Cracking the Quota Code: How Elite Coaching Propels Sales Mastery

Good afternoon, good evening, everyone, wherever you're joining from. Again, welcome to Coffee Time with Sales Table. And today I am super excited to welcome Kevin. And along with several leadership roles that Kevin is in, he's a great mentor to me personally and then for Sales Table. And I always love and take a lot of his advice. and I'm super excited for this episode. Welcome, Kevin.

Thank you, Suresh. I'm super excited to chat today. Always love our conversations. We always have a ton of fun as well. I really appreciate you asking me to join this. This is great.

Absolutely. Kevin, I think we will jump right into the topic. One of the things that when from Sales Enablement point of view, when we talk to a lot of sales leaders, I think especially the topic related to quota attainment comes up often. Hey, whatever you do, how can you help me to attain quota? It doesn't really matter whether it is a process or tool or whatever that is. I think every sales leader now is really thinking about the quota. For me to really start with, how have you seen the quota attainment, the discussions, the strategies have changed? in the last 3 years, especially pre-pandemic, post-pandemic? I mean, I know it is a kind of loaded question, but if you can just throw some light on that, that will be super helpful.

Yeah, that's a huge question. I mean, listen, everything has shifted, right? The way buyers want to buy has shifted. The introduction of AI into different go-to-market motions has made a major shift. You know, budgets tightening up, more stakeholders involved, right? Also too, right, we're doing a lot more virtually behind Zooms as opposed to things that we were maybe doing in person like previously. So a lot of it has shifted. And I think as I kind of go through that journey myself and I talk to other sales leaders, you know, there's never one silver bullet. that's gonna all of a sudden change the landscape for you. So you really have to take a look at all of your go-to-market motions. What are you doing from a marketing side of things? What are you doing from a sales perspective? What are you doing with your customer success and account management teams to really help drive and secure revenue through renewals? So it is a massive thing, but again, there's no one silver bullet that's going to fix it all. But just, I think really having your finger on the pulse on on your go-to-market strategy, understanding how things are performing, using lots of data to drive that, and, um, being always being open to testing things, optimizing things, and knowing that it's not— not everything you put in place is going to work.

Thanks for saying that. So the, the one deeper on that is to say, previously, uh, or rather even during the pandemic, or probably before 2022, there is a lot of demand in general everywhere, right? Whether it is the software, take any industry, everybody wants to buy, buy, buy, try, try, try. And then people were like very much interested in trying new things. So there is naturally the demand side where I as a consumer or a B2B company, I'm reaching out to these vendors.

Yep.

Versus in the last couple of years, that has completely changed, where the demand is less, which means the companies are getting to do more outbound. And can you kind of throw some light on what does it really mean for sales leaders, the shift between there was a lot of inbound previously versus now we have to do a lot of outbound? And how do we need to really prioritize those things?

Yeah, it is a massive shift. And I think what was driving that demand was, you know, those years it was grow at all costs, right? It was tons of money being pumped into a lot of, you know, B2B SaaS companies, lots of budgets, very aggressive growth targets. And so it was, we're gonna hire a lot, we're gonna spend a lot, and that's how we're going to grow. Now we're seeing a completely different landscape, which is unless you were a must-have solution, right, it's probably not being bought, right? And so I think, you know, you have to continue to find ways to, um, engage your, your market, right? Engage your buyers, educate them, um, continue to nurture them and kind of track how they're engaging with your website, your content, to continue to optimize your inbound funnel. Um, but that for, for most companies, that's just not going to be enough. And so, um, I think really having more of an integrated sales and marketing approach on your outbound is super, super important, right? If you can get your team focused on highly engaged accounts, you'll see things like your conversions go through the roof. It'll really skyrocket. You'll see more conversions, more demos, more, more conversations. Um, because again, part of it's like timing, Right? We can't control the timing of when someone's gonna be in market to buy. And you see a lot of different data points on this.

It's—

I've seen anything from 1 to 5% of your TAM is probably in market for your solutions at any given moment. So that's why I think that collaboration with sales and marketing is super important to help surface up those accounts that are in market. But, you know, I also think too, it's really about educating your buyers. It's about providing value to your buyers. Through different ways in which you can actually help them overcome whatever challenges that they may be facing. So, um, again, I think the more that you're integrating the sales and marketing efforts, the more success you're going to find. But yes, it's been a really massive shift. And even to, you know, you do a couple scrolls on LinkedIn and you see outbound is dead and all that. And, um, it's— I don't think that it's dead, it's just that it's changing, and your tactics and your approach need to change accordingly.

Gotcha. So, Kevin, one of the things that we are realizing is for a lot of sales leaders and marketing, there is always that integration or integrated approach that everybody is trying to see. And I especially think that is much more important now than ever. And one challenge that we see, especially, you know, we, I mean, at SalesTable, we being a startup ourselves, a lot of startups, the moment there is a cash crunch, the first thing that they stop working on is marketing. Yeah, right. And again, I do understand why that is, but I want to get your take on why that marketing is important, and then how do you typically think about that whole collaboration between the marketing and sales?

Yeah, I, I think, um, You know, it's interesting. I think this, you know, we've seen a lot of layoffs and reductions over, you know, the last 18 to 24 months. Um, you know, I, I don't have any data on this one, but my, my sentiment kind of feels like it's not just marketing, right? Or it's not just sales. I mean, we're seeing this happen across all different departments of the business. And so I think that Um, in this kind of current time, uh, again, companies are just getting super lean. And similar to the buying process I mentioned before, like these nice-to-have roles or these, you know, everything has to be mission critical and drive back the value of the organization. Um, I do think though too that, you know, when in times when, when times are tough, this is when really great things emerge and, and can be created. whether that's companies, people's careers, their skill sets. And so you do have to get a little creative and be scrappy to do, you know, we hear the phrase do more with less, right? But I think, you know, this is also a time where when things start to get a little bit more quiet, maybe in your competitive set, it's an opportunity for you to really stand out, right? So I'm not saying double down on marketing when times are tough necessarily, but I think you have to find the right moments and ways and strategies to really stand out and break through some of the noise when maybe it's a little bit quieter. So I think there's an opportunity there from a marketing side of things. I think sales and marketing collaborating, it's being really, really aligned on things like what are your ideal customers look like, who converts the best, what are the best personas for you, like really tying back your customer segments to your performance data, right? Where do you win the most? What are your best sales cycles? Where are your average contract values the best? Um, and really being able to laser in with unified messaging and a value prop. Um, again, I think today it's a lot about being able to educate buyers on why you are a must-have and not just this nice-to-have, you know, type solution. Um, but I also think that it's, it's a really big opportunity to, to add value and to help, right? Um, we lean into Free trial access, right? POCs, proof of concepts, big time. Because I think too a big shift is, you know, buyers, they have lots of content out there, but to mitigate risk in making the wrong purchasing decision, they want to try something. So if you can really lean into that and have a good motion around your trials, right, it can, it can hopefully bring more of your buyers into your product set to show the value.

Gotcha. So in the founder community, one of the challenges that we keep discussing, Kevin, is attribution problem, right? Which is basically right now we keep talking about the multichannel touch, whether it is about the email, LinkedIn, the webinars like this, or even the ads and whatnot. But at the end of the day, when a sales rep goes out and then gets one referral or a customer, it is very straightforward versus when something comes from a marketing team, it's very difficult to say, oh, you know what, this person came exactly because of these 3 touches.

Yeah.

Right. And that's been, I think, one of the challenges for us. That's why I think in a lot of, especially the early stage companies, really fall back to some some of these straightforward mechanisms of webinars and then community buildings. And then recently, I think you and I discussed private dinners have become very, very important, close one where really invite people that are interested in your segment, your problem that you are solving. And then that really becomes a kind of nurturing aspect at a later point of time, right?

Yeah. It's a really interesting topic and it's a challenging one, but I think, you know, the buying processes aren't linear, right? Like, and how you learn about companies, how you engage with companies, it's not always gonna be a perfect science to be able to track things back to this one moment in time, this person learned about us and boom, they're a customer, right? Prospects could be in market one week, out of market the next week, And so again, that's why the multichannel approach is so important because there's never gonna be that one silver bullet of this one campaign is driving all this pipeline for us, but there's a lot of different touchpoints. So I think reaching, again, multichannel, different formats, different versions in which you can actually share and showcase your value prop is super important, but you do need to have data and analytics behind understanding what does your customer journey actually look like and what is driving pipeline across different customer segments for you. But I think if you, I think when you get into the conversation around attribution, you know, it's sort of like chasing the boogeyman if you try and go too deep, right? Like it's never gonna be perfect. But at the end of the day, I think at the very most you do have to have that data to be directional and guide your decision-making moving forward.

Gotcha. So I know by now we've looked into the past, set some basics on, I think, you know, how the trends are in the market. And now coming back to the, topic for us. Quota attainment is based on who is looking into it. It's a mysterious topic for everyone, and there is no one scientific methodology or a way to set the quota or to attain quota in that sense. But my specific question, probably, or the topic really, Kevin, is there are 2 specific scenarios that we see, right? There are leaders who join organizations as VP of Sales or Director of Sales, and then they are given the responsibility, hey, you know what, this is the team that you have, and now go figure out what to do in the next 1 year, let's just say. There are instances, the second example is where somebody is doing really good, maybe it is a sales rep or a founding AE or whoever, and then because they are doing so good, they are promoted to director or a VP role. Then they are like, okay, now you go bring in people and then run with it. I'm sure, I think both are very different instances and examples where we need to deal with. In one case where if you join as a leader, then you don't have a choice to pick your people, they're already there.

Yeah.

Can you walk the direction of how you would really think about When you already have a team, how do you evaluate the team? And then how do you really set the quotas in that situation? And then we'll follow up that with net new situation as well.

Yeah, so if you're walking in and you're, you know, kind of adopting a team, so to speak, um, you know, the performance evaluation is It can be tricky, but I think there's a couple of things that you can do is, you know, first and foremost, you know, I always start with data, right? And I think there's a couple different layers of data you're gonna wanna be able to look at. So you, of course, looking at quota performance and attainment, you know, anything that's a performance metric on the sales side, you start there, but you really need to kind of unpeel that onion, right? look at different things like conversions, more of the behavioral data, activity and effort data, right? Like you have to get a holistic picture from the data side of things. And then I think the other part of it is you really need to get in there and be a part of the process with your team, right? Data and dashboards only give you a piece of the picture, but I think you really need to be able to get in there and really understand You gotta be on sales calls with them, you have to be routing shotgun, like you really gotta get in there and do the job with them, listen in on sales calls and recordings, but you know, the more you can actually observe and watch the behaviors, that'll give you another part of the picture as well. And so, you know, you can really start to unpeel that and see how they're moving along in the sales process, right? But again, I think, you know, it's not just like you can't really look at through just one singular lens, right? Are they creating enough pipeline? Where's the pipeline coming from? Like, how are they working with their SDRs? Like, there's a lot of different parts of the business that really drive to quota attainment. So you really have to get a holistic landscape of how they're performing. Um, I think that's why if you have some type of sales methodology in place It is helpful so you have something to kind of work against. You know, you can of course start to benchmark on performance against, you know, if you're looking at conversions or quota attainment, benchmark that against the rest of the team, benchmark that against industry standards. So these are all different ways to kind of get a sense. Once I have a lot of that data, the one thing I really like to do though is use the 9-box talent evaluation, which, you know, it's the 9-grid and there's, uh, you know, performance on one and then potential on the other. And you start to kind of plot people, um, because when you, you know, when you're bringing in a new team or you're adopting, you know, a new team, you know, you really, really want to, of course, hold on to your high performers. But those that are maybe average or slightly below but have high potential, you really want to be able to invest in them because if you can turn that around, it's a great thing for the culture, it's a great thing for the business. Um, but I think at the same time, you also, if you are going into that situation as a sales leader, right, you want to know going into that that you do have the autonomy to make decisions if decisions have to be made, right? As you get into that role, you may think our sales motion has to shift. We, you know, for whatever reason, just based on how you see things working moving forward, you need to make sure you have the right skill sets, the right talent, right people to execute on your strategy and your vision. So, you know, again, you wanna be able to turn people around, you wanna engage and keep your top performers happy and continue working with them, but at the same time, it doesn't always work, which is, you know, you and I had the conversation, it's always a tough part of this job that we don't love, but it's part of it. So at the end of the day though, you have to make sure you do have the autonomy to make tough decisions if they need to be made.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So just to double-click on what you said, Kevin, when we go into the team situation, how do we really know who is great? I mean, the benchmark that we want to do at the end of the day, is it that a sales rep is great because they're always meeting quota or exceeding quota, or What are the different ways that you really think about as a framework on how do we know what is the benchmark for knowing somebody is good?

Yeah, I think there's, you know, like I said, it goes— I think it goes well beyond just quota attainment. You know, I think too, you're going to be looking at things like what is their knowledge on your product, on your customers, how deeply do they understand the personas which they're selling into. So I think that's a big part of it. I always also look too in terms of, you know, is this like a— is this a team player or is this a lone wolf, right? Is this somebody who's going above and beyond, sharing their learnings, helping other people on the team, you know, just doing more than what the job calls for, right? Going above and beyond from that perspective. The other thing is it's effort and desire. Right? Like, are they, are they working hard? Are they working hard at getting better? Do they want to learn? Are they coachable, right? Do they take feedback well? Um, you know, all those types of things. Are they, are they constantly thinking about how to sharpen their sword and get better every day? Are they managing their time really well, right? So, you know, as I kind of rattle these things off, you can see like it, it is, it is really complex and there's a lot of layers to all of this, but You know, I think it's breaking it down like, yes, here's your sales performance data, but then you've gotta get in there to see how they perform, how they build relationships, how much they know about your business, about your product, about their customers. And then it's like that skill and that desire to constantly be getting better.

Yeah, yeah. And I would assume, I think the net-net for me, Kevin, I think based on what you said, it's really about the data and the people. At the end of the day, right? I mean, it's really a combination of those 2. And data might say something, people might say something, you know, you look at the gaps on why those things are, and then really try to kind of peel that onion and see what is the insight and the truth behind that, right?

And I think another thing that is super, super important as you're evaluating performance and evaluating talent, right, asking them how they think they're doing, right? Um, self-awareness is such a crucial part of developing and getting better, right? And so if you're going through your entire process of evaluating their performance and their potential, and let's just say hypothetically, you know, low performer across, you know, from, from looking at data, from being on calls, from really seeing how they operate, Um, and you ask them, hey, how do you think things are going? How do you think you're doing? And they're like, I'm doing great, like I'm the bee's knees, right? It's gonna be really, really tough to, to bring that person around, right? So I think also getting their feedback on performance and where they sit is, um, is super important because that self-awareness factor is, is crucial.

Gotcha. So in those scenarios, Kevin, when, uh, again I heard about this 20-60-20 rule, kind of, you know, 20% of your sales reps always do great no matter what because they have the DNA sort of. And the rest of the 60% of the people, probably high potential, but the moment you give them the right coaching help, they kind of rise to the occasion. Whereas the bottom 20% of the people, no matter what you do, Unfortunately, probably this is not a right fit, or probably they're in a wrong place. I mean, whatever that could be. If that is the case, how do you really identify individual strengths? And how do you coach them to really do their best? Because at the end of the day, feedback is very tough for everybody, no matter how we say it and what we say.

Yeah.

People don't take it in a positive way. So how do we really bring that, identify the strengths, And then help them to get better?

Yeah, it's, it's a really good question. I think, you know, kind of, um, going back to an earlier point, like, I think having some type of sales methodology in place and really having a well-defined sales process is super important here because that's gonna— that helps you understand how do you navigate, right, your sales process, how do you bring your buyers through that journey to, to make a decision. And so The sales methodology piece I think is super important, but also having like, what is our sales approach, right? What, what are we trying to accomplish based off of sales cycles, our deal sizes, all these different things? But it's really going to kind of dictate what your sales motion should look like and how you move through that. Um, based on that, it's then identifying what are the skill sets needed to be able to actually effectively move through that sales motion. So I think you have to start off with like a foundation of what good looks like, right? And I think what you'll start to be able to do is you'll start to be able to see, and it's gonna be different with each rep, but, you know, some reps can be like, wow, this is what great discovery looks like, right? This is what a great demo looks like. Here's how we close. This is what this looks like, right? And so you're gonna start to really define a more of a universal or best practice across the board. And so once you have those things documented, right, which is the really, really important part here, is have these things documented so you can point to something you can share with the team. It's not all up in my brain or, you know, scattered, right? All this stuff documented. And now what you can really start to do is create coaching programs against those different parts of your sales motion, right? And so I think that's sort of a starting point for you. And again, I think it's really important as you're— whether you're adopting a team, you're building a team, really building this culture of constantly learning, constantly developing, and a culture of feedback. Like you said, feedback for some is really tough to hear. I think a lot of leaders are bad at giving feedback. It's something that a long time ago I realized, I'm like, man, I'm just not great at this. Like, It was definitely a weakness of mine, and I, I definitely invested a lot of time to, to get better at it. Um, still not great, probably always working on it, but, um, I think it's just super important that you're, you're building a cultural culture where feedback is given often. Um, and it is this sort of, uh, culture of constantly looking to get better. And as you said before, you know, really being able to Understand your team's skill sets, identify their gaps. Um, I love to get teams, you know, identify the areas of weakness and improve on them, but I also like to really double down on what you're great at, right? Because if you can constantly get more and more out of that, you're going to see better, better, uh, performance across the board.

Completely with you. I'm such a big fan of continuous feedback in a way, Kevin, because There are a couple of instances where I sat with some of our employees to say, okay, the feedback, and then at the end of the year, and then they're asking me, what's the feedback? I'm like, there is no net new feedback.

Right.

Sometimes it is shocking because there is no net new feedback because we are talking daily. And then if there is something that has to be improved, we are talking about it in a positive, constructive way. At the end of it, nobody has surprises. Nobody wants to have surprises at the end end of the quarter, at the end of the half year, whatever that is. And that culture of continuous feedback, I think, you know, goes a long way both for the leaders as well as for the reps or whoever the people are out there, it looks like, right?

Absolutely, 100%. Yeah, I think, I think that's a really, really important, um, a really important point, right, is there's nothing worse than being surprised about, especially if you're delivering negative feedback, right? Constructive criticism, ways to get better. It's tough enough as it is, but if you feel totally blindsided by it, um, it's not great for anybody. So yeah, constantly share feedback, constantly talk about it, makes things, uh, a lot better in the long run.

Yeah, and the one aspect probably, uh, I want to touch upon, Kevin, which you mentioned, is sales methodology, right? Uh, sales process. Especially because we speak with a lot of the SMB segment. For them, some of the companies, what we see is there are 1 or 2 salespeople who are really good. They are doing whatever they are doing, by the way, and they are able to attain quota for whatever goals that they have set. But now when a VP of Sales comes in or the leader comes in, Now they realize that yes, the sales reps are doing what they're doing, but there is no process. There is no one way of doing things. That basically means to your earlier point, how do you put in a benchmark? How do you set up a process within an organization when you are bringing in new people? What are they supposed to follow?

Yeah.

That becomes an extremely challenging part. That's really where I feel a lot of these companies are stuck because now they don't really have a repetitive process that they can rely on.

It's, um, I, I, I've seen it a lot, right? And I've joined companies where no formal sales process, um, and lots of sales reps are doing it differently, right? Um, which when you're looking to define a sales process isn't necessarily a bad thing because you can take a look at a lot of different approaches. You can see what's working well for some, see what's working well for others, and try to create like, you know, this, this— take all the best parts of it, right, and create this, this sales process. Um, but I think it's really important too, as you're defining this, is, you know, it, it should kind of be guiding principles, right? But particularly with top-performing, more senior, more experienced reps, you know, Again, buying process is not perfectly linear. Every sales call, every deal you run, it's— they're always going to have some differences, something unique about them. So you also have to give, you know, reps the freedom to have their autonomy to do what they feel is best in the moment, because it's not always going to be, you know, the standard, you know, standard situation you walk into. There's always gonna be something unique and different about it.

Yeah, so, um, Kevin, when we have this diverse set of— especially now There are senior salespeople, there are some junior salespeople that come in, and I'm sure I know that is a great mix. But how do you really look into when we want to coach them? How do we look into that kind of coaching, one-on-one, group coaching? How do we distinguish coaching senior members of the staff versus the junior members?

Yeah, I mean, I think, um, you know, everyone, everyone's gonna learn a bit differently and everyone's going to need different types of learnings and different types of coaching, right? Um, you know, one of the things that I always love to do is kind of create some type of mentor system. So if you have some senior reps, you've got some more junior, newer folks, you know, kind of creating pairings where, you know, the senior folks are able to, you know, kind of share a lot of their learnings and their experience to, you know, for, for the, the newer folks. Um, and particularly the way I like to do that, it's almost, you know, you can have like the, the one-on-one sessions and kind of like, you know, those types of coaching sessions, but I think it's really important to allow the junior folks to watch how a senior person does their job, right? How they approach sales calls, the preparation they do, how they go through demos. But that way you're not taking your top performers off the floor necessarily, right? Like they're still getting their work done and still performing, but it's more of of watching. Um, but again, everyone's gonna have different needs, different ways of learning. And so I think, you know, you, you try and do a lot of stuff at scale because, A, you know, if you can coach 5 people as opposed to 5 one-on-ones, it's, you know, it's a lot of time savings. But you have to go beyond that. You have to have, you know, sort of individual personal development plans for people. Um, and even too, like, you know, I, I, I run a team today and I've got some really senior folks on it, and I'll tell you, um, You think they're, uh, like they're, they're just so energized and, and coachable and wanting to learn. And so, um, I think, you know, if you're, if you're getting the right people in the room that are, again, culture of constantly learning, constantly developing, um, your, your coaching should be very well received.

Gotcha. Um, as a follow-up, um, Kevin, you and I spoke a lot about the role plays in general. And whether it is about the objection handling that somebody is really looking at, whether about the demos or whatnot. From your career point of view, how have you seen role plays playing a role in developing sales reps in general?

It's, it's, I think, one of the most important things that you can do because I, I've said this a lot, and I think, you know, learning the concepts of sales is not hard. Sales is really hard to execute. But these concepts, like, we're not, we're not splitting atoms over here, right? So concepts are easy, execution is very hard, and it's all about information retention. And so, you know, we can learn a concept and we can understand it, but it's hard to execute. Sometimes it's very uncomfortable for people. So Practicing that skill set or whatever that, you know, whatever you're focused on, the practice and the role play is really what makes it stick. It becomes second nature, right? So I think depending on the different types of teams and seniority of folks that you have, but constantly role playing different scenarios is really important. I like to role play small topics as opposed to trying to boil the ocean on run a demo, right? Maybe we just focus on let's open up the demo, let's demo this portion, right? How are we going to show, um, be, you know, more benefit-focused versus feature-focused when talking about this one part of the platform, right? So I like to do role plays in smaller chunks because I think they're just that much more effective and you can do more reps, right? You can do a lot more reps, which is going to again allow that information to really sink in and stick. And so Yeah, I think that, you know, role-playing is so important because too, you know, like objection handling is a really good one, but you never know the types of questions you're gonna get on a call.

Yeah.

Like sales is all about like reacting and it's a performance in a way from that sense. So being able to think on your feet, some can do it naturally and do it really well. Others actually have to really work at it and practice, right? So I think that again, the more reps you're getting in practice, the better you perform out on the field type thing.

Gotcha. Thanks for saying that because one of the aspects that we keep looking at SalesTable, Kevin, is how do we make sales reps much more confident when they go to a prospect, when they go to a customer talking about the product or solution or asking about the problems that they have, right? Because one of the things that I realized early on was asking qualifying questions is one of the major things that sales reps don't do well.

Yep.

Right? Even though that is the first call, that is the first interaction that they're having with the sales reps, with the prospects. But because everybody's intimidated, they are like, hey, if I ask all these questions, would my prospect be pissed at me? Yeah, right. They don't like that kind of intimidation. So they all kind of really ask 1 or 2 questions and then come back. And then after 2, 3 months, you realize that had I asked these questions much earlier, then it would have saved me a ton of time and frustration from— for myself, for my management, and even for the prospect.

Yeah. And you know what, so This one's interesting. I think it ties a couple of things here, but one of the big things that, um, I'm doing with my team today, um, for every single opportunity we have in our pipeline, we're filling out— we're filling out deal plans, right? And so this kind of ties back to our sales methodology, but simplest format is here's the 8 things that we have to know about this customer that's going to create a higher likelihood for us to convert this deal into a customer. customer, right? So things like what challenge are they trying to solve, what's the impact of solving those problems, who are the stakeholders, right? But we basically have mapped out here's all the things we need to know that'll give us a good chance of closing this deal. And as we're going through our pipeline conversations with the reps, we're looking at deal plans, we're identifying gaps, right?

Yeah.

And identifying these gaps is so great because what we're finding is, A, it gives us really good strategy on what we have to do moving forward. Right, to go find out this information. What are the questions we have to ask? What do we have to learn? Um, who do we have to engage with? But at the same time, it really allows the sellers to see what these gaps are. So moving forward, they're doing a better job the next time of gathering that information sooner rather than later. And when we talk about these deal plans, we identify these gaps, we build out these strategies, and then that's where the little— like, it's like role play doesn't have to be this big formal Tuesday at 10 o'clock, we're doing role plays. It can be like on the spot. So, all right, we're missing this piece of information. We have to engage with the stakeholder. What do we do? All right, how's that conversation going to sound? All right, let's practice it real quick, right? Like, it can be these really like in-the-moment impromptu role plays going through these scenarios. So I think for me, the deal plans have been an amazing tool That increased our win rates significantly in Q1, but it's creating all these coaching moments for me and they're learning on how to do things better the next time. But we're also getting really good strategy to close deals in the pipeline currently, right? And then we're doing these role plays that are getting them prepared and ready for it. So it's just, it's been a, it's been one of the biggest tools I think for me and my current team that's driven a huge, huge impact for us.

Awesome. And one last topic before we end today, Kevin. What would be your advice for sales leaders, especially coaching takes time, coaching needs involvement from everybody, right? There are some who wants to bring in sales coaches or sales managers to actually do the coaching versus there are some leaders who wants to do the coaching on their own because that's how they want to be closely connected with their team and everything. I mean, again, both approaches have its own benefits for sure. But what is your take? And what would you advise leaders on?

Yeah, I think if, if you're looking to start coaching, right, find the— do a lot of the on-the-job training, in-the-moment coaching. Right, because A, it's not a really big lift, right? But B, it's also the probably the most impactful. So get on sales calls with your reps. Right after that call, take 10 minutes, right? Do some coaching, right? Hey, here's the things I thought you did really well. This was awesome. I think an area where we can improve is this. How do you think the call went, right? Find little moments to coach and Start creating that culture of coaching and talk about it, right? Talk about it with the team, understand what are they doing to learn and develop on their own, but what you really wanna try to create is a culture where people are looking for coaching and they're really open to it.

Yeah.

There are some phenomenal sales trainers out there I've worked with a lot, I think they're great, they're usually not really cheap, Right? But if you have a culture of openness and wanting feedback and wanting to learn and wanting to coach, then bringing someone like that in will be well worth your investment. But if you're not really coaching today and people aren't really open to it and you bring somebody like that in, it's gonna be like a shock to the system, right? And it may not stick. So start small, start in the moment, and those are really impactful.

I love that. Uh, I think for me, that takeaway, uh, biggest takeaway, uh, Kevin, really is building that culture of continuous learning and then the culture of coaching and from everyone. I mean, because at the end of the day, it's really like as a sales leader, we are learning what's happening in the field, what's happening on a daily situations, and then really taking that tribal knowledge, what's happening, and then really giving it to everybody else at scale is really what we want to do, right?

Yes. And if you're a sales leader, I think that one of the greatest things you can do, find a mentor, right? Doesn't matter how many years you've been doing it. You could be in your first VP of sales role, could be your fifth, right? Find a mentor and they will help guide you through all of these different types of things because everyone's situation is unique, everyone's situation is different. And so being able to talk through these things like coaching, for instance, how do I introduce it to the team? Right, there's not a one-size-fits-all model, right? And so find a mentor. It's great because if your team knows and sees that you have a mentor and you're constantly learning and you're constantly getting better, that'll trickle down as well. So big, uh, big fan of finding a mentor.

That's amazing, uh, especially I think, um, these days on LinkedIn everybody has an opinion, everybody has a kind of, um, advice on what you should do. That's actually challenging, to be honest with you. Because at the end of the day, yes, I think something would have worked for them in their instance, in their situation and circumstance. But applying the same knowledge or the same roleplay or playbook in your different situation may not work well. That's exactly, I think, you are talking about, hey, you know what, your situation is very unique. So you really need to get into the details of who you are, what you are doing, and what your goals are to really know what you should do and not.

100%. Every company, every team, everything, they've got their, you know, very cool but unique circumstances. So yeah, again, never a silver bullet, never a one-size-fits-all model. But I think if you're, again, having that mentor to talk through these things and help you know, take a concept and customize it into what's going to work best for you is— it's been invaluable for me. So, um, yeah, highly, highly suggest it.

Absolutely. For all those people who are out there thinking about silver bullet, unfortunately there is no silver bullet. You just have to do the hard work, right?

100%.

Yeah. Uh, these are great insights. I know we went, uh, broad and depth, and, uh, thanks a lot for your time, Kevin.

Thank you, Suresh. Appreciate it.