What Sales Metrics Should My Team Track? [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 92]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

00:00:00:00

Tom DiScipio

you know what? Most organizations are trying to track their sales performance. They get caught up in all of these different metrics that they think are truly impacting the outcome, which is their team hitting quota.

 

00:00:12:07

Tom DiScipio

But the reality is teams don't need to track everything. So when you're looking at your overall sales team's performance, these are the things you should be thinking about.

 

00:00:30:03

Alex Winter

We have a really exciting announcement for all of our viewers and listeners out there. The new book, Endless Customers by Marcus Sheridan and the team here at IMPACT comes out in April of 2025, which is really exciting. But, you know, it's more exciting. You can go right now, today to endless customers.com and preorder your copy. And if you do so, there's all sorts of great bonus content that you're going to get that you wouldn't normally get if you don't preorder.

 

00:00:56:05

Alex Winter

So again, go to Endless customers.com and preorder your copy today. So you can learn how to earn trust and win more business in the age of AI.

 

00:01:04:17

Alex Winter

Welcome back to Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter. And today we are joined by Tom DiScipio, a managing partner and lead sales consultant here at IMPACT

 

00:01:12:00

Alex Winter

Tom, welcome back to the show. Hello.

 

00:01:13:22

Tom DiScipio

Hello. Good to be back.

 

00:01:15:01

Alex Winter

Good to have you back, brother. How's everything? Good.

 

00:01:17:01

Tom DiScipio

Good man.

 

00:01:17:09

Alex Winter

How are you? Everything's good. This is good. I am pretty much over winter. I'm ready for summer. But other than that, I can't complain.

 

00:01:23:20

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, same. Yeah, same. We're about to get, faux spring here in New England where it's going to give us one day of above 60, and then it's going to go back to below freezing.

 

00:01:31:21

Alex Winter

Yeah. Everyone's going to get so excited and be ready. And then it's going to kick us right in the pants.

 

00:01:36:11

Tom DiScipio

Yeah yeah. But then it's boat season.

 

00:01:38:13

Alex Winter

Oh I can't wait for that. We're gonna have to have a separate episode about boating. But for now, today, the topic, which is an important one, we hear all the time we're talking about sales, and we hear all the time in sales that we have to hit our quota. And making sure we get to our quota is the most important metric to measure.

 

00:01:54:07

Alex Winter

And quota this and quota that. No, no, no. Is that really important? And is that what sales teams should be focusing on or what should be the focus, I guess, is the question.

 

00:02:04:06 

Tom DiScipio

Well, the answer is yes. I mean, quota is essentially the end-all-be-all be all metric of did we achieve success in sales. So you got to look at it. You got to focus on that for your individual reps in the organization. But at the same time it's a lagging indicator. So if you're only looking at your sales quota it means you're essentially ignoring all the other important metrics and numbers that actually help you reach quota.

 

00:02:37:20

Tom DiScipio

And so if you're not measuring those things, it's hard to actually manage and anticipate what you know if your reps are actually going to achieve quota, which ultimately means you're achieving revenue targets too.

 

00:02:51:20 - 00:03:04:16

Alex Winter

Yeah. Now that makes sense. Not just the way that you said that. It's like all these things play into hitting your quota, but you can't just look at the bottom line. You have to also look at all these metrics and all these key indicators that play into hitting those numbers.

 

00:03:04:18

Tom DiScipio

Yeah yeah.

 

00:03:05:11

Alex Winter

Yeah. So how do you do that. How does like what are some indicators that people should be looking at to make sure that they're hitting their quota month over month and keeping the sales pipeline healthy and and in a good place?

 

00:03:16:01

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, I think it's important to take a step back and, remember that we don't just want to assign metrics for the sake of having metrics. I mean, they're literally bajillion sales metrics that you can measure that sound good or look good on paper and can give you some indication of what's going on. But I think ultimately when you set sales metrics as an organization, you want to align it to your sales process.

 

00:03:42:07

Tom DiScipio

So the first thing that you have to do is make sure you've established your exacting sales process, like what are the different steps and stages that you bring a potential customer through to get them to a close? And, you know, some companies have really long sales process processes, proxy processes, and processes, while some have much shorter.

 

00:04:04:06

Tom DiScipio

Right. And a lot of it depends on, you know, what it is that you're selling. Is it a very expensive item? Does it require a lot of transfer or change within the business? Is it more transactional? Once you've established your sales process and you've set the different stages, then the idea is to align your metrics with each of those stages.

 

00:04:25:09

Tom DiScipio

So you can essentially measure the process that leads you to achieve a quota.

 

00:04:31:13

Alex Winter

Got it.

 

00:04:32:02

Tom DiScipio

Okay. And as you're doing that, again, it's important not to put a dozen metrics at each stage.

 

00:04:39:13

Alex Winter

Now, you said that earlier and I'm just curious, do you see that a lot where people are like, there's all these metrics that are like shiny and look great, maybe on paper. And for someone who doesn't know, they're like, wow, look at all these. Got all these data points. And data says, this is wonderful. But like, does it really does it really matter?

 

00:04:53:21

Alex Winter

I guess is the question. Yeah.

 

00:04:55:04 

Tom DiScipio

I mean, not only have I seen it, I've done it. I've totally made this mistake from experience. Oh man, so many times, so many times. And I see a lot of companies do this to, you basically end up in your, your weekly meeting and you're looking at the numbers and you sort of go blind to the numbers.

 

00:05:11:19 

Tom DiScipio

You look at you and you're like, am I actually going to make a change based on what this number is telling me right now, or am I just reading it for the sake of reading it? Right. And I feel like what happens most of the time is you're just reading a number because it's the number you've read every week in your sales meeting.

 

00:05:26:18 

Alex Winter

Yeah.

 

00:05:27:06 

Alex Winter

I've been there too. And you get into the like, this is just what we're tracking. I'm just, like, going through the motions. It's like doing the laundry, you know? But does it does it really? Does it really help you understand if what you're doing is the right thing and if it isn't, how to adjust for that. And I think that's the bigger question, which is really interesting.

 

00:05:43:08

Alex Winter

And you're like, unearthing this with me, right now.

 

00:05:45:00 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, yeah. So, instead of just simply looking at these numbers and reviewing every week, it's you have to ask yourself the question, can I actually implement positive change based on the numbers that I'm tracking, the metrics that I'm seeing? And one of the I learned this from one of our business coaches back in the day.

 

00:06:06:10 

Tom DiScipio

A really great question. You can ask yourself to make sure you're looking at the right things. Is if you were stranded on an island and you only had one sheet that you could use to understand whether or not your sales performance is good or bad, what are the 6 to 8 metrics that you would put on that sheet?

 

00:06:27:10 

Alex Winter

I love this, that's great. So what are these 6 to 8 metrics like? What would you want to see on a sheet like that if you're hopefully on a tropical island somewhere.

 

00:06:34:22 

Tom DiScipio

Oh get well. Yeah. Yeah. Well I mean, I'll, I'll take my personal opinions out of it in terms of like what I personally would want to see, but in general. Yeah. Again, you want to align it to what your specific sales process looks like. So some examples of this might be how many discovery calls are you completing in a given week.

 

00:06:59:20 

Tom DiScipio

Right. Because when we talk about leading indicators, at least from a sales side, we'll leave marketing out of this for now.

 

00:07:05:07 

Alex Winter

Okay. Yeah.

 

00:07:07:07 

Tom DiScipio

You know, the idea that if you can have more of these discovery calls in a given week, the more opportunities you're going to have fall out the bottom, week over week. Right. That's how you're building your pipeline, right? So that might be a great example. Maybe an example on the trailing indicator side is or maybe I'm not going to say trailing.

 

00:07:28:01 

Tom DiScipio

It's like right in between leading and trailing might be the value of your pipeline. So in other words, what is the total value of the deals veteran motion at this moment in time. Yeah. So if you have ten deals and let's say they're all worth 10,000 bucks, you've got $100,000 in your pipeline. And so some companies say in order for us to know that we're going to hit quota, we need to have x value of pipeline for that to happen.

 

00:07:58:14 

Alex Winter

Right. Because usually, you know, your percentage, your clothing percentage. So you can just do some quick math and figure out like the pipeline has to have X in order for us to hit this percentage right.

 

00:08:07:15 

Tom DiScipio

And to bring it back to the stages. Like with impact, we only start to measure our pipeline value at a certain point in our process. And that's usually after we've determined that it's a, a well qualified opportunity. Right? Because if you measure pipeline value of an unqualified opportunity, is it really something that you can anticipate closing?

 

00:08:30:17 

Tom DiScipio

Probably not. Right. So you want to be able to weed those things out before you really start to measure your pipeline measure, forecast. And it'll give you a better indication of whether or not you're going to hit quota.

 

00:08:42:14 

Alex Winter

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. So it's really looking at just not pipeline in general but qualified, like how qualified people are in that pipeline. And where are you as a company. Draw that line for qualification. And if you you can usually tell to a degree of like, okay, they're really I think they're going to move forward versus like this person's just kicking tires and it's not going to not going to happen because otherwise then you're just inflating the numbers.

 

00:09:04:23 

Alex Winter

It looks like, oh, we have $1 million in the pipeline, but only 50% of it's actually legitimate. So you don't have $1 million in your pipeline. Yeah.

 

00:09:13:03 

Tom DiScipio

And you're wasting your sales team's time, right? Like, you don't want your sales team focusing on opportunities that are not going to close. Right. And you don't, to your point, want to give the rest of your organization, the view that more is going to close than actually is?

 

00:09:30:07

Alex Winter

Yeah, we talked about that in the past, too. And I think it's the perfect thing to talk about here, going off script just a little bit. But like we we talked about the value of disqualification just as much as qualification where like, sure, your sales team might be amazing and your sales team might be able to do the impossible and and convert people, but how much is that time really worth for people to ultimately not close?

 

00:09:51:09 

Alex Winter

And how much time could you be wasting there where you could be spending it on qualified leads that are actually going to convert and really drive your pipeline forward? Yeah, I think that's a big that's a big piece that people need to think about. So how do teams do that? Like when you're setting up these confines your your you know, you probably your checklist I'm guessing of like here's how we know someone's qualified versus not like what does that look like?

 

00:10:11:13

Alex Winter

And what would you recommend for businesses out there that are trying to do the same thing?

 

00:10:14:15 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah. Good question. This is where I would probably probably bring marketing back into the equation, which is how can you solve this as much as possible on the front end of of the sales process, which is really the back end of the marketing process? Okay. And so we teach our clients to do is essentially state very explicitly and with clarity who is and is not a good fit for your services.

 

00:10:37:15 

Tom DiScipio

And a lot of that comes with, you know, explaining what pricing looks like and the mindset you might have to be in in order to make a purchase with, you know, your company or, for example, like we'll take a home builder for, for example, right. You know, are you doing a whole home renovation or are you doing a just the bathroom, right.

 

00:10:59:07 

Tom DiScipio

Like those that differentiation could be time that you end up saving with your reps. If you're a company that only does whole home renovation, right?

 

00:11:09:00 

Alex Winter

Yeah. That's a good point.

 

00:11:10:18 

Tom DiScipio

So it's being explicitly clear with this on the front end of your your marketing process. And while you're in the sales process, it's always good to have maybe 3 to 5 what you would call qualifiers, maybe written down or mapped out somewhere that you can sort of anchor back into during your sales conversation. You're making sure you're getting those answered as you're going through,

 

00:11:34:12 

Alex Winter

I feel like the class. Like what? You're saying. I'm picking over. You're putting down where, like, the classic sales pipeline is, like, you lead someone to a close. It's like we're going from A to B, and it's black and white and cut and dry, and it's very linear, which that's not typically how any sales conversation goes if you've done sales.

 

00:11:52:01 

Alex Winter

So like yeah, what questions can you be asking. And like what alternative frameworks are there to like help direct people correctly to a place where you know that they're going to convert, but also that's going to help them, like if we're going back into endless customers and we think about the principles of endless customers, we want to be honest and help people.

 

00:12:08:04 

Alex Winter

So yeah, how can you do that in a way that's like not just moving people like here prospect. Now you have to buy the the most expensive package that we have. And it's like, how do you really help them and get them in a place where they can talk to a salesperson and have a meaningful conversation?

 

00:12:21:22 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think in our minds we want it to be as linear as possible. And for me, I still kind of look at it and feel like the overall linear sales model is still something that exists today. But the how is different, like, how you move somebody through that process is very different today than it was, you know, ten years ago.

 

00:12:46:12 

Tom DiScipio

Right. And all that comes back to the principles and philosophies of endless customers, right? The buyer has changed. The buyer has more control. They have more technology and tools at their disposal. Right. So if if we're, let's say, a 100 year old packaging company and we're still using the same sales process today that we've used for the last 70 years, it's possible it may still be working, but as your buyers continue to become younger, it's going to be more difficult to sell the way you've always sold.

 

00:13:23:07 

Tom DiScipio

Right? Because your buyers are just so dramatically different. Right? And so when we think about the how a lot of it does come back to education, are we actually educating the buyer on how to make a purchase with us or how to not make a purchase with us, right. And build that goodwill and build that trust? Yeah. Whether or not it's it's with you.

 

00:13:45:19 

Tom DiScipio

Right? Yeah.

 

00:13:46:17 

Alex Winter

That makes sense. I, I've heard this from Chris and from a lot of people in our company and Marcus especially where they say, they say exactly what you just said, like maybe we're not a good fit. Maybe this isn't. And I think when you say that as a salesperson and the reverse psychology of that, it builds trust so quickly because you're not just trying to make somebody make a purchasing decision.

 

00:14:04:23 

Alex Winter

It's like, I'm going to give you the best info I can so that you can make the decision that you want to make, and it puts the ball really in their court and in a good way. And I think that's when you're you're going to see way, way better closing rates and way better, results with your sales teams.

 

00:14:18:18

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, yeah. And you know, when we think about sales performance, a lot of times we just think about like, oh, how much revenue is being produced. But I want to add the stipulation that like, it's it's like how much good serviceable revenue for our company is being produced. And what I mean by that is like, are we closing clients that are a good fit for us, that will stay with us for a long time?

 

00:14:44:04

Tom DiScipio

Are people buying our products that will actually use it and get the most out of it for years to come? Yeah, and in sales, a lot of it is all about getting as much revenue as possible. But we think about high level sales performance. We want to be generating lots of new clients and new, you know, buyers that are good for our company to have.

 

00:15:08:19 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, not bad for our company to have.

 

00:15:10:19 

Alex Winter

That's that's I love what you're saying. And that's the perfect segue into our next question, because it says here that a lot of companies focus on revenue. It's like revenue is is the biggest piece of the of the equation. I feel like for most leadership teams, and when people try to measure and scale their companies, it's all about revenue.

 

00:15:27:05 

Alex Winter

But how can you tie that to like a healthy indicator for your sales process versus just like the numbers? And how do you translate that with the sales team so that they have really good indicators to be like, we're driving towards this revenue goal or towards whatever the goals are that the company has set out to achieve?

 

00:15:44:10

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, I think there's I think there's a number of ways you can do that. The first is, is honestly setting some standards with your sales teams of like, these are the types of clients that we want to work with and letting them, giving them the permission and letting them know, like, our company is in a position to where you can do this.

 

00:16:06:07 

Tom DiScipio

Right. Because I've talked with a lot of companies, you know, startups to huge companies and a lot of them base their sales decisions in their growth, unlike what can we do right now. Right. So that might mean close. However, you can just get the revenue in the door and we'll worry about it later.

 

00:16:25:02 

Alex Winter

Right. Almost like the revenue is limiting what they think is possible.

 

00:16:29:14 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah. Or it's not limited at all. And we're bringing on clients again, that may not be the best fit long term or okay. And you're maybe bringing out people who can't fully take advantage of the thing that we sell. And the problem that we solve. So it's establishing these guidelines of like, hey, you know, these these are the types of clients that we work with at this level and this value.

 

00:16:57:10 

Tom DiScipio

And I want you to a, a attack that specifically. Yeah. Not just go rogue and Wild West and bring on whoever you can. Yeah. Now I know some sales organizations they don't have that luxury. Luxury. Right. Maybe they have a ton of different types of products. And maybe there's ways they get them from one product next to the next to the next.

 

00:17:15:23 

Alex Winter

But maybe or maybe sometimes they're backed up against the wall and they just need revenue. They're they're in a tight spot and they just need revenue. So it's like take whatever we can get, which is understandable. But that might actually not be the right answer. Right? Even though it might be the easy answer, it might not be the correct answer.

 

00:17:30:20 

Tom DiScipio

It's a very difficult choice. And, there have been moments and impacts history where we've gone through that cycle as well.

 

00:17:38:02 

Alex Winter

I'm sure most businesses can relate to that.

 

00:17:40:00 

Tom DiScipio

Of course, but at the end of the day, the the better sale that you make, the better long term effect that you're going to have on the business. Even if you're feeling a little bit of pain in the short term. So do everything you can to manage that pain. And, you know, look at revenue as not a oh my gosh, we're going to miss this month.

 

00:18:03:13 

Tom DiScipio

It's how am I setting up revenue for the long term? Okay. And maybe that's the key takeaway here.

 

00:18:10:02 

Alex Winter

I like that there's very well said. What can sales teams do. And I feel like there might be a misconception. Like is it when you get backed up against the wall and you need to hit revenue goals. You need to hit targets, you start to you start to fall into that trap of like, just whatever I can get in the door.

 

00:18:24:06

Alex Winter

Let's just do it. How can salespeople and sales folks start to leverage content and start to leverage different tools, and maybe thinking outside the box a little bit and trying to get out of their comfort zone to ensure that they're doing what you just said, where it's like they're going after the right deals versus just trying to make it happen.

 

00:18:40:22 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, content is such a such a great way to help your prospects know if they're in the right place. And to help them know if they're in the wrong place. And so instead of having to, you know, be the salesperson that continuously talks about and articulates it on calls, you can use the time in between calls or the resources you have on your website in other places to help prospects know whether or not it's worth it for them to keep going.

 

00:19:13:08

Tom DiScipio

And eventually they're going to self-select out of your process, in which case you've saved your salesperson a ton of time. And you've ideally set yourself up to close another prospect who might be a much better fit for your long term revenue targets. Right?

 

00:19:30:08 

Alex Winter

I think that's the beauty of this. And there's something that I learned when I came into impact is I've always known that sales and marketing go hand in hand, and there's always been a division of like church and state. And most companies where sales does their thing and marketing does their thing, and they kind of butt heads a little bit.

 

00:19:45:22 

Alex Winter

But when you read endless customers and you start to understand the importance of like a revenue squad and working together and helping the sales team create content to do exactly what you just said. So instead of having to hard sell and chase people and do all this extra legwork, you can give them everything they need so they can self-select.

 

00:20:03:01 

Alex Winter

And then by the time they talk to you as a salesperson, you get to have an awesome conversation and a meaningful conversation. And it's not all the, you know, the dog and pony show, basically.

 

00:20:11:00 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, yeah. In this this brings us right back to the metrics, conversation or performance. Like you can you can measure how long with the right technology, you can measure how long somebody is in a particular part of your sales process or your stage right from like maybe between your discovery call and your solution call. You know, it's it's a certain amount of time.

 

00:20:33:05 

Tom DiScipio

Right. But what if you could accelerate that time using content. And so now you're connecting content with process with metrics and stages and you're optimizing pieces of it with the right metrics in place.

 

00:20:50:04 

Alex Winter

Yeah, that makes total sense. I'm thinking now about if I'm a CEO or if I'm a business leader or a business owner, and I'm listening to the podcast right now and I'm hearing this and I'm going, I do some of these things and my sales team does some of this stuff, and maybe we need to rethink this, and we need to like, rejigger this a bit.

 

00:21:05:18 

Alex Winter

How how can they improve their sales process and performance and like, what should they start doing to to adjust to make these things more of a reality?

 

00:21:13:13 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, you gotta write it down.

 

00:21:15:21 

Alex Winter

Okay.

 

00:21:16:11

Tom DiScipio

Right.

 

00:21:16:21 

Alex Winter

Is it that simple? He's got to write it down.

 

00:21:18:06 

Tom DiScipio

I mean, you got to start there. Okay. I think a lot of, a lot of organizations, that have, you know, sales teams, have probably inherited the sales process from the CEO or an executive at one point, that sort of kind of made its way down into the next layer of of people. Sure. And so a lot of times these are, understood processes, but not fully documented.

 

00:21:48:03 

Tom DiScipio

Right? So maybe somebody is doing part of it differently than, you know, another rep. And you can actually measure the performance of each one and see who's better. Right. And I would argue that the one who's following the proven process better is probably going to have better results. So I would say first thing to do, look at your process even maybe go through it as a mystery buyer or role play it with one of your salespeople and then just document it, write it down, write down in different stages what needs to happen in each stage.

 

00:22:16:15 

Tom DiScipio

What's the name of each stage? And how are you going to measure each? Like what metric are you going to apply to it? Yeah.

 

00:22:22:23 

Alex Winter

Now it sounds like the more granular that you can get with it, the better chances are you're going to have success, especially as it trickles down through the organization into your sales folks. Because then there's a clearly defined step by step. It's almost like paint by numbers at that point.

 

00:22:35:18 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah. And you can finally see a visual of it. All right. A lot of times you can hear the sales process and go through it, but sometimes you can't actually see what it looks like. So, I know there'll be instances where you, you might write down something and you're saying, why do we why do we have two stages here?

 

00:22:53:22 

Tom DiScipio

Why isn't this one stage? What happens if it was one stage or, you know, these are two these two stages are so close together. What's happening in this one versus that one. And can we improve. Yeah. Our throughput. Yeah. But you can't do that unless you look at it.

 

00:23:08:01 

Alex Winter

You have to look at it. And you said role play. That's a that's a huge piece too, which is really awkward at first. The first time I did a role play, I was like, oh, what are we doing?

 

00:23:15:01 

Tom DiScipio

It's still awkward.

 

00:23:16:21 

Alex Winter

It can be a little weird. It can, but it but it what comes out of those sessions is, is astounding. It's pretty amazing what what you see and what you learn in some of these. Oh, there's duplicates here. We can merge these two pieces together and streamline this, this, experience with this process. Yeah. So it's got me thinking, because I'm sure there's people out there listening that they're hearing this and they're like, yeah, I have some of these problems and I want to fix this.

 

00:23:38:05 

Alex Winter

But reversely, I'm sure there's also business leaders out there that are like, I've been doing this for 30 years and it's been working great for me and hogwash. I don't need to do any of that stuff, but I don't know if that's necessarily true. So how can you how can you, maybe as a salesperson or if you're not a higher up in the organization, kind of bring this to the top and try to get people to see how meaningful and important it is to continue to like, pick apart or analyze and like continually evolve this process to make it as as optimized as possible.

 

00:24:07:15 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah. I mean, I hate to say it, it might actually be really hard if the bottom or middle layers of the organization are trying to move this upwards, because what we're talking about here is just a, a shift in mindset and a culture of, yeah, the way we've always done it can't be the way that we're always going to do it.

 

00:24:26:19 

Tom DiScipio

We have to embrace that. Buyers have changed and technology has changed, and, that people have essentially been taught not to trust salespeople just innately, psychologically. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, company leaders have to understand that in order to succeed, their reps are going to have to overcome that trust barrier.

 

00:24:49:22 

Alex Winter

Yeah.

 

00:24:50:20 

Tom DiScipio

That's a good point. Or they're not going to win.

 

00:24:53:15 

Alex Winter

That stigma is real. And so I guess maybe I can direct this directly to you, because I know you talk to a lot of businesses about and customers that are potentially exploring, going on the endless customer's journey. Right, which really dissects the sales process, the marketing process. It's really revamping. So when you have somebody on On the Hook and they're like, no, our sales process is perfect.

 

00:25:12:23 

Alex Winter

I don't want to mess with it. It's been good for the last 20 years. What do you say in those moments? Like, how do you get a sales leader, a CEO, somebody like that? That's maybe a little, stuck in their ways with like, no, it ain't broke. I don't want to fix it. Like, what do you say to them?

 

00:25:26:02 

Alex Winter

How do you how do you combat that or have that conversation?

 

00:25:29:00 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah. Well, I don't, you know, I don't know if there's anything that I could say to them that's going to get them to change their mind. I think it's helping them understand what happens if they don't change. And coming to a self realization of like, if I don't necessarily have a compelling reason to change, then there's nothing that a salesperson can say or do that's going to make that happen.

 

00:25:56:17 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah. So again, this this comes right back to the idea of edu education and meeting your buyers, your potential buyers where they are. Right. Like, you know, I need to achieve these significant growth goals or I need these problems to go away. And as a salesperson, it's your job to understand how important it is for that to be solved now.

 

00:26:23:14 

Tom DiScipio

Right. And what happens if those problems do go away, right. Only then, if the prospect articulates those things, are you most likely going to get a win?

 

00:26:36:01 

Alex Winter

Yeah. Well, I mean, listen, time is time is flying by. Technology is at a breakneck pace. And the next generation of of business people and buyers and sellers are on their way up. So you almost have to make that shift, because if you don't, it seems to me like you're going to get left behind. So how can you establish that right mindset to get people to acknowledge that that's the reality of the situation, and that you have to embrace it, because otherwise you're you're going to do what Marcus says, you're going to ostrich, you're going to be the the bird with his head in the sand.

 

00:27:06:07 

Alex Winter

Yeah. And, pretend like nothing's wrong when really everything's burning down around you.

 

00:27:11:01 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah. I mean, interestingly enough, I think it's looking at your own buying habits and self-reflecting a little bit. We can remove everybody else from the equation. Old, young, you know, new to the industry, all of the industry. But like, what are what have you noticed that you're doing differently in your in your buying scenarios. And some people are listening to this going, well, I do the same things.

 

00:27:34:00 

Tom DiScipio

I go to the networking events, I face handshake, face to face and great, that's awesome. Like that should still happen. And frankly, there should be more of that. Agreed. Because I miss it.

 

00:27:43:07 

Alex Winter

I miss it too. Yeah, I do.

 

00:27:44:15

Tom DiScipio

But but generally speaking, and I even notice this with my own habits. Alex, you know, I'm a big fan of playing guitar. And my natural state was to go to Google and, you know, Google things about guitars. The other day I found myself going to ChatGPT, asking specific questions about guitars and specific categories. And the answer I got was better than looking at a full search page of, you know, totally things that I don't know if I can trust.

 

00:28:20:10 

Tom DiScipio

They're actually the real answer. And so self-reflect look at your own buying habits and things you're starting to do differently as a result of the world around you. And that's a great way to say, oh I don't know if my business actually it addresses the way I would buy something, which could be a trigger for you to make some change.

 

00:28:41:16 

Alex Winter

Yeah, yeah. And I do the same thing even with Google now, when you search it, the Gemini answer comes up first over, over any of the results now. So I end up looking at the Gemini answer. If not I'm in GPT or I'm using some AI tool now because that's scrolling and clicking through page two three, four to find what you're looking for and you're not sure which links are.

 

00:28:59:22 

Alex Winter

That's I feel like that's an antiquated thing. It used to be amazing that there was a time not too long ago when that was groundbreaking. But yeah, that's the speed of of change in what's happening in the world right now. Right?

 

00:29:11:12 

Tom DiScipio

Right. And your business has to keep pace with that, because that rate of change and acceleration is not going to slow down.

 

00:29:20:12

Alex Winter

All right. So we've we've covered a lot of ground. You made some really excellent points. Can we tie this back into, like, what should the sales teams out there that are listening. Like what are the key takeaways for them. What metrics should they be measuring. What should they be looking at to make sure that they're hitting their quota hitting their revenue goals.

 

00:29:35:04 

Alex Winter

But like.

 

00:29:36:11 

Tom DiScipio

What are.

 

00:29:37:02

Alex Winter

What are those key pieces that they should take away from this conversation?

 

00:29:40:09

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, I mean, from a metric standpoint, like I mentioned before, there's hundreds of metrics that you could look at that may or may not have meaning for your particular sales process in your particular organization. So principally, I think there are few things that, you know, sales leaders, business leaders should be looking at, right.

 

00:30:00:19

Alex Winter

Not going to list out all 100.

 

00:30:01:23 

Tom DiScipio

I'm not going to list out. Oh no okay. No I'm not I'm going to give you five okay.

 

00:30:06:11

Alex Winter

Principles are good though I think. Let's do the high level. That makes sense. Yeah.

 

00:30:09:12

Tom DiScipio

You know, we love principles here at impact, and those customers. So let's start with the idea again that there are leading and lagging indicators, okay. And you can't have a, a tracking sheet or a dashboard that's only full of lagging indicators or only full of leading indicators. You need to know the outcomes that you want to achieve, and you need to know that you're doing the right things along the way to achieve those outcomes.

 

00:30:39:01 

Tom DiScipio

Got it. So lagging and leading a good mix of those two. Second you don't again you don't want too many metrics. Right. Because when you're measuring everything you're measuring nothing essentially. So again what are those metrics that you need to track. They're going to give you complete clarity on the performance of your sales team and allow you to make adjustments that you can track.

 

00:31:03:21

Tom DiScipio

Right. You don't just want to make a change for the sake of making a change. You make a change so you can measure or not. It did something good. Totally. Which might accelerate a deal or decelerate a deal, right? Yeah.

 

00:31:14:03 

Tom DiScipio

And the last thing would be around the actual performance of the individuals on your sales team.

 

00:31:20:04 

Tom DiScipio

Right. Like how are they showing up to calls? Are they doing well? Are they doing poorly. And this all comes back to role playing. And so for those organizations that feel like they want their sales team's skills to improve, you might even actually set metrics around how often you're role playing with your team. Because again, what gets measured gets managed.

 

00:31:43:02

Tom DiScipio

So if you say, you know, you might have a metric around, we're going to role play with each sales team member at least once or twice a week. Right? I'd recommend even more than that, but that could be a way for you to make sure you're tracking how your sales team members are upskilling every week.

 

00:32:03:20 

Alex Winter

Yeah, and I just have to say, the role play thing sounds silly. And even if you're a pro at selling and you think you have your conversations dialed in, it's amazing what you can unearth just from doing these exercises a few times and how much better you can get. Even though you're already great, you can be even better.

 

00:32:18:05 

Alex Winter

So it's just fascinating. I think you made some really great points there.

 

00:32:21:20 

Tom DiScipio

And what I'll tell you is, for those of you that are avid listeners of the podcast, you've heard Connor Delaney speak before. He and I role play four times a week.

 

00:32:30:23

Alex Winter

Four times.

 

00:32:31:11 

Tom DiScipio

So almost every day, that week, we have half hour to hour long role plays. Yeah. And honestly, I've, I've been in sales for ten years. I've been at impact for a long time. I still learn things from Connor every single day. And he from me. How cool. So there's nobody's too old to role play, right?

 

00:32:52:04

Alex Winter

And there's also overlap too, because the marketing team, us folks high over here in marketing land, we watch some of the sales calls that you guys have so that we can understand the conversations that are being held so that we can make content and shape content around what our customers want and need, versus just what we think they need.

 

00:33:08:00

Alex Winter

Right. Big difference there. Yeah. All right. Closing thoughts. What, what's the one thing that we should really take away from today's conversation for our listeners and people out there?

 

00:33:17:01 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah, I think I think the most important thing and the most actionable thing that you could do coming out of this is to visualize your sales process in stages, in steps, which is then going to allow you to identify the key metrics that you should be tracking, lagging, and leading, and ultimately help you reach your sales quarter.

 

00:33:38:14

Alex Winter

I love it, Tom. Thanks for all the insights and for being on the show.

 

00:33:40:23 

Tom DiScipio

Yeah of course.

 

00:33:41:21 

Alex Winter

Really appreciate it, man. And for everybody out there watching and listening is endless. Customers. I'll catch you on the next episode.