INBOUND 2016: Jason Jordan "3 Things Sales Leaders DESPERATELY Need... But Don't Get"

Thank you.

Thank you. I have a theory that the older you get, the less likely you are to get applause. It's like when your kids, no matter what you do, it's like, oh, look, he made a mess in his pants. Now, by the time you're a grown up, it's almost impossible. So if you applaud afterward, I'll be particularly grateful. You'll have actually earned that. So thrilled to be here. This is the first time we've done inbound, so I'm just curious. So what percentage of folks in your raising your hands are in sales operations, let's say. Oh, okay. How about people who are actually in the sales function like sales manager, salesperson, sales leader. Ah, pretty good sales enablement. Okay. Many didn't vote. I guess you're the last undecided voters. Anyone who didn't raise your hand, it's okay, we're going to get there. Well, I'm Jason Jordan. I actually am in none of those categories since I don't actually have a real job like you all do. I have the privilege of spending a lot of time researching and writing and thinking and working with folks to try to uncover best practices. And today we're going to talk about not one, but three different topics. Coaching, forecasting and pipeline management. And in my role, I do have the privilege and challenge of working with a lot of very senior sales leaders. And they can be a pretty demanding lot. If anyone in here spends a lot of time with your CSO and you know, most demandingly, they expect everyone to make their quotas every year, almost unreasonable. But they do have some reasonable expectations too. And I really do think these are at the top that you would find, first of all, sales leadership expects accurate sales forecasters. Everyone here can agree with that. If you're in sales operations, forecasting is probably something that's very near and dear. And I think that's a fair ask for senior leadership. Because if you're at the top, the CEO is asking you. The CEO has people to answer to as well. Right. You have internal or external investors or stakeholders, however, so accurate forecast important. The second thing that we see sales leaders spending a lot of time thinking about and working on is the sales pipeline. I was talking to the head of sales for one of our clients. It's a $30 billion company, so substantial company. And I was asking, I said, what's one thing that would make you feel better about your sales force? And he said, I would sleep better at night if I just knew that all of my sales reps had healthy Pipelines and that's talking about consumer products and they sell to the government and to business. To business. So I know firsthand that this is a very important thing for folks and it makes sense. And then the third is almost like a tacit expectation. There's an expectation that the sales managers in the field are going to be doing coaching. And if you look at this list, it's kind of like you expect people to be coaching so that they can fill the pipeline with good opportunities and hopefully those forecasts come to be true. So I think that, you know, sales enablement folks, sales operations, and even people in the sales force, these are reasonable expectations. The question is, how do we get all of these things? Let me start by talking about a reality that sales leadership faces. So if you're a sales leader, you've probably started out in sales as a salesperson. You've been promoted through the ranks and you know, depending on how many layers, you can be pretty far removed from the action. And though you like to log into CRM just to see what's going on and feel like you're participating in all the action because you can see calls being logged, in reality you're pretty far removed. And the other actor I'd like to introduce into this play is the frontline sales manager. We have a lot of passion for frontline sales managers. I'll talk about it in a second. And really, the sales managers, the sales leaders, gateway to the world. And so a lot of the research I'm going to share with you is going to be from sales managers and sales leaders perspective. But obviously the practices apply and are supported by everyone in the organization. Let me just focus for a minute on the sales manager. So we have such a soft place in our heart for frontline sales managers. So think about the frontline sales manager. So you've been a superstar salesperson in your organization, right? Rockstar. And the top salesperson in any organization is known by the CEO, right? In a 30 billion dollar company, I guarantee you he could have told me who the top five salespeople were in the company. You got all of the attention, you get all of the compensation, all of the training, all the tools are deployed to make you a great salesperson. And then if you're good enough, congratulations, you get reported, you get promoted to be a sales manager and then you get ignored. This is when you disappear into the middle part of the organization. You have all these expectations of sales management, none of the privileges of being a salesperson. And I really think that frontline sales managers have it hard. And in the conversation today, we're going to focus on frontline sales managers because we do think they're the key change agent if you're trying to make change in an organization. But I always joke around that I'm going to get some buttons made. Hug a sales manager. I think I'm going to get them made. And so this is true. I went on to Google, I typed into Google Images, hug a sales manager, right? So I thought maybe a button would come up or some cute little imagery or something. And in the first page of the results, this is what was there first. Like off to a bad start. If you're a sales manager, just want to hug a sales manager. You can type in hug a cow, hug a car, hug a rock. Plenty of images of people being hugged, things being hugged. But a sales manager, man, it's a tough gig. So the storyline that I'm going to build here in these three different sections, we're going to have three sections, one on each of these topics is that the pathway to more accurate forecast and healthier pipelines and sales coaching goes through your frontline sales managers. And if you can put everything in place and the system starts working really well, these remain very happy people. But what we find is not a lot of organizations. I'm sorry, have really sorted this out. Let me just pause for about two minutes and just share with you a little bit about my company, Vantagepoint. So Vantagepoint is a. So at our core we're a sales training company. All the energy just went out of the room when you said that. Another sales training company. You know, if there are 20 million salespeople in the United States, there must be 5 million sales trainers. Well, we are the only one focused on sales management and that's how we differentiate ourselves in an otherwise very crowded place. We really believe sales managers are where it's at and specifically frontline sales managers and their managers as it applies to actually affecting change in the organization. And we believe strongly in research. This is a book that I wrote with a co author, a partner of mine, Michelle Bazzanik, on cracking the sales management code. If you're interested in sales management, I encourage you to pick it up. But we do think that selling isn't the same as today, that it was 15 years ago. Therefore sales management can't be the same today as it was 15 years ago. And yet in the absence of any real research into what are the best management practices managers do to their salespeople, what their managers did to them 15 years ago when they too were salespeople. And so we have a strong commitment to research. In fact, if you don't like data and research, this would be the opportune time to leave the room. It would be a conspicuous but probably smart move because I'm going to share a lot of research with you on these topics that we're discussing. I'd also say that, and this is. You would almost expect me to say this. We're focused on ROI for our clients, but the point of this is not that we can do these things. The point of this is that we achieve results with our clients, but we never train a salesperson. So our clients, 30% more revenue, 20% more reps, a quote, a 15% larger pipeline never trained a salesperson. And that really underscores the importance of getting frontline sales management.

Right.

They can make a huge difference. In fact, we have some research I'm not going to share that shows if you had to spend a dollar on training a salesperson or a sales manager, the ROI is actually greater training frontline sales managers than spending it on frontline salespeople because you effectively make them infield trainers. And the final thing I'll say about our company is that we know what we're doing. This is a rather indulgent quote from one of our clients, but I think it says a lot. So this is the North American head of sales enablement for 3M, best most successful training ever launched to our salesforce. Including salesperson training, including sales manager training. The stuff that we do is well received. And the final eye candy shark that I will share with you. I was looking at this last night and I was thinking, we only work with blue and red companies. And I thought for a kick this morning, I'm like, what if I just actually arranged it like the electoral map, right? So what if I put all the red stuff at the bottom and the blue? And then I was afraid it would trigger some PTSD. For those of you like me, who spent 10 of the last 20 hours staring at a map, Yellow, yellow, blue, yellow, yellow, red. If you squint your eyes and shake your head, it can be purple. But you know, we haven't been around for a long time. People who have been at this for a long time, like hiring and training, appreciate the innovative and thoughtful things that we bring to the sales management function. So now back to the story at hand. So now we say, okay, we can believe that accurate forecasts are important to leadership and important to the organization. Healthy pipelines, coaching. Now what, what do we actually do? Let me Start with sales forecasting. So if they ever make a movie about sales and it's a slapstick comedy, forecasting is going to have the starring role. Forecasting to me is the most comical thing that takes place in any sales force. And I'm going to share with you some specific reasons. But let me just show you a little video here, some animation, it's about a minute long. To just demonstrate some of the behaviors we see in sales forecasting conversations.

Hi Jane, I'd like to review your sales forecast with you.

Sure, Bob.

It looks like you have $2 million in revenue forecast for this year. I'd like to make that $3 million.

But I think I am going to sell $2 million worth of products this year. That is why I made $2 million my forecast.

Yes, but I would like to make $3 million your stretch forecast.

A stretch forecast. Okay. But will you actually expect me to bring in $3 million if that becomes my stretch forecast?

Of course, Jane. That is why we call it a forecast.

So where do you expect me to get the additional $1 million in sales this year?

It looks like you have an opportunity in your pipeline with Peterson Corporation for $250,000 and a 50% CH in March. Couldn't that really be a $500,000 opportunity instead?

No.

And don't you think there is more like an 80% chance that we will win that deal? And couldn't that close on December 31st of this year instead?

No, that does not seem likely.

Awesome. Then I'll update that opportunity to be 80% likely to close on December 31st for $500,000. See, there is four.