Lead With Accountability To Drive Sales [Endless Customers Podcast S.1  Ep.12]

we're going to do. It's all about pipeline review and looking at this deal and just telling you to close them.

Chris
Seems like it's kind of cutthroat as well, where you need to sell more, whatever that means, and then if you don't, your job's on the line, it seems like. Is that accurate to say that?

Chris
Well, listen, I mean, sales is 100% a what have you done for me lately game, right? And every sales professional that goes into it knows that. I mean, if you think about, you know, this is that profession where those that have the highest risk tolerances find sales jobs that are 100% commission-based, and these are folks making a killing, right? And then you go back and it scales from there,

Chris
but this is a you either win or you lose type of a job. And so there is always gonna be some sort of that, but if we're looking at it from a sales leadership perspective, we're looking at it from a company leadership perspective, we aren't playing the role of sales person anymore that's like, yeah, I'm just going to go work harder and close more deals. You're like, hey, we have to generate more revenue for the

Chris
company that's not just revenue, but it's good revenue, it's profitable revenue. We need to have a system in place that allows us to do these things and to keep growing. And when that's true, and the sales leaders are just saying, sell more, that's often where we see conflict. That's often where we see people that get to that plateau and don't go further past it. Gotcha.

Alex Gotcha.

Chris
It sounds too to me that there's times where sales leaders, if the team's not selling more or getting what they need to accomplish or getting that thing done and move across the finish line, they almost like take everything on their back and try to do it themselves to do you see that happening?

Chris
I mean, that happens sometimes. Yeah. And and it's in this point of when, when a sales leader is doing nothing but pipeline reviews and activity reviews and telling people to sell more to get better. And that's not happening. That is when you watch these great, great professionals hit into all time slumps and hit their lows and are just emotionally drained. And so one of the best parts of being a coach like I am is,

Chris
we, you know, in the team here at impact is that we get to go in and fix that. So that we stop saying things like sell better, we stop having sales managers that don't know what they should be doing or how they can help their teams. We actually can go help them unpack that stuff and then like, get them out of this man, we just got to sell more. And as soon as we get them out of that, then that's really where growth comes.

Chris
Yeah, that's really interesting. It sounds like you're trying to shift the mindset because I feel like if you get into those trenches where you're not selling and you're hitting your lows, it affects everything. It affects how you interact with customers, it affects the whole game itself. So in those meetings for sales leaders,

Chris
what specifically do you coach them on to try to get these conversations that are gonna unearth some of these problems where they can identify and actually fix them instead of basically like sweeping them under the rug.

Chris
Well, I mean it's the simplest answer in the world, right? It's like, well, why aren't we closing more? Yeah. And the problem is they don't always have an answer because we might have a culture where we haven't started recording sales calls. We might have a culture where we record sales calls, but we don't watch them. We might have a culture where we care more about the number of phone numbers you dialed

Chris
than the quality of the conversations you're having. And so we have to uncover that. And a lot of the time, sales leaders don't know why they're not closing. Really? Yeah, because they're not, like, they will have, so here's what happens. They will have a gut instinct of why they're not closing,

Chris
but they haven't done that next level of work of watching the game tape. You know, you hear a lot of people say, why go on the sales calls with the people? And the second that they do that, they end up taking over the sales call. Or they get one or two outcomes from the person they're sitting with, right?

Chris
You either get the best day that they ever have because they're like fired up and they wanna impress their boss, or you get the worst day because they're so nervous that their boss is sitting next to them, right? So it's not this clear picture, so it's not as good as watching a series of calls,

Chris
watching several calls that somebody's had to see, hey, do they talk about the product wrong? Are they not asking enough questions? Are they presenting too quickly? Are they talking about themselves and not really honing in on the product? Like, these are all things that when you watch your people, then you know what needs to get solved.

Chris
So then you go from being that leader that's got the bat that says sell more and beats your desk to being the dude that goes, hey Alex, I noticed in your last explore call you did X, Y, and Z. Let's role play that now so that we can get a different outcome the next time. That's where we want to get to and there's things that have to come in place to get to that point for sales leaders.

Chris
That makes sense. It makes sense because it sounds like from an accountability standpoint for sales leaders, it's looking at what you're measuring. So instead of just looking at pipeline velocity or looking at the numbers, start to watch game tape, start to look at some of these different pieces that you can also use almost like analytics to help teach and coach. So what are some of the specific ones you said watching game tapes and watching sales calls is important.

Chris
What else can sales leaders do to have like an accountability, like the checklist or some things they can really focus on? Yeah.

Chris

So listen,

Alex like,

Chris
like with anything, every individual rep is different, right? So we have to assess the reps, so we have to have some sort of criteria that we assess people on. Right? So that's a good chunk to have. The next thing is, it's not that we don't want to look at activities, right? Because activities, there's a reason that we've gone so far into that,

Chris
is that data has made it really easy for us to do that. We've got all these tools, and so we're like, we can go look at that, but it's only half the thing.

Chris
Half the story, right?

Chris
Half the story, right? So today now, with some of these AI tools that help us record the calls, transcribe the calls, summarize the calls, show us how much time people have talked, show us how many questions have been asked, all these different things, it's taking what is that quantifiable data, hard data of number of emails, number of calls, number of this, number of that, and then going into some of the more qualitative aspects

Chris
of, hey, using a baseline selling term is, does rep X get speed on the bases all the time? And that's where you've built up as you've added advice people are leaning into listen what you have to say they see you as a guide you know your your you're getting there with them you you are different than other sales reps it's one of that quality that's hard to define but but do they get it

Chris
you can only see that if you watch them with multiple

Chris
right and also watching it after the fact we're not on the call where it might motivate them to do their best call ever or you might scare the crap out of them and they have their worst call ever. It gives you a chance to see them in their natural environment.

Chris
Right, so we gotta do that. And then, as we know, where are people, so when we look at the activities, we look at the actual performance, then we can go, okay, cool. Sales rep A needs to work on asking more specific questions. Person B needs to really dive in questions.

Chris
Person B needs to really dive in and ask more follow-up questions to truly paint the picture of what prospects are saying, like whatever that is. And so we take that, we can work on those in one-on-ones, but we also need to bring the whole team together and talk about these things, talk about what we saw on game tape, role play scenarios that are coming up, talk about issues that folks are having and have this collaborative approach to selling versus, you know,

9
reps going off.

Chris
Yeah, and just being off on your own, right? But so for the sales leaders, they have to set that tone and it has to be one where, you know, it's open. It's okay to talk about our failures here. You know, the sales leader might have to start out by talking about how they've failed in the past and tell a story to get everybody going.

Chris
So trying to create a safe space or an environment where people can be open and learn from their mistakes and mistakes aren't like this really negative faux pas thing that you're going to get in trouble for necessarily.

Chris
Yeah, so I'm working with the client and I've worked with them for a long time but we just started really getting into sales training. And they have a sales rep who's been with them for a long time, he's their highest performing sales rep, and we watched a call, and it was not, like I watched a call they did, and it was not good. Right, it was, and it wasn't not good from a, like it was just very much about their organization,

Chris
it was very much a pitch. I think this human talked for like 75 to 80% of the call, when we want sales reps talking about 40 to 50% maybe, like asking questions. And it really didn't do anything. Like at the end of the day, we didn't know much about the buyer, we told them a bunch of stuff, and we set up another call, right?

Chris
And this is their top sales person? This was their top performer. So we went into a sales training, we talked about it. And what was that like? It was great, because here's what happened. And so by the way, when we do this, I love getting everybody in there. So I like having marketing folks in there.

Chris
I had the CEO of the organization in there too. Right? Very cool, wow.

Alex
And as we start talking about it,

Chris
the sales rep is like, hey, knowing everything that we know now and haven't talked about this, I totally botched it. Here's what I should have done. Here's how I could have done it. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And here's the best part that happened.

Chris
The CEO raised his hand, which is funny that the CEO raised his hand, you know, but raised him zoom and he's like, salesperson dude, the only way we're going to get better is if we have attitudes like yours in here, so awesome that you did this, right? every other rep who is like afraid to talk about their mistakes. And this CEO allowed the sales reps to talk about where they're messing things up so that we can have these bigger conversations. Now if the CEO wasn't there, the sales leader who I know, he was gonna say the same thing.

Chris
But that's what we need sales leaders to do is to be open to all he was going to say the same thing that's what we need sales leaders to do is that open to be open all the stuff because i was on the tell you the best what like where i've seen sales leaders weekly flip their sales organizations and take

them in starting to go in the right direction

Chris
is by talking about the losses and not from a shame on you perspective, but from a, okay, so who else would have done that? And everybody's hands would be, oh, great. So knowing what happened, how do we do this better? And let's role play it out and let's talk about these things. Let's talk about these communication principles that we should be using. Let's talk about what we're trying to achieve.

Chris
And that's when people go, I know what I need to do next time. I know what I should have done in that situation. That's where growth happens and that's where we actually start to sell better because we start selling smarter. We stop wasting time, we stop pitching, we really get to how do we solve or how do we understand the need and then how do we provide a solution if they've got one that fits. Right, right.

Chris
It's also shifting the culture.

Chris
You're from the top down, whether it's the CEO or the sales leader, creating that environment, that safe space, having everybody in the room, it shifts the perception from maybe being scared to share openly and honestly to driving that. Like people wanna share openly and honestly so that they can learn and they can get better. And it just, it shifts the whole momentum of the team.

Chris
Yeah, now some people might be listening to this and be like, dude, sales, we're supposed to get results, so you're too soft here.

Chris
Like everyone can't sing Kumbaya or something like that.

Chris
Right, but let's get real. I love to win.

Alex Right?

Chris
This is not like, oh, Chris is just telling us how to love each other. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is how we learn. We don't learn when we bring shame to people. We don't learn when you're like feet are on the fire. But here's the deal. We still have to hold people accountable.

Chris
So, if they are not improving based on the training, we should be watching that and holding them accountable to it. Totally. If they are not taking the training seriously, so they don't show up, or they show up and they don't pay attention, like hold them accountable.

Chris
If they tell you the same loss over and over again, haven't changed anything, hold them accountable. Right. But if we're gonna truly hold people accountable, we have to provide them the right coaching and guidance and teaching for what we expect. Yeah, having that accountability, and clearly

Chris
defining that, right gives you the it gives you the leverage as a leader to make better decisions. Whether people are keeping up with what they're supposed to be doing and you can actually measure it and it's not just a subjective review of what your gut instinct is telling you.

Chris
And the cool thing when you do all this stuff together, this training, this role play together, everybody starts doing it in their own way but having those sort of guardrails on, hey when we're going to go talk about budget, here's generally how we're gonna approach it, right? And then we continually re-look at the ways that we do this. And so, hopefully we can see this clear difference of sell more to, today we're gonna role plan how we have the budget conversation

Chris
because we keep getting, we keep losing deals because of budget, right? One makes us maybe feel better, like we've done our thing as a leader. The other actually will get results going will help the team know how and what they need to do to to sell better to sell more. But if we don't do that training aspect, then we lose it and we can't train on stuff that's just random. We have to watch and know what's happening and as much as I hate saying it you can't trust back briefs from reps. It's not that they're gonna lie to you it's

Chris
that they only heard it one way. I got you yeah and so we are hearing one side of the story. So we as leaders need to watch it. And we need to look at how was this asked? How did this go? What was the prospect's body language like we have to look three dimensionally, and all this stuff, so that we know what to coach on how to coach and the direction that we need to take the team.

Chris
That makes a lot of sense. It doesn't any interaction I've had with clients. I like to win too. So I get I get very in the moment where like, I don't want to say a blackout, but it just happens where you may think you have said something a certain way, your body language, or this and that, but because you're in it and your emotions are up, you're not always analyzing it like you would if you stepped away from it

Chris
and you got to see yourself from a third person view.

Chris
Yeah, it's really fascinating. And that's what sales leaders need to be doing. So if you're saying, so Chris, I'm the CEO of my organization, how do I set up accountabilities or how do I help my sales leader know what they should be doing, right? I'm gonna say, so yes, you have to have the KPIs

Chris
that you guys care about from a performance standpoint. But I would add a metric around how many sales calls they've watched in a given time period whether that's week month whatever uh... i would say daily they should watch your sales you should be watching at least a sales call a day in my book that i have a metric on sales training

Chris
and or role plays uh... and one-on-ones that are outside of just pipeline reviews if i was you know if i was the ceo of a company that had that, that's what I'd care about. I'd spend most of my time talking about what are you seeing in your calls, what are the trends that you're seeing with the team, and what's your plan of attack to change those. That's what I would focus on, not why aren't we making

more phone calls.

Chris
It makes a lot of sense. I'm going to switch gears here because we have a quote that is from someone named Brent Keltner, and he says that sales training has evolved very little in 50 years. There's a focus on product training and methodology training, but no focus on having authentic, fluid conversations with buyers. What do you think about that quote, and how does that apply to accountability with what we're talking about?

Chris
I agree with him. Because here's what you typically see is sales training programs. Product, so if they're a product company, it's explaining a certain product, how do you sell it, what are the things, what are the features, what are the gasments and gizmos and all that stuff. Then it might go into tech,

Chris
you might get some training on how to use the CRM, how to do this, how to do that. But we don't focus on the most important part of selling, which is the human to human interaction, the how do you have great conversations to understand what people are getting into. We spent tons of time talking about how to give your pitch. Here's the one pager, here's my sheet. But the reality is that's the last thing that you should be putting focus and attention on.

Chris
Because you only get there if you've had a great conversation, if you do sales right. But so as a profession, I mean, I have heard prospects and clients of mine talk about how sales in their industry is old or traditional or behind. And I think that quote just sums it up. We have not worked on the skills in sales that go past closing, that go past product demos,

Chris
partially because those are the things that are easy to train on. It's easy to train somebody on how to give the demo for your SaaS product. Right, you can memorize the script and walk someone through a PowerPoint or a demo real easy. Right, but here's the problem. That means that we go right to demo before we know if the prospect has a need and is even willing to solve the problem that they have. Right.

Chris
The thing that we have to do if we're going to take sales, which is one of the coolest professions out there, right? Like it's just, you actually get to go help people solve problems, right? But if we don't change the way that leaders look at sales training and take it to sales training to communications training, and if we don't focus on that, then we're going to sort of get the same results we've always gotten. There's only so much stuff product knowledge can get you. There's only so much stuff that process can get you.

Chris
There's only so much stuff that tech can get you. If you don't know how to ask questions and not sound like you're an interrogator, you're not going to be a good salesperson

Alex if

Chris
You don't know how to ask questions and deal with Potential tough answers and know how to roll through it and dig deeper You're not a good salesperson if you think the second you get resistance

you have to go back on offense and pitch do all this stuff and Basically, it's really you go on defense by like pitching again. You're not gonna be a good salesperson because You have to understand the resistance You have to ask questions. You have to understand what's going on in their mind so that you can know what to do But we don't train people that way

Chris No

Chris
It's a really good point because I've been on many many a sales calls that are just right into the demo and look at the shiny Object that we've created and maybe it's a wonderful product or a really cool tool or whatever the case is but they're pretty much on autopilot reading off the script showing showing the thing not asking questions I've been a lot of those I'm sure a lot of our listeners and viewers have been on those

Chris
calls too. One of my favorite stories is about a sales interaction that we had here at Impact and it was us and a technology partner did their demo. Buyer still wouldn't buy. A client of ours wasn't ready to buy. So then our technology coach did the same thing. Weren't ready to buy. And we brought in Marcus. Marcus asked two questions.

Chris
Two questions.

Alex
Two questions.

Chris
Okay. And then said, you need to buy that because of this. And they bought it.

Alex
Because what Marcus did was found out

Chris
what was important to them. The tool that they were talking about would solve that. And so all the extraneous other stuff that's super duper cool. Didn't matter in the buying decision. What it actually did was confuse the buyer.

Alex Wow.

Chris
These are the types of things that if you are a sales leader and you actually start watching calls, you're going to notice.

Alex Right.

Chris
Well, it's just like supply and demand. If you don't create a demand or a need and show a problem or discover a problem and ask those questions to get to that place, then there's no need to buy whatever

Chris
following product or service there is.

Alex Yeah.

Chris
And this is the thing that sales, when you start watching calls, when you start doing role plays, you will see where your teams lose. And it's not always where you think.

Alex Right?

Chris
But so that's the key, and I agree with the quote of, sales training hasn't changed much. We don't do enough of it. And we need to really change sales training to communications training, and everybody should be doing it. I agree, and I'm learning a lot listening to you.

Chris
So if I could put you on like a proverbial soapbox, right? Why hasn't sales changed? Why is it stuck in its old ways? And what would you on your soapbox say to everybody out there that's like, this is, the new era is coming, AI tools are coming out. Like there's a human piece to this that's way more important than just numbers and sell more.

Chris
So I think we all have to get out of our own way. Okay. Meaning, and listen, I'm guilty of this too, right? I was an army officer. I got trained hard, like, like my bosses treated me tough because that's how they got to, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. That doesn't work with everybody. And so we shouldn't look at this as like, well, I had to walk uphill both ways to school, so you should too. It's like, no, we have all this wisdom and we shouldn't let it be wasted on us. And so as leaders of organizations, as sales leaders, we have to go cool.

Chris
So I've got all this wisdom and I should go give it to people. But the way that I need to do it is by doing role plays. The way that I need to actually know what the problems are is by watching game film and talking with people and training on this stuff. And so if we're like, well, salespeople should just know what to do. They're here, I pay them well, ba da da da.

Chris
Like, cool. Hopefully you have great salespeople that are doing great. But if you're sitting there going, man, we just need to close more. Like, if you're not saying we close every deal we get, if you're not saying, you know, we never lose a deal that we shouldn't lose. Like if those things aren't true statements, then you need to go look at why are we losing? We need to look

Chris
at what is happening in the conversations. So that that's my piece. The number one thing is, you don't know what's happening in the sales call unless you watch it.

Chris
Yeah, you said something really interesting too that stuck out to me. I feel like a lot of sales leaders, when they're hiring sales people or when they're looking at sales people, they're judging them on performance from their previous jobs. It's about like a numbers game, which plays right back into what we're talking about, that like you're basing a judgment off of a salesperson solely on their

metrics of what they sold and maybe not on how they actually interact and all the things that we've been talking about.

Alex Yeah.

Chris
Wow. So can you share a story with us? Is there a client or a company that you interacted with that you've helped coach and train, maybe did a workshop, but like they were in this stereotypical box that we're talking about and they've progressed into adopting this idea of accountability and it's just completely shifted their whole sales process

Chris
and they're crushing it.

Chris
Yeah, I mean. I'm sure there's a ton, but is there one that sticks out? Opus Partners. Yeah. They're this great property investment company. They help Kiwis basically take that first step into planning for their retirement through helping them acquire rental properties

Chris
and grow their portfolio so they can retire and have a great retirement, right? And when I first started working with them, they like literally had a script for each meeting. And they were doing okay.

Alex
And then we started doing all of this stuff

Chris
and we started looking at like what's happening in the calls and we started refining the types of questions that were asked. We started really learning the principles of the question first framework. We started, you know, doing role plays. We started having sales people share the losses that they've had.

Chris
And we had the marketing team and leadership there. And from that, we've created more content that directly helps seller sell and buyers buy. We've refined their communication skills to the point of they are asking really tight, great questions. They get the right answers rendered. They're actually helping more people because they know how to talk about the thing

Chris
or ask the questions to see, is this right for this person, is it not? What are their hangups, what is all this stuff? And so, they're in an industry that interest rates directly affect.

Alex Yeah.

Chris
And they are doing better year to date than they were last year. They're on track to hit close to a record year when their economy's been weird, their interest rates are super high, all these different things they had in the election. All things that impact. Right, right, right.

Chris
Yeah, they'd be going the other direction typically.

Chris
Yeah. And they're just doing really well.

Alex Wow.

Chris
Right? And so they're a great example. Another example is Lamont.

Chris
Real quick, so you said something in the beginning. So Opus Partners, they help Kiwis?

Alex
What's a Kiwi?

Chris
Oh, sorry, folks from New Zealand. Oh, folks from New Zealand. So they're a New Zealand company. They call themselves Kiwis.

Chris
Gotcha. Yes. I wasn't sure if we were like in Spongebob land. Nope.

Chris
That is how they refer to their countrymen. Gotcha. Very cool. Alright, and then you were gonna say there's another one as well. So listen, Lamont, Lamont Brothers, they're a design, build, remodeling company in Portland, Oregon. And we've been with them for a while now and they've not only adjusted their whole sales process but they meet weekly, they role play, they work on questions, they watch calls and they do again like this elaborate thing, right? So people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars through these remodels and before they used to start and they get all the scoping stuff and they'd lose

Chris
on price all the time. And through role-playing and watching tape and understanding buyers and all this stuff, they started getting to why people wanted to do this change. What was that compelling reason? What was that thing in them that's like, hey, I've had this rock in the shoe about not loving my kitchen for long enough. Now I'm ready to do something about it. And that one shift got them over a hump, right.

Chris
And so again, that's an industry that interest rates being high, like all these things should have impacted them. And they had a really great 2023. That's incredible.

Alex Yeah.

Chris
And and I think it's because their sales folks have better conversations with their buyers. It's not more conversations, it's better conversations.

Alex
Better conversations?

Chris
Better conversations lead to more sales.

Alex Yeah.

Chris
Well, because I think the markets that they're in, you're right, interest rates are high. It might seem like a deterrent where like, oh, people aren't buying houses right now, people aren't remodeling right now, where that's actually not true. You're not having the right conversations to get to the people that are actually buying into those things.

Chris
And oh, by the way, when you do all of this stuff that we're saying, when you train on communication, you train on asking great questions, you do all this stuff, salespeople become guides, guides aren't scary, and you can get better results, right? Now here's the thing about both of these organizations. Sales leader is fully present. Owner slash managing partner, present.

Chris
Marketing leader, present. It is not optional training. It is mandatory training. You don't show up late or you put a dollar in the late jar type of a thing. But it's really important for everyone. They've made it this sacred space, and they do it when they have the coach there, and they do it when they're not there.

Chris
And they even send me the recordings of when they do it so that I can give feedback to the sales leader how they're running these things, right? Very cool. And it's this three-dimensional approach to improving their sales, as opposed to the owner just saying, sell more, sell more, sell more.

Chris
Yeah, and it directly affects the bottom line of the business. And that's huge.

Alex Yeah.

Chris
Wow, Chris, I've learned a lot about accountability. I think a lot of our listeners surely have too. If they have questions or followups, how do they get in touch with you? Where can they reach you so they can ask you more about sales and accountability?

Chris
So if you wanna get in touch with me, if it's real quick, find me on LinkedIn, drop me a quick chat, happy to respond to you. If you wanna have a 30 minute conversation to just talk about what's going on in your organization, you know, when you go to Impact's site, just put, when you convert on that book, a call with a coach, say,

Chris
hey, I'd like to talk to Chris about this specific thing, and we'll have a very chill conversation about what's going on in your organization and how we can help.

Chris
Chris, thanks again for being on the show. You're welcome any time, and for all of our viewers and listeners out there, we'll see you on the next episode. we'll see you on the next episode.

Alex
You're welcome anytime and for all of our viewers and listeners out there. We'll see you on the next episode

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