How Can An Agency Owner Support Their Sales Team

Welcome to Inbound Sales Journey. If you want to hone your sales skills and learn from the leaders on inbound selling, you've come to the right place. This episode of Inbound Sales Journey is brought to you by Do Inbound, the world's first project and process management platform built specifically for inbound marketing agencies. Learn more@doinbound.com now here are your hosts, Ryan and Gray.

Welcome back to Inbound Sales journey, episode number 114. This is the very last episode here in season nine, let's go. Which also lines up with the very last week of the third quarter of 2017 here. So, Ryan, as we're wrapping up season nine, you and I wanted to do an episode on basically, how can, as an owner of an agency, how can you support or the president, leader, whatever that that role is, how can you support your sales team member as well? So we may just start with the specific example that a lot of agency owners ask us about and also that we went through, which is when you hire that first full time inbound or that I guess that only inbound sales rep who's kind of the first person who's just doing full time sales at your agency, what are the things you need to do to support them? Well, so since we went through that here a couple years ago when we brought you onto the team at Guavabox, talk to me about either what went well or probably more exciting, what went poorly from that process and what you would tell agency owners as far as how they can support those sales reps.

Well, I was excited. We got asked this question and asked to cover this question so you could.

Scream, shout about all the dirty laundry.

Yep. All, all the terrible things that.

Here's what they did wrong. Don't do what they did.

No, it was good. Yeah. So let me. I guess I'll give it from my perspective as the salesperson, you can kind of talk about some of the things that you learned being the agency owner. I think one big thing for, for me realizing coming into it and I think was kind of half by you guys was having a process in place and no, no shots across the bow here, you guys, it was half. Halfway done, I guess. But no, I mean, so what's probably very common amongst agency owners is and the reason that they're hiring salespeople is either they're having a lot of growth, which is good, or they're not super comfortable with sales. It's not their strong suit and they really want someone to come and take it over. And for you guys, I think that was kind of the situation with you and Andrew. Both were certainly good enough at it to grow the agency for the last few years. But it wasn't the primary area where you guys really enjoyed spending time or liked it. And because of that, I think the tendency is we'll kind of give them what we got, but hopefully you can take it and run with it, which was a little bit difficult coming in with no real industry experience, trying to learn that and then also create a process, a sales process, which is something I didn't have experience with at the time, which I'm very grateful for the experience now, because I feel like I did learn a lot through that, but trying to set them up for success. And if you. If you don't have the perfect process, that's fine, because realistically, you probably won't. Right? Which is why you're hiring someone in sales. But try your best to support them and give them everything that you have and work alongside them to help, you know, get up to speed quickly. Don't have these unrealistic, realistic expectations of sales is going kind of slow for us as agency owners. All I need is to hire a salesperson, and then it's gonna go great, because that's, I don't think, a very realistic expectation. So trying to make sure that there's something at least decent for them to walk into with the process being there is something that's big. The other thing that I think that is really helpful for people, and you guys did a good job of this, but some agency owners might struggle with this is like, how hard do I push a salesperson? How much pressure do I give them, what type of quotas are realistic, and how do we figure this out? Especially, again, younger agencies might struggle with this a little bit, not having a ton of experience. And I think the realistic situation with salespeople is we're pretty hungry for success, so you can probably give us more to handle than you think we can. And the reason I say that is, like, most salespeople are a pretty specific type of person where, like, quotas and things like that don't scare them to death, like, that's what they want. Like, having goals to try to hit is something that's very important to me and to a lot of different salespeople that I've known. So having some sort of stress and pressure that way is actually a good thing. You know, obviously, you don't want to be unrealistic. You want to be as realistic as possible. But I think that it's. It's Totally fine and good to have some, you know, some good goals. And then the last thing Gray, I'll say is from a support side of things, when they're not meeting goals, it's not putting them down. And you know, you want to always be encouraging people have bad wants. It's always going to happen. It will just, it will always happen. And so you want to try to encourage them and lift them up through that. But have regular monthly and quarterly meetings where we're kind of reviewing, you know, where are we at from a quota standpoint? How are things going? What have you noticed? What changes have you noticed? These things that we identified are areas of improvement. How have you been improving on those? These things that you're doing well, are they continuing to go well? That kind of stuff. So just having like many reviews, it doesn't have to be a, you know, monthly, huge performance review. But I used to really enjoy those meetings with my sales manager. We even weekly would meet just to talk about prospects and things and just, you know, let the salespeople share that, talk about it and kind of game plan with them. It's always good to get a second opinion on how to approach people and, you know, talk through some of those different scenarios.

So, yeah, I like it. That's a lot of good stuff. I've got a couple other thoughts, like probably the bulk of this comes down to knowing yourself, the agency owner, and knowing that person who's the sales rep. So understanding how much that sales, how much is realistic out of that sales rep to expect in terms of process development or building the infrastructure themselves versus how much they want to function inside what you already have built for them or, or you build for them, look for ways that you can support them in the process or provide more of the process stuff. Also look for if there's things that you can do to help accelerate their workflow. Like in Ryan, in your case, you're coming from much more of an old school selling model where some of the tools that we have, some of the stuff that we have available at Guava Box and at Do Inbound, wasn't the same stuff that you guys were using. There was more. Some of the automated pieces were done by assistants before, whatever it is. So there's a lot of, a lot of differences. So there are probably ways, if you're bringing somebody in who hasn't been in the industry before or even if they have, maybe there's things that you can do to help workflow wise with, hey, why don't. Instead of having to manually go back and forth via email to set up times. Why don't you use a calendar scheduler at this point in time? Probably everybody knows that a couple years ago, not everybody knew that. So those types of things I think can be really helpful. I think also knowing what to expect out of that person in terms of. Are they just, I say just, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Are they more of a, like I said, operating within this structure or do they want to be involved in building that structure themselves? But, but there's, I think there's a combination of pushing them outside of wherever they normally are for what's best for the agency while also kind of accommodating what you have to their needs. And then I think another big thing as agency owners, you're obviously, you're really busy. And in a lot of cases, the agency owners who are hiring full time salespeople almost, almost across the board, the agency owners who are hiring full time salespeople early on in the first couple years is because they don't love sales and they have a different personality than the sales type of personality. And this happens a lot of times where the agency owner, the salesperson finally has a good month and the agency owner goes, finally, that's the way things are supposed to be going. And the salesperson thinks they just did an awesome job. The agency owner is like, well, it's about time that you made stuff happen here and got things rolling. And then it's just a totally different. Agency ownership are busy, it's a hectic life. It can be hard to stop and make the time to go back and look at what happened, what progress is being made. And there's also typically kind of different. A common mistake that I see is not understanding and that I've made is not understanding the way that people are wired. So the agency owner says, the way the agency owner who makes this mistake would phrase this is salespeople are the type of people who need their ego stroked. Salespeople, on the other hand, would phrase it as, I just want to be recognized for a job well done. Everyone's got kind of a different perspective on it. But I think realizing that a lot of salespeople are motivated by external, I guess, encouragement or if it's the same type of person who's gonna be motivated by a public quota or just a quota in general, it's very possibly also the person who's going to be motivated by getting praised publicly. Call me vain gray, I'm veiling all this in a little passive aggressive shot. Across the. No, I'm just kidding. But I think that's pretty common. But that's not the way a lot of. Because there's a disconnect that often happens here between the way the agency owner who likes the tactical piece, the analytical piece or whatever it was, but didn't love the sales piece. Between the way that they would want to be basically between. We're almost talking about marriage and love languages here. Like the way that they would.

Great. My mind literally went. I was just gonna share there.

It is the way that they would normally handle things and the way that a lot of salespeople are motivated. And so there needs to be. Obviously that should be a two way street. There should be empathy and understanding and both people kind of recognizing like if the agency owner was the exact same personality, they would just do your job for you and take care of the sales piece. And the agency owner understanding if the salesperson was your exact same personality, they would be really bad at sales and wouldn't be doing well right now. So I think that's another piece that can often kind of go wrong and go awry where people just. In a lot of cases, it's two relatively different personality types that often in social settings don't get along well or aren't the best. Those are rarely the best of friends. Maybe not rarely, but often aren't the best of friends. So because of that, I think that that can lead to a disconnect if you're not self aware.

I was going to say this is a personal side note if any of you guys listening are in a relationship. But when I asked my father in law to marry Monica, he gave me a book called the Five Love Languages. And coincidentally one of the five Love Languages, which. It's an excellent book and you guys should all read it if you're in a relationship. One of them, and the one that I most identify with was words of affirmation, which is exactly like you said, like some verbal praise about doing well. And that is like a personal thing with like Monica. Like I like that. Like there's acts of service and curses, quality time and stuff like that. But it's so true too, just on like a. I mean it makes you sound vain, but really that's not what it is. It's just how you identify, like success. Like it's. It's more important for me to hear someone tell me good job than it is for you, you being gray, which is not your love language, I would imagine.

Yeah, I think that's a. That's A good example is that, that obviously Ryan's bringing that in from love languages, but that applies to every relationship where one of the ways that I give and perceive love is through acts of service. So if I think that I'm doing a huge. I'm basically telling Ryan, great job when I'm helping him by serving him, by building out a new workflow for him somewhere, and he's like, well, why doesn't Graver say anything to me to tell me that he's proud of me and I'm doing a good job, then that can lead attention. Even though I thought I was telling him I was proud of him by helping him out, and he never heard that. There's an easy disconnect there. So that's just a simple example.

Maybe everyone should read the five love languages.

Really? Really? Everybody should. You read it. And it totally makes sense at the time that I think that at least I read it, that most people read it probably in the midst of an early relationship or getting serious relationship. But really it applies in so many scenarios and kind of opens your eye. It's just another way of looking at. Everybody's wired differently. I need to understand what motivates people and help help them by paying attention enough to what motivates them to give them feedback in that way. And then the same, the same thing applies where if you want to give criticism or feedback around improvement, understanding the ways that people want to hear that or will hear that or will respond to that is important as well. So there was a lot. We got. We got a little philosophical.

Yeah. It took a turn I didn't expect, but what a way to end season nine. Upbeat. Talking about some personal relationship advice. Love advice.

We all want to be loved.

Gary Chapman is the author of that book, by the way. Highly recommended to everyone. Sounds like great, you've read it.

Is that gonna go onto our book recommendations list for.

For sales reps?

That's right.

You gotta speak the love language of your prospects and then you're good to go.

There we go. Well, cool. We'll go ahead and wrap up season nine right here. Thanks again for tuning in, for listening along with us, for participating. If you have read the book or have not read the book, but have an idea what your love language is, shoot it over to us, let us know. You can, you can let us know. We'll see if I. You know what, I'd be curious to know. I know that sounds silly. Who wants to send in an email with here's what my love language is? But I would be interested to know if you're in sales right now, what are the ways that you want to receive praise?

It's got to be 80% words of affirmation. You're right. It is a type.

Oh, it's absolutely.

If you're in sales, let us know because that's our hypothesis.

But if you're an agency owner, I think you're too. I bet that's a little bit across the board. Like because you've got the agency owners who are.

Yeah.

The momentum makers.

Us sales people, we're all the same.

And then you've also got the. Yeah. The perfectionists or the detail people who are typical. A little bit different. So cool. All right, well, stay tuned. We'll be kicking off season season 1010 double digits here in the here in the near future as well and keep you guys updated. In the meantime, if you have any questions, you can hit us up via email. Ryanoinbound.com or gray G R A Y just like the color. Doinbound.com thanks guys and good luck.

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