[Sales] Sales efficiency is a useless priority

All right, so I've got a hot take today and I have completely changed my viewpoint on the importance of sales efficiency. I used to be all about efficiency, right. How can you make reps more efficient? Tools, tech, process, whatever. Right. But it was all about efficiency. I have completely changed my mind on this and happy to dig into why. I mean, essentially what I think the challenge here is is that all of these tools have come out that allegedly help reps become more efficient. Even over the last, I don't know, decade or something. You've got tools like sales lofts, the outreaches, the gongs, all of these call recorders, these note takers, these tools that live on top of salesforce to make it easier to import your salesforce notes. Right. You have all of these tools that have been designed to help make reps more efficient. However, the quota attainment rate of reps is basically the same. It's been flat. Reps aren't just out there crushing their quotas. They're not filling their calendars with extra meetings using this extra time. It's like, cool, I saved myself an hour today. And I think my hot take here is that that doesn't mean the rep is spending that extra hour doing, doing more stuff. I think that they're just taking it as like, cool. I've got like a little bit of extra time to like do whatever else I want to do. Like if you're working from home, like, you know, potentially, you know, chatting with a friend or, you know, doing laundry or going around doing something else, I'm.

Gonna count on that and jump to the rep's defense.

All right, please.

I actually think you're right. And they have that extra time and they're not using it. I think there's a small subset of reps that are now sat in the pavier garden. Right. Which is really where I want to be is sunny. Right. But I think the majority of it is, is people are taking efficiency and not using it. So like they're. Instead of doing that, they're now caught up in something else with the operations team. They're caught up in something else within work and they're a plan put in that time to this. They still feel really busy of their tasks are being done efficiently, but they're.

Now not focusing that time with other non selling activities.

Yeah, they're not filing it back into the thing that makes them effective. And I know this is your hot take and you've probably got some key tips you want to have, but one of the things I want to say and hopefully steal all your funder is if you think about your job and there's that one thing that would make a difference we always talk about what is that thing that would make a difference to you in a month, two months, three months time. When you gain your time back from any efficiency tool, all of that time goes into that one thing. And if you did that, how different would your world be in three months time? I think that's probably but I think.

That'S like the theory that has been like portrayed like that is the theoretical outcome that all of these tools are providing, right? Which is like oh I'll save you 30 minutes a day from having to log your stuff in salesforce or like hey I'll save you, you know, you have five, 10 minutes here or there on send your follow up emails because those are pre written now with AI like I think the theory behind that is great but I to your point, don't think that as human nature, nature is to be like oh cool, like I am now more efficient so I can do more things that are like really impactful. It's like I'm just going to fill it with other stuff that like, you know, I so like there could be, there probably is value in saying, you know, if you were to turn that efficiency into actually executing the highest priority of tasks as it goes to like prospecting, finding new business. I think that is great in theory but I just don't see that in reality. And so I like it's. Yeah, I think that's the challenge I'm having. And so where I'm coming at from this is there's all of these like all of these companies buy these tools, they put these things in place to help make their reps more efficient and everything is around like efficiency for reps because again the theory is if you're efficient you, you will be able to have more calls in a day, you'll be able to close more deals whereas in reality don't really see that. And so I think the focus should actually be around rep effectiveness which is how do you ensure that you are as effective as humanly possible in every sales interaction. Like instead like even using AI, right? Like AI is here to like help make you more efficient. But like I actually think that you should be thinking about how can it make you more effective. So how can you do deep research on a company before a call that would take you 20 minutes to do, 30 minutes to do before run a deep research report with ChatGPT and now you've got these detailed Analysis around the strategic objectives and what they're focused on. But you also now have to have the skills to leverage those insights to be effective in that conversation. Yeah, so I just think that there's like, I think we should be focusing more on effectiveness. Like how can you get better with what you have and like better at finding new opportunities rather than just trying to like make these efficiency gains where I am not convinced it's actually showing up in the real world.

Sure, yeah, I completely agree with the effectiveness and I think part of that is that reps aren't thinking about what is most effective for them as well. So what is it that you do that makes it most effective and then looking to save the time or use the right tool to make you effective? There we just pulled and often pulled into something else and we feel like because we're busy, we're doing our job. Whereas unless it's going towards closing deals and you're a rep, that's not doing your job. No matter how good it feels, it's not doing your job.

Yeah, there's this other famous sales trainer, his name is Mike Weinberg. A couple of great books, new Sales, Simplified talks. A lot of you guys had a couple of sales management books as well. Really, really, really smart guy. And one of the like simplest, funniest things that he says is like the, the best way to drive new business and close deals is by focusing on driving new business and closing deals. It's like you have to put the effort in to find new opportunities and that means like not doing so many other things that are that like, that are against that objective of like prospecting, finding new opportunities, driving those deals to close. Anything you're doing that isn't, that is literally not your job as a rep. Like I think. And then this is the other thing that kind of irks me is right people get caught up in this like oh, I have to be like the firefighter for the client. Like no, you got support to do that. Like you have scientists in your team that can probably help with that. Make your manager do it right. Like you as a rep need to focus on like finding new opportunities and closing deals and any time spent firefighting or doing these other sort of, you know, non selling activities is a waste of time.

There's a. I'm not sure I agree with all of his. He's basically an influencer on social media and I'm not sure I agree with all of his like shouty opinions. But something this guy said recently was so whatever it is you're meant to be doing. Yeah, do. Do the thing. Talking about doing the thing is not doing the thing. Planning the thing is not doing the thing. Telling someone you're gonna do the thing is not doing the thing. Do the thing and your thing is find new opportunities and close deals. That's it. Anything outside of that is not doing the thing.

And that's where it's like all of this efficiency stuff and all this talk about efficiency and how reps are more efficient, it's literally not showing up in the numbers. Only 30, 40% of reps are hitting their number. And that's been the same for the last decade. It's been the top 20% of reps are responsible for 80% of the revenue. Again, number hasn't changed. So these things that are making people more efficient aren't actually helping. And so I think this has to be this mindset shift that goes from we are thinking about efficiency to we are thinking about effectiveness, which is how do we make our reps as good as humanly possible in every sales interaction? That's my hot take.

You know the answer to that as well, right? Higher succession.

Sure, yeah. That's not where I was going with that, but obviously that would help.

My job's to be selling. Right, so.

Yeah, exactly. Always be closing.

Always be closing.

Well, that's all I had on this topic. I don't know. Anything you want to add to that or should we end it?

No, but maybe we should follow up with this in and drop a couple of tools that we think actually impact effectiveness rather than impact efficiency when we're posting our LinkedIn offset.

Well, so, okay, effectiveness. When I think of effectiveness, it's like, how do you actually do something? It's not even necessarily like a tool either. Right. Like, sure, ChatGPT or some of these AI tools could be leveraged to make you more effective, which is, I think if we define efficiency as being faster at something or getting something done in a shorter period of time. Effectiveness being like how well you convert or how well you can. Improving your win rate as an example, or identifying and getting more opportunities into the pipeline, like those are effective things. Your prospecting rates go up, your reply rates go up. That's how I think of effectiveness. So I think of. That's actually more of like skill development for the most part. But then because even if you use these tools, let's say you use AI and you get a bunch of great information from. Didn't take you very long to do so it was very efficient, you still have to know how to leverage that on a call. So if you don't know how to talk to an executive at another company at the executive level and you're trying to talk about like the really technical nuances in the science, you don't have the effective skills to actually use the information that you got from AI on that conversation.

Yeah.

I think the same thing goes with prospecting. It's like I can be really efficient. I could take a template, load it up into my sequencing tool and send it out to everybody. Or I could, I could figure out how to get really effective where I learn how to personalize my messaging, I learn how to tailor it specifically to their high priority business problems and I learn how to write it in a way that's more likely to get them to respond. Those to me is like, that's more important than the great. I sent out 10,000 emails today, Whoop de do maybe a couple of them respond back. It's like that isn't going to like drive the needle in the long run.

No tips.

That's my, that's my thought. Huh.

I think a tip. No, I agree. It definitely is. Effectiveness is about the outcome driven, right? So you can be efficient and change none of the metrics. As you said, if you're effective, the metrics will change. So yeah, I think that's it. It's about driving that outcome.

It's just a different mindset of. I think how you think about sales improvement is that you think about it as like it's less about giving reps time back. It's more about getting them to do the right things in the moment, the moments that matter. Right. It's like when you're in a conversation with another person, how do you get them to convert when they're spending time prospecting the moment that matters when they're about to send that email or about to send that thing on LinkedIn or send that video that they made for that person at the moment that that matters. How effective are they? There is more important than like saving 10 minutes here or there on different tools and shit.

Yeah, I suppose. I know we don't want to think about tools so much, but I did use a tool to be more effective in my last role. Right. So it was about how I implemented the information, but getting access to it quick. So when I made the pocket tech expert, that was being effective because on the call, in the moment, I could get the information I needed. I needed to know where to go to, I needed to know that information. I needed to know the skills to communicate that information to be effective. But I could pull it in quickly, and when paired with those skills, I could answer the client's technical questions they're now in front of them.

Right. Rather than having to, like, be like, hey, I, let me go check on my technical team and get back to you later.

Right.

That's a great example of being effective. That's a great example of being effective. I mean, it's also efficient, but, like, in this case, it's actually effective because you are improving the conversion rate in that moment because you're able to have that conversation right then and there with the client versus having to go get that information later and send it over via email, where everything goes to die.

Yeah, but I use that as an example because if I were, I was efficient, but it was effective. Right. So I could have been efficient and got the information and pulled it up, but without the necessary skills to digest the information, present it back to the customer in a coherent fashion, and understand what they needed to drive the deal forward, it would have just been efficiency of getting the information. It wouldn't have been effective in moving the needle on that deal. So it's both of those aspects that were key.

Yeah, makes sense. All right, I think we've beaten this one today. If you want to talk about anything related to efficiency or effectiveness for your team, let us know. Happy to have the conversation. And if you disagree, let us know as well. If you think it's all about efficiency, I would love to hear that, too.

I'm going to get off this podcast and go be effective.

Yeah, let's do it. All right, see you later, Leo.