Summary

In this episode of "Building Elite Sales Teams," Dr. Jim sits with Lucas Price to chat about building and maintaining dynamic sales teams in B2B tech sales. This discussion gears towards understanding the balance between promoting from within and injecting new insights from external hires to prevent the sales environment from becoming stale.

The episode delves into Lucas's journey through various stages of growth at Zipwhip, from startup to a sizeable sales organization. It highlights the importance of hiring strategies that align with the growth phase of the company and the criticality of having a solid development plan to foster sales success. Also explored is the concept of implementing structured processes and criteria for promotions to help maintain momentum while fostering a culture of professional growth and sustainability.

Take Aways

• Consistent hiring from outside the organization can be detrimental; showing an internal path for growth is vital to retaining ambitious talent.
• Balance promotions with new hires to avoid insularity and to introduce fresh ideas and professional management skills.
• Proper infrastructure and criteria for promotion and hiring are essential for scaling sales teams effectively.
• Effective communication and adaptive hiring strategies are crucial at different stages of organizational growth.
• Recognizing the diversity in leadership styles and playing to your strengths while hiring to compensate for your weaknesses is key for harmonious and successful team management.

Learn More: https://www.yardstick.team/

Connect with Lucas Price: linkedin.com/in/lucasprice1

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Mentioned in this episode:

BEST Outro

BEST Intro

One surefire way to send your team running for the exits is to consistently hire from outside the organization. You've got to be able to show people within your sales organization a path forward and a path up. But if all you do is promote from within, You also run the risk of becoming an insular club and you can run stale.

So what's the right way to build growth in your organization without the environment becoming stale, building a succession and development plan. It is critical for sales success. And that's what we're going to tackle today in the founders feature of building elite sales teams. Welcome to the show, Lucas.

Lucas Price: Thanks, Jim. Looking forward to having another conversation with you.

Lucas Price: I'm a founder of Yardstick. And as Yardstick solves the waste and loss from failed sales hires with tools that add structure and guidance to the interview process for sales roles, and then tracks the progress of new hires against the hiring criteria. And this startup grew out of my previous sales leadership positions, where I realized that the number one thing, not only for my career trajectory, but for the career trajectory of everyone on my team was the other people that I hired on the team.

Most recently at Zipwhip where it's key part of it selling to Twilio two and a half years ago for 850 million started there less than a million dollars in ARR, built the team that took it to over a hundred million. And so that's that's. One of the foundational pieces that brought me to starting yardstick.

Dr. Jim: one of the interesting things about our previous conversations about your zip whip story is that during your time there. It was almost like you had three different jobs. Every 18 months, the scope and span of your responsibilities changed. And that offer is a really interesting context for the conversation that we're going to have today, which is, what should your hiring and development strategy look like? So tell us a little bit about how your hiring strategy and development strategy evolved during your time at Zipwhip,.

And then after about 18 months, we'd grown to the point where there was, I think I had 15 direct reports or some unmanageable number. And so hired the first sales managers in and so now I had sales managers reporting to me. And so I was, acting more like a director of sales and that I had multiple sales managers reporting to me.

I had two teams. I was on the executive team. And then I had my sales leadership team that consisted of my top sales operations person and my recruiter and the sales managers who reported to me. And so that was the second 18 months and 18 months again, I'd gotten to, I don't remember how many, but 12, 13, 14 sales managers who were reporting to me.

In addition to the the sales operations folks as well. So the job changed a lot over time. Then from there it continued to grow and I never really felt like there was another change. I felt like my job changed a lot, but there wasn't another 18 months later. And then I had a new thing through that period. I really focused on improving my communication to the team, my written communication, my spoken communication, because I started to feel like the thing that, you know, one of the things that I had to give was the air cover to all of the managers and directors on this is what our strategy is.

And then when I was the sales director, I needed to start to equip some of the sales managers to be a great sales director and on. And that was part of the development philosophy that I needed to. Work myself out of the job by teaching people to be great at the things that I was currently doing.

Dr. Jim: Let's dig into that a little bit more. Let's just assume that first stage is a true sort of startup or accelerating growth stage. When you look at your development and promotion strategy at that stage of an organization, What were the key things that stood out at that point, and how did that inform how you hired and developed talent at that stage?

Now, I will say in retrospect, I think we made some mistakes on the promotions, mostly around. We promoted some great individuals, but What we didn't do is that we didn't bring in enough ideas from the outside. And so the people at Zipwhip, the account executives at Zipwhip saw, Hey, if I perform well and I do it the right way, there's a great opportunity for me to be promoted.

And so I think that was really great for the culture, but I think some of how we did things became a little bit too insular because we were just learning how we did them and not bringing in outside ideas and outside perspectives and kind of professionalism. On how to manage teams. And so I think in that early stage, we overdid it one direction versus the other.

If you were really firing out all cylinders and doing it the right way.

Dr. Jim: If you had the opportunity to hit rewind and go back to that stage of organizational development, what would be the one thing that you would have changed at that stage of development that you think would have made the most impact? In how you grew from that point forward.

Lucas Price: So I think the thing that would have made the biggest impact was hiring some like very professional skilled managers from the outside and not just doing all promotions. Let's say. A 50 50 mix or 40 percent from the outside and 60 percent from promotion. So that's, I think that's the biggest thing.

Hit certain numbers consistently from a performance level to be eligible for promotion. So I would have done more around creating some infrastructure. So this is a close second is do more around creating some infrastructure on what the requirements are to be promoted.

Lucas Price: I was pretty green as a leader. And so it was just a very organic growth thing where we could have done a better job at identifying where people needed to get better in the sales process. And just been better at helping our sellers develop very high level sales skills, if we had more outside perspective and it wasn't just Oh, Hey, look we're closing deals really fast.

And so let's just hire more people to close deals really fast. And we're just going. And I think that over time it, it felt hectic to people and when it feels hectic to people, it affects the culture. Especially in a transactional environment, it can feel a little bit like.

These are the problems that we're going to run into down the road. If we don't implement these. These steps now I just think there's a lot of things we could have done earlier that would have gotten us into bigger deals would have been more strategic,.

If we had brought, outside people in earlier who were looking at some of the deals we were doing and say, let's hold on a minute and let's see if we can turn this, 10, 000 deal into a 50, 000 deal. So I it's hard to pinpoint just one thing, but there's a lot of things that I think we, we left on the table by just going fast and not having outside voices in there that were pointing out to us where we should be slowing down a little bit.

How did your hiring and development process evolve at that next stage where you've risen to the ranks? of managing managers.

Lucas Price: We got a lot more deliberate at this point in terms of what we're doing in interviews. I would say we didn't get deliberate enough, but we got a lot more, it went from like completely haphazard to, Hey, managers, this is what the role that you have to play in the interview. And this is what you want me to do.

And we want you to fill out scorecards. I don't think we gave them enough help at that point in time to truly be great at interviewing, but we started to put some of those pieces in place. We started to try to collect data on what was leading to successful hires at Zipwhip. I think we learned later that we were collecting the wrong data or we were collecting data the wrong way.

We started to put more formal structure around what we wanted from our managers in terms of one on ones and team meetings and. And Salesforce cleanliness

Dr. Jim: One of the things that was interesting about that evolution that you described was that you became much more process oriented and.

Some of that process orientation showed up in how you hired. Tell us a little bit more about what you were looking for in the hiring process at that stage of the organization's development, that more consistently predicted success of a seller.

Lucas Price: We were looking for candidates who had a natural curiosity, who had a level of kind of resourcefulness and stick to itiveness that they wouldn't easily give up and that they would, that they could tackle difficult tasks, things that were in an environment where it could, was easy to get discouraged.

Dr. Jim: So that covers some of the things that you're looking for from a hiring perspective. The other side of the equation, or at least the different side of the equation is building capability at the leadership tier underneath you for them to take the next step. So what were some of the things that you did there that positioned you for success?

In the next stage of the organizational development,

Lucas Price: About that time, I read the book, the hard thing about hard things. And one of the things in that book is a republished blog post from Ben Horowitz about the different types of CEOs. And he goes over that, some of the. CEOs are doers, they do first and they think later and other CEOs are thinkers where they think, but they have trouble with action.

I could give feedback, I could coach, but they wouldn't wait for me to, get going, they would just, they'd start. And so that was one of the things that for the people who work for directly for me, as I like to mostly not entirely, but I like to mostly hire doers. Rather than thinkers to, to offset one of my weaknesses and then, among managers, we're looking for people who have the skills who can do the coaching, who can, who have high levels of emotional intelligence, who aren't trying to manipulate their team.

They're trying to connect with their team and help their team succeed. We're looking for people who are willing to set aside in the short term, their own financial motives for the good of their team who care more about the success of their team members than they do about themselves. And so those are some of the things that we're looking for in those management positions.

One of the things that I'm curious about is, you uncovered your profile as a leader by happening on a book. If you had any advice to other leaders that who are out there that want that level of self awareness or want to build that level of self awareness within their organization, what are some of the things that you've discovered now that might have been helpful back then to give you even more self awareness about how that team needs to be constructed

He says, it's important to put people around you that have the opposite style of you. And, when you. When you're a doer and it's all doers, then too many people breaking things and no one reeling them in. And if you're a thinker, then you put all thinkers around you, then nothing ever gets done.

And so part of the importance of that is just being aware of it and making sure that you have the right people around you. To get back to your question I think one of the other things, so I live in Seattle. One of the other things that was happening at that point in time was the Seattle Seahawks were contending.

They were winning super bowls. They were the best around and, someone who has like a very different personality than me, but was like a very successful leader at that time was Pete Carroll, the leader of the Seahawks.

Dr. Jim: Run the ball at the goal line? Or were you the one that told him to pass?

To try to lead like I do, . One of the things is like, Hey, there's things that you can learn from all of the leaders that you've worked with, but don't try to be them, try to be authentic to you. And that's, if you start there, that's going to help a lot, I think with the self awareness and with the.

The awareness that develops over time about what it takes for you to be a great leader.

Dr. Jim: That's a really good call out. And I think it points to a broader sort of debate in the world of work where you have this argument, or at least this stream of thought. Where people are always saying you should be spending time working and shoring up on your weaknesses. And I'm in the camp that you should always play to your strengths.

I want to fast forward to that next stage of development. So you've gone from zero to 55. Now we've gone from 55 to 80. How did you take it from 80 to 120 miles an hour? What were the things that you were doing as a leader at that stage of development and zip whip that informed how you hired and how you develop that organization?

Lucas Price: One of the things that happens at that point in time for a lot of companies is they start to hit bumps in the road, like you were growing 120 percent a year and now you're growing 70 percent a year and your board is saying, what's wrong with you? Your board is saying you're losing sales efficiency.

And so you start to hit bumps in the road and as a company. Not just as a sales organization, but as a company, you start to make bigger strategic decisions like, Hey, the way we're going to get it back is by if we focus on this set of our customers, then we're going, and really succeeding with this set.

All of the different organizations, all the different sub organizations, sales, marketing product in ways where it positively affects some people and negatively affects other people. Territories start to get shifted around and stuff like that. And so I could see that was coming and I felt like a big part of my job at that point in time.

Was the communication to the team. And so for instance, we had all sales Monday morning team meeting that was run mostly by some of my directors, but I started to make sure more often that there was a slot for me. To talk about how the company's changing the strategic reasons for it, how, Hey, if you're in tech sales, things are always going to be changing.

Just the things that you do on one on one conversations don't get to the whole organization anymore the way they used to, and so you have to be more deliberate about what you say to the whole organization, what you say in emails, what you say when you have the chance to speak to everyone, and really and make sure that you nail that part right, and that people understand what you're saying.

What the company is doing, why it's doing it and what role they have to play. So I think that was one of the big changes for me. And then, Hey, you let your managers and your directors run and, things will bubble up to you and that there, there were things that, difficult problems that I would've, rather didn't come, but, They did become my problems.

And not just live by that cadence is part of it, but you got to take your time to think bigger than just what's this week's cadence

Dr. Jim: One of the things that I hear from your answer is that at that stage of development, You were probably managing a lot more people related issues. You mentioned territory changes and the impacts of all of those changes and how people are being seen and felt. Did that mean that when you went and were either promoting leaders or hiring leaders, you were looking for specific capabilities from an EQ and people management perspective that you weren't looking for earlier on in the organization?

It's oftentimes, but not always like pretty transparent. And I guess they're doing it cause they think it's going to help them get ahead. But it doesn't help with me and hopefully it doesn't help with others as well. It shouldn't help. The EQ of Hey, I'm the same person.

I'm consistent who I am as a person. I have the humility to not take, my title is something that I lowered over other people is always important to me. I think that, maybe it does get more subtle and more challenging as the organization gets bigger. And therefore more important, but there's a certain base level that I think you always have to have.

If they're in the world of B to B tech sales,

Lucas Price: A lot of the skills that are really important are important to develop them as a team muscle, not just an individual muscle and a lot of them for most people aren't natural. Most people are left to their own devices are not good at hiring. And so you, so people need the tools and the structure and something like yardstick in order to make them great at hiring.

A lot of people are not naturally good. Even people that are let me say it this way, people who, a lot of people who are great at sales. Still aren't naturally good at some of the individual sales skills. And so you need to be deliberate about building that muscle as an organization for the sales skills that are really important to you.

Dr. Jim: solid stuff, Lucas, if people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Lucas Price: Yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn, so definitely hit me up on LinkedIn and be happy to connect there.

Dr. Jim: For everybody listening, thanks for joining us on another founders feature segment. When I think about this conversation, I think the one big lesson that comes out of it, and I can't believe I'm going to even say this out loud is that regardless of what stage you're at from an organizational perspective, Thank you.

Even as a sales organization, you're going to be served well if you slow down to speed up. One of the big lessons that came out of this conversation was how there was an emphasis on putting in definitions, systems, and processes. Those are the things that are going to enable your teams to function at a peak level.

For those of you who have listened and liked the conversation, make sure you leave us a review. If you want to continue the conversation, make sure you check out yardstick. team. Drop us a message and we'll get connected with you there.