How To Foster An Environment for A-Players with Edward Golod and Colin Kleine
Where we discuss the challenges and remedies for tech startups that know having a top-ranked salesperson will make a big difference in sales. To make them successful, there are key steps that must be taken, and learn what these are and how to implement them.
Colin, today is a continuation of the other day, one of my favorite topics about a player’s how to foster an environment for”A” players you can hire and how do you make them really productive? And how do you keep them? I know you deal with this globally, not just region. Give me your two cents on this.
I’m very glad that you asked me this question, I am going to cite examples that I have seen over 12 years and during recruitment. I have seen companies that you would think that this test solution isn’t all that exciting. But sometimes it doesn’t need to be because if you can have absolutely incredible stuff, a player you’re going to absolutely crush it. On the flip side, I’ve seen absolute market-disrupting software companies, but they just couldn’t get a ride, they kept getting in a place but then they wouldn’t stay.
What I have seen over my 12 years, is what I believe is the golden recipe for getting “A” players and retaining them.
The first one is ongoing training and development. People want to feel that they’re growing salespeople more than money, which of course is very, very important. They want to feel like they’re actually leveling up, they want to feel like they are advancing. The second one is being able to enable your “A” players. And that is providing tools, the trade, a recent trend that I’ve seen, which is taking the world by storm, is enabling them with sales tools, like the fact is, if you want to be using the Docusigns or the Zoom inflows or Lusha’s of the world, then you’re staying as somewhat of a relic and not investing in helping yourself people to be the best that they can.
The second one is it’s having a very clear vision and having the people that are within the company bought into the vision. If you have a company, which I do a lot of work with called GetDeel I’ve mentioned to you previously. Every single one of their posts, it’s 100% on brand, every single post is a rocket ship that the feeling within the company, people absolutely love working there because the genuine sense is that this is a rocket ship. Why do people love working for the apples of the world because they feel like they are changing the world? It’s classic Simon Sinek it all starts with why people work for a business because of the why of the business. So having that vision and people buying in it’s imperative. The other one is having a good culture. Now, I know that that can vary. But what I mean in this particular instance, is from the sales perspective, it’s having that vision that people are drawn to having a successful culture is celebrating success, it’s celebrating wins, it’s promoting the fact that you’re smashing it, or that someone is smashing it because that is the sort of environment that makes people bounce off one another.
It’s also having a strong inspirational leader, we probably both work for bosses that were absolutely horrible. Because that’s different from someone who’s a slave driver who’s sitting there, looking over you and telling you what to do to someone who’s in the trenches with you who gets exactly what to do. They’ve proven themselves to be successful, they’ve earned their stripes and people want to come and work for them. And then the other one is, look, the ones mentioned are hey, people what they were like paying, the pay is not always the most important one, but don’t lowball people and muck around or things like that. And the other one, though, the most important one is to appreciate your stuff. If you create an environment that shows appreciation that celebrate the successes of people. That’s how you foster an environment of a place. What are your thoughts? So let’s break it down into pieces. Let’s break it down to the first piece. You’re a co-founder owner.
You talked about leveling up, re-skilling, we all know, we all know everybody in the world listening knows.
Budgeting for sales improvement, not just training on how to close. They don’t level up but the fire quickly. So if you were running a startup, would you budget to level up your people? And then where would you level them up? You have to bring in experts. How important would that be?
I think it’s absolutely critical. It’s you and I both know this and if you speak to any successful salesperson, Brian Tracy, who is one of my absolute inspirations, I love this guy. He’s been around a long time. I love Brian Tracy in so many things that I talked about, but Brian openly speaks about you need to invest let’s say 10% of your salary into learning, growth, and development, and when organizations are able to allocate a budget, whether it be getting a personal coach, a career coach or a sales coach, the results are incredible. I’ve seen people come from the depths of achieving absolutely nothing. You and I have both seen salespeople completely struggle to turn it around and three acting on their results. It’s honestly, none of these, if you have that sort of an environment that’s going to provide the coaching, the training, and the development, people don’t leave because then people want to join because they know that when they’re coming on board, what they’re going to be receiving is world-class and not seen in most organisations.
I think it’s it’s a bonafide mistake if you happen to be right. And everybody wants leadership. So the takeaway is, the takeaway is to level them up, and I agree and bringing in Yes, a motivational speaker, or a trainer, for the same reason that my accountant who’s a CPA, and a tax attorney goes for accrediting exams every six months, he’s got to get reaccredited all the time. Why don’t we reaccredited salespeople? I think that’s a huge takeaway. So I like that number one, number two, you brought up enabling them with tools, you know, who buys sales tools that are thought up? Sales Operations. I like sales operations. I love sales. I love salespeople. I don’t think sales operations people have done 10 $20 million and beat up enough to do big deals, to always know what’s the best tool, but they know how to buy tools. So how do we teach a start-up to buy the right tools? For the right, a player not just well, I need some, you know, outbound calling tool for my team, the one for many versus the one for one. That’s a tough one.
Success leaves clues to look at what other successful businesses do and replicate them. It’s not a revolutionary concept. It’s honestly one of the simplest concepts in the world. What I would suggest for companies that are seriously thinking about this is having a read of John Barrows’s book. So having listened to some of his podcasts, he’s very heavily within the world of what sales tools are being used by Salesforce. So the best really compelling SAS companies listen to that and replicate what other successful businesses are doing. Not world-changing concepts. I’m surprised more businesses don’t do it. Yeah, I like that. And that’s something I think want to add going forward.
But if you’re hiring an A player, and you’re building an environment for them, they’re going to tell you what they want. And I would listen to them for the same reason I would listen to the pilot of a 747 plane, instead of listening to the guy pulling the tug that brings the plane out to the tarmac. So you listen to the best, you’re going to get the right optics, you bought the point about vision. I just had a I have a lovely client in Sydney. They do construction software, they’re awesome. And we just had for the first time and all hands on deck meeting. And they’re a small firm, but they’re very competent. But the small, and the all hands on deck meetings are usually when you work for much bigger firms. We’ve been in them you and I with has been 100 people, and there’s been 3000 people, and everybody comes getting a voice with 3000 is not easy. But in this instance, we had about 20 people, and everybody had a voice. And it was incredible. We’re hearing between production and sales and marketing and development and everything else. The takeaway is a player’s liked to lead. They like to go forward. Because they’re a players. They’re the ones whether it’s raining or snowing or there’s a hurricane, they’re going to get things done. So when you bring them in and you say to them, we’d like to have an all hands on meeting. Let’s talk about our company vision. Why don’t you talk about our sales vision, and what our clients are struggling with? And what our big customers are struggling with, and why they’re coming to us. And they’re begging us to help understand their business deeper. I think that’s an A player conversation. But I haven’t seen many startups doing that. So I’d love you to take on the all hands on deck meeting where the vision is transcribed, but yet sales has a very good voice in that.
I don’t really know how much more to add other than what you mentioned. I have seen it time and time and time again, with a
startup is launched and they raise, let’s just say $20 million. And then it goes to $120 million. And they’re ramping and they’re scaling. And this is part of the organisational culture. It’s having those meetings and getting your A players to present around what is the vision? What is the strategy having product to present on borders division? What is the strategy? Because that’s one of the points that I mentioned earlier. It’s people being completely bought in to the why it’s classic Simon Sinek what you’re talking about, people are drawn to the vision and the values of an organisation. And when you’re doing that, that is a byproduct of having those visions and values.
I think you’re right. So this is a another straight talk with Cullen and Ed, about how do you foster an environment for a player and if you’d like more information on hiring and a player we’d love to share with you we got books that you could read and links is changed my business is changed my life. I am in a player. I got my job at Eloqua by convincing the right executive on the spot. And in five minutes he realised I was an A player and I got the job and that was one of the best jobs I had. So thanks for listening, and we will talk to you soon.
Looking forward too, thanks for listening