're on track on a week to week basis? Again, we're not looking at the end goal. We're looking at every single week we're measuring something. It could be. Cold calls for sales. It could be cash in the bank for accounting. Who knows? but you're looking at it and it has to move. It has to change. There has to be some sort of variable associated with every metric. Otherwise, you're just measuring the same shit every week and nothing changes.

Adam Boyd 9:57

How do you help entrepreneurs and, and the people who work below them? Because I think this is very important, find the work.'cause in that measurability there are things that people are gonna do better, but even you, like, you're really gifted, you have an interesting connection of relationship and operations. Like some of the operations people are like, leave me alone. It's kinda like Shrek. how do you help, is there any thought to like. Getting people into the place where they're thriving because they love the work and they're in a state of flow.

Matt Haney 10:27

I mean, you've seen this in your sales leadership world and your leadership entrepreneurship world. It's like when you get the right person in the right seat, they immediately start to thrive. and unfortunately for a lot of visionary entrepreneurs that go out and create this business and wake up tomorrow and figure out how to do it. They don't necessarily go back and ask that person, Hey, are you fulfilled? Yes, it's a job, but you wanna show up every day and do what you're doing. Or have we put a square peg in a round hole here and you're just doing it because you need the work. So to your point on relationships, I get to go back and ask those questions with people not being feared of being the boss. They're gonna tell you something different than they tell me. They do it every single time, and that's less than fortunate. But that's the relationship Part of it is, are you in the right seat? and by the way, if you're the right person, we can generally, we can find you the right seat. So I think it's being humble and curious, Adam, and understanding, if these people want to do what they're doing every day or they're are hitting a paycheck.

Adam Boyd 11:24

I love it.

Matt Haney 11:25

I want to go back. so Trinity Training and Development spun outta Northwood or there somehow Tell us about Trinity training and development. Give me the understanding of what it is, who you're targeting, sort of what the business model

Adam Boyd 11:37

Robert Winter had a background in, working in the college system with corporate clients doing leadership training. built this company, really great program called Frontline Leadership, and he largely worked with, More of a blue collar industrial clientele who needed frontline supervisor training. So if I talk to you about leadership training, you're gonna think about like Covey, you're gonna think about Lencioni and a lot of the stuff is amazing. There's some really good stuff out there. What they don't do is have anything that's very, very practical for the front line. And so you get a lot of people who are doing the work and the next day they're promoted from welder to team lead and or

Matt Haney 12:18

So, hold on. I wanna ask a question. Frontline leader, what does that mean to you? That term, because I got follow up, but I wanna make sure.

Adam Boyd 12:24

Now they are the people like doing the work who actually then start to manage the people doing the work. It's not someone on the 40th floor who's looking at spreadsheets. It's actually the people really close to the assembly line. It's people really close to the project in the field. Who touch, feel, smell, work side by side with each of the workers every day. That's a frontline leader. And those people, there's almost nothing that's available for them. And if there is, it has to be tailored to their world. Right. They don't need to be thinking about regression analysis. They've gotta think about precision and manufacturing. They need tools that, Hey, when I work with Bob over here, I can help connect with him and understand him, but I don't need to look at like some 16 point chart to understand his motivation. I need to understand some general thoughts about. Engagement and be able to connect with him and find out what's important to him. So we provide that. Sometimes we train it, sometimes we train the company to train it and we provide that leadership. And, Northwood, which has been our sales training and sales consulting business, is being rebranded into Trinity training.'cause it doesn't make sense to have two brands out there and one of which no one really knows.

Matt Haney 13:46

so distill down Trinity trainings deliverable are what the service offering is to this. I'm guessing it's blue collar service based industry businesses based on the reference that you just gave me. But I could have made that up.

Adam Boyd 13:57

Hey, it's front. It's very practical. Frontline supervisor training, first

Matt Haney 14:03

And that's on not not on everything, any type of, just how you operate as an individual, how you manage people accountabilities.

Adam Boyd 14:10

We, the things that we're gonna cover are, do you understand your role as a leader? Do you understand how to manage different personalities? Can you adjust to those? Can you communicate coach, hold people accountable, manage change in conflict, and that framework is built and taught. We have clients who take some of our frameworks and they have them in the break room on the walls

Matt Haney 14:33

awesome.

Adam Boyd 14:33

to help remind people of this, almost like you do with E Os.

Matt Haney 14:37

Yep. So you have a series, and how often are you, I mean, is a program, is it a class? Is it quarterly? Am I getting, can I get one-on-one coaching with you on a weekly basis or how does that

Adam Boyd 14:48

So we have a group of 10 trainers. We're actually expanding the bench'cause we need to go deeper.

Matt Haney 14:54

I.

Adam Boyd 14:54

They go and sometimes every client has its own set rhythm of working with us. It's usually somewhere between two and four weeks that they have training going on. And our current program is 10 modules. Some of them we work with a casino in Arizona. They actually work it up and a two hour modules. And so they run about 20 trainings and they actually have a big graduation for people when they're done big dinner, whole deal. We work with clients around their schedule.'cause you can't just shut down a manufacturing line just to do some training.

Matt Haney 15:25

It's funny you said something earlier that made me chuckle'cause I hadn't heard this term before. I was working with the mechanical contracting firm up in Cedar Park, Texas. They're a awesome firm, capital industries, great group of people that, uh, do mechanical contracting work for large, commercial buildings. And I got to be friendly. after working with them I I did a year deal with them as a fractional COO, and it was great. One of their, plumbing techs was a turned inside manager, and he used to have this joke. He would say, uh, man, I think that guy's more of a, an outside dog than an inside dog, because

Adam Boyd 15:59

house cap versus a house cap versus, yeah.

Matt Haney 16:01

Yeah. How's Cat? So I thought that was so funny. And he said, my job's to turn the outside dogs into the inside dogs. And I thought that was funny as shit.'cause it's like, it's so true. But those people don't have a ton of, experience or training or background in leadership. They need to get it somewhere.

Adam Boyd 16:18

Well, and here's what you gotta think about. A lot of people are really gonna get the work done. They have a native skillset. and I'll correlate this here in a minute to the other side of our business, but now are asking them, get work done through people.

Matt Haney 16:30

Mm.

Adam Boyd 16:32

You can't just do that through sheer force of will. So like in sales, one of the things that happens is you get somebody who's really good at starting new things, finding new deals, working'em. That native skillset does not necessarily translate to management. So when we work with CEOs, it's like, whoa. Before you promote your best sales person to a leadership role, you need to consider you're gonna lose your best rep. Unless they're just gonna close everybody's deals, in which case you're not actually getting a leader, you're getting just someone who closes and other people prospect for them. And we can set that structure up. But once people go into leadership, they need to learn a new skillset. So sales leaders who have all the degrees and titles in the world, they have to learn to operate differently. They have to hold people accountable. Something you and I talk about, they have to learn how to coach, and it's sort of Groundhog Day. While they built some systems and some structure and all the other fun stuff.

Matt Haney 17:28

We also used to say he can't take off the tool belt. Because you think about it, if you go from, you know, screwing and drilling and banging and cutting, all of a sudden that's your, you've done that for your whole career. Taking the tool belt off and setting it aside and having to teach people is a foreign skill to a lot of people. But they show promise, they need lead, they need a path, otherwise they're gonna burn out or retire or whatnot.

matt-haney_2_02-06-2025_192447 17:51

You are listening to the Scalability Code. I'm your host, Matt Haney, founder of Sinclair Ventures, and we help visionary entrepreneurs like you get out of the shit show and focus on growing your business. We offer fractional COO and leadership coaching services that free up that brain of yours to focus on what's next. Learn more about us at SinclairVentures. com. Now back to it.

Adam Boyd 18:12

And, and here's the deal. Think about it. The most credible person is not somebody who has a degree. It's the person who's done it, right? So one of the things we're thinking about is when we hire trainers, can we hire trainers who have an operational background? Because there's this thing in them that you sense, like you've done it, like you've been in a small business and run it day to day. There's a certain thing that I sense in you that I trust. And so with sales leaders, there's, we could talk about this all day. You want to find sales leaders who've kind of gotten beat up doing it. They don't have to have been the best salesperson, but they have so much more credibility if they can say, this happened to me. They don't need to have all the answers. there's a relatability they need.

Matt Haney 18:54

Yep. No, you gotta miss payroll. If you've been an entrepreneur. If you hadn't missed payroll, you've never been an entrepreneur, you know, and I think it's one of those things that you just can't teach that skill of experience.

Adam Boyd 19:05

It, it's, it's a crucible, right? And I was telling people recently, like, you know, the entrepreneur lays awake at night and says, laser lies. I was an English major. I forget

Matt Haney 19:15

Sure. We'll go both, both lay and lie. Sure.

Adam Boyd 19:18

They're in their bed wondering, am I gonna go bankrupt? No one else has that concern. Other people go get a job. The entrepreneur is sitting there going, is this gonna, I, it's funny. Quick story. I was at a Christmas party. And I was standing next to two entrepreneurs, one of whom they just sold their business for a billion dollars. Another one, the business does over a billion in sales. And they were talking, and this was fascinating. And I thought, oh my, I was like, got a front row seat to like just something insane. Great, great guys. Really successful. And they said, one of'em said together. When did you stop worrying that the business was going to make it? How big were you? Right. And I didn't know what he'd say. 10 million, 20 million. One of'em said, you know, at 50 million I knew we could cut back and still survive. And I just thought, you know, the fear that an entrepreneur has like, oh, when I get here. It doesn't go away, it just changes. And you learn to live with it. And the other guy said, yeah, it was about the same for me. And then he said, then we got to a hundred million. And the game completely changed. And then we worried, is the market gonna shift? And for any entrepreneurs or CEOs listening to this, it's like you just kind of make peace that the challenge is gonna be there and you're the person called to go attack that challenge and you make peace and you just get really good at adjusting. And no one in the business is gonna feel that. But the owner.

Matt Haney 20:44

Yep, that's exactly right. I helped a client, who's become a close friend. Uh, he's actually an Aggie, who, uh, ran an incredible business.

Adam Boyd 20:53

by the way. I love that you had to put that

Matt Haney 20:55

I had to do it for you. I know you're not an Aggie, I know where you lie, but he's an Aggie and he'll laugh when he hears this, but, I was fortunate to help him run his business for a year, year and a half, and he gets ready to exit and we're getting payroll by the dollars dollars clear in the bank. He sells the business the week before Thanksgiving turns over the operating account with$2,000 in it, literally.$2,000. And for him it was a challenge to see how he could run that down yet keep this thing, he's an engineer. so it was funny, but to your point is we were always a little concerned about whether or not, every two weeks, that number and as, and you grow yourself right outta business, you literally grow yourself outta cash. Contracts coming in, you're hiring, everything's going together except the cash balance, which is always a challenge.

Adam Boyd 21:42

So good.

Matt Haney 21:43

all right, so I have an interesting question and I dealt with this in this mechanical contracting firm that I, uh, was involved in and former project manager and contracting spins out, starts his own mechanical firm. He is the face of the business. He is the head sales guy. He has all the relationships with every one of the, of the general contractors, and he's the one generating sales. We had to transition a sales director, a sales leader into the business, getting that visionary owner to stop focusing 110% of his time on revenue and pipeline, and allowing and trusting this person to then also take over pipeline is a terrible process for an operator to watch. Because every single time when you have a visionary owner running revenue, transitioning revenue over to someone else is fucking painful,

Adam Boyd 22:33

Because you're afraid that they're not gonna care like you, they're not gonna be as hungry as you. You're thinking all the time, like, that lead costs me$500. Are they actually gonna follow up? Because the truth is, no one cares the way the owner does. No one understands the pain. And this is why, you know, you've helped people through sales. When they go to sell the business, they have so much invested. And it's why if you're approaching a CEO or an owner for equity, you need to understand, you are asking them, like you're saying, Hey, I think I should be the godfather of your child. Right? Or, or like, you should write me into the will. Like you don't know the suffering they went through. You just see it as equity. Right. And it's a

Matt Haney 23:16

to you. It's, It's, it's, yeah. No, that's so well said.

Adam Boyd 23:20

I, uh, I was talking to a woman yesterday and she's through acquisition and just sheer force of will, she's gotten a company about 250 million, and I told her, I said, and she's, she, you know, she's like, she's still doing a lot of the sales, a lot of it, and they're trying to figure out the sales question, so they're talking to us and. One of the things I tell CEOs is, one, you need to understand sales. Whether you come from an engineering background, a product background, a finance background, you need to understand it. So you can call BS two. You need to be involved. Doesn't mean it's your all day, every day, but you need to be involved. Three, you definitely need to be brought in on deals to help bring a certain level of reassurance. So if it's a large deal. And your sales director, your head of sales, your CRO is not leveraging you. That person is an idiot, Look, there are exceptions, and when there's an exception, let's call it an exception. Like if Matt's my CEO and Matt's the name in this space and I don't know how to use him, we have a problem. It's either competence or trust, but I think a leader. On a situation like this, they've grown the business. They need to start handing things over in phases and seeing that this person can do it, and then they move to developing that leader. To grow the company.'cause who knows that sales leader may end up being the CEO one day or the president. But you have to kind of give it to'em like, Hey, let's talk about how you're managing pipeline. Let's talk about how you're running those reports. And you just slowly get that CEO down to 20% of their time is on sales and pipeline.

Matt Haney 24:56

God, everything I, my hair just sticks up on the back of my neck because I spend a lot of time. With sales leaders and just leaders in general, helping them understand the relationship that they have with this visionary that hired them and trusted them, and how our job is to deliver information up to that person so when they do roll over at night and have a question about something, A, they can access it, and B, we're comfortable and confident delivering. Like to your point earlier, if you're hiding something, you're immediately not the right person. Because guess what? That visionary, who figured out how to run a business to get it to five, 10, 50 million, they're gonna figure it out, and you're instantly gonna lose credibility. So I spend a lot of time in that hiring and onboarding process, just setting expectations for what it looks like to work for an entrepreneur. And, and to your point earlier on equity, which I hadn't heard said so articulately the way you have, which is it means a thousand times more to them than it does to the person receiving it. And generally the person receiving it feels entitled to it, But, CRMs have become, my best friend and I continue to talk through these. Anybody who's managing projects or dealing with sales calls, the best sales leaders I know brag about their activity. They're so proud of the fact that they're moving the ball forward, that they're having the touches, they're setting their objectives for themselves, and they're following up on it to go through a pipeline review meeting and have all the information be in there. It's like I just kinda, I'm like, yes, we did it. We did it. All the answers are there.

Adam Boyd 26:25

Well, and then where you want to take them next, and this is for, for anybody listening and for you is, alright, great. We have this amazing activity. It's not that we need more activity, like once it's dialed in, it's more of. Who are the right people to do the activity with? Can we get more of the right people? Because I was talking to, a guy on our team who's starting to handle sales, and I said, Hey, look, long term where we're gonna move is we need more of this type of prospect. That's gonna convert better. It's less effort. it's higher margin for us. It's a bigger deal size. They're happier. We're happier. So it's not, can you just put more in there? Because that costs money and it's time and it's really your attention and focus. But over time, can you start thinking, how do we over time start moving to more of just the right type of customer or prospect? Because that starts to make everything operationally and financially work even better. And then the salespeople work less, right? Because we're getting more of the right people.

Matt Haney 27:27

So in that individual contributor to, to, you know, transitioning to a team member, I'm just thinking, oh, I mean, this has been a common theme in the last three clients I've had. and I know there's no right answer, but I'm just trying to get an understanding of it and, and the two scenarios I'm mentioning, mechanical contracting firm and engineering software services firm. The visionary owner of the business is also was the sales leader. what's the right amount of engagement to have with that person? I mean, every owner of every business thinks about revenue. It's on their mind. How when you bring him in, like without losing credibility with your sales leader who's like, I don't need this guy. I can do it better than him. It's like, yeah, but you know, you wouldn't take Tom Brady off the field if he wasn't Tom

Adam Boyd 28:07

Right. Yeah. So are you asking how much does the sales leader need to work with the owner or

Matt Haney 28:12

Right, and, it's a fine line because if that sales leader engages the entrepreneur too much, then all of a sudden that entrepreneur's run in the sales org and you don't need the sales leader.

Adam Boyd 28:21

I think so. I was talking to a CEO and he really wanted, from his sales leader, he didn't come from a sales background, the CEO. And what he really wanted was the sales leader to be a true strategic advisor. Not all of them could do it, and you have to think about where you are by stage. So if you're a one to$5 million business. the odds that you're gonna hire someone in the role to do the work, to be a strategic advisor are low because sometimes a strategic advisor, they've played at a higher level in a different type of company, and they would really struggle at that smaller stage because they're having a do it all and maybe it's really ambiguous as they move up. That sales leader needs to, I tell people we're working on a recruiting gig for a client and they want somebody who's taken a company from 5 million to 75 million. And I said, look, you might get somebody who's gone from five 20 and then you may need somebody to go from 20 to 75. Just understand their different people. Now, early on, if we're talking small business to build a relationship, that sales leader and that CEO need to talk every day. And this is, I don't know how long that lasts. Three months, four months. And a lot of CEOs are just like so stressed. They're like, just take it. But it's about getting what's in their head into systems and into process. And it shouldn't be too rigid early, then maybe it goes to three times a week. Right? But if you're growing and the sales leaders doing their job and they will grow. You're now gonna need to work with a CEO or the COO to start thinking about, alright, we need to think about delivery, we need to think about capacity. And so now we have a different set of issues and now the team's growing. So I don't think that those touch points matter. It's who's doing what. I don't wanna minimize, like, I'm not trying to say, Hey, you can become an owner who steps back, but eventually you gotta find a new CEO. But the CEO and the head of sales need to be talking regularly.

Matt Haney 30:18

What does a pipeline review meeting look like? What's a solid pipeline

Adam Boyd 30:22

Oh, well there's what they look like and there's what they should look

Matt Haney 30:24

Well, that's what I'm asking because for me, you know, I've seen a hundred of'em and I've led 500 of them. what is the, what's a

Adam Boyd 30:34

Lemme give you a handful of questions. Here's what it should look like. I don't like going through the CRM and doing it. I like this. I literally want a spreadsheet or a sheet filled out with here's what we expect to close in the next, you pick your timeline, two weeks for 30 days, right? The next 45 to 60 days. And then beyond that, and here's what I wanna know on every deal, I want just the headlines. Salespeople love to give you a good Jack Ryan story and that the twists and the terms and the history and how we got here and why, and it's like. And you're sitting there going, I just need this answer. A couple things. I think anybody from management should be able to attend a pipeline meeting, right? C-E-O-C-F-O, operations delivery people. And everybody needs to be able to ask questions. And some of the things I wanna know are, first question on this deal. Why are they going to choose us? They have to be able to answer that, You gotta say no, no, answer that question. Then you wanna know what's the highest level at which we are having a real conversation. I don't wanna know that the CEO was on an email. I wanna know where's the highest level we're having a conversation. What's the conversation we've had around money? And then I wanna know what is the clear next step that both sides have agreed on? Sending a proposal is not a next step we are going to have a proposal review and there'll be a decision at the end of that if you can do that one, you can get through your pipeline meeting really quick.

Matt Haney 32:07

Right.

Adam Boyd 32:08

And what you're trying to just get at is like, Hey, you tell the salespeople we love you. You're great, you're working hard. I just don't need all this detail. I mean, I need like, give me the bottom line up front on these deals. And it takes about three or four times of doing this for them to learn how to do it.

Matt Haney 32:25

are you a fan of applying probability percentages?

Adam Boyd 32:28

Yeah, but the way we do, it's different. So one, I want to, I wanna lay over two things, and you and I were talking about assessments before this got going. I don't think any one assessment is the, is the whole thing. I like to stack a couple. So one buy stage in the pipeline and that's a, in the sales process, That tells me something, if they've hit the milestones, not just'cause they had a meeting. The other thing that we do, and this is really important, is creating a scorecard. Now, the scorecard, and you'll like this is not it's, it's not necessarily about the sales pipeline or the process. Lemme say it's not about the process, it goes into the pipeline. It's based on objective criteria that are predictive of a win and dependent of the rep. So lemme give you

Matt Haney 33:14

Ah, hold on. Say that again.

Adam Boyd 33:17

it's about identifying objective, not opinion, not feel, not, thinks, not seems, criteria, completely independent of the rep's work. So lemme give you an example. it might be. They've worked with us before. That's a yes or no. That's true or false. It might be they have a new CEO who needs to make a splash that's objective and that is predictive. Because if you start looking at deals, you start finding these things that tell you when these five or six factors are true, we win. if three of'em are false, we lose. And so people will say, well, every deal's different. No, no, no, no, no. Across a large enough. Sample size, we get averages.

Matt Haney 34:01

yeah.

Adam Boyd 34:02

So we look for things like, I'll give you an example. do, they use EOS. So if I am talking to a prospect who uses EOS, I haven't actually done the math on this, I have a much higher likelihood of one getting hired and two, having success. So you start putting grades on these things and now you're like, oh, these are the 18 deals we need to focus on. These

Matt Haney 34:24

so so moving from subjective to objective measurements and there's you one.

Adam Boyd 34:29

And, it, and it's not about what the rep thinks. It's this is true,

Matt Haney 34:33

Yeah, it's a yes or no. Interesting Interesting because so much, and I know you've heard this and seen this, it's like, well, I feel like this is gonna that and feel and this and that. and I

Adam Boyd 34:43

us.

Matt Haney 34:44

I like, and I had a beer with a

Adam Boyd 34:45

No, no, no, It's a no. It's, Hey, they've worked with us before. They hire a consultant. They've done these things, and it's literally, everybody can look at it and say, all right, this is a deal. We might lose it, but our odds here are 30 times greater than this deal over here because. It's, you know, let's go back to my examples. Former, CEO's been there 20 years. they don't use EOS two, three other factors. It's like those people never, so in the next conversation, if you're gonna convince us this deal's gonna change, you need to go get hard proof from them that they are gonna buy from us. And why I,

Matt Haney 35:16

That's right. But take those subjective things to a measurable that says something.'cause otherwise it's all warm, fuzzy feelings. alright, last question. Tell me about, your ideal client type. Like, what is, what is, what does some of the people come to you like? What do they look like? I.

Adam Boyd 35:30

Yeah, so I'm gonna give you two'cause nobody likes this, but, so on the frontline leadership side, this is typically a, a blue collar company that really cares about their people and they know that. Leadership affects quality, productivity, safety, that if you have turnover, there's a massive expense there and they're saying, Hey, we need to invest and like develop our people. On the other side, it's typically a CEO and I use this phrase mid-market, but there at like 15 20 million a year up to 200 to 500 million a year. And the CEO says. we need to move sales out of the nineties or early two thousands to the next level, and they're trying to figure out how do we make sure our forecast is believable? How do we develop our people? I can't completely rely on like two or three Supermen or Wonder Woman to solve my deal. What can we do in our market to make sales a competitive advantage? Those are the two folks we're talking to. And, um, one's on the sales side, one's on the leadership side. So Matt been so much fun, man.

Matt Haney 36:32

Always good to hear from you. And had never even thought about. turning a pipeline into more OB objectives because you always, it's always such an elusive conversation and that's field-based and I love the idea of finding indicators that may not directly indicate a yes, but they're facts that we can track and use our

Adam Boyd 36:50

Yes.

Matt Haney 36:51

Awesome.

Adam Boyd 36:52

Yeah, let's talk about it some other time.

Matt Haney 36:53

Adam, you're the man. I appreciate you, sir. Have a great afternoon and I'll talk to you soon.

Adam Boyd 36:58

See buddy.

Speaker 2 36:58

Thank you for listening to The Scalability Code. If you made it this far, please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next time on The Scalability Code.