The One Thing Companies Get Wrong With A Sales Team Every Time with Vaughn Sigmon

So, you have a high-performing salesperson on your team who is smashing targets left and right. You wish your other salespeople could perform at the same level. And so, the next logical step would be to promote that person to the sales manager, right? Not so fast. Promoting that person may be the worst thing that you can do to them and to yourself. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, Customer Experience Expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode. My guest today is Business Mechanic Von Sigmond. And today, we will unpack Ineffective sales performance? Ineffective sales performance? Marc, you were just talking about my best salesperson. Stay with us and we'll uncover some common misconceptions about promoting your top salesperson. Heck, your top employee. But before we get into it, I just want to do a quick shout out to those of you who take the time to leave comments and reviews. I know that when you tune in, you think, Wow, this is great. Well, at least I hope you are. You do think that, right? But it takes intentionality to come back and put your thoughts down on a review and some comments. And I really appreciate when you do that. So, thank you. I was a victim. It's hard for me to admit it, but I was a victim. It was so hard. It's one of those things that you never, ever forget. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. It was back in 1980. I had been working at my job for a year. Marc, you are incredible. I want to promote you to management and you can teach everyone how to work just like you. At the ripe old age of 19, I was promoted. I was now responsible for leading my friends and I was given No tools to succeed. I really learned how to be a manager. Notice that I didn't say how to be a leader. But I learned by sucking so bad. I was always in trouble. I left the job a year and a half later, which was unfortunate. So that brings me to our Question of the Day. What is your process for promoting your high performers? I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead And share this episode on your favorite platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put your comments down. Love for you to be part of that conversation. Today's guest has made it his mission to turn the tides on ineffective sales leadership recruitment. Von is the co-founder of Results Driven Leadership. He is a leadership development expert, podcaster of the long-running show, The Business Mechanic, and author of The Roadmap to Difficult Conversations and the soon-to-be-released The One Thing All Sales Managers Must Know: How to Recruit, Interview, and Hire Great Salespeople. He is a former executive with CarMax, the world's largest and most respected company in the auto industry, and is a Fortune 100 Best Places to Work. His motto is, no matter what business you're in, you're in the people business. Von, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

This has been a long time coming, Marc, and I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

I am really tickled. Before we get into today's topic though, could you tell us a little bit more about how you serve your clients, maybe even who they are?

So, I'm a little bit of an industry agnostic, if you will. I work with manufacturing companies, software companies, aerospace companies, textile companies, Tobacco companies. I work with a variety of different industries. But the commonality of all this is most often they've grown to the point, they've scaled to the point where they're now promoting people into management roles. And those managers may not be performing at the level that the business owner expected it to be. And just like your story, which I had a very similar background, They're to figure it out. And as I often say to people, most companies are willing to spend more on training their forklift driver than they are training a new manager on how to manage and lead people. So, I work with companies to fix that problem. And there's all sorts of byproducts that come out of this lack of management understanding and acumen and leadership knowledge. And it can all be easily fixed with an investment in helping their managers learn to manage people.

Yes.

Ta-da!

Yes.

That's what I do.

And so, in your experience, is this something that's brand new? Is it an evolutionary thing that's been happening in the business world? Why does it keep rearing its ugly little head today?

Yeah, and it's getting worse and worse, frankly, Marc. And then, The statistic shows that disengagement, the levels of disengagement with employees in the workplace is at its highest levels in history since— and I rely a lot on Gallup for this kind of information. They're one of the premier companies to track all this. You know all about them. But I started managing in the '70s. I just dated the hell out of myself. So I started managing in the '70s and it was a problem then. It was a problem in the '80s. It was a problem in the '90s. Gosh, in the noughts, it was a problem. But I've seen it, the same problem, take on different forms. Today, we have an ability to understand people, what drives people, understanding behaviors, the complexity of driving motivations within individuals. That if you can make it up and try to figure it out, it's trial and error. And trial and error has rarely worked except for a very small group of people who have figured it out quickly, or they've had a mentor who has been able to course-correct them through some of their mistakes. But it's a very common problem. It's been around forever, but it is escalating in its impact on business. And the difficulty of being successful in business today.

I can't help but wonder when you said that you started back in management in the '70s. Of course, I started in management in the '80s. And at the time, the mindset was always kind of that carrot and sticking. It was always, I'm the boss. If I want your opinion, I'll let you know what it is. If I tell you to jump, don't ask me why. Ask me how high kind of mentality. And of course, when I entered the workforce, I mean, unemployment was at an all-time high back in the early '80s. And I can't help but wonder if that kind of seasoned our mindset as leaders that we didn't need to be trained because all you had to do is just shut up and do your work.

Yeah, I call that command and control.

Sure.

You had to have an employee base that would just do what you told them to do. And I think there was a time in our social history that that worked to a degree. But then the Me Generation came along. And there's many people who are going to be listening or watching this that aren't familiar with the Me Generation. But we started looking inwardly, and it was not so much about helping others. It was, hey, it's about me. I need to show the world how successful I am. And people became much more egotistical.

Totally.

To just call it what it is. And giving people orders, not allowing any collaboration, not tapping into their intellect, getting their opinions failed miserably. And that's where it was a leadership change along with the need to start managing people who had a very different mindset around what they wanted to accomplish. So, yes, there was a carrot and stick. There's still a carrot and stick, but it has to be approached in a very different way. And if you're not tapping into the heart and the minds and the behaviors and the traits, if you don't even understand what they are, you're going to have a very tough hill to climb. in leading your team to success. Or here's what— and I'm going to pontificate for a minute because I'm very good at that. Here's what happens statistically. All internal promotes of managers fail in their first 18 months. Managers fail in their first 18 months of promotion. The problem is they don't know it. Because they stay employed. What— and this is going to be relatable to a lot of people listening to this— what they end up doing with their failures, they blame others. It's hard to hire people. These people are lazy. We need better tools. We need better processes. It's all externalized. And the fact of the matter is, a great deal of what the challenge they're facing is, is coming from how they're communicating, interacting, leading people. You fix that alone and you can fix a lot of the fires that you fight all day. But how many managers get up in the morning and say, you know what? I'm going to go do as crappy a job today as I possibly can. I want to just drive everybody crazy by being an a-hole all day long. It doesn't happen. They go in, they put their nose to the grindstone, and they work their fannies off to do a good job. But the problem is, is they're applying their energies in the wrong direction. Why? Because they don't know what they don't know. And how many of them, frankly, ever crack a book, ever go to a seminar, ever say, hey, it's me that needs to change. It's not all these externalized— because again, back to the me generation and what has transpired since then, it can't be me. You know, self-care and self-love and all that. Self-esteem protects us from all of that kind of internal reflection. And there's— I'm certain that everybody watching this is someone who is eager to get better. And congratulations. I'm very, very happy and proud that you're doing this. But you're such a small percentage of people who are trying to get better. So many people just put their head down and they work hard, applying their efforts in a very ineffective way.

So, the big question for me then becomes how does one self-vet their capacity and their capability? To your point, unless you trip over something. So, you're at a conference and you walk into a session about leadership. And you're like, oh, I thought this is the milk line conference. And you end up sitting there and you go, oh wait, he's talking about something that I have no idea about. And of course, this is the focus of this podcast, is I want to bring to the forefront things people might not know. So, how do we know? How do we self-vet ourselves as far as the capacity that we bring to the forefront?

Yeah. So, many people arrive at the role of leadership because of functional expertise. They're very good at doing a job. As started talking about in the beginning of this, those are the people get promoted. Then they're not given the tools to learn their new job. They may be very good at accounting, but managing accountants are a whole different thing. So, they're thrust into that role. And so, what happens is you have to be able to recognize that there are outputs that are created by your lack of leadership and management ability. So, goals aren't being met. There's a high level of turnover. There's— people don't participate in meetings. You're constantly firefighting because of people issues. Your boss is coming down on you because you're constantly late or they're not pleased with what you're doing. Those are all the signs that are very clear that you've got a challenge, that you need to know more about what you're doing. And working harder is not going to fix it. And I always feel for these managers who don't come across this aha moment that, well, I'm just going to work 60 hours a week. I'm just going to work 70 hours a week. I just have to work harder. And if you catch yourself working an enormous amount of hours that your people aren't good enough to do the job, so you have to take it away from them, do it for them. And you go home and you say, oh my God, nobody knows how to do anything. Everybody's like— If you're saying any of those things, friends, look at yourself. Inigo, take a good look at the mirror. You haven't failed. You just don't know what you need to do. You have not been given the tools and the knowledge that is required to be successful in your role. So, it's not a failure on your part. It's a misapplication and it's a lack of knowledge.

Right. Yeah. It's a lack— to your point, you don't know what you don't know. What's interesting is Anna's on watching live. She said, hello, I made it. And Anna's background is very much similar to that where when I came in and started working with Anna, she had been promoted into leadership roles, but she had never been given tools to be able to be successful. And people can always poke into your point. People will always blame everything except for themselves because to them, everything should be common sense. So, the big thing, especially, and today we're talking specifically about sales leadership. How do we know that we have poor sales leadership versus, oh, it's the economy. Oh, it's the client list that I got is no bloody good or whatever. How do we know that the problem is sales leaders, not necessarily the surrounding symptoms that we're seeing?

Well, to grossly oversimplify, if you're not hitting your sales targets, your existing accounts aren't growing, You're not bringing in new accounts. All the things that business owners and CEOs are looking for in the way of sales growth execution is just not happening. And once again, this sales manager generally is a very good excuse maker. Again, I don't blame them. They've got nothing else to work with other than externalizing it. And so, if you're not making your sales plans, if you're not growing, if you're constantly missing your targets, If you don't have all the tools in place and see that your sales team is executing a process, that they're following a sales approach that is consistent, there's some standards around that. That if many sales organizations deem their salespeople lazy because they jack around all day and all they do is goof off, if you're saying any of that as a business owner or CEO, You got a sales management problem because great teams, those CEOs with great leaders never say those things.

Yeah.

They just don't.

So, we talked about this idea that we're promoting people. And the logic is if we promote people from within that because they're really good salespeople, shouldn't they automatically know? Because I mean, sales is one of those people industries. Shouldn't they know how to drive other salespeople? I mean, Don't salespeople getting like people who are really great high performers in the people business of sales, wouldn't they automatically be really good managers and have like the keys to that success? He says, playing devil's advocate.

Well, so conceptually makes all the sense in the world. In reality, it doesn't work. And I got to tell you, I've got counterparts all across the globe I've got a very good friend in Ireland. I've got a very good friend in Australia that I've trained to follow my systems. And they get the same results that I get in that they recognize that, can great salespeople become good sales managers? Sometimes, given the right tools. But through, you said the word earlier, if you believe that through osmosis, they're going to be good sales leaders. You're as wrong as you can possibly be because here's the simple fact. I use DiSC, the DiSC assessment extensively in my business. It is a deep look into the soul, the behaviors, the driving factors of humans. This is a human issue. And it's innate traits versus trainable Traits or trainable skills. So, the traits that it requires, your God-given ability to be a salesperson, is very different than the traits you need to be an effective sales manager. In my studies, and I did this for a number of years, I've promoted hundreds of sales managers in my corporate experience before I retired. We never promoted our best salespeople for a multitude of reasons. But when we attempted that early in our creation of the business, it just did not seem to work. As we dug into it, we found that there was a very different profile of someone who was going to be an effective sales leader. So, a sales leader has to be consultative. They have to be a servant. They need to be much more empathetic. They need to be a coach. Many sales teams are managed through my term I used earlier, command and control. And the worse the sales are, the more the command and control gets ratcheted up. And you know what the byproduct is? Less sales, less motivation. If you think that's ever going to work, friends, come talk to me because I can prove I can prove to you that does not work. So, let me give an example. Somebody to be effective in sales needs to have things like self-accountability, organizational skills. They need to have critical thinking skills. They need to be very results-driven. They need to be very rejection-proof. They need to understand a sales process and follow a sales process. They need to be optimistic. Those are the sort of things that make a salesperson effective. Successful. If we take that same format and look at sales managers, they need to be very good at team development. They need to be results-focused, but they need to be team results-focused, not me results-focused. They need to be more interested in customer service. They need to be very into coaching and training and helping and supporting. They need functional expertise. But those functional expertise are utilized to educate a salesperson or help a salesperson land or close a deal or give them guidance. It's all about somebody else, not you as the top dog, as the salesperson. And right there, I close with that because one is a very me position. One is a very we position. That's the distinction between the two. And on the— anybody familiar with the DiSC profile? Our most effective sales leaders were higher on the S, the stability, the people to follow a process. They're very team-oriented. They're less about themselves. They're about everybody else being served, not themselves. They have a heart of a teacher. They have the heart— Of a servant leader. They may know how to sell. They were probably average at selling, but that's a very different skill set. And I often am hesitant to use sports analogies, but I'm going to use one right now. Arguably one of the best basketball players of all time, Michael Jordan, became a coach and failed miserably, became an owner of a team. It's failed miserably. He had natural-born talent that he could not, and very few people with a lot of natural-born talent, which is many of these top-level salespeople, can't unpack the steps, the traits, the minutia of being good at selling. They go in with a chest thumper and say, just do it the way I do it and it's going to work. Selling is an intricate dance that has to be performed. And it's different with every— this dance is different with every partner you go through. And every salesperson has to find their way. Yes, they have to have structure. There has to be expectations. There has to be a process that they're following. But they're going to have to have the leadership, the leniency of being able to make it their own. They're going to form their way of being successful. A good coach can help them understand what their strengths are, what their opportunities are, play up on their strengths, minimize their weaknesses, and take that structure and make it more effective for them rather than just do it the way I've always done it. It's going to work. I told you to do it just like this. Here's the script. You just read it like I wrote it. And when the sales manager is walking by, they pick up that script and they read it perfectly. When that sales manager is out of range, they go back to whatever they're going to do, which may or may not be effective. So, that's the downside of command and control is they'll do it in front of you. They just, as soon as you're out of sight, out of mind. So, it's a different skill set. It's a different internal trait that you have to possess to be successful. That's where you have to understand those differences. You probably need a little— expert advice on that. That's the book that's coming out. And once you understand that, you get that aha moment. Now I know how to have effective sales leadership and thus an effective sales team, because I have to have the right human in place, not the right experience in place.

I love that. I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into some of that, including some of the implications of When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning?

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Welcome back! I am speaking with renowned business coach, Business Mechanic Von Siegman. You've unpacked a whole bunch of things for us today. And ultimately, we talked a little bit about how do we know if we're bad sales leaders. But let's talk a little bit about the implication of having The wrong people in the wrong position doing exactly what you're saying. They're just doing the best they can, but their best is not good enough.

Yeah. So the implication of that is it certainly retards your growth. It is going to weaken your relationship with your customers. It is— you get a new product launch, you're going to have all these hockey sticks in sales. There's going to be good months and bad months, and you can't figure out why this keeps happening. Well, you can tie back— a good month is usually associated with a promotion or a product launch. And so, anybody with something new can pick up the phone and get excited to go visit a bunch of people and get excited about that. It's new, it's brand new. I'm going to drive my sales up. But then, it's a great sales team has a steady upward trajectory. We're trying to avoid these hockey sticks of valleys and peaks and valleys and peaks of sales performance. And if you're experiencing that with your sales team, you got a sales leadership problem. If you have a customer retention challenge where your customers just seem to be dropping off, especially your big ones, that they find somebody else to go to. There's 3 elements to every sale. And this has to be understood, that are exactly the same with every sale. There is the product, there's the need, and then there's the salesperson. Or if you are the salesperson, it's you. You can have the greatest product in the world, you can have all the need in the world, but if that salesperson does not have the knowledge and ability to transfer the information in a way And is compelling, value-driven, fits the needs, makes it about the customer, builds commitment through their conversations, has a great relationship-building approach. That's all part of the structure of a good sale. You're going to have a challenge selling things consistently.

Yeah.

And so, it's all the fractionalization of your sales that one's good at this, one's bad at that, one's good at this. It's all over the place. And you're like, why can't I just have a team of people that do it all? Oh, well, that's some of the implications. And frankly, every client that comes on board with me, they fall into 2 classifications. It was a founder that was the salesperson. Now they don't, they're too big now to be able to continue to be the best salesperson. They need a sales team. That's what I help companies do. We build that out. Or they're realizing all these things that I just described. They've thrown up their hands. They've come across my podcast. They've read a blog. They've heard about me from one of my other clients. They say, send me some help. And sometimes, I can turn around this sales manager if they're willing to be turned around. Very often, it creates a demotion or an exit for this sales manager because it's just gone on too long. If you then put the right person in place, Gloriously, things change.

Yeah.

I was in retail for a number of years. It's no different than having a great or an ineffective sales team. I could have a problem store that every reason in the world, it couldn't make its numbers. You know, shoplifting was high. They constantly had turnover. The store looked dirty all the time. You know, all these problems that you're looking for. And they had all the excuses. There was competition, it's the weather, it's road construction, it's all these things. If I made one change, I could fix that store almost overnight. I take that manager out and I put a good manager in. And miraculously, 100% of the time, the bad store became a good store.

Yeah.

It's the same thing with the sales team. If you're having struggles with all the excuses, you change one person, one person, and almost within a few hours, you see a dramatic change in the outcome.

It's interesting because you mentioned the word bad manager. So, I just want to make it clear that a bad manager is not necessarily a bad person. It's just a person who's not capable of doing the work. Can we talk a little bit about the expectation of a sales leader versus the needs that salespeople want from their leaders. What is the expectation for the people who are supposed to be following this person? What are their needs?

So, salespeople need guidance. They need coaching. They need help. Most highly effective sales managers are a resource of knowledge, a resource of ideas, a resource of, have you tried this? Have you thought about this? You want me to get on the phone and help you out with this? You want me to see if I can get you a better price on that? Whatever it is, they're there to help someone else. That is the most important element of a great sales manager. Plus, the ability to be able to carry on conversations, earn the respect, carry on conversations, one-on-one conversations and group conversations. They need to be able to build a team atmosphere. But those teams are made up of individual components called your individual salespeople. So, you have 2 different conversations and be willing to make the time, create the time to have these conversations. They need to have a weekly one-on-one where they talk about what worked last week, what isn't working, what else do you think you could be doing, having a dialogue. with a salesperson each week and each month to get their opinions, get their thoughts, get them to self-reflect. It is amazing if you approach these conversations with an open mind and with a truly helpful mindset. I'm here to help you. But you always allow them to speak first. Simple.

Yeah.

How many people really do that? What do you think's happening? What can I do to help you? You ask questions, and that's a skill set that we can teach anybody. I'll give them the doggone questions. Here's the questions you ask. And it is amazing how through these conversations, these salespeople can self-prescribe the cure. They know it. They just need somebody to slow them down, think about it, and bring it out. And it's amazing, Marc, you know this, I'm much more likely to go make a change or accomplish something if it's my idea versus my boss telling me what to do.

Yeah.

If I want to go do it, much more likely to do it.

You just hit on something that I've been supporting as far as the change in management styles that are required in this new age. And by the new age, you hit the nail on the head. It used to be we wanted people for their hands. Then, we wanted them for their brains. And then, we wanted the hands, the brains, and now we need their hearts. And the only way to do that is really take the management role and encourage managers to become more like coaches. How magical is that?

Exactly right. We need to manage less, lead more.

Yeah. Personally, I believe that. And to your point, nobody comes to work every day saying, today, I'm just gonna suck for no apparent reason. I believe that everyone brings their own superpower to the forefront. And if we're good at what we do, we can really tap into people's geniuses. What would you suggest organizations do to tap into and prepare their high potential people for leadership roles, if at all?

Yeah, so let's identify who those people are and then assess them somehow. Let's make sure based on outside of just their functional expertise, their ability to perform a task very well, Do they have what's internally needed to be a successful leader? There is a leadership or a management-level behavioral-type interview that needs to be performed. You need to also assess them through some form of scientific approach. I use DiSC. There's dozens of them out there. And then understand what behavioral profile is going to be successful in management and which ones aren't. What are the elements? And DiSC is typically somebody, if they're managing a frontline team, it's going to be a high Di. If it's a role that needs a lot of servant-type leadership, they need to have a little more S in them. If it's one that needs to be more analytical and studying and processing information, they need to have a fair amount of C. They have to have— everybody's a combination of all that. But it's understanding what's my benchmark. How do I know what my benchmark is? You've got one good manager, and maybe it's you. Do a DiSC profile, get your benchmark, and then that becomes the comparison. You use the scientific comparison of behavioral backgrounds, behavioral tendencies, their traits of individuals to understand, do they meet the needs of this role or they don't? If you take somebody, for example, and I'm not losing the audience, that is a super high S with very little D in them, they're going to suck as a manager because they're very conflict avoidant. They won't say what needs to be said. They'll be walked on because they're about everybody else. They don't have enough demand in them. They won't say what needs to be said. They're going to be held back. And so, we don't want a super high D because those are the ones that are going to be beating everybody over the head with that all day and expect everybody to work to the They do, and that nobody can. It's 3% of the population. So, it's understanding the proper mix based on the management role and the people they're going to be leading. And you need to also understand as you advance in this, what people do I like to lead? Which people— what is the type of individuals, the innate traits, what's the behavioral profile of people I'm successful with? I want to surround myself with them.

Yes. You know, and what's interesting is, so what you're suggesting, first of all, the one thing I got out of that is even if you're promoting from within, you must go through the screening process as if this was a brand new employee, right? It's not something we could skip over. Oh, I know Jim, so I don't have to interview Jim.

He'll be fine. Everybody likes him until he's the boss.

Until he's the boss. But the other thing as well is you mentioned the DiSC thing and where people stand in their qualifications. It doesn't necessarily mean if people are on the different spectrums, it doesn't mean you can't work with them. I think though, as a manager, as a leader of that new upcoming manager, you're going to have to understand that this person has some obstacles and some challenges that they're going to have to overcome. And you're going to want to give them the tools to be successful.

Yeah. And I'll give you an example of that very thing. We can find workarounds to make this successful. I work with a biomed company that is full of engineers, PhDs, Masters of Engineering, very, very bright people, all super high S's and D's on the DiSC scale. They're managing engineers below them. And in this organization, I introduced performance management, a performance management process with the this company. And these management-level engineers are like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to be doing that. I don't want to be having these conversations and telling people what they're doing wrong. So, we said, okay, that's fine. We can work around that. We've got a general manager who's a super DI who will be very good at that. So, we will set up a system for you to feed information to this general manager, office manager, general manager, who can then perform these performance reviews. The employees or the engineers below you are getting the necessary feedback on their improvement. It's an approach that is not optimal, but it certainly is practical. And that way, they're getting their feedback, you're getting the performance improvements, and you're avoiding this hesitancy of, again, their born-in traits of not wanting to say things bad. To somebody. They do not want to give negative feedback because they want to avoid the conflict. And so, you can work around that. There are people who have moved into management that may not have enough D in them. Okay. There's somebody else that can drive that work ethic and that persistence and the never quit and making sure everything gets done on time. We can surround them with something like that. It could be a lead. It could be an assistant. We can make that work. It's the value of building the team with the right profile.

Right, right. And it's right there. And as an owner-operator CEO, your number one objective is to use your resources. And that's right there. This has been a fascinating conversation. I'd love to get into some dos and don'ts. Well, we've been talking about a lot of dos. I'd like to, for the people who might be challenged with kind of looking at their teams and saying, I need to get started, I'd like to talk about some cautionaries. And we'll get to that right after this.

Attention meeting and event planners! Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective on what it takes to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Marc Haine for your next group event. Past participants have said, Marc kept us in stitches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be. Read more testimonials and find out how Marc can serve you and your group at marchaine.com. That's M-A-R-C-H-A-I-N-E dot com.

As you can tell, Von and I are really passionate about helping entrepreneurs and business managers just like you. If you belong to an industry association or an organization that is planning a conference or a leadership retreat and you feel that we could be of service, feel free to drop us a line or do a connection request. Our details are in the show notes. And to that end, Von, maybe you can just let everybody know how they can get in touch with you.

Visit my website, RDL Training. That's short for Results Driven Leadership Training, romiodeltalima-training.com. Follow me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Vaughn Sigmund in the world, so I'm easy to find there. And Results Driven Leadership has its page too. Or listen to my podcast, comes out every week, The Business Mechanic Show. It's on all the platforms, so I'm easy to find there. There's only one Business Mechanic Show out there. So, That works easily. So, please join me, get my perspective. A lot of people come and talk to me and want to retain my services. And I've got a multitude of coaches that I work with within my organization. We'll find the right coach for you. And they find me through this great podcast that I've been doing for all these years. They hear my straightforward, down-home North Carolina approach to managing people. They get stuck with my Southernese sometimes, but they understand that I probably have the solution for the problem.

Yes. Wonderful. And your expertise, and I've listened to a few of your podcasts as well, and I think they're brilliant. I think they're consumable, they're digestible, and right on the mark. So thank you for that. So, Vaughn, as we kind of, people come across this episode and they are thinking what we're talking about really, really makes sense. They want to start implementing some things. Maybe they hire somebody who's a DiSC coach or something to help with it. Are there any cautionaries, anything they should be aware of as they try to make a transition to having a more effective sales leadership team?

Yeah. So, let's talk about training first of all. Training can be either treated as a task or a long-term investment in the growth of your managers. Training, regardless of what it is, cannot be treated like a car wash. You don't drive in, you drive out, you're clean. That's not how training works. Training works through the 4 tenets of teaching: tell me, show me, have me do it, and then give me feedback. And it's that 4th one that often gets missed. But that— the 3rd and the 4th one of doing And giving feedback, that's got to be in your organization or you're going to struggle. Your managers, you, your managers have to understand we learn by doing and we need to have that feedback. It's— we've been taught that way our entire lives. With salespeople, understand salespeople, and you've got to embrace this, and there's no argument around this. Salespeople cannot be managed like anybody else in the organization. It's one of the biggest mistakes I see. You have to have a special approach. And here's why. There's 3 elements of sale that come with a sales role that no other position faces. And they're all very emotional. One, they're paid on commission. And if you're paying 100% salary to your salespeople, that's your first big mistake. But that's another book. But they're paid on commission. Their performance determines how much they make. There's rarely anybody else in the organization that faces that. Plus, they're facing competition all day. They're fighting against someone else to get their job done. I don't think accounting has to do that. And then third, and this is the biggest emotional element that many people discount or pay no attention to, salespeople face rejection. All day, every day. And that wears on you. And you have to, as a— your leadership team, you as a business owner, you as a leader, have to take that into account that you've got to be there for the emotional support. You've got to help them stay positive. If you dwell in their negativity, you're feeding it. If you discount this rejection, You're feeding it. Salespeople have to have a deposit into their emotional bank account on a constant basis. Emotional bank account. So, if you picture their emotions as a bank account, as long as I'm making enough positive contributions to that, I'm never going to be overdrawn. But very often, and this is in all roles of leadership, all we're doing is making withdrawals. And that's where you lose people. So, if you don't have the proper plus balance in the emotional bank account of the hearts and minds, the souls of your people, you're going to run into performance issues. So, salespeople can't be managed like anybody else. You have to be a supportive, encouraging manager. You're managing behaviors, not numbers. So, you have to understand in any KPI, in any organization, the inputs are the KPIs. The outputs are— or the input is the behavior. The outputs are the KPIs. If you only focus on the KPIs and you beat people up about numbers all the time, you're just never going to get there. You can go through some sprints of getting there, but it's never going to be sustainable. So, focus on the behaviors. That will bring you the outcomes that you're looking for. And so, those are key. And always understand, no matter what business you're in, you're in the people business. And you have to be effective and understanding. You have to have a knowledge level of what drives the humans that you work for. You've got to hire the right human. You have to train them in a way that they're going to retain and utilize and appreciate that information. You have to lead them to continue to help them learn and grow, feel supported, feel good about who they work for. People work for people. They don't work for companies. So, employees that leave, they're quitting their boss, not the company.

Love it. Love it. This has been such a great discussion. Do you have any last thoughts as we wrap up? One key kind of point of brilliance that you bring to the forefront?

Well, there's no brilliance in me. But there's certainly common sense. Understand human nature. Appreciate the way to lead, engage, and move forward with happy employees. Happy teams give you the outcomes that you're looking for.

Love it! Love it! Bon, can you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Please visit my website, rdltraining.com, Results Driven Leadership, The Business Mechanic podcast, or follow me on LinkedIn. I, I post all the time.

Thank you so much, Vaughn. Like you said, it was a long time coming. I'm so glad we made it happen today. It's been a brilliant conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you, Marc, and for everybody that joined us today.

Why don't you Let me know if this was of value to you. As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book a time that works for you on my online calendar. The link is down below in the show notes. It's the one marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this podcast? And go ahead. I would love a comment, or review about this episode. Was it helpful? Was it valuable? Is it something you can use? I'd love whatever it is. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you very much. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe. I hope you stay healthy. And I hope you dare to be the exception.

Thank you for joining us this week Thank you for joining us today on Experience Leadership. Make sure you visit marchaine.com for a full directory of available episodes. While you're at it, if you found today's content valuable, please share it and tell your friends about the show. As Marc says, knowledge is power, but only if you share it. Be sure to tune in each week for the newest episode.

Thank you.

Please stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.