Lead and Make Decisions Through Tough Times with Kevin "KG" Gaither

And the salespeople are going, things have changed very, very quickly until the day you had to make those cuts.

They're making these cold calls. And, like, the tone had changed completely of, like, so quickly. Do you know what's going on? Are you. You're calling me right now. You know, I can't even open my practice. So deals were getting pushed, deals are getting in weight. But then the prospecting, that's where we saw the biggest shift in, like, there.

You go, there you go. And then what did these SDRs BDR start saying to your leaders, like, hey, we're getting hammered here. Hey, what's this going for us? Are you going to lower our quotas? What's happening next? Are we, you know, are there going to be layoffs?

How do you encourage, you know, the companies you're working with and the people you're working with to make decisions during tough times? Fear does, right? The 3s of fear. Fight, flight. Or fear or sorry, freeze, Right? Fight, flight, freeze. So some people make fight decisions or they just go out fighting, right? And it's just all right. And that goes one way. Or they flight, they leave, or they just send everything away, or they freeze. They do nothing. So how do you encourage them to make decisions during tough times? Because eventually you got to make a decision. How do you walk them through that?

Well, let me paint a picture then, for you to help you think about how I think about this, and I'll tell you my story after you tell yours. It was March 2020 when the shit started hitting the fan. You knew things were difficult at patient pop KD in March of 2020, probably even in February 2020, it started kicking in, right? How long did it take before y' all actually got rid of 65% of your team? How long did it take, like, from when you were like, should we do something? And the salespeople are going, things have changed very, very quickly until the day you had to make those cuts. How long did that take?

Well, there's some things out here. Because it took 14 days, we were fully remote. March 15th. Yep. April 1st is when the rift occurred. And we hadn't seen much of a slowdown yet. The slowdown for us actually happened more in April and May. This was a preemptive decision that got made. But at that moment, it went from, hey, we see where things are going about March 15th is March 18th. The decision was made going into April 1st. Yeah.

And what were the salespeople saying? March 1st, March 10th, March 20th. They didn't know what was coming but they felt some ripple effects. What were the salespeople saying to you during that period of time? And your managers were getting way more.

Push off on deals. More people are just kind of saying, no, we want to wait it out. We're getting more and more people on the phone saying, hey. Like, no. Actually, funny enough. Again, I'll share this too. I made a post about this, and it's the only time in my career that I've had a leader ask me to take a post down. Only time in my entire career. But I made a post that I had told our whole outbound team to pause for the day because we were making cold calls and they were getting ripped to shreds on these calls. It was that same week. It was actually March 12th and 13th. Like, they're making these cold calls. And like, the tone had changed completely of, like, so quickly. Do you know what's going on? Are you. You're calling me right now. You know, I can't even open my practice. Like, that was the big one. I remember calling like, yo, we pause. We got to figure out how to navigate this better. And then one of our senior leaders reach out like, hey, like, we just don't want people thinking things are bad. I'm like, okay, that was the big one. Was like, so deals were getting pushed, deals were getting in weight. But then the prospecting, that's where we saw the biggest shift in.

Like, there you go, there you go. And then what did these SDRs, BDRs start saying to your leaders? Like, hey, we're getting hammered here. What did they start saying? Did they start saying things like, hey, what's this going to mean for us? Are you going to lower our quotas? What's happening next? Are we, you know, are there going to be layoffs? So.

So no, they didn't get any of those later ones. Because you got to remember, these were the glory days of sas. No one had experienced a tough time. Like, that wasn't even a thought for most people in terms of layoffs. Didn't get asked at all. That actually caught everybody off.

No kidding. Okay.

Everybody but the quota reduction questions were coming in of like, hey, like, how am I going to hit my quota? Like, how? I can't. Like, I can't even talk to anybody. They're pushing off, like, what are we going to do here? And interestingly enough, I did make a requ of like, based off how our conversion rate metrics and everything are affecting. We may need to make an adjustment here. Right? Because otherwise we can lose people Right. And we won't be able to maintain through this. But yeah, that was it.

Quota. Yeah, exactly. So are just like, same as you. The business I was in at the time just all of a sudden just fell off a table. And the sales reps, I mean, you know, we had 550 and they were, they were saying, hey, what's happening? Are you going to lower my quotas and are there going to be layoffs? And the, you know, behind the scenes we're, as a leadership team, we're talking about what we should be doing. And at one point, one of the senior, you know, C level people came to me and said, you know, we were talking this through and just off the cuff said, you know, kg, just, you know, let me know what you, you know, how I can help you. And I said, stop before you get off of the call. I'm going to tell you exactly how you can help me. We make this decision and execute on it very quickly. Because what happens on the sales floor is that the sales reps start wondering what's happening? What's going to happen? What's happened to me? Am I going to get laid off? Is my quota going to go down? Is my quota going to go up? You know what, what is going to happen? And that uncertainty. This is, I'm getting to the answer to your question. Finally. That uncertainty, Kevin, on the sales floor is the exact reason why I advocate that my sales leaders and the CEOs that I coach do your best to make your decisions as quick as possible. Because that water cooler bs, and I say water cooler because it's on slack now, water cooler BS is actually very destructive to the team. And so when you can make tough decisions quicker, they may not be perfect decisions. No one's going to make a perfect decision. But you can, but make it quicker. So make it as quick as you possibly, possibly can. We had to lay off 45% of our sales team. And that was a massive number at the time. And it was one of the worst days, of course, in my life as well. Looking down a spreadsheet with names and people didn't even know what was, you know, but, but that, but that undercurrent of uncertainty was awful. Okay, so, so Katie, that's number one. Number two, this I learned from one of my favorite leaders I've ever worked for. His name is Jeff Zwelling. He's currently over at StubHub to are Create 2. Are there two way doors here? Are there two way doors with this, you know, with this decision? Okay, can you Create a decision such that you can walk back from it easily or, or not. And if you can't walk back from it, then you want to spend deciding whether or not it's the right decision or not. One of my most recent clients, they were going to make hires and they're like, but things have changed very, very quickly. And we've got these three new hires that are coming on board. There's this ops hire that we're going to make and then a manager to be named later. Kg, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And I said to the CEO, first thing you do is you unwind those offer letters to the three people that have signed those offer letters. And she goes, oh my God, that's so aw.

Awful.

I'm like, right, it's awful. But that's the right thing to do for your business. And you'd better do that now before they start. And then you do it two weeks later. Like don't like think through that. And then I said, this player, this manager to be named later. You don't have this manager higher. Don't do that. Hire. What about this operations hire? It doesn't generate revenue, right? But think six to 12 months down the line, is your business going to be better or worse by having this operations hire, make things more efficient with the resources that you have left over after getting rid of some of these people and seeing some of the, you know, the attrition there. And so the decision making. Make your decisions as quickly as possible. Decide whether or not this is going to be, you know, impactful to your business or not. And sometimes you, you know, you got to be nice, but not that nice. And so, you know, unwinding these offer letters and going, that's the right thing for the business. Because you know what, cash is king. If you're the CEO and, and heads of sales should think this way too, by the way. You know, you, even though you may not be on a P and L, you should think to yourself, cash is king. Cash flow for our business is key. So I need to make these cuts. Can I help sustain the business? And there's so many variables to this, but make your decision. Look for your two way doors when you're making those decisions. And remember, cash is king. Because if you're out of cash, you're out of business.

And everybody goes, yeah, no, it's hard. And these are the unfortunate, harsh realities of business as much as like, and it does, it does, it sucks. Sucks when it happens. Sucks to be a part of it. Right? Like, it's awful, but it is part of business. Right? Like, yeah, we can't praise capitalism on one side but then ignore the demons on the other side.

Yeah. Yeah. This CEO had to call her sales manager who was on vacation in Hawaii to tell him to tell the three people where he had made offers that the offer is now null and void. It is what it is.

It is sucks. The only difference I would make there is I would make those calls. I wouldn't put that on my people. I would make that call. Like, if I'm. As if I'm making that decision, I'm gonna make those calls.