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I guess the question I'll ask, and this is what I've brought up many times with on the show, is so managers, you know, again, if we're looking at making changes is should we have managers and coaches,
such a good question.
right? Because
I don't know what Leslie thinks. Leslie, what's your answer to this? I struggle with this one.
think in an ideal world, our managers, the same group of people that can dig into the dashboards and look at the conversion ratios and identify exactly where to make those incremental gains would also be a group of individuals who was able to have learner centered conversations. Which is just not something I see very much in sales management, whether it's, you know, for second, third line and like what I think a big miss is a pretty universal big mess is that even when folks are good at coaching.
They coach on hard skills almost exclusively, and they don't coach on soft skills like you talked about active listening in your post yesterday or the day before, Andy. So they're not coaching on some of the whys, like time management, how, like, understanding that active listening is a skill that needs to be practiced and then practicing it.
They're not coaching on growth mindset. That's it. a lot of the missed opportunities that I see aren't because somebody can't memorize how to do a skill. It's because they memorize it. They do it for a bit. They don't have any broader context as to why it matters to them. There's nothing internalized.
So it just sort of floats, floats out the window.
my post the week before about we need to teach the why more than the how, but yeah yeah, you just have to go back and look at that
I got to.
I got it.
that sort of gets to my point, though is the manager report and surveys that so much time being taken up by, you know, bureaucratic type tasks. I don't have time to coach.
Yeah.
So that's why I say, so let's hire coaches.
We know, Andy, there's also a body of work out of CEB Gartner which originally came out of the HR practice, but it's spread across all of the practices called the connector manager. And actually the colleagues men wrote a book about this, which I think is in fact called the connector manager, if I'm not mistaken.
And the and the whole idea was through a whole lot of data and research, they found that this is a function agnostic. So it could be, you know, supply chain. Operations, whatever, but that the best managers weren't necessarily just coaching. They were the really, the best ones were particularly good at connecting you, the frontline person to the resources that you need, to the people you need to get better at.
So to essentially help you find solutions to your, Opportunities, your challenges. So in other words, if I may not have to be the coach, which is one of the things they found was that there were coaches as managers did pretty well, but these connector managers did even better in terms of, I may not be the right person to coach you, but I know who is, and let me put you in touch with her because she's going to be amazing and I'd love for you two to work together.
And so I think that at the very least, there's an indication that it doesn't always have to be the manager
Right. No, I
like
me
ahead, Daniel. I'm
yeah, I want to piggyback on that because we're talking right now. We've been talking about so far is about kind of 1 to 1 coaching. And I think the most effective way of coaching is one to, one to team. So what you just said, Brent, I think to do that, like at a team setting, we're going to bring in you know, the lunch and learn, subject matter expert on the deal desk or whatever.
Right. I think that the team meetings are an underutilized but highly impactful opportunity. To, to up level the team and leverage peer to peer learning and coaching, you know, you can do a team deal review a topic. So I think that from a coaching perspective, I think the manager, if they focus on that's easier to do than focusing.
I have to understand each of my 10 reps, individual skill gaps, then build a development plan for each one and coach to each one. Unless they're, you know, you're an SDR manager. Where you have to do that when you're talking about more experience, I think a better approach and emphasis is at the team level.
Okay,
and one to one is coaching. And I think those are very different types of learning that are happening. And I would challenge that every single one, if you have decided to step into a manager position, you have decided to take responsibility for your reps and that every single one of them deserves You'd have the skill sets and to make the time and to give enough Fs that you do create a personalized development plan based on the fact that, you know, the average, you know, discovery meeting to second is 70 percent and there's this 20%.
So you're like, what the heck's happening on your discovery meetings? Because once you get them past 2, you have a. 90 percent close rate, like being able to go through the data and pinpoint exactly where reps need that one to one that's not gonna work in a big training. I think that is the distinction between maybe just like a manager and somebody that is truly like a leader and a coach.
Almost more of a mentor.
Sure.
Maybe, but I think let's say I, so first of all, I'd agree with your point. So at least definitionally, that's how we, part of this stuff is definitional. Like, what do you mean when you say coaching? Right. But so the, like the the definition of coaching is customized or is tailored to the person in need of the coaching and their needs are going to be slightly different than everyone else's.
So anything else is customizable. Kind of training, which by the way, is nothing to say anything bad against training, which is kind of different because they're designed different. And they're meant to do slightly different things. But the well, I think it's really interesting then too, is a little bit your point earlier, Leslie of, or at least piggybacking on it, it's like some of the soft skill stuff.
Well, it's very possible that I became a manager without becoming good at the soft skills. Like, I don't know if I'm very empathetic or I'm not very curious. Now I've got to coach you on being empathetic or curious or whatever it is. And I may not be good Particularly good at the thing that I need to help you get better at.
And so that's why, again, I think this idea of, but I can be a resource to help find you connect you to someone who is, I think that's probably the better way to think about it. It is also Leslie, your point about, but it is kind of my responsibility as your manager, which again, just to state. Just for the record, this is why I never want to be a manager is because I don't, I'm too old for that kind of responsibility.
And even when I was young, I was too old for it. Cause it's too scary. Right. But the I don't really like to be responsible for myself, let alone anyone else. Right. So the it is, but I think that's right. You kind of not, let me take the kind out. You owe it to your team. If you're going to assume that role.
To help them otherwise, why do it? Right. And, you know, for the, because it's gotten us to your point earlier, Leslie, again, it's not for the pay. If you make more money, just be an individual contributor. Right. So if it's not that which gets you jazzed and gets you fired up as helping other people come better versions of
yep. Yep.
then why the heck would you ever want to go into management?
Because it's other than that, all the rest is crap, to be honest. Right. Unless I'm missing something.
it's the ego and just take a phrase that you used earlier. It's the lack of penalty free opt outs.
Yeah, I
People get stuck in the role, or they get stuck in the role and they realize they hate it and they just don't do the work, or there's a lot of ego that puts them in the role, and if they're an ego, predominantly ego driven person, they're also probably, Brent, not the person that's going to be like, Hey, like Daniel, full disclosure, this is not my courier of expertise.
Andy, excellent at this. Let me facilitate that introduction because
there's probably fear at play that they don't want to admit that they can't be like all the things to all the people.
I think you're right. And social pressure too. Like, you know, it's kind of like you need to grow up, be a doctor or lawyer. You need to grow up to be a manager, a general manager and work your way up the ladder. It's a, yeah, that's all. It's all true. Notice how human all this stuff is. We're talking about process and metrics.
Like these are, we're all just, we're just human beings trying to shlubber away through life. As you know, just doing the best we can is really what all this stuff ever comes down to, isn't it?
Yeah. Well, I think the thing that I want to point out to ask is for me, the motion of, Yeah. Being a sales manager is similar to what you do as a good seller. This is why people default to top performers, but you know, as a seller, I looked at my job always as, you know, understanding what's really most important to my buyer and then helping them get that right.
Isn't that what you want to do as a manager? I want to get to know my sellers. I want to understand what's most important to them. What's driving them. And then I want to help them get that.