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Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Learn how you can pass the sales baton to your team with today's guest are you leader trying to get more from your business in life? Me too. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois.
Curt Tueffert is a professional speaker, Professor, author and podcast host as the VP of sales development for a $1 billion industrial distributor for works his skills daily on the frontlines of sales and marketing, for its work has earned him a Stevie Award as well as other accolades and today, we're going to dive into the ins and outs of sales training for startups. Kurt. Welcome, Ron, man.
Curt Tueffert 0:47
Hey, Chris. It's great to be with you today. And I love that introduction. It got me a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. Just listen, guy. I can't wait to hear about him. Yeah,
Chris DuBois 0:56
that's the goal. I've told others that you can just you can pay me to follow you around. And I'll introduce you anytime you walk in a room.
Speaker 2 1:02
Well, you've got you got the voice already got that deep baritone voice. So you're good to go.
Chris DuBois 1:06
Nice. See, I'm still annoyed by my voice. But all right, this is good. See, you just boosted my ego. Alright, let's uh, so let's kick off the episode by getting into your origin story. But
Speaker 2 1:16
wow. You know, I got to the place I am today, which is the vice president of sales development for a very large company. Started probably back in my college years where I heard a professional speaker. His name was John neighbour, and he was a seven time Olympic gold medal swimmer. And after he did his fundraising at this event, I rushed the stage, I grabbed his hand, I shook it as hard as I could. And I said, John, neighbour, I want to be just like you. And he said, Well, Kurt, I have a degree in speech communication from USC, and I have seven Olympic gold medals, what do you got? And, and I said, I got squat. However, I will change my major from computer science to speech communication. I did the very next day, graduated with a degree in speech, COMM And comp sci slung code for many years as a computer programmer. And here's an outgoing extrovert, in a bullpen of coders. So that was annoying for them much more than it was for me. Fast forward, I had a couple of opportunities to jump into the sales game, crushed it there moved into sales management. And then about 20 years ago, this company dxp, industrial distributor here out of Houston, Texas, took a shot with a guy that didn't come from the industry, nor did I graduate from the hallowed halls of Texas a&m University. And yet, I've been here and for the first 10 years, I was the VP of sales for the Houston region, we carried about $100 million quota. And for the second half, I've done all of the sales development for the company. And we're about 3000 employees, just under about 225 outside sales, and about 210 Inside Sales.
Chris DuBois 3:06
There's a lot to unpack there.
Speaker 2 3:08
Yeah. Faster. Sounds really good. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris DuBois 3:13
So actually want to ask you one question just based off the bio. So you You did really well in sales, and then stepped into a management role. A lot of people find when they have that salesperson who's crushing it, and they bring them into a management role. They don't crush it anymore. Why is that true with some people and not with others? Why is
Speaker 2 3:32
that true with some people, because some people have that hypercompetitive lone wolf mentality, which causes them to crush quota. We love these people. And the reason that they do so well is because they're independent lone wolves that are doing it the way they want to do it. I have the heart of a teacher. And so I really wanted to get into a management role because I wanted to give back or pay it forward in a way that would allow me to get into a professional coaching speaking career. And then as a professor of sales at the University of Houston, I've done that for 20 years. I'm one of those weird hybrids who love to chase quota love to help other people chase quota, and teach and mentor at the same time.
Chris DuBois 4:16
Right, like the dream employee. Let's, uh, let's, uh, let's get into some of your initial tips for just for hiring the right salespeople. Yeah, sure. We've already identified a couple different styles of personality types, I guess, you know, what else do we should we look for?
Speaker 2 4:31
You know, I'm a big believer in all things of assessments. And I know that your listeners will be looking at well, I'm a pro. I am pro Bergman. I'm pro Myers Briggs. Well, I'm pro disc. Well, I believe that there is a reason why these assessments are out there. That gives us as the hiring managers, a little bit of a better understanding of the person we're trying to get. And if we take it one step further, and we benchmark the job, and we ask if the job could talk what would the job say? benchmark, I wanted to benchmark the characteristics of a LeBron James, or a Kobe Bryant or of a Michael Jordan. And then I start comparing the kids in Junior High in high school and college, their talent against that benchmark that gives me greater opportunity to at least align myself with some behavioral traits. So Eric dxp, what we preach as a gospel is you've got to be hyper competitive, gotta be motivated by money. And you've got to have a hunger for knowledge, because a lot of what we sell is engineer esque. And so we're talking with, you know, some complicated things. And so I would say to any entrepreneur, scratching their head thinking, what am I looking for, for my next outside sales pro at somebody who's independent, somebody is competitive, somebody has money motivated,
Chris DuBois 5:49
right. And they just design that compensation package around them to keep them motivated.
Speaker 2 5:54
Hopefully, hopefully, we create a package that keeps them in the game, but doesn't allow them to coast. Here in industrial distribution, we call it clipping coupons. And that's that guy that isn't out there knocking on doors or building new relationships. They're not filling the top of the funnel there. They're more like farmers and ranchers, they've already killed it, crushed it. And now they're just babysitting that. And while that's a great thing to have, we know and in being entrepreneurs, that there's a missed opportunity cost, what's happening, what am I missing by not having somebody out there with a compensation plan that aligns themselves to the reward of bringing in that new?
Chris DuBois 6:34
Yeah, so I mean, especially with depending on what your like your tam would look like, right? total addressable market? If we're, if we're cat really tight, then yeah, maybe we spend more time just fostering the relationships, we already have to kind of grow those accounts. But otherwise, why would we not stop? Jason Newcomb?
Speaker 2 6:54
Absolutely. And again, you're, you're an enlightened individual, Chris, because you're talking about a total addressable market. Most people in sales, sales management, aren't even aware of the ideal customer profile, total burstable market and the lifetime value of a customer these, these three letter acronyms that we live and die with in order for us to get better, right?
Chris DuBois 7:13
Yeah. So I guess I've had a lot of these conversations and stuff. So let's get into with a salesman, right. So we talked hiring, what you should be looking for. If you end up hiring some junior team members, especially if you're a newer startup, you maybe can't have such a large compensation package. What are some ways that you can be kind of bringing them up to speed fast building their confidence quickly, so that your team can actually start making those sales, I think one
Speaker 2 7:42
of the things you can do with the junior reps is to let them know, look, you're in a program where we are going to develop your skill suite. And that might be through an academic learning exercise, read this book, watch this podcast, attend this seminar, it might be let's look at the low hanging fruit and within what whichever our market is there's going to be low hanging fruit. And we might use a loss leader or some kind of a low end just get in and see if that person can manage the account from the initial get go through the process, whatever that sales cycle is, that helps us as managers and leaders to determine does this person have what it takes? One of the people here that I work with that I highly respect, talks about, do they have a motor? Do they have a motor for sales, and again, that's an internal combustible, I can get out there, I can face rejection, I can get creative. I can think on my feet, I can follow a process, do they have a motor,
Chris DuBois 8:43
I need to master the motor part. As far as it comes down to face and rejection. But the so someone had at one point, told me that 50% of sales is a transfer of confidence and enthusiasm. I don't think it's a set number they are, you know, they're making a point. But uh, for a lot of my, my clients and probably a lot of people listening, right, the founder, is the one doing sales at the start. How can they're very enthusiastic about their, whatever they're selling, because they've created this idea for whatever it is, how do they transfer that enthusiasm to sales team member so that it actually comes across in the same way?
Speaker 2 9:25
Well, one of the things I teach is I teach that there's only two things that we sell, that's trust and value. And so what does that entrepreneur look like? What does that entrepreneur wake up thinking? What's the vision they're trying to cast? It all requires time? Time with that sales pro so we can do some kind of a Vulcan mind meld where I can transfer my vision of what my product or service is to you the outside sales pro. That takes time and it takes many many different methods of communication could take a press sentation it could be an experiential, it could be you watch what I do. It could be, I'll do it twice, and then you do it once and if you fail, we'll do it again. There's lots of different ways of transferring that vision to that person where you can feel confident. I've given them all of what I have there like a young Jedi, a little pad of wine, and they're like, Can you handle a lightsaber? Yes, without you know, dismembering yourself. Now let's go out there. And let's talk to prospects and customers,
Chris DuBois 10:31
right? And how do you kind of validate that they have, like, understood that vision?
Speaker 2 10:37
Have them sell it back to me? Give me 30 Give me your 32nd commercial present to me as if I was a prospect. Allow me to ask you some softball questions to feel your confidence. Let me ratchet it up a little bit and give you a couple of objections. And again, in sales, we know what the objection is going to be, we're going to be able to couch it, present it address it. But I don't know what it sounds like within the vision of the entrepreneur, is are you selling a new payroll system? Well, what kind of objections are we going to get? Let me guess it's going to be a new CRM system. Well, what objections am I going to get or whatever that would be? If the entrepreneur can hear that person cast that vision, and share it articulate that, that's a great first step,
Chris DuBois 11:24
right. And then I'm sure that works. Now as a training asset for others. On the team, it's learn,
Speaker 2 11:29
practice, teach, learn it, practice it, now teach it to someone else. And again, that outside sales pro will be teaching it to the prospect who will eventually become a customer, but will also be teaching it to the inside sales rep, the operations team. And then when we hire a second, third, fifth, ninth sales pro, that message continues through that tribal knowledge around the campfire, until the same message that starts at the one end of the campfire is the same message that ends at the campfire.
Chris DuBois 11:58
So in our pre interview, we started talking about some of the different things startups might be trying, I guess, in order to start building up a sales team. And and you warn me against hiring family members and friends, you go deeper into that,
Speaker 2 12:15
you know, family members and friends, they know too much about us, that's very difficult for them to be objective in transferring that knowledge because their family members, you're not going to fire me, their friends. You know, I know the inside I remember where you were in high school, and you couldn't, you know, you couldn't even talk to a girl much less day one. And again, the somebody who is what I'm going to call a professional sales person will be able to articulate that value proposition above and beyond family and friends. Now, if you say yeah, but I've got a whole staff full of family and friends. Okay. But you have to evaluate what roles do they serve within your organization, if you're the, if you're the husband's entrepreneur, and the wife is a sales pro, that might work for a while, but I would say acknowledge that your goal is to bring in professionals, the professional actor can pick up a script and act it whether it's a comedy, a drama, or a thriller. And again, you're looking for those people who can pick up the script and run with it.
Chris DuBois 13:22
Right. Yeah, I mean, that makes complete sense. And just you just said something that got me thinking too. So is there. I've been told there's a huge difference between sales for b2b versus b2c When a sales rep is required. How much of a difference is that? And can I be looking for individuals who, you know, kind of from each side?
Speaker 2 13:44
That's a great question, Chris. If I'm looking at a resume, and I'm selling b2b, and this person has only done retail, or this person has done some kind of a hybrid retail can they cross the chasm can make cross the gap between b2c to b2b. And again, the same direction if it's b2b, I'm only selling to entrepreneurs, I'm only selling to Fortune 500. Now I'm moving into a b2c situation. Typically, in my experience, the b2c is a short sale cycle. It's it's very quick, it's two weeks, it's two, it's two hours, versus a b2b. It depends on what we're selling. It could be a one month, it could be six months, it could be a two year sales cycle. I've got somebody who is patient and networked to a six month or two year sales cycle, they may be fatigued by the person who you see it at 10 o'clock, and you close it at 12 o'clock. And then the opposite is even worse. I'm used to having that immediate gratification. Now you're telling me that I'm not going to be able to get a decision making appointment for six weeks. What do I do?
Chris DuBois 14:46
It's tough, right? And I'm sure some of the strategies are completely different, right, like handling objections in a single call verse, waiting for them to bring in the stakeholders, decision makers.
Speaker 2 15:00
all that. So, again, what are we selling? Right? If we're if we're selling something on a lower level on a b2b sale, maybe I don't need to have all those stakeholders. But if I'm selling something like fractional jets, well, that's at the C suite. And how do I do that? Or if I'm selling an internet security system or something that's going to prevent ransomware or hacking? Well, that's going to be at multiple levels and multiple locations, and multiple titles. Do I have what it takes to bring those people together to create consensus in a way that gives them a chance to feel secure? About what I'm trying to sell trust and value?
Chris DuBois 15:37
Right? Let's move into talking about the the minimal, and then ideal numbers for sales teams. Really, what do you guys start at? And then how do you determine the growth rate as you start adding headcount?
Speaker 2 15:52
So minimal is probably two because if if you have yet one, and they go on vacation, nobody sells anything. So you're trying to get to maybe it's one and a half, right? You get a part time person or something. And you scale based on selling price cost, gross margin, and your contributed margin, or what what do you have left? At the end of the day, service Turkey taken out all your SG and a and all your other things? What do you have left? And then you can start looking at that through a simple Excel, you know, exercise, what do I need to to be able to take on my next sales pro, who's going to want some type of a financial guarantee for compensation, right, until I can get to the point of where I can get them off of a draw, and get them into whatever I'm looking at. So I would say it's just a simple mathematical equation of what can I afford, or I'm an entrepreneur that has access to ANGEL or bridge funding. And so I'm looking at big zeroed lots of commas. Now, I can take on five sales pros with a six to 12 month guarantee, and given me giving me the opportunity for that value proposition ferment out there in the field, and then I can determine, hey, based on what I know, now, my sales cycle is x, and I need this many sales pros.
Chris DuBois 17:12
Right? Yeah, that makes sense. You just mentioned shifting the like the compensation package as the company grows for companies, startups, you know, that are, I guess, more junior, and they don't have the ability to pay great compensation packages right up front, what are some creative ways that you've worked with companies or seen them set that up?
Speaker 2 17:35
Sometimes it's as simple guarantee for x months, maybe four to six months, before we go into a base plus commission, maybe it's a base plus commission plus equity, a lot of sales pros, if they believe enough in the entrepreneur, owner and the product, they'll take an equity stake. And I'm not saying a big equity stake, this isn't shark tank here, where I want 40% of your company, enough to keep the sales pro in the game. Because you could it could even be private it could be an ESOP, it could be any of those things that you could create an equitable share that says, Look, if we can get from x to y by win, then there's going to be this pot at the end of the rainbow, we can all play with. Now, even a sales pro coming from a 1015 year game, who says I'm going to re enter the game under this entrepreneurial model, I believe in the product or service so much. I'm gonna go there. I you know, I don't know if Marc Benioff could create such compensation plans when he was pre revenue at Salesforce. I mean, it was was a dream, it was the idea of this is a cloud based CRM, we've not done this before. And you know, over time, it became the world's number one software company on the planet.
Chris DuBois 18:50
Right. So how do you I guess, with how do you manage the expectations of your team in regards one to compensation, but then also, as you're looking at their quotas and, and everything else that comes along with it?
Speaker 2 19:03
I'm gonna go all the way back to when I was in high competitive sales. It was with a company called ADP automatic data processing. And I was a junior sales rep and I had a bunch of zip codes. And I had to go out there and knock on doors and try to convince people to give me their payroll service back when payroll service was not even a thing we had every Tuesday night meetings. And tragically, it was the number of calls, the number of meetings, the number of sales, I would say that you create a cadence in the beginning that allows you to manage those expectations. And then review that a football coach reviews the tapes of their previous game and the competitors games. Why are we reviewing tape to see what plays are setting up? Why are we reviewing tape to see where you missed that tackle where you missed that block? And boy, that's a hard and tough ask to find somebody who could manage Just start up sales company and say, let's look at the tape. Where are we at? How do we handle this? Guess what that sales cycle which we thought was three months, it's turning out to be six to 12. Because for some reason, they're not getting the return on investment, it's got to go higher in the organization, or, wow, what we thought was six months has become 30 days. And we really have got to get faster on our game, because we're processing a lot more orders. So the whole takeaway is a cadence of probably weekly sales calls, sales, huddles sales, autopsies, whatever we're calling it, that allows us to just align that expectation.
Chris DuBois 20:42
I worked in a marketing company for that for years. And one of the things that baffles me the most is with the clients we worked with, how many of them did not record sales conversations? What is the hesitancy? With recording, like, you just explained it, and it's, it's the perfect idea, right? Like you get to see what's going on and potentially get better. From a marketers perspective, I get to now take out like the objections I get to create content and assets for you to use before they even get to you hopefully shortening the sales cycle. I know people want those benefits. You know, I think
Speaker 2 21:16
recording a sales call is is dicey when you depends on what state you're in some states require the acknowledgement of the other person some states don't. So people get wrapped around the axle of the legality of that. And as soon as that happens, we tap out, we're like, you know what, we can't do that. It's just too much. Sometimes we have remote sales pros, where they're in a region, or they're in a territory where they're making calls out of their home or their home office. And so it's a little bit harder for us to to do that. On those sales calls. In fact, well, you know, here, we've got so many inside and outside sales pros, we don't typically record their calls. And so we don't know, if we missed a buying signal, or a simple, innocent question, does it come in blue? And we missed it? And we should have said, well, it depends, you know, what color blue? Would you like? Well, if it comes in blue, I don't want it oh, well, you know, those are some of those immediate coaching moments that you and I could refer to back maybe in the 70s and 80s. But it is coming back. There's some sophisticated software out there today that can take a call, measured the number of questions, the open ended questions, the closed ended questions, the percentage of time one person spoke, then the other person spoke. And Chris, could you imagine being able to just run that through a filter? And I realize as a sales pro, I've never let my prospect talk? Oh, my gosh, just, I'm just blown and going and you know, smiling and dialing and what an error that could be. So you've you've really scratched the surface of a powerful tool.
Chris DuBois 22:50
Yeah. And even just the number of times that you use, like I or we versus you in the conversation, it's like something so simple that you could just change that the next time you're in a conversation, essentially see tremendously different results. Good point. Yeah, it's awesome. Next, let's go into fundamental skills for new salespeople. What do you see in people lack as they're coming into the space? How can we help get them up to speed?
Speaker 2 23:18
You know, one of the fundamental skills I see in sales pros is the ability to handle rejection. Because we know that we're launching a new product or launching a new service. We're in a land today, where you have caller ID and you have the ability to block everything. So this rejection is is huge. And so, you know, again, going back to assessment work or other tools out there we can measure, does this person have the ability to respond to objections in a positive way? Will it not weigh them down? Teamwork, having the ability to be part of a team, because today, or Yes, I said, you want that lone Desperado sales pro out there. We're finding through a lot of this new research, post pandemic, that teamwork is becoming much more of a tool that we should be looking for, because we're we're trying to connect with operations and payroll and, and accounts payable, accounts receivable and vendors. There's a lot of teaming coming in there. So those are two, I would say, always self management, the ability to manage yourself, you know, where you say, I'm going to do what I said I'm going to do, because I said, I'm going to do it. Just have that clarity in that person that they're looking for many of the other skills we can teach, as long as the last skill is, are they coachable? Are they do they have a coachable mindset? Or do they be believe they're so good, they're taking notes on themselves?
Chris DuBois 24:43
Make sense? Do you find their skills that as sales reps going to move up the ladder, that they served in neglect, and just like through either complacency or just confidence from previous success, that they just stopped doing certain things that it would be really pay off? They kept doing. I always
Speaker 2 25:00
say ABC, always be curious. I think curiosity is a muscle you workout in the gym. And I think a lot of the sales pros who have gone through hundreds of reps, repetitions, 200, repetitions, 5000 repetitions, you know, I think it was Malcolm Gladwell that said, once you do something 10,000 hours, you become a professional at it. I see so many people when I do a training class, and I asked them, are you still curious about that person? Are you asking them questions about? What do you do when you don't do this? Tell me about this. Tell me about that. Are you asking questions to create conversation? Now the seasoned pros, the older people? Were okay with asking that. But you start drawing a line and about 32 and South 32 and younger. And I don't think that we are as strong in the gym of curiosity that we should be. And I think that's one thing that doesn't take a lot of time in the gym to come back and say, you know, that's an interesting last name. What's the origin Ireland? Have you ever been? Tell me if you ever went and what would that be? Like? That's nothing new the sales call? No, I don't care about the sale right now. I just want to get to know you a little bit because the lifetime value of getting to know you is far exceeds the profit I'll make on the sale.
Chris DuBois 26:18
Right? I mean, it's a great approach through things shell Dinis influence. I mean, just being likable, is going to increase your sales and easiest way to be likable is actually care about the person you're talking to. Yeah, like, makes such a difference. Kurt, this has been a great conversation. I want to go into our three kind of wrap up questions. With the first being, what book do you think everyone should read?
Speaker 2 26:44
Yeah, What books should everyone read? There's, there's so many of them there. I would say I'm staring at my shelf right now. And I would say, execution is a good book, that first break all the rules is a great book. These are two that I kind of go to all the time, selling the wheel is a great book. There's a lot of that and give Jeffrey Gitomer, he's, he's he just writes a lot of stuff, but anything and everything because really, I've read so many sales books, at the end of the day goes back to what you just said, about being interested in the other person, not the 1000 closing techniques or the ability to articulate a value proposition on a cocktail napkin. We've covered that a million ways. But again, at the end of the day, I think we're still selling ourselves each other. And I don't think chat GBT or AI is going to be able to replace that. So we got to get really good at that.
Chris DuBois 27:42
Great, can I set that bar better? What is next for you professionally?
Speaker 2 27:49
You know, I'm dabbling around with some stuff. I'm a facilitator for the Brooks group, the Brooks group is a company out in North Carolina that has the impact sales process, we've been using it here at my company, for 22 years, I've had the ability to be able to branch out and facilitate so I'm doing a lot of that. I've got some workshops and seminars that I do on communication, using the DISC profile. Those are some of the things that I've really started to branch out into. And I love the fact that I have the freedom to do that in my current role. And as long as I'm obviously not trying to sell to our competition, whether it be a conflict of interest. It keeps me sharp, you know, there's, there's that whole Stephen Covey principle, you know, where you just gotta sharpen the saw. And that's kind of where I'm at right now is I'm doing a lot of shot, saw sharpening.
Chris DuBois 28:41
And I'm sure that even just that pays dividends for your team, which is,
Speaker 2 28:45
I think, so I come back reenergized. In fact, I have a sales training class on Wednesday of this week, and in two days. And I'm really excited about sharing with some new information that I just got, through listening to a couple of podcasts and finishing a couple of books, I want to share that with the team and see if I can help them achieve their goals quicker. Awesome.
Chris DuBois 29:05
Finally, where can people find you? You know,
Speaker 2 29:07
I've got a profile out there on LinkedIn. So there's one place you can find me. That little website that I have is called peak sales strategy. It's all one word peak sales strategy.com There's a little bit of information out there. Please friend me connect with me. I love to pay it forward. And and just the fact that you've put me on your show, Chris is is humbling. And these are very challenging questions, and I really appreciate the chance to share with your listeners.
Chris DuBois 29:39
If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership visit leading for effect.com As always deserve it
Transcribed by https://otter.ai