Josh Sweeney: Hello, and welcome to the Founder Scale Sales Leadership Podcast. My name is Josh Sweeney. Taylor Barnes: And I'm Taylor Barnes. Josh Sweeney: And today we're going to talk about mentally debilitating your salespeople. So, Taylor, you got a really good story about a salesperson that that was really debilitated by some things that happened in the business. So tell us a little bit about what happened. Taylor Barnes: Yes, that he was. So my friend Jason worked for a company that basically did factoring for logistics companies, and in short, what that means is that if an independent truck driver wanted to sub out his services to a larger organization, that organization would pay him in roughly 30 or 45 day terms. Well, as an independent truck driver, sometimes you need that cash quicker, so what his organization would do is pay roughly 96% of the invoice, keep 4% for themselves. And that's what factoring does in general. Taylor Barnes: So in the case of Jason, he basically went out and bought so many books of accounts receivable that his organization ran out of cash. So it's not that he bankrupted the organization by any means, but he was basically told, "Jason, you have to sit on the sidelines now. You've basically sold, or in this case bought too much and run out of money. So we're going to have to wait for some receivables to come in." Josh Sweeney: So right out of the gate they get this rock star sales person. I mean, I wish every company was able to have a salesperson that would do so good, they outsell your operations. That's a pretty good problem to have. Taylor Barnes: It seems a great problem to have. Josh Sweeney: On the surface Taylor Barnes: Yeah, absolutely. And no, you nailed it. That's such a benefit as an organization, to have an individual that can just blow the doors off like that, but what came with that is him having to sit on the sidelines and all of a sudden now he's scratching his head, pretty demotivated because he's thinking, "Okay well my organization either didn't have the forecast in them to handle the scale of business. They didn't potentially believe in me when they hired to the point where I was going to blow the doors off. Is this an organization I want to be a part of?" So right off the gate, obviously the initial problem for him and the challenge for him was that he was basically asked to stop working. Josh Sweeney: Got it. So the debilitating part was really he had to stop working, and that's how he makes all of his money, commissions off of this, and so he's at a standstill. Taylor Barnes: Yeah, exactly. And maybe that sounded cool for the first day, you know? Oh, cool, I can go golf, and my coworkers and my boss have basically told me to go do so. But after that first day he really started being concerned with where he was working, and you nailed it. The challenge for him was twofold; it was about the organization and their ability to scale, and it was about his ability to make income and generate revenue for his own personal life. Taylor Barnes: So when you look at this from an organizational point of view, had the organization communicated to my friend Jason on the risks associated with overselling, or in his case overbuying, then mostly Jason would have had a very firm understanding of what's possible. But for him to get... From him to walk in on a Monday morning and learn that this was happening, it was completely demotivating, completely debilitating, and as leaders of an organization, if you don't communicate that ahead of time, that is step number one of an issue that you could have easily gotten ahead of and solved. Josh Sweeney: Yeah. This makes me think this can come up other ways. So not every company is doing factoring or any of this. So like in the case of a BDR, we were working with a client and we really wanted a place of business development rep in there that was supposed to get them 30 meetings a month. That's one of the goals of a BDR. And they basically said they wouldn't know what to do if they had 30 meetings a month. So they actually said, "Let's pull back on the plan. Let's not hire a BDR yet, because if they actually succeed and get us all of these meetings, it won't happen." And so you would say, "Well, maybe that's a good problem to have, so let's hire them and we'll deal with it later," but then if that's a really good BDR, then you would be in the same situation. You would have to say, "Hey, you got me all these meetings, but stop." Taylor Barnes: Right. But stop because we're not sure if we can deliver them. And for the organizations out there that are new or in their infancy stages that are kind of building the plane as it's flying, I get it, because we've been there and we fully understand, but there is a line. There is a balance between being able to just go after business, and then there's a line of being able to comfortably deliver on that business. And as soon as the individual crosses over that line, the salesperson, not necessarily the organization, but the person that works for the organization, yeah, they're going to experience some discomfort in that regard because they're going to lose faith in the organization. Taylor Barnes: So I think the big question is what as leaders can we do when our sales people... I should rephrase that. What can we do as organizations to prevent demotivating of any type to our sales people? Josh Sweeney: Well, let's take one step back from there and say, okay, this person got demotivated because they oversold, they went out and crushed it, and then they had to pause. So their money's affected, they don't know how long it's going to be. What are some other ways that you've seen these weird scenarios happen where people were demotivated or sales reps were demotivated? Taylor Barnes: 100%. Well, I mean, you got to imagine, in service delivery organizations, incident management organizations, any organization that delivers the service haphazardly is going to demotivate the salesmen. So the most recent example I can give is an organization that sells a managed service or an organization that sells anything from installing technology to installing TVs. Well, if they go out there and they sell this promise to the client and then the service delivery organization doesn't come through on time with quality and in a manner that was aligned with what potentially the statement of work says, that sales rep, guess what he's thinking or she's thinking right now. It's great, I'm doing my job, but they're not doing their job. Josh Sweeney: Yeah. This goes back to, I think I was told many years ago at one organization, don't confuse sales and delivery. Or maybe it was sales and execution. They wanted you to go out and sell it and let the delivery team manage it. But on the flip side, psychologically, if that you're putting your face out there, and you're going in selling those deals, it's going to be a disaster afterwards, that really affects your ability to sell and your confidence, because it's you that sold them. They don't look at the business and go, "This business isn't good." They go, "You sold me on this," and when they run into you later in life, they remember that you are the one that sold them on that. So that's another debilitator I would say. Taylor Barnes: That's exactly right. And you nailed it. I mean, Josh, it doesn't matter what you sell. You could sell solutions, products, it doesn't matter. If as a salesperson, your organization is not delivering what you promised on, then that's going to completely demotivate you as a salesperson. And to be fair, to some delivery organizations, things happen. Service delivery issues happen and whatnot and escalations occur, but when it becomes a pattern, it becomes a performance pattern, that's really going to hurt the individual. Because look, some people are motivated by money and they don't really care about the outcome. Those are the individuals that are not going to last very long. If you are a seasoned professional, a seasoned sales professional, then you care about what the delivery looks for your client. That's where you are garnering the majority of your income, you're building your relationships, you're thinking longterm. Taylor Barnes: So if you put your face out there and basically vouch for your organization being able to deliver effectively and they don't continuously, well that that individual is going to think about leaving your organization. And I wish there was more of a process from start to finish, but it really does happen that quick. We've seen it in other organizations. I've coached other organizations where they had this high level of employee turnover and with a great culture at the same time. So something's missing and in that example, it really does come from a lot of the times the organization at the end of the day is not able to deliver on what they've armed the salesperson to sell. Josh Sweeney: So let's take small B2B services organizations. We have plenty of experience in that, both of us. So the smaller you are, the more of the chicken and the egg becomes a problem. So too much sales crushes the operations, there's a lot of planning. Too many people ready for operations with no sales is a huge cost, and expense, and people are sitting on the bench. What are some options around managing that situation? Taylor Barnes: Yeah, that's a great question, and we, because to your point, we have heard people that go out there and sell it before even exists. You know what I mean? Josh Sweeney: Sell the dream. Taylor Barnes: Sell the dream. They are the epitome of fake it till you make it. And I've seen businesses start that way, and I can respect and appreciate that hustle as much as the next guy. You what I mean? I think there's something to that and looking back on that, there's some good memories that I'm sure have happened. So I don't want to completely condone that idea, necessarily, but what I do want to make sure people understand is the risks that are associated with that. Because if you understand the risks, then you can make a calculated decision how you're going to go to market. Taylor Barnes: The risks are probably more way towards the if I sell this and I can't deliver, I'm out. And as you know, you've seen businesses fold on that all the time. Startups fold on that all the time because they have this grand idea and then the tech doesn't work out, or they had this grand idea and distribution doesn't work out, or a grand idea and all of a sudden, like we're experiencing right now in China, things happen, economics get affected, and all of a sudden supply chain costs go through the roof and you're not profitable. So so many things can happen if you don't build it before you sell it. But again, it takes one of those where you hate to... I don't want to prevent creativity by any stretch of the imagination, but it's all about understanding your risks before you get into the delivery and the sale. Josh Sweeney: Yeah. So if you're going to turn up sales, you're going to go out and you're ready to make the leap from maybe a founder generating most of the sales to a sales team, or maybe you have a small sales team that's working and you're really looking to make the leap and add a couple of people quickly, you have some challenges. So one solution is think through the operational side of that. What will happen? What are your contingency plans? So there's ways you can solve those problems and scale up with part time people, or have some fractional resources ready at hand, you can have the documentation in place where you can add people quickly, and just give them a document, and they know how to do some of the fulfillment. So a lot of the training comes in play. What are some other ways that the business can overcome some of these issues? Taylor Barnes: Yeah. Well, you listed off a lot of really good ones. So when a business is looking to basically scale by adding resources, such as a sales team or BDRs as some examples, in order to gain a wider market share eventually, your comments about starting small, in my experience, are absolutely huge. Because nowadays, for instance, people are really investing more heavily in things like search engine optimization, or lead generation, or just driving general traffic to the websites than they are the traditional outbound cold calling, knocking on doors, [crosstalk 00:12:31], and all that. Taylor Barnes: So there's one aspect of that is how you're going to gain interest. A lot of organizations throw people at that. They have to understand that that comes with a very heavy OPEX cost with a longterm conversion into deals. But if you're going to look at doing things like having a utility player, like a Swiss army knife, an individual that can market themselves, and go out there, and preach the good word, generate opportunity, generate interest, and then you look for the founder to begin helping them close the deal, once it's between 50 and 75%, well that's a good system. Because then you've got basically a great presales effort with a Swiss army knife type of an individual, and as the founder they can go back to what they're good at. Or maybe a senior leader can go back to what they're good at and they can help them close the deal at that point. Taylor Barnes: People so many times try to hire these individuals to do it all, and you nailed it. If you want to be a process driven highly successful sales organization, as an organization, you have to understand the difference between presales and sales, BizDev, and operation service delivery and execution. You have to. There's no real way, effectively that is outside of the startups, to do that successfully. So that'd be my recommendation. Josh Sweeney: Yeah, I know we deal with it all the time because one of our pillars is people, Salespeople. And so we get all these questions around, "Well, I want to hire salespeople. What do I need to do?" And so my first question is often, "Well, what kind of salesperson?" And they're like... You get a deer in headlight look a lot of times, like, "What do you mean? I need somebody to go do all of this." And I'm like, "It doesn't really work that way. You got BDRs, and SDRs, and inside and outbound, inbound." You have all these different combinations and the combination or the type of person has to fit what you can manage at that time. Josh Sweeney: I know one client we had, most of their business was generated, they didn't have a sales team, most of their business came from the founder, and it mostly through networking. And I said, "Okay, well, the first way to augment that is if you don't have budget to hire a $40,000 base person, $60,000 base person, then we can go get you a part time MBA mom purse type that is going to go to networking events with you and augment you and now you're starting to scale up." You're going to see what problems and challenges come from managing that one person in a part time capacity and you can start to add, and then you'll get one full time, and well now you know how to get two full time. So like you said, there's a way to step into it to start to scale up. And we're just talking about smaller businesses that are founder led sales, but I think that's the case in organizations where you already have 10 sales people, but you're still trying to tier up to the next level. Taylor Barnes: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the way that you said that, Josh, it is something that anybody listening should really take into consideration. I want to add a salesperson, great. What kind of sales person? That's huge, man, because look, we've heard all the different nicknames. You've heard of hunters and farmers, you've heard of inside and outside, you've heard of all of that. Taylor Barnes: So as an organization, when you're looking to add a business development sector of your business or looking to ramp up sales, you really do have to think about a lot of that. Because if you've got, assuming that you were all aligning with your vision and your mission and you don't want to become the company that's good at everything, you want to stick to what you're great at and train your individuals on what you're good at, well then you need to look at the individual subject matter expertise and say, "Is this human being good for marketing-led sales inbound efforts? Is this human being good for inside sales, setting meetings for maybe some more senior account executives? Or is this individual just an incredible account manager that should really be more on the farming side because they understand how to sustain and expand within an already previously existing accounts?" Josh Sweeney: Yeah, just to bring it back to the debilitating sales people that we talked about, I mean I was talking with a client and they had a networking person. It's like this person is a power networker. But then they started having some challenges with the deals and then the contracts weren't right. And I was like, "Hey, they're not a contract person. They're not a closer. They're the ones that you need to go generate the lead and bring it to the next person that's detail oriented, that knows the ins and outs, that can close the deal from there. Josh Sweeney: So really understanding that because on the flip side, the debilitating side is now if you don't know that, then the founder or the sales leadership is now having a conversation with this person about what got messed up. And that salesperson is disheveled about it because they're like, "Well, I messed this up, and they're worried about it, and now it's mentally affecting them to go generate more leads," and it's nope, your role is to bring them to the next person, to make that introduction to make it happen. So that's another way that we see this little nuance thing around just writing up the estimate could mess up and debilitate- Taylor Barnes: You're right. You're exactly right. And I've seen that, your example, I've seen so many times. It goes two ways. The minute you tell a seasoned account executive to get on the phone and start pounding the phones, go knocking on doors, they're going to tell you to [inaudible 00:18:01]. They're going to tell you you're crazy. The minute that you put a brand new, very, very green individual in front of client, they're going to feel the exact same way, just on a different level. They're going to think, "Overwhelmed. I can't believe it. I'm freaking out," which will result in debilitating them professionally and personally, and then the seasoned account manager, if you're telling them to that all of a sudden he's going to have to generate his or her own marketing-led efforts and whatnot, they are going to feel potentially unappreciated and it might not be something that they're interested in or what have you. Taylor Barnes: You have to put people in the right positions in order for you as an organization to succeed. In order for them to be satisfied with their jobs, you have to make sure that you're leaning into their strengths. If they're an inside, outside, presales, account sales, territory, whatever that is, and that is something that organizations don't really, in my opinion, they don't focus on enough. They say, "I'm looking for a sales person, come on in," and that's it. Josh Sweeney: Let it rip, go make calls- Taylor Barnes: Let it rip. Go make calls. Josh Sweeney: ... close deals, and that's it. [crosstalk 00:19:05]. Taylor Barnes: Right. And once you sell it, tell the people how to deliver it. It's like, oh my goodness- Josh Sweeney: Right, now you're an ops person. Taylor Barnes: Now you're an ops guy. So that's something structurally, and just some general hacks on how to make it better, you mentioned process documentation. As an organization, that's absolutely huge. Now here's the mental effect of process organization. If you coach your individual salespeople during the ramp up time and whatnot, and you've got things documented for them to follow them, and their maturity and their ramp up time comes as a result of what you've made, well, that goes a long way. A long way. Because the majority of the organizations don't do that. So they'll be very appreciative. They'll feel you're setting them up to succeed. They'll feel you're giving them the best chance in order to do well and have a potential career at this organization, and you're taking it very seriously. Instead of just being like, "Hey, I've hired a new person. Come on in, sit down, here's a phone and a Rolodex." Well, just aged myself a little bit on Rolodex. Josh Sweeney: Yeah, what's a Rolodex? Taylor Barnes: Yes. It's a piece of paper and it flips around. There's just a lot of Googling going on right now. Bu I would say- Josh Sweeney: Their sales just went up. Taylor Barnes: Exactly. So that's why people, I think, because at the end of the day, if you flip the idea of not debilitating a salesman, well then what are you doing? You're motivated them then. Then you're keeping them excited, you're keeping them engaged, and I can talk until I'm blue the face about this massive epidemic in the US with 70 some odd percent of employees being disengaged. It just hurts my heart, because I really feel there's ways to solve that ahead of time, and it's with identifying the risks in communication that could have potentially saved my friend Jason's employment at that organization, potentially. It could have. And/or this is massive turnover because young salespeople don't feel like they're being put in the right position to succeed, and/or more seasoned individuals coming in feeling they have to do it over and they're taking a step back and they're- Josh Sweeney: Correct. Taylor Barnes: You know? And so hiring for, as you called it, specific subject matter parts of sales, I think is absolutely enormous. And creating structure as you're building out your organization to say, in stages like you mentioned, is are you going to be in marketing lead sales, are you going to be in presales, inside or outside? Create some sort of a career path. Create some sort of an ongoing here's where you're going to start and then in one year here's where you should end up. And then at that point at least you've set the expectation organizationally. Now you know what kind of investment you're making, and that investment isn't going to return anything for you until X amount of time, so you're not going to be surprised, and you can pour into that salesperson unequivocally because you're not expecting this return immediately on hiring a salesman. Josh Sweeney: Which most likely isn't going to happen anyway immediately. Taylor Barnes: Right. Exactly. Yeah, right. Josh Sweeney: Let's be realistic. Taylor Barnes: And it shouldn't, you know? And there's a lot of organizations that have made it very, very well over the years with hiring somebody, giving them a script, and telling them, "The more activity that you do, the more sales you're going to make." Look, those organizations, they've done well for a long time. Maybe they've got the magic script, I don't know. But for other founder-led organizations that want to develop sales teams, that want to develop sales leadership, we have got, as leaders, we have got to find a way to make sure that our actions are not debilitating the human being that's trying to generate business for us. Josh Sweeney: Yeah, definitely. So we've got a lot of good topics for future, right? We've got sales roles, what are those? Some onboarding career paths. We've got lots of stuff to talk about from a sales leadership perspective. Just to recap on this, we don't want to debilitate our salespeople. So we really have to break down and look at what are the actions we're taking as sales leaders or founder-led sales teams and understand how do those actions impact? Is it an operations issue where we have to put somebody on the bench? Is it something where we're giving them a certain amount of feedback that's really crushing their spirit when they're going out and selling? What are some other, just to recap, what are some other items that people need to take away for the wrap up of this? Taylor Barnes: Yeah, I would say as an organization, so many times... Well, I should say as leaders within the organization, so many times leaders are not able to emotionally detach, and I can use an example- Josh Sweeney: In a good way. Taylor Barnes: In good way, yes. Emotion [crosstalk 00:23:47]. Emotionally detach. Josh Sweeney: Because I know some emotionally detached leaders, and people don't like working for them. Taylor Barnes: Yeah, exactly. Way too emotionally attached. Josh Sweeney: Exactly. Taylor Barnes: So I would say a healthy amount of emotional detachment. It's kind of like this, today I had a salesman get a little bit out of line because he was more worried about his customer's feelings than he was about what we have built as an organization. So I told him he needs to emotionally detach from this and remember what team he's on. Now, I said that in the same tone of voice that I'm talking to you right now. Had I written that in an email and I said that with a stern face, well, that's going to come across emotional. So you can get your point across by emotionally detaching as you're trying to continue to motivate your individuals. Taylor Barnes: But outside of just the general day to day actions that would affect the human being on the other end, the individual that's working for you, I think it really comes into leaning... If the organization is willing to make this kind of investment in the human, they've got to lean into what their strengths are, even if it develops over certain periods of time. They've got to understand what sales people probably are best fit to remain in certain departments like presales or solar service design, what have you, and then motivate the individuals that are showing signs of, I don't know if promise is the right word, but just to have different skill sets and potentially getting into account management, global account management. Well, the leaders need to be able to really continue to push that button. The idea of any leader looking at an employee and saying, "This is all you're going to do for the rest of your life," that's pretty rough to hear it right. For the most part, individuals want to know if they can move up in the organization. Josh Sweeney: They want to progress in something. They want to grow. Right. Taylor Barnes: Exactly. And if it's not going to be with that organization, it's going to be with another. And I can't speak for everybody in this case, but for the most part, for the listeners that have chimed into this, most likely they are interested in growing and progressing in their careers. The majority of the people that I've talked to are. So it's not necessarily a motivational core problem for the individual. If they're listening to this, they're already motivated. It just really comes into pouring in at that point and hitting the accelerator button, and to make sure that as an organization, you're never complacent with your sales person as is. In a healthy way. Josh Sweeney: Yeah. Well, lots of good information. Lots of good shares around not debilitating your salespeople. Some good options for future podcasts. So we look forward to you tuning into the next podcast with us, and thank you for joining. Taylor Barnes: Thanks everyone. Page 1 of 1