In episode 3 of the Startup Skills Podcast, sales leaders Christine Rogers, Emma Brady, and Christina Brady share their insights on essential sales skills for startup success.
They discuss the importance of effective coaching, communication, and understanding customer needs, while exploring innovative training methods and the shift towards efficient growth strategies in today’s market.
Tune in for valuable tips on developing high-performing sales teams and fostering a culture of continuous learning.
Episode Transcript:
Corey: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the startup skills podcast brought to you by Aspireship. Today we have an amazing panel of sales leaders on. We’re going to talk about the sales skills that you need to develop in your teams and as a leader yourself to be successful in startups. So today we have Christine Rogers, who’s the CEO of M3 Learning.
We have Emma Brady who works for Prompt Physical Therapy or should I say Prompt EMR? I don’t remember
Emma: Prompt therapy solutions.
Corey: Okay, Emma Brady from Prompt Therapy Solutions leading an awesome SMB sales team and Christina Brady formerly from Sales Assembly and now doing Luster. A. I. A. Awesome. A. I. Powered coaching and skill development platform. So thanks. Thanks all for being here. This is gonna be fun.
Christina Brady: Woohoo. Thanks for having us.
Corey: All right. So what’s cool about this panel is that we have some different sets of perspective. So Christine you are currently doing M three learning. You’re working with lots of companies. Implementing sales kickoffs and ongoing sales training for their teams. You get a lot of different perspectives on what teams are looking for from skill development perspective.
Emma, your boots on the ground, you’re doing it inside prompt with an awesome team and been growing just tremendously. And it’s been awesome working with you. And then Christina, you know, with your new solution that you have in the market. You’re really kind of ear to the ground, listening to what people are thinking about from a skill development perspective.
So what I want to touch on with each of you, I’m going to go around, is to ask about the top three skills that you focus on when developing teams. That can be your own team, or it can be what you’re seeing from your clients. And customers as as you’re working. So, Christina, why don’t we start with you?
What are the top three skills that you’re seeing companies prioritizing these days?
Christina Brady: Yeah. I mean, I would say, I don’t know if companies are prioritizing these but they absolutely should be when you’re thinking about it from a leadership standpoint. I think I’m hearing a lot about training leaders to be better coaches. Better trainers, but I’m not hearing a lot about training leadership on the critical soft skills to actually be heard and understood.
And so there’s this element of how do you train on that skill of identity versus role based feedback? I talk about that a lot, but how do you actually give people feedback in a professional setting? So that it not only sticks, but you eliminate defensiveness. You don’t make people feel personally attacked and using feedback as an opportunity, whether it’s positive or constructive to really show that you care about somebody in their development versus this back and forth kind of boxing match that can become when you heart attack somebody’s identity.
The second thing is practice in the workplace and finding a scalable way to do that. A lot of companies have wonderful enablement teams and learning and development teams to train their reps. And a lot of organizations have incredible coaches to coach their reps after they’ve already performed their skill set or their task or their calls.
And what we don’t see a lot is really scalable practice and actually making what’s trained kinesthetic, meaning I’m learning something, I’m physically doing it in a low stakes environment before I’m actually going to have to perform that to try and gain revenue. And then getting feedback on that and having an opportunity for more at bats, if you will.
And then the third one is the scale of understanding early signals in a sales or CS process that is going to lead to a bad lagging indicator. So we’re really good at looking at, we got a bad result. Let’s go back and post mortem it. And instead there’s something Jen Iguarta, who is the CEO of a company called Go Nimbly talks about this.
It’s called gap first thinking. and it’s looking at every individual at your team and looking at what are the gaps that you have right now that you’re That are about to impact our brand or about to impact our revenue or about to impact the customer experience. How do we proactively identify those gaps and close them before they do that?
So almost as element of how do you get the crystal ball to not no longer look at lagging and current indicators, but get ahead of that and then determine how much faster you can scale.
Corey: Wow, that’s awesome. I definitely would agree. I have not seen companies prioritize most of those things. So great that you’re leading that, that charge out there. Emma, let’s go over to you. And by the way, Christina, we will come back to how. That’s gonna be a big part of this. How do you actually do this?
But let’s go around first. So Emma what are your top three?
Emma: We sell into a very niche vertical. So knowing the product in the industry is critical. There’s no getting around that. So the first two weeks are just learning the product itself and about the industry that we’re selling to. The second thing is really communication. Whether it’s tonality, how you’re writing to someone in an email, not having, as Josh Braun says, that commission breath, really making sure we’re respecting the client and doing right by them.
Then the third thing, I kind of like to call it no ego amigo, which I stole from a Peloton instructor. We’re all working as a team, We’re collaborating. We could not be successful without each other. So yes, we want to have a healthy level of competition, but also normalize asking for help and not being just afraid to ask questions or seeming stupid.
Corey: Christine, you’re up next. What are your top three?
Christine Rogers: Okay. So I was thinking about this from when I had teams and over, this has actually changed for me quite a bit over the years. One of them has stayed the same. So I will lead with that one is teaching someone how to be organized, making sure they are organized and as salespeople, that is usually not The top priority.
However, a lot of salespeople lose deals because they don’t know how to organize themselves. So I think that is something that when we think about kind of skill versus will, versus how to make sure that someone can control something, you can control being organized. So I always think about that as a skill.
Number two is. A lot of times we need our sellers to be able to ask really strong questions and also know where we’re going with them. So I think kind of similar to what Christina was saying, sometimes we get going, we’re teaching, and we want people to understand, like, ask good causality questions, ask good outcome questions, and then they do not know where to go.
In that conversation in how to lead someone through a natural conversation through decision making and a process that doesn’t feel like one. So I think that is really important. Good questions that know where we’re going. We’re leading somewhere. And the third is what I actually think is super important is understanding the customer.
So that is also a controllable is we can understand who our customers are, who the target is, who the outliers are, who we can still sell to, but know they’re going to be a problem. And I think sometimes we spend so much time on the thing that we miss the who. Who are they? What are we doing? What are their problems?
What do they think about? Where do they hang out? And we really need to know those things. And so again, I think about controllables and if I’m trying to tell someone you can control your destiny, that’s, those are, those would be my top three.
Corey: Christine? I’ve never seen that. Never experienced that before in my life. So what’s interesting to me about all the things, there was only one thing I think that crossed over between two of you, and that was knowing the customer. That one, I definitely think companies spend time on. They prioritize most of the rest. I don’t see a lot of it. which is interesting.
but I’d love to go to each of you and talk about how either in your current teams or with companies you’re working with, how do you develop these skills and people? Or how do you train people? the trainer, train leaders to develop these skills in their teams. And yeah, specifically love to, to start with you, Emma.
Emma: For us learning the product, we essentially have Aspireship for our customers where we call it prompt university. So we have all of our sales reps go through the same training that our customers would go through. Then we also have some recommended podcasts and how to start a PT business. So we give them.
Like, Hey, pretend like you’re going to open up your own business and just have them live that. There are also some social media places that we send them to. So that’s learning the industry. And we’re also lucky to have a lot of people from the industry on our team to also help fill any gaps for those who might not have an industry background.
Then of course, for learning the sales, we leverage the Aspireship training, which has been awesome. So all our new reps go through that. And the other thing we do to sort of tie it all together is we have really strategically created mentorship pods where there’s usually a mentor AE and BDR, and then we have mentee AEs and BDRs, and they’ll meet.
Within their own court cohorts, and then we have them all go together and that way they sort of have a point person that they can go to, and they’re not relying on 1 person. So that’s been a big success.
Corey: Can you talk, the mentor thing is really interesting. Can you talk a little bit more about what that process is like? Is it just someone that’s assigned they can ask questions to, or is there any kind of structure or something that you see for consistency across mentors and mentees, you know, on the different teams and whatnot?
Emma: Yeah. So I call them pods. So we have pod 1, 2, and 3, and each pod will have an A E and BDR combination. So if it’s What should I do about this deal? I don’t understand the HubSpot note or what’s this feature in the software? It can be really any question at all. The goal is to start in the pod. And that way, if you have a question back to the no ego amigo, someone else probably has that question.
And so we’re all answering it for each other. And then it’s also creating a record for new people who start. And then there’s a call review channel where the BDRs have to post calls and then everyone has to comment specific positive and areas for opportunities and then they do weekly meetings so the BDRs In their pod, we’ll meet weekly and then bi weekly.
So every other week, the AEs and the BDRs will meet together. And I have a structured outline that they can follow if there is no specific topic. And then I do, I either will think of something or I try to encourage someone else to take the lead on, watch this 20 minute webinar or training video and talk about it.
Corey: Awesome. Thank you. Christine, we’re going to go over to you. So with M3, you’re working with all sorts of different types of companies and they brought, I’m sure great companies, but they’re probably not all doing all the right things all the time. Right? And you’re kind of going in and advising them on the things that they should be prioritizing for their people.
how do you go about helping them to enable their team to develop these, the skills that you prioritize.
Christine Rogers: One thing that I think is really interesting that I have seen many companies over the years do, and. And has worked very well is again, focusing on the who, but not just the who of the prospects or the customers, but the who on like who they are as well. So, a lot of the companies that I’ve worked with over the years, and even Corey, you know, when we worked together at a previous company.
We did almost like a personality assessment. So people understood who they were coming into the company. And then they knew how the world was occurring to them and also able to, whether you use a disc or, you know, a pro personality assessment, like the 16, what is that one, Corey, you know, the one that we did but it allowed.
The people within the company to understand who they were and then that allowed, you know, connection points. And then they were able to look at other people that they were communicating with in market as a prospect and also understand their communication style might be a little different. And I think that is so effective.
When I think about something that a company can do right away, that would be a really helpful gift to both internally help with communication. And externally help when you are going to start doing practice and training and emails. If you are, for instance, a high D on a DISC assessment, you are going to have a much different communication style than someone who is a high I, for instance.
And understanding that when you speak with someone and you’re watching and observing how they interact, you can make a fairly decent guess at what will work for them. And you can then craft a bit of your communication style to be frictionless or create less friction for them. And I think internally and externally, if I were thinking about how to start a company again, or how to revamp a company, this is one of the things that I think is absolutely very effective.
Everyone to do, and it’s fairly simple
Corey: okay. So beyond the I do just want to go a little further though. So beyond the like internal communication, understanding their personality type, communication style, that stuff, which we have done, which has been very effective.
When you’re going and you’re working with all these different companies that are either struggling with sales or they’re just looking to improve in certain areas. How do you go about getting them to develop some of these skills, like the question, asking the right questions, doing that stuff and do it in a way that’s going to help the people develop long term.
Christine Rogers: Well, I think that Christina will probably be able to give a lot of insight on this around practice, but it is super important to be able to listen, understand who we’re speaking to. So, And then be able to craft. Everybody needs to understand how we just need to understand that there is no conversation.
If there is no causality, why are we talking? And everyone will typically give you a very rapport answer that will not be the real reason. And so being able to train people to say. Politely. Continue to dig. Politely continue these whys until you actually get to something real and listening differently and knowing when you’re actually there, that was the real answer.
Everything before that wasn’t. And you have to continuously have those conversations over and somebody coaching, listening, and giving you guidance around that wasn’t it. so much. You almost had it, but you need to keep digging there. Keep digging, you know, and that is how you get better is when someone is actively giving you guidance so that you are able to shift and make adjustments as you go.
Corey: Great. That’s wonderful. Christina, perfect tee up for you. So talk about how you go about reinforcing these skills that you think are important. And feel free to share about, like, how that led you to doing Lustre and all the things that you’re learning there.
Christina Brady: Yeah. The first thing with skill development around effective leadership feedback and around proactive skill gap identification and everything else that was kind of listed there. Yes, practice is a key component of that. I’m going to put that aside for a moment because first there’s this element of can you actually identify what you’re doing?
Where the problems are, or you reactively guessing where the problems are. And that’s what happens in a lot of organizations is we are reacting to someone’s subjective opinion of a small blurb or, you know, gong rationale at the end of a call saying, okay, I heard this thing on this one call and it sounds like it’s a problem.
So I guess I’ll coach to that. And then they don’t know how to coach to that. Cause they haven’t been given soft skill training on how to coach. And what works for to Christine’s points, I’m a big fan of disk methodology or any kind of methodology because to her point, also the way that you would coach somebody who is a high D communicator versus the way that you would coach somebody who is a highest communicator are actually the opposite, right?
And the way that they actually interpret messages is very different. So, for example, When you interrupt somebody who is a high D communicator, it makes them angry. When you interrupt somebody who is a high I communicator, it makes them sad, right? So interruption is bad on both of those accounts, but the reaction that you’re going to get is going to be different based on how they communicate.
So first is do you have a methodology by which your organization kindly communicates with one another? The second piece of that is have you identified a good methodology or process for how you want your leaders to actually coach and have you enabled that. And to be honest, most organizations need a third party resource for something like that, because in house it is too difficult to do comprehensive, fundamental leadership training on soft skills and feedback delivery.
So all of that identification needs to happen. The same thing for your frontline level skill gaps. Do you actually have a way to identify who you are? Where your gaps and deficiencies are how they’re impacting your customers and then proactively find a way to address them and this is a problem that as a 17 year sales veteran And i’ve spent the last over a decade in leadership on the revenue side of the house I found some incredible resources for Training and development to such representations on the call right here today, like those exist.
And I think those need to continue to exist. You have to find incredible people to train your people, how to do the thing. I even came from a couple organizations where I was selling enablement technology or selling enablement services. Like I’ve lived that. And the one consistent feedback that I would always hear and that I would feel Prior to that, when I was a revenue leader was the training was great.
We don’t know if anybody is using it. We don’t know if it’s actually being ingrained. We don’t know if it’s working on these calls. We don’t know reps proficiency with the training that we’ve given them. And I would feel that. And to be honest, There kind of wasn’t a solve for that because we can’t be in the room measuring every deployment of how a rep is presenting a skill or a gap on a sales call or on a call with a customer.
Or can we, right? So like, that is sort of what brought me to the concept of developing Luster, and it’s less about luster directly and more so just about the category of productizing practice and not only creating a safe space for customer facing employees to be able to practice conversations, skills, New product pitches, objection handling, full sales processes, application of methodologies.
You’ve just brought on an incredible third party resource to train your team. And now you want to actually have them practice that before they go do live fire calls on customers. Like a practice platform like Luster will do that. Where it goes one step further is because of the fact that we can actually be there in every practice session and on every call, we can proactively identify the progression of skill, proficiencies and deficiencies for the entire team.
So, because of the fact that in real time, we could be measuring. your skills. We’re then able to proactively say, Hey, you’ve got a call coming up next week on discovery. You’ve been stepping in the mud on discovery a lot. So here’s a custom practice environment. We’re gonna mimic that call you’re about to be on so you can actually practice that before you go get on the call.
And so then we have this ability to predict where your skill gaps across the team are about to impact your revenue and then give them a way to practice it ahead of time. And so is it about using a tool? Well, It’s not about using a tool. It’s about, do you have a way to proactively practice at your organization and identify where your skill gaps are about to impact you?
That’s the thing that has been missing. And if organizations can find a way to plug that in, it’s like I said earlier, they’re going to have the crystal ball effective understanding where we about to make a misstep and great news. We can minority report the heck out of this. We’re going to stop it before it happens.
That’s what practice simply practice allows you to do. I
Corey: Yeah, I love that. I particularly think, and I told you this when we spoke and you introduced Lustre to me, that potentially the most interesting part to me is the identification of the gaps and the progression and all of that stuff. There are a lot of practice platforms now, there will be a lot of practice platforms.
But this sort of speaks to the next question which I’ll go around a bit on. That oftentimes what we see with both training and practice is once someone is proficient enough, they’re like, they’re good. I got it. We’re done. Forever. Right? And so, so that leads me to, yeah, how do we go about.
Ongoing skill development for performing reps, right? Not just new reps, not underperforming reps, but performing reps, or at least performing to a certain certain standard. Christine, I’m going to go to you first on that one.
Christine Rogers: So I would say. That is one of the most important things is very frequently your top performers are not singled out or even put into cohorts to continue to advance and hone their skills. And sometimes they get a little To comfortable with where they’re at, and they don’t want to adjust. And so I do think, you know, in, in many companies that I’ve both been in and also advised, it’s important to have, you know, we’ve got an a team and you want to be going, getting into these cohorts where we are going to do specialized training, coaching, opportunities, you know, different things that allow them.
To continue honing their skill set and in a way that makes them feel both respected. And I loved what Christina was saying about you know, this is about giving the right feedback in the way that is. Is respectful and feels good because you do not want to say to a 20 year veteran or someone who has done this is You know, let me get you into this training program where it’s literally 101 It’s insulting and so but if you say, you know, this is the tiger team And this is the group that we’re going to put together and this is where we’re going to get product information And this is how we’re going to learn more things and this is where we are going to continuously, you know sharpen You know, our saws together to learn to co create some things together and allow them to give advisement almost like your advisory team.
This has been very effective for me to continue to allow them those sales skills and also be very impactful for the company as a whole, you know, because they will give feedback if they do feel respected, they will you know, that’s a great time to have yours. Your chief product officer come in and talk to every quarter, you know, your top performing reps, what are they hearing?
What are they seeing? What do we need to be doing next? You know, these are the places where you can continually encourage and keep them in alignment with your organization, but also get great insights you know, from them as well.
Corey: That’s great. And Emma, have you found this to be something that impacts your world when you have, you know, your reps that are doing relatively well.
Are they open to more learning? What have you been doing in this area to kind of keep those folks continuing to learn and progress?
Emma: Generally we’re very lucky that we have a lot of inbound. And it’s not to get too into the leads, but there’s sort of a hierarchy of when you can get certain levels of inbound leads. So that’s generally very motivating. If you can do X, Y, and Z, then you’ll start to get this next level of inbound lead, and then once they’re sort of at the top of that, sometimes, okay, I want.
This title or I want this promotion and then that turns into a conversation. Okay. Well, maybe now it’s time to consider a growth plan We have an awesome people department that’s kind of helped with growth plan and leadership training. So sometimes I’ll say, let’s, this is, where is a gap you’ve identified with the rest of the team?
Here is what I think so and so could be better at. And then, okay, great. Do an in service on it. Watch this video and do an in service. So generally, extra credit projects, I guess you could say, are also motivating. It helps them and it helps us. So that’s been successful as well.
Corey: Awesome. That’s a great plan. Christina, how about you? What’s your perspective on this? I’m sure you’ve baked a bunch of this into, what you’re doing over there at Luster.
Christina Brady: laugh because every time I talk about this concept of the more tenured you are, the less you either want or feel that you need to practice. It’s like, imagine if the top bodybuilder in the world was like, I’ve done it. I am the best. I no longer need to exercise, or I think about like, as a personal story, my, mom was the pianist of the Chicago symphony orchestra.
She was objectively one of the best pianists in the entire world. She was the one playing piano during the Fantasia 2000 score. And what is the thing that my mom did more consistently than performing was practicing. Now, what that means is that the key to achieving mastery is practice and the key to maintaining mastery is also practice, but the practice has to fit the acumen.
So the bodybuilder isn’t going to go to the gym and start lifting five pound weights. And if you’re giving your top bodybuilders five pound weights in the gym and being like, go practice, they’re going to be like, go kick rocks. I’m going to throw this weight at your head. Right. And so there’s this element of, Are you is the practice is the training is the enablement meeting you where you are?
And can it evolve? And that’s historically been really difficult for organizations because you don’t want to have to put together seven different enablement calendars to account for the fact that you have people across four different generations with wildly different experiences, right? You could have a 20 year veteran in the field that you are selling in who has no sales experience.
but they can speak the voice of the customer. Well, that’s an experienced individual. How do you train them? Or you could have a 20 year sales person who has never once sold to somebody in that industry and doesn’t know how to speak to it. You have two veterans in the space. How are you going to actually enable your curriculum to bring both of them to the level that they need to be at without insulting their resume or insulting their experience.
And so being able to be prescriptive with your learning and development and not give the top bodybuilder five pound weight takes a little bit of work, but is Unbelievably necessary to do it. I would say there’s nobody in the world that has earned their way out of practice and if you think you have, you’re not going to be number one for long.
Enjoy getting lapped because you will.
Corey: So I totally agree with that sentiment. And I know that sentiment’s been shared before by by many, but oftentimes there just isn’t a concrete solution that’s widely adopted for that. Have you come up with a solution to that problem for giving the giving the a hundred pound weights or whatever the analogy would be to the the rockstar salespeople?
Christina Brady: Yeah, there’s a couple solutions to it. One is if you think that you have to do all of your training. In house and that your enablement and learning and development team has to custom create all of the content for your entire team. You’re doing too much. So number one is democratize the access to the content that exists for your people.
You can own. The content for your onboarding team and your newer reps and things that are more foundational, but there is no shame in going to a great third party training resource and bringing them in to account for some of those edge cases. So that’s number one, you don’t have to do it all yourself and it will actually cost you less even if you are spending on those because you will keep your people longer.
They will achieve their targets faster. faster, and you will actually get a new idea of what a good rep looks like by enabling everybody at their level. So it will save you time. It will save you money, democratize the access to that training. And the second piece of it is being able to have a practice environment where you can actually turn up the volume, right?
So, like, can I go into a practice session that feels pretty level one and pretty easy going and just kind of get my footing wet? But then could I also Go into a practice environment with a CTO that doesn’t have the time of day to give you that is highly technical, that is agitated, just spilled coffee on their shirt, and you’ve got two seconds to impress them.
Like, can I give you that guy? Can you try to beat that guy? Right? So does the practice environment match the custom training that you actually just got? Or are you kind of going into these 101, like, click through the box really quick? I understand all of this, which is unfortunately potentially difficult?
A lot of people think that practice is e learning over and over again, or practices, knowledge checks and quizzes or practices, record yourself giving a pitch and have your manager watch that. Unfortunately for your senior level reps, that’s 2 It’s a waste of their time. Give them a practice environment that mimics what hard looks like at your organization.
And it might not be what you think it is.
Corey: I love that. Let’s shift over to the struggling reps. So, Emma, I’m going to pick on you first. How do you handle this? What is sort of your kind of standard plan or a way in which you go about helping the reps that are not necessarily where they need to be get where they need to be and continue developing their skills?
Emma: Yeah, the 1st thing would be trying to look at the pipeline and the data and to see where the. The fallout might be happening, right? They can get to step four out of five. What’s happening at five out of five versus who’s kind of stuck on step two and then cater the training and identifying what the problems are at each step.
I already mentioned the pods. So sometimes if someone’s having a particular issue, I will tweak the pods. So a great example is we did have an AE who was struggling. So I was very intentional with who I put them as their mentor and they Got there together and he was facetiming us the last day of the quarter when he met his quote, it was an amazing, and I couldn’t have done it without the help of that, that mentor AE to do that.
And that was really just blocking off time on their calendar, helping them with the agenda for the meeting, seeing what deals they were going over, what skills they were going over. So I was somewhat involved, but I also wanted to give them the autonomy to work together and figure things out from a more peer perspective.
Corey: That’s great. That’s great. Thank you. Christine. I know you’ve had a number of different situations regarding this topic, in the past. Let’s talk a little bit about the now, with through M three and when you’re working with companies and they have, reps that either are not picking up the training and applying it the way they should or, As you’re coming in, there’s already like a set of people that are struggling and one of your, you know, main objectives is to get them kind of up the curve.
What’s the best way you’ve found to help them develop?
Christine Rogers: So I’ll talk about it from two points of view. So one, if, you know, when I have my own team and was managing, you know, sales talent, and also, you know, having to consistently look at, you know, what are the people, who are the people that are not getting it, what do we need to do? Again, I look at it like skill versus will.
Do they want to be there? Are they trying very hard? Are they culturally really working and exemplifying the values that we believe to be a part of our organization, and are they just having trouble getting the job done? And can we work together? And in that, regard, I believe it is critical to co create a plan with them together.
This is not a performance improvement plan because I actually have put many people on a PIP over, and I know this is highly controversial, but I have, and that is not what I’m talking about. I am talking about prior to that with them saying it’s not getting done. What do we can, what can we do together?
How can we co-create something together that will work? I can see that you want to be here. I can see that you are doing the work. I can see that you are trying very hard and how do we do that? And on the ad adverse if they don’t want to be there. That is a different conversation. And also we are co creating that plan for them to be successful elsewhere or to put together a timeline that will work for them or to do something else.
And I think that again, having those strong communication points prior to. Hey, we’re at a place now where, you know, you’ve been inconsistent for this many months and now we’re putting you on a performance improvement plan. That’s not that there is a place where you can have these conversations and co create something together with them prior.
So, I think that’s 1 when I get into other companies and they’re like, hey, this is a group of like 6 people and it’s not working really well. Then we go back to basics if we’re working in a group We do go back to basics. Where are they at giving an assessment? A rubric on like where are they struggling?
Also having them self assess Very interesting to have someone Self assess where they think that they’re having struggles and have their manager do the same thing. And then I’m doing it, the manager’s doing it, they’re doing it. And you’re going to come up with a lot of data really quickly. And so I think that’s a really good way when I’m coming in and don’t know anything, you know?
So I think that’s really effective. And then again, we’re going to put together a plan. What can we do if it needs to be in a group? Again, this is where it gets a little tricky because you will have different tenures. Like Christina said, it can get a little tricky when you’re doing training like that.
However, what we do know is what’s consistent is they’re not getting the job done. So we’re going to have to put some skills together quickly to help them turn it up. Or again, if it’s not going to work, then we are, should both be in agreement. They, I’ve not really had this experience where when it’s not working for the company, it’s usually not working for them either.
They know it. And that, you know, that happens. And so we can again, put together what is the next, what’s the next step?
Corey: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Christina, I’m going to go over to you. I’m sure that we may be talking about identifying gaps and those sorts of things. But, anything else beyond that’s been sort of pinpoint for struggling reps.
Christina brady: I think it’s been nailed in this room. The only thing that I will add is you might not know what good looks like. And I think a lot of organizations don’t actually know what good looks like. They have a series of incredible training resources and they’ve got some really smart coaches, but there’s no foundation for what good at this organization looks like.
And that’s usually not broken down to process versus methodology. Versus soft skills versus hard skills. And so the first thing that I would say is if you are trying to coach people and you’re trying to train people into what good looks like, and you don’t agree internally, and in most cases, I bet that you don’t like you’d be surprised at how many organizations are sort of coaching very randomly.
And it’s a bunch of smart people. All outlining a different play for how we’re going to get the goal. And then everybody smacks into each other. Right. And it’s like, not everybody was objectively wrong, but unified you weren’t right. And so if you don’t have a way to identify what good looks like, you’re flying blind and you’re going to move a lot slower.
And there’s no reason in this day and age to run a marathon with a pebble in your shoe, stop, slow down, dump the rock out, get on the same page and you will run faster.
Corey: I love that. I love that. That’s great. Okay. so we’re going to wrap with one final question and this is one that I love because we all have been impacted in so many ways, by the changes of the last few years, specifically around, if you are in a startup. Even more specifically, if you’re in a startup that is backed by some amount of outside investment, venture capital, private equity, whatever there has been a definite shift from growth at all costs to not just profitability, but being more efficient, being smarter about growth and really making the right decisions.
I’d love to hear from each of you, how, if, and how. That shift in the market has changed either your own business philosophy for skill development and your own priorities there or how others are viewing it. Emma, I want to go to you first.
Emma: Can someone else go? Cause I, I’m not. I don’t know if I can relate to this. So if other people do mind, if they go first and maybe I can think of something.
Corey: You absolutely don’t even have to go at all if you don’t want, it’s not a problem at all. Christine, how about you?
Christine Rogers: Sure. So. You know, over the last dozen years that have been in this space, it has been thought about like, Oh, if, you know, five reps can do 20 to 22 a piece, then you just add, if you add 10 more, look, then the revenue is just going to go right up. And they’re all going to be able to do that. And it’s going to be perfect.
And Christina’s laughing and Corey’s laughing because we know
this is how.
Corey: math.
Christine Rogers: it. That’s it. Yeah. More, more, just more bodies equals. exactly the same thing. And that’s just going to be the straight line up into the right. And I will say it always has felt bad and it’s because it’s not, it hasn’t been real, it’s just, that’s not how it works.
Efficient, sustainable growth, putting effort, putting training, putting, making sure that your team, you have a consistent methodology that they understand that you are giving them. What they need to do to enrich and make every conversation matter when you can take a lead and say, I can give you with pretty strong certainty that if it goes to any of my 32 reps or any of my 10 reps, it’s going to do about the same thing.
They’re going to have the right conversation and we’re going to move it down the field versus, you know. It is vastly different between people because we have some that are very skilled. We have some that we have put time into. We have others that aren’t at all. And it has always been important to be efficient with every single lead that comes in.
And now it has gotten more scrutinized and efficiency has been prioritized. So I am tickled about the move because I think it is the way that it always should have been. Why would you want to have 50 people? If 20 can do the job, they can get paid very well to do it. Your customers are very happy because they are being Treated well, respected and served through the entire process without just trying to shove people through the chute to make a number that is unreasonable because we started from a top down number that makes sense.
And so you can tell him a little passionate about it. Also, I love this because it has really made the cream rise to the top. And those that have learned this skill and the products and services that people do need and those that know how to communicate through it in a way that is, I think, honorable.
This is an honorable purpose. An unknowable profession to help people have a simple value exchange. And I love it. And so I think it is great that I love the change. I love that it has it has caused much more conversation around this and it has caused people to do the work that has been necessary all along.
Corey: Christina, what kind of shift in behavior have you seen out of customers that you’ve worked with since all of this has gone down?
Christina Brady: know what’s interesting is the shift in behavior from customers. I’ve seen them do what they should have done all along, which was be a lot more selfish. You know, like I think customers have realized that they have earned the right to dictate how they want to be sold to. And the more organizations that listen and aligned with that and let go of their rigid process and what they need out of it are going to win.
And we talked about this concept of, you know, in, in late 2022 to 2023, like there’s been all of these catch all phrases that everyone’s gotten all caught up in, right? They like, is it growth at all costs? And sometimes we fast as slow and moving slow as fast. It’s like, there’s all these things where it’s like, we’re doing this.
This is the plan. We have to stick with the plan. No one deviate from the plan. And then six months later, it’s like, we’re going to throw out that plan. There’s a new plan. We’ve got a new plan. And it’s like, nonstop. And so for me, what I started thinking about now being a founder of an early stage startup, again, with VC backing one, I realized that your approach when you’re not thinking customer centrically, right.
So I think as the customer, they should be able to dictate how they want to buy all the time. No matter what, I don’t care what your stages listen to your customers when they have their wallet out. Based on the stage of company that you are at growth at all costs might be great for you. Moving slow, moving fast might be great for you.
For me, I started thinking about a children’s story and I know that sounds really weird, but I started thinking about this concept of the tortoise and the hare because I was reading it to my six year old one night. And there was this idea that like slow and steady wins the race. And then I was like, d does it?
Like, actually, if you think about it, in no way, shape, or form, should that turtle have beat that rabbit? That rabbit was built for speed, that rabbit knew the path, that rabbit had a heart that beats like 200 beats per minute, so it can run forever, it’s got a metabolism, and the turtle has nothing. That should allow it to win except this relentless desire to drag its portly body across the ground.
So it’s not actually that slow and steady wins the race. It’s that if the rabbit had been focused and fast, they would have won. Because they had everything that they needed. So my lesson for everybody, regardless of your state of growth, is focus. Fast and focused is how you actually win a race. And so what do you need to focus on right now?
Is it growth at all costs? Is it revenue? Is it NRR? Is it churn? Is it customer like buying centricity, whatever it may be like be fast and focused on what’s important and what’s in front of you. And by the way, that might change. And also that’s okay.
Corey: Well, this was so much fun. Thanks all of you for being here. Everyone check out Emma Brady, Christine Rogers and Christina Brady on LinkedIn and beyond and can’t thank you all enough for being here. This was a lot of fun.
Emma: Thank you.
Christine rogers: So great.
