Everyone Bought the Same AI. Why Only Some Are Growing.

It is my great pleasure and privilege to introduce Tiffany Bova. Uh, she's the Chief Strategy and Research Officer with the Futurum Group and author of a wonderful book called Growth IQ. Welcome, Tiffany.

Oh, thank you, Gerhard, for having me. It's a thrill to be back at 3.0. I feel like I've been here on the previous 2. It's great.

Well, let's talk about your book, Growth IQ, which is a very interesting, inspirational, and practical book that every sales leader needs to read. You've written that book, when was that, 4 years ago?

So my second book, Experience Mindset, was 4 years ago, and Growth IQ now is coming up on 8 years.

Yeah.

8 years. Yeah. So what was the state of AI then, 8 years ago when you wrote the book?

Well, you know, of course, I think that it's, it's AI is a conversation, and I'm sure it's been a lot of what you've been talking about today and yesterday.

Right.

But, but I'd say that it's more of the state of the usage of technology. You know, look, I've been in and around sales for a long time. I was an individual quota-carrying sales rep. I've run sales teams. I've been in tech for 30 years, and I remember using a single-user version of ACT and GoldMine. And I also remember using Excel spreadsheets, bubble gum, and Post-it notes, right? So I have evolved, right, over time. And then prior to this role, I spent 8 years at Salesforce as their Chief Growth Evangelist. So I've had, you know, a user perspective. And then I was an analyst at Gartner for a decade covering sales transformation. And then I was at Salesforce. Now I'm back in the analyst What's interesting is, um, ultimately that do we really use technology the way we could as sellers, as sales leaders over the last 25 years? Like we've been talking about personalization and automation and, right, CRM is much different than it was 25 years ago. All the capabilities that are there for marketing automation and customer service and success and all those things. And yet still quota attainment sits in the middle 50% range. And still, you know, the average seller only spends 30 or 35% of their time selling. So over 25 years with all this technology progression, we still haven't solved those 2 things. We still spend a lot of time not selling. And we have a lot of, you know, sales reps that are still not able to, to hit quota, you know, and not even come close. Right. Not in the 90 range or the 80 range. It's like the average is in the sort of high 60s, low 70s. So I think there's a lot of room for improvement using technology. And now AI is sort of forcing the conversation to say, all right, there's a lot of things we can clean up using AI, and there's a lot of power we can put in the hands of sellers. And now it's about where are we gonna make those bets and place those bets? And I think it needs to start with sales leadership.

So why, why do you think that is? It's such a paradox that, uh, more and more technology was designed to free the salesperson to spend more time with their customers, and the percentages have not improved, right? What's wrong with that picture?

Some of it is metrics drives behavior, right? So make 100 calls, right? Get out 10 proposals. Like, so the metrics drive behavior, and then the Comp plan drives behavior. So, right? It's like, go get net new customers. That's where you're getting paid. And in that motion, they may be forgetting their existing customers. Then if it's like, okay, balance the two, then you're asking a seller to say, do I go after net new or do I go after the base? And they're gonna go where they are most comfortable and where they can retire quota faster.

Right.

So, if they're really good in the base, that's where they focus. And then net new customers, uh, suffer, right? If they're really good at net new customer and they don't wanna be relationship sellers, Then the base suffers. And so that's when SDRs and, right, all these like, you know, customer success, all these other roles have popped up to allow sellers to focus where we want them. But then that requires leaders to be like, let's make sure we have sellers very focused. The metric matches the behavior, the comp plan matches what we want to reward for, right? We give them the tools and the training that they need. And now you kind of have to let go of the reins a little bit. Right. Like, ultimately, if your sellers are putting— and I'm just using Salesforce as an example for obvious reasons, right? But if you're putting your information into Salesforce and then your sales manager asks you questions about what you've put in Salesforce, like, what's going on with that account? You're like, I just spent, you know, 4 hours updating all my Salesforce records and you're not even looking. You're just asking me. It sends a message to the seller that it's not important. It's sitting in Salesforce. And so every decision should be made out of your CRM tool, whatever that is. And now AI can serve that to you in real time. What's happening with your average sales price, your average sale price, your deal velocities? Is your pipeline growing? Is it not growing? Like, it should take you 1 minute to get the answer to that question, right? And so then you're really having meaningful discussions with your sellers on how do I automate those things that are absorbing that other 70% of your time, like getting proposals out the door. AI can sure help, right? I am going to do an email campaign to my existing base. AI can sure help. Or I'm gonna summarize my meetings and do data entry into Salesforce or HubSpot or whatever. AI can really help, but yet they still want the humans to do a lot of that.

But isn't AI delivering that promise that it offloads a lot of tasks For the salesperson, but it also creates a situation where the salesperson works a lot more because of AI. You know, I personally, I find myself spending more time creating an article with AI than the time if I just focus on writing it. And AI gives me phenomenal ideas, but they're all half-baked that I have to edit. So AI is not freeing people, in my opinion, is not giving people a lot more time. But I think that the scenario that you described, spending 4 hours and putting data into Salesforce, That is gone.

Yeah, I hope so. But, you know, we all know that that is not totally gone and it'll never be totally gone, right?

Right, right.

But I think, you know, long are the times, of course, you know, many years ago when we started recording calls, whether it was Gong.io and others, and you were recording a sales call and you're like, let it tell you, are you asking too many questions, right? It started to coach you on how to behave better on sales calls. Now it's like, let me take that recording and use AI to summarize the call and then generate an email. and then maybe even enter that summary into whatever CRM system because of AI now, right? And especially around the headless and everything that's going on with using an AI to actually be your interface into the data models that are in your various tools, right? That will start to also change the way those relationships happen. But now it could generate that email for you. And instead of going, okay, I'm gonna take my notes handwritten, right? I'm gonna enter them into Salesforce, Manually, and then I'm gonna craft an email. And let's just say after every call that took 45 minutes.

Yeah.

And I do 8 calls a day. You, there's not enough time. So what happens, you just end up not entering the data or it's half the data or wrong data or no data. And then, you know, we need the data for the AI to get smarter, right? So to your point, right, Gerhard, it's like for me, I had my AI absorb all my podcasts, all my keynotes, all my books, all my writing. So it learned my style and it learned how I did it. And so, I write and then I, I sort of stress test it against, you know, does it stand up? Does it have a good argument? Did I tell the story right? Does it need another story? Did I leave a thought hanging? Like, it's a really good sort of editor for me, right? Versus I'm writing it from scratch using, uh, using AI because it just won't know the nuance of what I'm really trying to say. To your point, I was spending more time trying to educate the AI than it would have taken me to just write it, right?

Exactly.

But I think over time it's going to get smarter. So As sales— and I'm saying this, salespeople, do not just say, I'm gonna have, you know, Gong.io or Zoom or whatever record it. I'm gonna have it summarize it, use my AI, write an email and have it send, and I touch it. Zero. Like, I wouldn't say we're there yet.

Right.

Maybe, maybe there are some that are doing that, but I think then you run the risk of AI slop and customers going, they didn't even write it. Like, we— I was working on something the other day and We were bidding on some work and a client came back and I could tell that the RFP was written by AI. Then I could tell that the response to our proposal was responded by AI. And then this sort of email that came back to us to say we didn't get it looked like it was written by, by AI because they actually didn't even use the right name in the body of the note, in the body of the email, which then means they didn't even read it to be like, oops, this is going to so-and-so. You know, this is going to Tiffany, not to— Bob, you know what I mean? And, and although our name was right, the body was not right. And so, you know, that's the danger. So then what that said to me was, you, you didn't even take 5 minutes, you know, after all this work and after everything we've done over the course of, you know— and as a seller, like, my sales team was like, we spent 6 hours on this whole, you know, opportunity mapping it, the RFP, you know, the responses, the quoting, the You know, the deliverables, the methodology, like, you know, all the things we were talking about for a, you know, 30-second canned AI response. It really like just sent me the wrong message. You know, I felt like, um, although I'm not the seller anymore, my sales team was really, um, they were offended. Like, they were like, wow, okay, you know, we, we put a lot of work into this and, um, you know, I thought we had built a rapport and, and you didn't care enough to check the email.

Wow. That's a great story. Uh, it feels dehumanizing.

Well, it just felt like this is where it gets dangerous, right? So I don't want people to hear me say, I want you to increase. The goal is you take 30% of time selling and you just move it 2 to 5%.

Yeah.

You're never gonna get to 60% of the time selling, but What are the things that absorb the majority of your salesperson's time? Only you as a manager or you as a seller will know what that is. I can't tell you what is sucking the most of that time.

Right.

We have averages, administrative, proposals, you know, follow-up, billing, like all those kinds of things. But whatever it is, and then you say, let me pick one. If it's proposals, how could AI help me with proposals? Is it ingesting it and giving me recommendations? Right? You know what I mean? Our boilerplate, like, If it takes me 2 hours, if it could take me 1 hour, I've, I've saved an hour, right?

Yeah.

And then you go kind of one by one, but individual sellers shouldn't do that because then you have inconsistency amongst teams. That's why I said AI usage should really start with sales leaders and they start using it. They start leading their team differently. They start managing differently. They start showing different reports and insights. They start giving different recommendations so that then all of a sudden the team is like, whoa, wait a minute. What's, What's going on, right? How do I get that level of detail? And then they lean into wanting to use it versus feeling like it's going to replace them because I know that that's a huge concern.

So there's another thing that you keep writing about, which is that sales teams, they're buying tools and that everybody else buys and And they're dropping it into a broken process.

Yes. Yes.

Give me, give me an example.

Well, I, you know, this is where, um, many organizations, so if you're listening and you have a sales team of 2 or 5, it's very different than if you're listening and you have a sales team of a couple hundred or thousands. It, it's very different. So for those of you who have a good-sized team, let's say, you know, 25 sellers or more, There's a lot of processes that those sellers go through, and there's a lot of fields in your CRM system. There's a lot of requirements that, you know, different parts of the organization wants from sales, and sales is sort of catching all those requests and, and having to, um, deliver upon it. So that's why I say deconstruct the seller's day into, okay, they have a new lead. What do they do? They're, you know, nur— they're doing a nurturing campaign. What do they do? Right? They're trying to get a proposal out of the, uh, out of the, out the door. What are they doing? They're negotiating the contract. What are they doing? Right? Pick an actual task and then map it. And you very quickly will start to see, wow, there's 5 steps here. And it's because we used to do, have this particular technology and now we've replaced it with that particular technology. And we no longer need to do those 2 or 3 things, but we're still saying that they need to do those 2 or 3 things. But if they don't have, again, based on the size of your organization, a change management organization, it usually tucks under operations or IT, where when something is added, someone looks at the process and says, because we've added this, what should we take off the plate or change or streamline? And AI is brilliant. For helping with workflow, like workflow through it. Tell me where, give me recommendations where I could streamline this and reduce the, reduce the time it takes to do it in half. Right. And let AI help you say like, why are you doing this? Or why are you know really? And if you're just like, I don't know why we're still doing this step, then maybe you don't need it. So I think that if you look at use cases, Process re-engineering AI use cases is, is, is definitely one of the top ones that, that we hear a lot. And then of course on, on sales and marketing and customer success, right? The customer-facing, because there are so many steps that AI can, manual steps that happen that AI can really help with.

So when I think about your book, you described that finding the right growth path Is, is like getting a custom suit. You don't buy it off the rack. You don't copy somebody else's growth plan. So when it comes to AI integration, do you pretty much use the same sort of blueprint that you customize it for, for yourself and Or do you build it or do you buy it?

Well, if you think about, you know, AI, I think one of the first things is it's a multi-tool solution. Like what tool you're using, are you using Copilot, are you using Anthropic, are you using OpenAI? Like what are you using? And then you want to get the team to standardize on a tool specifically for governance and security, right? I mean, I think that, that it's not about that, that's the best tool. It's about, I can, I can really manage one around governance. And so this is what we are going to use. And especially if you're going down the path of headless AI and having it tag into a Salesforce or into a HubSpot or into something else, you know, ultimately it really has to be something that you land on because you're making all these investments in the, in the skills, right? In the processes, in, you know, whether it's cowork or what, however you're developing Um, and, and, and, um, building those solutions. So I, I would say to you, that's why I say, and you nailed it, I can't tell you here's the 3 things I would do because you may be killing it on proposals and that's not where you need help. Where you need help is you have too many leads and you can't respond to them. That's a unique situation for you where another company may be like, I have 2 salespeople and I need 10. And so I need those 2 to feel like 10. So I have to use AI differently. Then you have a team who has 50 sellers and they're only spending 30% of their time selling and they're missing quota, right? Like, I've got a lot of capacity I could unlock with the same amount of heads if I could, you know, give and streamline and, and automate. So that's why. Especially in Growth IQ, you have to understand your context. What is your business? What are your customers? What are your processes? What are your goals? What are your priorities? Then you can map back how and where can technology help me. And AI is one of those things. It's not the only, it's just the loudest right now, but it is not the only because AI without a really good database is nothing. It's, it's nothing, right?

Yep.

AI without really strong processes is the Wild West. AI without governance is, is also very dangerous.

Right.

AI without strong, um, uh, um, change management can also be dangerous, right? So the point is, is that I'm guessing you have a CRM system. So is the data clean? Is it, do you have it organized correctly? Do you need all the feed fields you have? You know, what is it that it's really lacking instead of just adding, adding, adding, adding, and customizing and customizing and customizing, sort of stopping and saying, how do I really simplify this and let AI really help me, um, scale my business without having to— you can add people, but you wanna unlock the capacity, the unused capacity you have in your humans now. I, I think that's, for me, that's the biggest goal.

So what, what you're really suggesting is that you need to begin with asking the right question.

Yes.

And if you're not aware that tools exist for problems that you have, then you need an expert like you. Or if you're not aware that your process needs to be fixed first, Then you end up with the wrong tool.

Yeah. And I always say this, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna shine this mirror on myself. So, you know, for those listening, take this as I'm saying it to myself, but as a high-performing seller who did really, really well, my reward was sales management. Okay. That's usually what happens.

Yeah.

But just because I'm a really great individual contributor did not mean I was gonna be a great manager. So, I was kind of okay, you know? And then, as time went on, I got better and better. But when you are an individual contributor and you get put into management, rarely do you get trained on how to now manage, right? And how to think the way we're talking about, right? Let me deconstruct a process. Let me look at the workflows. Let me look at the technology. Like, that is not a skill an individual quota-bearing sales rep has 5 seconds to spend on, right? I am trying to Win business today. A sales leader is winning business today and thinking about tomorrow. And that sort of multidimensional thinking requires a skill that as an individual contributor, you don't just walk in the day and you go, well, it says manager on my card. Now I know how to do that. So I would say to you that I didn't do a good, very good job of that. So if you're listening and you're a first-time manager, or maybe you're a second-time manager and you still haven't learned that skill, like I would tell you, This is where you have to step back for a second, listen to these sessions, right? Whether it's a book, whether it's a podcast, wherever you go, right? Selling Power, like wherever you go to get this sort of little nuggets of wisdom. But the first thing I'd tell you is the business and the selling motion you had 2 years ago or 5 years ago when you were an individual selling rep is not the same as it is today. So if you are managing your people the way you think it used to be, it is not the way it is today. We all know that. But intuitively you know that, but then you think, ah, I'll get to it later. And the problem is it just compounds itself. So if you take, you know, if take a week, go sit in on being a seller, sit in on being a customer success manager, go sit in and being a marketing manager and watch them do all these things you are asking them to do. I don't mean like have them tell you. I mean, watch them and do it. Like, get a proposal out the door, get a quote out the door, do a sales call, and then go through the recording and summarize and send an email and let it hit your— you very quickly will realize there's a lot of wasted time. You talk to them like this is all very easy, right? But the systems and processes are not so easy. And so that's, that's where I would start. And I'd say there's a fun Bain stat that I always use. I probably used it at the Sales 2.0 conference, the last one I did with you in I think it was in Vegas or Arizona. It's one of the two.

Vegas.

Vegas. And, you know, it was that like 47% of sellers wouldn't spend a dollar for an hour of their manager's time. Like, it's a fun stat, but that's because they don't feel they get value. Remember, as individual sellers, you might have sat across the table from your manager and gone, I got my one-on-one. They're going to ask me the same questions. They don't go into Salesforce and look before they talk to me. You know, they think that it's easier than it is. I'm wasting time. They're not helping me fix these broken processes. Now you're the manager on the other side of the table, and they're thinking that about you. So, you know, you got to sort of go, hold on, I have to take some ownership of trying to make it better for my team the way I wanted it to be better for me. Um, and, and that's hard for first-time managers, right? Again, there is no sales management, you know, MBA program, right? There is no— there are a few courses, but the net of it is you learn on the job. And being a sales manager requires a lot of different skills than what you had as an individual contributing seller.

Well, you have met with a lot of really, really bright people. And if you watched a lot of very successful people grow companies and, you know, what comes to mind is Bill McDermott. He was a salesman at Xerox, and then he became the youngest vice president, and then he start worked for SAP and ended up being CEO, and today CEO of ServiceNow. So there are a number of salespeople that actually learn how to learn, how to lead, how to manage, how to inspire a team, and how to become CEO. Um, when it, when it comes to your own, um, career development, uh, who have been your mentors that, uh, you still benefit from their advice today?

Well, I, I tell you that, that, that story of Bill is, is Is great. And you missed one stop, and you may not know this, but I'm gonna guess you do. But he also was the chief of research at Gartner.

Yes. Yes. I left that out. And it was not a long time.

Yeah, it wasn't. But still, right? Like, interesting. We had a very interesting common path. But, you know, so, but it used to be John Chambers, right? So there was a John Chambers and, you know, and, and you have Marc Benioff, you have Bill McDermott. Um, you know, there are CEOs out there in the tech world, um, that grew up on the sales side, not on the engineering side. And you can absolutely tell the difference, right? Leaders who are product-led versus customer-led, it's obvious, right? They get very excited about the shiny technical engineering thing and, and not about the customer value and outcome. Like, it's very obvious sort of where they sit. And then there's very few leaders who can, who up on the engineering side but can talk both, right? But talking both and having done both. But it's the same thing because then sales would not have the engineering chops, you know, as well, right?

Right.

So, I mean, I think at the end of the day, um, uh, it's important. So I would say that, that those that I look to for, for, you know, advice and guidance through my career were very specific who I'd go to and when. Like, if I needed real career advice, like, I'm going to change careers, I would go to those senior leaders that I respected. If I'm like, I, I'm taking over this part of a business and I don't really know how to do it, you know, you've done it, like, how, how should I do it? And so I, I, I view my, my team, you know, my mentor bench, if you will, as kind of like my orchestra. They all play a very unique instrument, and sometimes I need a drummer, and sometimes I need a oboe player, and sometimes I need a guitar player, and sometimes I need a violinist. You know what I mean? It's very different. Um, and so I, I, I would say that, that there are many that have been on, on your show. One we were talking about in the prep, you know, Mike Bosworth, who, you know, just was absolutely the sort of grandfather of a lot of the sales processes, um, over time, uh, Xerox included. You know, I, I think that there's, there's, there's lots of things that, um, many, uh, people that have been in and around my my orbit in my orchestra, you know, whether it's my indirect selling, my direct selling, my marketing, my customer service, my advisory, my analyst role, my author role, my speaking role. Like, there's multiple. There's no way there's sort of one. But I would count, you know, Bill. I'd count Marc Benioff. I'd count, you know, you, you don't get those conversations as often as I probably did, you know, a decade or 2 ago, um, because obviously now the, the organizations are much bigger and they're in much different roles. You know, ultimately I'd say that I have had the benefit and pleasure of getting the opportunity to ask really interesting people advice along the way.

That's very precious. And that will never be replaced by AI.

No, no. And I think it's human and AI. I never think it's human alone anymore. And I don't think it's tech. We say human and tech. I don't think it's human alone and I don't think it's tech alone. while I do think there are many things tech can do on its own, in many ways it has to be guided and guardrailed by humans. But now we see AI making decisions without humans, and that I'm not such a fan of for all kinds of reasons, right? And not doing good things with that capability, right? And a lot of hacking and security issues. But I think that the human— there was a study out, I don't know where it came out of. There's 2 actually, and one was um, China education, and it was, um, doing homework. Uh, you know, kids were getting much better grades on homework, and then they were getting much worse grades on testing. Now, why do you think that is, right? Because they're using AI for homework and they can't use it for testing, right? Then there was another study that they, um, that Dan Pink, who wrote To Sell Is Human, um, he, he was talking about, and it was like they put, you know, electrodes on your brain, and one was doing an exercise, um, with complete AI, and it was like literally like they were, um, watching TV. There was just no nothing happening, right? Then the middle one was they were using AI and they had the human element, and it was kind of firing a little bit, like they were just, you know, like they were walking and having a conversation. Then there was one where they were using no AI, right? And all these massive brainwaves. So to your point that it's It's more work when you're trying to, you know, there's no thinking. You're just kind of sitting there going, I'm gonna hit go and it's gonna write for me. There's no mental engagement. And then you overexert to fix, right? Versus trying to figure out how do I do it together?

Right.

Yeah. So there's a lot of studies out there now about kind of the implications of using AI exclusively versus, you know, as a thinking partner or writing partner or doing partner. And then those that are just like, I'm, I'm just gonna do it 100% human. And so it's fascinating to see where this will all land.

So I want— I have a final question that intrigues me because you are fascinated by growth. And what fascinates me about you is that you have applied what you wrote about to yourself. To, you know, you started as a salesperson and now you became a, you know, at Gartner, you became an analyst of the industry. At Salesforce, you became the evangelist for Marc Benioff, for Salesforce.com. And with every stage of growth, Um, you have achieved a new version of Tiffany Boba, and which I think is remarkable. Uh, so what, what drives you to become a better version of yourself all the time?

I think curiosity for sure. Like, I, that's what I was sort of saying, like when I became, went from sales to being a manager, I wasn't curious enough to figure out what did it mean to be a manager. And so I wasn't a very good manager, right? When I decided I needed to be curious and really dig in, I, I got better. And I, when I, you know, Gartner was a decade, I made it all the way to research fellow. And the first 2 years were really tough for me. I didn't know what it meant to be an advisor and an analyst and to really, you know, give advice to organizations that would be billion-dollar bets for some of the largest technology companies in the world. Um, it's a big responsibility and you really don't wanna screw it up. But I didn't know how to do it, you know? And so it took me a couple years to find my sea legs. By the time I got to kind of my 5th year, I'd really hit my stride. And in the last 5 years, I was very successful, which then led me to Salesforce, you know, really kind of talking about the art of the possible of how technology can really help organizations grow. But now, and then I wrote 2 books and, you know, I've done a lot of things in between that. And now I'm back into the research community. And I'd tell you that now I'm even more curious, right? Because AI keeps you on your toes and there's so much change happening so much faster.

Yeah.

But I often say, you know, if push came to shove and I could not be an analyst anymore or an author or a keynote speaker, I would go back to selling. Like, that's, that's what I would do, right? And I don't mean that as like a downgrade. I mean, like, I'd always fall back on that if that's what I had to do. And I can't imagine how successful I'd be with all the tools that are out there now because I was killing my quota with a single-user version of ACT and Excel.

Right.

And, and nothing. And like a, like, you know, a wing and a prayer. Didn't know who my customers were, had no automation. You know, Seth Godin had just written Permission Marketing. Purple Cow was just out. I was a Loquiz beta client. Like, you know, it was a long time ago. So I can say I can't imagine how much fun it would be now, like, you know, out going out there and using all the tools and capabilities that I talk about, you know, because sometimes people are like, yeah, you just don't do it anymore. And it's true, I don't in that way. But if I had to, I would.

That's awesome. Michael, you've taken a lot of notes. What are your thoughts?

Well, from a single user of ACT and Excel to where you are now, like what progression in your career. That's outstanding. And I've really enjoyed eavesdropping on this conversation and listening to Your passion and energy for growth. Um, and I've got— I've jotted down so many notes. One question I have is, if we free the salesperson up with more automation where contact records are requisitioned, the notes are there where they need to be, and they're not doing that manually as much, will we move them from an administrative mindset saying that's part of busy work? And now they can now focus on true sales work. How long would it take to change that habit right there where, hey, it's always easy to go back and do the busy work, you know, freeing that, freeing that time up to go back and sell now where the automation is completing those records?

I, I think it's a great question because ultimately, um, behavior change is super hard. And if you have sellers that have Sold the way they've always sold and been successful, it's very hard to get them to change.

Yeah.

So let me, let me put it into kind of a couple buckets. Your high-performing sellers, leave 'em alone.

Yes.

Where you really should focus is your middle sellers. And your middle sellers are those that are, you know, kind of selling in the, you know, 70 to 90% quota attainment range.

Mm-hmm.

Those that are, you know, kind of under 70%. Work with them to get them to 70, you know what I mean? Or unfortunately, right, you need to start to think about managing them out, right? Maybe that's not a fit for you, for your products, whatever it might be. The middle is where you want to move. And the mistake that sales leaders and organizations make when they test new processes or new technology, who do you think they test it with?

Top.

The high performers.

Yeah.

So the problem doing that is that I'm gonna do it, eh, whatever, you know, but I'm also gonna give you a false positive or a false negative because I'm gonna make it work regardless.

Mm-hmm.

And so now I've told you it works.

Oh yeah.

Now you apply it to everybody else and I did things that they don't do, right? So, well, that's— never test with your high performers. Yeah. Always test in the middle. Always test in the middle because the middle are the, I will follow processes. You know, high performers are a pain in the ass to manage, right? We don't, we don't do our stuff on time. Our, you know, our pipeline isn't updated. Like, you know what I mean? But we're, we're hitting numbers. I'm not saying, I'm, I'm being fun on purpose. So don't, you know, don't take this as an offense. Well, in the rule— The middle though.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Well, I was gonna say in the rule of 80/20, where 20% is your top performing and 80% is below that. Well, if you focused on the middle, you might get 60% of the, well, let's say 50 to 80%, that 30% middle performing people. Well, if you get them to improve, you've now realized a lot of growth because you got a bigger portion, a bigger audience, a bigger, I'm free of your salespeople to perform at a higher level from improved systems and automations. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So I would tell you, Mike Bosworth actually came up with this number. It's like 14 to 16% of your sales team is hype, those high performers. So it, it's a little less than the 20. Then you have about 60% that sits in that middle, and then the remainder is, um, those lower performers that you wanna make investments in, right? To get them into the middle. So if you have 60%, if you could move their budget or their quota attainment by 2 to 5%, and you could give them 5 or 10% of their time back, it would be meaningful.

Right.

It, it would be meaningful, right? And so, Always focus on that middle because they're more process-oriented. You can train them. Behavior's easier to change, harder to change at that, you know, top performer level. And by the way, I often get asked, should we have 100% top performers? You know, I don't think that's possible. I also would feel horrible for the manager that would have to manage 100% top performers. And I also don't mean that if your quota's too low and everyone's blowing out quota, like, that's not what I mean, right? Like, I mean, the quota is set properly and they're hitting They're hitting quota, right? And your average attainment is in that 70 range. But the average, pretty much, if you're listening, if you averaged it out, you're probably in the 60s. And, and that's kind of industry, right? So you start getting into the 70s, you have a really good performing team. So you want to take that middle and say, how can I give you more time back? How can I split up the team to be more focused on existing customers and net new? How do I get more that are on administrative and sales development or sales engineers? Like You know, you start to take a very small team and you organize them in a way where you point them at their skill level and let them shine where they're solely focused on something they're really good at. Like, you know, Tiffany is really good at going and, and hunting and killing net new business. You know, Gerhard is really good at, at finding, you know, existing customers. So, you know, I think that that's, that's, that's all in the, in the process. But again, You gotta deconstruct what you're doing and understand what's working and not working. And as a sales manager, invest in your own career development so your people underneath you can go on this journey with you, because AI is disrupting everything.

Thank you, Tiffani. Just to be funny for a second, never belittle the performance in the middle.

That's right.

That's right. That's right. We need to stop. That was phenomenal. Thank you. I encourage everybody to Get Tiffany's book, Growth IQ.

Thank you, everybody. Bye.

Thank you, Tiffany.

Bye, Tiffany.