Episode 119: The Must Do Fundamentals to Build a Sales Team, with Don Lazzari

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Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world World of B2B Sales Management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits. Along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to become the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Another week, another fantastic guest we have from deep in the heart of the United States this week we have Don Lazzari. We're talking to him from a region pretty close to New Orleans. Right. We were talking a little bit about that before we got on very much music Central. Right. So if Don starts singing to us during this podcast, we know why. Right. It's been certainly ingrained into him, but had a nice chat with Don today and I've loved hearing about some of his experience. He's been in the sales consultancy, sales training and sales profession for a really long time. And for me, that is worth a lot. Regardless as to how quickly the world is changing, how much of an onslaught we see from AI and other types of efficiency tools, for me, there's just something that cannot be replaced and that is time in the chair. And we have that with Don with us today. He's the president of Delivering Value, so that's a sales performance consulting company. So he's really focusing on helping both entrepreneurs and companies. I like that blend between solo and team driven sell more effectively and build teams. Right. Very much the mantra of sales consultants and sales strategists. Right. We want to help our customers grow. He's been doing this for 15 years. So since 2010, he's worked with lots of organizations. He's covered software, he's covered tech, analytics, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, and healthcare. He's also got a book for me. You can often tell time in this industry by how many books people have. His book's called Entrepreneurs Sales Secrets Revealed. And that essentially sums up his sales knowledge over the many years he's been in this industry. He's got an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and a Bachelor of arts. Right. So he's also got some theory behind the practice there. So, Don, welcome to the Strongest Sales Teams podcast. Very nice to have you here today.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It's a pleasure.

Excellent. Well, tell me a little bit before we get into today about delivering value. What do you do and how do you go about it?

We've really worked closely with CEOs to show them how you can either build a team or make a team that you have perform better by putting practices and putting measures into place so that you can look at whether or not they're performing in the things that matter. When it comes to sales, we refer to them as sales vital signs. So do you have enough interest coming in? Is interest being converted to action? Is that flowing through the pipeline? Is that going out the other side to a rate that you need it? And that's really what we've done for quite some time, helping companies put together sales teams that then fuel the growth of the company.

Excellent. So very much around a framework that we use over here around strategy, talent, and energy. But it's that natural flow of customers from the beginning through to the end that's so important to get right in a team if you're going to succeed. And I think that's the topic we're going to really zero in on today. I'm a huge believer that when you're trying to grow, that it is so beneficial to go back to some of the fundamentals around what you do within your team. Because if you can get these right, or if you can even find that 1% per day improvement mentality, right, just that little bit each day where you get better and better, then your team is really well set up to succeed. So I think that's going to be our topic for today, really, about how we get our fundamentals right to grow from there. So. So let's start. Don and I know you've got terrific experience with starting with entrepreneurs, which for me is where the fundamentals of sales really need to get built out. But let's start with a team that is beginning, Brian. And in fact, it can often be a solo salesperson that's beginning. Right. Or a team that's beginning. And for leaders who are listening, who have large teams, please stay with us here because revisiting the fundamentals is never a waste in my opinion. But let's start with single solopreneur or single salesperson. You're building a team. Where do you go to there? What do you try and get your Teams to look at.

Well, I mean, first of all, you have to metric the health of the patient, so to speak. Right? So even for the folks that have larger sales teams, you still have to be paying attention, because I don't care if you have one or 250. Everyone has performance metrics that they should be delivering on in order to drive the business that they need. So first and foremost, even if you only have one salesperson, or frankly, even if that's just you, if you're the solopreneur, think about my driving enough new stuff in. Don't think about, oh, my. I have seven deals in my pipeline and I'm feeling good about that. No, it's like a hose. You always have to be driving pressure through it. So regardless of the size of the team, whether it's 1, 2, or 200, that's pretty much step one right now. If I'm a solopreneur, step two is my sales hires are really going to make or break me in the early days, because if I make a bad one, I've spent a lot of money on someone that hasn't delivered for me. If I make a good one, it's a propellant. So you have to have a good vetting process in place to look for the people that actually have the right stuff. And the right stuff starts with drive. So I think that's step one right there. Have metrics. Find drive.

Okay, great. So for you, metrics, do you typically have a set number of metrics that you would measure a team on, be it small or large?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, it just comes down to five. It's in my world or my purview. The top end of your pipeline is a funnel. So interest comes into the funnel, and interest gets created into action in the pipeline. So there are two metrics there. What's new to funnel, what's new to pipe, Then third, what is pipeline value? So that tells me how much pressure is in that pipe, literally. So do I have enough in there to push out enough deals on the other side to get to the number that I want? And on average, most sales teams are going to win one in three. Unless you really have a killer app, you're going to win one in three, which in most major league sports makes you an all star. So beyond that, so you've got new to funnel, new to pipe, pipeline value, and then performance to quota, and then the fifth one is how far you've gone past quota. So are you reaching stretch? And I think you always have to have that in place. Because your top performers will always go the extra mile. Your top performers will say this when you're getting your their quota. A million dollar quota. What's my stretch? Your stretch is whatever. 1.3. All right, fine. That's what I'm going to set my number at. And they'll go after that for you. So you always have to have that as asset to make the team perform.

Okay, so we have new to pipeline leads.

New to funnel. New to funnel first.

Sorry, new to funnel. New to funnel leads. Yeah, we have slightly different terminology than I use, but I like the five. So new to funnel, new leads, new to pipeline. So these are new quoted deals, if we can call it that.

They don't have to be quoted, but it's interest created into action.

Yeah. Okay, great. So would they be qualified? They'd almost be qualified leads.

Exactly. So if that individual is agreeing to next steps, that is interest that is converted to action. Right. So if, if suddenly you respond to an ad about, I don't know, wakeboards and I'm selling wakeboards and I get in touch with you and you say, yeah, I'd like to learn more about the wakeboards that you have. Well, suddenly your interest has been converting into action because you're agreeing to a next step with me. So that to me is the gating criteria there.

Great. Okay. New to funnel. New to pipeline. Size of pipeline. Right. So are you putting enough in there? Closed deals. Right. At quota level. So closed deals to quota. Right.

It's not just closed deals, it's performance quota. One thing that I always stress with the teams that I coach is you are not hired to sell, you're hired to hit quota. And you hit quota by selling.

Okay, so step me through that again. How would that differ from performance to budget number? How does that differ to what you're saying around performance to quota?

It's not different, it's just a different label.

Right, okay, excellent. So we've got performance to quota. So essentially sales out to budget and then how you're overachieving to that quota. I really like that one. There's a couple of iterations in there that are different to how I'm used to doing it, particularly at the funnel versus funnel that are converting to action. I quite like that. As an additional step, it allows us to say, okay, are we not just generating leads, but are we generating the right leads? Certainly a nice metric shuffle there. And on the other side, I really like that piece around, hey, how are you going versus what your budget or your quota is? But on top of that is, let's have a look at those that are really taking the bit between their teeth and driving harder than the rest of the team to overachieve budget. So I like that because for everyone that overachieves, we're more than likely going to have someone that underachieves. Right. And we do need to level that out.

Plus the person that will go for stretch the performance you get for the bonus that you pay is an unbelievably good investment.

Yeah, absolutely agree. I always recommend for sales leaders that you should be getting seven to 10 times return on your investment into a salesperson. Right. Seven, your base minimum 10 is the higher end of good. Anything you're getting above 10 is fantastic. Right. And that will help you offset the new to team person that you might only get a three or four on in their first 12 months. But it's not really their fault. They're just finding their way and getting settled in their role. Right. And it'll also help offset some of the the poor performers that takes time to exit them from the business. Right?

Yes. Or it takes time to reassign them to do something else. Because sometimes you have to face the fact as a leader that sales isn't for everyone and good people. That doesn't mean they're not good people. That doesn't mean that they're non performers. It just means that this just isn't an area where they have the talent that's going to drive the growth that you need. And sometimes that's tough in my opinion for some new leaders.

Absolutely. New leaders are finding their way in so many areas. Performance management and team planning is absolutely one of those. Okay, so you're getting your metrics right, you're starting to build some momentum. Right. What are you then doing next to say, okay, it's time for me to start to grow my team and start to grow the volume of deals and sales that we're doing.

Well, first of all, the first reaction that most entrepreneurs have, let's just say you have two people and you want to grow whatever 20% and you think that adding another sales resource is going to do that for you. Well, and the knee jerk reaction is we need to hire another salesperson. That may not necessarily be your best bet. If you have two people that are at least hitting the ball, you may want to think about hiring supporting cast that might cost just as much as hiring a salesperson or slightly more to drive more in the top end for the people that you already have. So make your sales hires be pushed by your Pipeline instead of hiring salespeople to make your pipeline because they're the most expensive resource you're going to hire. And even if you want to, you can contract for, you know, outbound sorts of marketing, whether that's SEO or social or whatever, to drive more interest. And, you know, you made a point earlier about, you know what, sometimes that person in the first year is only performing to 40%. Yeah. That's not atypical. Right. Building the pipeline is difficult, especially if you have a longer sales cycle. But if you're metricing what's happening at the top end, you can at least feel good about what that person's doing. Because if they're not delivering on converting interest into action, then you have a problem. If not, then you don't. Right. If they're building a pipe and they're seeing the pressure, that person, you need to give them grace. If they're not, you need to have a discussion.

I really like that angle. For sales leaders listening in to this piece around, how are you judging the quality of your new hire's performance? It's not always about how many leads are they generating.

It's.

It's not always about how many deals are they closing. I'm paraphrasing what you're saying here, Don, is that it can actually be about how many of those leads that are coming into the funnel. New to funnel, are they getting some intent from. Are they converting into action. Right. Because the closing then naturally comes from it. If you're doing the right or taking the right steps early on in that engagement process with the customer. Right. If you're really asking the right questions and you're listening and you're setting up the deal to say, hey, here's the things we need to tick off to make this happen. That that can actually be a more impactful measurement around how a new person's going. Right. How many people they're converting from into the funnel to interested. Yeah, I like that. Okay. Anything else?

How well they build incredible pipe. That's really what matters. The first year is the hardest. Unless your sales cycles are whatever, 45 days.

Even then it can take some time. Okay, I like that. So there's an angle here to say, okay, we're making salespeople hires not on the budget we want to be achieving, but on the amount of leads or pipeline that's coming into our business. So we're scaling that first and then we're following with salespeople rather than starting with salespeople and following with leads. It's certainly a Lower cost strategy to do that. Okay, so we're building that team, right? And look, I'm skipping lots of steps here, right. I'm trying to focus in on some key areas I think that meet your background. But we've hired that team. We're starting to grow where it doesn't matter if we're at 2 people or 50 people, right? Doesn't matter whether we're face to face or phone. Based in your experience, how do we go about then building momentum in that team? And when I mean momentum here, I mean both momentum for activity, but also momentum for results.

In my opinion, that comes down to the leader and the way that leader is able to work with each individual on that team and understand what motivates each individual. Because being a sales leader is definitely not one size fits all. It's definitely not managing through CRM. It is basically having a one to one conversation with those reps. Or if you have 50, you can't do 50 every week. So you have to have another layer, right? But you have to have folks that report to you that are having those weekly conversations and then you need to have weekly conversations with those folks because you need to stay very close to what's going on. And the leader of the sales team, just like the CEO sets the culture of the company, the leader of the sales team sets the culture of the sales team. And you know, just like winning coaches in sports, they always have a winning mindset. And even when things aren't going right, they're continuing to implement the practices that they know that eventually are going to result in winning and they continue to keep people motivated. And that's not an easy thing. But there's no other way to do that other than one to one understanding of everyone that's on the team. Almost on a personal level and secondarily just having that culture of performance that we've already talked about, you know, you really want to have a team that no one wants to be less than number one. And that's obviously a panacea. But there are enough people on the team that are going to be in your upper spot. They're going to drive a lot of your growth. And you really want that to be out there. You want that visibility to be out there. Because for example, anytime I have a client that closes a deal, I make sure everyone else, you know, a salesperson on that client, I make sure everyone else on the sales team knows that deal's closed. And I'll just be like, hey folks, look at this, Paul just closed a deal. For $500,000 for X, Y and Z. Let's all congratulate Paul. So everyone else wants to step up and be in the spotlight to kind of get the trophy. That's part of what you do to keep the momentum going. So secondarily. And this is when it's really difficult, when you do get to the point when you're kind of halfway up the mountain and you're bivouacked and it's raining ice on you, sometimes you have to be the one that says, all right, you know, this hasn't been easy, but I'm going to the top of the mountain, and who's with me and who isn't and allow those folks to make that decision. Anytime that I've personally done that or seen that done, 80% of your team's gonna respond to, yeah, I got the guts to climb to the top of the mountain. So, you know, three different ways I can think of.

Yeah, yeah. We touched on culture, being set at leadership level. We've spoken about spending time with your people to understand what makes them tick so that you can make those little tweaks to drive their performance celebrations. Right. Dragging everyone along to the party. Right. When one person's there, you bring everyone with you. And leading by example. Right. Climbing that mountain. I don't know what mountains are up in your way, but we don't have that many big ones here in Australia.

But I mean, well, in and around New Orleans, there are none. But you get into the Rockies and they get pretty high.

Yes, I've been there. But I think there's one thing on there that's really impactful. And traditionally, when you interview salespeople and say, do you get enough training and coaching? Right. Note here. Training and coaching are different things. Training being knowledge transfer, coaching being knowledge enhancement. Right. Typically, the salesperson's response is, I'd like more. Right. When you look at a sales leader and you say, are you giving enough training and coaching? Typically, the response is, yes, I think we're giving adequate rights. Often followed by, I'd like to give more. But there's generally a disparity between the individual contributors and the leaders around how the business is going. In that part, I'm seeing there's a huge shift in the market, and I'm very open about this, where as leaders, our jobs to call jockey, our jobs to go out with our team and listen to how they're going and, you know, take that feedback around how we can improve them. But it's limited. There's only so much we can do. There's only so many calls we can listen to or everything, but a tiny subset of what our team's doing, that's all being replaced now by AI call coaching. Right. They can record every call. They can provide you with a level of coaching that I think is very good. I don't think it's as good as your human touch, but it's 80% of the way there and it can do it on scale. For me, what that should be allowing is that business leaders, sales leaders, now have that opportunity to spend more time coaching because they've got got that data. Less time having to listen to the calls, less time necessarily having to be in front of customers, although there's obvious other benefits to being in front of customers. Right. And more time on coaching. And look, I mean, I'm very open. I've put my investment, myself, my time into a business called Icana I C A N I Ikana AI. And it's all about getting that analytical work done so that as a leader you can spend more time one on one and you've got more data there to talk about your teams with. So, yeah, Don, I am fundamentally in your corner there. Around building momentum and getting results is absolutely around how you can work with your team as individuals. Right. And work out how you can upskill and ascend their improvement. But the last question I want to ask, I'd love to ask you today is, so you're a sales leader right now, right this instant, and you're wanting to really turn on growth. So sales growth for your company, right? What do you do right now for your business? Is a question I ask most of our guests. What are you doing right now to turn that growth tap on? Where would you focus yourself to turn that growth tap on?

Well, several ways to turn on a growth tap. One, you have to have a compensation plan in place that rewards performance. So if someone is shy of quota, they're going to make less money than if they were. And I don't mean just a little less. I mean enough to kind of feel the squeeze. But then you also have to have a stretch goal for the people that are really going to drive your growth. That's one, you have to have a good comp plan. Two, you have to have just simple metrics that you review as a team. And one on one each week, which we've talked about several times throughout this podcast, those sales vital signs. How well is interest coming in? How well is interest being created in the action? What's in your pipe? Is it moving through the pipe. What do we need to do to close things? That close one to one conversation on a regular basis is invaluable. I mean, you can talk about all the magic out there, but those little things are what continues to propel a team forward. So to me, it really comes down to those two things.

Okay, so repeat them for me, number one and number two.

So number one would be making sure that you have the framework in place. Right. To say, is the health of my sales function both overall and by individual contributor delivering to what I need, and if not, I need to pay attention to the ones that aren't and stroke the ones who are. And then secondarily it becomes understanding where everyone is with the deals that they've got and working with them one on one, how to get them across the finish line. Because some of your best performers, they don't want to be told how to close. So you've got to approach that along the lines of, so what's your plan to close this? Whereas the ones who aren't as adept, your conversation might be more along the lines of, so have you thought about doing this to get this closed? So you've got to be able to work both sides of that to motivate those folks to do it.

Yeah, yeah. Very practical. I'm very practical myself. I like that. Have you got the right framework set up? Right. And then are you paying enough detail in the minutiae or the micro detail. Right. To get those deals done? Fantastic. So for me, Don, my summary of today is you've gone through some really practical, common sense ways that you need to be delivering sales performance results. Right? Yes. There's some really flashy stuff out there, but sometimes as leaders, we just need to stop, make sure we've got these fundamentals right. Because they're really practical, but they also work right. You get them right and it makes a big difference to your team. So for those listening, please take that lens around. What's one or two things from today that you can take a really practical lens to? Is it over gauging on meeting target and exceeding target? Is it looking at new people and measuring their performance not from new leads or closed deals, but converting people from interest to action? Right. There's some really key things in there that I think are base principles and fundamentals to Rol. Great. So, Don Lazzari, from delivering value, where else can people find you or where can they see your book? If they're interested to know more, they.

Can find me@delivering value.com. they can also find the book on Amazon or through my website for those that can't see.

What's it called?

Entrepreneur Sales Secrets Revealed. Let me see if I can get the light off of it. There you go.

Excellent.

So I want to leave you with four words. This is what it really comes down to from sales leadership. A standpoint. You've got to have a structure, you've got to have visibility, you've got to have discipline and accountability. If those are your four ingredients, you're going to drive performance through your team. Those are the fundamentals, those are the pillars on which you should build your entire function.

Excellent. So say those four again. Structure.

Structure, visibility, discipline, accountability.

Fantastic. Love it. Thank you, Don. Thank you. Everyone listening. Four words to write down. But between now and next time, please everyone, keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're ongerngersalesteams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're fully free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales team.