Here's the thing. Most content focus on what the top 1% of sales reps do. While that's great - we seek to understand what the top 1% of sales teams are doing.
How do they operate? How are they managed? This and more we discuss with Kevin "KD" Dorsey, SVP of Sales and Partnerships at Bench.
Make sure to check out KD's sales leadership accelerator.
How do they operate? How are they managed? This and more we discuss with Kevin "KD" Dorsey, SVP of Sales and Partnerships at Bench.
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (01:51) - Meet Kevin KD Dorsey
- (03:30) - Understanding the top 1% of reps
- (06:25) - Creating a top 1% sales team
- (09:47) - The four Ds
- (16:59) - How to stack improvements
- (20:54) - You can't outsource this
- (25:00) - Supporting functions of a winning team
- (28:47) - Script or no script?
- (36:32) - Recognize behaviour, not just results
Make sure to check out KD's sales leadership accelerator.
Creators & Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, together they look at the full funnel.
With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.
If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.
[00:00:00] Toni: Hey everyone, this is Toni Holbein from Growblocks. You are listening to the Revenue Formula. In today's episode, we're getting Kevin Dorsey or KD to share how to build a top performing sales team.
[00:00:12] Enjoy.
[00:00:18] So Mikkel, intro,
[00:00:19] Mikkel: intro, intro.
[00:00:20] Yeah, yeah. We have an American on the show and the most natural thing is to talk about, uh, the Danish national sport handball. Oh, wow. You saved that one up. Because yesterday. Denmark was, in the final, uh, for the European Championship for the, I think, fifth time. They never lost, never lost up against the arch nemesis France. And, uh, basically, me and my wife were like with the kids and, yeah, we're gonna watch it together. And then it goes into overtime and we just have to put the kids to bed. Because tomorrow's Monday, school night, you know, they have to be ready to kind of, be manageable for the parents sake. And then we put the kids to bed, really hurry and rush through it.
[00:00:58] And then I come back to the TV and I literally just watch France score the final goal. That means Denmark lost for the first time ever. Oh, you lost? That was a really depressing experience. I
[00:01:08] Toni: thought this is going to go into how you beat Germany just last week and all of that stuff. Then I was going to make a joke about like, Oh, handball.
[00:01:17] What a great national sport. Is it right next to curling or
[00:01:20] Mikkel: what? What is it you guys do? And I can see KD probably saying handball. Yeah. So we have a guest and I just wanted to point out the reason I made this segway. by the way, is, so I mentioned it, they've been in the final and never lost. So they've been in the final, this team four times previously and won all the games.
[00:01:35] I think you made that point. They're consistently high performing. Oh, there you go. And we want to talk about top performers with someone who I believe is also a top performer. Kevin Dorsey, KD. Uh, we can call you, uh, we figured out we can call you quite by a few names. You respond by anything. Uh, so pleasure to have you. Welcome KD.
[00:01:53] KD: Yeah I’m pumped to be here yall, I love talking about these things, and I love, let's call it, like, two, three step analogies. Like, I love a good out there segue that comes back ten minutes later, so I'm sure I'll find a way to reference handball at another point during this.
[00:02:08] Mikkel: it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. but so you are currently SVP at Bench. so that's like an accounting company, software service, I believe. Yep. And,
[00:02:18] KD: we, we hope Which helps SMB businesses do their books, so like bookkeeping, taxes, you know, accounting, you know, financial insights You know, no one, no one likes to do their books. No one likes to do
[00:02:29] taxes, you know, but it's foundational to do So we make that much easier
[00:02:34] Toni: And massive, massive Obviously kind of who doesn't know,
[00:02:40] uh KD you know a lot about selling, you have a lot of like sales awards, you have, you know, some tenure at winning by design, which I think a lot of our listeners actually, uh, know about pretty, pretty nicely.
[00:02:50] Seen some videos probably. Um, and you have scaled a bunch of teams from zero to, I don't know, sometimes it's zero to a hundred, but zero to 150 plus, right? So this is not just, oh, wow, KD knows how to select, you know, one or two good salespeople. No, it's kind of. KD knows how to build the structure and the framework, um, that makes people successful, especially on the, on the sales side.
[00:03:09] Right. And I think KD, when you and I got talking, we started talking about the. What do you call it? The, the West side of the bow tie. Uh, which is basically, basically what we want to, you know, focus on today, specific on the sales piece, actually. So, um, yeah, that's what you're saying
[00:03:23] Mikkel: is we're going to take customers to set success and put that to the side. Like,
[00:03:27] Toni: yeah, like, you know, like everyone is seeing that. But
[00:03:30] Mikkel: anyway, so I think the, the first step maybe just to kind of, I'm going to prompt KD now, is to also understand the, those reps Who really perform in the top, top percentile. What sets them apart from the rest? And I would love to hear that from you because I know you've worked with so many great sales folks over the time.
[00:03:50] Um, so just love to hear your take on that.
[00:03:53] KD: I mean we could spend the full hour on what separates them, but I'll try to bucket it down, right? Cause there's a few things, right? If I look at, you know, I've now hired well over a thousand reps, you know, in, in my career. And you look at these one percenters, the things that really separate them, I'll start one is just consistency.
[00:04:13] They're consistent. You don't see these highs and lows from them. You don't see like they blow out one quarter and then have a neck, like they are consistent. Their pitch is very consistent. Their follow up is very consistent. Their activity, like they do the same things really, really well. There's not nearly as many ebbs and flows from them.
[00:04:36] So that's one big thing that the best do better than anyone else is there's never this foot off the gas. It's like they go, and they go, but what's interesting too about them is they're also not, I wouldn't describe them as sprinters. Like when you watch the best do what they do, they make it look effortless.
[00:04:53] They don't look like they're grinding their face off, they don't look like they're, like, they're just consistent with it, where it's not these ebbs and flows. So that's one big thing that I don't think people call out enough on top performers is the consistency of it. Two, they treat their career like a career. Like, they consider themselves a professional at what they do. And salespeople, they don't approach this career as professionals for the most part. They really don't. If you think about, like, what other high earning professionals have to do. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, like, it is regimented, and it is strict, and there is education, and there is practice, and there are rules, and there's all these things.
[00:05:39] The best hold themselves to that level of professionalism. Professionalism. They're prepared for their day. They take good notes. They are planning out their week, quarter, and year. They study their industry. They study the personas that they sell to. They know the intricacies and the trends. They study psychology.
[00:05:56] Like those are the things that the best also do that then allow them to apply it to their role, right? Whereas you have a lot of reps out there that are just winging it. They just show up and they hope, right, they hope it's gonna go
[00:06:09] well, or they hope they can just be charismatic enough to drive the deal down.
[00:06:12] Whereas the best, ah, they're methodical. Like, they're just, they're just almost, almost scientific with it. Where it's like the smallest nuances. They are prepared for it, and I just love that.
[00:06:25] Toni: I love both of those points, by the way, thank you for that. So the, the, the trick is obviously. and I think we talked about this even kind of before we kind of hit record here. It's, there's one thing to creating top one sales reps or kind of finding those folks and, and really using them to drive the business forward.
[00:06:43] And I think there's lots of content around that also, right? How do you train those folks and all of that stuff. But it's a whole other question when you think of it, you know, more from a sales leader or CRO perspective of like, well. How can I create, I don't want to say a machine, but how can I create a structure?
[00:07:00] How can I create something that not only finds those guys and girls, but really gets them to this point where they're seeing, okay, those consistent results, those consistent behaviors and the seriousness. They're bringing to the job. How do you, how do you, you know, give sales leaders a playbook to generate those top uh, top 1% sales reps?
[00:07:26] KD: So, I, it's actually, this is, I don't know if this will be a controversial take, or whatever. I don't care about the 1% ers. And what I mean by that is they are 1% ers because they are 1% ers. I've never made a 1% er. I've gotten 1% ers on my team and given them the tools to do what they do. But I can't look and be like, I made them a 1% er.
[00:07:51] There's, there's a different level to this, right? I'd like, Kim Scott talked about this actually in her book, um, Radical Candor. Like the difference between a superstar culture and a rockstar culture. Superstars are a rare breed. That's actually why I think sales is so jacked up is everything's built around trying to find these superstars when superstars are the minority, right?
[00:08:13] My job as a leader is to diagnose what those 1% ers do to the most granular detail so I can bring that to the rest of the team, right? So 1% ers in a lot of ways, I'm like, as long as they are not Breaking the rules, cutting corners. It's like, do what you do, but I'm going to study everything about you.
[00:08:36] Right? This is actually how you scale it to a, a team. Is like, so we do this, like, so we'll get into intricacies here. One, we have an acronym, right, that I'm starting to get some trash around called the WIGGLE. Right? So the WIGGLE stands for W G L L, which is what good looks like. Most orgs actually don't know what good looks like.
[00:08:57] They don't know why Toni is number one. They don't know why, right? And if you ask them, you're like, oh, because they work hard. The top one percenters, we know this, produce anywhere from two to eight times more than the rest. They're not working eight times harder than the, you literally can't work eight times harder.
[00:09:17] They're eight times better than the rest, right? So where I focus in my orgs when I first come in is I'm studying the wiggle, what good looks like. Who are my best? I'm gonna break down who do they target? How do they talk? What's their disco sound like? What are the questions they ask? How do they handle objections?
[00:09:34] What's their pitch sound like? I'm gonna break that pitch into seven or eight different places of like how do they approach them? What's in their follow up? How do they write their, like I dissect it, right? Because now I can take it and scale it out, right?
[00:09:47] So you go from the wiggle to the 4D. So it goes the wiggle what good looks like to the 4Ds which is define Document, Demonstrate, and Deliberately Practice.
[00:09:57] Toni: Mm-Hmm.
[00:09:57] KD: So now I know, this is how Toni runs Discovery, and he's one of my best. So what I'm doing there is I'm going, okay, here's what he's doing. Define. Okay, why I think it works. Okay, he's asking this question because it leads to this, and he does this here to go from this. So I'm defining what good looks like, then I'm going to document it, I'm going to write it down.
[00:10:16] I'm going to put it on a piece of paper, I'm going to create the scorecard for it, I'm going to create the prompts for it. Then we're gonna demonstrate it. I'm gonna pull up your calls. We're gonna do trainings around it. We're gonna get snippets around how you do these things. And then we do the fourth D, which is deliberately practice it, right? I believe any skill can be developed to the 80%, right? I can not like, you know, Mikel, like I, if you're a one percenter, I can't make everyone a one percenter like you, but I can get them to an 80% of you. That can be taught, right? I can capture that and I can level up the whole, whole thing. So I always, I use this as an example because it's just one of the most straightforward ones.
[00:10:55] So every quarter, my, my managers, my directors, we do what's called study greatness. So every quarter, assign out a metric, like alright, Toni, you've got ACV, Mikkel, you've got show rate, whatever. You've got the metric, you have to go find who was the top performer in that, and you have to study them. Can you understand why?
[00:11:15] Their metric was good, right? So we have a phrase that we use, if you can't explain, you can't claim. So if I can't explain why this person's the best, I can't claim them. You know, like I can't claim that success. I can't say that was me if I can't explain why they were good. So we did this one, um, actually my last company, um, this was an easy one.
[00:11:37] So one of our reps had a significantly higher ACV than everybody on the team. By a good like 30 some percent. So, Jess Strickland, one of my directors, now VP, like, I was like, you've got, you've got Julia. Go tell me why her ACV is 30 percent higher than everybody else. So, he goes in, listens to a bunch of like, her pricing calls.
[00:11:57] So, he'll go through her proposals, da, da, da. Comes back, he's like, bro, I got it. I know she does. The way she's presenting pricing, she's presenting it as a package, right, so it'll be, you know, $74,000 for all of this.
[00:12:09] Whereas most of the team was like, okay, you know, this will be 5, 000, this will be 6, 000, this will be 2, 000, whatever else. So he goes back and he's like, she presents it as a package. So what do you think we did? So we took that We defined this is how we do pricing, we demonstrated, we took five of her calls, she helped lead some trainings on it, we documented it, we built a scorecard for pricing, then we practiced it for a quarter.
[00:12:33] What do you think happened to ACV for the entire team? And when I say entire team, at this point I had over 60 closers on the team. What do you think happened to ACV for the entire team, y'all?
[00:12:44] Mikkel: Loaded question, but I love it. It's gonna go up. It, it
[00:12:47] Toni: went up by 20%.
[00:12:49] KD: 18, very close, right? So did we get it to Julia's 30 percent for everybody? No, but an 18 percent increase of ACV across 60 closers, talking millions of dollars in additional revenue across the board, all because of studying greatness. You find out what good looks like the wiggle, four D's, then you put it into your team.
[00:13:14] So I'll pause there, but like that's the system I run across
[00:13:17] Toni: Very, Very, tactical. Follow up on that one. you know, did you also look at, okay, maybe she's a higher ACV and you know, the show is called the Revenue Formula, which is like ACV is part of it, but then there's a couple of other pieces in there as well.
[00:13:29] Did you also look at, you know, how she's converting, how long it takes, you know, these things maybe kind of balance each other out, yes or no?
[00:13:35] Kind of would love to hear, you know, how you really dissected the whole thing because another explanation can sometimes also be,
[00:13:42] um, Oh, she got bigger inbounds, big enterprise, Different industries and so forth.
[00:13:48] KD: Yeah, when we, when we say study greatness, we mean study greatness. So like, there's like a, like a checklist in there. Um, obviously it's not a screenshot, I could pull one up where it is. Like you're looking at the industry, you're looking at the personas, you're looking inbound, outbound, you're looking at referral, you're looking at touches per lead.
[00:14:04] Like it's, like we're really diagnostic so we can eliminate. Okay, this is the cause, because to your point, there are times, and this happens, where you have this top, this literally happened at my, you know, yeah, whatever, screw it. So at my current company, right, came in, and we had a rep, right, that was just blowing everybody else out of the water, just blowing them out of the water, right?
[00:14:28] So, study greatness time, let's go. So I go in, and I'm trying to like listen to these calls, and like I listen to like 10 I don't, he's not that good. Like, how, like, how is he doing this, right? Like, he's not that good. He doesn't sound that great on the phone. It's like, what's going on here? And so we start, like, you know, dabbling and perusing around.
[00:14:52] Long story short, eventually found out that it's because he was given away invalid discounts. Like basically he was cheating the system at the end of the process. It literally led to a termination because of what was happening there. And it all happened not because of a witch hunt, but because of studying greatness.
[00:15:09] To your point, we listened and it's like this isn't what's causing it. Something else must be causing this, right? My sales leaders, as much as you like to think it's an excuse, sometimes a territory does suck. Sometimes it does suck. You've got this rep over here succeeding. You have this rep over here and their calls are the same, the follow up is the same, their skill set is the same, then you need to go another layer deeper and be like, well, yeah, they've got more ICP fits in their territory or they are generating two times more inbounds from their territory than this person.
[00:15:40] Like you have, you know, the phrase I use often is aim small, miss small. Like you need to know to the most granular detail what's causing success and what's causing the miss. I actually just tend to spend more time on what's causing success. I can spend all day focused on, like, what's causing a miss. I want to know to the smallest detail what's causing success, because that's my job as a leader, is to scale success.
[00:16:03] My job is not to fix what's broken. That's actually, like, my manager's and my director's job. It's my job to scale success for this org. And I need to know the smallest detail what success looks like.
[00:16:14] Toni: so we could spend a lot more time on the, the, I think you call it wiggle. Um, and then he went to the four Ds, right. And you know, maybe I'm going to jump now a couple of things here, but. One of the things that might be stuck in, you know, people's heads here is like, okay, cool, uh, analytical guy, analytical process, um, but with a sales brain attached and, and really kind of getting the whole thing, understanding it, then you distill it down into, you know, what's the difference, right?
[00:16:45] You know, what is that person doing differently or what does that team do, doing differently? And then you go into the practicing, you know, demonstrating practice or. Deliberate practice. or any, uh,
[00:16:55] KD: demonstrate is the training.
[00:16:56] Toni: yeah, there you go.
[00:16:57] KD: is, like, you actually have to practice this.
[00:16:59] Toni: that's actually kind of my, my next point, right? Kind of the, the rollout of that.
[00:17:03] I think a lot of people are screwing this up, honestly. I don't think people have this great structure that you just mentioned there. Don't get me wrong. I think that's super valuable, But a lot of people struggle with actually rolling it out and make it stick.
[00:17:15] What's your, what's your experience there? How do you, how do you achieve these things and how do you follow up and, you know, instead of building one improvement and the next quarter you build another improvement and then they already forgot about last quarter's improvement. How do you make them kind of add up instead of just replacing each other?
[00:17:30] KD: Yeah, well, so, because most, to your earlier part, first of all, most orgs have not actually defined what good looks like, so it's really hard to
[00:17:37] Toni: That's true.
[00:17:38] KD: They haven't documented it, so if it's not documented, the reps can't reference it. They've never actually demonstrated it, they just tell people what to do, right?
[00:17:46] So, there's not an example to follow, and then they never practice it. So, those four Ds are the foundation on why most people never achieve it, is because they don't follow them, but that last D in particular, right? The deliberate practice, okay? I told y'all I was gonna come back to it. How long is a handball match? How long is a handball match?
[00:18:08] Toni: I don't actually hour, an hour. An hour. Is it an hour?
[00:18:09] Mikkel: Okay, Yeah.
[00:18:10] KD: hour. Did you play, Mikkel? Did you play
[00:18:12] Mikkel: No, no, no. Unfortunately not.
[00:18:14] KD: but we can still play this game, right? We're talking about an hour, right? Hour. How many hours a week do those players practice for that one hour match?
[00:18:26] Mikkel: it's crazy. I, I, I think like six to eight hours probably,
[00:18:30] but I mean, I mean, per day, per day, Per day. sorry. Yeah, probably something like that.
[00:18:36] KD: So, six to eight hours a day of practice for that one hour match. Now, to get to the um, the uh, we weren't talking about Olympics, we're calling it the National Championships. How many years have they been practicing to get to that level?
[00:18:54] Mikkel: I'm going to say 20 at least.
[00:18:56] KD: Okay, y'all see where I'm going with this right now? This is what I mean around salespeople and sales leaders don't treat their job as a profession. Okay, six to eight hours of practice a day for decades to become the best at what they do. Right? So, Toni, we asked like why it doesn't stick is because people don't practice it.
[00:19:15] If you practiced it for 90 days, you'd be shocked at how well it stuck. But what happens is people just tell people what to do. Hey. Run disco this way, and the refs are like, oh, okay. Okay,
[00:19:28] and then, right, cause they're gonna be like, y'all, y'all can imagine this. So I was, I was athletic in high school and in college, right?
[00:19:35] What would happen if I walked out to that handball, what is it, pit? I don't know what they call it, right? Floor, whatever. What would happen if I just walked out there and was like, hey y'all, I'm ready to play. How long would it take for me to get good if all I did was play the game against professionals?
[00:19:54] Mikkel: Well, my first thought you were going to get injured, but I have no
[00:19:56] clue. It's going to take you quite, quite some time.
[00:19:59] KD: hurt. I'm going to get my ass kicked. I'm probably going to give up on the game because
[00:20:03] I'm not good enough, right? There is no other sport profession where this mindset is okay. I'm just going to get good in the game. But that's what happens in sales is we teach people things and we go put them into the game.
[00:20:19] The game is not practice. The game is where your practice pays off. The game is not practice. That's why it doesn't stick. It's because you have people, you know, that's me walking onto the handball court, trying to learn as I go. That's exactly how reps and leaders are doing this. They'll teach a rep something, then they'll put them on a call with a CTO or a CRO and say, go apply what we just talked about.
[00:20:45] That's, that's the missing sauce. That's why it sticks, or does not stick for most teams is because they don't actually practice it. They just go into the game and they try to wing it.
[00:20:54] Toni: how's then the, job description of a, let's say a sales leader changing. because to a degree, the reason why this whole thing exists is what he just pointed out there, right? It's, um, it's that this approach. it's not, it's not the normal way of doing it. I think a lot of people would in fact hire winning by design to come in and do some of that stuff for like the 90 days.
[00:21:16] And then, you know, they're out again or number two, would maybe hire like a sales enablement person, uh, maybe to kind of, to do some of these things or, maybe, you know, find some, some of your wonderful content. But, you know, how does that. Because the way you talk about this, this is not an outsourced anything.
[00:21:34] This is, this is core competency of a, of a sales manager, of a sales director and so forth, right?
[00:21:40] KD: Yeah. You can't outsource this. The only, the only thing you can truly outsource would be the training. Hey, we need new ideas and topics and tactics to come in. That's the only thing that you can outsource, right? Like if you're not sure how to do good messaging or you need a methodology, bring in a winning by design, bring in a challenger, bring, you can bring that in.
[00:22:03] That's the only thing you cannot outsource practice and development. You cannot outsource scaling greatness. You cannot outsource the four Ds, right? That poor person working in an enablement. Right? Like, and I love enablement, and by the way, enablement always reports directly to me. Always. They do not report to L& D, they do not report anywhere else.
[00:22:23] Enablement always rolls to me directly, right? And that's actually to give them the backing they need. Because my enablement people, if you're listening, you know exactly where I'm going with this. Oftentimes the sellers don't listen to enablement. They don't even listen. So enablement works for a whole quarter to develop this training.
[00:22:41] And then they do it, and the reps either don't show up, or they show up and their cameras are off, and then they don't even apply it. It's like, enablement doesn't have, like, the leg to stand on too often. But also too, enablement leaders, I'll just call you out real quick. Have you actually studied greatness?
[00:22:56] Have you, like, do you know what the best reps do on the team? Cause if you don't This happened with my own team, right? This is why I talk passionately about this, because I live this. Like, I'm in it, I experience it still day in and day out. This was two quarters ago, we were starting to develop, you know, our scorecard process for enablement.
[00:23:14] And I asked my enablement team, I was like, When's the last time you listened to a call? And I got the exact same pause and look right there.
[00:23:25] Mikkel: no.
[00:23:26] KD: on earth could you be trying to teach this team? If you don't even know what the best do, right? So enablement, often times, is so far disconnected that they can't even teach people what good looks like because they haven't studied it themselves.
[00:23:42] But this becomes cultural. Like, my teams practice daily. And I don't care if it's SMB or This is always my funny thing is people talk about what's enterprise, so like, whatever. It's like, oh, because the big deals are easier. Oh, that makes sense. The deals that are multiple seven figures. We don't need to practice with those because those are the easy deals.
[00:24:03] It's the fat. Like, back to your point on the 1% ers. The 1% ers in Enterprise, oh man, tell me they didn't practice their pitch. Like, they had every scenario planned out, they were prepared for it, they had their story in their POV, and they knew how to, they weren't in there just winging it, right? So like, that's, that's the thing, this becomes cultural.
[00:24:27] Top down, this is what we do. You have, again, it's really hard to practice if you haven't done the 4Ds, because people are just, what are they doing for practice? They're just kind of, again, winging it. Managers, this is where they're putting their time and focus. I have 15 minutes of every one on one revolves around practice and they have another 30 to 40 minute session per rep per week Dedicated to a specific skill that they are working on right and then that's what my directors are holding the managers to I'm holding my Directors to that level to ensure that the manager practice is paying off and it all connects through and through Mm hmm.
[00:25:00] Mikkel: almost this practice is so such an underappreciated advice because especially now things are just changing. You're seeing the CFO in deals all of a sudden. And if you haven't trained how to tackle that person, he or she is going to care about very different things. So I think this is super, super applicable.
[00:25:17] You kind of mentioned another thing I want to double back to here. You mentioned sales enablement, right? So usually when, when you're operating a team, part of it is, you know, the team players, how they operate, but also how, how you enable them and the operations around them. Like what, what are kind of some of the things you need in place, not just sales enablement, you also have marketing potentially supporting, right?
[00:25:37] And the product team building stuff and so on. So what are some of the things that, uh, you know, supporting functions you, you also want to take care of?
[00:25:45] KD: hmm. So enablement for sure Right of making sure that they are very closely attached to what good looks like. That's who's doing the four D's for me Right is like because there there are times where enablement may not know what makes the rep good. Like they're listening and maybe they just can't capture right or they're not going deep enough to understand like the subtle nuances, right?
[00:26:07] Toni you were mentioned like is it because of their pitch or is it because of you know, the territory or whatever else? So enablements really focused on the four D's for me. Then I have to leverage Ops to do the other side of it. Right? So my sales Ops team, right? I need the data to support who is number one, right?
[00:26:24] How do I know like they're number one? What's that margin? Are there any outliers, right? So a company I'm working with right now, I took them through this exercise and they found the outlier, right? They, Oh, like this person's ACV was like really, really high when in reality it's because they closed one 2 million deal, but the rest of their deals are actually below average.
[00:26:45] So what they were trying to study as greatness was actually not greatness. The rep just got lucky, right? And brought up their whole, Average, right? So I lean on Ops for the data side, right? Touches per lead, speed per lead, time in stage, conversion rates, conversion by stage, right? So my Ops team is very closely connected to my enablement team.
[00:27:05] The data, right? Called the art and the science. I got the science, right? From Ops and I've got my enablement team with more of the art. And then I work very closely with marketing for a few things. The primary place actually I love to work with marketing is actually objection handling. So what are the top objections my team is getting?
[00:27:25] I'm going to marketing to get collateral and content created to help handle those objections. Alright, I need a lot of pricing, um, Like, handling, like, stories of why people thought the price was worth it. I need more content to support, like, the CFO's conversations versus the CTO conversations. So I work very closely with marketing on collateral.
[00:27:46] Um, the other place I leverage marketing, not to go down this rabbit hole, but like, for, for copies. So, not to write my copy. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Um, but I want to know, so I, I want to know from marketing, what are our highest performing blog articles? What are our long term, um, long, long, one more time, long tail keywords?
[00:28:07] Like, what are the highest search volumes? What are our highest click through rates? What are our headlines? Cause that tells me and helps me write better emails. Cause it tells me what people are searching for in the market. So if I know what people are searching for, then I know I can use that very similar language going.
[00:28:21] Outbound as well of like if people are searching for XYZ that's gonna make great subject lines great for sentences in the email Right, so I leverage marketing for the data because marketing has data on what people do when there's not a person involved I want that data and then we give marketing the data when a person's involved.
[00:28:41] What are people saying? What are the most common objections, right? And so I work very closely on cross functional with them
[00:28:47] Toni: I had one thing, and again, we're kind of jumping a little bit, a little bit back in. Sorry, Mikkel. he's kind of the back on track guy, so we are, we are rolling this out. We're practicing it. we are, we are altering the existing process to a degree. And you also mentioned, you know, SMB versus mid market versus enterprise and that kind of different.
[00:29:08] Different expectations almost around this. One of the things that I've seen a lot myself is, at least in Europe, it's, it's very heavily the case. In the US it may be different, but people are reacting very allergic to scripts or like demo structures or stuff like that. Right. But then on the other side, well, if you don't have at least a little bit of a framework.
[00:29:31] How are you going to go in and provide feedback? How are you going to change things in there? How do you, how do you manage that? Do you just like, Hey, this is the script and you need to kind of run by this. Or how do you, how do you, you know, even roll this out in order then to add the additions later on.
[00:29:44] KD: Yeah, I'll say it's a combination of two things, right? So scripts are always so funny to me because, you know, people will say things like it makes them sound robotic or it doesn't sound natural, right? And I always counter with like, okay, so have you ever seen a movie before? Have you ever watched a show on TV?
[00:30:06] Have you ever listened to a song on a radio, gone to a live performance? Uh, they were all scripted. All of them. Why is nobody leaving Taylor Swift's concerts right now going, I could tell that was scripted. Even though she's given the damn near same performance like a hundred times now. And so what I tell people is like, the script doesn't sound anything.
[00:30:34] Right? You sound robotic. The script doesn't sound anything. It's our job to make it come alive first. Right? So like, one, I counter there. It's like, our job's to make this come alive. That's literally, we are the performer in this. Second, everyone uses a script. It's actually not even a conversation of whether or not people use scripts.
[00:30:55] It's whether we agree to what the script should be. Cause if I go to a top performer, Toni, and I say, Hey, how do you handle blank? What am I literally asking you for?
[00:31:06] Like, everyone uses a script. It's just whether or not we agree to what the script should be.
[00:31:11] That's why I'm building my scripting off what some of the best are doing, because it makes it very hard to argue. Because, like, literally this is what our best do, so let's learn it. But then where I go with this is the script to me I consider like a recipe. So if I'm making a pizza, there are certain ingredients that I need to make a pizza.
[00:31:33] I need dough, I need sauce, I need cheese, okay? Now, the moment I take one of those ingredients away, it's no longer a pizza. If there's no sauce, it's not a pizza. If there's no cheese, it's not a pizza, and there's no dough, there's no, there's no pizza. Now, if Mikkel, you want to throw jalapenos on there, throw some jalapenos on there.
[00:31:55] You want to load up mushrooms and onions over here, it's like, if you want to make the recipe more yours, that's fine, but you cannot remove the ingredients of success. Right? So that's how I focus on scripts and frameworks. It's like, here's the script and the framework of what we know. Like, we know this works.
[00:32:14] We know this works. We practice it to get the tone and the delivery right. Because anyone can read, right? It's not like, the practice is actually about getting the tone right. Because then, if you have the fundamentals down, that's actually what allows you to have more of a free flowing convo. Because you're not thinking.
[00:32:33] You know most of the things that you need to say and navigate and you don't have to think about it. Whereas if you're thinking, you miss out on it. So that's how I approach scripts. It's like, scripts should be based off best practices. They should be frameworks to follow and achieve. You can add your flavor, add your sauce, but you can't remove ingredients.
[00:32:52] Because once you remove the ingredient, the likelihood of success goes down.
[00:32:56] Toni: And when you entered Bench, and I'm not sure how sophisticated they were already, but was that actually one of the, you know, your first checkmarks there? Kind of when you assess the opportunity, probably even like, Hey, do they have something like this in place? And if not, well, it's the first thing I'm going to do.
[00:33:09] KD: Yep, yeah, so the latter, a lot of this was not in place, there was no documentation of what good looks like, what was being taught in enablement, had nothing to do with what was happening on the floor, like a lot of that was in place and that was where a lot of it started.
[00:33:24] Toni: And kind of taking this one step further, because you said that, you know, previously, you know, yourself, and I'm just picking up on this. All of this. All of this sounds, super smooth and delivery, by the way. I love that. Uh, but it also sounds, a bit more sciencey than it is artsy. Right. Um, and there's always this big debate, especially on LinkedIn.
[00:33:44] And it's like, oh, it's both and so forth. what's your take on that? Is that, you know, where are you leaning on this balance? And is there a balance? And how do you, how do you think about this?
[00:33:52] KD: It’s always so fun, I love this topic. If people understood how.
[00:33:56] much science went into art, they'd stop asking the questions. Right? Like, like, it's like, if you listen to music, art, are there specific notes and frequency that sound better together? Science. It's the application of science that makes the art.
[00:34:15] Paintings, right? The, you have the, the focal point of like where it should be in the art and what colors and shadows go together. It's all angles and color, like science. In the art, right? So it's, it's, to me, they're very, very well blended. It's just science, I, I've never actually said it this way, it'll be the first time.
[00:34:35] It's scientifically understanding the art. That's what I think this is. Is I want to take a scientific approach to the art of sales. This is, my best is a performer, and I love it. Can I scientific, go through the scientific method? It's a combination of that art to diagnose and document what it is that I think is leading to those results.
[00:35:00] And then you apply it scientifically. You practice it artfully. It's a combination of both. They are completely intertwined. Especially, and I'll call this out, you know, you said a lot of your listeners, you know, 10 million, 15 million, trying to grow. You can ride the backs of superstars to 7 to 10 million.
[00:35:21] You cannot ride the backs of superstars to 100 million. You have to have a system in place. Right, this is where a lot of early companies fall. It's cause they had a couple superstar reps, sometimes it's even the VP. Sometimes it is the VP, CRO, like closing all of these deals. So they get to 7. They get to 10.
[00:35:41] And then they go from 10 reps to 20 reps. And they don't know why that quota attainment goes down. They go from 20 reps. to 40 reps, and they don't know why things are breaking. Why can't everyone do what Mikkel could do? Because you literally, you never documented what it is that made them, right? Like, this is the sticking point for a lot of companies to go from 10 to 100.
[00:36:06] It's because they never put these systems in place to get there. So they have a false sense of security of like, Oh yeah, like we've been getting to our numbers. Like, mm, we've been getting there. But three to four of your reps are the only reason why, and you have no idea why they're getting there and the rest are not.
[00:36:22] And then when they scale, it breaks. We're literally living through this right now in tech. A lot of companies that did not scale greatness, they scaled suck and now they're stuck.
[00:36:32] Mikkel: I kind of wanted to transition a little bit because part of it is also kind of keeping, keep delivering consistent performance. And part of that is The rituals you have as a team and the habits you choose to form and, I mean, you've struck me so far as highly analytical and using a lot of numbers to inform decision making again back to this art, uh, science reference.
[00:36:52] So what are some of the, if you look at building consistent performance, what are some of the rituals, you know, the potential VP sales, the CRO needs to make sure are in place for the teams?
[00:37:02] KD: Ooh, I'll take this maybe a different direction. I think one of the biggest is just recognizing behavior as a ritual. Right, so in leadership we tend to almost always recognize the result. Here's what happened. Way to close that deal. Look, you know, Toni, number one on the board. Way that we recognize the result.
[00:37:26] One of the most important rituals to get into for leadership is to recognize the behavior. What caused that result, right? So you can instill the behavior that you're looking for, right? So we call out all the time, good calls, like good disco, good objection handling, that sometimes still didn't even turn into a closed deal.
[00:37:46] Because we got to remember in sales, you can do everything right and still lose a deal, right? That's why close rates are 30%, 40, like 60 percent of those never even close anyway, even if you're doing the right things, right? So we focus heavily on recognizing the behavior, right? Hey, listen to this disco call, the way that Toni asked not only a second layer question, but a third layer question and got the prospect to explain the impact of the pain.
[00:38:15] That is exactly what we're looking for. Everyone give this a quick listen. Way to go, Toni. That's a ritual, right? If you can ingrain that from VP to direct Like a lot of my comms, most of my comms with the reps, funny enough, is almost always positive. My managers and directors, they get the, they get the, whatever you want to call it from me, more for the reps.
[00:38:37] I'm calling, like, I saw, I heard this, Soraya told me this about your last call. I'll, I'll tell this real quick story. Alba was a recently promoted SDR to AE on my team. And she reached out to me in her SDR certification, right? So to go from SDR to AE, you got to go through an AE bootcamp. And the fact, the final stage of this, you have to do like a demo, right, to, normally it's the director.
[00:38:59] And Alba reached out to was like, I want to do my final test with you. I was like, mmm, like, let's go, alright. Like, I was already fired up. I was like, just that she would even ask me for that. I was like, hell yes. So we do it, right, does a great job until the very end where she just doesn't ask for the business.
[00:39:18] She did everything else like, but she didn't ask for the business, so I did not close. And so, you know, now she thinks she's failed, right? I was like, no, you passed. You literally, you just missed this one thing. Everything else was golden, right? She's an AE now. She was the second person to quota this month.
[00:39:37] Right? Second person to quota this month. So what do you think my message to ABBA was this month? Right? So it's her first full as an AE. She did her certification with me. What do you think my message is to her? It's like, way to go. I can see you finally are asking for the sale. Right? And it's like, it's a running joke now between us.
[00:39:56] She's like, I, that's the best, worst thing I've ever done. I will never forget that. And it's going to stay with me for the rest of my career. Like I'm very like with the reps. It's like, I hear you're doing these good things. Keep doing the good things. Not I hear you're closing deals way to go. So recognizing the behavior is a ritual I would highly recommend.
[00:40:15] Toni: You also touched on another behavior that I just wanna make sure it doesn't go under here. I You said in the one-on-ones 15 minutes is dedicated to practice. Uh, and then there's another, I think you said half an hour, 45 minutes per manager per week or something like that.
[00:40:27] That's also going into practice, right? You have your quarterly. you know, wiggle sessions, I guess, and so forth. I mean, all of these things, I think Mikkel and I, we would kind of, we would call those rituals.
[00:40:38] KD: Okay. yeah, yeah, it's, it's, to me, you know, it's a system, it's a methodology, right, there's all these sales methodologies, like, I've tried to build a leadership methodology, right, where it's like, this is the leadership flow that we have to go through, because leaders and managers are the biggest leverage point, and they get nothing, y'all, nothing, and you talk about, like, the sales training that's out there, you Like every two weeks I'm leading leadership training sessions with my managers.
[00:41:05] Everything that I'm talking to y'all about today is documented. We've got the checklists, we've got the follow through, we've got the what good looks like the one on ones are documented. The scorecards are documented. The issue diagnosis for, so BPSI is the leadership methodology I teach. Behavior, individual, process, skill, and you.
[00:41:25] Every single revenue issue is hiding somewhere in BPSI. You have to go and find it, what's causing it, right? Like, all this is documented. This is, you know, funny enough, because I get asked this, you know, pretty often. Like, how do I do all the things, right? Like, how can I take an hour out to do this? It's because I am not physically required to be involved in every granular detail across my org because we've documented what needs to occur.
[00:41:53] And I can focus on the 10 percent where it needs some real, like, nuance, like, dude, we have no idea. Like, we have no idea what's causing this. Can we go figure this out? These are the rituals. These are the cadence. This is the methodology that has allowed me to scale, right? Like, this, you know, I'm. I will have now, I'll knock on wood, this should be my third unicorn.
[00:42:17] Like, in a different industry. Okay, scaled at Service Titans, scaled at Patient Pop, now I'm at Bench. Like, and it's, the systems are what allows for this. Because when you're trying to go from 20 reps to 100, Like, it breaks and it breaks so fast if you don't have these systems and rituals in place. I like ritual, that's a good word.
[00:42:38] I'm gonna start using that.
[00:42:40] Toni: KD, this was really awesome. And I think all of our listeners will think the exact same, right? We talked about, you know, what great reps look like, but also that You know, you can't just bank on them. You need to develop folks to get up to the 80 percent and maybe kind of achieve that. We talked about how you're actually doing this and, you know, wiggle what good looks like, you know, rolling it out the 4 Ds.
[00:43:00] And now we had what Blipsy,
[00:43:02] maybe
[00:43:03] KD: BIPSY, I P S Y, BIPSY.
[00:43:07] Toni: So this was fantastic. And I also love the whole, science and art. And actually it's just, you know, both the same thing. People just don't figure this out. KD, thank you so much for spending the time with us, and enlightening our, our listeners here.
[00:43:20] I think everyone is going to take something really strong away from this. So thanks. Thanks a bunch.
[00:43:24] KD: Yeah, absolutely, thanks for having me, y'all.
[00:43:26] Toni: Have a good one. Bye bye.