Sales Management Podcast
Cory Bray, 8x author and co-founder of CoachCRM, digs into hot sales management topics.
Sales Management Podcast
104. Debate: Should sales teams use leaderboards? with Madison Santo
Cory and Madison debate the pros and cons of sales leaderboards and their use in modern selling.
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. Another debate format podcast. Today I've got Madison Santo here, who believes that sales leaderboards aren't the thing that people should be doing. She's anti-sales leaderboard Madison. How are you?
Speaker 2:Good. How are you doing today, Corey?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great. All right, kick us off. Why no leaderboards?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess that would be a long intro, but I will get started here. So I've been doing sales for quite some time now and I remember it was early on in my sales career. And I will not say the name of the company, because obviously anyone can go look at my work history. So I'll try to leave that part out of it.
Speaker 1:Everybody's pausing right now to go look at it. This is hilarious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, but when I first started in my sales career I was at a particular company Again, I won't give it a name and I remember in my very first week they had flew me up to Denver. I met most of the team there were almost 10 sales reps at the time and everyone was going through the strategy of cold calling. We didn't do any type of marketing or anything like that. Really, everything was hey, you need to outbound, so you need to outbound, cold call, you need to be able to drive your own pipeline, all of that. So that's what I knew going into it. When I first started, I realized that a lot of the sales people who had had I guess, quote unquote successful history in sales and a successful track record in sales were not as good as I thought that they were going to be. So I knew a lot of these people's background and history and when we first started we just went through hey, what are you going to do to cold call things like that? And I just remember thinking everyone's ideas on this are really, really far off and I don't think it's going to work. And so I took a really separate path than literally all of the nine other salespeople. Um, in that, I was incredibly successful and I I don't mean to toot my own horn here, but I I would say, at me giving less than 50%, I was well outperforming other salespeople. If I gave 40% of what I was giving, I was recognized highly by leadership.
Speaker 2:When I left the company, I was banged to stay at the company, things like that. So I knew at that point in time, I had a thought process that was like okay, yeah, we have a leaderboard, that's that simple. It's easy to see who is at the top of this leaderboard. But if I work at 40%, I'm still seen as this amazing sales person and sales individual and I could literally stay in there and meet my quota and never really push myself From there. I was at multiple other companies where I had felt similarly, or there were a couple of other 18 players who you know we could work to push each other.
Speaker 2:So since then, I had done research on that as well. So then I had looked in okay, is this just my experience or is this an industry wide thing? So Salesforce in 2023, september of 2023, salesforce put out and I'll actually look at the number to make sure 28% of sales professionals were expected to hit their quota. So I was like, okay, that's, that's incredibly low. Then, from there, if you look at, like SASTER, they say that 18% we're going to hit 70% of quota attainment, 43% hitting 50 or more. So the statistics all the way around for sales peoples as well. Today most salespeople are not hitting their quota. Most salespeople aren't even getting to 70% and a lot are less than 50%. So, going back to your comment on my post, because this is kind of where this all came about, I posted about it and everyone most people were against me, which is fine, but this is why I was excited to do this podcast to kind of explain.
Speaker 1:So your post was hey, if you Because I don't debate on the internet with all the other dorks. I'm like if we're going to have a debate, we're going to do it live, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, I agree, I agree, I 100% agree. Um, your post to me was hey, if you run with three other people, um, likely you're going to run faster. And if you run it sorry, if you run a mile by yourself and then run that same mile with three other people, you're going to be a lot faster. So my point back is that if I am running that with three people who are way worse than me than running and I can run 10% better than they do I would actually be limiting myself and the odds are not in salespeople's favors, according to Salesforce and a lot of other platforms. I've got a lot here. Actually, I've looked up even more than what I knew in the past. It's not in our favor to do that. So to me it takes A plus players and brings them down and never takes them to their full potential. I've got more than that. That I'll say. But, corey, I'll let you kind of give your side too.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's go back to the first thing that you were talking about. So, when you were talking about the leaderboard and doing 40%, were you talking about? You were able to get the results with 40% of the required activity. Is that what I was hearing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I knew that it was about 40%. I would say 40% of my effort to number one way, way, way outperform other salespeople and to be on track to hit full.
Speaker 1:Got it. And then the second point was around if you've got people that are underperforming and you put them out there with you, it actually can drag you down instead of push you further, right, yeah, okay. So my take is none of this has anything to do with leaderboards. It has to do with talent development, interviewing, hiring, selecting people that are right for the job, because all else equal. If you've got everybody that, let's say that they're at the same level in terms of competency.
Speaker 1:They all say we've got a sales role, closing role, account executive role. They all know how to to sell. They don't know how to do discovery. They don't know how to prospect. They don't know how to move a deal through the pipeline. They don't know how to disqualify early. They know how to do all of the things that a good salesperson could do. All else equal. I think we're talking about something completely different, whereas what you're coming from is that somebody who is a top performer does not necessarily need to do as much activity as somebody that's not good at their job, which I agree with.
Speaker 2:I would say, yes, I see where you're coming from there, but that is the state of the market. So if we're going to put that state of the market and where we're at, so yes, we need more mentorship, we need more training, we need better in my opinion, better leaders to be able to mentor and train. I also have statistics on how quickly people lose training. 90% of it is lost within 30 days, which is horrible. So that continued training. But to me that does not negate the fact that we're still here.
Speaker 2:So putting that leaderboard would decrease your A plus players. Maybe it would take your C and D players and bring them up a little because they're competing down here, but overall that's going to take your A plus players and drag them down and be way more demotivating because they're given. You know, they see that they're at the top of the leaderboard and if that's what they're driven by, then they don't have to do a whole lot, Then they never reach their full potential. So I do see what you're saying, but I still think that this is where we're at. This is the market.
Speaker 1:Let's define leaderboard. So what's on the leaderboard?
Speaker 2:In my experience I have seen quota attainment. So quota attainment is what is on the leaderboard. I know that there can be other leaderboards. My mind was and I think most people would be quota attainment.
Speaker 1:Got it Okay. So quota attainment being the amount of sales divided by the quotas and some kind of percentage terms. And the point that you're making is that, as we sit here in 2024, many teams are struggling to hit what their goals are.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:Yes, in the software sales industry, I would also agree with that, and the thing I can't wrap my arms around, though, is why, showing relative performance to your peers in a world where, setting aside companies that don't know how to hire and I understand that there's some of those out there, I understand there's quite a few of those out there Setting aside companies that don't know how to hire, companies that are hiring and onboarding and ramping and developing salespeople in a good way, how is a leaderboard detrimental?
Speaker 2:Because if I see, if I'm let's say, we have a sales team of 10 people, you may have one or two A plus players and then some B, c and D plus players. If I am an A plus player and I only have to work at 40% to hit quota attainment or have my activity or be close to hitting my quota attainment and I feel good about myself, then I become a stagnant employee, then I'm a stagnant salesperson and I never reach my max and my full potential. However, if I am driven by my own internal like I have to reach commission, I made X amount of money and giving salespeople the opportunity to make a significant amount of money. Because to me, that's what keeps salespeople there, that's what keeps me there and that's what makes me drive is I have a lifestyle that I really like to live and I've seen what it's like to make big commission checks before. So to me and I've always known this as I started in sales is I have to be self-motivated.
Speaker 2:Beyond that, I think that it would take away a lot of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs and my own CEO is an entrepreneur and he told me one time is that it's the loneliest path you can take. Nobody understands what it takes and it's me against me, and I think the closest thing that you can get to that is by being a salesperson without being an entrepreneur. Now, I also think that unless those A-plus players are pushed to their max and they can do that internally by making more money unless they're pushed to their max they're never going to be able to step out into that entrepreneurial role unless they are self-driven.
Speaker 1:Well, how do you know what a max is if you've never seen the max?
Speaker 2:So I mean number one, it would be quota attainment, and then number two, it would be like my post was compete against yourself yesterday. What did you do yesterday and how can you push yourself beyond that?
Speaker 1:Well, when you look at swimming, for example so I don't remember the numbers, I didn't look them up, but the rate at which people swam 100 years ago was substantially different than what it is today. And I think this goes the same when you compete against yourself, you don't see how fast you could go because you don't see what the art of the possible. So I wanna dig into one specific piece here which I agree with the comp plan thing. So the comp plan is good, the comp plan is motivating, and then adding accelerators on top of the base compensation. So when you go above a hundred percent you start making more money.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:That's good. I don't understand how the presence of a leaderboard negates that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I guess I'll ask I'll ask your question in reverse If you were running a mile with three people who were way slower than you and that was your competition, or let's say let's, or we could take the Olympics, for example.
Speaker 1:Sure Go with what you had. I think that's a good analogy.
Speaker 2:If you were running with three people who were, let's say, 50% slower than you, do you think that you would push yourself to your max in that mile? Or if you were X amount of ways ahead of them in a race or whatever it is, you were okay, you were still winning.
Speaker 1:If I'm on a team with people that are half as competent, half as good, half as performative as I am, I don't need a leaderboard to know that and I'm leaving. And this is what happens, unless you're the salesperson who's mopping up all the inbound, who's getting the good territory, you're selling tech and you're getting California and New York and somebody else has Wisconsin and Minnesota because they couldn't close a door, they couldn't sell their way out of a wet paper bag. That's what happens in some situations is that the person is really good, they get the good territory, they get the good inbound and they're okay hanging out with the JV squad, where, on the flip side, if you're sitting there and you got people that can't close the door, well you know that you don't need a leaderboard to tell you that or not. I think the point of the leaderboard is to be able to set a global maximum as opposed to a relative maximum, and really know wait a second, kim over there just hit 200% of her quota. I didn't think that was possible, because the highest I've ever hit is 130. That can unlock the art of the possible. That's one thing that it can do, and if somebody is terrible, you know that you don't need a leaderboard sitting out there to help articulate that to you.
Speaker 1:But if somebody's got a very high, performant way of doing things and they crush and it's not just quota team and it's also things like what's their win rate, what's their velocity from stage to stage, what's their conversion rate from stage to stage, how many days does it take them on average to disqualify deals?
Speaker 1:How many stakeholders are they getting involved in different deals? And you can formulate the leaderboard to show all of these different things. Because when we're thinking about coaching either being coached by a manager or coaching yourself there are so many different things that go into that quota attainment and you can't coach outcomes. You can only coach things that go into outcomes. And so we can start looking at Kim, who's over there at 200%. We can start deconstructing what she's doing around team up or discovery calls, the types of discovery questions. She asked the next steps, how she's engaging different stakeholders, how she's leveraging demos to be conversations and not presentations, and all of the really strong things that's leading to that. And being able to deconstruct that number into those components and then start doing those either through manager led coaching or self coaching, I think is critical and it's how you can make somebody better consistently over time and push folks to perform.
Speaker 2:So two different things you kind of made a point on. So first thing, kind of going back to the running scenario and we'll put that into an organization now. So let's say that I am that A plus life, I am that runner and I'm 40% ahead of them and I'm making pretty good money. I'm comfortable. I don't really have to try that hard anymore. I do end up getting the best territory. All those things align.
Speaker 2:So my point is is that I would stay at that company and just work with these daily players, but I wouldn't know my max potential, I would never be able to reach my max potential because I'm so much better than all of these people who are the the C plus players, um, that I'm never going to see that. I'm never going to be pushed to be an entrepreneur. I think so many salespeople, um, could be pushed into being an entrepreneur and their life could be so different at the end of their life that if they truly pushed themselves internally, not trying to compete against JV players, they would be at completely separate crossroads at the end of their life. Or I can stay at that job because I have a good territory and I'm comfortable. Stay at that job because I have a good territory and I'm comfortable.
Speaker 1:The second piece was um, you deconstruct the number into its components and so the leaderboard is. The number of the leaderboard can be depending on. It's got to have utility and one number doesn't necessarily have utility and you can. You can lead with that number, but understanding what are the leading indicators of that number, what are the components of that number? Win rate, deal size.
Speaker 1:So if one person is closing the same number of deals but person two's deal size is 50% greater, well, that's the thing that I'm going to push myself on. Why are my deals only 50%? And it's probably because I'm not engaging stakeholders, I'm discounting too much, I don't have good executive presence, my posture isn't strong when it comes to talking about pricing. I've got some kind of head trash that's floating around in my mind and that's the. That's the real challenge, and I think that you know I'd also challenge the concept of a plus player.
Speaker 1:I don't believe in an, a plus player in a role in a company, because they can exist for a flash in time. But the minute somebody hits true A-plus status, they're promoted, they're gone, they're starting a business, they're retiring, they're doing something else on the side. So I don't think A-plus exists, and A-plus certainly doesn't exist in the talent market. I've said many times before, I think the best you can get if you go hire externally, just kind of off the street, is C plus, because everybody else is gobbled up by folks that worked with them before or they're pushing themselves to get into a role that they're not A plus in yet they're still developing.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that. That is the whole reason for me bringing up the entrepreneurial side is that those A-plus players, when they realize that full potential, they do go on to do way bigger things than just staying with inside of a company. That is 100% a fact. Now two things there's a lot of people that never really know how great they are because, again, they sit in that stagnant sales role and they never learn to push themselves. Because they're surrounded by JV players and they might be seen as like, oh, this salesperson is pretty good, so we'll keep her in this territory or him in this territory, and they never get pushed their full potential.
Speaker 2:Now, on the flip side, I mean metrics are great. How many calls are you making? How many stakeholders does it take? You know that you have to be engaged with. Do you start at the bottom and work your way into a company? Or does a salesperson say, no, I'm calling C-level. So you know multiple different things that can lead to a win. I think that that makes lazy sales managers. I think that putting the numbers out there and just being like, hey, this person's the top, so go talk to them, makes lazy sales managers.
Speaker 1:That's not the point. That's not. That's not how you do it. The presence of metrics doesn't create laziness. The presence of metrics creates coaching opportunities.
Speaker 2:I've seen a lot of sales managers put out numbers and there are a lot of bad sales managers just about numbers and to be like hey, you got to go talk to that person, they're winning. I've seen it so like I I think that it can.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it always does, but I think that that is a way out of true mentorship, true training, really understanding somebody too. Um, I might struggle with something that if you, you know if someone is my manager, you might not ever something that if you, you know if someone is my manager, you might not ever know that unless you have a conversation with me rather than just looking at metrics. But you can help someone you know, hit quota attainment. So I think a lot of the times it's a, it's an opt out, it's like a, it's a cop out to just throw numbers up there and then be like yep, that's it.
Speaker 1:That's a possibility.
Speaker 1:That's something that could happen. I think that a sales manager, a bad sale, somebody who's a bad sales manager with metrics, is also a bad sales manager in the absence of metrics, and that person can go down a path that's even worse. And instead of things that are very smart, like how long do we stay in stage two of the sales process across the team and why, that would be an intelligent thing to look at, instead they're trying to find something to coach you on. So they say I don't like how often you say um, or they're going to say I think that you come to work too late or something. They're going to anchor to something, and who knows what that is.
Speaker 1:I think that I can't tell you how many people I've seen just both in terms of entrepreneurs who started businesses, as well as mostly people that hold a vice president product role that have have just damaged their company so bad with the assumption of salespeople and sales managers underperform. They don't get it. There's lots of bad ones out there. There are. I get you. I agree with that. I just think when we paint a picture of what good looks like, that can be accounted for, but only to the extent that we can feed them a path to get to better, and that's the idea. So, in a world where somebody doesn't know how to use metrics, ain't rocket science here's? Here's what the metrics are that we track, and here's what to do if they go up, and here's what to do if they go back down. And and that's not a hard thing to get somebody's head wrapped around If there's someone with the bandwidth and expertise to have that type of conversation with the managers expertise to have that type of conversation with the managers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I do see what you're saying. I just personally and in my personal experience and lots of other sales reps that I've talked to, with the numbers being as bad as they are, that I would venture to say it'll bring more people down than bringing people up. That is what I have seen, even if you've got a B plus player who's just barely hitting quota, but they're happy in that. I think that more than likely, because statistically you're not going to get a bunch of great salespeople. You're just not. You are going to get mediocre salespeople and you might get one or two and statistically that person is going to end up being brought down and being stagnant at one point rather than bringing up.
Speaker 2:I pointed that to is that if I rely on my own internal drive, I never need someone else, I never need other people and I don't need that competition to excel at a company. And then I go back to me by myself. I work remotely by myself, nobody knows what I do all day and I have to sell. I'm responsible for a large, large, large amount of revenue for my company and I do it by myself. I don't have anyone else to compete against. So I think people are in danger of being at a startup company that you want to see until the end, or a small sales team. I think that you're in danger in those situations if you rely on competition to push you rather than your own internal drive. And hey, I made this amount of money and that's going to be my driver.
Speaker 1:I think money should be the main driver of a salesperson. I agree with that.
Speaker 2:I think very few salespeople are actually money motivated Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and let me walk you through just one example.
Speaker 1:There's 168 hours in a week. People were actually money motivated. If they're truly money motivated, that was the thing that mattered the most to them. I'm not saying that it can be a secondary motivation, sure, but if, in a world where money is the primary motivation for a salesperson, they will be peeling off accounts in Europe and Australia and Southeast Asia, new Zealand, japan or Australia Because, hey, it's eight o'clock at night. I don't have anything to do While the Jets game is on. I'm going to prospect. It's six o'clock in the morning. I woke up. Dogs in the backyard, I'm going to prospect.
Speaker 1:If somebody is truly money motivated, they don't work at time zone, they don't work a country, they work globally. Because there's 168 hours a week. You only really need to sleep six or seven hours a night to have pretty good human health. There's a lot of time to do a lot of stuff. People are motivated by a lot of things, money being one of them. And if you show me that somebody that has those, those global territories, and they say, if I'm not, and and this is like the, the founder, who, if they're awake, they're're writing code, and I think that's a good analogy here, because you've got tons of founders that are writing code 80, 90 hours a week and you can do it. There's lots of people in the world that work 80, 90 hours a week. I don't know many salespeople that do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I would agree with that. I guess I will formulate I think that money should be your main motivator during your working hours. I I believe that, like people's families will typically come beforehand, and I I wouldn't even disagree with that.
Speaker 1:Not in finance and startups. Though Finance and startups, you're often finding people truly money motivated. They will say I will sacrifice everything and I will put things into a box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree with that, but I think if a salesperson is motivated by money during their hours and willing, I work well outside of eight hours a day, well outside. I travel this Sunday. I will be traveling on Sunday, but my family is also still my priority, but I also have no competition, so that is out the window for me. That's been out the window for me for quite some time now. I read a lot of books about like emotional intelligence, internal drives, things like that which keep me driven, and also I have the opportunity to make a good amount of money, which also keeps me driven, but I will not sacrifice my family for my job. That won't. That won't happen.
Speaker 2:Some people are willing, you know, not sacrificing, but some people are willing to sacrifice time with their family, to to start a company and to be an entrepreneur. And maybe it's a sacrifice for a time. You know, I would sacrifice for a time to do it. I think that there might be a time in my life where I step out and do something like that. I've had a lot of people talk to me about it and so I think that there might be a time. It's not today, but but I still. But money is still my motivator. It is still in my working hours and I work outside of those. It is still my number one motivator.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't have anyone to compare myself against, so I get it. I get it. The work remotely, things Interesting, you've got it under control. I understand that. What percentage of?
Speaker 2:people do you think work hard all the time when they're remote? That's a good question. Probably 50% 50?. That would be my guess, 50.
Speaker 1:I'm more of a 20.
Speaker 2:What do you think?
Speaker 1:I'm about 20.
Speaker 2:20?.
Speaker 1:Wow, I just know a lot of people and I know what they do. I know people that have xbox game systems set up on top of their laptop system and they can sit there and play video. They literally I've seen two people do this. They play video games while they're in some meetings oh, that's just unfortunate and they look and they I. Yeah, we don't even get into stories about my friends cause I don't want to dox anybody, but a lot of friends, several of whom have very high level jobs, and they don't do anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is. That is. That is unfortunate. And today I mean I saw a statistic the other day about how many after COVID I think it was above 70% of people who were in office or I forget the exact number, but it was well over 50% never went back to the office. I remember the exact number well over 50%, never did but saves the company a ton of money.
Speaker 2:So that's an interesting thing too. My question to you, corey, is how do you think you know you're pro leaderboard? How do you think salespeople who work remotely, how does that affect that, that effectiveness of the leaderboard and that competition there? When I don't get to sit next to you know someone in a cubicle next to me and hearing them and then getting the praise in person in front of my team, how do you think that that affects people?
Speaker 1:I think it helps you realize where you're at. And if your goal is to be on top and you're not on top, that can be a motivator. If your goal is to not be on the bottom and you're on the bottom, that can be a motivator. It gives you context. There's no context if you're sitting in your spare bedroom by yourself on a computer. You just don't, you don't know what's going on. I was, I was in a meeting yesterday with some clients. They had their executive team around the room. Somebody came in. They just said I just closed two deals. One person to close two deals in five minutes Wow, great job.
Speaker 1:That's something that if you're, if you're remote, how do you know that? How do you know that? How do you get that motivation? Are you sitting there two weeks from the end of the quarter and you're, you've got 10 deals in your pipeline that could close and you're sitting there you're thinking about, you're a little down on yourself, you haven't gotten there yet. Okay, good things are happening, I see it. Or if you're sitting there thinking about going fishing, I know one guy goes fishing every Wednesday and he's got it. He's got it planned out, and so it. It works and the least number of people know about it.
Speaker 1:All right Well maybe he takes a Wednesday off from fishing and puts a little more effort in if he's not at the right place. And again, I know it's not the cure-all, because this guy's number one goal isn't to make as much money as possible, it's the fish on Wednesdays. Admirable goal. Everybody can have their own. I don't argue with anybody. Whatever people want to do, they can do. They just need to be transparent about it. I think.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that. I think that it needs transparency. Second question Corey if you could have five salespeople be completely independent and be self-driven or compete with each other, what would you choose?
Speaker 1:Compete.
Speaker 2:Okay, even though you know some of them could be B and C's, you don't see that that would bring down your top people?
Speaker 1:I think if you're hiring a salesperson off the street, they're a B plus player at best. I firmly believe that If somebody is truly an A player, if they're truly an A player, they've worked at companies before they developed themselves into an A player. Nobody graduates from college or high school and just hits the streets as an A player. It's not going to happen. They work with, with people, and so that means all those people have let's let's call it just general first right of refusal to work with them or not. And they worked with lots of people because they prospected new accounts, especially folks that that sell into revenue teams. So they've they've touched so many different folks that could hire them. They've networked with people. They've worked with bosses and folks that could hire them. They've networked with people. They've worked with bosses and people that have left to go start businesses.
Speaker 1:And people have been executives at other companies. And what's the executive's number one goal? It's to hire and build a great team. Well, if you worked with so-and-so at your last company, or two companies ago, or six companies ago or whatever it was, and they're great, they're on your recruitment list. So these people are getting plucked off and I know a lot of them that you've got these pods of folks that travel together and you've got the leader, and then you've got the folks that go with them. So that's where the A's are going or they don't work anymore, or they start a business on the side, or they do something else. You're going to get a group of B's and C's if you just go through general recruiting channels, pull people off the internet and being able to put people in a cohort, identify where their gaps are, coach the heck out of them and let them be part of a team. I truly believe that makes them better.
Speaker 2:I think, though, I think you can poach a lot of people. I think that if you're a company and you want an A-plus player and you know about them, I think you can poach them. That would be my go-to is like if I think there's truly an A-plus player, because you're right, most of the time they're going to follow a sales leader that they really like, but they're going to follow their team members.
Speaker 1:And it're going to follow a sales leader that they really like, but they're going to follow their team members and it's going to be like, hey, you have to hire this person, but if you're willing to pay them more, they equity the lifestyle. Whatever it is, and if it's a random company that they don't have any background or history with, even if the number looks a little bit bigger, it's not necessarily a bigger package, because it's got unknown risks associated with it, so the expected value is lower.
Speaker 2:How many B players do you think never reach the max potential and could be an A player?
Speaker 1:I think hardly anybody ever reaches their max potential because that's not their goal. I think people have different goals and, like you talked about, there's there's. There's family, there's leisure, there's distractions, there's things that people do to themselves that are self-destructive. I think there's a lot of that stuff and I think that if you look at corporate America, it's built upon inefficiencies People make. They make jokes about middle managers times, mike Housky from office space. He takes the paperwork from the customers to the engineers so they don't have to talk to each other. The whole world is built. I mean, look what Elon did with Twitter. Elon fired 8% of the people that worked at Twitter and the product got them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you could probably do that in most companies, and it's because the organizational design is built to support people doing a certain level of work with a certain level of structure and a certain level of oversight and management and leadership. And if you end up in a world where everybody's an alpha, then I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.
Speaker 2:I think that there will always be, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. There will always be lower salespeople. That's just going to be facts. I just think that, with how many there are and this is a lot, I had a lot of statistics specifically with SaaS companies just how many there are, I think it has a very opposite effect.
Speaker 1:I think that it's. Saas companies. It's kind of a rigged game too, because if you look at the salesperson's quota, you're going to haircut that 15 to 20% to get to the team quota and you're going to haircut that another 10% to get to the board quota. So if every salesperson on the team hits 70% of their goal, the company probably had their board goal.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that is true. But as a salesperson, I don't really care what the company does, I don't really care how much money the company makes, I care how much, like, I make. So as an individual salesperson, that's my goal. Now I do agree. Going back to what you said at the beginning, I agree that a lot of this can be solved with the right mentorship, the right training. I think there's a way larger underlying issue here, but I see this as a very, very, very opposite through my personal experience and then through just statistically and what logically I think people would do. I think that it just has the opposite effect. I think that if I were to put a leaderboard up with, you know, 10 salespeople, I think they would have the opposite effect of what you are wanting. But again, there's a much bigger underlying issue and now I have a lot of statistics on that, like how many, how often do we lose training? How often are people in continuous learning? How many people read books today? I don't know. Do you listen to anything? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like, I've written eight books and I wrote books for salespeople and that was a silly audience to write books for, because they don't buy them as much as I should have written romance novels. If I wrote romance novels, man, I would have sold millions by now.
Speaker 2:People love it. People would be a millionaire by this point, for you wouldn't be here with me if you, uh, if you wrote romance novels with the wrong hat. But yeah, that's that, that's what I think about it. That that was my experience. Um, I, you know, I know a lot of sales people. I'm friends with a lot of good sales people.
Speaker 2:My husband is in sales. My husband's like the leaderboard is so stupid. He was like like it doesn't help me at all. He was like it's so, it's so ridiculous to think that that's what motivates me. That's how, that's how I see it, that's how my husband sees it, that's how a lot of salespeople see it.
Speaker 2:And my very first sales job, when we had a really really, really young team, you know, there was like, oh, we liked the competition. And then, once I got out of that, I was like this was so stupid, like you are not motivating me whatsoever. I really really don't care what Sally next to me is doing, and that's how. Like you know, my husband would say the same thing. He's like I don't care what Joe next to me does. I really don't. I am trying to bring in the most amount of money possible and maximize every single hour of my day to do that. So that's how I see it and that is what I want out of my salespeople. Now, how many people are going to do that, I don't know, but those are the types of salespeople that I am trying to hire. Those are the type of salespeople that I want on AVRL at my company.
Speaker 1:How do you assess for that?
Speaker 2:Assess for what exactly?
Speaker 1:Being the type of person that you want.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so we have. I I'll tell you this, and this is not a joke. I have been interviewing people for probably eight months. Um, we meet in person. Um, I try to look for people in the industry that's not always the case and we try to bring them around our customers too. We do not hire quickly, we hire very, very, very slowly. So that's a big thing in seeing and making sure that the people that we are hiring are going to be around in the long term. A lot of different factors, but we will do multiple conversations. We will fly to meet them in person, fly them to meet us, or we will meet at a conference. I'm meeting someone at a conference in two days. So that's what we do to try our best to figure that out. But we hire slowly, not quickly.
Speaker 1:Are you hiring active candidates or passive candidates, People that are actively looking or people that aren't looking but you think they'd be a good fit?
Speaker 2:Yep, exactly People that are't looking. But you think they'd be a good fit? Yep, exactly People that are not looking. Somebody says, hey, my buddy, is it a? I'm like, I don't want your money's wrestling.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Yeah, if you're out looking for a job, I probably don't want to hire you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hire slow works for passive candidates, it doesn't really work for active candidates. It's true, yes, yeah, we don't. Yeah, I don't know the last time I interviewed a an active candidate.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we have an interesting, you know, I would say a very, very different sales model. If you were to look at my company, corey, we don't have a website, so we don't have a website. We don't do marketing, um, we have played so strategically in the and we're in the logistics industry, um, but my company works with multi, multi, multi-billion dollar companies and, and many, many, many of them, um, just from word of mouth and us doing a good job of networking, posting on LinkedIn, getting activity, um, but we do, we, we do a lot in that way, but we don't have any marketing. We don't even have a website. If you go to avrlio, you will not find anything. So I would say that my sales methodology is probably quite a bit different than other people's as well.
Speaker 1:That's counterculture. I love it All. Right, cool, good chat today. Anything that you want to say as parting words.
Speaker 2:No, no. Thanks for listening. Thanks for having me, corey. I appreciated it. I love these conversations. I enjoy a good debate and good back and forth. I think when people stop having conversations like this, society doesn't grow. That's a big piece. I posted about this the other day. I think we're in such a dangerous spot. If no one's willing to get out and have a difference of opinion and people are not willing to talk about this, whatever your opinions are, I think that we become a stagnant society. So I like things like this and I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1:I love it. Yeah, when you limit speech, anybody that studied history? The minute you start limiting speech, really bad things start happening. Yeah, that's exactly right, very bad things start happening, all right, well, thanks everybody. Sales Management Podcast. We'll see you next time.