Tim Kubiak's Bowties and Business Podcast

10 Things High Performing Salespeople Know is a Waste of Their Time

July 21, 2020 Tim Kubiak Episode 28
Tim Kubiak's Bowties and Business Podcast
10 Things High Performing Salespeople Know is a Waste of Their Time
Show Notes Transcript

"10 things top-performing salespeople know is a waste of their time." Reverent is not something this one is as we poke fun at leadership and marketing along with offering advice and best practices to correct these items.

You can find us as Bowties and Business on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and a host of other services. There are other high performance sales tools available at https://timkubiak.com


10 Things High Performing Salespeople Know is a Waste of Their Time

  1. Endless Pipeline Reviews so you feel “good” about the company number.
  2. Committing Unnatural Acts for “Upside” to Help the Company Make Up for All the Schmucks that Can’t Close a Deal.
  3. Get Your Customer Base to Attend Webinars so marketing can keep selling webinars to vendors instead of helping you make sales.
  4. Being Asked to Share Wins because No One Else is Winning
  5. Increased Quota to Make Sure My Manager Hits Their Nut and Keeps Their Gig.
  6. Every CFO Thinking You are Making Too Much Money.
  7. Products or Services that get dreamed up, have no market demand and no customer research showing they do but you are expected to “make them happen” and push it anyway.
  8. Updating CRM as a CheckBox Exercise
  9. Adding “Customer’s” to Marketing's Mailing List
  10. Being Treated Like All the Others Sales People Instead of the Snipers They Are
Tim Kubiak :

Hi, thanks for listening. I'm Tim Kubiak. And I'm the host of bow ties and business. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at bow ties and business and on Twitter at bow ties and b i z. Today's episode is 10 things top performing salespeople know is a waste of time. So if you like it, please subscribe. You can find us on Apple podcast, Spotify and a host of other services. You can find the full length video as well as each of the 10 things cut into their own segments on YouTube. So like, share, tell your friends leave us a review. Thanks. Hi, this Tim Kubiak we're going to talk a little bit about 10 things from our 30 things high performing salespeople need and once but I'll never tell you Siri so we're going to have a good time with it. It's good to be direct into the point we're not pulling any punches, because frankly, we're in a world where you can't pull any punches. So with that, just kind of jumping ahead 10 things high performing sales people know is wasted time. This is the crap companies load on sales guys and girls all the time. So we're just going to go right in. And the first one is endless pipeline reviews. So management feels good about the company number. Steve in the last quarter, did you see a bunch of companies writing extra reviews thinking they pull stuff out of nowhere?

Steve U :

Well, I'll tell you more about this infamous deep dive. So the deep dive into every opportunity and the challenges that you're in, we're talking about high performing sales reps, the ones that continue to make their number in good times and not so good times. And boy, I'll tell you, it became an exercise of them just continuing to repeat where an opportunity was first getting any coaching on how to do anything differently or a different approach.

Tim Kubiak :

Yeah, in Azar, right didn't turn up any new diamonds in a wasted time on opportunities that were worthless, instead of focusing in like a laser on the ones that really could have made the difference.

Steve U :

Absolutely.

Tim Kubiak :

Number two on 10 things high performing salespeople know is a waste of their time, right? That's creating upside to make up for all the schmucks in your company that can't sell. We watch high performers go through this all the time, where they're asked to bring in deals early commit unnatural acts to make sales because somebody else's business didn't come in. See, what advice do you have for high performers in this situation?

Steve U :

Well, again, I think it's, you know, having that discussion with their leadership team to say they committed to it, and they're gonna do everything they can to make it happen. They've been asked their entire career to brand additional deals so that their manager can make a number. But I'll tell you some of the counseling I give high performers is make sure that leader understands that their job is to get everyone contributing, not just the high performers to make up for the other sellers that aren't bringing in any kind of revenue or gross margin.

Tim Kubiak :

Yet, the thing I'll add to that is if they're asking you to bring in deals early, and you're in a cap commission plan, make sure you're not anymore. Number three things that salespeople know is a waste of time, getting customers to webinars to keep marketing happy, guys, for anybody who doesn't know it. Here's how marketing works. In most resellers and distribution companies within the technology field, they function off of Co Op. So marketing makes a profit every time they run a webinar, they could give a crap. If they're delivering valuable content that your customers are going to use. They're going to help you to lead this sale. What they care about is getting people's butts in chairs, whether they do anything with it or not to show that as their success metric. Screw your sales so they can keep selling webinars. So getting customers to webinars with a content is bad. I understand it's a political game, but it's not worth it. Save it for when it's really valuable for your customer. Steve advice for you, from you on what you've seen vendors do that add value to the sales teams on webinars.

Steve U :

Well, I'll tell you number one, I've just seen some really creative innovative type things where the vendors themselves are inviting the reseller customers. So one is like a wine tasting event so they'll actually ship some wine out they'll have a wine Somali you know, though, run them through the the various wines and you know, they get their their product and solution solution message there, but it's something different. actually saw another vendor have a comedian take on the last 30 minutes of a 40 or an hour and 15 Minute Webinar. So some of those are great, but to your point early on, back to the company cannot just continue Back to the same 20 accounts of which are owned by three of the top sales performers. There becomes a webinar fatigue out there, and they're tired of being asked to continue to market to their same customer base once again, go to leadership and lean on the other people that are responsible to drive new accounts, new market activity, and lean on them to get different people to attend webinars.

Tim Kubiak :

10 things high performing salespeople know is a waste of their time. Number four being asked to share wins because no one else is winning. This one can go a host of directions. It can be additional work in dog and pony shows at qbrs, whether internal or external, but it can also be being asked to bring other reps into your deal to help prop them up. Steve, how should a top performer handle being asked to share their wins.

Steve U :

So top my experience top performers love sharing some of their more complex and competitive wins. But they also expect that if they're sharing that kind of information that the rest of the team will take some of those best practices they're sharing and implement them. So again, the biggest challenge is you continue to go back to again 20% of the team what your your high performers. And every week, every month, every quarter, they're asked to talk about their marquee wins, yet no, there's no take up on it on the other 80% of the team. So one of the things that I continue to coach our high performers on is it's okay to say no, I really don't want to share any more wins because it's not creating any kind of change in sales organization itself. So again, back to leadership, leadership has to take those 80% and say, if we're going to take the time out of the top performers day to share these, we're gonna actually take the best practices and apply them to other customer opportunities.

Tim Kubiak :

And things high performing sales people know as a waste of their time. Number five, inflated quotas to make sure that their manager hits or not, and keeps their gig. How often have we seen comp plan shifted, and quotas inflated? So a leadership team and a company can absolutely bank their number to the disadvantage of the high performing and even the the average performing sales rep. See, what does that impact on the sales reps commitment to the company, and commitment to their brand and they're lined? What happens when they did they get nailed with a number they just can't make?

Steve U :

Well, again, right? I think my experiences when you sit down with high performers, they actually want to make more money than the company wants them to make. Which means if they have a good comp plan the company I'll actually make more money. But when it gets out of whack when a top performer says and let's just use round numbers that don't deliver a million dollars of gross margin. And then their management team comes back and says I need you to do 1.5 million. And the reason they want you to do 1.5 isn't because they want you to make more money and be more successful is what they want is that $500,000 and they're not going to get from the other part of the team. That absolutely is a D motivator for high performing reps. We've all been asked to do that in our career. What we're seeing is it's being asked a lot more again, given the the selling situations that we're in today. And my experience is high performers are absolutely not excited about the fact that they're being asked to do more to make up again for the team that's not delivering to a bare minimum

Tim Kubiak :

10 things high performing salespeople knows a waste of their time. Number six, the CFO thinking you're making too much money. Steve, how often do you see finance organizations trying to chisel sales people's earnings?

Steve U :

Well, again, I think fortunately the client base we're complaint on we address this very quickly again the comp plan that we work with our clients and then help the sales organization not only understand it but and this isn't a bad term exploited and but what we have seen is where that finance organization starts seeing again, these high six figure even low seven figure come commission statements and saying, boy, we're paying too much money, my experiences that the CEO and or that VP of Sales has to be the person to go fight high performers in every organization should be some of the top paid people in any organization. Whether it's a technology organization, a manufacturing organization, that doesn't matter, they should be some of the highest paid people. And real D motivator for those folks is when they've earned it. And it's against the comp plan that's been given them. And then it's talked about either behind the scenes or even front of the scenes. That is something the biggest risk where companies actually lose high performers, is when there's a belief in the company that they're making too much money.

Tim Kubiak :

Yeah, I love when I love when the CFO pulls out while it was a bluebird, right, because they're not pulling, they're not pulling any of that out when the quarters are tough. But when a big deal comes in, right, and somebody makes something happen fast, because they got a competitive advantage, because there was an impending event, they want to play the blue burden, oh, you shouldn't get full comp on that. And I've watched top reps, walk from companies over that as well, they should 10 things high performing salespeople knows a waste of their time, products and services that have no market demand. Now, Steve and I work a lot with technology companies. And we understand that sometimes people are ahead of the market, are on the front edge of the market and demand isn't there yet. So we're not actually talking about technology shifts, business shifts and things that are going to happen. And by the way, the first market doesn't always win. Often, it's the second or third the market in the old analogy is Betamax versus VHS for those of you that are old enough to remember, those were types of videotapes. And for those of you that aren't and stream, everything, Google that'll show you what the difference is. But that said, so often, we watch great companies roll out products or services that their customers aren't asking for. They're not listening to what the customers want. And then they go put the onus on their high performing sales people to try and get them to drive that demand and create that demand, rather than understanding what customers need and doing fulfillment of that demand or innovation on that need. Steve advice for anyone asked to push a product that frankly, there's just no end user asking for today?

Steve U :

Yeah, I think this goes to one of the things that high performing sales people want that is, what is the appetite in their customer base for additional products and solution sets. And they'll very quickly and rightfully so pushback, they'll know their clients well enough to say, Hey, I don't believe right now, this is the right time to introduce this type of technology or solution. I don't believe this is the right person or the right function to drive it to. And, you know, you know, our approach, Tim, I mean, one of the things that we drive every day is that does what it is we're bringing to a client, help them make money or help them save money. And high performing sales reps can articulate that very quickly. And if it isn't, my suggestion, and while we continue to coach our clients on is that they will not introduce it to those accounts, unless there is a learning curve. And that often is what the cases where if you map a new solution to an account and talk about how it could help that account maker save money, then that high performing rapidly all over if you just say, you've got to build that bridge and figure it out yourself, they're going to continue to sell the things that continue to make or save their clients money.

Tim Kubiak :

Ten things high performing sales people know is a waste of their time. Updating CRM is a checkbox exercise. A lot of what we teach a lot of what we coach to is about accentuating CRM as a tool and making it more effective for you we're so sales opportunity management, which simply putting contacts in a CRM system, simply updating dates, or having touch points, when there isn't an impending event or something as a few days or weeks or months out, doesn't help anybody. If you're a top performing sales people, the person, you're going to have your eye on the deals that matter. You're going to be working those deals, yes, they should progress through the CRM system. However your company's designed it, but simply updating them and retouching them, especially when you're talking about dozens, if not hundreds of deals in some cases, is simply a waste of time for a high performer. Steve any thoughts on this.

Steve U :

High performers know how to use CRM, and if they don't, some of the things that we help them with how to use CRM to their advantage. And it's a massive platform that can enable success. But when it's asked to be updated, and then nobody looks at it if it was updated, or if they look at it, and they they run a report at the executive level, and it doesn't have exactly what they want, then it's that screenshare in today's world where a high performer is literally regurgitating everything that's in CRM, but now having to put it into a format. One of the things that we work with obviously is the administrators themselves to build the CRM so added adds value to those top performers. And, you know, there's not a top performer out there that won't use a CRM that'll help them benefit, help them benefit them and help them sell more. But they certainly don't want to do it 2, 3, 4 times a week, so that management's happy, but it didn't help them move any deal further along the sales cycle.

Tim Kubiak :

10 things high performing salespeople know is a waste of their time. Number nine, adding customer contacts to marketing's mailing list. I know I love the bash marketing, my favorite thing to do is sit down with the CMO and ask them to tag their efforts to sales opportunities and business they've driven and they hate it. Because it's not a feel good metric. It's not a tick box, it's who showed up or how many they have or what their open rate is or what the click through rate is, it ties it to real revenue. And while a database if your customer contacts, it's important for you to have as a high performing sales professional, and it's important for your company to have to be able to market to simply adding names to the list does nothing for you Steve, can you think of a single example of where adding a name to the list so marketing could mail something out, actually drove sale?

Steve U :

No Matter of fact, I've seen the inverse that by again asking top performers to add names to the database so that we can go market to them de-incentivizes that rep to put anything in CRM. So the exact opposite occurs. Again, you need to challenge your organization and you need to change and treat your high performing sales professionals differently than you treat the majority of your sales team. And therefore that majority of the sales team that is their job to add names so that we can market to them. But it's not go add names in a high performing sales reps account, so that marketing can check off a box.

Tim Kubiak :

Last but not least 10 things high performing salespeople know is a waste of their time. Number 10. being treated like all the other sales people instead of the snipers, they are. Look, odds are your top performer or your top performing salespeople as a sales leader are driving 80% of the revenue 80% of the profit or probably 20% of your selling staff. So you can't treat them. Like it's all the same. This isn't kindergarten, this is a profession. So treat the professionals like professionals and babysit the kids and get the people that aren't doing the job the hell out of the organization and find your next level top performers. Steve, thoughts on things you can do to support a high performing sales person and separate them further from the pack.

Steve U :

I think it's number one, you know, we all believe and we know this selling is a team sport. On one hand, on the other hand, there's a reason that we all have sales rankings, and that there's president's club and that there's high performing clubs and that there's commission plans. So not all sales reps are created equal. And that's based on results. So again, I think the idea is you don't want to treat and if you look at any professional sports team, they have their stars, and then they have the team that you can't just win with stars. But you also can't win with just mediocre team, you've got to have a blend of both and recognizing that in the sales world is critically important. And I think we've talked about it in this conversation. The way that you treat a high performing sales rep is by making sure other people start carrying their weight. And oh by the way, once other people start carrying their weight, you're gonna see that high performing sales reps even picked up their game more because they want to always continue to keep the distance between their results and the rest of the team.

Tim Kubiak :

And failing to do that to use a football analogy, is like taking an all pro wide receiver and trying to make them your nose guard right. It just doesn't fit they're not fit for purpose. So, I hope you've enjoyed this. We've broken it up into 10 different videos, we have it all running as one master video. But one of the things we want to talk about just for a few seconds is some things you can do. Whether you're a sales leader, or a high performing sales person or someone who aspires to be, first of all go to TimKubiak.com . I've got a host of free resources on there. Sign up for the weekly newsletter. It's called the weekly sales leader. Imagine that it's competitive world guys. Sorry, not politically correct. Sales is, as Steve says, a contact sport. The other thing I do like to do is have si share a few minutes with you about the value of high performance sales coaching, and what we do with top performers.

Steve U :

Okay, so we can say, let's Tim think about it. And you know, whether you're a golf fan or not, the one thing that has occurred in our lifetime is to watch a person take over the golf game guy named Tiger Woods, here's a stat Tiger Woods spends more money on coaching and coaching been from a physical standpoint for all of the strength coaching, he's got swing coaches, he's got putting coaches, he's got mine coaches that get his mindset, right. He's got an on field coach called a caddy. And he's got myriads of other coaches. And I actually read a statistic where Tiger Woods spent more money on coaching than some of the PGA professionals one in their entire career. So why would the best person at their sport take on so much coaching, it's because they're never satisfied, they want to do more, they want to get better, they want to achieve things that no one ever thought they achieve to include themselves. My experience, the same thing is true with high professional and high performing sales reps. And that is, if they've always been at 120% of their number, they want to get to 150%. What we see in the marketplaces, the investment and continuing to help develop and coach those high performers, is is non existent in the marketplace, all of those dollars. And there's not a lot a lot of dollars spent on training, development or coaching at all, but it's always spent on helping c players become the players B players become a players. What we've seen is if you double down and invest in your best, they'll generate 20 to 30% more, and anyone can run the math on that. If you get 20 to 30% more from your top performers that far outweighs getting 5060 70% more from a CD player. So again, high performance coaching, if you take it from a tiger woods perspective, and you think of all the amount of time, effort and money he spent to get the return to win at two PGA events, to win all of the majors come back from four back surgeries, three knee surgeries, and to get to the top of the top of the game and win the Masters last year. The same appetite. I see in high performing sales reps, they want to be coached, they want to be helped. They want to be challenged because they're want to take their game to a new record level.

Tim Kubiak :

Thanks again for listening to Bowties and business. As I said, please subscribe. leave us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, and a host of other services as that quick review 10 things high performing salespeople know is a waste of their time. Endless pipeline reviews, committing unnatural acts for upside, getting your customer base attend webinars that isn't a benefit to them, being asked to share wins because no one else is winning. Increase quota to make sure your manager hits a number and keeps a gig. The CFO thinking you're making too much money, products and services that get dreamed up but have no market share. Updating CRM is a checkbox exercise, adding customers to marketing's mailing list and I'm telling you there's a lot of CMOS that are my friends that are going to hate me after this one. They'll get over it and being treated like all the other salespeople when you're a high performing sniper, if you're interested in what high performing sales coaching can do for you. Come to Tim kubiak.com there's chance to book a session with us to have the conversation no charge, no obligation. Look forward to talking to you