Set Up for Success & Do the Mundane Well with Ryan Frampton

Foreign. 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 on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExCexcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff. But first, a quick shout out to today's sponsor, Vidyard. If you aren't using video in your sales process, I promise you, you are leaving money on the table. I personally have been using Vidyard with my teams for years now and we use it everywhere. Top of funnel to book more meetings via email and LinkedIn. Middle of funnel to improve show rates, to demos, post demos to do proposals and follow up and close deals faster. Using video allows you to connect better with your prospects, bring your personality, energy and enthusiasm across every single time and they have a much more impactful and memorable experience for your buyer. So again, if you're not using video, you need to be. And if you are using video, you should be using Vidyard. Check out vidyard@vidyard.com and with that, let's get back to the show. What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd, and we're going to talk about the boring stuff today. And before you tune out, though, this is actually what tends to separate the best from the rest, is they are phenomenal at the boring things. They have a high attention to detail, those small things that the other people don't. They do the things that are necessary, not just the things they like to do. And that's why I'm so pumped to have Ryan Frampton on the show today, senior manager over at Vidyard to talk about how do you get team Buy in to do the little things? How do you fire reps up to do the hard parts of the job? Because at the end of the day, that's actually what we're paid for. Sean Kelly, CEO at Snack Nation. Now Karoo said this about seven years ago to me and I'll never forget it. He said, you are not paid top dollar to do the easy shit. You are paid top dollar to do the hard parts of your job. And so Ryan and I are going to dive in today on one what some of those hard parts are the things that reps tend to avoid, but then how to actually do them and make sure they are tied back to your success. So strap in. This is gonna be fun. Ryan, my man, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks. Glad to be here. Super excited about it.

Hell yeah. My man. And I love the topic. I was like, what do I talk about? I was like, let's talk about the boring stuff. I was like, well, this could be interesting. But I get it because it's true, right? As a sales leader myself, it's like, yes, we'd love to always focus on the new, the shiny, all that stuff, but at the end of the day, sometimes it's just the fundamentals and the mundane tasks that need to get done to set things up. So now what's interesting for you too in terms of your background is not only have you been a rep and a manager and now a senior leader, but you've also been a founder. So let's talk about. Because that means, you know, you know the ins and outs of the role. It's not like you're just speaking from an ivory tower a little bit. So it's a narrow down focus to start here on like, what are some of the key tasks that reps, you know, might think are boring or might think aren't worth it that truly do lead to better success in the long run?

Yeah, I think what it comes down to, like the biggest obvious answer I'm sure everybody's expecting is like taking time to find good target accounts, building them out effectively, trying to understand not just that they fit your icp, but who do they sell to, how do they go about selling to them, like really trying to understand their business, which happens a lot in I think enterprise sales. But I think we often forget that when we're selling into more SMB emerging markets. However, it makes the exact same impact from a trust perspective and to take that time to really understand who you're selling to because then they're going to see you as an advisor. So I think that's one of the biggest ones that is often neglected. I think when you are selling more down market compared to enterprise and then from there just taking the time to dig in and actually do the work, prospecting, not just doing one call, doing a one email and be like, I give up, like it's not working. Like oftentimes we have to send 100, 100 calls. To get five connects. And that will turn into two meetings, right? So understanding sort of the game that you're a part of, which is a losing game, but how you can win at that losing game.

And so let's talk about what to look for, because I think sometimes that's what bogs reps down, right? Is like, all right, find target accounts. And they sit down and go, all right, well now what? Like, what am I looking for? And then it feels much bigger than it needs to. How do you help your reps narrow their focus on. Here's what you should be looking for to kind of help speed that up a little bit. Because if you're looking for everything, you'll find nothing.

Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I think it all comes down to, like, what you're selling, what part of the business you're. You're really trying to make the biggest impact into. So with Vidyard, for example, we're helping teams primarily change their sales organization's process from like a booking meeting standpoint, from a show rate perspective of those meetings, and then also from like a close rate when you're setting up proposals. Those are really some of the main impacts that we can provide. So what we're looking for is like intent data around, like, what specifically is happening at that organization? Are they having a growing sales team based on LinkedIn insights? Are they growing by a hundred percent year over year? Or are they kind of staying the same? Are they actually declining? They're all going to be thinking about their business in very different ways depending on those insights. One will probably be trying to have to hire less people to throw more fuel on the fire. Maybe we can do that with video instead. Or some of them are saying, hey, we have to actually do layoffs right now because everything that's going on, so how can we get the most out of the people that we can keep and, and save costs that way while also putting people up for success to be successful in the role? So different things like that sort of looking okay. Like, what part of the business are you solving for and what type of intent or situational insight can you get from an external perspective? Could also be something on their website for the recruiting industry. I've worked with some, some folks that sell in that space oftentimes and they're looking okay. Like, what jobs are they posting for? Did they just have to post like 17 job postings? There's something compelling going on there so that you can then bring into your talk tracks by rather than saying something like Hey, I just wanted to reach out to you because I'm from Vidyard. It's like, no, you're actually reaching out to them because you saw compelling reasons.

And so how do you encourage your reps to actually use that information? Because that's what I think is so I guess call it comical or sad about the sales industry right now is like, you hear this, oh, well, it's hard to find accounts. I'm spending so much time researching and then I see the emails and LinkedIn messages that I'm getting and there is nothing in there that shows a rep actually did any research at all. It's like people are doing all this research and then they don't use it. They still are just sending out the templates. So then how do you get your reps to use that information? Because people like this, this is. I'm ranting for a second and we'll get back to it. But like, I am easy to find, I am easy to personalize for. I've got years of content, I post every day. You know where I'm at, you know what I stand for. And even I get very few personalized messages. So then I know the rest aren't because it's harder to find. Right. So then how do you leverage. Okay, you did the research, how do you use it? Because otherwise they literally might as well not even be researching the accounts. Like, if you're not going to use it, it actually is a waste of time. So how do you then translate it over into being used?

Yeah, so there's a few different ways that you can go about this. I think first comes from like more inspiration, like how can you motivate them to understand the need? And then the second comes from the tactical holding them account. So from a inspiring the motivating to see the need of why they need to execute on that. I often like to do like an empathy experiment where we say, hey, go chat with Marcy our VP of marketing or Dan, our VP of sales or myself and just look at our inbox. We can pull up how many prospecting emails we got and what they look like and then we can pull up our LinkedIn direct messages and show you how many solicitation messages we've got. And that will start helping you understand like the reason why it's so crucial because you'll just be one of those 37 people that reached out to you that week if you don't do it that way. The other side of it, I often like collecting data on like a per rep basis around their booking rate. So if say X rep sends out 100 emails and reaches up to 100 prospects, how many of those are actually booking meetings with you? And what you can often motivate people with is showing them what the top performers are doing. So if someone on the team has a 15% booking rate, which means they reach out to 100 people and they're booking 15 meetings, and then the other folks that aren't personalizing have a 3% booking rate, you can clearly show them exactly how that is with data. So then it's not just you saying how it's important. It's anecdotal evidence. It's real quantifiable evidence that you can provide them. Then to actually tactically hold them accountable to it, I use tools like sales loft, you can use tools like outreach, I'm sure, etc. That can help you actually go into individual reps, emails that they're sending through the cadence and spot check it, actually follow up. I feel like a lot of times we put this stuff on our reps to say, hey, why aren't you doing this? But us as managers, we need to circle back to see if they're doing it because we're the ones telling them to do that stuff. And if you're not spot checking, if you're not actually testing your team, like, that's not a them problem, that's a you problem.

Love, I love the call out there because I have to work on this with my own managers as well, right? Where it's like, okay, if the reps aren't doing what we want, first question I always ask, did we coach them? Did we coach them? Not tell them, coach them. Big difference, right? Telling them is like, go do this. Coaching is, we showed them how we worked with them, we gave them feedback, and it's documented. That's the first part. Did we coach them? If the answer to that is yes, it's like, did we repeat it? Did we come back to it? Or was it a one and done? And that is still one of the places I think so many managers miss and I still battle internally is we always move to the next thing versus, okay, did we nail the last thing? Like, did we actually nail it? Did we get that yet? And to move forward. So I love the call out for managers now. I'll go one layer deeper there as we keep going is how do you recommend managers do that? And I'm gonna say this in quotes, like, without coming across micromanaging, which I have my own thoughts on as well, but like, how do you approach it that way where you're following up, but it doesn't feel like, you know, you're playing daycare kindergarten teacher with your reps?

Yeah, I think, I think it's a key separation of like, are you looking at your job as like a manager or a leader? Right. If you're a manager, you're just trying to hold everybody accountable to do the activity, the tasks that they're, they're doing or that they're supposed to be doing. And you're just saying it very directly and it's not really of, of like, you have an inspiring intent. Right. As a, as a leader, how you navigate that situation is go back and look at root causes. Like, what is this person? Like, we were big believers in our interviews. Like, understand, like, what are you working towards over the next eight months, 12 months, two years, that we can help you get there. And sometimes the answer is like, I want to open up a rock climbing gym and I want to save enough money to do that. And like, that's a great answer. We don't want you to necessarily stay at Vidyard for the rest of your life. Like, we, we want to, we want to help you get to wherever you want to be. And we start that process of understanding and empathy, like right at the start of the relationship with the rep. And then we continue that forward in our one on ones and our co coaching. So it's all in the lens of that. So if someone's trying to get out of credit card debt, if someone's trying to open up a rock climbing gym, we make like spreadsheets sometimes, depending on how open someone's with us, and say, okay, like, this is exactly what you need to do in order to get to your goal in two years. But if you did this, this is how you can get to your goal in six months. I love that. So when we're following up and checking on these folks around, if they're hitting the KPIs that we're asking them to hit, if they're personalizing their outreach, et cetera, it's not in the lens of like, hey, it's your job, do it. It's in the lens of like, like, this is to help you get after your dream or what you're working towards. And I'm your coach to help get you there.

I love that. And I love that you do that. At the beginning. We do something very similar. It's like one of the first sessions that we lead is around goal setting. Where are you trying to Go, why are you here? Right. And like really mapping that out for people because once you get into the day to day, right. The mundane, it's really hard to connect. Oh, this is cold. Call 43 of the day and I'm supposed to make 50 and I don't really want to. So let me double dial real quick. Let me just. Oh, who's not open right now? I'll call them because I know they're not going to answer. But then tying it back to the goal. So one follow up question there and we'll keep down this path is how often do you come back to that? Because I think that's important too is like back to this idea of like repetition as managers, same idea. People do a goal setting exercise with their reps and then gone. Never talk about it again.

Right.

It's just back to like where, where's your pipeline, where's your commit? So how do you weave those conversations into that weekly, monthly, quarterly cadence to kind of keep that momentum going?

Yeah. So that's one thing that I think everybody needs to get better at including like myself of like keeping that stuff top of mind. Because with everything going on it's easy to get distracted or to divert focus. One thing I would, I would suggest, and again we, we try to do this, I don't necessarily. We do this perfectly is we do something called okrs at Vidyard every quarter and we try to encourage our team not to just put like, okay, like what ARR attainment, what skill are you developing? But like what personal abilities or goals are you trying to accomplish this quarter as well? And then from there, typically every month, I encourage our management team on the emerging side at least to really connect with your folks in your one on one and make it less about a business conversation. You have your call coaching sessions for that. Make your one on ones about that person and what they're going through right now, how you can specifically help them, how they're feeling so organically. That stuff should be coming up. But I think as deliberately.