The Secret to TRUE Sales Leadership with Rob Jeppsen

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Thanks for having me. Love you. Huge fan, as you know. Love what you're doing. I think I might have been your first subscriber to your Patreon community. That's something I'm proud of, bro. And listen, I want to talk about this leadership thing with you because it's a small group of people that get it like you do, and I'm fired up to just rock and rol. So I say buckle up. Let's get after it, man.

Here we go. And that's what people love about this show, is no fluff, no backstories, none of that nonsense. We get right into the good stuff. So let's do this. First question, that's what I love to start the stage with. What makes sales leadership so hard?

First, I'm stoked that you admit that it is hard, Katie. There's a lot of people that don't realize that. There's a ton of people that I've heard say experience is overrated. Just put me into a manager role because I can do that shit. And so I'm gonna tell you there's two reasons, and I'm gonna do it fast. Cause that's what you want. It's hard for me, so you have to shut me up sometimes, brother.

I'm gonna let you go.

Okay? Number one, the first reason that I think it's so hard is it goes to the fact that sales is the most important discipline in business, okay? Period. I used to say when I would speak to people, katie, hey, if you did, you wanna argue with me about the most important role in businesses? Take sales away for a month and then come back and let's have a chat. Now, some people are actually having to do that now in today's world. They're actually having to come back and say, holy shit, we just took sales away for a month, right? They say, yeah, now you know what I'm talking about. And for a long time, sales was not. Was a very underdeveloped profession. You know, right? Now, guys like you and other places have done a great job helping develop it, and now you can even get a sales degree that was only a couple years ago that that could even start. So sales as a profession is lagging, okay? Most of the emphasis, Katie, has been on salespeople. If you take the most important profession, sales, and most of the emphasis has been on the people. Very little has been on what does it mean to be a successful sales leader? So that's the first reason it's hard. It's the most important, it's the most pressure and very little has been done. You get made a sales leader, they say, congratulations, Katie, you're now the VP of Inside Sales. Don't miss your number. That's about all you get. True or false? True.

100%.

And you think it's fun. Just wait till you miss your first number. Just wait till you miss in there.

Been there, my friend.

And that's another reason why it's hard. Who coached you? I mean, it's hard, right? That's hard. You go back and say, holy shit, what am I going to do? So that's the first one is there's very, very few tools and it's extremely lonely. You feel this pressure and it's lonely when you're winning. People want to high five you when you're losing. All the other parts of the business are talking about you. Oh man, if we just had better sales, right? That happens all over the place. Here's the second reason. It's role conflict. We ask sales managers, sales leaders to do a ton of stuff. So I have a model. There's four levers you can pull that makes performance happen. Lever four is role. And here's why role matters so much, Katie. And for your listeners, this is something you can take instantly. How you define your role is the fastest way to have performance improve or go down. Here's why. Your perception of your role is how you define a high value activity or a low value activity. And your definition of a high value activity drives how you spend your time and what tools you use. So if we have role conflict, that means I don't know how to spend my time, I don't know how to prioritize things, I don't know what tools to use. And we create this problem that's self fulfilling and no wonder sales managers are struggling. Those are my two reasons.

And so yes, yes to all that as a sales leader coming up in this game, like I've run into all of that. I've never had manager development, I've never had director development, and I sure as hell has never had VP development because those are all things that you go through as you come through it. So then, so let's flip this, right? So we talked about what makes it so hard. Let's go to that next question then. Like what are some of the top mistakes you see sales leaders making? Because you know, we can talk tips all day but, but sometimes people hear it and they go, oh shoot, I'm doing that. I need to stop. So what are some of those stop doings that sales leaders you see all the time?

Okay, I started the last one saying first of all, acknowledge that it's hard and that's important. Acknowledge that it's hard. It's not just I'll show up and get right here's the thing. Acknowledge that sometimes we make mistakes. You and I were talking about this. I was talking about it. In terms of mindset, we'll probably get there. As a sales leader, look at your deal as an engine. Your engine has three place three kind of gears, if you will. I can go backwards, I could be neutral or park or I can go forwards. If you can understand the times where you go backwards and stop doing it, I'm with you. I know that took a minute to say that, but I want your listeners to think a second. When am I engine going backwards? And if I can worst case be a neutral or park, you're going to be better off as a result. Fair to say?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So that said, I got a few, a few of these and I probably were saying for your listeners that don't know me, just my background, just for a second, I have led a Fortune 500 company with a thousand reps. I've been the guy that reported to Wall Street. I've also been the guy that helped people get their first million in ARR. And then all of my customers are everywhere in between. And I've interviewed these people. So my perspective, I suck at most things. Katie, this is like the one thing I can speak with with a little bit of confidence. And so I wanted to give that. So I'm not just like some guy theorizing it. One of the biggest mistakes, we listen to our so called thought leaders that have never coached or led a team. That's a problem, bro.

Yes.

That's why they should be on your patreon. That's why they should be listening to you, is you're actively doing it right now. A good common friend of both of ours, John Barrows, that we both love deeply. One of the reasons John Barrows is a guy to listen to is he actually sells every day. He uses up. You actually lead every day. So the things that you and me are going to talk about are two dudes that are actually doing it with some level success. Yeah. Yes. Now here we go. So the first one is role conflict. The fastest way to change performance. Like I said, there's four levers you Pull. The one that changes things fastest is, do you have good role clarity? So my first thing that I like to say with sales leaders is, what's your job? I was just interviewing a good buddy of ours, Scott Lease, for my podcast again. He's one of the guys that's of kind gonna come back like you are. And he said the same thing. You know, what's your job? So I would challenge all of your leaders, say, what is my job? Let's have some fun. Katie, I'm gonna flip it around and ask you a question.

I knew it was gonna happen.

What's the role of a salesperson? Role of a salesperson is to what role of salesperson?

See, my real answer to this or the market answer. My real answer to this. Okay. Real answer. The goal of salesperson is to make the person they're talking to want what they have.

Love it. So that's a good role. So we could call it lots of different things. I love the way I'm not surprised you gave a better answer. Okay. Want what they have. Let's just make it easy to do one word. We'll call it to produce. Sell. Okay. That's why we have a sales team. You got to fund the company. If you don't like the more button, get another job. Okay. And so that's easy. Make them want to buy what you have.

Right.

And there's a lot of things going to it. Now let's go up a level. What's the role of a sales leader?

I wish I had my managers on here because I grill them on this all the time. You could ask them this, I bet they'd all get it right. I believe the role of a sales leader is to make their people better.

Bam. Now I agree with you. And here's what happens. Usually when I ask that question. I've done this a big. I was speaking to a group of 2,000 people once, and I did that. What's the role of salesperson? They're like, sell. Produce. Like produce. Everybody agrees their job is to sell. When I say, what's the role of manager? I hear things like manage, help with deals, coach. It's all these words. I'm in a wind tunnel of words flying by me. And we have to have clarity that you're right. It's to make them better. That's the job. You know, here's here. So we'll have some fun with this. When I do this, when I speak. Yeah. The role of the salesperson to produce. The role of the sales leader is to reproduce so, yes, I want you to reproduce with your reps. Not like that, Okay? I want you to reproduce skills so they can therefore produce and become leaders. And so if you say my job is to reproduce, again, I'm simplifying. But it's a way of trying to be memorable. And so that's why I start with role. And so that's one thing is don't allow role conflict to happen. Sometimes you're going to have to push back, get good at delegating. Don't try early young leaders. One of the biggest mistakes I see, Katie, is they try to take too much on. They want to be. They want to be Atlas. I can take the world on my shoulders, man. You know, give it to me because my shoulders are strong, and they probably are. But it's going to come at the expense of making your team better. And so that's the very first thing I see is they do not demand role clarity. If you do not have role clarity, you're gonna have a hard time prioritizing what you do. Okay, that's the first one. Second one, I think you'll be. I want to get your take on this one. I've seen this. This is a very relevant one for your listeners. This has happened again in the last 90 days when Covid started, and we've had all kinds of other things happen. Everybody went from being an inside sales team that might have been some remote and some in or a field sales team that are outside sales team. Everybody's 100% remote now. Okay, you want to know what I've seen come from leaders as a result? The return of spreadsheet leadership. Okay, yeah, you're laughing because you know I'm right, dude. Yeah, it's a huge mistake. So I have three levels of leaders. There's the rookie, there's the amateur, and there's the pro rookies. They just look at the numbers, man. It's just pure data. Are you. You know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna base you on the. On the. On the spreadsheet, and here's what I'll tell your listeners. 0% of the reps on your team woke up in the morning hoping to be compared to the average on your company. The only person that they should be trying to beat is themselves. Yesterday you beat yourself yesterday. That means you got better, then you're winning. And I'm seeing the return of the spreadsheet because we don't know how to connect with people. So that's the second one. I'm going to give you A third one, then I'll stop and I want your take. The last one is misunderstanding what coaching is. I think coaching is a fat word. It's totally misunderstood. You know Keenan, you know Gong Gong. Keenan and us at xvoyant did a study together about a year and a half ago where we talked to close to 3000 reps and their managers. We asked the managers, how good are you at coaching? 83% of them said we're awesome. They self identified as awesome.

Yes.

Then we went ask. You're laughing because you saw the study. We flipped it and we went and talked to the reps that worked for those people. Only 48% of the time did they say coaching ever happened and only 13% of the time was it helpful. So if you're a manager, you need to ask yourself, don't. I don't want care. I really don't care if you think you're good at coaching. My question is, what would your rep say? Are you having one on ones that they're thanking you for and they refuse to let you skip? I don't know if you want to talk about that, but those are my top three that I thought of.

Well, so what scared me the most about that data? Because I think there was one other stat you guys had in there was. So the reps said they were only getting coached 48% of the time, but it was like 90% of managers said they coached.

That's right.

Like, like, so that gap. So let alone like managers thought they were good. But there was another 50% of managers that thought they were coaching, that their reps, like, you don't coach me. Right. Like I'm not getting coached right now. So that's a perfect segue to one of the questions we wanted to dive into. Let's break.

Before you go there, before you go there, bro, I want to, I want to hit this. I don't want to move off this. So you got, I mean, you got this killer group that's listening to you right now. Again, kudos to everyone that's listening to you because you're a guy worth listening to. And what this means is those people that said they're coaching, they weren't lying. There wasn't comp tied to this. That was a blind anonymous study. They really did think what they were doing is coaching. And that's why when you ask me the top three things, misunderstanding of what it is, they're doing things that they think are coaching, but it is not coaching and it's not helping the reps and it's not fulfilling that primary role of helping them get better. And so, again, you should ask yourself, okay, I think I'm coaching, but am I really? And I hope we'll break that down a little bit today.

I mean, that's the very next question I'm gonna jump around here where this goes. What is the difference between coaching, teaching, training, and managing? Because that's where, you know, they read a book or they hear a post, it's like, oh, go coach your reps. You're like, I already coached my reps. Yeah, I am. And they don't even think they have to change anything. So there's coaching, there's teaching, there's training, and there's managing. Let's define those.

So let's. Let's start. You know me well enough. You saw in action when you and I kind of were both on that USA versus uk. One of the things I like about you is we both know how to speak in sound bites. Okay, so I'm going to speak in a couple sound bites here, and then I'm going to let you break it down. Number one answer, common knowledge does not equal common practice. And so if you want to get better at this, start with that. Common knowledge does not equal common practice. Training is about getting common knowledge. Coaching is about getting common practice.

Yes.

And that's a soundbite. And just take it that way. Training departments, what's the role? What's the objective? It's to transfer knowledge. It's to get a badge, it's to get a certification. It's to get an email that goes and says, I, you know, compliance. It's done. Common practice is a totally different thing. And so they're not even. They shouldn't even be in the same sentence, Katie.

They shouldn't. They shouldn't. But people think it's the same. That's the problem is they think training is coaching. Or even worse, they think telling is coaching. Hey, Rob, I heard your demo. This is how you need to ask for the close. And the rep goes, oh, okay. Manager walks away going, man, I'm a good coach. And the rep walks away going, what the hell was that? And there's our divide. There's the 95% that think they're coaching and the 13% that are like, I get good coaching.

So if you just say teaching and training, teaching and training difference are two different things. Training is just sharing the knowledge. I would say teaching is one level above that where you actually try to connect to people and make sure that you're like doing something that's relevant to them or has a personal level of understanding. But coaching is when you get break. You start deconstructing and saying, now you take this thing that you have. How do I make it something that becomes part of your DNA and how you approach things. One of the things I love about you that your listeners may or may not know yet is your ability to teach questioning. I think you might be the best teacher of questioning. So that's teaching it. But you don't just stop on teaching it. Then you have them practice it with your flashcards and so totally different. You should ask yourself right now, I hope they're taking notes. What are my things that I do to gain common knowledge? List those. Okay, now come over here. What are the things that I do to gain common practice? Every single company will be different. If there's one thing I've learned. No two organizations will have the same sales ecosystem. So what that means is your sales coaching has to be a framework, but it has to be flexible enough to be able to create common practice in whatever it is that's required. And by the way, I'm going to go out on a limb and say in the last 90 days, if you're a sales manager that has not found some adaptations for your sales process, you're probably letting your team down. And so you need to be saying, what are the things we do to connect with our customers? Now to me, it's that simple. I don't need to break it down and say framework of teaching and framework of coaching. Common knowledge versus common practice. It's real easy. I mean, if you're doing a ride along or you're listening to a gong or you're doing a zoom meeting with someone, you should be able to not just take notes on were you good or not. It's what are the elements that you see in common practice? And you need to be able to deconstruct all that. How do I practice? How do I pre call plan? What should I observe in the call? And then how do I circle back and give feedback and then create an improvement plan on what we're going to do differently? And that's what I would say maybe the most important part of coaching is in this common practice. I'll give you another way I look at it. Katie. The most important question, I would say not maybe the most, but arguably. Arguably the most important question. Kay, Arguably the most important question that you should be able to answer as a sales leader is what is my plan to have every single member of My team improve by at least 10%. If I can have a 10% improvement plan for each member of the team, and if it's the same for everyone. You screwed up. I mean, so Katie is the manager, and Rob might have a problem in how he qualifies, and someone else might have a problem in. And maybe problems are on where. That's another problem with coaching. Katie, everybody assumes coaching is about fixing something that's broke, and it's not. It's going from where you are to where you want to be next. Doesn't mean something's broke. That's one of the biggest misconceptions. I got to fix broken things. No, it's fuel the individual journey. And so I would challenge each of your leaders to say, if I don't have a plan for each one of those people that we mutually are working on, I'm letting them down. Because then my reps have a right to say, the hell are we meeting for? You already have the pipeline. You know, you got that? And I would argue that pipeline is maybe shouldn't be part of a coaching conversation, depending on what you're working on. I mean, there may be some things you're actually coaching. So maybe. I don't know.

Yeah, well, but pipeline is a number. You coach behaviors. You don't coach numbers. Right. I'm probably coaching you based off what your numbers are.

I got something cool that I want to give you on that now.

Okay. Hit me.

This is one of the places. So I've got this. I wish I should take my. I'm going to. I'm going to take. Because you. This. You can see my whiteboard right here. I want you to see. It's crooked. There's a structure on there. You can see the end says outcomes, and the first one says focus. Okay. Here you go, dude. Rookie sales coaches, they just coach outcomes. That's what they try and do. That's what they focus on. People who have been in the game for a while understand that it's behaviors that change outcomes. Behavior. Here's where it gets fun, brother. So this is like a breakthrough I've had in the last little over a year that I think you and your listeners will dig. So behaviors drive habits and patterns. Habits and patterns drive outcomes. Fair to say. Yes, we get to behaviors. And when we just coach behaviors, Katie, we bump into the willpower of the person. We bump into their willpower. Think of it as like a fitness trainer that's trying to get them to change their diet or change their workout plan.

And.

And you're trying to overcome and say willpower. I'm going to do this for a little while until I get here and then I'm going to maybe go back to what I used to do. I found that there's two other places that you might want to think about if you want to be a really world class coach. Go past the behaviors because behaviors are fueled by what you believe. Behaviors are fueled by your beliefs and your beliefs are fueled by your thoughts and what you focus on. And so if in your one on ones you can start talking about what they believe is possible. If you can in your one on ones be talking about what they believe is in their future, if you can start having them really be intentional about what goes to that mindset and be the kind of leader that really is intentional about fueling the mindset and stripping out the negative things. If you can coach to the power of thought, it's easy to change beliefs and then you have behaviors to become a natural byproduct. But if you only go to the behaviors, you will bump into willpower problems. Something I've learned.

Boy, we could go for five hours on that. So I mean first off, agree or disagree? Oh, 100%. So this is why. So I mean even in my one on one docs, right, we have number one metric that you're focused on the coaching plan to affect it and where it is trending. Reps are bubbling that up. But what you said there about, you said this word that I love and I wish more of the industry understood this and even I run into this as a leader because I don't get to control everything. Is the word belief, right? If they don't believe they can hit their quota, if they don't believe they can get better, if they don't believe these things, they never will. I have watched, I have lowered quotas before and watched revenue go up.

I love it, dude. I freaking love it.

Just because they realize they could because and I coach my managers on this too is like, okay, this is the goal. We got to go Kaizen, right? Kaizen style, right? You know, small continuous improvement. It's like, alright, so a rep will use dials as an example just because it's easy. A rep supposed to be making 60 dials, they're making 25, right? First of all we got to find out why that is. What's the focus, what's the mindset, what's the belief? What are the obstacles preventing them from doing it. We work on that. But then the next day the goal is not 60 the next day the goal is 27 and then the next day it's 29 and then the next, like you got to make it also the steps of improvement believable in order for it to stick. So then let's jump to this year, right? Because also too, we're falling into our own trap here. We're talking about how to develop the reps, right? You coach the reps, you practice with the reps. You have this, let's go level up. How does a leader develop as a leader? Because I don't know about you when you were leading the sales team, but I don't remember getting any one on ones as a vp, I don't remember getting any one on ones like a coaching session as a director. I'm like, okay, we're going to role play today. What happens when your team misses goal?

So you got to own it. That's the first thing that I'll tell you. Expect nothing from your organization except for pressure. Expect that. And I hope that's not bad for me to say. I tell this to leaders all the time, man. I, I personally coach a lot of sales leaders that are our customers. We have literally thousands of leaders on our system. So that's one of the messages that we take on expect nothing. Expect nothing. Now I will tell you, I'm going to go back to when I really had my big breakthroughs was when I had the most pressure and so be okay with that. When I had the most pressure is when I had the biggest breakthroughs because I realized I was on my own. And so there's so many things that we could talk about there. Katie, of own it all. One of the things that I believe is there's going to be if you're on the hook for everything, then you want to be responsible for as much of it as possible. And so say to yourself, I am in charge of how good I get at this. And so the first thing that I would say is invest in yourself. And if you, you know, as a person that's a subscriber to your Patreon community, that's a good step in the right direction. I would tell you to go find people that can help you get away from just the pressure. I hire a coach, I have a guy that helps me. It's a very important investment for me. Mostly my coaching that I get is around mindset because I feel so much pressure from so many things. I found that if I can be very careful about this, then you can't do anything unless you think about it first. I mean, it's my favorite topic. I got two stories. If we have time. I'll tell you at the end because you're a sports guy. One of them, I think, will blow your mind because you're a basketball guy. And that's the first one is you own it, and you got to be willing to invest in yourself. It's dollars. It is dollars. Okay. But it's maybe more important. It's time. So you're gonna have to say, I'm gonna have to create time, discretionary time. What do I do for me, what am I reading? Am I creating systems? That's one of the things a good friend of both of ours, Ralph Barcy, told me when he was a guest on my show. He quoted Scott Adams, the creator of the comic Dilbert. Okay. Dilbert said winners have. I'm sorry, Losers have goals and winners have systems. Yes. And so you're gonna get a goal set for you as a sales leader. My question is, are you gonna be a winner and you're gonna create a system? Which takes me to the second thing, Katie. It's just do. And so I. Doing creates confidence. You're gonna do some things wrong. Okay. So you're going to have to create a culture. One of the things we haven't talked, because I think the most foundational thing that the great ones do, we didn't get into some of the stuff that. What do I see the great ones do that the other ones don't? The great ones create a culture. And there's a lot of things that go to this culture. In fact, you said it on my show. You'd rather have average people with a great culture than terrific salespeople and a shitty culture. Right. And you said that. I love that quote. And so we should create a culture where there's an expectancy of improvement. And me as a leader is going to invest in you. And sometimes I'll get it right and sometimes I get it wrong. But create a system where you get feedback. And it's not just outcomes. Outcomes are important, but you got to have other ways of measuring your success. It can absolutely be done if you want to. The only reason I figured it out, and the only reason you figured out, you didn't have someone teach you. You figured out because you did it. And sometimes you got it right and sometimes you got it wrong. But you had a culture where you were allowed to get it right and get it wrong. People realized you were doing it for them. Same thing for me, kd. I mean, if I was to show you my early day coaching stuff that I did years ago, before you were doing what you're doing, you crack up. But I had people coming around from around the world wanting to be taught how to do this kind of stuff. But now that was crap. Why were we going to do it that way? So invest yourself and do So I.

Got something that you'll love in my own personal evolution. So I don't talk culture anymore with my team and I don't talk values anymore with my team. I only talk virtues. And I learned this from actually Ben Horowitz. His latest book, what you do is who you are. Yeah, I've got on my stack right here. What you do is who you are from Ben Horowitz. And what he talks about is, you know, cultures is like a collective mindset. Values are what people believe. Virtues are how people behave. And so when you are building a culture, you actually have to build it back to yours around beliefs and behaviors. So this past year we rolled out the sales org virtues. This is how we behave in this org. And so our virtues, right? Take care of the person and salesperson. Seek perpetual growth. Seek perpetual growth. Own your shit. Help YTP yourself, team and prospect. Ecm. Every conversation matters. Plan and play to win and celebrate the process.

That's badass. I hope that your listeners wrote that all down. I hope that they wrote that down, dude. That's goals.

Well, so, But I don't actually, I don't, I don't want them to write this down because these are ours. To your earlier point, you said like every org is different. These are our behaviors. And what's beautiful about this, we can measure this. I can sit down. I can promote or fire rep based off these things because I can measure it right? And so if we go to like that next level of like what you said, some of the best of the best doing. You said culture was foundational. What are some of the other things that you're seeing the best sales leaders do to get the most out of their teams?

So the things that you do to get the most out of teams. I mean, I'm glad that we are taught culture, cultures. I mean, it sometimes is a buzzword, bro, but it's not a buzzword. I mean people are a reflection. This is maybe a good place to start. I believe this is a jepsonism, man. I believe that people are the world's greatest reflectors. And if you like what you see, look in the mirror. But if you don't like what you see, also look in the fricking mirror.

Okay.

And so I think that that's super, super important. So I've already talked about culture, some of the things inside of that before I move off. I just, I want to give them a few things. I don't want to just give them a buzzword. So every culture will be different. But I have found four things that are pretty common. Number one is that the culture has some element of collaborative work. Collaboration, I think that's important. So you should be looking for how do you make a team bigger than the individual? I think another one is, I call it demonstrate. So I have all these eights. It goes back to an NXS on the 80s when I was a high school kid. Collaborate is the first one. Demonstrate. You better be able to show a clear pathway to success. Either because you can do the job or you got people that are doing the job. But we want to make sure we're able to demonstrate. This is what good looks like. If there's an area that I see sales leaders sometimes miss is they don't know how to show what awesome looks like. Can you model awesomeness? And it's not just you showing, but you want them to be able to model awesome back to you before you just have them start just practicing on customers. Okay. So I thought you might like that one.

Yes.

Third one is we got the last eight that I'll give you a Celebrate. So collaborate. Demonstrate. Celebrate. It's not just celebrating wins and losses. Celebrate improvement, celebrate, you know, people's steps along the journey, whatever it is. And then the last one is expectancy. People should have a culture of, you know, I know what to expect and, you know, I'm not going to be caught off guard. This is the measurement today and this is the whatever tomorrow. And if we do change, I can expect great leadership. And so those, those are four things. Next thing I would say is systems. I already mentioned it, but it's one of the things that I see, man. I mean, systems, the great ones have systems, they don't leave stuff to chance. They want to be predictable, they want to be repeatable. So that's in there. Another one that I see is vision. One of the biggest mistakes and one of the flip sides is the great leaders are focused on what's coming, not where they were. In fact, this is one of my coaching best practices that I give people. I have my little seven deadly sins of one on one coaching. And one of them is we focus backwards instead of forwards. My rule of thumb is you get 10% to talk about the past and 90% about the future. And so if it's a 30 minute one on one, you got three minutes to talk about what happened since I saw you last, because I got 27 minutes I need to spend on helping you get 10% better. And so I see that as the last one. And then the last one I would give you is mindset. The great leaders help people build mindset. They don't just talk about mindset, they get into it. They build it. They know that it's the thing. And so I'll finish with this question with that, and I hope I'm not rambling. Katie. I feel like I'm talking too much. You know, when you push play with me on these topics, it's hard to stop me now.

And no one's going to stop you here. I'm going to. Because I'm also throwing questions at you that are off of what you're saying. So just talk about that one. How can a leader help develop the mindsets of their team? Right. Like, how do we not. How do we make sure mindset isn't fluffy? How do we make sure that there isn't the 9013 gap where 90% of leaders think they're helping their team with mindset and only 13% of reps actually think they do?

That's right.

How can leaders. I'm gonna rephrase the question. How can leaders make it obvious that they are focusing on the mindset of their teams?

So I got to talk in sound bites because we want this to be punchy and easy to follow. I would get on a soapbox here and I would give an hour, two hour deal.

I know, I know.

So I'm gonna do my best to be, like, really clear. The first is take away the negatives. That's the first. And there's five things. I'll tell you what they are like. I'm gonna send you a sound bite that you're welcome to share if you want to.

Okay, great.

So here's the first one. I challenged all these people that I'm working with for seven days just to try this thing. And they're taking it to their teams. And the feedback's been amazing. Number one, this might seem crazy to you. Take out national news for seven days. Just take out national news. Okay? And that stuff is wired to trigger you. And you know it is. It's designed to trigger you. Look at some local stuff, keep 20 minutes, what's going on? Take national news out. I won't get into other reasons why it's supposed to trigger You. And they're damn good at their job at triggering people. Okay?

Yes, they are.

Number two, be careful the music that you play. You know, many of the music, much music that we listen to, they tell stories. Stories are powerful. But so many of the stories are sad. Like, you've heard the joke about country music, that if you listen to a country music song in reverse, you'll get your job back, you'll get your wife back, you'll get your truck back, you'll get all these things back that you lost. Okay, so good. And so it's the reason that people like those songs, bro, is because 97% of the people have weak mindsets to your point that you talked about. And they connect to those negative things because it feels familiar to them. Be someone that finds. And I'm not even talking about genre. I don't care if it's rap or whatever it is everything you can find positive lyrics. When you put those headphones in, be really careful what you're putting into your brain, okay? And so that's the third one. Gossipers and complainers. Knock that bullshit out. Get it out. If you're talking to people that are gossipers and complainers, don't talk to them for one week. For one week. See what happens when you don't have that? I could talk for a long time about your become who you talk. The average, okay? Third, fourth. If listening to complainers is bad, it's 10x worse if you're the complainer yourself. So don't talk shit to yourself in your head, okay? Stop talking shit to yourself in your head. The stuff that you worry about. I've heard you say it. I've heard it said a slightly different way. I heard you say it. Fear is the enemy of creativity. I've heard it said slightly different. Fear is the enemy of creative energy. And you want your creative energy to be around what's coming, not what might come. Right? Which takes me to the last one. I'll give you a funny story to set it up. Okay? Bill Buckner, do you know who he is?

Oh, yes, we do that between the legs, man. Let that ball through. He blew the series.

Boston Red Sox, they're about to best the Curse of the Bambino. Game six against the Mets. He's a Hall of Famer, bro. A lot of people don't know this. He's a Hall of Famer. Routine ground ball goes through his legs. Do you know what he did 19 days before that?

I do not.

You ready for this? Yes. 19 days before he was interviewed by a sports magazine. And he said this shit that I'm about to say. He said it out loud, dude. He said, the dream is obviously to have a great World Series and win, and win the World Series. But my nightmare is to let a routine ground ball go between my legs and lose the World Series.

Oh no.

And he said, but I think most of its fate and there's not much you can do about it. Okay? He said that shit 19 days earlier. And then he let it go through is like, here's another one. You're a basketball guy. I'm Utah jazz guy. One of our most famous players of all time, Pistol Pete Maravich. Familiar with him?

Absolutely.

Okay. A lot of people think he might still be the guy who had the best handles that ever played. Okay. I don't know. I agree. But people around here say that. Here's the deal. When he was in the NBA, he said, he said this shit.

Katie die.

He said, I don't want. This was reported in LA, okay? I don't want to have a 10 year career and die at age 40 of a heart attack. Do you know what happened?

I do.

At age 40 he died in a pickup game from congenital heart disease. He said it. So thing five, I told you four things. Thing five, stop talking shit in your mind. Stop talking shit out loud. Okay? You do those five things and take them away. Then you will go from reverse to neutral. So do that for a week. Now a couple of other things. Last thing I'll tell you. There's a lot we can say. Here's a way that you can develop mindset. Have you heard of Earl Nightingale? Maybe old school dude. Okay. Yeah. Back in the day, before there's tv, he was a radio talk show host. People would huddle around the tv, around the talk show and listen to this guy. He has a very famous speech that every one of your listeners should write it down. Google Earl Nightingale. His speech is called the Strangest Secret kd. Here's what he said. This is timeless stuff. Your mind is like a farmer's field. And he said, if you plant on one row of the farmer's field corn, and then on the other side, you take the world's most dangerous poison and you plant nightshade and you cover them up, you fertilize them both, water them, let the sun come down. On the right, what's going to grow? Corn. Right on the left, what's going to grow Poison. Does the earth care what you planted? No, it returns what you plant. So he said, your mind's the Same. If you plant healthy stuff, you're going to get it to come out. If you plant poison, it's going to come out. So that's why one of my favorite tactics to develop mindset. You asked for a tactic. I gave you a long answer. But I think it's worth it because I want them to visualize. When you talk shit to yourself, write down these words I am, and then put a blank. I am. And put a blank. Be very careful what you put in that blank. If you say I am frustrated, you're going to be frustrated this year. If you say I am in the worst economy of all time, you're going to struggle. If you say I am Katie's top dog this year and I am taking his job when he gets promoted, you probably will be. If you say I am my customer's best advocate, you will be. So I in one on ones, work on knowing what are the I am moments. And then we build strategies to help make sure those IM moments come to fruition. And so that's a really good way. So if you don't know the IM moments of your team, you're letting them down because you're not building those. There's a lot of other things to do, but that's a really easy one to do. And when I do sales kickoffs, we talk about that. It's awesome for me to ask the reps, send me your IM moments, and then I get all these I am moments. And I'll check in with people throughout the year. How's it going? And what you think about is what you'll do. As a baseball coach, I learned don't ever tell a kid, don't strike out because that's what they'll do. You cannot do something, Katie, unless you thought of it first. So build that mindset. I hope that helps.

I love it. And actually, the Patreon group should sound very familiar, because I think it was two weeks ago I posted the quote that said I am are the two most powerful words in success, because whatever you say after them becomes true. I am frustrated versus I am successful versus I am a hard worker. It's even what I do with my kids. And they've studied this with raising children is making sure you recognize the behaviors back to that of like, don't just say you're so smart. You say you're such a great learner. Don't say you got a great. You got an A on that test. It's you really studied hard for that and you separate the result from the behavior And I try to do the same thing with my team, right? It's like, yo, like, you got creative on that deal. Not. You closed the deal. I know you closed the deal. I saw that. That's why I celebrate the process. That's what it means to us is like, can you recognize the things that led to the results and do that the right way? So then let's make a little, little bit of a shift here, right? Because, you know, I couldn't have you on if we didn't bring up one of my favorite words that has been creative. Because I'm a word creator like you are. This is why we get along so well. We create words, we create sound bites, we create things that, like, we also don't remember saying. And someone has to tell us back. They're like, oh, you said that. They're like, oh, yeah, I guess I did say that. Talk to me about dollarizing, bro.

Dollarizing is my favorite skill to build in a salesperson is my favorite skill, okay? So here's the thing. I'll tell you what the most bullshit thing you can do in sales is, is start with roi. No one believes that roi. Return on investment. Everybody believes it's a big I and a little itty bitty R. Okay? And I see it happen all the time. People try and sell me on ROI and I just never want to talk to them again. Here's what dollarizing is. Early in the sales cycle, you need to be able to dollarize. That's my word. Or put a framework around what is the value of going from current state to future state? What's the value of solving this problem? What's the value of achieving this result? Not the ROI I'm going to bring has nothing to do with my, with my product. If you were to solve that problem or if you were to make a change or if you were able to make an improvement, what is it worth to your company? And so it's really simple. You do it early on once you find out what it is. Okay, so what is it? So, like, I sell coaching services. There's, there's a lot of ways that coaching can be. It could be around turnover, it could be around win rate. It could be around percent, any quota. I trained my team how to have dollarizing conversations, right? So let's, let's, let's percent. Let's, let's, let's pick win rate. So I'm talking to Kevin and it's. So the thing he's worried about is my win rate. My win rates in the low 20s and okay, so now, number one, what is it win rate. What is the value of it today? 22%. Question three, what do you want it to be? 35%. Oh, okay. Then I say, what's the value of the difference? And we take your average deal size and how many reps and we go through a thing where we figure out that's worth x million dollars immediately. And then we say, what's the value of the difference over time? Call it three years. And then I can look at you and say, so how big of a deal is that patient pop? And you can tell me if it's big or not big. If I can't tell why it's big, then I need to keep talking. And then I need to be able to say, what is it? So that's it. Find what is it? What's the value of it today? What do you want to be? What's the difference of the value immediately and what's the difference of the value over time once you get some things? They say, I can see why you want to talk to me because, by the way, you probably know this. Your reps already know this Buy sign. Number one in any sales pursuit is that they give you time. If they give you time, you're a busy dude. The people you're selling to are busy dudes. If they give you time, there's either a problem that they hope you can help them solve or a result you can help them achieve. You need to find out why that result or that achieve matters. So you got to dollarize it. So I see why you're saying it. So then you ask three urgency questions after you dollarize what it's worth. What happens if you do? What happens if you don't? Besides me, who you talking to? Yes, you do that early in the sales process before you've ever told them what you do. I don't ever want them to talk about my product. I don't ever want to talk about my services. I want to talk about is there a problem or something. I even go so far when I'm dollarizing Katie, because I still I love. I'll never not sell. I'll always be sells, dude. Yes. And I'll tell them, listen, we're in the business of solving problems that matter. So if we can't find a problem that matters, you'll never have to kick me out. I'm gonna leave. I'll exit gracefully and we'll be buddies and I'll come back later and see what you do. People aren't Used to hearing that from a rep. Okay, and so dollarize it then urgent, get that urgency. And then here's what's so great about it. When you start getting an understanding of how big the problem is that you're solving, when you get to the end, you and I both know everyone's going to try and push back on how much they pay. You know, you've already cost justified or whatever you want to call it. But there's nobody that buys enterprise software without trying to twist the washcloth and get a few drops of water to come out. And so when they come back and say, you know, Katie comes to me, he's like, hey man, I love everything you got. We think your team's right, we think your software's right, we think you're great. But we just, you know, you're too expensive, we don't have the budget or, you know, we think you're too expensive, someone else is less. And so I'll say, great. Okay, well, before we get into that, Katie, I thought we talked about solving a $30 million problem. Wasn't that what we talked about? And you'll say, well, yeah, so we're talking about $100,000 investment to solve a 30 million dollar problem. If you think that's too expensive, what is the appropriate investment to solve a 30 million dollar problem? Tell me what the appropriate investment is. Shut up. It's not me saying, let me see what I can do. I go back to how I dollarized and say, what's the appropriate investment if we're the right ones to solve it. That's why you picked me. You picked me because I was cheapest. You picked me because I was best. Is it not 30 million? Because if you want me to solve a 5 million dollar problem, I'll solve that problem instead. Right? You'd be amazed at how much that has to say. I'll go find your money.

Yeah, and so what I hope people grasp from that too is the dollarizing has to stay front and center through the pitch, through the follow up, through the negotiation, through the objections. Right. Unfortunately, a lot of salespeople stop selling at the demo. They stop selling. Everything else then becomes follow up in negotiation and contracts and question answering. They stop bringing that problem back up. Right? And so making sure that 30 million is brought up every.

Every time, Every time. So when you get back on, they've introduced you, all the people, hey, glad Kevin for putting this meeting together. Hey, we're talking about solving a 30 million of a dollar problem. Here's why. Right here's how we're doing it. Okay? It's a big deal. We're gonna help you do it fast. We're gonna help you start seeing it quickly. That's why we're here. Kevin, is there anything you want to add to that before we get going? He's like, you know, boom, you're right. That's exactly how you use it.

That's gold there, y'. All. I hope, I hope you're grasping that because most people don't dollarize ever, right? They throw out these ridiculous. And this is also something too. Sales REPs build the ROI calculator. They don't get the prospect to do it. They say, okay, let me take your numbers and I'll put together a business case for you. And then they wonder why it doesn't stick. Now I gotta ask this question because this is what popped in my head when you were talking. Where is the gap in the sales leadership industry when it comes to what we're talking about here? Because we all know that if you could take your close rate from 20% to 30%, if you could take your top of funnel and give it a 15% increase, it leads to millions of dollars and multiple increases in valuation. And the best way to do that is not another tool. It's having better salespeople. Where is the gap? Like, I would assume, like, there should be a line out your door for the next 12 months. Like people begging to get in because of the impact you can have on their org. But that's not the way the sales world or sales leadership industry works. Where's the gap? Is it egos? Is it people just don't understand? Like, why isn't that just common knowledge? And I'll finish it with this because I get grief sometimes. Like, people say, well, kd, you shouldn't be leading a training or like, messaging isn't where you should be putting your time.

And I go, well, I was like.

Where would I have a bigger impact than like, so where's that gap? Like, what, what, what's missing out there?

That's a great question. And I'm not going to pretend that I know the answer to all those questions. I ask myself questions like that all the time. Like, one of my big customers called me yesterday and asked me that same question. Like, with what you've done here, why is there so few people, like, addressing this space? Right. I'll tell you who that was. It was waste management. They have 3,000 sales reps on our system. And I did the seminar, leadership seminar for their people so what do I think? Number one, it goes back to one of your first questions. Nobody is used to funding things for sales leaders. They just aren't used to doing that. If you look at where budgets go, we spend dollars on salespeople. We're used to that. But we also have fatigue on that. Think about the. You get hit up. You, Kevin, you must be hit up all the time. You must have everybody in their dog trying to sell shit to you guys over there. And there's, there's, there's tech fatigue, there's vendor fatigue. There's a lot of people will say, yeah, we probably need to do this, but right now we just. I don't have the energy to do this something else right now. And can you dollarize it? Sure. Can you build a business case? Sure. But you also have to have an environment where people say I'm willing to do it. So when I say KD that sales hasn't changed right now, here's what I mean. People still have to say they have a problem. They still have to have it be dollarized and say it's worth solving. Right now they have to pick patient pop is the right place to do it. And then they got to do step four, which is the hard one. And I'm willing to go marshal the political and the financial resources to pull it off.

Okay.

Yes. And sometimes that last one. And that's why it's so important to have such a good business case. So what do I think? I think that people are coming this way. I think people are starting to see that it's not enough just to have a big fat sales sales stack. I think people are realizing that the impact from a leader, like when you roll something out to a sales rep, kd, you hope that you could implement it to one person. You'll get one to adopt. But the reason that smart companies. And again, I'm grateful. My customers are all market leaders. My customers are not followers. My customers are the intels. They're the people that are leading the pack. So they're used to saying we'll do something because no one else has done it. Right.

Right.

They want to do that. They realize if you're leading eight reps, which again, for those of you, I think the magic number is about eight is what I think the magic number is. If you get north of 8, it's hard to coach. If you have 6 or less, 6 to 8, 6 to 9 is pretty good. If you have less, you better be carrying a bag, dude. I don't know what else you're doing. If you're. If you're. You know. And so they're realizing the multiplier effect. If I got eight people, if I can have one good leader have an impact on eight people. It's. That's the angle that I like to talk about. So I'll give you an example. This is a good answer. And I hope I haven't talked too much. I feel bad.

No, you're good. No, Go, man, go. It's value, baby. It's value.

So I was on the phone. This will. This will be good for your leaders. I was not on phone. I was in the headquarters for. For one of the largest electronic companies in the world. You'd know them. I just signed them, so I can't say their name yet. Someday I'll tell you who it is. And they have 8,000 salespeople. Okay. When I was on site with them in their headquarters, they were very proud of telling me about their one approach to make sure they didn't have 8,000 ways of selling their product. Right. B2B Sales. Org. That was cool. I was like. They went into detail on how they trained and taught their people to sell one way. And so for these 8,000 salespeople, they have close to a thousand leaders. It's like 975 leaders. And I asked the CEO, what is your approach to make sure that you don't have 975 ways that you're developing these 8,000 reps? You like that question? You're the question ninja. Is that a good question? Yes.

I love it. I love it.

It's so good. You know what the answer was? I'm sure it was nobody. Crickets. And the CEO had everybody turn and look at him. And then he turned and looked at the CRO. And she was like this. And that was why we started to dollarize the impact of that. Okay, I love it.

I just, like, that's selling through questions. You didn't have to. You don't have to make a pitch. You don't have. It's just like, oh, well, how are you doing this thing?

We're not. Oh, can we say, can we explore what that's worth? And so then I started dollarizing. I went to the whiteboard and I dollarized five points. And then I said, prioritize these five points. I have five things. We've dollarized any one it sounds like would be worth buying our stuff. Will you prioritize the five for me? So then they got into this big debate on how you. I was laughing dude, they're in there prioritizing these five. I'm like, I got these guys, man.

Got them.

Got them.

See everyone listening real quick. Sales is so much fun when you know what you're doing, when you know what you're doing. When you can sit back and say, you know what? I know I have this group before they do just the fact that they are arguing over which priority. Like, it's when you know what you're doing and you're selling. And like Robin, I will probably do a follow up on questions, but when we say selling through questions, Rob wouldn't ask that question if he didn't have a way to solve it. So he's already associated with the answer. He didn't pitch anything. He said, well, how are you making sure he wouldn't ask that question if he didn't have a way to solve that question? So that's how you sell through questions. And I love it. So. All right, we got to jump to our last. It's all good. We got two final questions here. If you got time for me here, I got you. Okay. The first one is one of my favorites, right? So we've been riffing now for almost 50 minutes, right? Say they forget everything except for three things. They forget. They forget it all. They blacked out. They threw back too many whiskeys because they're having too much fun. They forget everything. But three, three things when it comes to either sales, leadership or getting more out of your team. In terms of results, what would those three takeaways be?

So good. So I'm going to pick my favorite. I can't not pick dollarize. It's my favorite skill. You got to dollarize. And so if you get good at that, it overcomes so much else. So I would say that number two, I would say get really good at role clarity because role clarity will drive everything else that you do. Third, you becoming a great sales leader is up to you. Find the mentors, find the KD's, find the groups to join. Invest in yourself. Take ownership of your leadership success and lean towards doing, not sitting back wishing, and you're going to end up being just fine.

I love it. That's frameable right there. Y' all write that down because that is what if you go and do those things already, results will be better and you'll feel better too. Which is the perfect segue to the last question. And it's always my favorite. And so I end with it because it's like I want that lasting thought to be there. The name of this podcast is live better sell better. Right? Focusing on the person in salesperson which people always seem to forget. What would your live better advice be? What would be that parting advice on how to live better for fulfillment, focus, energy. Like, what would be that parting advice to all the people?

People listening. So you already know this. My philosophy on this is actually quite similar to yours. You and I are similar cats, man. I'm just a senior citizen and you crack the code sooner than.

I'm just trying to. I'm just trying to catch it, baby. I'm just trying to catch it.

You cracked the code sooner than I did. So my version of what you say is do your best work so you can live your best life. Listen, we have a certain number of professional career cycles in our professional career limited. It's a finite number, man. You have a finite number of professional cycles and how you spend them drives so much other parts of your life. And so here's what I would say on the live side, understand how what you're doing in your professional career is getting you to where you want to be as a person. Because if you can understand what that framework is like, I had a great mentor. Tell me in this 10 year period of your life, it's about finding out what you're going to be great at this 10 year period of your life. It's figuring out how to be the best that you can possibly be at it the last 10 year period. It's maximizing the commercial value of it. And so I would say if it's going to be live better, it's understand that it's not work life balance, it's work life integration. And understand how what you're doing now is going to take you where you want to go. And if you haven't stop climb the mountain, go sit down and figure out where you want to go. Get the people who matter most to you involved in it. Make sure that you're doing that and if you can make sure that the cycles that you're spending now are getting you to a place you want to go, you will find that the ride is amazing. You'll find the challenges are worth it. And there is nothing that you can say I can't handle because it's part of a greater plan. That's how it finished.

My goodness. You know what my only disappointment is on this episode? That we don't have more time. This did not disappoint. This checked all the boxes, people that can see the video. I've got three pages of notes that I'm taking during this. Rob, my man, where. Where can people get more of you? Because people need more of you in their life. Where can they find you? Where can they, like, follow you? Like, where can they get more of you?

So, x voyant, you know, we have a podcast, the sales leadership podcast. If you like this conversation, I have conversations, like one you're having with other great sales leaders. Check that out. Our podcast is good. I'm on LinkedIn, though. I'm kind of backing out of that a little bit, like you are, and. But, you know, those are the two places I would go to see what I'm doing on LinkedIn. I would go to the podcast and check out. If you want to be a great sales leader, it may be that we can help you do it at scale. If not, we still have go to our resource center. Our resource center for sales leaders is badass. We have video snippets. We have templates. We have all kinds of stuff. We give away 90% of what we do for free because I love the sales profession so much. So go to that resource center, download our stuff, and hit me up. I'll answer any question that you bring.

And he truly will, y'. All. So, hey, thank you, Rob. Thank you for tuning in. This was amazing. My man. Mind blown as always. Thanks for being here with me.

Thanks for having me, bro.

Hell, yeah.