Revenue Harvest

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features John McMahon, author of The Qualified Sales Leader and five-time CRO. Effective sales uses language that can be understood. Within sales teams, aligning the common terminologies is critical when companies are scaling and taking on massive amounts of new team members.

When it comes to the actual hiring process, companies can calculate the risk they have to take before taking on a new hire and apply tools like Profile XT to match the best prospects. John also points out that assessing character should be done alongside skills and culture fit.

Hiring in the sales leader position or higher has a huge impact on company success. In the event of underperforming hires, there are strategies you can use to identify key strengths. Sometimes, problematic sales leaders need to learn that, beyond delivering revenue numbers, excellent performance also means being a team player.

You can connect with John in the links below:

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Alice Heiman, Founder & Chief Sales Energizer at Alice Heiman, LLC. Good selling is still good selling even without geographical territories.

Alice shares how to transition your sales around the customer and do business the way the market wants to do business. She explains the benefits of aligning your sales people with buying methods and how to use team selling to service larger clients.

She shares her process of segmenting prospects and rating and ranking accounts based on metrics other than territory. Alice also discusses the importance of having a CRM and how this can be used to manage relations and measure salespeople on the level of their client relationships.

For your sales reps, Alice explains that leaderboards should display how deals come in, perhaps via referrals, to show the quality of the deals coming in.

You can connect with Alice in the links below:

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Justin Welsh, Co-Founder of Audience & Income. Creating a meaningful personal brand on platforms like LinkedIn can have significant impacts on your corporate brand.

Not only can this significantly grow your network, you can also meet other leaders who can shortcut your career goals. Justin stresses the importance of investing in yourself especially through courses created by market and thought leaders.

While becoming the best at what you do is certainly admirable, Justin also explains that you don't always have to be the guy and that other people can certainly be the best person for a certain job. He also shares that taking time off to decompress before taking on your next big role helps stave off burnout.

You can connect with Justin in the links below:

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Andy Raskin who helps CEOs align their teams around a strategic narrative. This strategic narrative shows how there used to be an old game of how to win in the world, but now there's a new game and look how all the winners are starting to play it already.

Andy shares how he helps CEOs form leadership groups that can shape the strategic narrative of the company. It is important to show the winners and the losers of this new game and how CEOs can become winners too.

He uses the example of ownership versus subscription and how the unicorns have all shifted to providing services instead of selling products. Andy also advises companies to ask their customers what can change their life and how you can align yourself to that.

You can connect with Andy in the links below:

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Rory Vaden, Co-Founder of Brand Builders Group and bestselling author of Take the Stairs. Managing time is a misnomer as the only thing anyone can really manage is their own self.

To truly multiply your time, you must choose the activities you do today that will lead to more time tomorrow. Rory discusses some mental prisons of our own construction which include procrastination techniques that can cleverly look like productivity.

Rory also explains the data they found that people are more likely to work for, buy from, and recommend someone with an established personal brand. This has far-reaching consequences for companies and the metrics they use to recruit top talent.

Some benefits of finding talent with personal brands include credibility from being associated with your company, higher sales, more trusted recruiting, and increased brand awareness.

You can connect with Rory in the links below:

This is the debut episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast season 2 with Nigel Green. Joining today's conversation is Nicole Moberg, CEO of Thrive Senior Living, as she breaks down the 3 phases of hiring a great sales team: you select us, we select you, and the alignment of expectations.  

Nicole uses 5 main elements to guide this decision-making process, such as identifying the core competencies that you require of a sales role, building a bench, using a framework to inform hiring decisions, requiring character references, and using tools like Predictive Index.  

Hiring the best salespeople takes more than just HR recommendations. It requires constant work to build your sales network, strategic use of compensation negotiations to finally make an offer, and following a sales success framework. Nicole also shares some red flags sales leaders should watch out for when hiring new talents.

HIGHLIGHTS

03:43 5 core elements in the selection process before hiring

05:08 Identifying core competencies and building a bench

15:28 Don't rely on HR recommendations and do character checks yourself

18:27 Using Predictive Index and spotting good character references

23:25 Other factors that affect hiring: Biases, experience, and intuition

29:42 Navigating the question of compensation and making an offer

36:24 Assessing new hires: 4 to 5 week training program and quarterly assimilations

39:07 Recognizing red flags: What to watch out for and noticing nonverbal cues

QUOTES

05:46 "Looking at the outcomes and then defining, working backwards in a sense, and defining okay, with that outcome that we're looking for, what is then the criteria? What is the competency that we're looking for?"

08:34 "This may or may not be unusual for some people, but we'll sit down and have dinner or lunch or coffee not only with the candidate but with their support system. And that could be a family member, that could be a partner, a husband, wife."

19:18 "If I believe that they could potentially be coached on that gap, Predictive Index has a really good job of offering up areas of opportunity in the form of interview questions. So I usually do it in what I would call phase 2 of the selection process."

25:46 "Staying true to your system that you've laid out can be challenging especially if you've not built the bench and you're trying to catch up with an opening and fill it quickly. You tend to, at that point, feel a little bit more desperate."

39:17 "That victim mentality, that I versus they, that skipping around without a great explanation, and that mentality of the grass is always greener, I think those red flags are really important not to ignore."

You can connect with Nicole in the link below:

Email is not dead. The phone is not dead. Yet so many sales teams but all their eggs in the LinkedIn basket. It's the person and their content connected to the email and phone that’s broken. Although sales processes have shifted with new tools, the opportunity in understanding how to structure outreach in a way that gets people to want to engage with you in a conversation hasn’t.

Join Marcus Murphy, the CEO of The Five Percent and Board of Advisor member to LinkedIn, in a conversation around building sales teams from scratch and making the most of LinkedIn.

Show notes:

• When you're coming in to build a brand new sales team at a company that's never had one, you have to understand and fall in line with the momentum they've already built. And you have to find a way to amplify what already works.
  
• Email is not dead. The phone is not dead. It's the person and their content connected to the email and phone that’s broken.
  
• You’re doing yourself a disservice if you don't see the value of LinkedIn with your people and how they're using it.
  
• Engaged/open conversations is a great KPI for LinkedIn InMail as opposed to an automated spray and pray model. Send 20 personalized, intentional, targeted messages that are going to result in a much bigger response than 100 automated ones.
  
• If you've taken yourself out of the teacher role, then you are killing your team slowly.
  
• If you’re growing out of cash capital, then you have to home grow your talent. Take high performers in the customer support team and graduate them into an MDR, SDR, BDR type roles, working them into being a well-rounded senior account executive.
  
• If you’re growing a team from scratch, be the first person that goes through the sales process so you create a wash and repeat process. Be mindful that if you are senior in your sales role, there are tactics you may try that are not repeatable for someone less polished and experienced.
  
• The sales process is shifting, however there are some tools in your inside sales playbook that have remained the same such as a CRM to organize your current customers and potential. Zoom, chat, LinkedIn and some type of outreach software should be investments for your sales processes if they’re not already there.
• Followup tends to be the least amount of effort and energy exercised by a sales leader, but it seems to be one of the most beneficial and crucial parts that leaders constantly overlook.
  
• If you're going to be a thought leader, be a thought leader in what your prospective customer cares about.
  
• Good thought leadership focuses on answering questions for the customer and addressing pain points.
  
• Having a personal brand is only helpful if you have built a large enough platform that you have more credibility to introduce your reps and your people to conversations that they normally would just get rejected on.
  
• The same things that make you really competitive, and make you a successful sales leader, are also the same things that have this ability to unleash the darkness that's in you, and you’ve got to do the work to keep that in check.

More often than not, the relationship between marketing and sales is siloed at best or it's adversarial, at worse.There’s no better time to lean into digital and for these organizations to unite. In this episode, Andrew Dumont draws on ways for sales and marketing organizations to be aligned on their shared revenue goals.

The world of work has essentially changed forever with virtual selling. Many organizations may not have the luxury of augmenting their salesforce with talents that is more naturally suited for this environment, however there is a real opportunity to use this new medium to make our sales teams even better. Ted Olsen leads this conversation in helping sales leaders understand how to coach individuals who are struggling in the new environment by continuing to tap into their natural strengths

Ted Olson currently leads the rapidly expanding partner activation channel at The Predictive Index (PI). Prior to this role, Ted built the direct sales team at PI that broke every record in the 65 year history of the company.

Show notes:

• Many folks who are now struggling to adapt their presentation, their ability to ask good questions in a virtual environment is because it's a different medium. To be able to pivot, and do it well is challenging for many. That said, the digital environment is ideal for really sharpening and honing your sales skills because you can use data such as talk time, interaction time, and patience scores to improve.
  
• If your top performers are coming to you with a list of “B player” excuses (I can't get my call cadence right, prospects aren't responding; the environment's really difficult), the first thing is to set the tone that that's not okay.
  
• When it comes to rethinking goals for the second half of 2020, it is up to the sales leader to inform the management team of the changes. For example, based on the data that we have so far, based on reduced number of leads, etc., we can begin to project and forecast new numbers and figure out some creative approaches that will help us find our way through the storm.
  
• Everyone is looking for help in navigating the storm. And right now B players are not going to last in this storm. They're going to be siphoned out.
  
• The same way that professional sports uses data and stats to understand which players to put on the field, in which order, in which position, working on the same goals to deliver on the goal, that's what Predictive Index does to build a winning sales team.
• The discipline of talent optimization, (which is the idea of using data to understand your people so you understand what naturally resonates with them), so you can tap into those superpowers, is a sales leader’s secret weapon.
  
• Every sales environment is different. Data helps you to understand your people so you understand what naturally resonates with them and their behavioral styles to know which environment will best suit them.
  
• Some sales systems and environments are operationalized and process-driven that you need a different type of person to be super effective in that environment versus the more typical, stereotypical salesperson who is naturally persuasive and can think quickly on their feet.
  
• The world of work has essentially changed forever with more remote work.
  
• There are behavioral drives that you can recognize and pick up with PI software that helps sales leaders understand who are those that can really struggle in an environment, in a virtual environment and who are perfectly capable of functioning at a very high level in a remote environment.

What’s your process for checking your self-awareness? How much of a priority are you putting on your emotional and mental wellness as a leader? When leaders are self-aware and emotionally fit, that's when they’re truly integrated and whole leaders.

A good value review includes both retrospective and prospective views. In this episode, Jeremey Donovon, the SVP of Sales Strategy and Operations at SalesLoft, breaks down systematic data collection tactics and how to build better relationships with existing customers by delivering value at your next value review meeting.

Show notes:

• The golden rule is: Do unto others as you would have done to you. But, the platinum rule is: Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.
  
• Part of what drives leaders to act poorly to their team is the fear of failure, fear of losing their sense of title, or position that they have.
  
• As you think about transitioning from sales into leadership and the importance of analytics, you don’t need to be excessively analytical, but you do need to think about the concept of A/B testing. Particularly, if you're prospecting: what is the mix of touches that you need to do? When you do those touches? How do you need to tune your talk tracks? How do you need to tune your emails? Your social engagement, etc.? Look what people are testing and finding, and then attempt those on your own and see if they work for you specifically.
  
• As a leader, don’t become a slave to the dashboard and the data. It's incredibly easy for a frontline sales manager to get lost in tools and data, and not actually "ride along" either in-person, or by listening to call recordings and providing commentary on call recordings.
  
• Analysis is important as a sales manager, but don't let that get in the way of actually coaching your reps.
  
• As you move up in sales leadership roles, you should shift to an analytical skill of interpretation and action, rather than an analytical skill of analysis and recommendation.
  
• As a leader, try to delegate deeper analysis work so you can focus on the interpretation of data.
  
• Pipeline coverage is an old school way of forecasting, but it refuses to die.
  
• To assign accounts, look at 10 or 15 diverse sources of information such as LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and then build an algorithm that predicts what is likely to be a good account and what is not likely to be a good account, and then use those predictive scores in order to assign accounts.
  
• A good value review includes both retrospective and prospective views. When meeting with an account, look at what was delivered during the course of the engagement and include a prospective view of, now here are the new ideas that we think are high leverage ideas for you should you wish to continue the relationship.  

Most sales leaders are terrified of the Board of Directors. The narrative with your customers is important, but how are you shaping the narrative with your board? Gaining your board’s respect starts with presenting a strong annual strategic plan. In this episode, Michael Burcham talks through the mechanisms of an iterative planning process that evolves with the market and engages the voice of the customer.

Michael Burcham spends his time working to build businesses as a CEO, Strategist, Entrepreneur, Educator and Executive Coach. He currently serves as Executive Partner with Shore Capital Partners. Throughout his career, Michael has scaled and sold 3 healthcare organizations – Theraphysics, ParadigmHealth, and Narus Health. He is also the founding President & CEO of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center where he served from 2010 - 2015.

Show notes:

• Planning is an iterative process that involves gathering market intelligence, bringing that intelligence back to the company, and as the market slowly evolves and moves, you know how to work contingency plans and update your plan as you go.
  
• Successful planning means watching all the signals coming from the environment and having contingencies set to go so that they can be adjusted week to week as needed.
  
• Customer sentiment shifts overtime: what worked a year ago won't work today, or maybe even six months ago won't work today.
  
• The sales leader and the sales team are the primary voice of the customer. The messages the sales team brings back of both successes and misses should shape and inform the planning process.
  
• Performance around process provides powerful insight.
  
• Frequent, fruitful conversations on where you’re hitting the mark and where you’re missing the mark between the sales leader and board is key.
  
• When a company does strategic planning without the sales leader present, it becomes everybody's best guess of what we're going to do and how we’re going to resource it.
  
• If sales plans fail, it's not because of a lack of resources. It's because of a lack of resourcefulness.
  
• Ask good questions. By asking good questions, you can get a beautiful, crystal-clear picture of what is or isn't happening.
  
• It's imperative that a sales leader have an opportunity to interact with the company's advisors who are helping guide the overall strategic direction of the company, because without revenue, there is no strategic growth, and the drivers of revenue are the folks leading sales.
  
• Once you lose control of the narrative with your customer, you are virtually guaranteed to lose control of the narrative with your board.
  
• If you’re a sales leader going into a board meeting, prepare as if you were going to see a serious sales prospect. You wouldn't walk in cold and not be prepared for the meeting.
  
• Ultimately, it's the entire team that makes a company hit its sales target.
  
• Understand you are part of the team and you're given the privilege to be the messenger of the company. But it only works when the entire company is working as a team to hit its quarterly number. And if you take all the credit for the sale, you have to also take all the credit for the miss, and neither are ever really true.
  
• Never forget the first 100 days with a customer.
  
• If you can't grow at a rate that's faster than the rate the business or the team is growing, you will be replaced. There's never been more need for a coach.