Sales Management Podcast
73. Sales Management Research Report Findings with Andy Springer
Want to dig into the data around recent trends in sales management? Join this episode for Cory and Andy's discussion.
Welcome to the Sales Management Podcast, your source for actionable sales management strategies and tactics. I'm your host, coach, crm Co-Founder, corey Gray. No long intros, no long ads, let's go. Research report coming up today I've got Andy Springer, Chief Client Officer from the Rain Group, and he's done a lot of research on sales managers. What's going on? Where are we strong? Where are we lacking? Andy, good to see you thanks for having me, cory.
Speaker 2:Uh, it should be a good time together, I reckon I love it, man.
Speaker 2:All right, well, tell us a little bit about what was the research project y'all did, and then let's get to the results yeah, I think, uh, we're going to talk about the people that often get forgotten about in terms of sales development, and that's the sales manager.
Speaker 2:So in our game, we focus on normally large-scale sales transformations with all different industry types in terms of the clients that we work with, and we spend a lot of time developing sellers, and when I use the term sellers, I'm talking account managers, business development managers, those in prospecting the whole gamut in terms of sellers and a lot of organisations spend a lot of money developing sellers and they get you know. When it's done properly, they get reasonably good and consistent sales performance improvement. Yet what we realised was, in the transformation space that we operate in, when we work and get the sales management layer right and we get that cranking combined with getting the sellers going, it had a multiplier effect in terms of sales performance improvement. So we decided to spend some time researching well, what are the ingredients that define a top performing sales manager and what do they do in order to outperform others?
Speaker 1:So what does the data show?
Speaker 2:So what does the data show? Yeah, so data has. I think it's six key findings. So, in terms of what we found, I'll just run them through and then you can you know, let me know which one would be of most interest to your listeners.
Speaker 2:So the first one was that there was a clear finding around the rhythm, roles and conversations that top performing sales managers have versus others.
Speaker 2:The second finding was that effective management, combined with regular coaching rhythm, combined with effective training, led to outsized sales performance in relation to sales managers. The third finding was that motivating sellers for high productivity and performance was critically important and a really important area of focus for sales managers with their sellers. The fourth was making sure that we build sales manager confidence. Confidence had a it shone through in the findings as having a critical or being a critical factor in terms of top performing sales managers versus the rest. The sixth one was that there was a dramatic difference between win rate of those who were defined as top performers versus the rest. And then what we found was bringing new sellers on. When you do that, all sales organizations do that, or most, I should say, particularly those that are growing or for those that have received a significant investment from their organization to hopefully boost sales. When you get newer sellers joining a team, they get a performance boost, a significant performance boost, from having an effective sales manager, if we'll call it that, and they are the headlines.
Speaker 1:That's a lot to unpack. Here's where I want to start. Let's start with the win rate. Give us some more information around. What are we seeing? Because I think that's one of the things that it's easy to measure. Everybody has this data. Well, that's funny. Maybe it's not easy to measure because the argument we always get into around win rate is what's the denominator? Because you've got, obviously, deals. One is the numerator. Deals lost is part of the denominator. But are there things that have hung out there for two years, that are still in the pipeline, that should be part of the denominator, that aren't actually counted as lost? So let's leave that aside and let's assume that we've got a definition of win rate. That's settled. How big a gap is this between the top performers and everybody else when it comes to win rate?
Speaker 2:So, in terms of average proposal win rate from those in our research study rate from those in our research, um, our research study top performers average win rate was 72 versus the average of the rest those who weren't defined as top performing sales managers was 47. So, uh, we're looking at, uh, we're looking about what's that? A 25 percent gap, uh, or difference in terms of top, those who are top performers versus the rest? Now, or difference in terms of top those who are top performers versus the rest? Now, I mean, that's a significant number.
Speaker 1:Well, it's 25, 25% if you do the subtraction, but it's dang near 100%. I'm pretty good at math. I guess it's like 80% if you do the division. Yeah, doing that, yeah, it's significant, it's significant, that's tremendous. And then you put some dollar figures behind that, because your incremental cost of having a salesperson on staff who's doing well is not very much. It's basically their commission. After they've hit their quota, you've got all the other cost structure fully loaded and then your variable cost is just whatever you're paying them at comp. So that is a profit machine when they're up there jamming it, and those are some high win rates, yeah, and I think that.
Speaker 2:So that is a profit machine when they're up there jamming it, and those are some high win rates, yeah, and I think that just correlates to where you invest your dollars in terms of development, right? And once again, what we showed was those organizations that had spent significant time and focus on developing their sales managers had a significantly higher win rate when those sales managers were defined as being top performing, and that has a huge impact in terms of the company's overall sales performance.
Speaker 1:I don't know if the study touched on this, but I'm always curious when somebody's performing at that level. I mean one of the problems with the way that corporate America is structured. I think it's different in other countries. I heard some stat that four out of the five people that created the original Mario back in the 80s are creating the next Mario. So in Japan they've got a culture of company loyalty is one way to phrase it where people stay at the same company for a long time, whereas here a lot of times you get really good at your job, you're either getting promoted or you're leaving to go take that next role. I'm curious if there was any talk or findings around how to keep these top performing managers in a role where they're still contributing at this level without losing them to either promotion or getting poached by the competition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so not the focus area for the study, but certainly there is a direct correlation to the environmental factor being if there is an environment that is conducive to success. We see in other studies that, even if they're not, even if sales managers are not paid as much, but they're part of a really good culture they really enjoy going to work, not for the financial benefit but for the problems they, but for the problems they solve, for the difference that they make. There's a whole range of factors beyond just remuneration and I think, in terms of remuneration, whilst if you look at all role types, sales has a significant lean towards dollars right, let's be really clear, that is absolutely a factor there is a significant volume of examples where top-performing sales managers operating in a top-performing selling organisation are very goal-driven in terms of what more can we achieve? What envelope can we push further together, beyond just you know, am I being paid the most?
Speaker 2:However, in saying that, if we deep dive into specific industry segments, I know cybersecurity is one, and I was just joking with a friend of mine who's a sales director at a big cyber firm and he said actually, you get looked at sideways in the market if you haven't moved every three years, all right. So there are definite industries whereby staying in the same place is there's a, I guess, an industry wide culture in terms of movement. You've got the regional and country type cultural differences as well, but predominantly if sales managers are challenged, they are outperforming in their eyes and they're working within a really good culture that adds value to the world we see less turnover.
Speaker 1:I love it. I bet the divorce rates are lower too, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean it's not all smooth sailing If you look at what we're focusing on here. I mean we break it down into, we've kind of codified it into what we call the top performing sales manager model and there's eight different roles that a top performing sales manager we uncovered we're playing. Half those roles are sales management roles and half of those roles are coaching roles.
Speaker 1:So half the job's coaching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean not that the time is necessarily split up in terms of that, sure, but the number of activities, the type of workload.
Speaker 2:We found a huge deficit, a huge deficit in terms of the rest versus the top performers. In the rest, we found a significant volume focused only on those sales manager roles. So really, a lot of them were really good in terms of performance management, pipeline forecasting, you know, leading meetings, territory planning, talent management and I know some of your listeners might go well, that's me and wow I'm. I thought I was really good at my role. It's like, well, actually, if that's it, there's, we found this.
Speaker 2:There's a whole other world, if you call it that, in terms of what top performing sales managers are doing versus the rest, which is they are spending a lot of time in those coaching roles. So motivating the team, focusing, uh, action, um, towards planning and execution of those plans, um, productivity, um was, uh, you know, coaching around productivity, coaching in terms of advising and supporting the team to outperform. And then development, being a coach, developing their teams, and I know that to a lot of people that sounds well. I might do bits of that, but we found that there was a clear, as I said, that clear delineation between here's all the things that top performers were doing in terms of the roles they played versus those who, in some circles, corey might be defined as being successful but not top performing, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, and I think there's also a line in the sand between coaching and doing. I see a lot where the managers jump in and do the job for the reps. I was talking to a company recently who had high turnover the last couple of years and they said, hey, you know that high turnover and they shared some of their call recordings with us and what we found was that the managers were in most of the meetings and when they were in the meetings they were doing most of the talking. So my question then became at what point does the rep take over? When do you let the butterfly fly? And it's not clear. And if somebody else is doing your job for you, you're either going to say, like I always say, the high performers hate it, so they leave, and the underperformers love it, so they stay, and they're like, oh boss, go close all my deals for me, I'll get paid, and then you've just got this culture of underperformance. If that's the way that things are made, yeah, I mean heroes, don't scale right.
Speaker 2:Especially in selling organizations. You know not always easy to see the heroes that are sales managers. They don't often wear capes but you know. They were nice watches. There's a time and a place for co-selling definitely but it's limited, right.
Speaker 1:Um well, if you're going to co-sell, who do you want as a prospect? Who do you want co-selling with your salesperson? Do you want the sales manager? Do you want somebody from the customer success team or the product team or an executive team? Those are the people you want. That that adds real value to the prospect.
Speaker 2:The sales manager like oh so you just brought the super seller to close me faster, got it cool, thanks and, and I mean, yeah, I can't speak for every situation, but if it, um, you know, some might do it to, to elevate it, if there's other executives in there, like peering and what have you, but it's not the norm. And I agree with exactly what you just said. Actually, pursuit is about picking the right team member for the right meeting, right, yeah, and we think, in terms of pursuits as, like you know, everyone has a different role. Like you've got your technical experts, you've got your collaborators, you've got those who are innovators and, um, those that will bring, you know, new thinking or technical thinking, or, you know, they'll bring relationship connection to the conversation. They're just three examples.
Speaker 2:Um, but, yeah, like the dependency on the sales manager, for that is that scary. When we see that it's scary, ad hoc here and there, as specifically required, no problem, all the time, and what you talked about there, it happens in a lot of the rest. There's a high dependency on the sales manager to actually be the seller. And to your point, well, what have the seller if the sales manager is going to do everything right? Yeah, and to your point, well, what have the seller if the sales manager is going to do everything right?
Speaker 2:So, and if you look at where AI is starting to impact professional selling, anything that can be, you know there's a consistent and defined output for that can be automated, is going to be automated, and so the value of the seller comes into question a lot, and so the sales manager's role, particularly in this new frontier that's starting to open up, is figure out what, in that I guess consultative selling space, are we going to bring unique value to that. A large language model couldn't just pop out if we asked them a question around, right. So I think the sales manager role, given this new frontier and where things are going and the speed at which things are changing because of technological impact, is putting a significant amount of more pressure on organisations to develop sales managers and then develop teams to really rethink what value looks like and what value we bring in our roles beyond just trying to sell something, because that is what's going to differentiate a lot of selling organizations in the coming years.
Speaker 1:Yep, got it, let's switch to onboarding. So I'm curious how much of this has to do with the hiring process and who they're hiring and bringing into the company, versus how they're running a new hire onboarding program, either for external hires or for internal promotions.
Speaker 2:So I think there's a significant. I mean the finding in terms of new sellers and onboarding is that they are 240% more likely to become a top performing seller if they are working with an effective sales manager. Wow, 240% more likely. There was that sort of multiplier in terms of that. And you know, often I see a lot of onboarding delegated. It's often delegated to HR or L&D or a function that often sits external to the sales organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah what a performance boost looks like and where it begins. And what we saw top performers doing was they were heavily involved with new sellers from day one. They were the first point of call on their first day. They were the last point of call on their first day. Oh, wow, first day. They showed significant interest in that seller and had a plan to develop them from day one and they were able to articulate that plan, or they are able to articulate that plan from day one, right?
Speaker 2:Versus others who are like, yeah, they're joining my team, hey, it's a three month. We've got clients who have three month technology inductions. Right, you are not allowed out to talk to a prospect or a customer without going through three months of technical training. Right, you get language, you get product, you get understanding how all the technology works before you're allowed to speak to someone. And we presented these research findings to a lot of those managers. There was a lot of aha moments in terms of that, because their process actually didn't have them connecting with their new seller till about month three, three and a half, oh, wow, and it was just a responsibility and they say hey, manager.
Speaker 1:The seller shows up and the HR or L&D or sales enablement team says hey manager, here's what you got. Good luck yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's like you know. You look at the rest and this is often a tremendous level of disorganization in terms of new sellers and starting. And you know, we had one instance where we saw someone turn up. They were a territory rep. They were given a computer, they were given keys, they were given a list of clients and they said go out and visit all of these companies in your first two weeks, introduce yourself to them and we'll see you when you get back. Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And this was in 2020? Is it not the 1980s? No, no, no, this was a month ago. Sounds like the 80s in Ohio.
Speaker 2:So it's still. Whilst it may not be widespread, corey, it still happens. Right, and it's just examples of we're not thinking about the space. Right, we're not thinking about what's the day one plan to develop a new seller to become a top performer versus top performing sales managers had this acute focus on new sellers and how they were going to support them to get future performance.
Speaker 1:So, beyond the check-ins I get being close to it what are the managers doing as the reps are ramping? Beyond just being there and being a motivating force?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, by the way, it's not necessarily, it's just planned interaction. It's not spending 100% of my time with new sellers. Right, first of all, they're showing they are leading the plan, not delegating it to others to do it. Right, so they, acutely, are involved in the planning of new sellers and they have frequent touch points from day one. Right, it might be 15 minutes at the front end of the day, 15 minutes at the back, quick check-ins it might be.
Speaker 2:You know, for most reps the most intimidating thing is you started a new role and you know day one or day two or day three, you turn up to the sales meeting and that's how you're introduced to all of these. You know, often experienced people, and you know it's very unplanned, it's not thought through, it's not. You know, we're just saying you know, just throw them in the mix, whereas you know everything is planned. In some cases we see sales managers not introducing new team members to the team for a couple of weeks until they've got their head, you know, their feet under the desk, they've got a relative degree of understanding of what we do so that the new seller can actually partake in meaningful conversation with other sellers as an example.
Speaker 2:So I think to answer your question from a headline level, they lead the planning in terms of the onboarding. They are involved and have planned FaceTime with new sellers and every part is choreographed to make sure that the new seller has a really good experience in entering their selling organisation and I think they are very culturally aware. They have a strong awareness in terms of what their top performing team looks like and how someone is going to join that level. There is a significant planning process that coaches think about before entering bringing new top performing people into a team and the best coaches get that. It's not just about throwing them in the mix. It's about figuring out the impact, where that person's going to play and how is the best way to integrate them with a team who's either not performing or with a team who will change?
Speaker 1:they'll change the offense, they'll change the place, so 100% like like philly is to say there can only be one dennis. Yeah, you know you can have two dennises on the team, but if you have one dennis we're talking about dennis rodman, everybody he, he's incredible, and the things that he can do allow for you to tweak what you're doing, because you know he's going to pull down 15 rebounds a game.
Speaker 2:Spot on, spot on. But you've got to, you've got to build to that point, right. Yeah, it's a team to get to 15 rebounds, not an individual right. The support mechanisms and the and the and the environment and the culture all need to be in place. And you know, if you want to be a top performing sales manager, you've got to think like a top performing coach, right? Or you've got a team of top performing sales stars that you've got to bring someone in and be really planned in terms of how you're going to integrate them to get to that level so that you can scale your sales performance. There's no different than that. So I think, corey, the big take out, there is a lot of managers just don't think about it. Right, they do not think about it. The rest it's unplanned.
Speaker 2:Because they don't want to, or they don't know how Well it's. You know it could be. They don't know how it could be either. I don't think it's because they don't want to. The biggest excuse in any organization for any person at any time is I don't have time, right? So what we talk about in terms of productivity is where are we spending our time to get outsized returns? Right? So, rather than just doing what I do as a sales manager, when have I actually taken the time to stop and look at which activities do I perform that are mandatory, that I have to do, but what are the ways I can do to minimize those and get through them faster versus the investment time? Right? If I invest my time in these group of activities, I'm going to get outsized returns from myself and from my team, and I think it's more that it's. I don't actually look at where I invest my time. I just do what I do. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did a calendar audit with the CEO earlier today. We were looking at their sales managers across the org and what I noticed was there was one manager who had a one-on-one Monday morning, a different one-on-one Monday afternoon, a one-on-one Tuesday morning, a one-on-one Tuesday afternoon, a one-on-one Wednesday afternoon, a one-on-one Thursday morning, a one-on-one Thursday afternoon. It's like wow and and guess what? There was no block for prep for one-on-ones and they're all just scattered amongst all this other stuff. So, yeah, they don't have time, but there's a very clear opportunity there. You know, again, different ways to do it. I always say stack two of them back to back, give yourself a break, do two more. You just knocked out four one-on-ones and in the morning, over the course of two hours, and boom, you're're, you're, you're rocking off, ready, ready to go to the races. But if you spread all your stuff and you just constantly in chaos, the mirror shows you the root cause of the problem.
Speaker 2:I can't obviously identify any any clients. We're doing a, a massive deployment for a for a company that operates in the construction industry, and they have just the initial engagement with 300 reps, and one of the key challenges we had to find was they're just plastering their day with customer appointments, and the big issue that we uncovered when we went in and studied their organisation was actually none of that, to your point, is controlled, nor is it planned or nor is it prepared for, and so one of the things we do a little differently is we focus on sales productivity before we look at sales skill. Right, yeah, where are the sellers spending their time? And then how do we give them the productivity improvement skills to leverage their time better to get those outsized returns right? And what we found was, two weeks after we did an initial deployment and an upscale in terms of productivity, the average time identified that could be reinvested in investment time was 37% across 300 plus sellers. Now you do the multiplier of that if you're a sales manager, and actually it's now the then focus.
Speaker 2:Now is well, here's what top performance in terms of key account management looks like, and here's now the sales skills that we're going to employ to get you to top performing in terms of account management, to employ, to get you to top performing in terms of account management. And now we have this tremendous volume 37% of freed up time to actually now go and focus on how do we grow our most important accounts. Now freeing up time combined with significant focus in the area where we know we're going to get significant sales performance improvement and then give the skills to the sellers to do it. I mean, watch this space. We will be able to measure a multiplier in terms of performance improvement. But, to your point, it actually all started with time. It didn't start with skill right Sales skills, selling skills it started with time. I loved hearing what you did. I bet you the CEO you're sitting with, was having an aha moment as you're doing that.
Speaker 1:Something so simple. Wow, yeah, nobody can be good if they're always going. The whole idea of multitasking I don't know where that became popular, but it's dumb, it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:It is. It is a fallacy. You cannot focus on two things at once no, you can do completely menial tasks.
Speaker 1:I mean you can. You can watch tv and vacuum or, you know, do laundry or whatever, but that's those aren't useful. Those are low value, low, low cognitive tasks. Anything that's medium to high cognitive load is going to require a lot of focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talk about sprinting right With sellers. We talk about sprinting and sales managers and removing distractions and having chunks of 20 minutes of time, if need be, on your iPhone or your Android, you turn your stopwatch on.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you just remove all distractions, notifications and you just focus on that task that you know you need to get done. Yeah, and you just focus for 20 minutes. Watch with that focus time with no distractions, how quickly you get more done in 20 minutes than you thought possible.
Speaker 1:Totally. I love it. Well, it's funny too, because I always end up in a spot where I got eight or ten minutes before a meeting. I always do the same thing pull out my phone, I play a game of chess or two, because I know that I'm not going to get anything productive done in eight minutes. But I can certainly get some competition endorphins released because I just I love competing and so and it.
Speaker 2:it frees your mind, clears your mind of things, enables you to focus, in that you know eight minutes later, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then I go to a meeting. I'm like cool, I just I just won a game of chess and I'm pumped. I just lost a game of chess and I learned something, whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're being purposeful, right, and I think that's what a lot of sales managers and, by the way, it's certainly not a criticism, it's about awareness building, right. It's like you know, if I'd be asking myself a question right now, if I'm listening to this podcast going am I really purposeful in where I choose to spend my time? Am I choosing to spend my time on the highest value activities that are going to get outsized returns for myself and my team?
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I deleted my calendar tomorrow and rebuilt it from scratch, would it look like it does now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great one. Yeah, if you had to start fresh in this week, how would you plan it differently? Where would you spend your times? What meetings would you attend? What meetings wouldn't you attend? I mean, there is a clear correlation between sales managers in the rest versus the top performing and the versus those in the top performing who simply say no to more things. They're more effective because they're willing to say no to more things, versus sales managers that think success is in me, saying yes to everything and everyone, and then realizing that you are just trying to be everything to everyone and you are. You know, if you have a hundred priorities, you have none right, so you're actually focusing on on.
Speaker 2:You're not consistently orientated towards value and the most value you can bring um at the time that you're being asked to invest that time.
Speaker 1:So I think there's something else here too, which is that if, if you, if you always feel stretched, maybe you are, maybe you're not ready for the role that you're in today, and guess what? There's two ways to address that either work more hours or take it to motion, because you can't force fit unpreparedness into a 38 hour work week. Ain't gonna work, no, I'll give you sorry, keep going. No, no, just you. If you're not, if you don't have the foundation to be in the role you're in today, the only way to solve for that is by being purposeful about identifying what your gaps are, filling in those gaps, and it's going to take hours yeah, I mean, I'll make it really real for your listeners.
Speaker 2:I was, um, you know I don't normally do individual one-on-ones, um, in terms of my role, I'm normally engaged, um, in in change teams and, you know, working with executives to to guide and share for sales transformations, to to get to outcome right. That's what I do each and every day. But I was working with this, this um, uh, this young sales manager a couple months ago and we were talking about the need to have effective coaching rhythms and how you put that in place. And, to your point, he was saying he would be described by what you said, corey, as being stretched. He was new to the reasonably new to the role. I mean, in his first 12 months he was so determined and he is, I mean, he's still doing the role. He's so determined to be successful in this role. And so, naturally, he fell into the trap of yes, right, yes to everything. And if I say yes to everything, I'm impressing everyone, I'm making everyone happy. And, you know, come very soon, like three months, into the role, he's working 60 hour weeks, stressed out of his thing, issues in his relationships, um, his personal relationships, um, questioning his abilities and whether this is the right thing for him. Six months in he's overwhelmed. And so I said, look, you're really just trying to master that. You know those management roles right and you know soon we were able to coach him to kind of get the management stuff sorted. But what he was missing was the coaching right.
Speaker 2:And I remember him. I remember sitting with him and we planned out his week and we started inputting, we started building out his coaching rhythm, his coaching schedule for his team. And you know he wanted to go weekly and sometimes twice a week with some people. I said, just look, let's just start fortnightly, let's just start every second week, right, and let's just make sure we can commit to the management aspects and the coaching aspects and not over commit ourselves. Anyway, yeah, we put the rhythm in. He's engaging with his team every two weeks. He's having really good coaching uh conversations.
Speaker 2:And he and he came to like one of the last sessions I had with him and he said, um, the the most profound thing just happened. And I I had with him and he said the most profound thing just happened and I said what's that? And he said I would say yes to everything. I will be responding to everyone on email and, given our conversations in the last few weeks, what I realized was I now have this operating rhythm across how I'm going to manage and how I'm going to coach the team, and I started this week diverting requests to either the coaching session or one of the meetings that I have with the team on, you know, pipeline review or the sales meeting.
Speaker 2:And he said I have this amazing sense of relief now because I'm finishing. I go home on a friday and I actually feel, a I've accomplished more and b I've worked less. And he goes. It's quite amazing and my result, my team's results, are starting to really go up. And I said right, so it's possible that you can work less, you can achieve more and you can actually be happier in terms of what you do if you are much more purposeful in the way in which you do it. So I would recommend um, people, do what you just said. Throw out your calendar and actually look at where. If I had told you you have to invest your time and if I was an investor going to invest in your calendar, would I give you money based on where you're going to invest that time to? And if I was an investor going to invest in your calendar. Would I give you money based on where you're going to invest that time to get outsized returns? Yeah, you got a certain number of hours.
Speaker 1:You know certain number of hours and you got to use them in one way or another. I love it. So I think we touched on a couple other things here. So rhythm and roles, I mean that's that's. That was that first thing that you brought up as part of the study. So really understanding what is the rhythm in terms of what are you doing, how frequently are you doing it, who are you doing it with and are you committing yourself at the right level. It sounds like that's what was coming out of that part of the survey.
Speaker 2:And, as I said, first of all, a lot of managers don't focus on the coaching aspect. So, for those of you who aren't doing that and, by the way, some of you in your space might be highly regarded as a successful sales manager, but are you, could, could, couldn't, would people define you as a successful sales coach? And there is a significant difference between those who top, perform and get multiplies in terms of performance improvement versus those who don't, and a lot of those who don't are just good managers, right. So you've got to look at your coaching. You've got to look at your management rhythm, let's call that or your meeting rhythm, and be really purposeful in terms of all the different types of meetings you can run and what you're going to be covering and which role you're going to be playing. So, what's the output? The amount of meetings and I'm sure you see the same Corey the amount of meetings that don't have A an agenda, or B an outcome. I mean just getting some people to write an agenda. It's like just put four bullet points together around why we're having this meeting and if you can't do that, then question should we have this meeting? Second of all, once you've done that, what's the outcome. What is everyone going to be walking away thinking, feeling and doing from from this meeting? And you know, um, I mean, even if you just get to doing, let alone thinking and feeling, that might be too advanced. But um, what, what do we want people doing at the end of this meeting?
Speaker 2:Now, the reason why I'd say feeling is because if one of our roles as a coach is to motivate, well, motivation, a lot of motivation is. I'm feeling motivated as a seller. Right, it's a feeling, it's an emotion as a sales manager and a coach. How do I create that feeling? And so top performers think about feelings. They think about, after I've had this engagement with someone or had this meeting, what do I want them thinking, what do I want them feeling and what do I want them doing?
Speaker 2:And the thinking creates the doing part, but it's never the doing. That's the issue when you're a sales coach. It's never the doing. You go to work on the thinking because the thinking creates the doing. Right, and so that's what we want to be thinking in terms of our rhythm and the coaching and management meetings, that we have to focus on both the tangible outputs, but also the emotional aspects as well, and the frequency in terms of when we do that. We can't be spending all of our life coaching. We've got to be managing as well, right, right? So what's that balance look like in your sales team over? And just just map it out over a four-week period, don't you know? Every team and every selling environment is going to be different, right? Um? You know, coaching individuals four times a year might be groundbreaking in your sales environment right, that's crazy, but it's.
Speaker 2:Four is better than zero, right totally?
Speaker 1:whereas on the other end of the spectrum I'm sure you've seen this you get the, the great managers who work with the top performers, and top performers coach themselves because they can. They got to the point where they know the training cold. You know if you got a really strong sales methodology rolled out. They know the playbook, they know what's going on, and then they know the sales process on top of that. And then boom, they can figure out where the gaps are, where the problems are. They listen to their own calls, they look at their own pipeline review and, yeah, they still need some help on the from the manager from time to time. But you get the weak sales people that are self-prescribing patients. That's where you get in trouble. But if you can get man, you get two or three of your best people just coaching themselves and and pushing themselves to get better. It just amplifies what you're able to do and that's such a sweet thing when it if you're fortunate enough, that won't happen and what are we doing to be purposeful?
Speaker 2:yeah, socializing that. Um, you know those top performers who are coaching themselves. How are we getting that information out of them? Yeah, and into the team. You know the the worst manager is the one that thinks that they can solve every problem themselves and they've got every answer to every question. Right, sorry, if that's you and you're listening. Um, you need to really rethink your approach, because you don't have all answers and you're not the fountain of all knowledge and you're never going to solve every problem. So there is a degree here in terms of taking what you're saying and and and tapping the wisdom of those who are performing in my in in the team and figuring out a way to make them a really important part of that rhythm in terms of meetings and when we're gonna engage them and what their role is. So we're removing dependency on the sales manager. Anything that removes dependency and increases performance.
Speaker 2:Outcome improvement is a win. It doesn't always have to be us and so I think validation is a really key factor. It's a mental factor for a lot of sales managers in terms of doing the things they do, just to feel validated. Now, validation is not the is, is not the goal here. You'll be plenty validated if you achieve the performance outcomes. So what is that? That's orientation, that's our North star. Is performance outcome, performance improvement outcomes, right, consistently. And a lot of that comes through value and where I spend my time and when I invest that time. What are the outcomes that I'm expecting at each touch point? Love it, man. Well, yeah, this is interesting. I think the big question then becomes if somebody is not where they need to be, do we build the managers internally or do we go hire somebody as a hired gun from the outside? Combination organizations develop their managers, right, you know? I just I'm not sure. I mean, I'm assuming you have a, a global audience. So I'm going to use a global sport as an as an analogy, and I love this analogy.
Speaker 1:Um, for those of you who who watch the english premier league soccer, oh, this is a sport where people use their feet to kick balls, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I've heard it, it's actually growing quite a bit, not as big as pickle ball in the us, but but certainly soccer is, uh, is, is is on the up, and you know, uh, I joke to all your soccer fans y'all.
Speaker 1:Y'all have done amazing things with the sport.
Speaker 2:We're gonna call it football for those in the in the outer. Yeah, there we go. All right, you can call it football for those in the outer country.
Speaker 1:All right, you can call it football With that accent. You can call it football, you're allowed yeah.
Speaker 2:So in terms of English Premier League right, it is the probably penultimate in terms of soccer globally, and some of the best soccer stars in the world are homegrown and they're from England. So why is it that since 1966, england has not won a World Cup? If they've got the greatest Premier League version of their sport, which is revered and, you know, looked up to around the world, can they not produce a team that will work together in order to achieve, you know, to win a World Cup? And often what you see and I hope I'm not going to get hate mail from English soccer fans, but you see the team playing as a team of individuals instead of a team. And that's why teams who on paper should never be a team, like england, who have all the stars on their, on their roster, can play them, outperform them and win time after time.
Speaker 2:And so the same thing goes for sales managers. You develop sales managers and sale sales managers develop top performing teams, hiring them, finding that superstar, finding that superstar, that elusive seller or sales manager that's going to suddenly come in and change the world, and we're not going to have to develop them, is an absolute fantasy. It won't scale, it doesn't happen. And guess what If it has happened to you? It's an exception.
Speaker 1:It's never the rule. Well, if they jump ship to come to you, they'll jump ship from you to go somewhere else. That's another thing to consider.
Speaker 2:Right, there's no, there's no loyalty there. I'm just going to marry poppins my way into all different types of organizations, fix things and then leave um yeah, like you, ground up development. The best teams that have the the highest and most consistent win rate are homegrown. You've got to, you've got to develop them and, by the way, as I said, this research findings talk heavily, build a very strong and compelling case for organizations to invest in their sales managers in order to help them become top performers.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, the hooligans can come after you. That's Andy Springer, everybody. So, Andy, I know we're out of time. Where can folks get in touch with you and learn more about the research?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean raingroupcom. You can head there. All of our research papers are available. The one I'm referring to is the Top Performing Sales Manager Benchmark Report. For those of you who want the detail and more of the how and what they did, just download a copy of that, and it is I mean just in the first six pages. You'll find a richness of information to help you begin that journey, to dig deeper on all the things we've discussed today.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, thank you, andy, so much, really appreciate it, as always. I think I made this after the last few shows. We've got this open source course on sales coaching 90 minutes, 60 minutes of content, 30 minutes of role plays. If y'all want to check that out, email me freestuffatcoachcrmcom. Freestuffatcoachcrmcom. Andy, thanks for joining us. I'm Corey Bray, sales Management Podcast. Like. Subscribe Apple Spotify. We'll see y'all next time you.