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The world's best conversations about B2B selling happen here. This exciting new podcast from Andy Paul, the creator and host of the Sales Enablement Podcast (with 1200+ episodes and millions of downloads) is focused on the mission of helping increase your win rates by winning a bigger percentage of the deals in your pipeline. In this unique round table format, Andy and his panel of guest experts share the critical sales insights, sales perspectives and selling skills that you can use to elevate your sales effectiveness and create the buying experiences that influence decision-makers to buy from you. Host Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!
Hi friends. Welcome to the win rate podcast. I'm your host, Andy Paul. Now that was Roderick Jefferson and Roderick is one of my guests on this episode of the win rate podcast. Roderick is founding member of the sales enablement society, and he's the CEO of Roderick Jefferson and associates. My other guests today for this lively discussion about the role of sales enablement and improving sales effect, notice and increasing win rates include Amy Rahovchik.
Amy is a sales and sales enablement consultant and host of her own longtime podcast titled the revenue real podcast and a friend of the show. And, , joining us also is Crystal Nikosi. Crystal is vice president sales transformation for the sales collective, and she hosts a podcast of her own as well, titled sales and enablement, the podcast.
Now, one listener note before we jump into today's discussion. I love to answer questions, from the audience. If you have questions about B2B selling sales effectiveness and how to increase your win rate that you'd like to have answered either by me or one of my guests, then please submit those to us via email at winratepodcastatgmail.
com. Or you can DM me on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you. All right. If you're ready, let's jump into the discussion.
Okay, friends, that's it for this episode of the win rate podcast. First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the show. I'm so grateful for your support. And if you're enjoying this for this podcast, if you could leave us a quick rating review on Apple or Spotify, or ever listen to the podcast.
Very much appreciated. So thank you for your help with that. I want to thank today's guests, Amy Rahovchik, Roderick Jefferson, and Crystal Nicosi for sharing their insights with us today. And again, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast, the win rate podcast with Andy Paul on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Again, thank you so much for investing your time with me today until next time. I'm your host, Andy Paul. Good selling everyone.
Okay. Welcome everybody to this episode of the win rate podcast with Andy Paul. You got the deep, heavy side, cause I'm dealing with technical issues here today. We've got all star lineup of sales enablement professionals today. We're going to talk about sales enablement in relationship to win rates.
Let's get ready to say a few words about themselves. Get started. RJ, we'll start with you.
Sure. Thanks. Appreciate it. So Roderick Jefferson. I am the CEO, Roderick Jefferson and Associates, a enablement consulting company spent the last 25 years in corporate in variety roles from sales to mid market. Sorry, mid level all the way up to executive level and now out there just trying to help companies be bigger, faster, stronger and better.
Like that jump higher, stronger, faster. So, somewhere people like call you like the father of sales enablement or something.
That is what's out there on the streets
Hehehehehehe
Okay. All
about 18 years
ago. Yeah. I created a little tiny nomenclature that we call sales enablement. I've been fortunate to be incredibly blessed over the years, even wrote a bestseller about the entire process. And now it's great to see where my baby is growing into.
Excellent. All right. Crystal, how about you?
his book on my nightstand as we speak. So it's truly, it'll be the second time I've gone through it. So my name is Crystal Nicosi and I'm a VP of sales transformation at the sales collective. And we consult it's really interesting because we consult with businesses that are now outside of SAS and tech.
So that's something new for me. I come from the SAS world. I was raised in the SAS world and,
um, I've been in enablement. Yep. I've been in enablement the last eight years. And prior to that I was a seller for a few years. So working. My way up from, inside sales, enterprise AE and decided, what, I want to share my knowledge.
So that's how I got here.
Excellent. Excellent. Amy.
Hi, everybody. My name is Amy Rahovchik and I like starting with, I'm a revenue human for life. I sold enterprise tech for a decade, built out two sales enablement departments. Now I've got a podcast, the revenue real hotline, and I'm excited to be here and talk about this, the sales enablements role in, in driving win rate today.
Perfect. Perfect. So I want to start with something that I just saw yesterday. News piece that came out and it's not really enablement related, but sort of is it's an effect sales in general. And maybe you all saw this. So, so as a leaked audio from. Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, who shared, he's calling employees back to the office because of quote, remote work doesn't allow people to build as much trust or be as innovative. And I thought, well, that's fascinating. Zoom is saying.
Right.
Yeah. Out of all companies, that's
That it's not really working the way that, that it should. And yet, we've certainly since 2020 we've put so much faith in the ability to build these connections and so on, but quite honestly, I'm one of the things, one of the major trends, at least in sales is that. Buyers are calling back sellers.
They want to see them in person again. Just very interesting your whole take about sort of this role of the virtual versus in person and how you maybe are accommodating that as you're looking at sales enablement.
it's interesting. You said that zoom would say that given that's kind of their business model, but
Different. I don't know. And having gone through both working distance and also in the office, I don't think one is better than the other. I think It's different. And what I mean is, obviously, if you're in the office now, you have that water cooler talk.
You have the opportunity to listen to best practices, how things work, don't work. You also have an opportunity to build that physical community, if you will. And, just kind of glean from each other. But I think there's also a value in being distance because you don't have the drop in meetings that take away all the time throughout the day.
Right. And it also gives you an opportunity, actually it forces you, I think, to be a bit more innovative. And especially now as a consultant, when I was in house and I was on site. I needed something done. I'd send it off to my product marketing. Can you pretty this up for me? Right? When you're off on your own, you figure out hot new tools and new ways to do things.
And you also have an opportunity to try new things, whether it be new A. I tools or even traditional tools. So it comes down to one where you are, I think, in the maturation point of your career And also personality wise, I'm a, I know, hard to believe a wide open extrovert. I get energy from being in the office.
But I've learned that I actually get more things done when I'm working remotely.
Yeah.
Yeah. I was going to say that to RJ, what about the choice? Right. How about the choice? People know themselves best. Sometimes they may want to go into an office three times a week. Sometimes they may need to go into the office. One time per week. I think where it really ruffles my feathers is taking away that choice from adults, people who have been in their roles for a significant amount of time, or they've been a working professional for 20 years.
And now you're telling me I'm not productive at home, and that I have to be forced to go into an office. I said this at the beginning when I started seeing it happen, is that you're gonna lose a lot of good people. You're not gonna lose everybody but you are gonna lose a lot of good people who are saying, I, I don't want to go into an office every single day.
And so I'm going to go over here where , they are going to let me stay, work remote. So I think it's all about choices, respecting the individual. Honestly, it's up to each person, whether they're productive or not. Some people aren't. And to be honest, if they're distracted at home, they're more than likely going to be distracted at work too.
It's just different distractions.
Well, let me follow that thread a little bit about, taking away choice from people and so on. I'm at sort of the general MO of many sales managers, right? Is this is the way we sell, you're going to sell this way. You're going to do this set of activities. Irrespective of whether it works best or not for the individual.
So, isn't that sort of standard operating procedure for sales leaders? Yeah, limit people's choices?
yeah, I, Andy, you're, I think you're spot on there and it certainly like speaks to one of the root cause problems here, but I want to touch on a different part of this conversation and that is this idea of trust and how do we best establish. Trust both with our peers in it as well as our buyers.
And I think like when I remember back to pitching particular trainings or programs that we're going to put out there, it was very hard to get out air quotes, a soft skill program like how to create. Trust, how to maintain trust. And instead we would favor like how to demo, how look at our product, look at all these features here.
Let's talk about our trophy case of logos that we've acquired. And so when I think about like the root cause problem, yeah, we have an issue with. learning how to create and maintain trust, but we weren't able to figure it out when we were in person. And we certainly, for the most part, don't know how to teach it, whether a group of people are remote or sitting together.
And I think that's the problem. How do we dig into the components of trust and how do we teach and train people to do a better job of connecting with their buyers and so on. And I think that's the issue.
Okay, well, Crystal, RJ, how do you respond to that?
I think Chris, why don't you go ahead and take this one and then I'll come in behind you.
So I am of the mind. I despise micromanagement. Okay. I think everybody does. And the way that I think about things and the way that I work now with my executive leadership is my work speaks for that trust. If my work starts to fall, if my if what you expect out of me starts to. I'm not meeting those expectations.
If, whatever it is, right? That is what is going to establish that trust. It's not, am I on Slack? Am I logged into the system? Am I, calling you right when I, get into an office? Can you see me and know exactly what I'm doing at all times? And so with that, though, what is even more critical is establishing those expectations and being very clear and very aligned with whoever your leader is on what that looks like and making sure that you are doing everything that you need to do to dot those I's and cross those T's to make sure you're hitting those expectations.
And if not, if there is something going on, Then communicate, right? Communicate. So I think that's the trust, right? Because it's, again, it's not like you said, Amy, it's not all that different from office to remote. It's just different as RJ mentioned. So that would be my advice on that.
RJ.
think great point. And I'll look at it from a different angle. And that is the world that most old school leaders grew up in, cut their teeth in and used to actually manage versus leading no longer exists. Let's be honest. There's never been a time I believe that. Leading with EQ, compassion and humanity has meant more than today.
And so in talking to what I'll look at as those traditional or even old school leaders. Can't do it that way anymore. First of all, the mindset of sellers, the mind of the next generation is not like we were, and I'll say we, cause being, more seasoned, like you and I, Andy, both of us, right.
I said seasoned, I did not say old. I said seasoned, right?
I like to
we can't, expect leaders to lean on their own experiences because I don't think there's a new normal that we're going to. I think there's a next normal. And what I mean by that is if it's a new normal, that means that we can rely on something we've been through before.
We've seen what we are before and we can glean from it. Where we're going right now is just brand new Unchartered, Opportunities and space before us. So if anything, I tell sales leaders all the time, you got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Otherwise, you're going to become a dinosaur quickly.
And we know what happened to the dinosaurs. None of those are still walking around. Right? And also, because especially with that first and second line manager, you've got to be comfy. And model the type of person that people want to follow because of your actions and your characters, not because I told you so, or I can give you 8, 000 stories from 25 years ago, it doesn't matter anymore.
It doesn't play with today's sellers and today's generation, because honestly, the bottom line is IQ without EQ and EQ without IQ is useless. If you can't put that together, you're not gonna make it out there today.
Isn't this one of the, at least from my perspective, I was curious on your ideas. This is I think one of the real contributing factors to what I see as the low levels of sales performance generally across the board, not just in tech, but in other segments as well, is, but for sure we know in tech, is a lack of trust. Right? Is, this heavy reliance on, you have to comply to this process, you have to comply to this set of metrics, you have to comply to this methodology. And it, it's further exemplified by, things I read on like LinkedIn that always drive me nuts is, these big voices on sales on LinkedIn saying, well, you got to give all your good leads to your best salespeople.
And I'm like, what? Because, but, and these are people you'd names, I don't
Oh I, yeah, I'm sure we would know the same
And
seen the same
what are you talking about? That's a management failure. If you've got people that you don't trust. That you haven't coached to be able to handle a lead
That's on you.
Yeah. We're always pointing fingers at the salespeople, the trust, it goes both directions. Like you clearly don't trust those persons. So, it's like. We have to somehow break this cycle from a cultural standpoint, where everything seems to be so fear based. Oh, if I give it to somebody that's not, they don't trust, Ugh, what's the impact going to be from me, right?
If we don't close the deal, or if we don't, hit our number this month. That's like, no one's willing to extend themselves.
I wouldn't say no one, cause I know actually a few really amazing leaders. And I think there's a difference between sales managers and sales leaders right there.
It comes down to trust and it also comes to modeling of , the positive execution that you want to see, right? There are some, even I would say very seasoned leaders that I've talked to lately that are like.
We can't continue trying to do that. And we all have to know that it starts with that FLM, right? Because what's important to your leader is imperative to you. What you see them doing, you will follow. And thirdly, another piece I think we need to talk about, and that is compensation drives behavior. You've been comp, you've been compensated to do those things. And unfortunately for the longest, we've taught people, and I say this broadly to the panel, we've taught people how to sell. Rarely do we teach people how to help.
100 percent agree
Yep. And I'm going to throw something else too in there, RJ, to add on top of what you said. We as enablers, even before enablement, we have failed to insist on leadership training and coaching and to include those, not even just soft skills, but as you said, RJ, that, EQ how do I trust better?
How do I be more empathetic? How do I work in this new environment? We assume for some odd reason that, that it's innate within our sales managers, especially the frontline sales managers, like,
sellers.
Rarely is
it,
It's like they were just an AE last week that was a top performer and you didn't think that they had all of these skills.
And then now all of a sudden this week they have, and they should have all of these skills. So it's really, they're doing with things that are hardwired. Into them already. It could have been from early childhood. It could have been from an experience that they learned 10 years ago, working for a micromanager, and that's how they learned that they should, lead and coach, or they just completely don't know how to coach one or the other.
So that we've missed. We've missed the bar big on that.
Right. So how does sales enablement play with changing the culture and starting at the top or change us to start? Right. As yeah, earlier today, I was having a recording, another episode of the show with some sales leader types and thought leader types, and it's like, Everybody sort of agrees that we've got a problem, but no one sort of agrees is how do we start the change and make the effect the change at the top so that the culture changes down below, right?
As they were talking about, the fact that sellers always talk about no one's coaching me. And my solution to that is, well, hire coaches. Why does a manager have to be a coach? Let's hire coaches. People that are trained professional coaches. How much uplift do we need? to be able to justify that expenditure. But it's like, you start at the top, it's like, no, we gotta keep our sales expenses really tight. And, we're, being innovative at all to them is, oh, well, we created SDRs, we got these specialized sales roles, that's innovative. As opposed to, oh, let's do something truly innovative.
going
think the innovative thing
I
I
think that, I don't think you should hire coaches. I think that should be a part of a sales leaders. responsibility because they are the closest to the ground with those people. They should be able to individualize coaching. Now we can help with them. Certainly we can even, coach the coaches.
But I think ultimately it has to come from that first line manager because what's, as I said, what's important to them is imperative to the people below them, but I think there's, we got to go further back than that. It's got to start from the top down. If enablement is not woven into the fabric of a company, it's not going to work and it has to be driven from East F CRO all the way down.
We can't own that because we don't drive revenue. We impact and we influence it at the end of the day. Right. And we have to partner with the folks that are driving that. But at the same time, I think that bringing in coaches, Andy now takes sales leaders off the hook of actually doing anything other than I just drive revenue.
That is such a bogus old school mindset. It does not play anymore.
right.
but that's, it's the reality on the ground, right? Is, we all see the research reports. Yeah, part of the reason, a couple of facts. So yeah, one is high turnover. People primarily leave jobs because of managers. Right? And sales in particular. And then you also have manager reporting that, oh gosh, I'm overwhelmed with reporting requirements and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I don't have time to coach. And so what do, well I know it's a cop out. I know it's a cop out. So how do we change that? And, you talked about compensation before is,
Yeah,
How do you change that in manager compensation?
yeah, I think it starts with an acknowledgement that the old way of thinking about how we're generating revenue is not working right now. In the past, we've been thinking about the sales process is a very linear siloed function, right? Marketing brings in lead sales. Works the opportunities and then we hand it off to see us and it gets renewed and it's and part of this change again starts with that acknowledgement and then when we start to look for new ways to that actually center the buyer or the customer throughout the whole process.
And so that I think is also a part of the acknowledgement. But at the end of the day, none of this is going to stick unless we address the compensation plan and the incentives. right? The KPIs that are old and outdated. And this is, it's not a software issue. It's not an enablement issue per se, but it is an organizational and a change management issue.
And until we start working together, we don't stand a chance.
So how do we change sales manager comp encourage coaching and development of their people? Any ideas?
Go ahead,
ahead,
have one. I, I gotta give credit to where the credit is due on this one, but Scott Lee's talks about a Like a communal or got like a communist comp plan that pays out at the frontline manager level based on the entire team's performance, right? And so it really does. It's like a rising tide raises all ships.
And so just a way to think about it and have it be less about like the individual team we got ours. Right? And more about a holistic, like, either everybody makes it or nobody makes it. It's an interesting way to consider it, but yeah, that is, I think, something worth exploring.
That's how a lot of enablers are compensated. If the sales team doesn't hit their targets, and not just one team, it is the entire team. If they don't hit sales targets, guess what? We don't get our bonuses.
That's right. That's part of our variable, right, Crystal?
yeah.
All right. I think there's another component, too, and that is Not in regards to the existing old school leaders, but for the new folks. And, you said something earlier that really struck with me. And that is that you said, Crystal, and that is we take these rock stars and we turn them into sales managers.
And what you're doing is creating two problems. One, you're taking an absolute rock star out of a patch and you've left it vulnerable. Right. And then no one talks about that piece, but the other piece is you're now moving someone into a role where they've never hired, fired, had difficult conversations.
Hell, they've never even run a team meeting, but yet we expect them to be a shepherd over the flock. If you will, you know what they do, they wind up trying to now micromanage the team the same way they did their patch because that's the only experience they have. What if we turn that thing on its heel and or on its head and said.
Now we have a transitional program for those high potential rock stars that get them slowly or not even slowly, but over time prepared, have them come run team meetings, come have them run QB ours, give them that experience, have them a part of maybe even the interview. Process for newly hired folks, and then make sure that there's, of course, metrics around it.
Cause we're enablement people. That's what we do. Right. And make sure that they have clicked all the levers. They have crossed all the hurdles before we go throw them into the pool without telling them how deep is the water? Where's the swim lanes? Is there a lifeguard? And by the way, where are the sharks too?
And how do you deal with those?
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah. I think it's a great idea, but I, that's sort of, of a part with the underinvestment, I think in, certainly in enabling managers that exist. Right. And unless you guys have different experience, certainly based on conversations I've had and what I've seen with companies is sort of an afterthought.
And, but I'm sort of curious this idea of comp again. Is, I guess my idea on that, just to throw it out, get your opinions on it, is see if you could, I think I'd sort of, I don't know, I think it'd be an excellent way to encourage and incent managers to help their people individually, is what if a substantial portion of their variable comp was they got a flat fee per seller that hits quota? So if they're variable comp, let's say it was, let's say a hundred K just for math purposes. We'll say, look, two thirds out of three quarters that was based on, you're going to get 10 grand per person that hits quota this year on your team. You don't think that would change? You don't think that would change the conversations around quota setting and enablement and the support managers need.
I think it would change it overnight.
Absolutely. And again, I think that would be easier for the newbies or the future forward. I think that would be a hard sell to those grizzly old school leaders. And I think that's a good thing.
Yeah.
When also, I think. I would just point out, you talk about old school and you've used the term several times. That's not age based. That is outlook based.
That's mindset
that's mindset. I see plenty of young managers who are what I'd consider old school. Command and
either that's what they were taught by their mentors or what they watched their sales leader do that. Their goal was to sit in that seat one day. And they thought that's how I'm supposed to be a manager. Maybe it is how you're supposed to be a manager, but it's definitely not how you're supposed to be a leader.
Think some of that's, I've said this before, don't you think some of that's fear based? Everybody's so, tenures are so short, certainly as sales leaders, and many, certainly in the tech space, we've got 18 months on average or something like that these days, and I think Bravado was talking about, average tenure for AEs is like 14 months or something
CRO is like 18 to 24 months.
well, that's what I'm saying, 18 months is, so, if you're a CRO coming into a new situation You're have the, you don't have an incentive to shake things up and change things because you've got a limited period of time to work with.
Yeah. And I think, and I'll speak just for tech, cause that's where I grew up. I think. The entire premise of sales is built on fear. You make your number, and look, part of it is what I love about sales is there's a Mendoza line. You're above it or you're below it, right? There's no gray area. And I love that piece, but at the same time, it's been fear driven.
You do this or you're out. You do this or you're gone. You do this or you're on plan. Is that necessarily the right way to go future forward? And how do we change that is, I think, the big question.
Right. Well, how this I'm glad you brought that up. Cause yeah, my favorite CEO I ever worked for brilliant persons. Yeah. I joined the company. It was really small. It's not really quite big. Is his thing from the beginning was. Hey, I don't think sellers should operate in a environment where they feel like there's always a sword hanging over their head. And, yeah, they've been very successful. In fact, this is a company that's close to a 3 billion company. They don't have a sales function in the company. They don't have a CRO. Um, And yet they've built this culture, it's, they grow rapidly, they win massive deals and they've got a business as well that's sort of a B to C, it's, it works, and it doesn't have the same, there's pressures, you're gonna perform, it's not like that doesn't exist, but as a cultural, it's like, yeah, we're not setting people up to, operate for fear of their lives every month.
Yeah, I agree with you, Andy. I think, I think a lot of sales leaders, CEOs, CROs sometimes we can forget the value of the intangible of the human spirit. And when you are working for a leader that you respect, that respects you in return that trusts what you're doing, that is empathetic, who is, I've had one leader like this in my entire life.
And it was years ago when I worked at Monster. com. And there was a CRO, he was the president of Monster Steve Pogorzelski. And he was truly a people's leader and man, and I'm telling you, people wanted to work and they wanted to stay longer at work. They wanted to hit quota. They wanted to just, stay until the last possible minute until 11 midnight because he was there.
with us.
Was people just, he was a people's leader. And I think a lot of times CEOs and CROs they forget about that, the human spirit and how much it can affect
Yeah, because they.
It'll never underestimate how important small gestures are. Thank yous. And you're appreciated in small trinkets of whatever it may be. And I don't mean physically, it could just be, Hey, you know what? Take every other Friday as an admin day and block out your calendar. What it says is I actually care about you as a person and it's not just profits over people.
Sure. I know most companies they're there to make a profit. I get that part. But there's also another, to your point, Crystal, the human component and the human element of if someone you know genuinely cares about you and has your best interest, you're going to go above and beyond for them, run through a wall, if you will.
Yeah.
It's I would even add it's it is about the small gestures. Absolutely. But it's like, look at the modern science on productivity and performance and where it comes from. I'll give you a hint. Micromanaging is not does not help. It is autonomy. It is creativity. Like when people are fearful for their job every single quarter, when they do not have the opportunity to rest, especially without the coaching around that success is not based on an outcome.
It's a journey. Like it is very difficult to maintain or performance. And that is, I think a big part of where this turnover is coming from, but it's. It does, to Andy's point, require a great deal of bravery at the leadership level to step outside of like the filter bubble and how we've been doing things for the past 20 years at least and try something different. But I do think, and I do have hope that those organizations that do try to operate differently and do experiment and do change up the comp plan are start, are going to start to pull ahead.
And those that do not, we're eventually going to get a bit left behind, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Yeah, well, it's gonna be a certain attrition, but I think that I think the culture change is a bigger issue, right? And that sales is still fundamentally perceived as sort of a necessary evil. And, let's do sort of the bare minimum to, to support it and put high expectations on it.
And that seems to be the M. O. for most companies. And, yeah, I think it's sort of a lack of understanding of, to your point, Amy, about performance and productivity and how these things are actually managed and grown. And I think sales is, yeah, to your point, the science of performance that you see in professional sporting organizations and the way they manage development of young people into professionals is something sales could really learn something from.
Okay.
think it also starts with starting to, you have to center the buyer. I, another reason why I'm hopeful right now is because look, like the buyers are practically screaming, right? About how. They don't want to work with salespeople or they feel like they report feeling like a number or they're telling us explicitly the most important factor.
And I'm pulling from Gartner's like state of buying this year, 2023 trust. Number one factor, number two, adaptability and how we sell number four, able to focus on our business problems and help us to achieve those outcomes. And so as long as we as either commentators or sales enablers or sellers or sales leaders, whatever, when we center the buyer on what we're doing and what is best for them, I say, I think it is a little bit easier to operate through this quagmire of oldness to, to use RJ's nomenclature or the old way of doing things, the old normal.
Yeah, but, let's follow up your point, Amy, and let's look at Let's look at specialized sales roles in sales
Okay.
SDRs. We didn't create that role with the benefit of the buyer in mind. That's complete, completely for the convenience of the sellers.
Scalability.
I wouldn't agree with that one, Andy.
well, why? Because think about it.
You're
not agree with that one.
taking your least experienced, least knowledgeable people in general and putting them closest to the point of attack. And first impressions are incredibly important. And what we're saying is, our first impression, we're going to be talking to the senior executive, is by design, suboptimal.
Now that part I agree with, and I'll talk about one enablement organization, I think that did it right. And they did it really well. So traditionally, and I even wrote an entire chapter on their organization in my book, right? What we traditionally do is that we bring in these kids from college, we put them there and we put them right on the front line, the firing squad, if you will.
And push them out there and go, you know what, go dial for dollars. And I'm going to give you minimal amount. What this organization did differently was they took the traditional approach to college and university, which was we all came in as a cohort, right? We also gave you a syllabi. You knew what you were going to be covering for that first year.
You knew what the advancement was going to be from your freshman, sophomore, junior through senior year. And things got, it got compounded similar to algebra, right? You start baseline and then you go from algebra to geometry to trig to stat. They did the very same thing and they immerse them these new sellers into the culture.
First, they made sure that there were mentors assigned to them. They literally were treated as a group, a cohort. Sure. They had their individual numbers, right? But they kept them in a place where they were comfortable instead of trying to indoctrinate them into corporate ease right away. And you know what they did?
They literally were and go back to your analogy of sports. They were creating a farm team that moved from the minors to the double to triple. Then you got to the show. Nobody just walks in. I won't say nobody. There's a few that walk right into the NBA. But it still took them four, five, six years to acclimate.
What if we took that approach with VR SDR? But I also think there's a whole problem where I think within the next three to five years, we won't have BDRs and SDRs traditionally, as we know them. If it takes that long. But for the ones that we do, why would we take them through that cohort mentality and that approach and indoctrination into corporate and ease them the way that they've already learned for the last four to six years, depending upon undergrad and MBA.
If we did that, you get more success. And then what you also get is exposure to actual real life selling, not a bunch of BDRs that AEs look at as though they're personalized admins, right? We got to get away from that mentality.
All the junk I don't want to do. This is what you do, or when it doesn't work, I've got somebody I can point at and blame for things going wrong.
Yeah.
If we change that approach, then we shift and I see it starting to happen at a slow rate. But again, I think it may be too late. Cause that BDR SDR role with generative AI and the other AI tools that are available and that continue to be released constantly, I don't think we'll have a need for the traditional BDR SDR.
And I'd say three years.
Are we sad about that? Like I, I was full cycle from the very beginning and I'm a big fan of teaching
I was a BDR Like you, Amy.
no full cycle as though like I was responsible for finding and opening my own opportunities as well as selling and closing them exclusively. And I almost feel like we're doing this modern seller a disservice because like, look how many AEs right now are really struggling to create and generate pipeline.
It's like
making changes in sales and we all know the BDR role is where you go in and you learn quote unquote, the sales game, take out that role, where are people going to learn that now?
But do they learn the sales
Yeah.
They're exposed to one part of it. I think your model that you talk about RJ is something that's much more, uh, yeah, relevant perhaps in terms of developing people is this idea that to some degree sales was sort of an apprenticeship. And we've sort of lost patience with that.
Cause now we think, look, you got 90 days to onboard and get up to full productivity or you're out. Right. And we all know people
back to that fear factor though, Andy, that you were talking about.
right. And yeah, I've not seen one bit of data that says uh, okay. Yeah. We've got this cohort that we onboard in 90 days and they go a certain level of productivity.
I'm willing to bet. if you change that to 180 days or something, that you'd find that in year two, the people that took longer to onboard, that you spent more, invested more time into onboard, would be more productive than the people you only did 90 days with.
I'd
companies have never done the payback calculation on that because they're so short sighted.
It's like, we gotta get your productivity in 90 days. It's like, well, hey, to your point earlier, RJ, people develop at different rates. We're in the human business. Right? And we're just going to treat people's numbers and yeah, you wash out in 90 days. It's ludicrous in these positions.
ugly name and stink on it, right?
Is that very reason you just said, Andy?
Yeah. And it's, well, I said it's very short sighted because I'm of the opinion that by and large, when you look at the SDR model, the quote unquote predictable revenue model, It's value has been in, in certain companies that's maybe help them create enterprise value, but by and large, it's been destructive for the sales profession in general.
Because what we see is in general in the SaaS world is we see companies with win rates sort of in the high teens, mid twenties. I'm doing a bunch of work with companies looking at detailed analyses of win rates. We're seeing this time after time again. And you have to think, oh gosh, if you're building companies with such low win rates, two factors are sort of at play.
One is you don't have product market fit. Because you only win close one of, win of one of every five of your supposedly most qualified opportunities in your pipeline. Or two, you just aren't very good at selling. Right, as we haven't put in place the processes and the people that are able to say, Look, I'm going to make a choice to win this deal.
Right, because I think winning is a choice in sales. You make a series of choices. You're going to make the choices that you're going to put you in a position to increase your probabilities of winning. We've completely failed on that front.
Yeah,
I
do you think? Crystal? You haven't weighed in here In a hot second.
I have so many thoughts. I was kind of thinking about the BDR role. I love BDRs typically they're the more entry level and they have my three H's, which is they're hungry and honest and humble. And. Yes, a lot of AEs can also have those things. However, I find BDRs have it more often.
How, but I will say that the only problem or the only industry where this is a problem is in SaaS and tech. And so I lean more toward where we got into this is when we started seeing that hyper growth, right? That intense scalability where we started to see VCs, where we started to see all of these, unicorns popping up.
That's really where we started to see the problem is in terms of BDRs, right? And it is just spiraled completely out of control and I agree with you, Amy. I feel like every single sales rep on this planet needs to be a full cycle seller. You need to be able to know how to prospect and hunt.
You need to even go deeper account hearing work with your sales leader on, identifying your personas. And I feel like everybody needs to know how to do that. And it's, that is just not the case. AEs have gotten so lazy. And I see it and, BDRs are a lot of times their crutch.
Well, to their own detriment, though, and this is the thing that, as I'm doing work with a number of companies really helping them understand their win rates and we're this partner, we see this trend, which is, companies go, sir, go through a stage where maybe early on the AEs are sourcing more of the leads and their win rates are Pretty good.
Not fantastic. Pretty good. 40, 45 percent win rates. And then they start rolling out the inbound function or the outbound function with SDRs, BVRs and lead flow goes up, win rates drop to the floor. And so the same AEs that were winning a high fraction or ultimately generous fraction of their own self source leads, and I won't call it laziness, but they, I think they sort of get drunk on the lead flow coming in.
Not trained and coached how to be discerning about which ones they should be investing their time in. And as a result, they suddenly become, at least from a data perspective, going from being a pretty good AE to a, yeah, not so good.
And this brings us back to we need to address our metrics. Our metrics stink. This is a part with the number, even marketing, like number of leads delivered to SDRs, number of, like it's just, it's silly. It's silly.
I think there's a human component to back to that part that we talked about earlier. And that is, and I will throw myself in this bucket too earlier on my career. They come into your point crystal with the three H's right there. They definitely are hungry and humble and such. And then we bring them in.
And they learn either from each other, from the cohort or from AEs about the process of happy years. And they think everything is wonderful and everything is elite. And I say, I throw myself in the bucket. Whereas I wish earlier in my career, we would have taken more time focusing on how to call out. Versus just how to qualify
Yeah.
we've done them a disservice to where either because we've made it seem like everything is a fit because if it comes to you, it must be a fit. And we all know that's not true. Or we've thrown so much pressure on them with that fear we talked about earlier of, well, it may or may not be a fit, but you've got to run with it because it's what you've got.
We rarely teach BDRs, SDRs, or even AEs, how to call out.
And how to call out early and be okay with that. Cause everything does not fit for every company.
Exactly. That's the key point is to be okay with it, right? That's the key thing is I use robots in my first book, use the imagery is, as a seller, you should consider yourself sort of like the bouncer at the head of the velvet rope getting into a club and that club is
get in.
now they can get in, right?
You choose who gets into your club that you sell to.
But so
You just created trauma, Andy. Cause I remember not getting in, but thanks for bringing that up. Appreciate it.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, didn't mean to trigger you here, but, but I think for many sellers, they don't feel they have the permission to do that. And I, to me
either,
that's the crux is they think, well, but, I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday, which is, they felt insecure and they're getting pressure from the boss because they're crushing the number, but they're doing it with like. 2x pipeline coverage, right? Their win rates are about 50%. They're all means killing it. The boss is hammering them that they don't have enough pipeline. It's like this person's killing it. Who cares? But then bosses all think, Oh God, we need to have 4x, 5x, 6x. And
school,
oh, but it's not. I would, yes, the trouble is the old school is the pervasive way of looking at it.
It's the predominant way of looking at it. And that's, I think is really the issue is,
but it can be shifted. 'cause I think enablement made a significant shift. 'cause to me, I think the best thing that came out of Covid for enablement folks was that we were forced to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and doing things way we had never done before. So if it can happen in an industry or vertical that I look at with enablement, it can be done.
The difference is we wrapped our arms around it when we had to. And secondly, you're like, wait a minute. This actually makes a little sense. I
Yeah. That's the trouble. Things that make sense is it's really hard to get them adopted.
Isn't it though?
RJ, I want to touch on something you said that about being okay with qualifying out opportunities. And I think that part of the problem with that is, is back to that linear thinking and this like binary yes, no decision with the reality that just because it's a no right now does not mean that buyer is not going to be prepared to buy 12 months from now.
And so, And when we make that switch and when we adjust how we show up in the present moment and being more okay with saying no again with the knowledge that if we treat them right, if we are delivering value in the touch point in the conversation that we have right now, then those buyers will come back to us.
And so that at least I'm remembering back to my days selling, that is what worked for me or helped me be really okay with being very candid with buyers about who we're not ready to buy right in this moment.
I love that, Amy. That's such a good point. And I think a lot of people have, are not okay with it for a lot of different reasons, right? They could have, obviously it's the pressure, but there's also external pressures that they're experiencing too, right? Like, Hey, they could be the only source of income at home.
So it's like, I'm not letting that, I'm not letting that go. I'm going to hold onto it like a pit bull. So. I Love that that you took that, maybe it is just a mindset thing, right? Maybe that's what enablement needs to focus on, helping them get that mindset right. Cause I think that's, that's exactly what you did.
. So
Let's stay on that point for a second, because I think RJ really brought up something really critical, which is from a mindset perspective. And I'm passionate about this, because I think this has enabled my success for my career is my mindset was, I'm there to help, I'm not there to sell.
I wanted to make money, I wanted to hit my targets, and I did, and help grow some companies, and, but, I knew that, I'd be pretty transparent to the buyer. If I showed up just to pitch sell is I was there to help. And I think this is a fundamental mindset shift that needs to happen in sales is as a seller, yeah, I believe if you actually feel like you're selling, yeah, you're selling too much.
You're not helping enough.
Yeah.
put that enablement, that mindset. I put, I said, I put that mindset on enablement because we have focused for so long on teaching people how to give presentations rather than how to have conversations.
Yeah.
not how to detach from the outcome. You've got to really detach from the outcome. And once you detach from the outcome, I'm sure we all have different methods, but For me, it is about all about, competency based type coaching and learning. And so when you're focused only on your daily competencies or your daily activities, you're so focused, you're in the moment, you're focusing on that day to day instead of thinking, holy shit, I've 16 million by the end of the year or whatever your number is.
Right. And overwhelming lack of clarity. It all comes into play. But I think detaching from, that
Yeah.
and you're right, RJ, it's enablement that's got to do it.
And you got to detach
We're going to have to slay it at some point.
enablement create? I don't think enablement created. I think it's
I think it's cultural, but I also think that we fed the beast. We stayed in that box of demo and POC as opposed to how do you have the conversation and why I say that Andy is we rarely even teach sellers of a single question that I think changes the whole conversation with a prospect and that is, so Mr and Mrs customer, what will it do for you personally by having a relationship with our company?
Can it get you out of the doghouse? Can it put your name in lights? Can it get you promoted? But we always want to talk about, Oh, we want this champion, but we don't ever actually ask the question that could get us to that. But instead, we want to talk about and find out everything that works and doesn't work in the company.
Go back to being personal and human and put that EQ piece back in and your win rates will go up.
Read this book. It'll help you.
There's that part. And did I have teed you up any better, Andy?
You did. You did. That is the definitive guidebook
think we've done this before
together
Well, one last, one last question I have. And one, one last point I would just dig into briefly is it's like enablement or could have a role in this, which is. everybody's excited about, sales tech and AI and da, and all these latest technologies and so on and invariably, they sort of get used the wrong way. And, and I like to say, the lesson that sellers never learn is that, I think because they're not taught, is that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. And I think this is a critical mindset we need to inculcate in sellers, right? Sure, you could send out sales organizations.
Yeah, you could send out 100 emails a day. You can make 50 calls a day. Yeah, we can go through the list of behaviors. But just because you can doesn't mean you should. That means they're not helping you achieve what needs to be achieved. Why are we continuing to do them? And we seem to have so little questioning of these things.
Anyway, interested in your take on that.
This is the way we've always done it.
It's the way
always going to be a few. There's
always going
we haven't it's evolved.
Yeah, it has
All three of us sitting here thinking the same thing. It's just, this is the way we've always done it.
well, it's evolved, but also there's an absence of knowing what to do instead. Right? Look at all the people right now that are talking about how ineffective Outbound is. Or, right, let's turn up those cold calls. That's what's working. 300 a day sounds like a great number.
And it's just, it's wild to me. And it's just a really stark observation that I've had lately is that we have a really, Poor understanding at the leadership level. And often I don't want to paint with a broad brush with enablement, but there, there are very few programs that I've seen or conversations or talks that I've seen that really help sellers create opportunities in 2023.
And that's a big part of it, right? You have to know what you're going to replace the old thing with, or that vacuum is going to, just revert back to the old way of doing things. Ha.
Andy said, I know there's a book to help.
Ha.
it is. There it is.
Does that mean I have to hold up two copies of my books? All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a great conversation. Just take a few seconds to go around and have people tell how people can get in touch with you. So RJ.
I'm one of those spaces that if you can't find me on social media, you're not really trying.
It's out There everywhere. You can find me on LinkedIn, Roderick Jefferson on Instagram, Roderick underscore J underscore associates on Twitter and on threads at at the voice of Rod, or you can hit me on my company website at roderickjefferson.
com, or you can find the book wherever you buy books. Thanks.
just so people don't think you're old school, we call it X these days.
I tried to forget Andy. Thank you very much.
I actually don't even normally talk about that one cause I'm rarely even on it, but people seem to find me somehow. And
Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
gosh.
Amy,
I'm a little place called LinkedIn. Not sure if you heard of it. You can absolutely find me over there. Good luck spelling my last name. And I, the two communities that I find myself most active in these days are the sales rebellion and women in sales. You can absolutely come find me over there as well.
your name spelled almost exactly the way it
It's phonetic to pay no attention to the silent H there at the beginning.
H is the only thing that throws you off. Otherwise it's just as a sound. So in crystal
Yes. RJ, let's see how well you know me. Where can they find me?
Let's see, I find you on LinkedIn and I also find you on Instagram cause you are my favorite enabler.
Yeah, is perfect. Yes. So LinkedIn, Instagram, your favorite enabler. I am also the co host of the podcast sales versus enablement with Dan Reynolds. He is an AE and we're about 60, 40 enablements and sales. So that's where people can find me. Spotify, Apple podcasts. I'm all over the place.
Excellent. All right. Well, everybody, thank you so much for joining me. And you're all welcome to come back at any time.
Aw,
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. This was great.