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Highlights

• The journey from starting out in tech sales selling computer systems to becoming a successful sales guru, entrepreneur, and podcaster (02:29)
• What it really means for a sales manager to be enabled (04:14)
• Stepping off the hamster wheel: Why he decided to transition from corporate to entrepreneurship (08:40)
• Helping turn around mature startups that have stalled in growth (11:38)
• The inspiration behind his first book and his advice for new authors (15:11)
• How to succeed as a thought leader in your space (21:00)
• Passionate about inspiring salespeople to keep learning and improving (22:54)
• The importance of understanding how buyers form perceptions of you as a seller (25:26)
• Achieving sales success by lifting up the lower tier of salespeople on your team just as much as you do with the top performers (29:36)
• Distinguishing between the job of a salesperson and the job of a sales manager (32:47)
• Growing your business by enabling your salespeople to grow (36:41)

In this episode of the Science of Selling STEM, I will have a chat with global sales guru, top podcaster, and entrepreneur, Andy Paul. Andy has a hit podcast, Accelerate Your Sales, that was acquired by ringDNA in 2020. It has since been renamed “Sales Enablement with Andy Paul.” This show inspires thousands of sales professionals each week. Andy has also written two award-winning books, “Zero Time Selling” and “Amp Up Your Sales” 

Having sold any kind of item in the past, Andy Paul now coaches and consults CEOs and sales teams. He's worked with all kinds of companies from start-ups to Fortune 100. He’s ranked #8 on LinkedIn’s list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts and he’s consulted with some of the biggest businesses in the world including Square, Philips, GrubHub, and more, making him one of the leading voices in the sales industry today.

Paul shares his interesting journey, from a start in tech sales to a successful sales career and then transitioning into entrepreneurship. To teach us his strategy for revitalized selling, he will talk about what's important to your buyers and how you can help them get it with his 4 pillars of selling in. Wanna get better at selling? You'll learn how in this episode. So stay tuned!

Quotes

“We move salespeople into roles of authority and positions of authority and responsibility without educating them in just some of the basics” - Andy Paul

“A sales manager is the most influential person in a new seller’s life and so we must help managers get better” - Andy Paul

“If we spent 90% of the money on sales managers, we would actually end up with better results” - Andy Paul

“At the end of the day, in an overwhelming majority of cases, the decision the buyer makes, the difference between you and another vendor is you as a seller” - Andy Paul

“Your job as a salesperson is not to persuade somebody to buy your product, your job as a salesperson is to go out and listen to your buyer, understand the most important things to them both in terms of the challenges they face and the outcomes they wanna achieve, and then help them get that” - Andy Paul

Resources Mentioned:

• Sell Without Selling Out By Andy Paul
• Zero-Time Selling By Andy Paul
• Amp Up Your Sales By Andy Paul

Learn More About Andy in the Links Below:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/realandypaul/
• Website - https://www.andypaul.com/

Connect with Wesleyne Greer:

• Wesleyne’s Website - https://transformedsales.com/
• Wesleyne on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleynegreer/
• Wesleyne on Facebook - https://web.facebook.com/wesleynegreer
• Wesleyne on Twitter - https://twitter.com/wesleynegreer
• Email Her at wesleyne@transformedsales.com

As a sales manager, you are judged by the

performance of your team, and you're praised when they do

well. But one thing that you've not been able to figure out is

how to get everyone on your team consistently hitting quota every

single month. On the Snack size sales podcast, we discuss the

science of selling stem sales leadership in the science,

technology, engineering and manufacturing fields is

difficult. You will learn from sales managers just like you

that will give you actionable insights and tips on how to

develop as a leader and achieve your revenue targets every

single month. So pop your headphones in and get ready to

listen to my guests today. They will give you information and

inspiration to ensure that you have actionable insights that

you can put into place today. Hello, and welcome to another

episode of the science of selling stem today. I am so

excited. I feel like I am in the presence of royalty like I'm

interviewing a podcaster that has been podcasting since before

I even knew what a podcast was. Andy Paul, how are you today?

I'm fine. Thank you for having me.

Let me tell you guys. I mean, like when you're in the presence

of royalty, you have to let them know right and podcasting. As we

both know, it is a labor of love. So you have been doing it

for a long time. Seven years. Let me tell you guys a little

bit about Andy. He has a hit podcast accelerates your sales

and it was acquired by ring DNA in 2020. It has since been

renamed as sales enablement with Andy Paul, this show continues

to inspire 1000s of sales professionals each week. Andy

has also written two award winning books zero time selling

an amp up your sales, he is ranked number eight on LinkedIn

is list of top 50 global sales experts. And he's consulted with

some of the biggest businesses in the world, including square

Philips GrubHub and more making him one of the leading voices in

the sales industry today. And I think this must have been

submitted before your latest book came out. But we'll get

into that later.

Yes, a third, a third book. Yes.

Book. So how did you start your career and become

so amazing that a giant company wanted to buy your podcast?

Well, they're actually kind of a smaller

company. But still, nonetheless, they wanted to buy it. Yes.

Gotcha started my computer in Texas, or I screwed my career in

tech sales, selling computer systems to you know, at the time

when computer systems were rooms full of equipment

back in the day, and did that get promoted to management

fairly quickly doing that and enjoyed that, though, you know,

sort of under enabled as most managers are in the first jobs,

but then had sort of this adventure in Silicon Valley,

where I went to work for Apple in very early days of Apple. And

that's a variety of other startups and eventually found

myself in the satellite communications business where

we're selling large, complex satellite communication systems

to some of the world's largest companies working for startups,

you know, for small companies. So as the challenge was how do

we as a small company, go compete for 789 figure deals

against really large tech companies and when so that sir,

became my specialty that start my own company in 2000. And

which was designed to help small companies learn how to compete

for big deals with against a big competitors did that until about

10 years ago. And so I started writing my books and Sir, down

this path of being sort of sales thought leader, quote, unquote,

started my podcast in 2015, as you said, as Stephen initially

called Accelerate, and then acquired in 2020, and we renamed

it to sales enablement with Andy Paul. And now with 1043

episodes, I think as of this week, we're still going strong.

And yes, just published my my third book sell without selling

out.

Wow. So I want to kind of go all the way back

to the beginning. And you said something that I think a lot of

people, they don't quite understand what the term means.

So you said you move it from being an individual contributor

to being a sales manager, but you weren't quite enabled. So

help us understand what that means to be enabled as a sales

manager?

Well, it's a great question, because I don't think

any of them really are, unfortunately is, you know, we

move people into roles of authority and positions of

authority and responsibility without educating them and just

some of the basics. Yeah, no one taught me how to coach somebody,

right. I mean, I think I became pretty good at it, but it's just

through trial and error, right? I wasn't throwing a call

teaching me how to do it or training me how to do it. We're

in a performance business and sales, right? It's like

athletics to some degree or professional sports. When do we

ever train sales managers how to help people perform better,

right? We tend to say, oh, go make more calls and more emails,

so on. But you know, we in this performance business, and we

don't teach managers anything about performance improvement,

and I serve it on the list. So it's sort of left to fend for

yourself. And some people are fortunate, I think I worked for

good bosses at several points in my career that, you know, I

could see what they did. And, you know, they sort of modeled

it for the behavior that I thought was good. So I could

take examples from them. But even to this day, we under

invest in managers, and it's their really, yes, I've done

this couple months, we've polled salespeople said, so where do

you learn how to sell? And the biggest influence is not

training that's actually on the list of things is relatively low

down the list? It's it's their managers, it's their peers?

Well, if that's the case, if the managers are the most

influential people, oftentimes in a young seller's life and new

sellers life, why aren't we helping those managers get

better.

And like, you're singing my song. I literally,

I'm these days, I'm so irritated on LinkedIn, I see all these

people, and they are appealing directly to the seller, like,

I'm gonna teach you how to cold call, I'm gonna teach you how to

write emails, I'm gonna teach you how to do this, this and

that. I'm like, you're talking to the wrong people. We need to

fix the managers, right? We fix the managers, we fix the team.

And so when we talk about enabling sales managers, giving

them the playbook or the toolbox, I think that is such a

huge gap in our current market space.

Oh, absolutely. So I make the case. And this is

really not hyperbole, I'm actually serious about this is

that you we spend, I think the last estimate, I saw from

LinkedIn, May $15 billion a year in sales training in the United

States, of which let's just say 90% of it, it's probably more

but 90% of it spent on individual contributors, and 10%

on managers. And I would advocate that we reverse those

percentages, and that if we actually spent 90%, not that we

necessarily could on the number of sales managers spend 90% of

money on sales managers would actually end up with better

results.

I 100%. Agree. And I think that when even when

you have those sales trainings, right, what did the managers do?

They sit in the back of the room, and they're on their

computer, they're not even paying attention. And then

during the breaks, they're like, oh, yeah, hey, what about this

deal? What I mean, and so it is such a huge problem. But you're

right, if we spent more, even if we split that in half, and did

5050, the industry wouldn't like it, because they wouldn't make

as much money, right? Because once you enable those sales

managers, then the teams follow right along.

Right, great. You're 100%? I think, yeah, that

doesn't have to be, you know, 90% spent on managers, but a

higher fraction, but we just have this cultural issue in

sales, which is this assumption that we give somebody a title,

they know what they're talking about, which is so unfair to

those people in those roles. I feel bad for frontline sales

managers in today's environment, because there's so much pressure

on them. They have their sales team, especially in the tech

business, they've got their AES churning every year, they've got

the CROs are only lasting 12 to 15 months, these days. So their

supervisors are turning quickly. It's like, let's help them

because these are the I think, the most important people in the

chain. I mean, yes, the individual contributors do the

actual selling for the most part, but these are the people

that make the whole thing work to your point.

Yes. So when you started your business in 2000,

what was your mindset? Why did you say, You know what, I've

done the corporate thing. Now I want to transition and start my

own business.

It was two things one is was very personal, which was

I've been the previous 15 years, I've been traveling extensively

over quarter million miles a year type of thing, and a lot of

it overseas. And I had missed my daughter's birthday. And I said,

Well, that's not me. I don't want to do that. So start my own

businesses way to sort of step off the hamster wheel, if you

will. And I wanted to be the dad who was there. So having my own

business or gaming that flexibility and for at that

point, my kids were 12 and 10 is for the next eight years. I was

that dad every single lacrosse game soccer game theater

performance dance performance. I think people started to take

pity on me because like, save a life because he's always here.

But I had that flexibility and used it in building my business.

I was able to sort of control the schedule to a large degree

and so I just didn't miss a thing. And for me that was

really important at that time. And yeah, I'm sure I sacrifice

income and some other things in life. short term, but yeah, I

would never, never regret that at all. So that was one reason.

Another reason was just yeah, I'd been in one business for 15

years and satellite communications business, and I

was ready for a new challenge.

Yeah, the quality of life, right. I think

a lot of times as salespeople and sales leaders, we, we think

that this, it just comes with the territory. And I can

remember doing the same thing, I would literally get their

calendars the beginning of the school year and put all their

stuff on and had to be traveling around it. And sometimes I would

like fly in the morning for something that was happening at

noon, right? Because I was like, I want to be there. And what

that did to me was, I would just be so exhausted, right? And

like, You're half one foot in and one foot out. And so like

that quality of life, and that balance that when you start your

own business, you kind of get that back. But yeah, do you lose

the opportunity of making as much money as a fortune 100?

company can. But I think that people have to make that

decision. What is more important right now in my life?

Yeah. And it was temporary, to some degree. But

again, I never give those moments back. And quite frankly,

missed them. You know, and I don't know how old your kids

are. But I mean, it's like, you know, when my son had been very

involved in the sport of lacrosse all the way through

college, you know, we get to his last game of college, it's like,

he was done with it. His mom and I were both like, we're gonna

miss this. I mean, you miss the opportunity to see your kids do

things. And so yeah, being able to arrange things. So I could do

that. I was very fortunate. But it was intentional.

And so your business? Was it sales house?

was is that the

No. So my consulting company called zero time

selling, which is the name of my first book. And yeah, so work I

did was work primarily with companies that in the early

days, the companies that had sort of call mature startups,

they had reached a certain point, and then their growth

stalled, and oftentimes their serve at a loss to figure out

why why they'd lost the recipe, why they've been able to grow

successfully for five years or 15 years in some cases. And so

yeah, I would come in and analyze the situation and work

with the CEO and the sales leadership to turn things

around. Hmm.

Okay. So very strategic in nature, really

diagnosing and understanding what specifically is going on

within the organization? Well, and

then getting very tactical from an execution

standpoint. So that's, for me, the view that actually was with

the strategic The second is just the tactical execution on making

deals happen. And that's, I love that part. And so I still do

that work today, I do it both with companies that deal with

individuals, you know, high performing individuals that I

coach on a one on one basis that, yeah, this, you're looking

for the outside there make a ton of money, and they're hitting

their numbers. But you know, these people that want to take

it to the next level do even better. Mm hmm.

That's awesome. Because, you know, they're, I

think that the guys that people always think about when they

think about sales consultants, and you know, people in our

world is that your sales have to be low, or you have to be like a

low performer. But that's not always the thing, right?

Exactly. Yeah. Somebody asked me once, you

know, how did I, what sort of the profile of the companies

that I had worked with? And I'd say, well, by and large, they're

all pretty successful. Be like, What do you mean? So yeah, those

are the best clients, because they're the ones that say, I

know, we can do even better. I had one client, I worked with

who he was serial entrepreneur, and I was working with him, I

think, on his third company, and he just did that every year. He

said, I bring in a consultant, right, as I know that, I don't

know everything. And yeah, we're doing pretty well. But I know

that I, as a CEO need to get smarter. So I bring people in to

help me. And, you know, that's a great perspective to have.

Another time somebody asked me, you know, how did you How could

you serve, qualify your, your customers, potential clients?

And I'd say, Well, this is go and meet them in person. Before

we sign the deal. I said, I look at the size, how big of a stack

of books they had on their desk. They had a big stack of books.

They were my person. If they didn't have books, they weren't

going to be my person. And so yeah, I mean, I do think it's

funny, but yeah, as a consultant, I've worked with

successful companies.

That's good. It's not sometimes I used to

tell people Oh, I like working with the hot mess. You know, the

company gets really messed up, but ya know, it's way too much

work. Right. It's a lot of work.

Yeah. And you serve if you're in the consulting

business, you're listening to your thing about okay, yeah, the

temptation is to say, Yeah, I need to look for companies that

are really screwed up. And the hot mess isn't, it's like, not

really. I mean, you want the people who are dedicated

learners. Yeah. Other things. I look for a CEO. So we're members

of YPO or e o or Vista. Should I mean they were again, people

committed to learning. And so if they were doing that, then

again, that was another great for me another great indicator

that Yeah, we had a chance of making that successful.

So you have written three books thus far.

Yeah. Tell me about what was your inspiration for that very

first book,

I just said, felt like I had a book inside me for

a while. And I'd wanted to write one for a long time. And I just

hadn't. And, yeah, 2010 I got married for a second time. And

yeah, my wife was just incredibly supportive and urged

me to do it knew I had wanted to do it. And yeah, I think she

inspired me to invest the time and effort to do it. And like a

lot of surf consultants who write books, service calling

cards, right, this is a statement of who I am excusing

is. Yeah, it sort of caught on though that was unexpected. I

didn't think anybody would pay attention to it, quite frankly.

And yeah, became so popular and less a one on one Ward, and so

on. So it's like, oh, wow, people maybe do want to hear

what I have to say. And that sort of started on this path.

Now three books and 1043 podcast episodes.

So tell us more about because there's so many

people who are like, I want to write a book, maybe is it going

to be successful? Tell us about some of the tips that you would

give some a new author how to make a book successful,

still learning that I think, gotten better over the

course of three books, I think. So one thing is, there's lots of

different publishing options these days. But the one thing

everybody needs is everybody needs a really good editor, you

whether you are self published, or they work with a hybrid

publisher, whether you want to try to do a conventional

publisher, a traditional publisher is in terms of making

a good product, which is really what you're doing is you need

that outside perspective, that's really going to challenge you

and and work with you. And and I was really fortunate the

unfortunate my first book, I had hired an editor who was okay,

but was more sort of following my leads. And then second book

with a traditional publisher editor was not very good at all,

and didn't really help. But this this book, sell without selling

out that just published, our just fantastic editor she worked

for the publishers were hand in hand with me for better or four

months on the book, maybe even a little bit longer. And it just

made all the difference in the world. So in books are really

collaborative. And that's the lesson learned after the first

two that I actually the first one was that, yeah, it's a

collaborative effort. It's the editor, just a big part of it if

you find the right person, if the publisher has the right

person. So that's one bit advice. The other piece of

advice is that if you plan on writing a book, investing the

effort, then plan on selling some. And well, you laugh, but I

mean, I have a lot of people on my show that want to be guests.

And this I've written this book or research the book, and I'll

look at and say, Okay, it's been published, you know, it's been

on the market for two years and has 20 reviews on Amazon. And

it's like, yeah, what are you trying to do to market the book

or you went to all this effort. So what I encourage authors, and

I actually run a mastermind group for aspiring sales

authors, is really invest time to build your platform, right?

Build your audience before you sell before you write the book.

Because it makes it easier to find an audience for the book.

So invest the time, if you want to be a thought leader, which if

you want to write a book, clearly you do is invest the

time on primarily LinkedIn to build a following to express

yourself out there. So even test your material a fuel source, I

often use the analogy of LinkedIn or being like the out

of town comedy club for a comic that wants to try out their new

material. Yeah, that's what LinkedIn is for. It's it's

there, it's public. But you're there served to figure out what

you think and what you believe in what resonates with an

audience. So you're sort of doing market research to some

degree. So it's really important if you're thinking about

building a book. So I've long are writing a book series, I

sort of have a little longer term plan and say, yeah, how am

I going to prepare myself for that? Because also, you make

yourself more attractive to publishers, if you have an

established audience on LinkedIn as well.

So one thing that I find so so amazing about

the advice that you gave on writing a book, I feel like it's

the same thing that you you preach, and you talk about when

you say that, hey, yep, you want to be a good sales manager. You

want to be a good leader, you need help, right? Your editor

that's kind of like your coach, and then you're like, Okay, on

LinkedIn, sometimes it might booth sometimes it might not,

but you got to try. Right? You got to put yourself out there to

at least get moving.

Yeah. Well, I think people that I mean, it's you do

you feel about the podcast. I know. I do, too, is like when

you first started it's like sort of afraid to put yourself out

there right? Because you're afraid someone might say

something about a negative or whatever. I mean, I remember

when I first started doing paid speaking in public I come back

from a speaking event, my wife would say, Well, how did it go?

I'd say, Well, no one stood up and called me an idiot. So I

think it was okay. And that was sort of my bar, right? It's just

because you have that fear, when you first start putting yourself

out there, you write a book, you put the book out there, it's,

you know, even the third book, there's still sort of this

trepidation about, you know, somebody's gonna like it. So, in

building your audience, in advance of writing a book, you

sort of have to conquer that fear to some degree and get

accustomed to putting your opinions out there. And for me,

the great thing about LinkedIn is not necessarily the quality

of what's put out there, because it's on uneven quality, that's

fine. But the fact that people are doing it, because I don't

know, we don't know where the next great insights is going to

come from, and the next great idea is going to come from and I

don't think it has to be, yeah, somebody like me, that's been in

the business forever. I think how somebody, you know, two

years in their career, if they've got this insight about,

yeah, there's different way we could do this aspect of selling,

put it out there. Let's socialize it.

So when you think about thought leadership,

what are some of the things that you find most important, because

you said, Hey, build your your tribe, your community have a

engaging group of people that you almost can kind of drop

into, you know, a book launch or whatever you're doing? So when

you think about thought leadership, what are some of the

things that have not gotten so good for you? And some of the

things that you're like, Oh, this is great.

Well, you know, the things that are great, it's

just, you know, sometimes you write things that people don't

like, and that's fine. But it's, it's the consistency is really

the key, you just have to commit to doing it and doing it on a

frequent basis. And just having a point of view. For me, that's

really the important that I think if you're even if you're

not a thought leader, as a profession, but you're in sales,

you have this increasing obligation to have thought

leadership, as part of what you do is we know that buyers

current study from RAIN Group two year but two years ago, 82%

of buyers look at a seller's LinkedIn profile before they

speak with them for the first time, what are they looking for?

They're looking for, are you worth investing their time in

you? Right? So what do you stand for? What do you believe? Does

anybody know? Can they find out by looking at your LinkedIn

profile? What separates you from the next salesperson? Because at

the end of the day, we know that in the overwhelming majority of

cases, the decision, the buyer makes the difference between you

and another vendor? Is you the seller. So you know, what's that

impression you're creating on the buyer? And when do you start

creating that impression? I think it starts if they're

looking at your LinkedIn profile, that's gonna be their

first impression of you, oftentimes, so what should they

find there? And so I think sellers that don't spend some

amount of time and we're in this profession is expressing and

having an opinion about selling about their customers about

their market, their customers, or in so on, it doesn't, you're

doing yourself a disservice. And it's so

you have this amazing new book sell without

selling out, right. And a lot of times, I know that authors

thought leaders typically come up with ideas for books based on

things that annoy them, it means that they're seeing in the

marketplace, or they're like, Okay, you guys are getting it

wrong. What was your inspiration for this latest book that you've

written?

Well, yes, sir. What you said is, is that we're just

not and we in b2b selling, we're just not getting better at it.

Right? Ms. We've had over a little such over the last 1015

years, we've had this little gold rush of incredible

technology, marketing, automation, sales, automation,

sales technology. And yet you look at the results that

companies are achieving, or individual sellers are

achieving. And you look at some of the research that's done. And

we see all see the research of a percentage of sales reps

setting, quotas dropping when rates are dropping, sellers are

turning more frequently with all these data points of saying,

Hmm, what's going wrong here? Why aren't we able to take

advantage of this technology and do better and do better in the

sense of creating better experiences for the buyer? And

that's really the bottom line. Right? And so, yeah, just over

the course of all the conversations on my podcast, and

in my own work with companies, that was just clear that there

was sort of this impediment. And I think a lot of the impediment

is just how we perceive what our job is as sellers. And yet

there's plenty of counter examples. And I just want to

draw those out in the book and say, yeah, here's a different

path that more focused on the buyer and the experiences the

buyer has that to some people may say, Well, gee, seems a

little counter to what we're doing seems a little soft,

maybe. But the fact is, it's actually a faster path to an

order faster path to increasing your win rates. Then sort of the

stereotypical salesy behavior that sellers are known for, and

that's sellers. Many make buyers cringe when sellers do it.

Yes, it's a very, very unfortunate when, as

a seller, you're just so in your mind and you're like, This is

how things have to go. And I really don't care about you. And

I'm just talking, talking and I'm vomiting product

information. I'm doing this and I'm doing and it's like, you

lost a sale before you even started, like five minutes in

the cell was already lost.

Oh, yeah, probably 10 seconds? Well, it's as we know

that, again, I wrote about this in my second book is this

there's this body of science about how people form

perceptions of other people. And but one of the things that

always stuck in my mind was, we do that within a quarter of a

second. So I can figure in the example they use. And so the

study was people meeting people, let's say, in a social setting,

or a bar man and a woman or potential romantic partner, you

make an perception like this. And if you think your buyers

aren't doing the same thing about you is you're mistaken

they are. And what we know about against from the science of

perception is that once a buyer forms a perception of you in

their mind, it's very hard for them to change it, even when

they're given evidence that directly contradicts that

perception. And the example I like to give is, if you imagine

that you live on some suburban street somewhere and the police

show up at your neighbor's home and drag the guy out of bed and

walk away in handcuffs and all the neighbors are out. Looking

at what's going on. Now, the day later, police out mistaken

identity, not the person at all. Nevermind, what is everything

about the neighbor? He's a crook? Something wrong as bad

person, even though it's nothing at all right? And the well, this

is this is so what happens is if you show up, and yeah, one of my

favorites, is you act too familiar too quickly with a

buyer, for instance. Yeah, I hate it when mail sellers

presumed early in the relationship, they can call a

guy buddy or PAL, right? It's just it's off putting to a lot

of people, right? You have to earn the right to be able to

call somebody that. Well, they formed that perception of you

little lazy, doesn't think things through, you know,

presumes makes presumptions that shouldn't. Yeah, what's the

person would be like to work with going through this process?

Maybe not right? Just from that little thing, just like that. So

in sales, we have to be incredibly intentional about the

impressions we create at all times. And it may seem like a

small thing, but it's like saying sales are no small

things.

No, there aren't. And you know, the old

cliche, first impressions. Last is it's true, because I've had

people who are like, hey, Wes, I'm like, Excuse me, who gave

you permission to call me West? Right? Like, who are you? Like?

Right? I mean, you're it affects how you interact with

that person. Right? Yeah, I want to post about that on LinkedIn I

posted about a couple of times is is young, mostly young male

sellers, really hate that, that I call them out on because they

think, yeah, we're just we're being ourselves. That's like,

No, I I encourage people to be yourself, but you earn the right

also, to do certain things. Yeah, much like you earn the

right through building trust with the buyer to ask them more

detailed questions that force them to reveal information that

wouldn't normally reveal. They don't have to just because

you're asking a question. They don't have to answer it

completely, or fully or truthfully, you earn the right

to get that. Yeah. And

you know, I think that so many times when we

have these, I like to say outside of the box ideas in

sales, there are a lot of pushback, right? Because it's

like, well, we've been doing this for 15 or 20 years, and

it's been working. And you're like, Okay, let's look at the

data. Who was it actually working for? Oh, there's top two

or three salespeople? Well, what about everyone else? Right? And

when you're saying, hey, less people are hitting quota, but

maybe the company is still hitting their targets. But if

you look at the spread, you only have a small percentage of the

team that's doing it right. And so it's like, but we have to

give a framework we have to help everyone understand the why and

the how don't just give them scripts and tell them to go do

it

exactly. Couldn't have said it better. Rarely do

we give people the why behind the how. And so people have sort

of the sin robotic approach to selling and so on. It's one

things I tried to accomplish in the book, with my four pillars

of selling in is getting the detail about the why behind the

how and then provide the high was well, because people need

context for why they should act a certain way to your point to

about the top two 3%. I would say in most companies, the top

performers, they do sell in versus sell out. But they've

developed their own style over time. Right. And it's something

that's unique to them is why I tried to make it a book is you

know, sales managers basically want everybody to comply to a

process except you people who are really good. You do what you

do. Right? Why is they need to act that way with everybody to

help. They've helped those people get to where they were

hopefully sales managers. So do it for the rest of the company.

The rest of the team is yeah, I always find it very interesting

to and I just saw this a couple weeks ago on a post somewhere.

Someone was making the camera button Well, you know, sales

managers could do a better job. But thing is they spent so much

time with the mid to low performers that they just don't

have time. I'm like, actually, that's not my experience working

with companies as ever, is actually sales managers spend a

disproportionate amount of time with their top performers,

because they think that's where they're going to achieve their

success. And what happens is the middle tier, and the lower tiers

get ignored. And that's a huge problem. So, yes, we need to

lift all people in the profession and in a specific

team. And I think one of the ways to do that is you you

enable people to become the best version of themselves as a sales

manager. So what I lay out in the book, I said, these four

pillars of selling in connection, curiosity,

understanding generosity, is these are, these are attributes

we all have as human beings to some greater or lesser degree,

we need to develop those as managers, because this is how

they were naturally in, in a more human way interact with

buyers, and enable more likely outcome for them than they would

acting somewhere else. Other way. So yeah, managers need to

spend more time with those people and let them experiment.

Yeah, this is a part that, again, is one of my pet peeves

that drives me nuts is managers with middle and lower tiers,

they want them to be more compliant to their sales process

a little more rigidly managed in terms of activity, I understand

you're a little nervous about it. But the path forward with

those people is to enable them to build on their unique

strengths, because I believe they all have, we all do. And

yeah, sort of follow the path I've laid out on the book and

that word,

I'm so mesmerized, because I've

literally just sitting here, and I'm thinking about, you know,

there's a popular sales methodology, and I won't call

any names, but they try to get everyone to act a certain way.

Or if you're not this kind of salesperson, you're not going to

be successful. So get everybody on the team to be this kind of

salesperson and do it exactly this way. And I advocate for

individualized coaching plans, right, every single person on

the team is a different person. And if you can level that middle

tier up just 10%. And then with the bottom tier 10%, right, your

top two, they're going to do what they need to do, they don't

need as much of your time, you need to focus on what you can do

to let me level them up. Let me level that person up. And once

you start looking at each salesperson as a human being not

just a block on your revenue spreadsheet, and say, This

person needs to be better here. Let me help them in our coaching

sessions do this that is the way that we can sell without selling

out. Oh, absolutely.

I tell people what I write in the book is that the

job of a salesperson, it's not to persuade somebody to buy your

product, your job as a salesperson is to go out and

listen to your buyer, understand what the most important things

to them both in terms of the challenges they face and the

outcomes they want to achieve. And then help them get that,

right. That's our job as sellers. That's our job as a

salesperson, as a sales manager. Your job is not to force people

to comply to a process your job is to it's gonna sound very

familiar, it's to listen to your salespeople, understand what are

the most important things to them in terms of you may the

skills they need to upskill or maybe the things that the goals

they want to achieve in their life, the outcomes they want to

achieve in their career, and then help them get that that's

your job. Your job is to help your people get the things that

are most important to them. And if you think it's anything else,

but that then you're missing it, because the path to your own

success as a sales manager is doing just these things,

understand what's important to your sellers, help them achieve

them.

Yeah, I like to say if your sales team is

failing, you're failing, right? And so if you can't help them

get to where they need to go, then you are failing as a sales

manager. And it's not about you being up there getting your

award and getting a pat on the back and like Yeah, you did so

good this quarter. No, it is about knowing that all 510 20

people on your team can be up on the podium and you can sit back

and say that is a reflection of me. My team is a reflection of

me.

Well, absolutely. And to that point, right. As we all

seen the reports from CSO insights and from bravado just

came out with a report. Majority of sales sellers are not hitting

their quotas. So whose responsibility is that? It's

just what you said it is the managers responsibility. And too

many one offs are pointing fingers at the sellers and

saying well, they're not doing the work and so on. Well, okay,

well, that's still your responsibility is and I think

the way that managers need to look at it is assume that you

are a manager of a manufacturing plant, and you're making a

product. So if 52% of the product coming off here assembly

line didn't work to specification, how long would

you hold your job? Not long, right? Yeah, that's really what

this is, is the sellers, I don't make turn sellers into, you

know, a number or something, but they are your product, you are

shaping those people. They're your responsibility. So if

you're allowing salespeople, either virtually or physically

to go out and have conversations with customers that are so

ineffective that such a few percentage of them a low

percentage of them actually attain quota, that's your

responsibility. And now, as we said earlier, we don't

necessarily enable sell sales managers to help their people

the way they need to in that regard. So it's yeah, we've got

multiple steps in this. But yeah, we need to start looking

at sales managers is really take it personally, if people that

were responsible for aren't hitting their numbers.

And you know, a lot of times when we go in, and

we're working with companies within our consulting practice,

you know, I'll say, Hey, this is where your salespeople are, this

is what they need. And a lot of times leadership be like, oh,

let's just get rid of them. They're all bad. Let's just

replace them. And not doing this and not doing that. And so I

just said, Look, each and every person in the eye, whether I'm

on Zoom, or in person, and I say, have you given each and

every person on this screen 100% of what they need to be

successful. And 100% of the time, they say no, so I'm like,

you have to give them something before you say go away. If this

is your fault, right? And we can talk about this all day, Andy,

because this is actually like, this is my heart. I talk about

this all the time, sales management enablement, right,

and why they're the nucleus of the organization

Well, right. But we can't set people up for failure.

And this is my concern is so ripe for the pandemic, I spoke

to a group of CEOs, they were CEOs of portfolio company of

this private equity firm. And as presenting to them, and I went,

I said, Well, let me ask you all the questions. Yeah. Whose this

was toward the end of 2019? I said, So, who here on the table

is going to raise quotas this year? Well, they all raise their

hand. Okay. Got it. I said, so, you know, how much we serve,

established over baseline was like 12 13%, on average. I said,

Great. Okay. So raise your hand, if you've invested sufficiently

this year, and your sellers that, you know, their

productivity has improved by 13%. Hmm. That sounds

like,

huh, wow. That's like, we don't tie the ends

together. It's like, sure you want to grow, but you have to

provide people something to be able to enable them to grow,

right? It's how are you adding to their skills? How you're

adding to their experience? How are you improving the level of

coaching and management they get that can help them achieve at

higher levels? Whatever that dimension is? What are you

doing, and too often that we just raise the quotas,

regardless of those things. And then we wonder why people get

frustrated, why they quit, why they turn over quickly. You

know, it's a situation that that management leadership is

oftentimes creating. So you have to look at the whole the whole

picture.

Wow, we've had an amazing conversation. And I

do want to wrap up and ask you something, what's the thing that

you're most excited about accomplishing personally, or

professionally, you talked about your kids and books and this

amazing consulting practice. So I don't know how you're gonna

get just one. But give me the one.

You know, at this point in time, it's fun. I mean,

the podcast and the books, I think, but also, you know, my

partner in creating the podcast, and in my business has been my

son. So, again, as a parent, having the opportunity to watch

your kids grow and mature and to have the opportunity to interact

with them frequently. Daily as because we're working together.

It was Yeah, unexpected. Pleasure and bonus for

everything I've done. And yeah, I just remember we're down a

similar age, and I sunsets mid 30s. But yeah, I want to talk to

my parents once a week, right. And they really have no idea

what I was up to in my life in terms of understanding my

profession and what I was doing, because at odds what they had

done, yeah, good chance to share this with, uh, not my daughter

works for me as well. So that's a lot of fun.

That is amazing. I would say that is an amazing

thing to be able to hang your hat on, right? Both of your

kids, they've done their thing and now they've come back and

they're working in the business with you. That's awesome. Yeah.

And so far,

they don't hate me for

Awesome, awesome. Awesome. So Andy, what

is the one best way that people can get in contact with you if

they want to chat with you or engage with you or

LinkedIn? So you can follow me on LinkedIn connect

with me please connect with me. That'd be great. message me on

LinkedIn as well. That's funny. Like many people, it's two

inboxes both my my email and LinkedIn but LinkedIn is

probably The easiest, most direct way at this point.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been

an amazing conversation. Thank you for having me. And I would

encourage anyone, please pick up a copy of Andy's book. I've read

it. It is an amazing book. And I know that your leadership if

you're an individual contributor, wherever you fall

within the sales organization, it's going to help you to become

a better seller. So thanks again for your time and talent and

expertise. Andy? Well, thank you for having me. It's been a lot

of fun. And that was another episode of the science of

selling stem and remember and all that you do transform your

sales until next time. Thank you for joining us today on the

snack sized sales podcast. If you enjoyed this episode,

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