Coach with the Right Questions to Hit Quota with Kris Hartvigsen

Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions. Especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet, beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head over to patreon.com inside sales excellence. Now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd and I'm I hope y' all are sitting down today. This isn't one to be out on a walk on. This isn't one to be riding your bike on, maybe not even driving on because you are going to want to pay attention because we are diving into quotas today. This mystical, mysterious thing that we all chase, that we all want, but there is so little information on not only how to do it right, but what are the actions we actually need to take to get there. We've talked demo and prospecting all those things, but eventually you have to put it all together in order to reach this number. And that is why I'm so excited to have Chris Hartfensen on the show with me today. If you don't know who this is, he is the founder and CEO of Dooley. Dooley is the fastest trending startup on G2. They are saving people time, salespeople time because we know how salespeople feel about admin we're bad with it, they are killing it. And their brand is amazing and just flow fun to be a part of. And so we have the founder, the CEO with us today to talk about quotas, what it takes, how to get there, and the mistakes a lot of companies are making while setting them. Chris, my man, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me today.

I'm pumped for this because this is a topic people love to dance around. And so I saw the topic, I'm like, here we go.

It's why I started a company around it.

Here we go. All right, so let's get into it, right? Because we don't do the backstories, we don't do the fluff. We're going to talk about it. This topic of why sales reps aren't hitting quota, right? Like what are some of the things that you're seeing out there that you think is driving because of where we at right now, like 50 ish percent of sales reps are actually hitting or achieving quota. What do you see as the core driver of that?

It's an interesting question. I think if you asked me that question a year, year and a half ago, I probably would have given you a different answer because I think when the pandemic first struck, a lot of people had their budgets frozen, whether it was selling into sales companies or selling into marketing or finance. Didn't matter what part of the business you were selling into. We all took a pause, we took a breath and we said, oh, what does this mean for our business? And so a lot of spending was frozen. That world has obviously changed. And we saw some pretty tremendous results, particularly in SaaS over the last little while. So we dug in. We wanted to understand what it was that people were experiencing that was making them not achieve quota. There's some obvious stuff, right, that we can always hang our hat onto. And I think every salesperson will try to hang their hat to a few things, whether it be the product doesn't feel right or my quote is too big or my geography is too small. Well, let's say that those variables aren't the ones that are the things we want to talk about today. Let's talk about the things that you can change that are within the control of the individual, that are in control of the manager. So one of the things that we know, people spend a lot of their time during the day not focused on selling. That's a big, big challenge. I think something like 59% of a salesperson's day is spent selling which means that there's a full 41% that is being used to context, switch to other things. That's a big challenge when you're trying to hit your number and you don't spend your entire day busting it to hit your number. Guess what? That's going to be really, really frustrating. So definitely something that we dialed into. The average rep, for example, spends about five to eight hours a week updating the CRM. That's a bit of a problem, right? What if we chop away at that? What if we make that one hour? What if we make it 30 minutes? What if we make it? So kind of like when your kid at home, you tell them to make their bed and they're like, oh, I don't want to do that. We said, you know what? Bed is automatically made. Go back to work, go back to playing, go back to having fun. And I think that a lot of time is also spent with things that could or should be done for them. Whether it be prepping for meetings, whether it be digging for content to try to understand, like what. What could be said in certain moments of truth, given the Persona that you're talking to. And I think the last one, which is really, really important for any rep, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, you got to get rid of the happy years. You got to be focused on the deals that are real. Yes.

Oh, man. Okay, this is going to get good here. There's a lot we can unpack. Right, because you opened with this a little bit, right? You said, okay, let's just put aside that you think your quote is too high. We're going to shelf that. I'm going to take that back off the shelf here real quick because I think it's important to talk about this right from a leadership perspective. How do you recommend maybe stress testing the quotas? Cause there's always that divide. Reps think they're too high. Leaders think, no, you should be hitting this. How can you stress test that or communicate the feasibility of hitting quota to your team?

Yeah, look, I mean, I've lived this from both sides now, right? Actually from three sides. I've lived it from the executive level, from the sales leadership level, and also from the rep level. When your new quota gets handed down to you, it's usually based on the performance of the business in the previous year, combined with the roadmap and the plan for the future year, the funding that's going to be put into marketing and all the rest of that stuff, those are all ladder up and ladder down decisions. And with good sales ops people in place, your quota should be pretty tightly aligned to the science, right? So there is some math that goes into this. The joke when I was an individual contributor is every year your quote is going to go up and your territory is going to shrink. And that's true, right? If you're a high performing business, that is the reality. You know, if you're working@salesforce.com right now, you know what you have as your territory, you have a zip code. You might even have just a street in San Francisco or maybe even a building in San Francisco. So that stuff is based on science, it's instrumented for the rep. It doesn't always feel good because you're like, wow, this is the year that I mean my quote is a million last year I know that this year I'm going to double that number. And then you see that your quota's been doubled. Well that's again, that's the math of the business.

And I think it's important too to know like some of the key metrics that go to quota because I think oftentimes reps see the number but they never actually work backwards on how to get to that number. Right? And I think it's really important that they take the time to say, okay, like how can I get there? Right? How many deals is that? What is my sales cycle? What is my close rate? Right? Like how would you recommend reps leverage data to get to their quota?

So I think that the thing that again I'll kind of point to my career and how I've worked with my teams and then just some general observations. You have to have a work back plan, right? You can't just go out there and do brute force and just expect to hit your number. You have to think about like how many small, medium and big size deals do I need to get in order to get there? Where am I going to have the most success? Where have I seen the most success? What are my core strengths? And then I think it's also really incumbent upon the rep to ask or at least request of the business the things that they think they need to be successful. I see the quota, I understand the quota. Here are some of the gaps I have in either my personal skillset, hopefully your manager is helping you to identify those. And here are some of the gaps that I see in terms of product or marketing or ABM or whatever that will help me to get to that number. Now we're in a team selling world now more than we ever have been And I think that as you start to look at your quota, you should be instrumenting a plan that is not just you, but the whole organization to help you achieve that. It's the Jerry Maguire help me help you moment.

I love that because I think there's so many reps out there right now that don't even have an idea of how to get to quota. They just see the number and they're out there winging it like, all right, I got to go get some revenue.

Yeah, instant coronary. When you get your new, your new quota for the year and you're like, there's no way I'm going to hit this again. It's based on the business performance as to how that gets rolled out. It's not just a finger in the air. And if it is just a finger in the air, chances are you're probably going to walk from the business in six months time.

It's true. Now let's flip it. All right, I've done this work back, right? I said, okay, this is how many ops I need the revenue, who I need to target. I've looked at my territory, I'm feeling good, I've got this plan. But as we all know, right, like everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right? And it all falls apart. Like what? I guess either how should they execute a plan or. Or like what are the things you see out there? Because it always works in the spreadsheet, Chris. It always works in the spreadsheet. What do you do when this plan actually goes into the real world?

Yeah, I think that the punched in the mouth thing is usually what happens in the deal itself. It's when we think about the funnel, for example, the top of the funnel is fairly predictable, right? I'm going to make X number of calls, emails, LinkedIn requests, etc. To get Y number of demos, which is going to lead to Z or Z number of dollars in my pipeline. What happens after you get that person into your. Your top of funnel is where the punch in the mouth stuff really occurs, right? So the punch in the mouth could be a new competitor entered into your territory. It could be that a high performing sales rep at another company is in the same territory as you and it just eating your lunch. It could be that they're more hungry, all those different things. But when you're in the deal and your questions that are coming to you from your buyer are ones that you can't answer, that's the real punched in the mouth moment, right? So how can you mitigate that? One thing you can do is spend a lot of time in the batting cage, right? Yes, actually. Actually practice and rehearse. I don't know that all reps practice and rehearse and really think about honing their skill on a regular basis. But there's also the. I'll use the football analogy to go on top of my baseball analogy. There's also the coach calling the audible from the sidelines, right? So you think about, like, when Tony Romo's calling the game, he knows what's going on on the field very quickly, and he can see how the defense is set up and whatnot. If he had a direct line into the player, into the quarterback on the field, he could tell the quarterback to pivot left and make the throw or to. To run the ball or to hand it off based on how he's reading the defense. So that's not scalable. He couldn't do that for all 32 teams. So you need a way of helping your reps be able to adjust tack to what's happening on the field. Again, some of that is just reflex and muscle memory. The other part of it, though, is making sure that you're enabling the reps with the right tools so they have content in context to be able to support the differing buying patterns of their different buyers.

Now, I love that first and I love the call out on practice. I have literally have like two episodes. I think the podcast are all on practice because as salespeople, I don't think we practice enough. We practice on prospects, which is a horrible strategy, right? We hear something from our manager and we go out there. But what I also like, what I'm hearing here, I just want to dig a little bit deeper, is like, how you can enable the rep a little bit more to have access to this information. Because oftentimes with managers and companies I consult, I was like, take 10 minutes and write down all the things you expect your reps to remember. And like, look at that list where you're talking so much stuff. And there's actually a story from Henry Ford that I've always loved where he was being, like, he was on trial for something about, like, being competent or not. And they were grilling him on all these questions. And after a few, like, he couldn't answer, he's like, why would I know that? I don't need to know it. I need to have access to the answer. I don't need to know it. So how can you give a rep access? Or let me ask you I'm going to rephrase this. What should you be giving a rep access to to prepare them for all the things that can go on in a deal.

So I think that there are things that you know are going to be repeat patterns that you're starting to see. And if your product marketing or sales enablement team is working closely with the sales Org, they should be able to identify those repeat patterns by doing game tape review or film review with the team or even just sitting and having like a roundtable with the team and go, okay, what are you hearing? What are you feeling? What's, what's working, what's not? Where did you get stuck? And understanding all of those different moments, a lot of reps will try to BS their way out of that. And a good buyer is going to be able to read through that. And you're gonna end up making promises often that you can't keep. Right? And that's not gonna work for you. So if you go again and work with your enablement team, you work with your manager, you help them understand the things you're running into. Coaching that happens off the field is great. What I used to do. I'm gonna go old school on you for a second here. What I used to do is when we were on our old Cisco phones, I would get the Y splitter out and I would pair my headphones and I'd be on a whiteboard behind them and I'd be listening. And so a good manager will know like, when to, when to contribute verbally and when to, like, help to guide them in different ways. I used to whiteboard. I used to just whiteboard behind them and give them ideas of things that they could say or do at that moment or just have a bunch of stuff that was written out already and just kind of point to the visual cues to try to create that. That muscle memory for them so that it was their words and not mine. The best salespeople are the ones that are able to take all of the learnings that you've delivered to them and turn it into their own story, their own narrative. Right. If it's still somebody else's story, then it doesn't feel natural or authentic and it comes off as unnatural and inauthentic. We are now in a world fast forward from the years when I was an individual contributor. I still am to a certain degree. I've got a business, I got to talk to investors, I got to do a lot of selling to a lot of different people. But we're now in a world where that whiteboard, it doesn't have to be offline and it can be scalable. It could be rinse and repeatable. Right. So we do a lot of work in our company to make sure that the signal and response are very, very close together.

And I love that it's that in time guidance where it's like, this is why I always talked with my managers, the difference between deal prepping and deal coaching. Where oftentimes for deal coaching, it's always after the fact that. Right. So Chris, what happened? Where, where did we go? What do we versus prepping for that call? Like you do it before the call, not after.

Yeah, for sure. And I think the thing that's really interesting is every time that you say I don't know or let me get back to you to a prospect, you have a moment where maybe you're earning the respect because you haven't told them a BS story, but you're also limiting your ability to be the credible person on that call. Right. Every time you have the answers in your hand, you go, you know what, that's an interesting question. Let me tell you how we've experienced that in the past or how we've responded to that in the past. If you can do that on the fly to something that you didn't even really know all that well, mighty. It changes the way that your deal flow goes. It makes you stay in that high value, trusted authority level as opposed to the seller that's trying to get the deal. You are the consultant that's trying to guide them to the deal.

I love that we talk about being consultative in sales, but so often we're not like, we're not actually consulting. We're not actually providing that much value, unfortunately to the buyer. And we need to, we need to know that and go through it. Now I want to flip this right real quick because we talk about quota and there's like, you know, the 50% that aren't hitting, but there's 50% that are.

Yeah.

And so like we can't ignore that. Just as many people are getting there. I'm going to take this. It's not so much about what they're doing, but what can a leader do to get more people across that line? Because not like nobody's hitting and there's examples of success, like what can a leader do to try to replicate some of that success?

It's a good question. When you think about your best reps and the things that they're doing, a lot of them have a system and that system is something that they've either learned over the years or something that was taught to them or you know, just some people have God given talent. It helps them get it across the line. The people who tend to struggle with quota tend to not have as good of a system or tend to not do all of the things behind the scenes. So again, we could talk about practice as one of those things. Um, and, and that certainly is part of the narrative, but the other part of the narrative is very much making sure that people have something that they can rinse and repeat, that they have a system that works for them and everybody's system will be slightly different. Mine, back in the day, pen and paper notebook, lots of highlight colors, lots of post it notes, all those different things to keep me super organized so that if you ask me something about a deal, I could get it to you very quickly. And we could spend more time in our calls coaching than we would spending our time getting caught up on what was going on in the deal. The system allowed for that to work at scale. So implementing a system by using less disconnected sales tech, thinking about how you can optimize your internal meetings to be more around coaching and less around asking and getting caught up, those are great things that you can do. I've sat in on so many deal reviews where the rep is just telling, here's all the stuff that I've learned. And then you're like, well, we're kind of pressed for time here. Got four minutes where I can tell you some ideas of things to do. That's not the way to work this. That doesn't work. You got to spend way more time with the rep on the improvement of their storytelling, on the improvement of, of their knowledge of the different things that make your company or your sales process special.

I love that call out, especially at the end there because I actually just posted about this on LinkedIn, I think a couple of weeks ago. Like updates are for email, updates go on a doc. Updates should live somewhere else. That's not what the meeting is for. The meeting is for action, for coaching, for actual plans. Right? So you don't need to spend 30 minutes asking where the deal is that should be filled out ahead of time so that when you get together, you're actually taking actions on it a hundred percent.

A hundred percent. Like you should have something that's more templatized for your reps, particularly in the early days when they're trying to figure stuff out and then allow them to adapt and adjust their script over time with something that can Become more acapella, whether it be, you know, templated sales or you know, building out the proper cadences for them. Again, when you start with something like Outreach or Salesloft or Apollo or any of those things, you probably have some boilerplate templates that people are going to use for their cadences sequences. Depends on which company you're using as vocabulary you're going to use. The same thing happens when you're further in your sales cycle. I might have something that feels very scripted or very structured for my discovery calls or for my scoping calls or what have you. And then over time I want to be able to thin that so that the story becomes more authentically mine.

I think that's really, really crucial as, you know, the intricacies. The closer the deal gets to the end, the more things that can go wrong and you gotta be prepped for it because also forecasting is this black magic that's out there, right? It's like I had three forecasts and I'll pitch this back over to you. It's like what the reps told me was gonna come in, the math told me was gonna come in and then my interpretation of the two, right? Because there's a lot of people that are shocked that they missed quota. Like they're like, I thought for sure I was going to have it. So like what are some things that a rep can I guess, do to better understand where they actually stand on that progress?

Right?

Like for forecasting or committing deals. Because you said happy ears earlier, which is so true. Like what should they be thinking about in that system? I love the word system in this. To know like where they're actually at within a deal.

Are you answering the right questions? Right. So you need to have a list of things that will validate or invalidate where you truly are within a deal. You look through most CRM systems today and it would appear that the majority of the deals, even amongst people that are hitting quota, it would appear that the majority of those deals are single threaded. They're probably not for the people that are hitting quota. They're probably not even for some of the people that aren't hitting quota. But it's not logged and as a result it's really hard to get caught up and coach. So that's when you have to go into the room and whiteboard the deal or, or go online nowadays and talk through the deal. Those are all lost moments of productivity for the individual contributor. That makes it harder for the manager to give them good coaching and good insights. But I Truly believe. Like, the more you can try to work with your team to create the right questions to validate or invalidate something, the better off that rep is going to be at making their own decisions of whether or not they're in a legit deal. Happy ears are based on a Persona within a company that you're talking to that tells you all you, all you think you need to hear. And it might not be an influencer. It might not be somebody who has a high degree of influence. It might not even be somebody that's got like direct decision making or impact on the deal. But you hear it and you love the way it makes you feel. You know what feels even better? Hitting your freaking number.

Yes.

That's when you got to get. You got to get a little uncomfortable.

No, for sure. Right? Like, and hitting the number is so motivating. It's like once you get there. I used to like artificially like have very low ramp quotas. So people got used to hitting quota. So that was like the mindset, like, I hit quota. That's what I do, you know, to get there. And. But I want to bring it back to one of the earlier themes and you just said the word like productivity. Like, I don't want to breeze past this. You mentioned at the beginning that reps are spending only 59% of their time actually selling that. Even to me, that sounds higher than where I think a lot of people actually are. You mentioned some of it goes to admin. Where else is that time going? Right. We're talking about four hours a day disappearing.

Where is it going? Yeah, I mean, it goes to a number of different things. So the key one that we observe is that reps are spending a lot of time context switching. And that starts to make more sense as you start to think about the way that the tech stack has become more bloated. They have to be in their forecasting tool. They have to listen to their gong calls, they have to go into Salesforce, they have to switch over to their G Doc and all sorts of different things that they're using throughout the day. The average rep has 13 tools. Right? So that is an incredible amount of tools that somebody has to own and manage of that. They probably only know the logins for 60% of them. That's actually a stat. So you know, you, you start to think about. Okay, now, so of the 13 tools they, they kind of know about or are working in actively, eight at any given point in time. Whenever the phone rings, Kevin, you have this moment where you answer the phone and you talk to the person and then you get back to the other person that was on the other line and you go, sorry, where were we in that conversation? I got to get myself caught back up. Every single time you context switch psychology will say this. It takes you between three and five minutes to get yourself back into your super focused mode. So if I need to context switch between my eight actively use tools all day, every day, every single time I'm doing that three to five minutes, that's a lot of time you're chewing up. That's a lot of time that's being eroded. So you know, something to consider. It's not necessarily tech stack reduction, but certainly a way of consolidating the tech stack or making it so that you've made good decisions around how those things work together. So there's more fluidity. I think that's a big one. It's a really big one. There are other areas where we contact switch throughout the day too. I got to dig for the right content. I got to dig into my sharepoint or my confluence or my high spot in order to find all the stuff that I need. Make it so it's near hand for people. Make it so it's super simple for them to find it in those right moments of truth so they can stay closer to that high value mode. Reduce the context switch. Make it so that they're, they're just, it's like when you're driving a car down the highway Instead of having 15 lanes, make it so they only have to shrift over one.

I think that's so, so key because we also know this too. Like every click decreases the likelihood a rep will actually do it and actually finish it out. And so they have to one, remember what they need to remember to remember where to find what they need to remember. Three, go through that process, remember the login, like all of that. Not only does it take time, that drains willpower, it drains energy. Right. We wonder why the end of the week tends to be very low productivity for a lot of people. They've been switching all week long and they're just not productive. Right. And so if you think about, you know, obviously there's tools out there. Obviously you run a technology company that helps pull some of these things together. I think oftentimes there's this fear sometimes with managers too of like, well, that's just part of their job. Like if, you know, we give them that time back, you know, like, where's it gonna go, right? Like, oh, like cool. So you're saving all this time now what? Like, is that a justified fear or is it just, hey, it's just part of your job. You should be spending 50% of your time on non sales related tasks.

Well, I mean, if you want to think about it that way, sure. But you're always going to run into the barrier of human psychology, right? So you could say, well, that's why we pay you a base salary. That's why you have to update salesforce and you got to listen to your gong calls and you got to do this. And the rep goes, yeah, my base salary, fine. But I can't make a living on my base salary. 50% of my performance is based on or 50% of my paycheck is based on my performance. Because 50% of their paycheck is based on their performance. Psychology dictates what they're going to do. I'm going to stay in my high value mode as much as I humanly can. And if I need to jury rig the system in order to work in the favor of the house, and I am the house, I'm going to do that. And if I have time left at the end of my day, I will do the things you asked me to do too. But know that that is an afterthought, not a forethought. It's not that they're doing it to be inconsiderate. This is survival mode for a lot of them, right? You don't hit your quota two quarters in a row, what happens? You get pieced out, you're done, right? So people are always going to lean in on doing the things that will get them to their number the most efficiently in the moment. And it's a short term strategy, not a long term strategy. That's a mistake. Your long term play is better than your short term play. But you get stuck in that cycle unless somebody helps you get out of the rut.

Actually, it's a good little segue there too, like helping someone get out of a rut, right? You are a leader of leaders. You've built a very strong company. Strong company brand, strong company culture. What are things that a leader can do to get someone back on track? Because just like we mentioned a little bit before, like you start hitting quota, you believe it, you're like, okay, like I can do this. The opposite's also true, right? Like, all right, I missed quota. And that can start to get in your head. Like what can a manager or leader do to kind of get someone back on track?

Look again, I think that sometimes you Got to be in the classroom and sometimes you got to be on the field and there's an opportunity for people when you recognize that an individual is struggling to say, let's take a step back, let's figure out what's not working. Let's figure out what changed in your mechanics or did something change in the market or did something change in our product or have you just not really conceptualized how that would work within your target market so you get a bit remedial. But again, a good manager can do a couple of different things or a good coach can do a couple of different things. One is they can do color commentary with you. Right. Let's go on some calls together. I'm going to ride along with you and I'll plug in where I think it's necessary. Sometimes you can take ownership of those calls and just show them some of the things that you think will help them in terms of their storytelling capabilities. Sometimes you can do the game review. I think a lot of us are doing more game review now than we ever used to because it's become easier and more efficient to find the highlight moments without sitting on every single call. Thank you, Gong. Thank you, chorus and other solutions to make that part of our, our coaching regimen come to life a little bit more. Those are some of the things that I would be digging in on and just try to figure out, like if you go back to the basics, what made that rep good?

Right.

What made you hire him in the first place? What made you think that that person was going to be a lights up performer? And if they had a couple of good quarters and they're having one, that's a bit of a. A struggle. Again, is it internal to the rep or is it external to the market forces at play?

And I just, I love the attention to detail in that recommendation. It's not. They don't need a hype up. That's not what it is. Right. It's like, hey, hype them up. And you got this, Chris, you can go for it. They need a plan. They need to understand it. They need to get into the weeds and do something.

Yeah. You can't say to somebody. So I mean, the parallel lane to hyping somebody up is to say, and it double your commission if you sell anything this quarter. Right. Or if you achieve quota or whatever. That's not what's making them miss. Right, Right. It might make them feel good and they'll be like, yeah, sweet. I'm not going to leave the company now because I managed to Pull it together. But it's not the thing that's making them miss. Something else is making them miss. And you got to dig in and understand that stuff. Look at how they're. They're commenting on their deals. Understand the different things that they're learning and figure out where the gaps are, figure out the questions they're not asking. Oftentimes that's where the real magic lies. Because a lot of reps, and this kind of goes back to the happier stuff a bit. A lot of reps will ask the questions that they're comfortable asking, knowing that they're going to get safe answers. Right. A lot of people won't ask for the deal. People, a lot of reps do not ask for the deal. I know a very, very simple thing.

Sad. It's sad. Like, it's just. They hope that the buyer will say, how can I buy? Yeah. Versus saying, chris, ready to get started today? Yeah, Yeah.

I got a contract prepped for you. I'm going to send it across. Just need signatures. Let's go. Right. Use the style that works for you. Obviously, not everybody has that. There's the passive close, there's the active close, there's all sorts of different things in between. But just make sure people are doing the right mechanics.

And so I think that's the last part that I want to touch on before we start to wrap is like, how can you, I guess, build some of that into. I love the word you used earlier about a system, right. Of like, how can you build some of those prompts or almost like, like plays or playbooks into the system to remind the rep? Because I do think a lot of it comes down to not knowing but not being able to recall it fast enough because they're in the moment. All these things are happening. Like, I guess, what is your thought on, like building in prompts or playbooks or things like that so they know what play they should be running?

Yeah, well, clearly, I mean, I'm a huge fan of it. We built a part of our product around it so that when you're taking a note, it will automatically prompt you with. With content that is relatable in the moment. So there's a reason for that, though. Again, if you can create an experience whereby the rep knows that you have their back in the moment, that not only gives them confidence in their abilities, it also gives them confidence in your abilities to support them. We've coined the term internally ever boarding because you're no longer onboarding somebody. You're perpetually helping them learn and so if I can help ever board you with knowledge that is pertinent to the experience that you're having in the moment, it's going to go a long ways. You have to make sure, though, that whatever you're doing is additive, not distracting. It's a really important piece of that puzzle.

I'm gonna steal that term for sure. I like that. Everboard. And it never stops. It never stops.

It should never, ever stop. You should always be learning. Your product's always changing. Your market's always changing. Your buyer is always changing. Why wouldn't you change? That's why reps get stale. You know, it's the same thing that happens in, like, professional sports. Coaches get stale and get fired. They were an amazing coach for three years and suddenly they're gone. Why? Because they didn't change. They didn't change with the way that the systems around them were changing.

Change is hard. You have to be willing to. And also to the leaders listening, this isn't just to your reps, is also you as a leader. The playbook should change. What have you learned over the last year? What have you learned? What was your top reps doing?

Yeah, how many times have you responded to a buyer with competitor intel that is stale? It's like, yeah, well, actually, they don't even have a feature like, blah, blah and blah. And the buyer's like, actually, they do. They shipped it last month. You're like, well, guess what just happened there. My deal just went south on you because you're no longer credible.

It's the constant evolution. Honestly, it's what fires me up. It's because I know it's going to be different in six months. I know there's things we need to be learning now. And so, my man, this was phenomenal. But I can't let you off the hook yet because there's the one question I ask every guest, right? Because the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Because I also have this strange idea that if we took better care of ourselves, had more energy, more joy, more enthusiasm in life, the sales would also improve. So what would your live better advice be to people listening?

I have this thing internally. I call it the 501 challenge. And the 501 challenge is this. Your company kind of expects you to show up between 9 and 5, right? Those are traditional working hours. If you're in engineering, you can probably change your hours and work in the evenings or whatever works for you. But between nine and five, those are our traditional business hours. When it gets to 501, that's your time. How are you going to recapture it? How are you going to get that back? Right? And the reason it's important to me is because I want that for all of our customers, all of our users. It's why we built this product, is to recover time so you can use it accordingly. You might be in the groove, you might be having a great day, you might be crushing it and go, I am going to work until midnight today because I want to get a couple of proposals out, and I'm just on fire. Awesome. But you should have optionality, and you should make sure that you continue to focus on having optionality, because one day your kids are newly born, then they crawl, then they walk, then they run, then they wreck your car, then they borrow some money, then they move out. It happens super fast. And so you can't blink in life. You need to create balance. And it's really hard for salespeople to create balance because they do feel the pressure of quota. And actually, when you exceed your quota, you want to continue to get the, you know, the gravy train of your accelerators. Make sure you're keeping time for yourself. That keeps you human, keeps you humble, and use that time for the things that bring you joy outside of work. That's the reason we do this in the first place.

I love that 501 challenge. I was like, where is this going to go? It's like 501 things. Like 5. 01. I love that. The time that we have, what are we doing with it? Or are we just throwing it away? Binge watching Netflix, Maybe from time to time, but if that's not giving you energy back, it's not used that time there. So, Chris, my man, this. This was phenomenal. Where can people get more of you? Where can they learn more about what Dooley's doing? Like, where can they get more of this juice?

Yeah. So our site, obviously, is a great resource for any content or just to learn more about what we do. Www.d o o l y.AI that's Dooley AI. You can follow me. I'm hrishartvigson on Twitter. If you don't know how to spell my last name, I'll spell that for you real quick. It's K R I S H A R T V I G S E N. That's my Twitter handle. I don't tweet a ton, but I sure post a lot of stuff on LinkedIn around what I believe is happening in the world around us. I have some values that we try to uphold here. One is to do like the world, and one is to make sure that we're all being good humans. With all the stuff that's going on in the world these days, it's important for us to all think about all the things that make us good and try to help people be better.

Oh yeah. Well, I just got on Twitter, so consider yourself a new follower, at least for one. Hop on there and get you there. But my man, thank you so much for your time, energy, and insights. This was great, dude.

Thanks a lot, Kevin.

Hell yeah.