Sales Management Podcast
Cory Bray, 8x author and co-founder of CoachCRM, digs into hot sales management topics.
Sales Management Podcast
80. Sales Fundamentals, Coaching, and Consistency with Eric Hamilton
We were tight on time, but we recorded a great episode that's high-energy and packed with actionable takeaways. Eric is a sharp sales leader who just released a new book: The Sales Blueprint. Check it out on Amazon.
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. I'm here with Eric Hamilton today and we're going to talk about fundamentals. Fundamentals are fun because they lead to outcomes, and outcomes are fun. We make more money, we get more success, we get what we want out of our careers, and our personal lives are exciting in that way. Eric, how are you? I'm fantastic. Pleasure to be here. How are you? I'm doing great. So why are fundamentals top of mind for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I've built my whole career around fundamentals. I think that a lot of times we get away from fundamentals. When we feel like we're good at something, we begin to skip those steps and what we begin to notice is for whatever reason, the results aren't the same that they were at one particular point in time. What changed A lot of it is because I'm skipping steps, because I feel like I'm really good, I don't need to do those things. I need to prep. I show up to a meeting, I'm OK, but is it the best version of myself that you're going to get? So that's why I think foundation, basic fundamentals, the prep, meeting stuff like that is so important and it's so overlooked.
Speaker 1:And I think people get addicted to new stuff Shiny object syndrome, some people call it. Oh, this is the new thing I learned, so I'm just going to focus on this and I'm going to get distracted from what got me here.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I think that is that. I think that's kind of human nature is. We do get attracted to these new bells and whistles. We got this new AI thing. Oh good, we got this new AI, let's go and do everything with this. And again, ai is fantastic. It's going to revolutionize how we do business and for the listeners. If you're not using some sort of AI to help review some of your emails, I think it's doing a disservice, but it shouldn't be the root of what you're doing. It's just a something to enhance some ideas or enhance an email that you send.
Speaker 1:But I completely agree with you Exactly the number of words I mean. If you think about Grammarly I think it's the original email AI and it's becoming more AI I've been using Grammarly for almost 10 years probably and what I use it for is just that last mile. I know generally the point I'm trying to get across. I know how to space my paragraphs out. I keep my vocabulary fairly constant. I'm not trying to impress anybody with my words. I'm not trying to go all Dennis Miller on them.
Speaker 1:If anybody doesn't know that reference. Go listen to Dennis miller. Do anything and he just goes. Remember when he did monday night football. He's like the vikings are playing the packers tonight and uh, barrett farve is a christian and last time the christians went up against the vikings was in 12 42 in norway. We all know what happened then.
Speaker 2:We don't need, we don't need that.
Speaker 1:We don't need this, this thing, to just transform who we are. We just need a little nudge, a little tweak, a little sugar, a little icing on the cake, if you will. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:I agree with you. I think when we use it I use AI, chatgpt, others like that, and Grammarly particularly. I have Grammarly pop up on my screen and it lets me know. Hey, you probably want to think about, you want to rephrase that word, but to your point it's.
Speaker 2:I tell the team, the reps, et cetera and whatever I do and I got some entrepreneurial pieces that, as you have an idea, if you get stuck, just bounce an idea off of ChatGP, but it's still your. You got to have your core. It still has to be you because there's a piece around technology where there's still interpersonal communication that needs to take place. People still buy from people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and fundamentals. It's funny because I was watching a. I've gotten into this. I'm not proud of it, but I watch Instagram videos every now and then. So I was watching one yesterday and I'm real into sports, mostly baseball, football and and billiards pool. Yeah, and I was watching one yesterday and they were talking about how back I think it was 92 93 nolan ryan was playing against randy johnson and back then they were all nice to each other. I'm sure to some extent they still are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nolan ryan's not. He doesn't have the reputation of being the biggest sweetheart in the world, but he's kind of. He was that. He was the uncle at that point and in his 40s, while still being out there, a stone cold killer. And what he told randy is he said look, randy, your fundamentals are off because when your front foot lands, you're landing on your heel and it's drifting you towards third base and it was causing randy johnson zra to be up in the fours. Okay, so you gotta land on your ball of your foot. You'll have more control. What happens? Randy johnson goes on to be one of the best pitchers ever and was unstoppable throughout the mid and late 90s because of that change, but he was already one of the best pitchers in the major leagues when that happened yeah, yeah that's a problem.
Speaker 1:You haven't made it just because and this is where I'm talking to managers, at people on their team, like, oh, that would have been helpful when I started, that would have been helpful three, three months ago, no, no, no, we got to get through that and help diagnose what can be helpful today. Because I'm telling you, if Randy Johnson, while he's on the Mariners, can make that change, your second year salesperson or 10th year salesperson on your team can make a change too.
Speaker 2:You know, that's a really good point. There are so many times where if we have tenured sales professionals, we tend to give them so much grace and we do not hold them to that same level of the fundamentals like we do the new reps. And there's so much that even the more tenured professionals that feel like they have their own thing, that they're doing and it's working for them, that they just miss out on because they have their way of doing things, their way of doing things and they've been to President's Club and they've been, you know, one of the top AEs for years and we're like, ok, well, I'm just going to let that person do what they do. I don't think that's the best version because it's still Michael Jordan need to be coached. They didn't win rings until Phil Jackson came. Kobe, they didn't win rings until Phil came. They're still. They were great players before Phil. Yes, what he did is he enhanced what they were doing, and a lot of it was. He took them to this weird Zen place, right Mentally, because mentally is very important to have that mental, mental fortitude to know how to prepare to win.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't know how to prepare for success. They just kind of show up and go, but a lot of it is how do you start your day? Preparation doesn't start right before the meeting. Preparation starts that day before, maybe the week before, as you're researching and looking at 10K reports Like. Preparation is extremely important and it's's something one of the only things that you don't need a certain skill set to prepare. You just have to have the work ethic or the fortitude to do the preparation work.
Speaker 1:That's not necessarily skill, that's more will yeah, exactly, otherwise you end up like alan iverson scoring 32 a game but never winning a ring absolutely.
Speaker 2:A good coach will take you so much further, but you have to be coachable right if Michael Jordan or Kobe or whomever any, player you can think of, or any athlete you can think of, if they felt, you know, as a great example. I know we're off, we're talking about scores, but Randy Moss, yeah, randy Moss was one of the greatest receivers of all time. Prior to going to New England, he humbled himself and he took coaching from Bill Belichick. He played into his role, which wasn't traditionally him.
Speaker 1:The result he didn't get a Super Bowl ring. But they went undefeated and they ended up losing the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:But again, it doesn't matter who you are, how talented you are. There's always room to improve and as coaches, as leaders, we need to continue to coach our players.
Speaker 1:And here's one of the biggest issues I see in sales management in particular is where managers and enablement folks and whoever else is around has trouble diagnosing when is the salesperson just putting their own flavor on the fundamentals, or when is the salesperson doing something that's not fundamentally the fundamentals, or when is the salesperson doing something that's not fundamentally sound? Because you can use different words and still be following a framework, but you can also be using different words. That's completely the antithesis of the framework.
Speaker 2:Yes, and if you don't?
Speaker 1:truly understand the sales methodology, the framework, whatever you're trying to roll out as a leader, then you're not going to be able to diagnose that. And if you can't diagnose, it's really hard to coach.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think it's important, like to your point is you know I have teams that will record. I want you recording yourself doing the pitch or, and once you record yourself doing it, we'll listen to it together and I'll say there's a few fundamentals. I say, as we listen to it, let's find your filler words. So as you go through this, just listen to yourself, Find your filler words. That is so simple. It's not a skill set per se to find and sew and blah, blah, blah. So find the filler words.
Speaker 2:All right, let's look at each slide or each piece that you did. How did that look? Do you think you spent enough time? Did you ask any questions? Were you engaged? And then, lastly, is how was the flow? Was it concise? Was it run on sentences? Were you just talking? Was it just six minutes of you just rambling on about how great the product is? Anyway, I completely agree. I think it's important for us to make sure we diagnose what the gap is and sometimes, if we're uncomfortable, if we just ask them to record themselves doing a pitch, we can expose that with them so we can do it together.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think every call should be recorded. I want to touch on two things here. First one is this when someone is in a conversation around filler words, sometimes they say that's just how I talk, that's just natural. Okay, cool, let's do some math so I'll ask them the questions. What percentage of the time should a salesperson talk in a discovery call? They say 30%, cool. How long is discovery call for you? 30 minutes, cool. So 30% of 30 minutes is nine minutes. So you got nine minutes to talk. You got some pleasantries up top. You're going to set an agenda logistics preview, next steps. Top of the meeting. You're going to set next steps at the end of the meeting.
Speaker 1:Let's say that you talk for one minute at the top, a minute at the bottom, 30 seconds for pleasantries, two and a half minutes gone. Now you have six and a half minutes to talk. Yeah, are you telling me that, um, you know, like cool, sweet, excellent, whatever is is worth five to fifteen percent of your entire budget that you're going to spend in words in this conversation. I love it. Then they realize, oh, okay, well, that that puts it in context for me and it makes more sense, and I think this is the thing that you you touched on earlier, which is you got to be able to have those types of conversations with the more senior folks Cause, and this is where we see. I think one of the big issues with sales enablement these days is that the manpower is drifting towards new hires and entry-level people. Yeah, because it's easy. Well, how do we take somebody that's 10 years, 15, 20 years in and make it better?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that's not only challenging for most leaders, it's also challenging for enablement. The sales enablement typically want to roll out these tools that they feel they've researched, they've heard at a conference. They roll out these tools and you have these 10-year sales professionals that say, well, that's great, but I haven't done it like that before. Yeah, I have my process and this process is going to be the President's Club five years in a row. Like, why would I do that, even though this year I'm struggling, I can't figure out why. What's different? And as coaches, as leaders of our organizations, it's important for us to have those tough conversations. And they don't have to be tough, it's just straightforward conversations. It's not like. Everything that I try to do is in a very professional way. I'm not going to yell at you. I'm not screaming, I'm not cussing. We're just going to have a conversation and ultimately, we will find a way to figure out what that gap is in a professional way, right you?
Speaker 1:got to diagnose the gap. If you start rolling out tools without diagnosing the problem, then what are you doing? You're doing the opposite of what you want your team to do with their prospects. And so how's that going to be? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, hey guys, here's this tool, cause it's easier.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I thought that you told us when we talked to prospects, that inefficiency and ease and pleasure and things don't get deals closed, so why would I adopt something just because it's easier? Yes, oh, checkmate, strong sales enablement programs. What they'll do is and you can do this as a manager or somebody that has a different specialist role and go in there and be like, all right, well, here's the metric that we need to impact Win rate, deal cycle, deal size, whatever, not quota attainment, because that's an outcome of those other metrics. Sure, you have to impact that, but what are we going to actually change? Okay, well, we need to increase win rate.
Speaker 1:Win rate's low because we get no decision. We get no decision because we don't do enough discovery. So we don't do enough discovery because it looks like we're not doing good pre-meeting prep. We're targeting the right people, we're talking to the right people, but we're not doing, we're not uncovering the right pain points with those people and it doesn't seem like we're prepping for the meetings to be able to ask the right questions. Cool, so we're going to roll out some pre-meeting prep template, for example, and we're doing that because we realize win rates are at 26%. We need them to be at 33%. If we do that, then the business scales and we're able to do whatever we want to do. That's great. Absolutely, that sounds like a reasonable plan, not. Hey, here's this cool new tool. We're going to roll it out with a pilot group and then we're going to expand it to everybody else Once we get it done.
Speaker 2:No engagement from the salespeople, then how do you know like it's important to engage the salespeople? Because we're the ones that are conversing with the prospects, we're the ones that's engaged. So I call it feet on the street, that you have to get feedback from the feet on the street. If we sit in an ivory tower and just say, hey, let's throw this out there because I sent it at this conference, that sounds good Like it worked for this, it has to work for ours. You're absolutely right. We have to be able to have those conversations and have a goal in mind, and the attainment piece is a byproduct of doing the right activities and the right things over and over again, which is consistency and discipline, which ultimately will lead you to those attainment goals. So I agree.
Speaker 1:But then you can't. But what you can't do is let the feet on the street be the ones that come up with the solution, because in that world every salesperson especially so you got a salesperson that's 50% of their compensation is variable. What's the most important thing in their world? Mortgage, car, kids, school, college, whatever.
Speaker 2:Okay, those are the things that matter to them.
Speaker 1:Well, what matters to the manager? Well, I need a team, I don't need a bunch of individuals, because if I've got a bunch of warring tribes under me, then coaching becomes very difficult.
Speaker 2:I completely agree, completely agree.
Speaker 1:I love it when I see these individual contributor salespeople on LinkedIn or conferences be like. Salespeople should be able to do whatever they need to do. Cool For you and your family. That makes sense. But you work at a company, yeah, yeah. And how the heck are you going to coach everybody doing whatever they need to do to get the deal done? How does that work? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think it's a, it's a mindset shift. Some of this, some of it, and you know, one of the ways I feel like is important to coach people is you have to get to know what drives them.
Speaker 2:And not always just money, and not always just money. It's not always just money. Sometimes it's recognition, sometimes it's career advancement opportunities, like it's whatever it is. But if, as coaches, we don't spend time to learn or try to understand what drives them, it's going to be very challenging to make just a generalized statement that it's all about money. But if you really want to motivate somebody, get to know them just a little bit, like on your one-on-one, spend the first five, seven minutes getting to know them, just asking how's the weekend, what have you been up to, how's the family? Whatever the case may be, out of your 45 minutes of one-on-one, if you spend five to seven minutes, you will begin to grow and understand that person. Drive you, because I know what motivates you and that's, that is where we do differentiate.
Speaker 1:So we can differentiate what, because everybody's going to be motivated by different things, and then we can put what we are doing as an organization in the context of each individual's motivation. Yes, and when it comes to understanding the people, the thing that I love three things one, where does they want to go professionally? Where do they want to go personally? And then the third one, which a lot of people miss, which is how have they been coached in the past? Yes, yes, so honest people, go out, what sports you played growing up? I played football.
Speaker 1:What was your? What was your coach's name? Your highest level you competed in? Oh, coach thomas, how'd coach thomas? Coach, yelled at me every day. How'd you like that? Hated it, okay. So now I know that. Or yelled at me every day, motivated the heck out of me, and so I knew what I needed to do, and it was just real concise and I went out there and just did what I needed to do, okay, cool. So I know I'm not going to spend 15 minutes buttering you up before I get to the point, because it's going to be a point to you now. I know and I'm doing it. Not just what? What do you prefer? What do you like? Give me a real example of how it's impacted you in the past. That's what's really impactful, yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. I'm actually add that to my repertoire. That's a nugget right there, Corey, I like it. There we go. Yeah, people don't do that man.
Speaker 1:It's so easy because it's a discovery technique. We call it previous experience, when you're looking at how, when you made purchasing decisions like this in the past, who else has been involved? Yeah, when you've tried to buy things that weren't budgeted, how did you go about that? Just leaning on previous experience as part of discovery, instead of feeling like the burdens on your shoulders to go in there and solve all the world's problems, cause that's just that's just hard. Make it easy on yourself.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah, that's a gym right there for those watching. That's a gem right there for those watching. That's a gem, love it, especially the one-on-one piece. Hopefully most people are doing that when you're engaged with a prospect to understand how they previous purchased or been out of budget, but from a one-on-one standpoint, that's a gem right there, gordon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it, and then just so how do you keep from getting bored with the fundamentals? Yeah, yeah. So you know this is. This is very interesting. That's an interesting question because I think I rely on sports quite a bit.
Speaker 2:So Nick Saban, one of the greatest coaches of all time, bill Belichick, a few others you know they. They taught the importance of not focusing on the end result, which is the national championship or Superbowl, but focus on each and every day improving in certain areas, doing the right things over and over. I keep going back to these two words discipline and consistency, because if you're doing the same things over and over, whether you feel like doing it or not, it becomes something that you're going to consistently do. You will get good at it, you will be great at it if you consistently do these things. So I think about getting bored. If you're driven by finances, these fundamentals will help you reach those finances. If you're driven by recognition, doing the fundamentals consistently over and over again will lead you to get that recognition to President's Club. If you're driven by fill in the blank, by doing these things, that will make you successful. That's why you continue to do those things as long as you're doing this and you're executing on it.
Speaker 2:You will want to continue to do the fundamentals.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you're already brushing your teeth and taking a shower and washing your clothes, might as well do premeditated.
Speaker 2:Did you stop brushing your teeth? No, did you see anybody like I'm bored of brushing my teeth? Like I'm just gonna stop, cory, I'm done brushing my teeth? No, you keep brushing because you know you don't want to walk around with stinky breath and yellow teeth. Right, you want?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's the same thing. You don't want to walk around having discovery calls, or you just tell people what your product does and hope they buy from you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because no one cares what your product does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a Billy Mays commercial. I'm Billy Mays with the most amazing product you've ever seen.
Speaker 2:I bought a few of those Flex Seals, by the way.
Speaker 1:It's fun. They're fun, but they're overly produced and they have the best people in the world to present them and no one that works for you is gonna go to anybody listening out here. You don't have billy mays on your team or the sham wow guy whatever his name is yeah, oh sham.
Speaker 2:Wow, I remember that, oh man yeah yeah, so all right, I know we got to wrap up.
Speaker 1:Eric any final words on fundamentals or anything that, uh, you want to let people know about yeah, I would just continue to say, um, as a leader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would just continue to say as a leader, it's important to just continue. It doesn't matter how redundant or repetitive it may become. You have to hit on those fundamentals with the team, and a lot of it is they watch us and what we do. If we talk about fundamentals but we never stick to it, or we roll out something here's what we want to do, folks, and we do it for like three weeks and then we stop Like, or we roll out something here's what we want to do, folks, and we do it for like three weeks and then we stop Like what example are we setting? That's it.
Speaker 1:And here's the best real manifestation of that, which is oh, it's end of quarter, just get him to sign the contract and then, oh, it's not end of quarter anymore. Okay, let's go back and do that other thing. You can't do that. That doesn't work. That's yeah, that's not, that's not how it works.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with you, you know. The last thing I'll say, too, is I just recently wrote my first book and there are a lot of fundamentals in the book. You could find much more information in the book, but you can order from my website, which is the sales blueprintlueprintforsuccesscom. It's available now. It'll be available. It's available on pre-sale for hard copy and paperback. It will be on sale on Amazon on the 27th and the Kindle is available now. But the website, the salesblueprintforsuccesscom, is where you can find it. But it's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:Corey and I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you today. Yeah, thanks, eric, appreciate. Everybody can check out Eric's book and this is the sales management podcast. We'll see you next time you.