Sales Coaching – Actionable Strategies for Sales Leaders and Reps

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone, wherever you're joining from. This is Suresh here from SalesTable and welcome to all the viewers over here. And this is Coffee Time with SalesTable where we bring in the industry experts within the sales, sales enablement area. And over the past time We've definitely had Dustin come in last year, and there are so many great insights that we've had. I wanted to kind of bring him back again for sure. Dustin, thanks a lot for joining today.

Thanks a lot, Suresh, and excited to be here again. It's been a little bit since we last spoke. Things have probably changed a little bit since last year, so I'm excited to talk about some of these topics and keep it conversational. I'm out of Texas this week. I usually am out of Georgia, but I'm traveling right now, so I'm in Austin, Texas. Looking forward to getting it going. So yeah, let's, let's get into it.

Absolutely. So I think, you know, today the topic really is about the sales coaching. And as much as everybody talks about the sales coaching, Dustin, the one thing that I realized when I talked to the sales leaders is we don't do sales coaching enough. And when I say enough, I think what's happening is Most of the sales leaders that I talk to, they understand the value of sales coaching. They talk about the mentorship, coaching, and everything. And they also realize the fact that they don't have enough time and they're not doing enough. I want to really start with that. How are you seeing that with the clients that you are working with and in general in the industry?

I think you're spot on there. I think most leaders, from what I see out there in a variety of industries, they want to take care of their people. They want to do the right thing. They want to invest in them. But they also have a full-time job as a sales VP or CRO, whatever it is. And that's very stressful. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that and they get overwhelmed. They get— it's— there's not enough time in the day. And although they in theory know that coaching is important, I think It gets pushed to the wayside sometimes because of all these other priorities or whatever it may be. I also think the leadership from the very top really needs to instill that in the organization. Otherwise, that trickle-down effect isn't going to happen. So I think the leadership, starting at C-suite and other managers and VPs, they need to practice what they preach. So if they're talking about coaching or they're talking about That type of stuff. Like, they need to be doing it themselves and they need to not speak out of both tongues because sometimes I'll see that that stuff's important, but then Q4 comes up and there's pressure and they're trying to hit numbers and it all goes out the window. So I think, you know, typical sales roller coaster stuff, but I think I 100% agree that there's not enough time for them. So how do they get creative with that? And also being very accountable with themselves about, hey, if we're talking about this, we gotta actually implement it and do it the right way. We can't just do it for one quarter and then stop. It's gotta be a long-term thing.

Yeah. Which is really— thanks for mentioning that because at the end of the day, a lot of organizations think about learning as a one-and-done, which is, oh, somebody came in, so put them through the onboarding process. Now they are ready. But then we know again and again that every quarter is different. Every quarter the product is changing, the pricing is changing, probably your customers are changing, your messaging is changing. If so, How are you making sure that you are actually giving all these changes in a right way, in a consumable format to your reps is going to be super important. Let me take a step back. Dustin, you said one thing very important, especially from the leadership point of view, it has to start. One of the patterns that, for example, I've seen, especially in the technology companies is this. which is a lot of reps join in and they join in as, let's say, SDR or AEs, and then they do really well for the next 1 year, 4, 5, 6 quarters. And then all of a sudden they are now in director of sales roles. And then lo and behold, and you get some more investment and then you get some more SDRs and BDRs and now you are hitting the quota again for the next 1 year. Now you are at a VP of Sales role, which is great, by the way. But in this hypergrowth model, what's happening is they don't have the right mentoring system to say, what does it really mean for somebody to go from AE to Director of Sales, Director of Sales to VP of Sales? What are those leadership principles, management principles that you need to accommodate so that you can not only uplift yourself from the title's point of view, but you also have to take care of your team, coach them, train them. In a lot of cases, the VP of Sales or even the Director of Sales, they themselves do not realize that there is so much of coaching needed for their team. Is that what you see?

Yeah, you made me think of a couple things there. That was some really good feedback. I think for whatever reason, I don't know why this is, it was probably before my time, but the sales business unit just gets treated differently from other business units. So if you think of engineering, for example, a lot of— I know you have a lot of tech and SaaS folks that follow you. Engineering, you would never just go into a job, they give you one day of training, and then just like, all right, go ahead, figure it out, you're good to go. You know, there would be a structure. It's very systematic. It's, um, a process like from start to finish. So I think sales, it's like for whatever reason we think we can just train people for a day or two and then like, oh, they'll figure it out. They'll just, you know, grit and resilience, they'll figure it out. Maybe that worked back in the day, but things have changed for sure since COVID and you can't get away with that anymore. And I don't think the certain generations are gonna put up with that. So I think There needs to be a mindset shift of like treating sales like other business units, that you have to have processes, you have to train them, you have to do all these type of things. I also think that you made me think of this, is that sales are like the professional athletes of the business world. Like you have to maintain them, you have to prep them, you have to give feedback, you have to do postmortems when things aren't going well. I mean, like all these different things. So I, I feel like they're the lifeblood of the organization. If sales isn't performing and bringing in revenue, then a lot of other issues are gonna happen across the company. So yeah, I don't know where that happened or how long it's been, but I think that needs to be shifted. And that's something you probably see a lot. I try to preach that as much as possible because we wanna lift the sales profession up. And if you wanna do that, you need to invest in your team. You need to invest in yourself. You need to be open to everything we're talking about. Otherwise, it's really hard to be successful. I think it's gotten harder and you have to treat it like a legitimate profession and be serious about it.

So you brought an interesting point because that's exactly what I was talking to my advisor yesterday, Brian Stern, about. How do sales teams learn? The premise of the question for me really was When I was leading engineering teams or product teams, to your point, Dustin, there is a process of learning, right? I mean, yes, people come in, they have a certain skill set, that is why they came into the company. There is a potential that they can get to, but how do you know and how are you nurturing that potential, right? So first things first, there are a few things like we give them coding exercises. they need to look into that. On the product side, there are these design exercises to say, what is the right way to design the product and what is the philosophy of product design and whatnot. Then on the top of it, you have a buddy system. Hey, you know what? That person is a great architect, so go sit with them. They can look into your code, they can provide the right way of doing the things and whatnot. Then the same thing is with the product. Hey, there is this architect who knows the product really well, go sit with them. And then on the top of it, these industry conferences and then some of these great blog posts and whatnot. So there is actually a great way that engineering teams and product teams actually organize the learning as part of the organization. So my point really was, how do sales teams learn? That's exactly to your point. It's like initially they come in, probably some companies may not even have a great onboarding process. They are probably thrown with a couple of good demos, maybe. I'm saying good demos and I'm assuming a few things out there, but then that's it. Now you go figure it out and then at the end of every month or every quarter, it's really about how many how much of sales did you do? And then if somebody didn't do that, unfortunately get into the PIP and then they're out. And for me, that's one thing at SalesTable, we take it very seriously because at the end of the day, we are talking about people, their careers, their families, and we cannot take that lightly as to say, oh, you know what, salespeople, just let's you know, bring them in and then if they don't perform, we let them go. That's a very wrong way to think about the natural talented people. And that's exactly where I know you and I, even when we talk offline, we put in so much emphasis on the coaching and training. I'm really glad that we're having this discussion today.

Definitely. Yeah, there's times where I think perhaps people think that salespeople can be replaceable. You know, when you have those classic things where, you know, maybe private equity comes in and if you hire 10 salespeople, you're going to get $1 million in production from each salesperson. That's never how it actually turns out. And everyone is at different degrees of responsibility, different degrees of performance. And I think it's devastating if you lose some of your best salespeople. And it's really, you need to invest in the people that have the potential that can get to the next step. You can't just expect people to figure it out and just knock on doors and, you know, do email cadences, like all that stuff. There's going to be some trial and error and making mistakes, but you got to set a framework for them, set a process, like invest in them from the get-go because you can't expect people to perform at that type of level without some support on the back end, similar to what other business units are doing. So, and I And it's really, really rough. I think companies realize that when they lose some of their best people and they're like, man, we gotta do some more to try to keep people. 'Cause it's usually not, I mean, money's always at the top for salespeople, but a lot of it is investing in them, the culture, the training. Like, do they feel like it's a home and a family? Like that stuff usually might prevent someone from leaving. Maybe I was on the fence of leaving this year and then you're doing all this training, you're doing all this onboarding, all this support. And maybe I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna give them another year or so and see if maybe I can right the ship. It might, who knows how that's gonna impact your retention.

Completely with you. So Dustin, you touched upon 2 points. One is about the experience of the people. And that hits me hard because just this morning I was talking to my AE and then he was like, hey, you know what, I went to this call and then this specific customer talked about, hey, you know, we are doing great. I mean, all our salespeople are pretty experienced. So they don't need training, right? Then I'm like, sure, I think, you know, that's how many of us feel. Just because somebody has 10 years of experience, 15 years, or 20 years of experience, doesn't matter, they don't need training. I really want to hear from you. I know you do a lot of one-on-one, you know, group kind of setting training and coaching. What patterns do you see in these people who are probably just entering the career versus people who probably gone there, done that, but they still need training?

It's a great question. I know we've talked about this before, but I've been lucky to be able to get mentored from Brian Burns, who's pretty famous in the sales world, one of the OGs. He's helped me out a lot with this specific topic and it's something I know he's passionate about too. The whole idea is that, okay, think of cooking class back in the day. If you're in grade school, you go to cooking class, all right? There's 25 people in the class. Everyone gets the same recipe. Everyone gets the exact same recipe. At the end of it, there's 25 different outcomes, all right? Some of them are really good. There's like 3 or 4 that are like, man, that's amazing. There's probably a lot in the middle that are okay, and then there's some that are just absolutely terrible. So the point is If you think of that analogy, sales is a performance profession. It's not about what you know in your head. It's about how you perform when it matters, when you're in front of the customer, when you're doing the demo, when you're following up, whatever it is. So it's good to have experience. It's not a bad thing. It's not bad to have knowledge and keep building that. But I think there's a lack of focus on how you perform because that's really what gets deals closed and that's how you get paid and that's how the companies keep moving forward. So I think somewhere along the way it got a little lost there. And I found that working with individuals or companies that focus on that, they have a lot of success. Now, the hard part is those younger folks, they're usually more open. Like they're ready to get after it, chop wood, like try new things, like prove themselves. So they're usually more open to feedback and different type of coaching. The folks that have been there for 10 or 20 years, they tend to get And rightfully so. I mean, they probably had success, they've probably done well, they've done a lot of good things, but that can get you in this sort of complacent mindset where you think you know everything, you think you've been there, done that, you're not open to new ideas. And I think that's usually the start of a decline in your sales careers when you start thinking that you know everything or that you've been doing it so long that you don't need to be open to new perspectives. Certainly filter who you're taking advice from. and who you're getting coaching from. You wanna make sure it's from the right type of people. But the day that you start thinking you can't learn from other people or that you're not open to new ideas, I feel like that's when you get passed by. And we see that very often with sales folks. There's a lot of ego in sales because of the type of money you can make and what you accomplish. But I've learned myself, like I had to check my ego several years ago because I was way overconfident and borderline cocky. And uh, you know, right around the corner you're gonna get humbled. Sales is gonna humble you at some point. So you, uh, the more I focus on that, the better. And that's what we try to teach when we work with companies and individuals.

That's amazing. So the— just to go back to the previous point, which is when people are— when the sales leaders are thinking about bringing somebody in and then letting them go, uh, we'll just try out somebody, right? And that's in a lot of mentality that is out there. But let's talk through the cost of hire and fire aspect of it. Because at the end of the day, to your point, Dustin, we bring in somebody, it takes probably almost— the US average is about 3.5 to 4 months for somebody to onboard. Then on the top of it, you probably have a step function for the quota attainment. Maybe initially it is 15%, 20%, whatever that is. And by the time you want them to completely hit the quota, it's almost about a year in time. And again, the same US average is about 40% of turnover within the salespeople, which basically means you put in all this effort for whatever reasons, and then at the end of the year, out of, you know, 10 people that you have, 4 people are unfortunately gone for different reasons at the end of it, which basically means you're spending time on recruiting the new people, and then you are again spending the time in onboarding. And then on the top of it, during all this time, you've lost the revenue, you're paying the salaries, and it's very difficult for sales leaders to actually get around that fact that you are actually spending a lot more money and losing a lot more revenue by not helping your reps the right time at the right insights. And probably I want to hear from you on how are people that you are working with thinking about this whole aspect of hiring and training those reps?

It's definitely a painful subject. I mean, what you mentioned there, it's happening more often than not, unfortunately, in a variety of industries, and it can be pretty devastating to the the company as far as the productivity, as far as the profitability and revenue. So it's a huge issue. There's no doubt about it. I think my perspective and the companies I know that are doing better with it is they're very relentless on the interview side of it. So on the interview side, they're asking a lot of the tough questions and really trying to dive deep into the psychology behind it with that person because Everyone lumps sales into this one bucket, but every industry, every type of specialty, every— everything is very different as far as the deal process. So the classic example is, okay, a hunter versus a farmer, right?

Yeah.

So if I, if I'm a startup, it sounds great to be like, oh, I wanna hire someone from a Fortune 500 company because they've had experience, they've done all this stuff. It looks great on the resume, but that person, you know, perhaps they were just servicing and upselling accounts. They'd been there for a long time, a great brand, They weren't used to going after new logos. They weren't used to no marketing behind them. They weren't used to having to put themselves out there. And maybe they wanna change and they wanna do that. But I think a lot of times there's a major disconnect when they come into a startup, for example, and it's set up for failure on both sides. And, and there's no right or wrong way to do sales. Like if you wanna be in more of that servicing type upsell environment, that's great. You can have a great living with that. And it's awesome if you wanna be more in that commission hunter environment. That's not for the faint of heart. It's really hard, but you can do really, really well there. You're more like an entrepreneur in that situation. So I think the companies need to really understand who they're hiring. Are they the right fit in that specific sales situation? Ask them the tough questions during the interview. And, you know, maybe they really don't want to be in that type of sales role, and you can figure that out on the front end before you hire them, because once they get in, then it's this chain reaction that you mentioned, and it usually doesn't go well. So that stands out a lot, is really understanding your industry, your sales process, who are the right people that usually do well, and doubling down there. And then the second thing is setting them up for success. Okay, so you're still going to take some chances. You're going to bet on some people that have some upside. You're going to— someone came from marketing and they want to get into sales, whatever the situation. And you need to have that. I think those first impressions are key. If the first month or so is not dialed in, I think that sets up some failure a lot of times too. And you really need to be investing that 4 months that you talked about to get them onboarded. And then depending on your deal size, your deal process, how long it takes to close, all that, I think everything right now is taking longer just based off the market. It's taking twice as long to close stuff. The deal sizes are shrinking. Like, that's consistent everywhere that I see. So you need to be— it's really hard in sales, but you got to be somewhat patient with them. I mean, you got to give them a little bit of time, a little bit more probably than normal. And it is a performance profession, as I mentioned. So eventually, like, if you're not hitting the numbers, Yeah. not doing what you say you're gonna do, like, you got to have those conversations. But I'd say patience on that side and then being relentless on the front end to make sure you're getting the right type of salesperson, not just blankly hiring for sales or whatever.

Yeah, so Dustin, I think that that's a great point that you mentioned about really vetting the salespeople before you bring in somebody, right? So it's a very recent experience for us where we wanted to have the founding AE as part of the team. And when I advertised that on LinkedIn, about 450 applications came in 2 days.

Wow.

Yeah, completely overwhelmed for sure. The one thing that I always believe in is attention to detail is very much of one of the value that I see from a sales team in general. As part of that, I was like, in the job description I said, hey, whoever wants to kind of get to the next level, please submit a 1-minute video using Loom, Vidyard, whatever is your favorite thing to say why you are excited about Sales Table opportunity and then what's your background that fits together. Believe it or not, out of 400+ applications, only 6 people sent the video.

Wow, that's like 0.1%. That's, that's really low, right?

Um, and now, I mean, the reason why I'm mentioning that is to exactly your point. It's actually on both sides of the equation, I feel, where the hiring managers at this point of time, they need to also very consciously think about what kind of people that they are looking for is one. On the rep side of it, they also need to be very conscious about what company should they be joining, what is their skill set, what skill set they can bring to the company, and how they want to impact. I think they all have to be very deliberate and conscious at that point of time because there is this very unfortunate aspect of, I think, especially these days, the job boards make it super easy to say easy apply, easy apply, easy apply and then people are just going through their mobile phones and then applying to the jobs without really thinking through if that is the right thing for them or not. The reason why I'm bringing the topic is that's actually a cultural aspect of it to say that the job seekers or even the reps have to find the right fit for them. The same thing is true on the other side, which is for the hiring managers, especially the sales leaders. They have to think through about the right candidates? And then what skill sets are we looking for? To your earlier analogy of the hunters versus gatherers, in a way, who are we looking at? What is our sales philosophy? And why are we recruiting hunters versus gatherers? For example, that's a very different mindset where people often forget, right? They just have a very generic job requirement on the thing. And then everybody comes in, And now you are like, you know, you, you are at a phase of, uh, I, I just need somebody, so just pick 2 and then go with it, right? That's unfortunately the challenging situations that we are running into these days.

For sure. And, and a lot of that could be, to your point, trying to get revenue in the door. There's a little bit of desperation there, and then you're like, all right, let's just hire somebody, and then you pull the trigger. But if you don't do that due diligence, I feel like it can be really tough for companies. And on the flip side, the The salespeople need to be dialed in too, because you need to understand that stuff as well. What are you good at? What do you want to do? Because not everyone wants to be a hunter, that's for sure. Not everyone wants to be a gatherer. Maybe they want somewhere in between. And then the industry, the type of sale— I mean, there's so many factors that go into it. I don't think a lot of people are doing that type of research, and then they figure it out too late once they get there, and then it's not good for both sides. So like, you gotta be, uh, pretty diligent and have a almost treat it like a sales process. Anytime I would interview, I would treat it like a sales process and do all these certain steps that helped me. And, and you got to go above and beyond. I mean, I'm sure out of those 450, the 6 people that replied to you on the video, I mean, you could tell if those people were actually passionate. Were they full of it, or were they actually really looking for something, wanted to be there for the long term, like wanted to do something different, be the founding member? I mean, I'm sure you saw that passion. Passion's one that's I feel like it's easy to see if they're not passionate or maybe they're faking it a little bit. So you, you have to stand out today because like, look at that example, you just pressed the button on LinkedIn and had obviously a great background and everything, but then 500 people applied like right away. It's like there's a lot of competition, so you have to think about that too if you're actually trying to get jobs as well.

Exactly, exactly. Um, so Dustin, I know, uh, from the coaching and the training point of view I've seen you as one of the leaders who've been consistently there, really doing the right things for the teams that you work with in the last couple of years that I've known you. What has changed from last year to now, if at all? And how are you really thinking about the whole of the coaching and the training aspect for the sales teams?

It's a great question. I think that the— there's a lot of industries that had a ton of success in 2021, 2022, around that time, and everyone's patting each other on the back. It was great. And, you know, hitting good numbers, making good money, all the, all the travel stuff was good to go. You didn't have to worry about any of that. And then last year, and then in this year too, I think all of a sudden it just started getting a lot harder. And where before you could be reactive and just rest on whatever happened in the past and you had some inbound coming in, whatever the case. Now it's like the opposite where you have to be very, very proactive and you have to scrap and claw for a lot of things to get them done. And that's tough. I think it's the organizations are like scrambling because they're like, uh-oh, we're not hitting this quarter. Now we gotta plan for This quarter, and then geez, we're already behind for the year, and it— and they're trying to play catch-up, which puts a lot of pressure on the leaders, which then trickles down to the reps, and then they start doing things they normally wouldn't do, which ends up backfiring. So I think there's— you got to be proactive, and if you're just figuring that out, it was probably too late. But I, I'm seeing that a lot now, and it's— it, it can be a little stressful out there. So I think the more you can just, no matter how well things are going, Be as proactive as possible. I think that's gonna help folks. And, you know, for us, some changes that we've done is we still do a ton in B2B and still do a ton of groups, but we found as a good follow-up to that is working with individuals afterwards. Because a lot of times, you know, if you have a group of 30 people on a sales team, no matter how good you are or me, we're not gonna convince all 30. to buy into our philosophy necessarily, but there is maybe 5 or 10 that are probably really interested and they do want to get better. They, they are really trying to change it up and do something different to stay at the top or get to the next level. And we found that a good follow-up for us is working with individuals a lot deeper because they, um, are already bought in. They want to be accountable and they want to take it to the next level. So a shift that we found is You know, and every— everyone's a little bit different— is that when we're working with leaders, like finding those individuals that are really bought in and doing it more of a direct approach like that after we do something for the group. And, you know, that's worked for us. I don't know what you've been seeing yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a great thing that you just talked about, which is there is a value in the group coaching and as well as there is a value in the one-on-one coaching.

Right? Yes.

So the reason why I'm thinking about that is when, especially at SalesTable, when we are thinking through how do we upskill the current team that exists for any company, that's exactly one aspect where we keep thinking through, which is there is a generic training and set of items that everybody should be going through, whether it is about the product, how do you demo, how do you pitch, all those things, which is good. But at the same time, there are these very specific one-on-one things like, for example, role plays. When we think about the role plays, those are absolutely one-on-one. It's not as though that for a bunch of 10 people you would actually teach them or take them through the role plays. Especially we keep thinking about those teachable moments is what we think about. For example, when let's say when we look into the funnel, there is a certain rep who is actually bringing a lot of demos for sure, but then things are not moving from demos to let's say contracts or the next steps at that point of time. Again, there might be different reasons, but one of the very specific things is probably during the demos, the rep is not actually able to translate the value prop that he or she put together initially to the product. That's why a lot of demos, even though they are doing, but they are not probably hitting the right elements of the product and then they're not able to translate that. They're not going to the next step. At that point of time, it's super easy for any system at a scale to say, oh, you know what, this person, maybe it is Suresh, hey, why don't you go back to your role plays and then actually practice on more of product demos? Then there is somebody or even AI that automatically looks into the demo and then tells you whether you are confident, you hit upon the right value proposition and the product demo and all that good stuff. So I'd love to get your perspective on where do your customers see the most value in terms of the group coaching versus one-on-one coaching, or you keep both at the same level?

So you mentioned role-playing. I think that's really important and maybe has gotten lost a little bit the last few years. I know companies like yourself are really big on helping with that. I'm a huge fan of that because of the whole performance thing that I mentioned earlier. Like, you don't wanna— we're all gonna make mistakes, right? It's okay to make mistakes in sales, but you don't wanna make big mistakes in front of these big opportunities and these big customers. So the only way to prevent that is you have to practice. And that's where that whole know-it-all thing comes in. We're like, oh, I've been doing it for 15 years, I don't need to practice. But no, you do. Professional athletes, they practice. Anyone that's got to a certain level, they Continuously practice. So I think role-playing is huge, and it's uncomfortable. No one wants to do it. It's not fun. So you have to really instill that culture. But there's a lot of cool ways to do it now versus just, hey, we got to go meet in person and do it. There's all kinds of things that you guys provide as well as, um, you know, other things that you can do. So I think that, that's a huge thing. Uh, we found more impact with the one-on-one. That's just our— where we've had more success as a business. Because if you look at Everyone knows about the 80/20 rule, but a lot of times it gets even more exaggerated the bigger a company is and how many people they have on the team. So, you know, a few people can make a pretty huge difference if you really invest in them and go deep, because if they're already a top contributor and you want to keep them up there, maybe even take them a step further, or get someone who's like right there to get to that A-level, I mean, that can make a huge revenue impact. It feels Different. It feels different. But I, you know, I think group is great. Like, you got to be doing the group for sure. But I think going really deep with a few people can make a huge impact. It's just hard to wrap your head around that. But if you look at the numbers, like any company, like there's something called Price's Law. So basically says the square root of the number does 50% of the production. So if there's 100 salespeople—

Oh yeah.

If there's 100 salespeople, 10, of them are doing half of the volume. And that just keeps getting more exaggerated the bigger the company is. So it is what it is. But, and then there's people that really wanna do that too. I mean, I don't think you wanna force it on people that are maybe not as open to it. If they're not performing, you gotta have a different conversation. But I think you wanna find those people that are really trying to do that. That's gonna help with retention. It's gonna help with all this other stuff we were talking about. And, you know, it can make a big impact on the revenue for sure.

Gotcha. So when you're going and talking to some of these leaders, how are you talking to them in terms of bringing that coaching culture? Because at the end of the day, sometimes they may believe in coaching culture, they may not believe in coaching culture. And then especially, there is a question that everybody asks, which is, What's the ROI? How do I see the direct impact, right? So how do you address these kinds of questions from the sales leaders?

It can be tough, right? Especially if you're looking to an outside party. I think it can be— the sales leader might be threatened by a company like yours or a company like mine because they're like, well, man, I should be doing this myself. I got to figure it out. But I think if you can be more of a partner in crime of like, hey, where are you trying to get to? Like really understand their business and what they're trying to accomplish. And be like, guys, like there's no way you can do all that stuff and coach and implement all this stuff yourself. Like we wanna lift you up together. We're not trying to one-up you and make you look bad. We want you to get promoted and stay at whatever role you're in. So I think you have to start with that. And that's sometimes that's harder than others depending on the people you're talking to. But I try to like really dig into what is their personal win? Why are they doing this? Hope, hoping that they're not threatened. So that, that, that's the first thing I think is you gotta be open to it. as a leader and whoever you're talking to hopefully can help you with that. And then the second thing is just going back to what we were talking about before. I think there just has to be a lot of accountability from the leadership team of being real with themselves about not blaming the salespeople. You can always blame the salespeople. That's easy. But they need to be real with themselves about are we really teeing them up to be successful and giving them the right tools?

Yeah.

And infrastructure, and then admitting that and everyone agreeing on it. Like, that has to be done to get the top-level leadership. And then if we want to get into it, then you got to have a really consistent framework that works for group and individual, and you have to commit to it for the long haul because it's probably going to take 12 or 18 months to truly get a change done. And if you're not consistent, it's— you're not going to get the results that you want. And you have to be real about Like, guys, look, you can get off at point A or point B, but you're not going to get this full ROI we're talking about. So that's the vision over 18 months. Here's your checkpoints. And then you, you know, sort of leave it up to them and you got to prove yourself along the way. But I think that's how I look at it. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, especially the biggest thing for me is to make sure and understand when we talk to the leaders, what are the top priorities in your mind that you are currently working on and what's working for you, what's not? And especially, I think I'm just going back to Dustin, your previous point, which is a lot of sales leaders think they're doing a great job. I mean, and then thus, oh, I don't have anything to improve or my team doesn't have anything to improve. Which is great, by the way. Then my discovery would be to say, hey, that's great that you are doing that, but what does it really mean for you in the last quarters? How many times your team has hit the quota and then targets? What are you really thinking about Q4 or 2025? That typically opens up about some opportunities to really think through and say, Oh yeah, I mean, you know, we probably didn't hit the targets well, or we barely met the targets. And now there is an opportunity to really talk to and see where we can help them. But most often than not, to your earlier point, some of those discussions are super tough because they're like super guarding their team and themselves. So it's very difficult for them to say, I need help.

Oh yeah.

That's exactly. Then the people that we work with are the ones who actually are very open in talking about the opportunities to improve. Those are the ones where, of course, the help is actually bidirectional. You need to seek help to get help. That's really how a lot of leaders that we've talked to, they know exactly what what the strengths are and then what they need help with. They're really trying to see who are the best fit to really help them in those specific scenarios. That's really where I would say our discussions become really positive versus when some leaders say, oh, you know what, I'm doing everything great. I'm hitting all my quarters or my future forecast is all great. I don't need any help. Sure. I mean, you know, that's great. I mean, if that is the case for sort of sales leaders, but more often than not, we know that's not.

For sure. And that's your job as what we're doing too. You gotta have the right approach. You gotta ask the right questions. You gotta build up that know, like, and trust because people wanna avoid pain. No one wants to talk about, you know, where they maybe fell short, especially if they don't know you. So you have to be careful how you bring that up. But people do want to talk about their problems, that's for sure. So if you bring it up the right way, you can get people talking. And I think you just got to be real. And the problem is if you have those leaders that are not willing to admit that or they cover it up, whatever it may be, when it does become a really big problem, it might be too late to fix some of the stuff we're talking about because then there's just too much urgency and they're not patient at all. They're like, we got to get numbers now, all this stuff. And then you start skipping steps. You start doing stuff out of ordinary, and it can be hard to recover if it's too late. I mean, and I have empathy for the sales leaders. It's not easy right now, especially in the startup world. I mean, if you're not performing in that 12 to 18 month window, I mean, there's a good chance you're not going to be there very long. So it's not easy. It's not easy.

Yeah, yeah. As part of the last segment on this one, Um, I know we are in Q4 now, and then a lot of companies are actually preparing for the next year. What are some of the insights that you are seeing, how people are really running the Q4, and then how they are planning for the next year?

Yeah, one of the best pieces of advice I've gotten, and I use it myself, and I, I know a lot of people think like this, is if you can plan your year to end before Thanksgiving, it's going to bode well for you. So basically meaning that if it doesn't get done by Thanksgiving, the chances of closing it in December with all the holidays and the Christmas and New Year's— it's not impossible. It would be a nice icing on the cake if it does happen, but I wouldn't— no one wants to be in that high-pressure December where they're like trying to close everything and they're doing all that type of stuff. So one of the things that's really helped me is thinking that the year ends by Thanksgiving in my head. You know, I just remind myself that, and then everything in December is just great if that happens too. So, um, you know, having that sense of urgency before, that way you're not doing the typical stuff on December 30th, like sending some discount, you know, all the stuff that people are expecting. I think that's stressful, and I think that burns people out from, from a leadership standpoint and individually. So that, that's like a, just a, I guess, a little quick Tip on that. And then getting ahead of 2025, I mean, you know, the classic thing about setting New Year's resolutions, 90% of them never come to anything. I think people need to take it seriously with coaching and training of like, hey, what are my personal and professional goals going into 2025? And get a head start on it because a lot of this stuff takes time. Like, you're a reflection of what you did one year ago. So I think, you know, right now Maybe before it gets too crazy in December is a good time to, you know, really start planning for, for next year and being proactive, like I said earlier, on the, on this side, on the sales stuff side, but also personally too, like mindset, habits, accountability, whatever it is. So organizations can help with that and, and, and be proactive. And also individually, you gotta do stuff for yourself. That's, that's my perspective.

That's amazing. Dustin, I think that's a great piece of advice to do as much as you can before Thanksgiving. That just leaves some of the fewer deals into December and not really worry about— we don't really have 3 months. It is really about 2 solid months when you include the holidays and whatnot. Not many people are really writing the checks. Not many people are actually Because they're like, hey, the— in the next couple of days, if I'm going on a vacation, I'm not writing a check right now, right? Uh, it just gets—

it'll just get— those like, uh, let's just look at it next year. And then, then you end up starting the deal all over again, and it's painful. So it's better to try to get it done. Obviously never going to be perfect. Nothing ever works 100% of the time. But I try to do that, and it's, it's very helpful.

Absolutely. Dustin, I know, hey, we wanted to discuss 30 minutes, but then this is so encouraging for us to just keep talking through. There are so many insights that we have uncovered today. Dustin, thanks a lot for your time. Really appreciate it.