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

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 on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence 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 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, to the 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 Carew 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 going to 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. 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 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 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.

Mm. And so let's talk about what to look for. Cause I think sometimes that's what Boggs wraps 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 100% 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, we'll 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 for Vidyard. It's like, no, you're actually reaching out to them because you saw a compelling reason to.

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, reps. Oh, well, it's hard to find accounts where 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 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 accountable. So from 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 a hundred 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 is or 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, we put this stuff on our reps to say like, hey, like, why aren't you doing this? But us as managers, like, 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 is documented. That is 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 really of, of, in, like, of an inspiring intent. Right. As a, as a leader, how you'd 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 and 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, with the, 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, these folks around, if they're hitting the KPIs that the, that we're asking them to hit, if they're personalizing their outreach, etc, it's not in the lens of like, hey, it's your job, do it. It's in the lens of 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, 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 passage. 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, 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, 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 deliberate as you can make it without making it too like manufactured. Because that's also important is you want to have real true intent on this. Not just like do it because you feel it help the business. Right. Like that's, that's not never a good. That's sort of how I think about it, if that makes sense.

I like that. I like that because I think it's something where if we don't come back to it, it doesn't feel real. And also sometimes too. And I've said this even to my own managers. It's actually worse if you do talk about it and then never talk about it again than if you just never covered it, because then it feels fake. Like, oh, you wanted to get to know my goals, and then you literally never spoke to me about them again. Again. Right? And so that doesn't. That just does not work and doesn't matter. So then let's go another layer deeper here, right? So we talk about, like, you know, prospecting. You know, it's mundane, it's boring, but if you can tie it back to the bigger things, like, okay, like, this makes sense. What about when someone's in a slump? Right? You know, like, there's. Because there's also a difference between motivation and inspiration. Like, sometimes, like, that spark just isn't there. And I think, you know this. You've probably lived it as a rep, and you have it on your reps, where it's like, they know what to do and they know what their bigger goals are. And, yeah, they get it, but they just can't seem to will themselves to sit down and do it. How do you work someone through that when there just seems to be something off mentally?

I do it with them. So I think the key thing is when someone needs a spark, be the spark, right? Don't. Don't ask them to, hey, like. Like, you're having trouble finding accounts. Like, here's a list. Go find five accounts. Don't do. Say, hey, here's a list that I just found five accounts for you. And here's those five accounts. This is the list I'd recommend. So if you're just saying, hey, here's a resource, like, go at it, like, then they're gonna be like, yeah, I know, like, but again, there's something happening there. There's maybe a limiting mindset that they're developing because they're struggling. So in order to break that, I think, like, go in the trenches yourself as the leader.

No, and I love that because I think it is, like, I love the way you phrased it. Like, be the spark, you know, and motion creates emotion. I think Tony Robbins said that, right? And it's like, if you can go in there with them and just get the ball rolling a little bit, you know, like, hey, like, let me. Let's do five together, right? Versus I'm going to watch you do five. Let's do five. Like, let's build it. We've got the momentum going. Let's just ride that. And I really try to encourage my Team too. To start smaller, like when someone is really starting to struggle, start with one. We're going to get one today. We're going to get. We're going to get one account today. We're going to get one extra dial today. We're going to get 1 yard out today. And then we're going to go to two, and then we're going to go to three and like, really slow down. Like, I think for management so often it's slowing down to speed up. We try to accomplish it all in one full swoop. Like, all right, I need your dials to double. I need your commit to be there. I need your pipeline to get shored up. You need 15 more accounts. Gotta personalize that messaging. And then you can get that BMW.

Yeah. One thing every week. One thing every week.

So I love that. So then actually this would be good one. Then how do you. How do you do this for yourself? And you have managers that roll to you as well. Right. You have a decent sized org there. How do you help them prioritize? Right. How do you help them pick that one thing? Because that is always a struggle with managers is either they try to cover it all right. Or some like the opposite. They're like, okay, we got to do this, but it's like, you got to get rid of the ums in your disco.

What?

That. That's the thing that we're going to talk about right now. I've missed goal by 35% and you want to talk about the ums in my disco. So, like, how do you help your managers prioritize where to focus on, like their reps? Yeah.

So from a call, coaching perspective specifically, is that more what.

Just. Just in general. Because sometimes it's not like, back to the mundane. Right? Yeah. Because managers love to focus on the call. But if this rep is only running two demos a month, the problem is not the demo is they're not generating enough. And even as managers, I think we shy away from the boring mundane where really this rep's just not getting enough accounts worked and we're not focusing there. So I guess it's really anything. How do you help them prioritize and figure out, okay, this is where we actually need to be focusing our time and attention.

Yeah, I know exactly one thing that Jimmy, our director of sales at Vidyard, developed was like a manager hygiene sort of weekly scorecard that the managers like, scorecard themselves around revenue attainment. So whatever their quarterly number is broken down by the week. And then from a pipeline perspective as well. A forecasting perspective and then there's a few other components that are pretty Vidyard specific around it. But what that allows them to do is from a high level is see okay like what, what are the three pillars of like revenue generation is either doing really well or is like lagging behind. Oftentimes it's the pipeline side because that's oftentimes the hardest to manage. So what then we can double click on in our one on ones is we pull up that, that hygiene sheet and we say okay like what's going on here? Where was the miss? It might be one specific individual on the team. And then from there we then do a focusing exercise around okay like what's actually happening with that specific person. We have a modeling doc that shows like what's their input, what's the conversion rates on that input, what's the show rate on that input, et cetera. So then we can narrow down that focus to actually understand not what's the symptom. The symptom is like not they're not building pipelines. You just tell them okay like go build more pipeline. You're not going to get anything done. But we're really using those meetings and that sheet to keep prioritizing focus. And then from more of a call coaching perspective, I developed demo scorecards at Vidyard to really understand like what actually makes up a good like first demo call. What are the, what's the key recipe of that? And then from there it's constantly focusing on what's the root cause. So maybe they had a ton of pricing objections but objection. Handling isn't what's actually going to move the needle. It's we didn't get enough understanding around the quantify quantifiable impact we're going to have in the discovery. Right. So constantly doing these, these one on ones we're checking that focus sheet and that hygiene sheet and then doing an hour a week of coach, the coach sessions where we're actually doing call coaching together with that scorecards that they can develop their sense of prioritization. Because I think you're right. It's one of the biggest things that new managers especially struggle with.

And I love this and I know people's ears are picked up like ooh, call scorecard. What's what, what, what do we have on here? It's I love like one, I love call scorecards. I believe every team should have them. I think they should have two to three of them. Prospecting, demo. But then like follow up negotiation. Like no one talks about that side, like you only run a demo generally in the sales process and then there's no checklist of things to come. So what are things that you have on your call scorecard for what you can share? Right, there's things I'm sure you can and things that you can but like what do you look for in a. I guess what is on that scorecard so your managers can prioritize properly.

Yeah, so there's around like 50 points. So there's quite a bit to work from. I think some of the key things in a discovery perspective is crystallizing the KPI. So the first thing that we're trying to do on a call other than understanding around like what inspired them to come on the call and doing like an agenda and et cetera. First, first focus in the discovery is crystallizing the KPI. So are you trying to book more meetings? Are you trying to increase the deflections of your support tickets? Are you trying to do like, like, like better no show rates, like improve the show rate of your meetings. And then what that does is set the guardrail for the discovery because too often I find we start diving to current state too quickly and then from there they're just saying everything that they're currently doing and that goes 20 minutes. So I think one of the biggest things that we see that really turns reps from being mediocre to exceptional and great on our team is their ability to set the guardrails really early Discovery. Then they can just ask questions, okay, like you're trying to book more meetings. How specifically are you going about that today? What's happening? What's going well? What's not going well? When you look at like last month, like what was your team actually able to achieve versus their target? Like it's really easy to get answers that land very efficiently which is what allows you to then do a demo and pricing potentially even on that same call, versus if you just start with open ended questions that don't really have any like barriers to them, like who knows what they're going to tell you about. So I think that's one of the key things. The other thing that I've been really trying to get our team to focus on is at the end of the call we go through during just around how they can get ROI of the tool, etc. But then we leave the call without understanding if our champion, because oftentimes champion selling actually understands how to articulate that ROI to their leadership. So a big question that we have in that scorecard is Asking the, the champion at the end of the call is like, hey, like, out of everything you saw today, like, and it sounds like you're leaning on, leaning in on this. When you go to your VP or CRO, etc, how are you planning to articulate the roi? And we'll typically get two types of answers. One bulletproof, like X, Y, Z. Great. Yep, I agree. Here's a resource that actually can help you better articulate that as well. Or we might get someone say, oh, I, I don't know. And then you know, hey, I know you have that meeting with your VP tomorrow. What I recommend is like, let's toss that to next week. Let's delay that. Let's get on a call to further go through a business case and better articulate the ROI can help you with that. And this way, when we have that one shot to go into that meeting with the vp, it's going to be successful. Because I know that you need this for your team. You want this for your team.

I love that. I think it's so important. Champion selling. I don't even want to say it's a lost arc. I don't think a lot of people have really, truly leaned into it. But like, we sell to our champion and then we just like, just hang them out to dry where it's like, all right, go, go talk to your mp. And we're like, all right, like here we go. Like, let's hope we do it. Or the opposite. This is actually my personal favorite is when like the sales rep goes like, all right, so like when can we hop on a call to speak with your cfo? And I go, what, what on earth makes you think that you will be able to sell my CFO better than me in a 30 minute session? Right? Like, they just ask for the top and it's like, do you really want that? That's actually gonna make it worse. Right? So I love that. Right. And so then let's go a layer deeper there then. How do you work with your reps to support that champion? Right? So say they do come back and it's kind of like, well, you know, like, I guess I'm not sure, like, I think I'll tell them this or that. Like, how do you help your reps coach that champion and kind of help them buy, so to speak?

Yeah, no, great question. So I think the, the key things is giving them the resources and abilities to, to provide that champion that allows it to be easily forward up. So we have things like ROI calculators that all we need Our champion to really understand is like their key metrics. And then we can automatically calculate that on that call and we can give them a copy and sort of go through the articulation of it with them. So I almost describe it to like, our reps is like, be their sales manager. Like, exactly what I would ask you. Ask them those questions and come from a place of empathy, of course, but that's the key thing is like, enable them with resources.

I think that's so important is like, we talk about this a lot internally in the companies that I talk to and advise and consult. It's like, you know what questions the VP behind the curtain is going to ask. You know, why isn't there like a one sheeter? Oh, I don't know, a video set answering those questions. You know what legal's gonna ask. Give your that checklist. Like, you just know. Right. And they don't. Exactly. I never understood that process driving is important. Now. Quick tip for everyone on ROI calculators. You wanna call us out and I'll get your feedback on it? When you're building roi, you have to build ROI around the worst case scenario you can agree to. Not the best case scenario. And reps always do the best case scenario. You're gonna see a 1300% ROI on our product if you just double your pipeline and increase your show rate. And like, no one believes that. Versus, like, do you think maybe you'll book at least one more meeting per rep per quarter if they were doing video or however you phrase it. It's the worst case. Like one. One per still covers. Right? Like that's, that's where I think with ROI people. I still remember. I won't say the company. I still remember. I went through a process with a company and it got down to this point and they put together ROI potential and it showed like an 1800% increase in pipeline. Yep. I was like, y', all come on, 8. 1800%. What world are you living in that you think I'm going to 1800 my pipeline? I would be a billionaire now. Right. But like, the reps don't connect the dots there. So glad you called it out, but we got to be careful with it. Go ahead. Yeah.

Well, I think a big part of it is just asking that individual, like, if they have an understanding around, like, what target returns their CFOs like, look for. Right. And a lot of times, like in a SaaS business, it's like 1 to 4, 1 to 3. Right. 1 to 4 is great. 1 to 3 is acceptable. So then if you show, if you anchor with one of your case studies to your point and say like, hey, like this is what HubSpot saw. They got a 400% increase. I'm definitely not promising you this, but it does happen. Right? But most CFOs are looking for a 1 to 4 return. We literally only need to improve your metrics by 0.5% for that to happen. Like, how do you feel we could drive towards having that 0.5% increase? Or what concerns do you have like, of us doing that? So I think that's the, that's the key thing. Yeah.

Because that's where you can go take away. Right. It's like, because if you don't believe we're going to get you a 0.5% increase, we don't even show this to your CFO. Like, if we're not even on that level, just scrap it now and just call it a day. And that's where you get that extra buy in from your chip. Like no, no, no. We will at least see that. Great. And let's go through it. So awesome. Okay. We went down a rabbit hole on ROI counts that I think is good and fun. I want to bring it back to a few more things around back to this idea of like kind of those mundane tasks and getting them through. Like I guess what you talked about like motivation and inspiration a little bit. What are things that you do Team Wide. Right. So we talked about the individual. Right. Of like, okay, goals and where they're trying to go and mapping that out. What are some things that you've seen that you've implemented team wide to help the team kind of rally around some of these mundane tasks. Or that is prospecting or maybe that is the cold calling or it's, you know, for the closers, salesforce nodes or whatever else. Like what are things you've done team Wide to kind of like get those things done?

Yeah, I think it's something that I'm trying to get better at. In the new selling landscape with everything being remote, I think it's a lot easier to do team wide initiatives in person. One thing that we are doing this quarter that is led by our director of sales, Jimmy, is really driving the behavior of Selfgen where we almost provide not just basic spiffs like an Amazon card, but like meaningful spiffs where if you hit your pipeline target in this month and next month, then your commission payout is like doubled or up 150% in the following month. So really meaningful incentives like that because at the end of the day, a comp plan drives a lot of, a lot of meaningful behavior. So that's one thing that we've done at Vidyard. But in all honesty, I think I need to get better at doing some of the team wide initiatives in this new landscape. I'm still trying to figure out how to motivate people in a virtual world.

One of the things that we've seen the most success with around some of these things is actually doing them as a group, which, like, is actually a lot easier than people realize. Where it's like, yo, 12 o', clock, we all hop on a zoom, right? We all hop on a zoom. We got the music playing, especially if it's not like, for like call, but even do this for call blitzes. I was like, all right, everyone's hopping on the zoom and then everyone's calling out and you actually still get some of that buzz. You get some of that noise coming through a little bit as well, which is helpful. But like, for the mundane things, getting people together to do it at one time, one block is also big because they're doing it together. So it's like, all right, my tribe is here. But also what I found, like, bonus tip for managers is it removes some of the distractions because if I'm a rep and I'm doing prospecting, but the other 12 people on my team aren't doing prospecting at that time and they're pinging me with gifts or ideas or like whatever else, like it just throws me off or says, hey, we're all doing this together at the same time. You can still do that. You really can still do that remote. And a lot of people like, oh, I just can't wait to get people together again. Or you just bring them together. And the beauty of zoom too is you can share like screens, you can like share like this. Like, reps can pick the music for it, right? And rotate around and go through. And so you also get one quick tip for people too. You can do breakout rooms. So everyone comes together. Then you go breakout rooms, which will let you, as the manager, jump into those rooms and the rep can share their screen with you, show you kind of what they're seeing or doing, and you're part of that action as well. So like bring people together, right? If it's boring, bring everyone together to do the boring task, get it done faster, right? And move on from there. So I like that a lot. All right, last, last question or two here, right? And so around this idea of you Know kind of growth. Right. So you're background is really interesting, right, in terms of like your own growth both at Vidyard, right. Like bdr, AE manager, senior manager there. But you also founded your own companies as well. And I love, I'm going to say this in quotes, I love the step back stories. Right. You were a CEO, you were a founder and an advisor and then you became a BDR and you took this step back, so to speak. Why did you do that? Right. But then how do you think that actually helped accelerate your growth where you are now?

Yeah. Well I'll take you back to you. I promise to keep it concise, but I'll take you back to university real quick. So I think that's where it really started. So in university I was a broke student. I wanted beer money so I can go to the bars and hang out with my friends and whatnot. But I didn't want to have the classic like Starbucks job or whatnot. So I decided oh like everybody sort of doing like Facebook advertising whatnot now. But then you go on a street and you see a million real estate bus ads and it's just like, is that really effective? So I didn't know how to run a Facebook ad at the time, but what I decided to do is message like as many real estate agents I could. So I think I messaged like 500 or like a thousand of them, like tons of them. Super generic messaging, terrible prospecting emails. But I was able to get one response and that was like a local real estate team that was fairly big. They were the number one for Coldwell Banker in our area. And at that time I had zero idea how to run a Facebook ad. But they messaged me back saying hey, we're actually looking to make a decision on this this week if you want to come into our office tomorrow and pitch your stuff. Sounds great. So what I did is I took a udemy course for $27, learned how to run a Facebook ad, showed up to their office the next day and sold them on a 1500 dollars a month retainer plus advertising budget. And that changed my life as a university student. And then I kept building that business up. I got to around like 10 or so clients. And then reading the four hour workweek by Tim Ferriss, I decided to move to Thailand and see if I could live the four hour work week. But when I did that, I wasn't that great at advertising services like actually doing them. So all my clients fired me within the first month of me being in Thailand. So I had like 1700 bucks in my, my pocket. So I decided to like move back to, to Ontario. And from there I started like Lender, which was like a peer to peer rental app. We brought that up to like 10 employees. We got funding by a few different incubators. But we came into that business with just an idea and tried to make it fit into a market which is never a good idea. You need to find a problem and then find a, build a solution for it. So that business ended up failing. But over those two experiences where it's like if you think about it, they're like massive failures. It actually has taught me so much about what I'm good at, what I'm not good at and where I want to be. And those things were I'm really good at selling, I'm not good at services, like actually building the product. And I'm also really inspired by the tech and software world. So that's what took taken me after a couple months of being sad and like, like down on my luck being okay, like no, like I'm going to get into tech, I'm going to get into sales. That's what brought me to Vidyard to be a bdr. And then within the first four months because of all that other experience that I had, I was able to accelerate into an AE role and then accelerate into a leadership role. And now that's what's brought me where I am today.

I love that and I think it's something that gets missed in SaaS a lot is like we over specialized and there's this bubble of like in order to get into SaaS you have to have SaaS experience and all these different things which is not the case. My background's very similar. I was running gyms or a multimillion dollar per year gyms. I was selling fitness equipment and was managing a team of like 15 trainers at one point, 12 enterprise reps at another point and then became an SDR. But same idea. I went from SDR to AE in six months, right. Then to manager in six months, then director and then VP all within like an 18 month span because of that previous experience. And so I hope people like one SDR is in the role right now. Slow down a little bit. It's okay, right? Like this Ralph Barcy actually talks about this. He like mapped out like your career in sales and he like shows like the two and a half years which is long for an SDR is makes up like a fifth percent of your entire career. Like build the skills up, right? But Then people hiring look for people like, like you, whereas I do. They have experience that could translate over. I just love that mindset because so many people are afraid to take a step back in order to like launch. And you were able to do that, which I think is amazing.

So good.

Shit, dude. Like, we could riff on that even more because I think there's so much we could pull, pull from that. But we got wrap. I look up, I'm already 40. These go too fast. I'm still trying to figure out, like, how do I condense them, but I'm not done. I got questions to ask, but the last one is my favorite one. And what I think is one of the most important, right. Is like the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell better have this weird idea, you know, if we took better care of ourselves, if we had more joy, more energy, more fulfilled. Excuse me, more fulfillment in life, the sales also would get better, right? What would your Live better advice be for people listening?

Sorry, my dog is having a scratch right now. But I think the biggest thing that I think I found is like when I first started my career at Vidyard, I was going to the gym every morning, I was working out a lot. And then I sort of fell off that because I was. Had tons of demands at work, super stressed out, et cetera.

Sorry, one second. I'm just gonna put my tickets.

Okay. Yep, it's all good.

This is, this is remote life, right? This is remote life. Yeah.

So I think just to circle back on that, I think when I first started at Vidyard, I'd work out every day, I'd get a lot of exercise. And then as. As my job and my career got more demanding and tough, the first sacrifice I made was fitness and working out. And then over the last six months, I've really gotten back to that training at least three times, three times a week. And what that does is just give you a certain level of mental clarity that you just can't get from anything else. So I'd say as you lean more into your career, as you gain more success and responsibility throughout it, don't let the fitness, healthy eating be the thing that gets sacrificed. Sacrifice other things, right? Like, like have non negotiable time in your afternoons. I think that's a really big key. Before I'd let, I'd work from 7am to 7pm midnight sometimes. Although that will help you in the short term, that's not going to be sustainably long term. So it's important to have that, that level of Balance. And that's something I've really only gotten back to over the last like six to eight months.

I love that. And you know, it's a journey, right? You can get back on track, right? I think that's where as humans so often, like, we get off track and we throw in the towel like, oh, well, this year is done. Next year I'll get back on track. Whereas it could be a decision at any point. And it's funny, I talked with hr, this is last year, I was like, can I make exercise and meditation mandatory? Like, can I make that mandatory? Can I make that a part of the OKRs for this role? And of course I'm like, no, you can't do that. I'm like, why not? Like, I can make cold calling mandatory like just a soul sucking, destroying task, but I can't say, look, in order to earn your commissions, you have to log X amount of exercise and meditation on a weekly basis, right? Like, it's just, we all know it's so good for us, we still just don't do it. So like, what if I made people like, what a horrible boss I would be, right? Like, oh my God, my boss is paying me to exercise. But anyway, different, different conversation. But this was awesome, man. I love this because it's like everyone always wants to talk about the new and the sexy and the shiny and I think really taking time to like, how do we do the basics and get people fired up to do them, I think is a huge, huge opportunity for companies. So where can people get more of you, man? Where can they follow you? Where can they connect? Where are you putting content out so you can get a little bit more of the insights and that you have?

Yeah, just follow me. On LinkedIn, it's Ryan Frampton from Vidyard. And yeah, always sort of chiming into different LinkedIn posts and threads and yeah, feel free to send me a direct message if you ever want to pick my brain or just have a chat. Always looking to learn from other sales leaders in the industry.

I love it. Actually. Bonus question real quick. Did you organize your books and color coded behind you? Did someone do that for you?

So my sister's an interior decorator, so the first thing she did when she came to my my place is just completely take everything out of the bookshelf and throw it right back in much prettier way.

So, so fun. I've wanted to do it for like 10 years. I'm like, every time I look at it, I'm like, nah, not happening. I don't got the time for that. So I was curious if there is a technique there. So awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you the insight, the energy, the ideas here were phenomenal, man. Thank you so much for your time and energy.

Yep, thanks a lot.