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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. That was Brandon Flewharty and Brandon is one of my guests on this episode of the win rate podcast. Brandon is hugely successful enterprise sales professional, and now he's the founder of Be Focused, Live Great. This is where he mentors top performing sales professionals to achieve their career and earnings potential.
My other guest today for this roundtable discussion about sales effectiveness, the buyer experience, and increasing your win rates are Kyle Williams. Kyle's an experienced enterprise seller and sales leader for companies such as Google, and he is the founder and CEO of brick stack. Also joining us as Megan Michiak, Megan's an experienced sales professional and sales enablement professional.
She's a sought after sales coach and founder of the path to presidents club. Now, a couple of quick [00:01:00] items of business before we jump into today's discussion. First, if you're interested in receiving even more actionable ideas about how to elevate your sales effectiveness and increase your win rates, then please subscribe to my weekly newsletter.
It's called win rate Wednesday and each week you receive one actual tip to accelerate your win rates. So to subscribe, visit my website, andypaul. com. Second enrollment's now open for the next session of my buyer experience bootcamp starting on September 12th. Now this bootcamp is my five week coaching program that teaches you how to.
Elevate your win rates by delivering the buying experience. Your buyers actually want and need because how you sell is how you win. So for more information and to grab your seat in the class, go to andypaul. com slash bootcamp. Okay. Are you 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. I am so grateful for your support [00:02:00] of the show. And I want to thank my guests, Megan Misiek, Kyle Williams, and Brandon Flewharty for sharing their insights with us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast, the win rate podcast with Andy Paul on iTunes, Spotify, or every listener podcast.
Also, don't forget to subscribe to my weekly newsletter. It's called win rate Wednesday. Each week on Wednesday, you'll receive an actionable tip that you can put to use in your selling to become a more effective seller and to accelerate your win rates. So again, thank you so much for investing your time with me today.
Until next time, I'm your host, Andy Paul, good selling everyone.
Andy: Welcome everyone. , gosh, I can have my guests introduce themselves today. We've got three incredible guests. Let's start with you, Megan. Megan, tell us about yourself.
Meghann: I'm Meg Mishak. I've been a salesperson my entire career since I was 16 year old selling bathing suits in St. Augustine, Florida. I've [00:03:00] been a sales person, a sales trainer as well as worked very deeply with sales leadership teams. And right now I actually am a sales training consultant usually helping companies that are trying to go public.
As well as working with high performing sales people as a sales coach. So really helping them break through performance blockers and achieve a lot more work life balance in, of course, their personal goals as well.
Andy: Yeah. And you're also doing your walkabout year around the world. You're joining us from Lisbon today.
Meghann: Yeah. So for me even like a part of that is I was always a really lazy salesperson that I was like I really want to be able to do what I want, live how I want, make money as quickly as possible. So for me at 32 years old, what that looks like is being able to travel the world, work completely remotely and own my own company.
So definitely very fun.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. You've been some great places too. So,[00:04:00] okay, Kyle, you're next. Actually, it's three, three floor Floridians today.
Meghann: Right.
Kyle: There we go. The other SF South Florida. I'm Kyle Williams. I run a company called Brickstack. We help companies basically point their insights at the market. So if a company has a really hard to identify ICP there's a lot of custom analysis and understanding to help them best point at their market.
I'm a sales leader who learned how to code sort of my background. So kind of taking these two different worlds and mashing them together, sometimes. Describe myself as a platypus. Like just random skills and abilities that somehow come together.
Andy: Do you have a venomous tail as well?
Kyle: it's actually the, I know too much about how a platypus works. The venom is in the elbow.
Andy: Oh, the elbow. Okay. There you go. Well, you live in Florida. So with all the weird creatures there, there's bound to be a platypus or two around there somewhere.[00:05:00] Hanging out with the Burmese pythons. All right. Brandon,
Brandon: Hey everyone Brandon Fluharty and like many, I happened into sales. I tried to start my career as a professional soccer player in Eastern Europe, didn't quite work out for me as planned and got into sales failed miserably at the starts climb the ranks eventually from SMB selling into mid market and to enterprise.
Found my sweet spot in strategic accounts and had a pretty prolific period in the last four years of my corporate selling career selling into fortune 500 brands and then parlayed that like Megan.
Andy: which by the way I take complete credit
Brandon: Yes. Yes. By the way, everybody, Andy Paul was my sales coach during that portion of time.
So all credit to Andy,
Andy: one of the most ridiculous claims you can make. But yeah, I do it anyway. That's Kyle. I did it earlier today.
Brandon: And then parlayed that most recently retired from the corporate [00:06:00] selling world in last year in 2022. And now running a strategy design firm called be focused, live greats. And the idea behind that is designing strategies for other strategic sellers to help them become what I call the purposeful performer like Megan.
The sales role is one of the best roles that you can enter to create that freedom and autonomy for yourself, and then turn that into the life of your dreams and that's the goal of be focused, live great,
Andy: Yeah, I mean, whereas Megan is spending this year traveling around the world, let's see, Columbia, Bolivia, South Africa, Portugal, Mexico city. I think you've been so far. Right.
Meghann: Lisbon. Yeah.
Andy: And Elizabeth, yeah, Lisbon and you sort of done the same thing with Stacy. You get in your RV, Brandon, you drive around.
Brandon: Unhitch the gravel, bite, go on the trails and explore somewhere in the woods or the mountains somewhere and come out with a big smile on my face and a lot of dirt [00:07:00] everywhere in mud.
Andy: yeah. So Kyle, what's your equivalent?
Kyle: Glamping is the latest thing. We have two small kids, so we have we go out with a tent, but the tent has the poles, like, built in, so it takes, like, two minutes to set up, and there's a, like, a battery I bring with an inflatable mattress, so it's not camping, it's definitely glamping, but that's that's our latest thing.
Andy: Still sounds fun though. Yeah.
Meghann: Good fan of glamping. I'm definitely a camping princess. It's the way
Andy: Oh
Kyle: way to go.
Andy: Yeah. I can't remember the last time I actually went camping. I think I made it once in my life or something. My parents were definitely not outdoors people. So, that was not on our agenda at all. Alright, well let's get to the heart of the matter here. Today we're talking about sales effectiveness, we're talking about win rates, and I'm just curious what everyone thinks is, 'cause the subtitle of the show is The Science and Art of Great Selling. So what constitutes a great seller interest in people's opinions on this? Brandon, why? Let's lead with you.
Brandon: Yeah. I think we're very aligned, got, from our sales [00:08:00] coaching experience and just, I think being very similar in our mindsets. Yeah. Yeah. I had to learn again, the hard way that it wasn't so much the sales side of the house that generated success for knowing for myself personally, or the companies that I represented, or the clients that.
I was working with more of the human side. So that was a big shift throughout my career is kind of when I started focusing more on the human element, things like mindsets, things like how I transformed how I work and more about how I prioritize the finite resources of time, energy and attention and sort of focusing those things on more meaningful things and developing purpose.
That was sort of the underlying thing that. Helped me to ultimately be a better seller. And, I think that's the interesting thing about this career is we over index, we talk about this a lot is the [00:09:00] sales process and enablements and training that glass has been overflowing for a long time.
But, when you start to tap into the more human side of things and I really got interested in design thinking and systems thinking to enable that. So that it could be repeatable that's where I started to have lightbulb moments for myself and now seeing it play out with others, with the firm and helping, hundreds of sellers tap into that, that to me is starting to define a new definition of success in the space.
So focusing on the human and underlying. Having a purpose for everything that you do, being more intentional with how you spend your time, energy, and attention. I think that ultimately leads to good sales success.
Andy: We're gonna, we're gonna get back to that. Megan, how about you?
Meghann: Yeah. So for me I think a lot of times we answer this question in terms of traits and things like [00:10:00] that. But for me when it like taking a little bit more of what makes up every seller it is three things and this is what I work on with my coaching do think that. 1st, a lot of times what we see is the habits that people have, right?
So consistency and even, resilience and the habits that we even like sleep. I know Brandon, you focus a lot on rest and like, and health. I think the 2nd bucket for me is mindset. So some mindsets I look for and help build in people is, resilience and ownership and having very strong personal goals.
And then the third is what a lot of us focus on in sales training, which is strategy. And for me, what I try, I think a lot of times people have, like, they're very high in 1 or 2 of those areas, but for me, a really successful. And healthy salesperson is someone who really focuses on a balance and on, building skills within each of those [00:11:00] buckets.
Andy: Okay.
Kyle: Yeah, I mean, going last, I'm going to echo a lot, but the things that I agree with are certainly, what Megan said about ownership. I think about, it's kind of interesting. Everyone on this call is a former full time seller who now runs their own business. And there's something about taking ownership of your sales career a CEO or a business owner would be.
And that mindset helps you to, I think in a paradoxical way, almost take ownership of your time and be ruthless about where you focus. And at the same time have a healthy disconnect from certain outcomes so that you don't get too, sales is one of those roles where it's very easy to burn out.
And I think as Brandon and Everett and Megan as well alluded to with purpose I think sometimes we get so caught up in going fast that you sort of lose along the way. how to stay up and use this analogy a lot when I taught my daughter how to ride a bike, I learned kind of the same as [00:12:00] a lot of people where you put the training wheels on and then you ride for a while and then take the training wheels off and then you crash a bit.
And I'd read about this technique, which we tried, which is instead of putting on training wheels, we took off the pedals. And so she had to use her feet to scoot along the round ground. So she's learning how to stay up. And so then when you added the pedal, she already knows how to balance a bit. So even if she's falls, she can sort of correct a bit before she falls.
So you skin your knees, you don't
Andy: I still have scars from learning how to ride the bike. I think so. Yeah.
Kyle: exactly. And I think in sales, a lot of times we learn with this, how do I go fast first mindset? And if you start with the pedals, you learn how to go fast, but you don't learn how to stay up. And I think if, as when I, what I hear, when I, when every time I hear Brandon talk is like when I hear purpose and having your own inner focus to me, that's about learning how to stay up.
Yeah. And if you learn how to stay up, then when you go fast you're much less, less likely to fall off the bike. And I think that's where a lot of burnout can happen with stale sales. So I'd say learn how to stay up and earn ownership.
Andy: Yeah. [00:13:00] Well, first of all, I love the story about the bike. I died.
Brandon: Yeah.
Andy: That's so smart. And you see kids, there are these little bikes without pedals. You see kids wheeling around all the time. It's like, Oh yeah, that makes us next step of the pedals. Easy shmeasy. Right.
Kyle: She did five miles her second day.
Andy: Wow. Yeah. Let's get Brandon over there to ride with her.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah. We've got a new writing partner
Andy: Yeah,
Kyle: we go.
Meghann: What I also really like about that is, I think what you mentioned is having a better sense of awareness. Because you don't really feel it with training wheels. You don't get the feel of how it's leaning and especially like you, I love what you said about being able to catch yourself when, because you feel the bike leaning and so you'd be able to catch yourself.
And I think. For me, how that also relates to sales and training is that a lot of people don't they have training wheels, right? We just tell them what to do. We kind of hold them up and for me 1 of the words I use in terms of those [00:14:00] mindsets is resilience. I think it's also very related to ownership because.
When you are able to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes and have a ton of autonomy in terms of trying a lot of things and really feeling the balance of those mistakes or of those strategies, that's how most people learn. It's not from, just having the training wheels on forever your boss, maybe micromanaging you or handling your deals.
So I think there's a lot to be said for being able to make mistakes. And learning from those
Brandon: It's interesting in the book, Think Again
Meghann: of it,
Brandon: there's evidence, a lot of evidence around psychological safety and how that leads to better performance amongst teams versus having, an outcome minded focus on everything that typically, has been associated with sales in the past.
It's all about activity. It's all [00:15:00] about the outcomes. As Kyle alluded to, when we obsess about those things, that's what ultimately leads to burnout. And, when we look at the world of low win rates, when we look at the world of high stress in sales today low quota attainments, that world, that old world, that old school minded thinking.
Has failed us and there is new paradigms to start exploring around psychological safety around the more human sided elements. And then, how do you design that in a more purposeful, thoughtful way at the individual level, at the team level, even at the organization level? Yeah. Yeah.
Andy: Yeah, I think at the individual level, this really becomes important. I'm glad you brought that up. This is, Mike's talk about ownership or agency, which I think is such an important part of the sales, obviously centerpiece of the book. I, my most recent books sell without selling out, taking control of how you sell and selling on your own terms, but on this [00:16:00] show, we're focusing on sales, effectiveness, win rates, and it's funny I look at.
The fact that you said, Brandon, that we spent too much time focused on results versus performance, right? And are made too focused on the outcomes. And so people always say, well, there's a little bit irony. You're talking about win rates when you're saying focus on performance. But to me, I asked people a question.
I said, well, so why are you in sales? Right. Why are you still in sales? Why do you stay in sales? There's a body of research that says, look, yeah, people that get into it for the money really don't typically don't tend to stay in sales because you don't stay in sales for the money.
It's not, I mean, if you're able to succeed in your fortune and in your career, sure, you'll make some money, but it's tough work, right? We all know it's hard work. The clock resets to zero every 30 days. We have to prove ourselves all over. And so I. I look at myself and, look at the research, others, [00:17:00] people stay in sales because they're finding some fulfillment from helping their buyers achieve other people achieve what's important to them in life.
And it's interesting your take on this. Cause my belief is that you can't help somebody if you can't win their business, right? If we have this connection is, we were in sales cause we want to help people achieve things. We can't help them if we don't. Put ourselves in a position to win their business.
And to me, that's how it all is connected is, and I think to your point, cause yeah, obviously my whole approach and sales are on the human centered buyer first approach to selling. I think, yeah, the most human, most buyer first thing you can do in sales is when your customer's business.
Meghann: and I think it's interesting because one thing I also love from your book and about win rates as the ultimate. Metric is because it also represents, like, if you win their business, typically, it represents the [00:18:00] fact that you have helped them assess their options, evaluate their needs, form a deeper understanding, like, make a ton of progress.
And I do think the, the exception is some of these environments where it's like a win at all costs situation, but a lot of times, winning is. Is hugely indicative of. What most of the people that I work with, like most of the salespeople of what they want to achieve, right? They want to really help clients better understand.
They want to help them, assess their options. They want to help them solve complex problems. They really want to be a consultant and build relationships and build trust and help people. So it really is a good indicator that and at the same time, it's really interesting that a lot of people Aren't even tracking how much they're winning, so they're, they, I think a lot of like, most often people are just looking at their quota, but it's interesting because what I [00:19:00] always tell people my coaching clients, I was like, quota is limiting because what are quotas based off of averages, right?
Average performance, average deal size, average win rate. And also a lot of just like. Randomness, right? I don't have, like, no offense to sales leaders, but a lot of times they're kind of arbitrary. So it's interesting because yeah, all the time. Thank you. Yeah, but it's also super interesting because when people are really defining their success and as well as their goals by quota.
It's so interesting because once you really take out that number, focus on your win rate, focus on your deal size and focus on your effectiveness in. The, the sales experience as well as the buyer journey, you actually get to completely redefine what is possible and how hard it is or how easy it is to get there
Andy: Okay. Yeah, I mean,
Meghann: that ownership as well.
It's like owning not only what the goal is, but [00:20:00] how you get there.
Andy: yeah, well, it has a problem with quotas, it's, yeah, I've talked about this on the previous podcast I did about Goodhart's Law, if people are familiar with Goodhart's Law, you want to, when a measure becomes a target, it loses all value as a measure, because you optimize your process to achieve the target, and quota sort of becomes, to some degree, this sort of self fulfilling, self limiting, Target, if you will, because people optimize their process to achieve it.
Brandon: That's right. And, here's an interesting story of, an individual I'm working with who's at a well known SAS company he's in the strategic account space and we've been working together for about a year and a half, Himanshu, and the transformation has been very great.
It's just been wonderful to see. And I would say probably at best 5% of our conversations every [00:21:00] Friday have centered around anything relative to specific sales strategy. The other 95% as we were talking about earlier is more on the human side. And there's been a bridge that we've been able to correlate to, higher win rates and using that as a beacon that he is doing the right things.
He is increasing his frequency on the human level to sort of get in this, what we call the green zone, that green zone allows him to build these better connections and advise his. Prospects and his clients on here's how we can open up a very authentic conversation of solving real challenges at a very large account that he's pursuing and what that's putting him in the space to do is he'll have a very high win rate this year off a really one account.
And so from an individual perspective, what that allows him to do is reduce the noise. [00:22:00] Typical sellers have
Andy: Or coming to
Brandon: around the arbitrary metrics that typically get mapped to things like quota activity to, to say, no I'm actually, I've been leading with impact and I've been designing my calendar around elevating the conversations that I can have by not succumbing to the stress and anxiety.
Of the noise around me. I've reduced the noise. I've protected myself against the noise so that now when, I'm in front of the client, we're talking through truly authentically solving problems. And that's actually speeding up the deal as well because they're thinking through all the things versus Six 30, it's coming up.
We've gotta close the deal. Guess what? What are the typical mechanisms? Okay, let's discount let's don't worry about the support and services that come along. We can figure that out later. There's this incessant anxiety and and appetite [00:23:00] for urgency and speed, whereas he slowed down to ultimately speed up because on the second half of This year, now he's set up the client for success.
They have the right support program in place. There's not going to be any issues. They've worked through all the different angles. He's worked through the commercials very intelligently, and it wasn't again, sales tactics that got him there. It was, being just a good human being, right? And thinking through things authentically without being sleep deprived, without leading with stress, without leading with personal intrinsic motivation to, to get them, get him to his satisfying his quota and making big bucks.
And, yeah.
Andy: extrinsic management.
Brandon: motivator I should say. Yeah. No, he's actually been driven. Excuse me. Yeah, good point, Andy. It's more intrinsic motivation on the right things, right? Not the extrinsic motivators of big commission checks and closing a certain deal and getting the applause in the back by closing the biggest deal in the [00:24:00] certain timeframe.
Andy: Yeah. Well, that gets back to what I was talking about before is, why do we stay in sales? Cause you know, he's working this deal. That's going to have tons of fulfillment from working this complex process over six months. Sense of achievement that he did it, personal achievement. Yeah, you can't help your buyers. I said, if you don't win their business.
Kyle: Something that's sparking for me on what you're describing about your client, Brandon, about like you mentioned something about. There's a lot less pressure on the other metrics that tend to get pushed as primary when your win rate is strong and then you have this sort of absolute number achievement is that there's this concept of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge is the thing I can sort of, I can write it down.
And you can read it and we can see the exact same thing and you know exactly what to do with that. Whereas tacit knowledge is the it's not something I can put into words. It's the how to stay, how to balance on a bike. I cannot write a manual that tells you exactly how to stay up on a bike. You sort of have to do that yourself.
And a lot of the metrics that we often are measured [00:25:00] against are more of a measure of explicit knowledge, right? Do this number of activities those types of metrics are more explicit, whereas win rate is more of a measure of your tacit knowledge, because it's a combination of factors really coming together to say.
When I play, do I win? And you have to almost look at it from different angles really to know, because what you mentioned about his win rate is really strong off of a single deal. To me, that would be, then we're talking about your win rate at a dollar level versus your win rate on a count of deals level.
And so perhaps, maybe his win rate is dramatically lower on account of deal level. But his dollar level is much higher and that's a function of he chooses to play where he can win and invest there is what the way you'd analyze that and how, by looking at these different angles, really with win rate you're exposing what that tacit information is.
Andy: but it's such a good point. You just brought up this idea about choosing to play where he can win is and it gets back to the point Meg was making before about agency as sellers feeling that they have this level of [00:26:00] control over who they sell to. Yeah. I believe that sellers make the choice to win.
In the choices they make, right? Who are they going to sell to? How are they connecting with them? How are they bringing the best version of themselves as a human to the buyer? Their curiosity, their understanding, generosity. And a choice you make. Yeah I like to use the imagery of, you as a salesperson, you're sort of had this in my first book is you're like the bouncer letting people into the club. Right. It's you, not everybody gets into the club, right? Just because your boss says, sell to this person. That's a decision you have to make.
Brandon: that's right. And sometimes it starts with being in the right environment. And interesting enough, here's another story that sort of illustrate that point. When we started working together around what circa early 2019, Andy 2018, I was coming off of a in an MVP year, [00:27:00] but I still, my confidence was low because I think I was still stressed on sort of subscribing to the hustle culture of traditional sales activity driven approach.
When you're very helpful in sort of redefining. It wasn't through sales tactics. It was through, recommending the book, barking up the wrong tree, right. And, again, a very human centric way of thinking about confidence and how high performance.
What I went through in 2018 was again, high stress got success to, to really major logos acquired and deals done. But what I was ultimately doing was saying yes to everything. And the manager who was a great leader, Sean Burke, who introduced me to you. We had a very I think poignant conversation in early 2019.
Which he sat me down and was just very honest, and it was the honest, direct feedback that I needed to hear, which was, Hey, Brandon, you are [00:28:00] great when you're in front of a prospect, a client that you obviously care about, and the opposite is true when you're in front of somebody that maybe you don't know as much about or you care a little bit less about.
And so what that allowed me to do was Go through a design thinking exercise of he's absolutely right. Yes, it was my, limiting factor here because I thought I could win all business that came my way or that I pursued and then 2019 started to become. A, a life changing year for me entering the same figure earners club because I made no, my default and the way that I, I got to know was one having that agency and autonomy from a leader who trusted me.
But two, I went through this exercise of taking the concept, icky guy the Japanese concept of reason for being and starting to become very popular [00:29:00] now with a lot of images floating around the internet. But essentially, it's sort of these four. It's a Venn diagram with four spheres of, what are you good at?
What do you love and so forth to find your purpose as in work and life. And so I went through a similar exercise as a filter of, okay. Well, what are, what is meaningful to me as a person that I can apply as a filter against my account list of 50 strategic accounts and that allow me to hone in on the middle, which was shaped like a diamond and I called them my diamond accounts.
So these were the accounts that I knew something about or I can move quickly with them. And so I can filter out things off of my strategic account lists. And focus more in depth of building these really strong relationships where I could be my natural self and I knew accounts on the other side of that would be really receptive to that and I could allow them to be the best professionals to solve these really large transformative [00:30:00] problems.
And again, that was, the biggest year of my career. And it became a foundational element to, what I'm teaching with others.
Andy: Yeah. And it's, and you think, and I'm interested in your guys thoughts on this is so why is this so hard? I mean, you had the benefit of a great leader and Sean, I know Sean was a actual client of mine before you and I met is. Why is that so hard for leaders or managers to provide the sense of agency to sellers to give them the ability to earn that trust, right?
Oftentimes they're not even given the chance to earn the trust. Yeah. One of the things Kyle and I've been talking about recently just drives me insane when I see it on LinkedIn all the time is, something along the lines of, if you really want to kill it in sales leaders, give your best leads to your top sellers. And I'm like, That is 180 degrees, the wrong thing to do, right? If you're playing [00:31:00] favorites with these people, what you're saying is I've got the short term mentality and I've got to make sure that we have these opportunities that we're going to, keep feeding them to our quote unquote top people. You're never giving the other people an opportunity to learn how to do that, right?
Meghann: can I share something here? I'll share kind of like a little thought and then a story. So, it's really fun when you work in enablement, because you essentially have no direct reports, but you're responsible for the entire team's performance, right? So, what you end up becoming is essentially a sales therapist.
Where everyone comes to you to talk about how horrible their managers are and how much they hate them and you get a really interesting perspective. So, in my 1 of my last full time enrolls I joined and, they're like, we need this training yesterday. We want all this help and all the support for our reps, but there was a lot of the that thinking, right?
Like, I think 1 of the biggest things I noticed is that they were all they'd [00:32:00] all grown through the ranks of the company. So, you think that a lot of people don't have sales training. Like, sales management training is almost non existent, right? There's not a ton of resources. So, what often happens is that someone walks into work 1 day and they have a territory.
They're a high performer. They are promoted the next day. They walk into work and there are. A sales manager, and what often happens is that they now just treat it like they have 7 territories. So, a lot of times they have the skills to be a high performing account executive, but not always a high performing sales manager, which is very skill sets.
So, I'll give a quick example, like, for me, 1 of the, I was hired into a company. And like, right away, 1 of the mid level manager quit. So, I kind of stepped in. I didn't know anything about the product. I didn't know anything, like, didn't know anything about the industry. But I knew that I was a really good coach.
So, what I started doing was and by the way, there were literally, [00:33:00] it was like seven people promoted into that team. Again, I'd been there for a few weeks. So, I started working with the team, and one, like, they didn't even have any training. They were BDRs first, first time they were selling. And it was really interesting because a lot of times, These managers, they kind of just treated people and like, even the expectations they had for them was based on what they had seen in previous roles.
So they didn't even expect anyone to sell within the 1st, 6 months. So, even just by really challenging averages and the status quo, I think that's 1 big part about when rate is once you realize that, like, the average winner is 17% you're like. My goodness, so all of the things that people are teaching where they're like, this is what worked for me.
I'm like, did it really work? Is 17% really working? I don't think so. So, even by just challenging status quos, I remember you the average dollar amount sold by this team in the first [00:34:00] quarter was zero. After 1 quarter of working with them, I raised it to 21, 000 just in 1 quarter. But we really worked on things like human centric selling, really helping people like, again, find value even challenge what they thought was possible.
Like, he had this his post it on his computer that he put in, and it was a secret between us. It was 100, like, 100, and he was like, I want to make, I want to sell 100, 000 in my 1st quarter. Again, average is 0. He didn't he only sold 87, 000 dollars, but I was like, okay, how can we transform this goal?
He's like, okay, I actually want to figure out how early I can hit 100% of my quota. And so he hit that and then I was like, okay what is it now? And it was salesperson of the year. And so, even I think, like, there is a really big aspect of challenging the status quo when it comes to high performance.
And I know how does that relate to your question about around managers [00:35:00] is I think a lot of people, they do not know how to coach, how to train instead of teaching skills, they're just teaching tactics, right? They're not teaching how to be agile, how to build ownership, how to literally build skills and sales that are allow you to apply it to a lot of different areas.
They're just telling people what they did that worked. Or, even worse, they're micromanaging them.
Andy: And isn't that really come from position? I think that comes from a position of fear.
Brandon: Yeah. Dear. Yeah.
Andy: right is as a manager, you hold the reins tight because you're afraid not to you necessarily know you have the answer is that you have an answer, which is your answer, that's not, that's certainly not going to be the answer for everybody in that program.
And that's sort of gets back to the point I was making before about, gosh, we're only going to trust these high performing people, quote unquote, top sellers.
Meghann: Yeah.
Andy: fear based as well, right? Because you're worried about short term results as opposed [00:36:00] to. How do I build a strong team of people that can help us grow more consistently, rather than relying on two people to Kyle?
Kyle: Yeah. And I think that's some of some of these problems are universal. I don't think they're just within a sales organization of, why would a manager do that in general? And in some of it, I think a lot of what you said, Meg, Megan, about the manager gets promoted from an individual contributor.
And so they know how to do the role and sort of built into that is that they have the tacit knowledge of how to respond to a given situation, or at least, as you mentioned, Andy, there's a, they have a hint of where to go and maybe the rep that they're working with has doesn't have that tacit knowledge yet.
And so it's similar to when I've been working with a relative who has a computer problem, like, click the blue button, no, that blue button. And it's like, obvious to me, for whatever reason, I'm like, where we need to click, and I think that's the sort of pattern that's happening with the manager of like, I know the pattern, I know the pattern, and so yes, the rep is sort of learning a little bit passively by observing someone take this in and respond in the moment, but it's very different versus when [00:37:00] you have the fingers on the keys as the rep and the manager gives the space for that.
So I think some of it is just that tacit knowledge and not, this feels obvious to me, why is it not obvious to you, and you sort of forget. That you didn't know. And then the other, I think is a common challenge is trade offs, right? If you've ever, if you sold long enough, you've probably heard product promise.
That top feature that you've been asking for is it's either next quarter or six months, but it's always next quarter or it's always six months. And if you've. Worked with product, like they're not bad people and they're not trying to lie to you or tell you that something's coming when it's not, but it have those same challenges of either biting off more than you could chew or, a bunch of fires come up to do these tactical things.
And in product, there's one methodology from base camp called shape up where when you're deciding to do some work. They talk about appetite because if you just say, what's a meal that we should have, you might say filet mignon, but if you say, I need a meal and I need it in three and a half minutes, filet mignon is not going to fit, [00:38:00] maybe a hot dog is what you should do, and sort of that prioritization or trade off effort that it's I think hard if you are a manager to like, let that trade off moment happen for somebody, because maybe I would have focused on this deal versus that deal and so letting that calibration happen is I get why that's scary and stressful because you can't read someone's mind or how they're doing that calibration.
Andy: Well, let's put this back in the context then is, so we've got managers who are operating from a position of fear. And is that the reason why we think, and I certainly have a lot of anecdotal evidence about this. I know Megan has some as well, is that people just don't know their win rates. Right here to me as individual seller, that is the single most important metric for you.
Megan, I, co run a cohort based coaching program with another coach. And the first couple of cohorts, we had like 50 odd people in them. I have fewer than five of the [00:39:00] 50 individual contributors, AEs, including people with 20 plus years of experience at some big companies, probably fewer than five knew their win rate. And it's like, well, if they don't know it, that means their managers aren't tracking it. And what, why aren't they, are they afraid to know the truth?
Brandon: I think there's a little bit of that, and I think the fear to, it's certainly not a problem that is done only the individual level or only done at the top or only done in the middle of the management level. It's something that needs to be harmonized and become consistent. So, why, have we been managing based off of fear?
Well, a lot of that pressure comes from the top, especially for high growth. You look at the macro environment we've lived in over the past decade, cheap money just hire people. Let's just get more bodies. That's led to this overarching [00:40:00] activity driven. Type of management. But we know, right, based off of research like the mental health sales reports done by the sales health alliance and Jeff Risley and other folks doing some great work there that, that has led to more and more stress for sellers at the individual level.
And then who's caught in the middle? Managers again, the universal problem of, okay, you've been a great individual contributor, so you must Obviously know how to succeed in the row go make people in your profile. And then that leads obviously the pinch from the top forces them to just go, okay, I'll commit the majority of my time, energy and attention on the top performers because that's all I can do.
Right? And individuals are lacking the coaching that they need. I see it every single day. Nobody's getting the high quality coaching. And if they are getting coached, it's on short term sales process and tactics to just get things done. And then, yeah, and then it, and [00:41:00] then that filters back up to the top that there's a, isn't a high enough quality of wins with clients that can be sustainable over the longterm.
It leads to unhappy clients, churn and so forth. So. what if you made win rates, the key metric, and what if you really let go of the fear to say, okay, the research is telling us through Adam grant and other high profile researchers to say, well, actually it's psychological safety that is needed for high performance.
We're hiring these people for a reason. Let's not encroach on them. Let's act more like a VC firm instead of a company. Let's not treat employees as employees. Let's treat them as mini startups and entrepreneurs and let them manage their business within our larger business. And win rate is the connective tissue that [00:42:00] runs through on how you actually build systems and frameworks and process in place, because as Meg alluded to earlier, it's not that we need better selling.
We need better decision making. And how do you enable these smart people who have come into your organization, trusted their livelihoods, they're coming in with, they've got a purpose that they want to build a life and take care of their family and what freedom eventually, what, how do you allow them to do that in the most authentic way?
Well, look at win rate and give them the resources that they need to be able to do their job and not confine them to. Urgency and artificial speed give them the ability to authentically connect with people and continue to use win rate to measure the effectiveness of that ability to do that.
And then when there are gaps, especially when [00:43:00] people don't know the win rates or are scared to produce it and look at their win rates obsessively as a way of showing progress, then that's the area of focus for. Skills development and and coaching. And that coaching is really centered around not sales stuff.
It is around thinking better as a human, making better decisions with their time, energy, and intention. Again, to find out resources we all have as professionals, whether you're a CEO or an account executive.
Andy: Of course, if we were all thinking like VCs, we'd say, right, well, we really don't want the salespeople to think we want AI and our systems to think for them. So, which is the absolute wrong thing. It's still a human business first and foremost. But we have a whole nother episode on that, I'm sure at some point.
So, just final thoughts from everybody,
Kyle: I was going to say one, one thought on like why is that not something that everybody has, tip of the tongue that they're thinking of all the time is there's one rate is one of those things where if [00:44:00] everyone's going, if you're going to trust it. That, that metric and the different angles you're going to look at are very dependent on other definitions outside of just sales because, as product, are we positioned and pointed at the market that we serve properly as marketing the leads that we pass are those matching Where we can actually win.
And then as sales, are we getting that feedback loop? Are we properly moving those through the funnel? And then as CS, like the customers that are we getting the feedback back on these are the customers that succeed and see the value. So that feeds back into the whole system. And otherwise it's very easy not to trust that win rate.
Metric, right? Because I could say, well, I don't trust the metric because, we had a couple events that we tested and a lot of those leads were just not the right fit for us. And so, we did our best, but they didn't make it through. And so that's messing up the win rate or, we just stamp everybody with 100, 000, deal size.
All of our losses are 100, 000. Our wins are only 30. So that's the metric, right? And so having to do it, I think to do it right, having shared, I Understanding [00:45:00] of as a company, what are we doing? And maybe that ownership. And understanding being above sales, even at the CEO level should know that metric and know what goes into it.
It's part of why, it's easy to, it's easy to pick on the metric or say, I don't trust it, but if you have that focus, then as we've talked about, I think it can be the best metric of sort of where are we and where are we winning where we mean to and why not?
Andy: All right. So unfortunately we're coming short on time. So, great conversation. Go fight everybody back. Hopefully most people don't realize this is all your second time back. The first time we recorded this, it disappeared into the ether somewhere. So, hopefully this one worked. So, just wrapping up, if you want to tell folks, where they can connect with you and learn more about you, Megan.
Meghann: Yeah, so, my company name is You can and my website is path to president's club. That's T. O. dot com. So, I help people accomplish their personal [00:46:00] presence club, whether that's traveling around the world, going in an R. V. or a glamping I work with both organizations. As well as individuals really helping with all of these things, when rates as well as those 3 core components of mindset habits as well as the strategy to get you there.
Andy: Excellent. All right, Kyle
Kyle: I'm just Kyle at brick stack. com or look me up on LinkedIn. Easy to find.
Andy: What's that? Yeah, Brandon
Brandon: Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me as well. Show up there every day and you can check out some of the links that will take you to brandonfluharty. com where you can explore some of these concepts, mostly focused for the individual contributor to sort of become an anxiety stress. Ridden status quo performer to a more purposeful performer who can calmly improve their win rates and achieve life changing [00:47:00] income.
Andy: and set aside two hours every Wednesday afternoon and take a long bike ride, right?
Brandon: Yes. Yeah,
Andy: Absolutely. All right. I'm there for that. All right, everybody. Thank you very much.
Brandon: Thank you.
Meghann: Thank you.
Kyle: Thanks.