S6E14 - Mark Ackers - How to Know Your Sales Leader Doesn't Care

What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Surf and Sales Podcast, brought to you by our good friends at winai. If you haven't heard of WIN AI, you might be living under a rock, but you will close more deals by making your funnel faster, smarter and smoother with automated data capture, seamless CRM updates and AI generated emails so you can streamline all your favorite sales tools into one. I am Scott Lees, here with my partner in the Surf and Sales Summit and co host of the Surface Sales podcast, Richard Harris. How's it going, Richard?

It's going much better, Scott. As of 12 minutes ago, our good friend Jake Dunlap just committed to sending someone to the event.

Coming in October. So I've gotta. Okay, we know Jake, so we'll have to wait for the, the, the credit card to come in. But assuming, assuming that's true, how many people does that give us? How many slots are left? Six? Five?

Well, there's six. So if Jake is sending somebody from scale that would be, would be down to five.

There you go. All right, so yeah, check it out.

Surf and sales dot com.

Yeah, it's happening in October in Portugal, so maybe, maybe we'll be down to four. Since Mark is already in Europe, our guest and see if we can get him to put a deposit down today.

Well, we'll see about that. Our guest today is Mark Akers. He is the co founder and head of sales at my sales coach and he is over in Newcastle Upon Tyne in the uk. How's it going, Mark?

Scott. Hey, Richard. Going very well, thank you. Yeah, I'm in Newcastle, but for anyone who knows this part of the uk, I do not sound like a Geordie. That's because I'm from just outside of London. But yeah, I'm very well, thank you. And I, I did share the Surf and Sales Summit internally with, with Richard Smith and Kevin Beals. But my sentiment is I cannot surf for. And I know you will say that's the whole point. We'll learn, it'll be fun. I'm, I, I couldn't even get up on my knees on a board. But it did remind me. I don't know, Scott, if you remember, I shared an idea with you, my own take on surf and sales, Sal's goals. You remember that?

I do remember that actually, yeah.

So likeness. Well, so I had this idea that maybe one day I'll do. Maybe we should do it together. But yeah, we should imagine this. Right, so you just get a football game, any football game really. You rent a Box a football stadium. You deliver some sales training and coaching for three hours before you have a nice meal and you watch the game. Sales goals.

Beautiful.

That's genius, dude.

Yeah, I know. You should do it, Scott.

You should sell that out in 24 hours.

Oh, this would be pretty easy, actually. Also, what you left out, Mark, is that we have our own little scrimmage, our own little pickup matches, you know, on, on the side, before and after as well. So we get a little, a little work, a little fitness in as well, you know.

Yeah.

Think about the amount of people that play football, sl soccer around the world compared to people who surf.

Right.

The total addressable market here is much, much larger than the one we've been going after.

Yeah, Scott's great, you know. Yeah.

Scott would have to be careful not to injure himself though, because I, I know his, I know his body and I know his passion for soccer and football is far greater than his concern for injury. And he would be highly enticed to try and play. He would be frustrated. Maybe you could be the, maybe you could be the ref. Maybe, maybe we'll.

I could ref easily. I could ref easily. But if I, if I, if I went out on the pitch as a player, I think the term you're looking for is reckless abandon.

Yes. Because it would be his last time he's ever allowed.

That's right. That's right. Well, tell everybody, Mark. Tell everybody about my sales coach and what you all are up to so they have some context on what you're building and what you do.

Yeah. So I suppose the easiest thing to do would be talk about the problem that we solve. So look, I, for the last 10 years, every day speak to a different sales leader running discovery calls. Right. And whenever I speak to a sales leader, they all tell me the same thing. They've got a problem, like a problem they need to fix with their team. That, that could be pipeline, top of funnel. That could be the discovery calls. That could be get creating urgency, negotiation, whatever, whatever that problem might be, they need to solve it if they're going to get their team to where they want to get them to. They know that coaching is the best way to level up a sales professional and that sales is a skill. But it really comes down to they've got loads of plates to spin. You know, if you're a sales leader in the modern age, you're onboarding one minute, you're interviewing the next you're having one to ones urgent action items going into meetings. So coaching can always wait till tomorrow. It's not really a metric or a KPI that you're measured on live on that hamster wheel of each quarter at a time. So coaching always gets kicked. And even if you do find the time to do it, you can't know everything. Right. You can't be a master in all the different elements of sales. There's so much to it. So what they turn to is my sales coach. We're a marketplace of expert sales coaches. We've got 80 plus expert sales coaches. And what we do is we match the right coach to, to the right team at the right time to solve their problem. And we either do that as a short intense program and we fix something and fix it fast or it's more a subscription. We want to give our team access to great coach on a consistent basis. And again we match them and we provide one to one and group coaching as a service. That is my sales coach.

It speaks to a large problem in sales leadership in, in, in that people get hired or take a role in arenas that they're, they're really not meant for. You know, like if you're a high velocity type salesperson, like short sales cycles, you know, more direct kind of pitching and you take this leadership role in a enterprise arena, Fortune 500 kind of arena, that's misaligned. If you spent 30 years in enterprise sales orgs and you're taking a early stage, first founding kind of head of sales role, that's misaligned. So what are some of the most common misalignments that you see that both sales candidates and founders should try to avoid?

So. Well, I think first of all, taking a step back, I think building on your point, here's just one of the greatest problems that we have in sales is that every sales manager has become a sales manager because they're a top performer. Right. They, they did well in sales, they carried a quota, overachieved.

And if not the very top, at least in the upper third or something.

Yeah, yeah. And, and they get promoted for multiple reasons. Like you know, if they're a top performer, they're probably ambitious. They're, they're hard working. They, they want that next step or a business just doesn't want to lose them. So they promote them to keep them and their knowledge within the business. But just because you're a top sales professional doesn't mean you're a great manager. Doesn't mean you're a good leader. And we just spoke about soccer there American audience, we call it football for mine. But again, the rest of it how many times do you see great football players become poor managers? Right. It's a totally different skill set and I think lots of people take that role as a manager because they want the title, they want the money, they want the acknowledgment, the power, all those things.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's a totally different job. And, and where the mistakes I see sales leaders make is they don't embrace that change and, and, and that actually they don't know how to. Very rarely do you speak to a sales manager that's had coaching and training on how to be a sales manager. They just get given the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. But it's a totally different dynamic and role and responsibility. And because they don't know how to deal with that, they manage with do I did this is how I was successful. Do what I did. That doesn't really work for everybody. You know, everyone's got their own style, their own way of learning, way in which they like to be trained, coach, challenged, supported and they start getting spoon fed. Do I did that's what made me successful. And it doesn't really work for everybody and it creates this awkward dynamic. So the mistakes that I see sales leaders make is that they got that role probably for the wrong reasons in the sense of they didn't really know the role they were taking. Truly until you, until you first step into management, you don't really know what you're taking. It's just so different. And then when it comes to putting your team first, that's a whole different mindset. Top performers are quite selfish people. They get things done their way but actually when you become a manager you go to the bottom of the pile and it's all about your team and it's a totally different mindset shift. So I think they're not prepared for that role. They, they don't quite know what to expect and they struggle with that. I think companies don't support them in that transition well enough. And in terms of founders, I think one of the things, you know, second part of your answer, founder led selling is very hard to step away from. And I think, you know, I'm a doing founder led selling myself. I've got a team. But moving away from that and giving that trust to a sale is very hard to do. So again it's about hiring the right people and then if you, if you hire them because you believe they're good, it's not.

But how do you. Here, here's the problem, right? It's 20, 25 and we're talking about this same problem again. And I'm not talking about pre Covid post Covid the last couple years. I'm talking, look, I've been selling since the 1900s. This problem has existed since then, right? It really has. What is the problem with executive leadership for this? Like why are they still so willfully ignorant that this is a challenge? Is it just because they expect an immediate ROI and they, they don't want to admit that or is it because they never like why, why are we still talking about this problem that is so simple to solve for if you put some effort into it?

So I think, I think there's a few reasons, right? So first of all, most senior leaders like we talk about big companies, senior leaders, the ones that really dictate they're from like the baby boomer, older level of Gen X, right. Whereas the majority of workforce is millennials and gen zers. And there is such a difference in terms of what the millennials and gen zers want from their employer, from their role, from their lifestyle to what that baby boomer Gen X wants. I think there's a huge challenge there and really understanding each other. I think the other thing, and this is, it's always a conundrum.

Hold on, I want to pause right there then that's still on Gen X to recognize that it's their problem.

Right? So, and I'm, you know, that's where my concern, like if you go to interesting thing is if you think about it and if you talk to any early stage founder, even in the startup commuter and you said, hey, imagine what kind of training and coaching you get at Coca Cola or IBM or Microsoft or Zoom. What kind of coaching do you think your, their leaders get? And they probably sit down and figure out they probably get some level of coaching, right? Why are they still holding back? Because I don't, I don't buy into the, well, it's just, you know, generational difference. Like I'm done with that excuse. Just like I'm done with, you know, every other excuse Gen X comes with and I'm Gen X.

So I, I think, well, I think to build on your point, I think first of all the conundrum with this dynamic is anyone that listens to this podcast is going to be different, right? Because they're going to, they're going to care, they're going to give a shit. People that don't care about their career, that don't listen to podcasts and try and learn that. I think the uncomfortable truth is majority of People in the workforce large and you can't have everyone that wants to progress and get to the next don't care. You know, they, they, they go to work, they earn their money, they go home and you can't, I'm not judging those people. You need those people, right? You can't have everybody want to be climbing the ladder. But I think that's one of the challenges is most of the workforce don't give a. And, and I understand that, right. But I find that difficult because when I talk at events and training and coaching comes up, people say to me, well, why have we still got this problem? I'm like, well, it's not you, you're in the room, you care, it's everybody else outside the room that's the problem. And they'll never be in this room. So I think that's one of the problems is a large portion of the workforce don't care enough. They can acknowledge a problem, but can they get by day to day and get their salary? Yes, they can. Sals is a beast in the sense of there's no barrier to entry. Anyone could get a sales job, right? There's, there's no university degree people. How many people dream of being a salesperson? They don't, they fall into it because they can't do anything else. So we're in an industry that has a lot of people that fall into that industry. They kind of survive. I think it's like 80% of people, I mean, you see different sites, area, 80% of sales who don't want to be in sales. They're in sales, but then they get into management roles. I think there is that challenge there. And I am about five minutes of my discovery calls. I can tell if I'm speaking to a sales leader that gives a shit or not. And it's so refreshing. I often tell them, I often say, look, I know I'm going to enjoy this chat because I'm speaking to someone that gets it.

I'd be willing to bet you could do it in two minutes.

Probably depends on, depends on how much weather talk we have.

Yeah. What's the dead giveaway where you feel like the particular sales leader doesn't really care? Lack of empathy.

How is that expressed? Or how are you? How do you learn that?

It's normally like body language, tone.

How they describe their team and then when you talk about, out of all the things they do, right. Of all the plates they spin, where does coaching sit on their priority list? And if it's not in the top three It's a problem, right? I mean it should be the, should be number one.

What?

Go ahead, go ahead.

Honestly lost my point. What was you gonna say?

Moment. I was just thinking you, you install these, you teach people how to coach, install these coaching programs. What is your 2025? Like okay, here is the exact blueprint for the best possible coaching training program. Are people meeting multiple times a day, once a day, once a week. Is the, are the topics like cyclical? And they go like let's start at top of funnel all the way down to the bottom of the funnel and then we repaint the bridge and start all over. Like what does that program look like to you right now?

Essentially just give it all away for free, Mark.

So exactly, that's exactly what we're supposed to do, give everything away.

I'd love to have like a whiteboard session with it with you on this. I think, look, first of all you have to acknowledge that everyone's different. You've got to meet the coachee where they're at. And I think there's a few rules of coaching, right? So number one, not necessarily this order, but you can't want more for them than what they want for themselves. And I think you have to understand the person you're coaching, what do they actually want? Some people will not want the things you know they're capable of achieving. They with that self limiting belief, whether that's just desire, they won't want that. So I think you have to understand who are you coaching? What do they want to achieve? You can't want more for them. It can't be about you. It's got to be, it's got to be about them. I think the next thing is you need to have a real unbiased understanding of what their actual needs.

There's lots of assessments out there. I use a particular assessment company to assess the traits of sellers that I hire.

And I think that's helpful to make them self aware of, of their blind spots and creating a plan. I think the next thing comes down to what's their coaching style. So when I, I don't coach loads of people, I try not to at my sales coach because I'm you know, trying to grow and scale the business and we've got coaches but I do still coach and I think it's trying to understand what do they want in terms of coaching style. Do they want accountability? Just real, you said you were going to do this, why haven't you done it? Do they want motivation, an arm around the shoulder? Do they want Just a safe space to vent because that makes them feel better. Do they want tactical advice that's implementable straight away? Do they want.

To be told the answer but just, just tell them what they need to hear or do they want to almost go on a journey with you where you ask them the right questions, they can draw their own conclusions. I think it's, it's understanding what they want, mapping that to a plan of what, of what they need and then coaching them on a consistent basis. And I think you coach them in, in a few ways. One is as a group, you know I, I for the last one, that's.

The one to many style.

Yeah. So every week for about seven years I would say almost, almost without foul. Obviously there'll be exceptions. I've done a group call coaching session and that's where everyone nominates a call. We vote on the call that we want to have coached and we coach that call. And I think cool coaching is just paramount. So much of it comes down to the quality discovery. But then it's about that one to one coaching and actually I'm a big fan of that random acts of coaching. So I can think the last couple of weeks sdr, I'm sort of pointing to where they sit. Got off a call, didn't go very well, had spare 15 minutes. I was like should we go have five minutes? Should we just play back that call? It was like a random act of coaching. But what I'm really passionate about is external coaching as well. So appreciate that is going to be the case with my sales coach. But everyone on my team has an external coach. Everyone in the business has an external coach. I've got two. Right. And it's just having regular access to someone that's not your boss, that's not connected to the company or the company goals, someone that's going to show up for you, someone that's going to be there through the hard times and the good times, that is going to understand where you are today, where you want to get to and there's someone that you can just speak to openly and honestly that isn't going to judge you. Right. And they've looked at in your shoes, they've been where you want to be, they've achieved what you want to achieve and they're there to help you. And I think having that regular access to external coaching is a luxury 99.9% of salespeople don't have. I actually just got lucky and got coached. I've been in sales for about 15 years. I thought I was all right for the first eight I did. I thought I was all right. Turns out I was shit. Like, I. I. Like, I was really.

For eight. For eight years. Yeah, he was good. It turns out he wasn't.

I remember my first coaching session, you know, so my.

What was it?

What was the.

What was the wake up moment of like, oh, my God, I'm actually not good.

My first coaching session. So I. My CEO, we. I work for a company called Refract. Got acquired, but just think of Gong Chorus, Jiminy, that sort of thing, right? So I work for a company called Refraction, and I was at an event with my colleague Stu, and we were demoing the system at an event, and I was showing one of my calls off, and out of nowhere, all of a sudden they had all these comments that had been coached by my CEO. And I remember reading these comments, and they were so brutal. And it was just. It was like, one word. Like, you know, crap, not good. Shit, Poor question. Whatever. One, two words. I remember talking to Stu, I was like, I'm gonna get sacked. It. But the CEOs listen to this call, thinks it's all. Anyway, next thing I know, I get a calendar invite. Can you meet? Eight. Eight o'? Clock?

Yeah, yeah. It was before work, Friday morning, 8 o' clock for a cost of coffee. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna get sacked anyway. Go and try and speak to Kev. And he's like, down. He's. Oh, it's fine, yeah, we should have a chat. Let's have a chat on Friday. So I get. I walk in a Costa, and he sat there and he says, you want a coffee? And I'm like, shaking. I don't know do. I don't know how long I'm gonna be here for. And he goes, I've coached one of your calls. And I was like, I know. And he's like, how do you know? I was like, I've seen all the comments. And his face dropped. And he was like, you're not going to have seen that. And I went, well, I bloody have. And he was like, no, they're. They're my notes. And I was like, right. Well, I. I've read them all. And he was like, right, you're not meant to have seen that. He said, I listened to one of your calls. I thought I'd coach it. And then I remember the phrase, right? He went, look, I'll be honest. You're a big boy. I've coached you like you're a big boy, right? And we Went for an hour through this call and the feedback was delivered in the best way. Like, he's such a good guy, but at the end of the day, it's my body of work, it's my career that's being critiqued. I've never experienced this before. And there was a couple of times where, do you know when you do that thing where you look up and someone's cutting onions and your eyes sort of water and it was really tough. And then at the end of the session, he was like, well, this was great. I think we should do this again. I remember thinking, I fucking hope.

Never want to be here. Yeah. Yeah.

Then we met every Friday for like three years at 8 o'. Clock. And I remember about six months in, he said to me, he said, look, just, it was really good session. And he said, I just want you to know I've not changed, by the way, I still coach you like, you're a big boy, but you just got much better.

You're just improving. Yeah.

And I, and I had, you know, I was closing more deals. I, I soon become one of, if not the top former, you know, right now, echelon. I, I, I got opportunity to start managing people. And I just, there was this moment where I just switched and I was like, if it didn't happen on the Friday, I was gutted. I was like, that I'm missing out, right? Like, I, I'm, I'm losing out because you can't coach me. And then, you know, like, team coaching sessions. What I spoke about earlier, I always wanted to be Michael. Even though as a whole team, I'd make a joke of it, like, oh, God, Michael again. Me getting picked on again, secretly, I loved it because I was like, I'm learning more than everybody here because it's my call. But that was the moment, my first coaching session, I was just like, shit, this call is really bad. Like, close questions. I wasn't listening properly. I didn't pick up on buying signals. I had a need for approval. I gave weak answers. I think that was one key moment. If you want a second one.

And that's after, that's after eight years. Think about, think about that. If you're listening to this and you.

How'D you survive eight years?

That's, you've been in sales for less.

Than eight years, so, well, you can learn. Still two things. This is what makes me laugh. You know, I speak to some sales leaders and they go, oh, my team's really experienced. They've been in sales for 10 years or whatever. And I'll be like, have they just had the same year 10 times? Because that's what I had same year, so eight times. In terms of how I survived, Richard, honestly, I think I got a little bit lucky. I remember there was one round of redundancies and.

I must have been close. But I think in all honesty, here's what I did really well. And I know it's not trendy to say this in 2025. I worked hard every day. Do you know me? I was a hard worker. I was in early, I left late. I took the role seriously and I just never got coached. But no one equally was coaching me. My sales manager never sat with me to try and help me. I just worked hard. And I think what I was a strength of mine was showing that I worked hard, being really.

What'S the right word here? Organized. Right. Like I was really organized. And I, I, I do think I was a very good, it wasn't called an sdr, but I was a very good sdr, which I think gave me a lot of grace being an AE. But equally I was an SDR for like three years. You know, I think most SDRs after six months want to be an AE. I was one for three years.

They actually just want to be a go to market sales consultant now, right? After six months, not anymore.

So I gotta, I gotta shift gears on you a little bit. Talking to a new sales manager, right? Someone who, and they have some level of desire to coach, perhaps they have coached some of the people on their team and now they're sort of getting the official title, right? So let's go with someone who's kind of wired, right?

What's the one thing a brand new sales coach needs to understand before they start coaching? What do they, and I don't mean like, well now your revenue is relied upon the whole team instead of yourself. Like, I don't mean that. What's like one good piece of, piece of like, hey, when you coach your reps, here's something to think about as you learn to be a better coach and leader yourself.

So if I'm speaking to a sales manager who's going to start coaching, what's one thing they need to hear is.

What you're saying, right? To help them be a better coach. Right? To help them be good at coaching.

I'm torn between two. I might just give you two.

Go ahead, give us two.

I think the first one I've already said, you can't want more for someone than what they want for themselves.

I've seen That I, I've sat with people and I thought wow, you could be amazing. And they're a lazy little ship. I just think, you know, if they don't want it, can't want more for them, for themselves. And I think the other thing is, and, and this is the hardest thing is you have to disconnect from the outcome. And I think that's where sales managers really struggle. They coach on their own agenda, they've got a number to hit.

What's that mean though? Right? Like yeah, so dive into what you just said a little more.

So every sales manager when they're coaching, they've got a boss, they've got someone they report into, they've got a goal that they hit, they need their team to hit that goal. So you know, let's pick something that's a little bit left field but totally reasonable request. Someone might want help coached to be coached on social selling. Right, Totally reasonable. We all know social selling is a really big channel but as a sales manager that's a topic you might look at and go.

Is that going to help you hit your number this quarter? Can we focus on prospecting, cold calling? Can we focus on your discovery calls rather than LinkedIn and social selling? And I think that's because you're attached as a coach to the company goal. You're not attached to that individual on what they want to achieve. So I think, I think look, there's loads of things there but those are the things that, well, I think the third one is you can't have the same expectations for what you did just because it's what you did and what made you successful. You can't create a team of mini use. And I think I, I've seen managers make that mistake. They have a higher people just like themselves. They try and coach people to be.

Just like I was, I was that person. I want to sort of summarize what you, you said which at a higher level I, I interpreted what you said and call me out if I'm wrong. Is that yes, you need to focus on some tactical day to day blocking and tackling, improving the sales performance. However, you need to teach them some long term sales strategies too that social selling, you know, sure it's not something you're going to talk about every week but you know, certainly once a month or twice a quarter should be coaching your team to do that. Unless, unless and maybe Scott will have a different opinion. Unless you're really trying to turn that into a channel. Right. Then it might become a more regular thing. But I interpreted what you said is, hey, you got to figure out as a sales leader, you coach the day to day tactical for the pipeline and the conversions and the revenue, but then you also coach to these long tail pieces of driving business. Is, is that a fair.

I think, yeah, that's a fair summary. But it's made me think of the other, the other big problem actually, that is everyone's going to relate to this, is it's so hard to let them crash the car. Like when you sit and live coach on a call and you see that car is going to crash, you grab the wheel, you grab, you grab the wheel.

It's like grabbing the bicycle before your kid falls off. When you're teaching them to learn how to ride a bike.

Yeah. What an appropriate analogy, right? I've just taught my son to ride his bike last summer actually. And one of the first things I said to him, I said, listen, you're going to get hurt, you're going to fall off, you are going to hurt yourself. I need you to know that. And he's like, yeah, it's fine. As soon as he fell off, I could see his face where he wanted to cry, but it's like it kicked in that he remembered this was going to happen. And he was like, I'm okay. But he quickly wanted to stop after about 10 minutes. But, but you're right. And I think that's one of the challenges. I, I still struggle that today, maybe more so as a co founder. But I pre warned the reps, like when they invite me to their calls, I say, look, one of my weaknesses is I know I'm going to take over and I don't want to do that. But I think I, I struggle and I, I try not to join calls, particularly when I feel like, look, if this goes wrong, it's okay. Right? But live coaching and accepting a crash is so hard. But it's actually really important. But I think what you can do there and what I try to do is look for those random acts of coaching. So like, here's an example, right? Someone said to me, got a call, CFO is going to join. I'm like, should we plan for that? And they're like, okay. And it's a random act of coaching. Like, so if they say this, what would you say? And, and we almost like just role play. But that like specific moment. And like, okay. And if they say this, what would you say? Okay, let's just roll. And it's kind of like trying to set them up so they kind of go and drive the car by themselves. But I do so with confidence. They've had a lesson beforehand.

Yeah, we got time for one more question from us and then we'll, we'll, we'll pivot to you and see if you have any questions for us or if we can be helpful to you. But one more shout out for our sponsors over at winai where you can get frictionless playbook adoption, seamless rep onboarding and effortless CRM hygiene. Check out Win AI. All right, My question is how are coaches supposed to prepare and position themselves and maintain their, their value with the ever looming threat and presence of AI, which seemingly every product on the market wants to replace the human doing the coaching with an avatar, with AI, with automation. So people can get coached whenever they want, wherever they want, for however long they want, and done cheaper and theoretically at a larger scale, what is the sales coach supposed to do?

So, I mean, I think AI is fascinating. I use it every hour of the day. I couldn't be more a fan of it.

I think it's. The CEO of Microsoft, I think, said that they think that coaching is the single greatest.

Beneficiary of AI.

At present.

Yeah, at present. Right. Single use case. Yeah, yeah. Right. And you think you've got to listen to that. I think.

I can totally see where that will help.

Coaching obviously takes lots of different formats. We focus specifically on sales coaching. Specifically what people really want the most help with is tactical advice. And actually they're okay wherever that comes from as long as they believe it. And I think that's the, that's the, that's the challenge. Right. You can use chat gbt. I use it every hour of the day to get tactical advice. But.

Is it totally applicable and. Right. And in the right style and tone? Not convinced at this moment in time. No doubt it's. Yeah, it'd be, it'd be better this time tomorrow. Right. But I think in terms of sales coaching, part of it is that accountability piece. AI will not hold you accountable like a sales coach will hold you accountable. When you've got to show up and speak to a sales coach and talk about what you said you were going to do last time and if you've done it or not, that you could. Anyone can turn chat GBT or AI off. And I think that's one of the, that's one of the biggest things with coaching. Right. How, how many times anyone listening to this, right. Just think about how many times have you read something in a book, watch something on YouTube, heard something at a conference and thought that's a great idea. And then done bugger all, all the time because we're not accountable to it. And that is one of the key drivers of a coach. They are going to get to work with you on a human to human level. They will understand where you are and where you want to get to and they will hold you accountable to those goals. So I think that's a key thing. I think the other thing is coaching. I think AI will always going forward be intertwined with coaching. And like you say, it's in between the sessions getting their help where you couldn't necessarily get it live from a coach, but the coach will always have over AI that human to human level. And like I said earlier on, sometimes. Yeah.

I like that analogy actually. It's like I'm old enough to remember and you guys are too maybe like do you remember those fitness videos, Richard? Yes, like Jazzercise fitness videos or whatever. And it's like at the time it was like, oh, no one's ever going to go to the gym anymore because you can just watch these fitness videos and in their homes at home. But to Mark's point, there's no accountability there. Yeah, you don't have an accountability partner. Accountability buddy.

I think to right now with the AI piece of things like even if I can have a AI coach, my rep on every single call and give feedback even at the manager level, I can't get rid of my manager because I got to make sure my. I need my manager and leader to make sure that the AI is actually coaching the right thing because it's still not perfect. Right. And it can also come down to, well, what methodology you're using. Neat selling or medic or medpip or whatever it is. Right. Someone's still got to watch the AI just to make sure and then so to hold the AI accountable. And then I agree with you Mark too of like, okay, well what's the plan with this? And like if you have A A players, they're the ones who probably don't need as much of the accountability support. B players need a little bit more accountability support because they hopefully want to become A players. And those C players, I don't even know if I'd let them use AI at this point because I don't believe them to be accountable to themselves yet. And there's the flexibility in that C player might be. Well if they're ramping, right. Or I'm bringing them in because they were an A player somewhere. But. But that's kind of how I see it. I think the. The leadership piece doesn't. Doesn't go away just yet. And I think that's what a lot of executives are thinking. That, that you can get rid of that middle manager sooner than later. And in fact, you can't.

Yeah, I, I think to sort of just build upon and, And. And conclude. I. I think. Here's the other thing. I think so much of having that human relationship, what appeals to me is hearing from someone that's walked in my shoes. They've been where I want to be, they've achieved what I want to achieve, and it's that delivery and, and it's their storytelling, and I think that's what's really compelling. And, yeah, you know, I look forward to meeting my coach. I don't. I don't need to see my coach every day. I can use AI and get the results I need. But you know what? Like, when I get to speak to my. So one of my coaches I meet every month. The other I meet twice a month. It's just like, just yesterday, it was just a download of thoughts. And just sometimes it's validating what I was thinking, and sometimes it was just asking me a question that I probably wasn't quite asking myself. And, and sometimes that's. That's what you need as well. So I think overall, it's that accountability piece. It's that human relationship, and it is just working with someone that, you know, I heard this a long time ago on a podcast. I think it's the best advice I ever got, and I wish I could track down that episode, but it was just surround yourself with people that have got what you want and have been where you want to be. That's the room you need to be in, and I wasn't in that room at that time.

Cool. Cool. Well, let's. Let's pivot. We got, you know, we got time for you to ask us a question, and then we gotta get out of here. What would you like to ask us, if anything? You know, you may be like, you guys don't know jack about sales coaching. You know, that could be true, too.

So I'll tell you one of the stats. Let me get the exact stat for you. Right, Because I think. I think I know my take on the answer, but I want to get your take on the answer so we.

See how wrong we are on this statistic.

We. We did a survey of my sales coach of over 1600 sales professionals took part in this survey. We believe it to be the largest ever sales coaching specific survey ever conducted. And here's one of the key findings. 38% of reps said they rarely will never receive coaching. 38%. But 90% of the leaders claim they coach at least monthly. Where do you think that disconnect is.

The definition of the definition of coaching? A sales leader walks by somebody in passing and says, hey, you know, make a few more calls today. They're counting that as coaching. They're at the, you're in the break room and they're like, hey, you know, Mark, make sure you ask this one question today. Incorporate that into your pitch. That counts as coaching. But the sales rep is looking for what you were talking about getting from that founder who sat with you for an hour, reviewed calls, worked on tonality, cadence.

You know, specific pitch information. Objection. Handling real detailed stuff. Right? I mean, I once sat with a rep and for 45 minutes straight I made them work on the first two sentences of their pitch over and over and over because they simply could not get it right. They couldn't get it. Kept stumbling around, they'd be too fast, too slow. They had no energy, no intonation. And the rep was like, never have I ever had somebody spend this much amount of time with me on this first like couple sentences. I'm like, well, you know, it's arguably the four sentences that matter the most, so we might as well get it right. So I, I would say that the delta is in what people consider to be coaching. What do you think, Richard?

So I've, you know, I've done this state of mental health and sales report right, over the last couple years and the data aligns very much so with what you're saying, Mark, that.

They.

Of the top 13 things that made people successful, it was when they felt supported by their leadership and management.

Right.

Which go. And coaching is a big piece of that. I think the reason that disconnect exists is accountability. Same thing you said earlier. The managers don't want to be accountable. They want to be able to pass the blame as far down the line as they can so they don't get sacked. Right. They want to make sure that, you know, of course they're going to tell their leadership, I'm doing one on ones every week. And one on ones are really just pipeline reviews, which you and I both know is not a one on one. Right. Or the only time they sort of do a drive by is to ask about a deal and maybe give, well, why don't you ask them this or why don't you say that? And it's coming from A tone of criticism, parental. So that's why the disconnect is still there. I think the other and in an even bigger world, right, particularly in the startup world, where a lot of us swim, the idea of slowing down to speed up does not exist. They think it's all about speed, right. They want to do it better, faster and cheaper. Right? That's what everybody wants. But you can only do two of the three in most cases. And everybody wants faster and cheaper, even though better actually does make it faster and cheaper in the long run. I think that's where the dis. Those are the places where the disconnect exists between why aren't managers coaching as much as they say they are compared to what the reps are saying they're getting coached on.

Good answer, chaps. Enjoy that. Yeah.

All right, so got to bring this to an end. Just want to say thank you to our listeners. By the way, if you happen to be watching on YouTube, please leave us a comment. Leave Mark a comment. Hit the subscribe button we're pushing on our YouTube. Leave us a review. Leave us a review on itunes. Wherever you like to listen to this. Mark, where can people get a hold of you? Mark? From my sales coach. But Mark, where can I get a hold of you?

Easily Best place to be. LinkedIn. So Mark, with a K Acres, A C K E R S I would say close to most days. I write and share content that salespeople would find of interest, but that'd be the best place to find me. Happy to connect and chat with anyone on that.

Thanks so much for spending some time with us, man. I don't know if you're a supporter or not, but if you are, good luck to Newcastle next week when they take on Liverpool in the Cup Final. I'm hoping for a much better outcome than yesterday's Champions League match.

Scott, what day and time is the Cup Final for those listening? Because if we have to reschedule a podcast recording, I'm sure we're going to need to.

Oh boy.

I need to support you Tuesday or.

Wednesday of next week, I think. No, no. So I. I do want to have on record I'm not a Newcastle fan.

But.

But so this Sunday, it's this Sunday, 4:00 UK time. So you know East. East Coast 1111.

Well, this podcast might come out after that match is concluded.

Yeah, sure. And Scott, that means that if we have anything scheduled on Monday and you lose that I should just expect to not hear from.

That's probably right. That's probably right. Yeah. Because it will have been a really bad week. If that's the case, it will have been tough.

All right.

Thanks so much, Mark. This is a lot of fun. Good to connect with you again.

Cheers, Scott. Thanks, Richard. Thanks very much.

Thanks, guys.