Using Data as a Springboard for Improvement with Peter Kazanjy

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 akd and I'm gonna start with a bold statement. Numbers don't lie, but salespeople do. So one of the things that I have experienced in my career right, is this idea around is sales is SaaS a numbers game? And so often when you ask people this question, there's a hesitancy to say yes, when in reality the answer is yes. But what people forget is behind every number is a person, a behavior, a process and a skill. And what great leaders are able to do is not talk about what the numbers are, but how to change the numbers to get the results that they're looking for. And that is why I am so pumped to have Peter Kazanji on the call with me today. He is the co founder at Atrium, the data driven sales management tool. And he and I speak the same nerdy data driven language when it comes to sales and sales leadership. So we're gonna be getting into the numbers, but also more importantly, how to change Them. Peter, my man. Welcome to the show.

You nailed it, man. Preach. I'm just gonna sit here silently while you just, like, proselytize. I love it. It's amazing.

I'm told the only reason guests show up to the show anymore is just for the intro. They're like, I just wanna hear the intro about me and with me, and then I'll deuce out from there. So here's where I'm gonna start, man, with the question is you get to look at a lot of companies. I have been blessed to lead quite a few, but now I'm consulting a lot of actually shocking to me how un data driven a lot of companies are. So I actually want to open with this into why do you think that is what seems to hold companies and leaders back when it comes to leveraging and using data?

Yeah, you know, I think that it's just a new thing, man. It's just a new thing. And, like, new things take time for people to get good at them. Like, I mean, look like you have a substantial background in competitive athletics and coaching and what have you, and the same sort of stuff, like, went down in the advanced kind of professional athletics and is now permeating down to college and high school and so on and so forth. But, like, you know, just back in the day, you didn't have, like, the data capture in order to do, like, you know, suite analytics on basketball or like, you know, football or like soccer or whatever. But how do you do. But now you need the humans who can like, interpret that, right? And like, the same was true. Like, you know, use the Golden State warriors as an example, right? Like when we were doing research with. When we were doing research for Atrium early on, you know, back in 2016, I actually interviewed the head of analytics at the Golden State warriors, right? And this is like, back in the day. And it was so funny. He was like, oh, yeah, we're doing all this great stuff. And I was like, okay, well, like, where do you guys use it? Do you use it to, like, you know, coaching in the game? And so he's like, no, no, no, the coaches don't let us do that. He was like. And I was like, what do you guys. He's like, yeah, well, we do it in training and we use it in recruiting. Now, again, this was like six years ago, right? And it was like, because, like, the, like the gray beards on the coaching staff or whatever at that time were kind of like, I don't know, get out of here with your, like, math kid. Like, you Know, go kick rocks. And so it's just a, you know, it's just a, you know, it's a process over time. This is what we see in our customer base is like, oftentimes the younger managers, right, who are like, who came up with whoop and came up with like Fitbit and came up with Peloton and what have you, they're way more open to this and they're like more, way more data native. Then you have like the older folks who are like, okay, I gotta get on the train. But then you just have people who are like, okay, you're never gonna change and you're just gonna have to retire. So it's just the process.

I feel like when you told that story for the Golden State warriors that like half the people in Revops just, they felt that in their chest where it's like, yeah, here's the data, but we're not going to use that. That's all I can think of is like, hey, we did some analysis. Go. This isn't get out of here nerd science. Get out of here, get out of here.

Get out of here nerd.

Now it's interesting because, you know, as I've gone through this, there are things that I was like, I just figured these were basics. I just kind of thought like everybody tracked some of these things and that actually wasn't the case. To your, to your point, right, like, and so if you think about like people listening, going, well, man, I don't actually know if I'm data driven. What are some telltale signs? What are some signs of, hey, you're using data the right way in your org.

Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing there is, to your point earlier about it's not about the numbers, it's about using them to identify shortfalls and areas of outperformance and then change behaviors and coach appropriately. Because it's like having access to data like a wall of charts, just, you know, shits and giggles is like, it's not useful, right? Like we're here to say, hey, sdr, you are not multi threading sufficiently. Like, and I know this because the number of contacts you're engaging on a per account basis is substantially smaller than the other SDRs on the team. I need you to put time on your calendar to then do blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, I need you to select up like three, at least three contacts that you're going to engage per account that we're going after. And I want you to like, you know, email me at the End of the day, every time you do it or whatever, like it's the changing the behavior. So, so then the question is like, okay, well like how do you do that? And so usually what that means is like having an operating rhythm, right? Like, and we all have our operating rhythms. Like you know, team meeting on Monday and we got our, you know, stand ups on. I'm talking about SDRs first, right? Got our maybe we got our morning stand up, we've got our new noon stand up or whatever and then we got our one on what maybe a half hour one on one like every two weeks or what have you. Cool. So there's your operating rhythm. Is there metrics in that? Right? Like are you looking at stuff like in your prep? Like as an example I have this like, you know my team meeting Google Doc has like a template at the top and I just like clone it out, right? Just like. Okay, cool. Like what were the wins for last week were the metric outcomes? And then it's also information like what new product shift, what did you know, what does CS want to have, you know, the AE team or the SER team know about? But then littered all throughout is just like a bunch of hyperlinks to various reports and various dashboards. And the same is true with in one on ones as well. So I think the important, you know that you're data driven when you're starting to weave this information into your operating rhythm. And if you're not, then it's probably a good indicator, right? Like if it's one of those things where it's like, oh, I have to, I guess now is the time that I need to go over to that dashboard, right? Like if it's not like on your calendar and it's not woven into your rhythm, it's not going to happen, right? Just like in sports, right? Like, you know, after the game we've got film review, right? And like you know, after and then like you go perform like and then maybe what we do is they would like look at stats on. I forget Katie, what was. You're a baseball guy, is that right or is. Yeah, yeah, right. Like, I mean I was a pitcher growing up and so like as a pitcher, like when you're not pitching, what you would have to do is you would do stats on all the other pitchers and then we would review it on, you know, at Monday practice. So again it was just like in the rhythm and if it's not like this is probably a good place to start is just like start putting in the rhythm because otherwise it's not gonna happen.

Yeah, yeah. I love the call out there of like, you know, putting it where people are.

Right?

So in one on ones, in the team meetings, in the huddles. Because funny enough, and I know when I first started saying this to my manager, I was like, my manager's on my team. I was like, I'm. I don't stop talking about results with me. I know the results. I have the dashboard. I need you to talk to me about what's causing the results. And so with the team too, we had one slide with the results. Here's where we're at with revenue. Here's where I'm at with pipeline. We spent most of the time talking about the metrics behind them. What are the drivers. Right? Okay. Revenue's low.

Why?

Pipelines up. Why? And what I would tell my leadership team is if you can't tell me why, from a data perspective, something improved, you're getting lucky. I need you to know, right, why, Right. And so what we joked about is like, don't bring me the data. I want the diamonds in the data. Like, I want the diamonds in there. Like, what's the good stuff coming out of this? And so if you think about a revenue org, we're going to get very straightforward here. What are some of the key metrics they have to be tracking? Like if think about a revenue old org from top funnel down, what are some of those key metrics that an org should be tracking at a team org and individual basis?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's funny that you're. I actually have these like metrics driver, like cheat sheets sitting next to my, sitting next to me on my, on my desk here. We actually, we just like give them out to people. I forget you can actually find them on Atrium's website. You can just like grab them on there. But yeah, I mean, I think so. Like, we can start with, we can start with the SDR team first. I mean, I think the first thing first there is like, there's varying levels of maturity. And so like, you know, if you're not very mature right now, the important thing is to like not overthink it and instead just kind of like start. Right. So like use an SDR organization as an example. Probably the most simplistic things that you would want to be paying attention to, there would be like, yeah, raw activity level. So like, you know, call volume, email volume, things like that. In addition to that, you would want to be paying attention to unique number of accounts that are being interacted with. Right. Unique Number of contacts. Because this is where you know, people can kind of get, can get tripped up is by you know, doing tons and tons of activity, not across enough, you know, at bats, right? Not enough accounts. And then then so like, and those are kind of be like the table stakes and of course your outputs, right? Like you know, opportunity creation or meeting creation or whatever it is that you are kind of kpiing on there. Then one of the non obvious things that people really get kind of tripped up on is not sufficiently paying attention to net new accounts interacted with or net new contacts interacted with. Right? And so because oftentimes what can happen is SDRS can, it's like stale accounts, right? They can have, you know, their couple hundred or like, you know, there are a couple hundred accounts that they're going after and they can just be like, it's kind of like flogging a dead horse. And so what you want to make sure is that there's like ongoing inflow that's going on there. So like new accounts that are being interacted with, new contacts that are being interacted with. So those are all like quantity metrics right there. And then I think you were kind of mentioning earlier, oftentimes people kind of get like wrapped around the axle like oh, it's an art, it's an art, etc. You can't like, you know, you, I can't measure my style here. You actually can, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. There's quality metrics, right? And so oftentimes people kind of just like more volume, more volume, more volume, more activity, et cetera. But what you want to make sure, like the success in sales is all about a high quantity of high quality selling behavior. And so there's also a number of metrics that are really important in order for characterizing the level of quality of the, the, you know, of the behavior in question. So again, go back, going back to SDRs, those would be things like, you know, email reply rate, right? And that's like a good echo. It's like, it's not actually like measuring the quality directly, but it's, it's, it's like an echo of the qualities. Because if somebody has an email reply rate problem, that could probably mean, that can mean a variety of things. It can mean that they're not selecting good contacts, right? They're targeting bad people. It can mean that, you know, their, their subject lines are poor because they're not getting opens. It can mean that their messaging is poor because they're not eliciting responses. It can mean A variety of things, but it would indicate that there's something off there. So that would be an example of a quality metric. And there's others as well. Like, you know, the ratio between opportunities created and the number of accounts that are interacted with is somebody just like spraying and praying and not getting anything to, to boil, right? Like is your batting average low? And then the last kind of quality metric that I really like is the number of activities that somebody that is required by, by an SDR in order to create an opportunity. Right. So it's a measure of again of efficiency. And some of those, like, some of those are more simplistic and some of them are more complicated. You know, one of the things that we really like here at Atrium, like this is why, you know, we, we've invested so much time and energy in making it take like three minutes to turn on an Atrium account and have access to like over a hundred KPIs that are really impactful for SDRs and for account executives. Because a lot of times people are like man, I really want to do those things. But like that sounds like a lot of work. And also like my rev ops team is like totally underwater. And like they keep telling me that they're going to give me these things but they never get around to it. So that's on the SDR side, on the AE side. I mean it's kind of like a similar situation, right, where again the kind of raw volume that you, you would want to be paying attention to there and this is kind of like contingent on sales motion. But is, you know, the, like the, the, the AE equivalent of an SD of like the SDR's email or calling is, is the meeting, right? Like the fundamental unit of, of of customer of like, you know, selling behavior by an account executive is a customer facing meeting. So starting with that, making sure that you're having, you know, like you're measuring the number of meetings that are happening, measuring the number of opportunities that are in pipe for a given, like how loaded they are. Because oftentimes what people do is they pay attention to the pipeline. Like the amount of pipeline that folks have, that's important. But like the number of ops that are like on their plate, are they too high, are they too low? Usually people will say that they're too low, but they can be too high as well. And then it's a similar and then measures around like are people working those ops, right? So like number of touches on ops on a, you know, on a weekly basis or a monthly basis or what have you? And then then like those are all the like really, really, really basic ones. And then you kind of have like the similar thing around inflow, right? So are people having new ops that are flowing into their pipe, kind of like the equivalent of engaging with new accounts? Are people having new ops that are coming into their pipe or are they having like stagnation there and then on the quality front, like obviously win rate is the most important kind of like metric there, but then you can kind of get more granular there and say, hey, are people engaging? Are they sufficiently multi threading in their accounts? Right. Like how many contacts are they engaging on a per account basis? That obviously is also important for SDRs. What are the conversion rates between stages? Right. Especially like once you have like north of five account executives who are doing the same sales motion, then you start having like enough data or enough sample where you can start like comparing people and can say, oh, okay, like this guy right here, he's got like a problematic conversion rate out of proposal as compared to everybody else. Like he's way lower, man. He's probably like not respecting. He's probably like not respecting exit criteria there. And he's getting things into, you know, he's putting things in a proposal way prematurely, which of course is going to like screw up your forecasts and all sorts of other stuff there. Right? So those are kind of like the more sophisticated measures there. Again, these are the sort of things that like, you know, our customers really like the fact that you can just turn it on and it's like ready to, ready to rock. Because a lot of these things are pretty much impossible to create in Salesforce reporting or mbi unless you have like a full blown data team, in which case like, you know, good luck getting their time. So those are some of the metrics kind of pay attention to there.

And I think it's so important as he's going through those y', all, as you're listening, it's important to have those. But you also make sure you're breaking them down for the individual and the team. Because I see exactly like, because I see a lot of. One of my favorite data quotes now that I've been using more and more is the average man does not exist. And I love using this. Go for it.

Yeah, well, we say a similar thing. We say like averages lie because they hide things. They hide. I love it. Keep going.

They hide it. Because if I have a team of 30 and the average close rate is 30%, how many of those 30 actually have a 30% close rate, you're lucky if it's one to two. You're going to have above and below. And yet teams run off the averages all the time.

Preach.

And it drives me nuts. And I'm sure, like, this, this could get dangerous because we are both very passionate about this, where it's like, you hear people like, okay, you need 3x pipeline coverage. And I say, how do you know? Like, well, that should be enough. Well, okay, so 3x only works if your close rate is 33% and your deal size is proper. So do you know those numbers? And it's like, well, of course not. Right? And so it's just hilarious to me, like. Like, because the averages will trip people up and I want to spend on there. There was just two metrics that you didn't mention on the SDR side. And I know you were saying a little bit higher level that I did want to call people out is the connect rate and conversion rate. Those quality metrics of like, okay, how many dials does it take to get someone on the phone? And then every time I get someone on the phone, what's that conversion rate to, like, the meeting? And there's that quality, that art measurements again around it.

Yeah, it's a win rate. It's like, did you win the call? Right.

That's the SDR win rate metric.

Right.

It's like, hey, I got the fear on. How many do I need to get to. To get to that? Yes. And go through it. Right? Because if we look at the flow, it's like, you know, you have your results. Great results have already happened. Those are in the past. I can't change those. Metrics are the lead indicator to a result, and behaviors are the leading indicator to a metric. And so where I want to take this next is like, okay, I start getting this data. What do I do with it? Because you. And you see this, as I know you, you see this more than I do. You'll talk to these teams and they have this data, but nothing's being done. So, like, how do I work with the data to actually then make improvements?

Mm. Yeah. And that's where the. This is why, like, I mean, this is why at Atrium, we call. We call ourselves a data driven sales management solution. Because it's not about, like, kind of hate the A word, like analytics. Because it's like, oh, that's for like, analysts to do analysis over there versus, like, nah, bro, we're here to manage. We're here to manage. We're here to coach. Right? And it's A mechanism. This is something that helps us a lot. Like, helps us do that better. And so then the question is like, okay, well what we need to be doing is we need to be having coaching conversations and doing, and doing the work of management. Right? Like, that's why we're in the big bucks. Right? And so what that means is there's a couple great books that I really enjoy on this topic. There is Corey Bray and Hillman. Sori's five Secrets of the Sales Coach I really enjoy does a good job talking about like having a coaching rhythm. We talked about this earlier about making sure that there's data involved in that. But you can have all the data you want. But if you don't say like, hey, Katie. So here's the. Hey, good to see you, man. Fresh hat. Love it. So, you know, I was preparing for our one on one today and you know, I was reviewing our metrics and I noticed that, you know, I noticed that you had this multi. That the number of contacts that you're engaging on a per account basis is a little light as compared to your peers. Do you have a sense of what might be driving that? Right now we're having a coaching conversation that is informed by data. Right. I'm not coming off the top rope and I'm like, oh, get out of here, you're the worst or whatever. But we're now having a coaching conversation like, oh, I didn't. I am. Oh yeah, totally. I had no idea. Bob, who sits next to me told me that that's the way that you're doing. Oh, got it. So maybe I need to refresh you on the rules of engagement where we have an SLA in our organization where when you pull an account into your name, you're supposed to select, you know, three to five contacts out of zoom info before you start going. Oh my gosh, I had no idea. Hey, great. Okay, awesome. Well, so what we're going to do now is I'm going to ask you to go ahead and do that for the next week. And what we're going to do is we're going to come back together, right? Like, because we got this metric right here and like I'm going to put it in the calendar invite. We're going to come back like, and I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to go ahead and hit this hyperlink a couple times throughout the week and take a screenshot of it and go ahead and slack it to me. Okay. Okay, cool man. Like, I'm on it. We just Had a coaching conversation, right? A data informed coaching conversation where we diagnosed a potential issue, we co created a solution, like we investigated what the issue was and then we came up with a proposed solution which then. And a timeline on which to fix it. Yes, right. And so I think the challenge is like the first step is like doing the data piece. The second step is like having the coaching conversation. And because I mean you see this all the time, man. You get a lot of, especially like SDR teams, a lot of first time managers, 26 years old, 28 years old, oftentimes managing people who used to be their peers. It can kind of make people clench. And so this is why one of the things that we kind of, we saw this across our customers and we realized that there was an opportunity for us to just help them better manage their teams, like get better at management. So we actually work with, I'm sure, you know, Richard Harris. We actually work with Richard Harris. We have a monthly manager bootcamp that we just make available to all of our customers and actually we make it available to the community too. If anyone wants to sign up, it's just@atreamhq.com bootcamp because often like people managers don't like new managers don't get coached on coaching. I know it's kind of meta, right. But they don't get like taught how to have those kind of like coaching conversations and hard conversations. And it's like, like it's not hard for like old fogies like you and me because we've been doing it forever. But it's tough for some folks. And, and if you, and if they don't have the muscle, then like you know, the behaviors aren't going to change. The behaviors aren't going to change and then like the outputs are not going to change.

No. And I love that because it fits right in with what how my leadership teams, how we run. So the managers reported up to me the number one metric per rep and what they were doing about it, right. That was, that was what the manager one on one structure looked like. Like we cover our team performance and all that, but then what they were reporting up. Okay, Peter, number one metric holding him back from his number is connect rate. And then what are you doing about it? And then we actually built out an entire issue diagnosis chart. So metric by metric, what to look for. And what's funny is every leader listening right now. You already have these checklists. They just live in your head, right? If I just, I could bump into you at 2am on a Saturday morning after five pints and go, hey, I have a rep who has a low close rate. And you'd be like, have you looked at this? Have you looked at. You already have a check.

Yeah, exactly. What's the decision tree? Yeah, it's in your brain.

And so we mapped it out and what that also allowed us to do is the reps could use it too. So the example you gave earlier. So, hey, Peter, going to dive into our one on one. Looking at our numbers, the number one issue we're running into, it looks like, is conversion rate. So go through the issue diagnosis chart beforehand and come ready to talk to where you think we need to focus to bring that conversion rate up. So now we were using it on both sides, literally metric by metric. It was like an 18 page checklist.

I love it.

Process. But it helped narrow the focus down, like to get it done.

Yep. Yeah, because otherwise you kind of like, you can kind of feel like you're like lost in the woods. Like, oh my God, what could it possibly be versus like, yo. Okay, cool, you've. Hey, ae, you've got like, it looks like you got a win rate problem here. Oh, okay, cool. Like, what could be the. What could be the upstream causes of that? Well, okay, well, like, let's look at your pipe hygiene. Like, what's our, what's our untouched op situation? What's our stuck op situation look like? It actually looks pretty clean. That's interesting. Okay, cool. You're on top of your stuff, so that's good. Not like Bob over there, man, his pipeline is like pig pen. Right? All right, cool. Let's look at something else. So if it's not a pipe hygiene problem, let's go ahead and look at the conversion rates out of our various stages here. Oh, it looks like we're not getting stuff out of disco, huh? Interesting. Well, let's go ahead and listen to five of your disco calls here. Oh, okay, cool. So you see at the end of call there how you're not like scheduling a next step, how you're not making a contract with them for a next step and you're not getting it on the calendar there and instead you're following up by email. That's the problem. That's the problem right there. So, hey, do me a favor here, Frank. I want to make sure that when you exit, I want you to watch the clock when you're on your calls, and I want you to stop the call when there's still like five to seven minutes left in the call. Right. And I want you to establish next steps right there. And I want you to get a next meeting on the calendar right then and there. Can you do that for me? Yeah, I can totally do that for you. Okay, wonderful. So I want you to do that, but then also what I want you to do is I want you to grab those clips out of chorus or gong right after you're. After you're done, and I just want you to flip them to me right at the end of the day, and we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna stripe a half hour on your calendar at like 5, from 5 to 5:30. And you're just gonna grab those for me because now. Now you know you're committed. Yes. You can't just tell me.

And I love that. I was just going to call this out again. It's. And I want y' all to go back and listen. Every time he goes into coach mode, I want you to listen to what he does in coach mode because it's a mat. This wasn't a coaching conversation session. But, like, it's a masterclass of specifics.

Right.

Backed by data. Non emotional. But I also want you all to catch. He's always asking for some sort of action and call it inspection, where it's like, okay, this is what you're going to do. You're going to send me a couple of these calls. You're going to click on this link. You're going to end the call at a certain point. Right. And send in the proof. Because that's always the thing around this too, is like. And I would talk to my managers about this. I can tell whether you're doing it or not based off if the metric changed.

Yeah.

Did this improve month over month? No. Then I already know either we gave the wrong direction or not. But I want y' all to listen because there's. I love the always. There's always something that needs to be done to show progress, not just waiting to see at the end.

Yeah. And I think that's the thing that, you know, managers kind of get kind of hung up on is especially like new managers, because we. You get this with AES, too. It's like, I call it the, like, little old me. Like, the little old me problem. It's like. But I'm just like, little old me. Like, I'm just little old me. Like, what do I know, right? It's like, no. And like, you do know, right? Like, you do know, so. And like, that's important and that's why you're the manager and that's why. That's why you're the leader. And so like, use it. And moreover. Oh, okay, well, like, I'm just little love me. And then moreover, also like, oh, I don't know. That's like micro managerial to like, you know, tell them to do this specific thing. No, dude, that's. That's your job. Right? Like, I. Yeah, I think. I mean, this is why, like, when we first started hanging out and, and, and I saw your background, you know, in kinesisiology and, and what have you. Like, this is the thing that, like, drives me insane. People talk about like, micromanagement or what have you, and I'm like, micromanagement. Like, so when Tom Brady comes off the field and like goes and like, sits down next to Bill Belichick and they like, you know, talk about like the last like, series right there. Like the greatest football. The greatest quarterback of all time is. Oh, he's being micromanaged right there. No, he's not. He's just getting better. Right. We're just trying to win here. Right.

It drives me nuts, actually. I just had a Great conversation with J.R. butler. He runs a recruiting from the Focus on Athletes. And we were talking about this a little bit.

Wow.

Like the Focus 100 on collegiate athletes getting them into sales. And we talked about this and I was like, if athletes actually brought that mindset into their sales career, they'd be untouchable. They'd be untouchable. Can you imagine in. Even in high school, forget college, even in high school, if you showed up to practice and told your coach, nah, I'm not going to. Your coach said, hey, we're running laps. You said, no, I'm a top performer, I'm not going to. Or even worse, no, I just ride the bench. So I'm not going to. We would never do that to our coach in sports. But it happens all the time in sales leadership. And so actually I want to. This kind of sets up a question here. How so how can I start to ingrain this? You mentioned earlier, like, you know, put it where people are right in one on ones in team meetings. Like, how do I start to create a data driven org? Because it's one thing for you to be data driven or another thing for me to be data driven. But like, how do I get my team kind of bought into this mindset? How do I get my managers bought in? Where we're starting to leverage this more often.

Yeah. And I think that kind of goes to. It's related to what you were just saying earlier about, like, you would never, you know, on a, you know, on your baseball team or on your football team or whatever. Like, one you would like. There's a culture, right? An expectation. You would never, like, when the coach says, like, oh, okay, cool. Like, you know, I played. I was a pitcher. I also played, like, third base, right? So it's like, hey, look, like, you're not getting your butt down, right? When you're taking grounders, I need you to, like, I need you to get your butt down, right, Like. And, like, you would be like, cool, thanks. Awesome. I'm tired of those grounders going between my legs. Like, wonderful, right? And. But, like, there's just an expectation there. And so the. And I think the reason why is because, like, people come up through that. It's like, yeah, that's what coaches do. And. And, like, that's what I do as a player. And so what you have to do is you have to infuse that culture in your. In your organization. So you have to have a culture of coaching. And what that means is like a, like kind of putting it in the water, right? Making sure that you're infused with it. And then do the same thing with data as well. I'll give you some examples of this. So one of the things that we have our new account executives do because, like, oftentimes, like, people are so, like, they clench before they coach. They're like, oh, I don't know if I want to. Whereas if you just, like, if you're constantly doing it, right, like, oh, hey, like, that was a good email there. But did you notice that you, like, didn't, like, the formatting was confusing here, and you didn't bold your call to action here. And in fact, like, you. You put the ask at the bottom instead of the top of the email, right? That's like a very small coaching conversation that you can have with an account executive to make them more effective in, like, their email communication, right? So then how do you have those more frequently? How do you have opportunities for that and engender that? So one of the things that we do in our organization, we actually have this email list that we call Sales Engineering and the account executives, because we only have 15 account executives only. It's actually kind of a lot now, Pete. We had, like, four a year ago, so I'm like, oh, yeah, we only have 15 account executives. I mean, it's nothing compared to patient pop, right, bro? But what we do is we have this email listserv called Sales Engineering. What the AES do is they just cc it and management is on there, right? And it's just like. Like, you don't read every email, right? But it's just like an opportunity to kind of like, you know, dip in. Right? It's kind of like the coach walking around, like, watching, you know, watching drills that are happening. And you just kind of see right there, like, oh, okay, cool. Like, Pete, you need to get your butt down because, like, you know, XYZ or like, hey, you know what, Katie? Like, you know, you're coming off first. Like, you know, you need to be a little bit crisper, you know, coming off, coming off the bag there. And so, like, by engendering more opportunities to have these coaching behaviors, one, like, you have more at bats and then it starts kind of. It's just in the water. Like, oh, that's what we do here. We get coached. Like, you know, it's okay. It's like, it's not because I'm a bad human being and I'm like, dumb or something that, like, you know, Pete or Sean or Melina or whoever is like, you know, giving you some coaching feedback on your email or, you know, overheard your call or what have you. And then the other thing too is that when we see particularly good examples, both like, opportunities for coaching and also, like, good exemplars, we make sure to, like, broadcast it very quickly. Like, hey, guys, this is a great example of this right here, right? Oh, hey, everybody. See how there was this boo boo right here? Like, this is the right way of doing it. And what ends up, it's just kind of like the same way that a coach would be like, hey, everybody, come in. Like, you know, come in. Right. Like, watch this right here. And so if you do that on a recurring basis, it goes from being like, oh, no, here's this. Like, you know, I'm taking the cat to the vet versus just kind of like, okay, cool. This is what we do constantly on the data side. It's like a kind of a similar situation where you just want to infuse it. And so this is one of the things that we do, our customers do quite a bit with Atrium is you just want to make sure that these metrics are getting in front of people. Right. Like, the OG version of this is like the TVs with the dashboards that everyone ignores and whatever the more modern version of that is, like making sure that that's like getting into people's slack, getting into people's inboxes, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Like, maybe they look at like, every other One or every third one or whatever. But what it does is it sets this tone of like, yeah, like, that's what we do here, right? Like, we, like, we are data driven and we have these coaching conversations. Like, those are the actions to kind of, like, change the culture, to make it such that it just becomes like it's just in the water and then, like, good things happen.

And I love that. I'll throw one bonus tip on there, y'.

All.

We taught sales math in onboarding because it's one thing to know what the numbers are. We actually. So it's actually in onboarding, we not only covered the metrics, what they meant and what impacted them, but I would give assignments based off these numbers. Peter ae, how many opportunities do you need based off these numbers? PETER ae what would your ACV have to come up to in order for you to hit your goal based on these numbers? Peter sdr. How many dials did we actually rank math exercises in onboarding? Because I think people oftentimes get intimidated by the numbers. Like, they see them.

Sure.

Like, I can tell you that your close rate, 16%. But if you don't understand what that means, you're like, all right, whatever. So we had, we. We ran math in the onboarding to make sure they understood how the metrics impacted each other. And that was part of it. If you didn't get it, like, you didn't graduate, if you couldn't tell me based off numbers what you needed to do, you were stuck. So we ran that in there. And so Madison, we're already at time. We could go on for, like, three more hours on this. I got one last power question before you can tell people where to learn more about you and Atrium. But, like, the name of this podcast is Live Better Sell Better. Because I also have this weird idea that if we lived better, if we were happier, if we had more fulfillment, if we took better care of ourselves, that the sales would also improve. What would your live better advice be for people listening?

Yeah, that's a good question, because I think I struggle a little bit with that myself as kind of like a bit of a workaholic. I think probably the live better thing would be around kind of that coaching. It's related to the coaching conversation and being kind of receptive to feedback. I think it's extending that throughout the rest of your life as well. I think is really effective. Like, a lot of the times. As sellers, I was talking with One of my SDRs, I took out to beers last night, and as sellers were like, professional Communicators. And one of the things, and those behaviors are really impactful even outside of our commercial interactions. And so one of the things that I tell our staff to do is that they can practice their sales chops like day to day, right? So like one of my favorite games to play is, I call it Speed Rapport. And it's like, how quickly, like, how quickly can I become friends with this bartender? How quickly can I become friends with this, you know, this flight attendant or what have you? Because usually especially in those situations where like those people are, you know, having a, they're in like high stress, you know, high stress professions, maybe people are like not nice to them, et cetera, et cetera. And so what you can, so if you can infuse your, the rest of your life life with these behaviors that like you need to get better at in your professional capacity, then then that can be great because like, then you're always practicing. And the same is true around kind of like getting like getting feedback, asking for it and like, and, and being a, like being good receivers of like, of coaching feedback. So as a rep, you can do that in, in your like, you know, in your day to day make sure that you're not being like negatively reactive to feedback. That's like showing up in the world. And then moreover, as like a, you know, as a manager, you can see about, you can practice that in the rest of your life as well. Like, you know, are you doing a good job coaching with like your friends and what have you? Which sounds a little weird, like I'm coaching my friends. It's like, yeah, but you actually are, right? Because like, you see your friends engaging in like, you know, this, that or the other thing. And like, maybe there's an opportunity for them to change their behavior. And so can you deliver that, you know, commentary in a way that like, is like they're going to receive it and they're going to appreciate it and and so on and so forth. So I would say that just kind of like infusing the rest of your life with these things can make you really can, can make you live better as well.

And I love it because. And it's a different angle, right? It's like we talk about the things that make us great professionally can also make us great personally, right? Asking the great questions, being intentional listening, doing proper discovery, like all of those things. So Peter, my man, this was exactly what I was hoping it would be and then some. We definitely got to do, we got to do a part two because there' still so much we can unpack here. But where can people learn more about you, Atrium, like resources around here? Where can people get more of what y' all are putting out?

Yeah, I mean, if folks are interested in getting more data driven, I mean, atrium is a great place to start. Takes 3 minutes to set up an atrium account, a free atrium account. You just go to atriumhq.com and you just, you know, sign in with your, with your, with, with your Salesforce credentials there and you're like, you know, within five minutes, you're on your merry way with a world class, world class metrics harness there. And then you guys can just like find me on LinkedIn and Twitter. I'm the only Peter Kazanji in the United States, so. And by the way, don't worry about, like spelling it right because Google will autocorrect it for you, so it's all good.

I love it.

My man.

I appreciate you, dude. This was so good, man. Thank you for the insights and energy today. We'll be in touch for sure.

Ram.