Unlocking Success: Building a Winning Sales Team

Paul Arthur is a high-performance sales leader. He is the VP of OutSystems, which is a low-code platform that is the most powerful on the planet. Paul has achieved Club 5 times. He has led his entire team to Club at least twice. And at OutSystems, he has doubled revenues. Today, You're going to learn about the 2x2 matrix, how to get the whole team focused on the goal, as well as creating a culture where everyone wins. So let's dive right in. Welcome to the call, Paul. I'm so glad that you're joining us.

Thanks for having me, Pri.

All right. Can you tell me a little bit about your journey as a sales leader? How did we get to today?

It's a pretty long and varied route, which I don't think we've got enough time for to go through the whole story. Suffice to say, I started off working in a technical role for an organization, and I only started there because I was working for a customer who's the vendor then saw I had some skills in the technology and they brought me on board to work in their sort of pre-sales role. Went into a sales role and then multiplied across different diverse parts of business. I've done marketing, I've done channel, I've done pre-sales, and then came back to sales into a leadership role probably 15 years ago now. And then for the last 15 years, I've been in sales leadership roles.

Fantastic. And I can just imagine how, because I know you did a first on-the-ground role and you've really in the last 5, 10 years worked with growing startups, scale-ups in region. So I can only imagine how have those experiences helped you be a more holistic leader cross-functionally?

I think it's an amazing experience to be able to get the opportunity to do things like that because Often people who are maybe isolated into larger organizations and have the support network of those organizations maybe don't get to explore some of the more diverse capacities of business. But when you're first on ground, you don't really have that option. You know, the first thing you have to do is go find a friend, go find a technical friend who can help you sell straight away. And I was very fortunate to be able to do that very quickly. And then obviously make the choice to work for an organization that has a great solution to sell in the first place. Um, but there's so many different facets to the business. And for me, being a great sales leader who can contribute to the business is not just about being good at sales and being able to grow people at sales, but it's understanding your place in a business and how you interact with the rest of the organizations. And doing that sort of first on ground role or startup role, which I've also done in a startup organization, um, really gives you that breadth of experience that is invaluable because it lets you start to think like a customer. And not so much like a vendor.

Now, you have a reputation for building good culture and teams. Tell me more about your early factors that have shaped your views around culture.

I am a firm believer in the classic quote that culture eats strategy for breakfast. And I think culture eats everything for breakfast, to be honest, and dinner and lunch and all the other meals of the day, predominantly because culture is about scale. If you don't have the right culture, you cannot scale success. And when, you know, one of the definitions I've heard of culture is culture is what people do when no one's looking. You want to know about the culture of your businesses? Take all the leadership away and then just have the team do what they do. Then you'll find what the culture's like. Now, if you want to scale, the leadership can't always be there. So from that perspective, you've got to have a great culture. And I've been fortunate enough to see great cultures in organizations. I've also been fortunate enough to see bad cultures in organizations and I know which I prefer and I know which ones can be successful. And I think that, you know, my early days, I saw sales teams that were really being successful and they had a great culture. And it was easy to think that because they were being successful, their culture was good. Because it's always good to, you know, everyone can be happy, everyone can feel good, everyone can be collaborative when you're winning. But was the culture gonna be as good? I've then seen, changes in leadership in those organizations, same team, same solutions, same market, culture fails, the success goes as well. So when I've seen that, for me, it's absolutely critical that the culture fits as well as the skill sets fit.

You know, you've seen both negative cultures and positive cultures. What are some of the key elements that you would contribute? Let's start with the negative cultures. What are some of the things that you've seen that you, you know, you clearly know you don't want to be a part of and you don't want that as a part of your organization?

Absolutely. And I think that one of the key ones is obviously trust. Between trust and accountability, they're probably the 2 key areas that you start with culture. If you do not trust your team and your team do not trust you, you're never going to get a strong culture. You may get some success, but it will be short-lived and it'll be sporadic. It won't be a culture of success. So that building that trust and trust comes through transparency. It comes through honesty. It comes through openness and it comes through creating an environment where people feel that they can be all themselves, their whole self, and they can ask questions and they can say, I don't understand and I don't know, and can you help me? You create that. That's the core of creating a successful culture. The second part is around accountability. It's not all rainbows and unicorns that we all love each other and hug. There is still an accountability that we have to deliver, that we have to— we're there to pay to do a job of work and holding everybody accountable for that job of work up the chain and down the chain. So your people holding you accountable, you holding them accountable, and also the people either side of you in different function holding them accountable. when there's open accountability, not in a vindictive way, but in a collaborative, in a constructive way, then people can start to understand why do people do what they do? What are their goals? What are their objectives? What are they being asked to do? And are they being held accountable to them? Because the minute you see people not being held accountable to what you think they should be doing, people start to question, well, why should I do it? Why should I do it if they're not doing their thing? So, when you can drive trust through transparency, then you can then create that clear accountability, then the culture starts to come. Then people start to think a little bit more than just themselves because you have to create the baseline first.

Yeah, that sounds really good. I think that those 2 pillars of trust and accountability that you've just talked about, I think trust creates that emotional security that people know that they are in a safe space. And I get to talk to people on a daily basis who are not feeling safe where they're at, right?

And it can be not feeling safe because you're not performing is a different type of trust from the perspective of, that's more around accountability. Trust is that people have your best interests at heart as well as the company's best interests at heart, that they're being honest with you, that what they say is what they mean and what they mean is what they do. So from that perspective, that's a real key element of trust as opposed to people who maybe don't feel safe because they're not meeting the accountability standard.

Yeah, that's very good. In fact, 2 situations there. One, I am speaking with people who they have put all their eggs in one big deal that's going to happen. And you know how that script unfolds, right? We've all seen that movie, right? And then you feel exposed because you haven't been sowing. in other parts of your territory, which you should have. And I'd say even where people know what's going to happen, at least they still feel safe in that, I know how this is, you know, if I don't close this, I'm exposed. It's my fault. I haven't done that. And people still remain in a state of ownership. I have had situations where iconic top 3 cloud vendor At the start of the year, this person, you know, they got given a number which everyone knew from the beginning could not be achieved. So now it's a matter of when we finish at 60% or 50%, will that be good enough or not? And that's not an environment of trust.

I learned from a very good manager a long time ago, a gentleman called Alex Schubman, who was brilliant, had a 2x2 matrix. And he called it getting it done and doing it right. And everybody wanted to be in the top right-hand corner, right? Which was getting it done and you're doing it right. That's the place where we want to be. And no one wanted to be in the bottom left-hand corner, which is you're not getting it done and you're not doing it right. Both those 2 people are pretty easy to manage, right? The ones where the element of leadership comes into place are the other 2 quadrants. The people who are getting it done, but they're not quite doing it right. That can give you short-term success, but it won't give you long-term success. So some coaching to be done there. Of course, the other people who are similar maybe to your candidate you were just talking about is doing everything right, but they're not getting it done because getting it done was unachievable in the first place. And sometimes those people get put in the same bucket as the people who are not getting it done and not doing it right. And the element of leadership is to identify those people And try and get them into a position where they can be successful because they know how to do it right.

Fantastic. I love that framework. That is so good. That is so, so good. One of my favorite conversations around setting people up for success was with Mike Wingfield from Twilio on this show. And he talked about how he wanted to make sure that there was equity in territories. When territories are designed for someone to come into it. And I can tell you so often, it is not the case because there are some, you know, you know how this cookie crumbles. But essentially, you've made an excellent point out there. So, but that's what we'll take away. Accountability and trust are critical pillars for a culture of success. So, let's move on to common goals. How do you keep team members informed about, you know, the goal that you have for the year, the progress that you're making, the challenges? How do you take people along?

I think, again, the key part there is transparency and honesty. Show them, you know, we all know that most sales organizations, there's an uplift. So the quota of all your reps added up tends to be higher than the quota that the sales manager has. Be open with that. Show them that. Show them the numbers. Go right into the system and show them where you are. what the expectation is for you to be successful. And then once you've done that, bury it, move it away. It's irrelevant from that moment on because what's only relevant then is how do you get each of those reps to achieve their targets? Because by definition, if they all do, you do anyway. In fact, you overachieve because your target is less than the sum of the parts. But once they've got that transparency, when they understand where you're coming from, then you can get them to buy into a bigger picture. So when I do forecasting, for example, Every other week in our forecast, so the first thing is when I do a forecast, all the reps are on the same call. So they're all hearing about each other's forecasts as well. It's not a secret. They're not keeping their own separate forecasts. I'm not hiding anything between them. They're open, they're honest, they're talking about their deals, and they're also learning from each other. But also every other week, I bring in the functional leads. I bring in my pre-sales lead, my marketing person, my partner person. My customer success person, so they can be part of that same success cadence that we're trying to create within the business. Because it's no salesperson on their own could be successful without the support of the other functions within the business. But if you isolate sales from the business, then when you need them, there isn't that connection. They don't understand the reason why. When you say, I urgently need, well, okay, that's just a salesperson asking for something and demanding like they always do anyway. But if they've been in the call and they understand the importance of the deal you're talking about to the greater success, then they're more likely to be, again, engaged in that culture of transparency and openness and trust.

Fantastic. Yep, I can just see, because absolutely, if people share the goal, they share the challenge, they are more likely to work towards solving those challenges and achieving those goals. That's a great example, getting your cross-functional team on those calls.

People want to be successful and people want to collaborate. As humans, we're tribal, right? We want to work together for a greater good. That's who we are. So if you actually approach it not as a target, but as a challenge, and you say, we as a team have a challenge here, this is what the company has set for us as a challenge, and how can we work together to solve that challenge and get to an outcome at the end of the year, then that's much more exciting than talking to an individual rep about them Achieving a quota of a number.

How do you see your team interacting with each other as you go through the year? What are some of the supportive behaviors that you see at work at an interpersonal level?

I think the key thing is, is you start to get to a point where you originally have to start to celebrate the successes. Everybody celebrates everybody's successes because they all see, no matter who's taking a chunk out of the quota, They're all taking a chunk out of the bigger number. And, you know, if everybody does that, then that's a great thing. The great thing about sales is it's not, it's more like golf than it's like tennis. Tennis, you're playing against another person. If you win, they lose. They hit a bad shot, they're, you know, they, you win, they lose. In golf, you may be playing with somebody at golf, but you're not playing against them. You're playing against the course. What they do is irrelevant. It's only you, the ball, and the golf course. Now, yes, you could play with your friends and you can have a collaborative game, and they may give you a little tip here and there to help you play better. They may want to beat you overall, but you're playing the course. They don't— for you to be successful, you to shoot under par, for you to do the best you've ever done, it's nothing to do with them from that perspective. And I think once we start thinking of it more that type of game rather than a win-lose within your team, that's the thing you really struggle with. I struggle with leaderboards. I'm open and honest with the numbers, and I show everybody where everyone is at their quota. But it's not a concept of a leaderboard. It's a concept of how well that person is playing the golf course, as opposed to somebody else playing the golf course.

Paul, that's probably one of the best metaphors I've heard in 25 years of doing this. So thank you. That's really good. I, I'm going to steal that.

You're welcome.

Yes. And I will say that it does feel, when I'm talking to people, it still does feel that people are playing tennis in some companies because it's very much about who can show whom up and who got credit for something and who didn't. And I think that goes back to that trust and accountability. I think they're underappreciated values. So, in terms of, as you go through the year, you start the year and you've got the big vision, you've got the big number, everyone's working towards it, you're getting We're getting into that. We're in quarter 4. Now, some people might have made their numbers, others have not made the numbers. Now, how do you keep it all together? Tell me, what do you do at this stage?

I think at this point, you really are trying to get that concept of, as you get closer to the end of the year, the concept of President's Club starts to raise its head and people start thinking who already made the quota or made the whatever they need to do to qualify the qualification. They're already probably celebrating. They're probably on accelerated commissions. They're making good money there. There. But what you then have is when you get that team dynamic working, you know, that culture working, they want their friends there too. They want their colleagues to, to be there. Now, I'm not saying my team will offer up deals and trade them across and give them to another rep, but what they will do is help them. And if they're struggling with trying to get to a particular person or they're struggling with a particular thorny problem, help them say, hey, this is potentially what I've tried. In the past because they want to bring them along. There is no success like joint success. There is no celebration like a team winning something as opposed to an individual winning something. You watch, you know, we just saw the Women's World Cup. We saw the emotion with a team, you know, and Courtney Vines scores that final penalty. She scored the penalty that got, you know, Australia across the line. But the team emotion, the team celebration was far higher. And I've been in organizations where one person's made club out of a team and it's great for them. When everybody makes club in the team, and I've only ever done it twice, but everyone in the club makes club, that's a whole different ballgame. And people, once they feel it once, they want to do it again.

That's fantastic. I think that creating a culture of support and winning, and you absolutely nailed it, you know, there's a very different feel. With a podium, with the first, second, third versus a whole team celebrating that joint trophy. The energy in the stadium is completely different.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you. You know, as we start wrapping up, tell me, what are some of the things that leaders can do to encourage more support and collaboration within a team?

I think the first thing to do is have a good process overall. Because to drive culture and collaboration, you need time to do that. So if you're constantly putting out fires, if you're constantly having to run down deals yourself, or you're constantly having to recruit or hire because you've got turnovers in your team, then you're not going to have the time to put the real level of effort that's required around creating that collaboration and working through with the group. So, you know, I'm a big believer, a previous manager of mine, actually wrote a book called Success Cadence. Bart Fanelli, Tom Shordoff, and Dave Matson are the authors. It's an amazing book to give you that cadence of success that you can look at to be your underlying foundation. Now, once you've got that and you've got that foundation, everybody knows how you operate, they know what the mechanism is, that frees you to be able to focus on building those collaboration tools and build those ability for people to work together. And one of the easiest things you can do is take some of your most successful reps and give them the job of educating some of the junior ones. They hate it at first, but after a while, they actually start getting into it. They start to enjoy it. So you actually assign mentorships for some of your most successful people and say, hey, you know, you're really good at this. You're really good at closing. You're really good at opening. You're really good at prospecting, whatever it is. How about you run a little exercise for the rest of the team? As a growth thing for you, but also as a growth thing for the team. So start allocating little tasks out like that. And all of a sudden you start to see the collaboration levels grow. Yeah.

And that would be a double win because I think peers are very likely to listen and learn from someone they respect, as well as somebody who's successful doing it is going to actually have their initial taste beyond success of significance. They've actually made a difference in someone else's life.

I think that's the greatest thing we could all do, right? We all want to make a difference in the world. We all want to help people. That's why we're here, right? At the end of the day. So if you can give anybody the opportunity to bring somebody else up, to reach down and pull somebody else up, why would you not do that?

Fantastic. That is such good advice. Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate everything that you've said, and it's going to help so many people who listen to this.

I appreciate the time, Pri. Thanks very much.

Thank you.