Dave Kennett, CEO of Replayz | Sales Coaching & Excellence | SSP Interview

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth in 10X businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders, dissect what's worked for them, dispel myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Thank you so much for joining me on the sales versus marketing podcast where we speak with sales marketing and business leaders, I'm your host Scott and today we are sitting down with the CEO of Replays Dave Kenneth. Now Dave is a tenured sales leader so he has over 20 years of sales experience. He has worked in both startup land and enterprise and big business. He has held progressively more senior roles as his career has progressed from individual contributor way back when to various director of sales roles, VP sales roles. He's worked with household names such as Hootsuite, Pay Furma, he's been VP sales at neck points and buddy build which was actually acquired by Apple. So he's held quite a variety of different sales leadership roles which is why I'm very excited to speak to him about what he's doing now at Replays. So I'm going to hand it over to Dave who's going to give a little bit of a background about who he is and his origin story and then we can speak a little bit about his company and what he's working on now. So thank you. Awesome. Thanks Scott. So yeah in terms of my experience, as you mentioned, I've been in sales for, in sales game for like 20 years now, basically right out of university and even including my work terms at university, like I would remember working for a water company and literally like slogging water door to door saying hey do you want a free water trial? And you know even that was very informative in my career because I was in charge of like driving top of funnel and getting those leads in right and then someone else would call them in two weeks and close them and even back then I had a very high discomfort with that right. Someone else closing my own leads it's like you know so I guess I was like the equivalent of the you know late 1990s SDR but face to face right and so even even more brutal than calling. Yeah right. But you know you'd walk into a hair salon there'd be a million people get their hair down and be like hey is there a manager here? Do you guys want water? But you know obviously a very informative experience in humbling you know all that fun stuff and you know what I had a good closer who actually made me look good so that we're talking about. But yeah so you know I started up in startup world for about three and a half years when I got out of school and then I went into big business. Someone said to me hey kid they said to me back then I wish they'd say that to me now you know go in a big business early learn on their dime so I actually did that I worked for a WWE Ranger you know it was then a $6 billion company much larger now and got a lot of you know that's where I got my first start in sales leadership and then moved to auto trader and was director of sales for a British Columbia here in Canada and was there in a pretty pivotal time actually in their history when they were transitioning from print to online so it was you know a make it or break it period of years that I was very fortunate to be part of and certainly look back and go I was going to say the original digital transformation it actually really was man actually really was and so you know you're right and so from there I was there for three and a half years and then moved into startup land and been there pretty much ever since you know the last eight or nine years I worked for different startups as had a sales and would help grow it for better for worse and you know I had some it's all been phenomenal experience but certainly I've had ones that have had better product market fit than others and and so I've we've had ones that were successful and ones that that weren't so and then you know leads me to today where I started a company called Replays where we we help organizations really do more call coaching and and use a standardized process for doing that it's one of those things that I wish I had but anyway that's that's just kind of the quick quick and dirty on my my last 20 years no it's good so so why why replays what did you what did you experience over big business and startup that led you to want to to do this so dive a little bit more into like the you know the state of of sales coaching because you're you know obviously you're the expert at that now and you that's what prompted you to do what you're doing so I want to sort of frame up and T up why replays is a is a company yeah for sure actually something on that note you just said as saying that I'm an expert you have no idea how much pressure there is when I'm doing a sales call which I do pretty much every day multiple times a day and they're like judging the whether they're going to move forward on our business based on how I sell right so and and it's funny I actually pitch to my old boss from like 10 years ago yesterday and he started coaching me halfway through the call in front of the CRO and I was like no dude no you know it was it was actually awesome because we had a good laugh about it and it was a good ability for me to also very humbly say hey listen like this is why we all need coaching we all have blind spots every single one of us and so when I go on to call with senior executive folks and I'm walking through replays and doing a discovery and that kind of thing like hey there's probably a few things you've seen in the last four five minutes we're like I would have done that differently but that's the whole point it's not just for junior reps right you look at any professional athlete they've got coaches they to take them not to them up to the next level and so but anyway to answer your question you know going back to it's probably the way I think the best way to answer your question on sort of why coaching and and and what's a good process for doing et cetera is you go back to one of the companies I worked for about 15 years ago and they invested a few million bucks in really good sales process and yeah they rolled it out and there was no follow up to that there was no train the trainer right and about a year later we we were very data driven organization a year later we realized wait a second we actually haven't seen movement uh we saw an initial lift upwards but then it it really fell off and so we called them back in and this happened to be a very lucky time if right when I became a sales leader and they implemented a train the trainer program with the same methodology and that's where we would as sales leaders every week when we had our sales meetings we would do role plays for half an hour um and we would um do role plays over calls throughout the week as well and we really built this culture of coaching we'd have coaching forms we'd hand those into our sales like as a sales leader I would hand it into my director and the director would make sure we had x number of calls per month etc so that's really where when when I think of how to kind of model a great phenomenal coaching culture that one hit a bunch of the tenants at least it was emerging that way when I started there and you know I think where we fall in short with um I sort of say we as an industry as a discipline is if you were to look at how many hours the average sales rep actually gets call coached in the course of a month it's very very low on average um you know some outliers out there are fantastic but unfortunately all the studies I've seen and the informal polls when we do webinars and podcasts we'll have hundreds of people and we'll do a quick poll be like hey how many reps here get coached more than you know five or less than an hour a month less and then one to three hours and then three to six or six and more and it's like overwhelmingly over 80% of the reps are getting coached less than an hour and a half per month and that's just not you know fair to them uh and and the honest thing is we obviously have to look at the sales manager but I was a sales manager for years I wasn't doing it enough so this is I want you to touch on this because I have I have opinions but I really I want to hear your opinions why is sales as a business unit so so forgotten there's so there's so much lack of process there's so much lack of coaching just to sort of frame up why sales is this struggling uh you know this archaic uh business unit within within an organization when everything else has proper training has proper KPIs has proper process um why do you think coaching for a sales in general is sort of lack that I think you have to start with ROI and I think you have to to to justify if I'm a sales senior sales leader sitting around the executive table arm wrestling for budget to train my team I'm gonna really have to prove the ROI on that and so A that means I need to be a data driven organization to begin with and we both know that there's some great ones out there but that's sometimes a challenge um then B we got to be willing to stack our stick our neck on the line and say hey this is actually gonna work I I know it I've seen it and and then we need to actually implement it in a way that is gonna be scalable and systemic not just like the scenario I describe where it's like you do it once and then it really didn't make an impact so I think that it starts with the sales leader taking a risk and that sales leader has got to have experienced being in a sales organization where uh coaching was really ingrained in the culture and that's not always the case I think that's where it starts so replays um I'm gonna I'm gonna sort of I'm gonna wrap up replays in in a single statement then you can keep going so replays is basically uh giving people the opportunity to take that risk outside of the organization and then now you can now you can quantify the ROI and hopefully you can roll that out in for opportunity like obviously through your company but walk us like walk us through just briefly so they understand how replays actually works which unfortunately it should be something within an organization but it's obviously not so how do you sort of fill the gap that you're speaking about about you know the sales leaders are not comfortable going out on the limb they can't prove the ROI they can't prove the coaching works it's in the coaching that is brought in is only a one time one and done and it's not effective long term so what does replays do for organizations that that check all those boxes we make sure that sales professionals are actually getting coached and that they're getting coached to a methodology that works and so what that means is they're closing more deals um they're closing larger deals and they're closing them quick so that's the kind of the you know what we do the how we do it is pretty unique I mean uh replays couldn't have existed a handful of years ago because the technology wasn't there so now that especially tech companies are using um lots of screen share technologies like zoom etc to be doing demos and discovery calls which by the way for everyone listening if you're a sales professional and you're doing all that over the phone right now highly recommend that use SWH to to video for multiple reasons but we can talk about that later and so um the the fact that people are now recording uh these calls means that they can effectively find a partner like replays to review their calls and you know one of the things that used to drive me nuts and also the sales reps that reported to me is I've been in some organizations where we would have folks come in that were say from the marketing partner very bright very fantastic folks love them love working alongside them they would come and deliver sales training and we go to their LinkedIn profile and they haven't sold it in their life and so the right away there's street cred that's lost there right so the one thing that replays changes about that is when a rep is being coached by replace it from someone where they looked at LinkedIn profile and they're like oh man I can learn from this person um and they you know they simply send us their zoom calls and we're like the coach up on the top right corner thing of a youtube video where you've got the youtuber on the top right of the screen we're actually sitting there listening to their recorded demos and let's say they're doing a part of a closing on a commercial call and walking through the financials and we might posit be like hey that talk track you use there really um wasn't effective here's what we recommend is a repeatable scalable process and you know thankfully Scott we've got like literally thousands of demos we reviewed and now we've distilled it into what we call that like the hundred I don't want to sound like a you know an ad here by the way but it's like no no I'm gonna I wanted to say something so before this you told me I don't want to talk too much about replays because it's going to sound salesy the reason why I pushed you to talk about replays is because the process and the workflow meet and the customer experience user experience is what sales organizations should be doing for their sales already so when you walk through your whole company and your organ and how you do business that's what I wanted to draw out as an effective coaching strategy that's what it's gonna that's why really well that's awesome I love it yeah so you know so we have a hundred point replace methodology or it's like hey let us we've taken the thousands of hours we reviewed we'd distill it into this handbook where's the modern day handbook for how to actually conduct a video call and demo online how much time you do on discovery versus demo how often do you check in what should you're lighting and background be like and what customer stories to use and how and why these are things where we love all the different sales process out there right challenge or Sandler Miller harm they're all great but we're not that we kind of dance in the white spaces between there where that aren't covered and so then we we we basically make it really low touch so the reps don't have to go to a boardroom for you know we can do process training they just send us a recording that they already did and we have a one-on-one to get to know them a little bit for half an hour and we do one-on-one roleplay calls and stuff like that and you know the goal though is a hundred percent to be able to pass the baton back and forth between our sales coaches and their sales coaches you know it's it's almost I mean economically of course it's good for us if we do all the coaching but it's kind of sad for me as a sales leader if they farm that out I way rather we position their new sales leaders for success or help them as they're going through hyper growth and don't have time to actually coach so like episodic things that's where we want to really step in now there's um there's a lot of benefits and you know you're speaking about video you're speaking about remote you're speaking about how to you know how to use video to connect with customers and what you should be doing and now it's a tool that we can use to effectively coach and increase it like everything everything you're speaking about everything replays does and everything that you know we've discussed in terms of how to engage with customers remotely this is increasingly like increasingly important in in a in a world where having physical office space is becoming less and less of a priority for for for employees right they they're working from home they're working remote you're working globally now you're globally connected um the ability to be effective on video is very important be effective remote and I think that I actually had a call um with somebody who uses video to sell uh like pre-recorded video to sell and we're just speaking about how important it is as we increasingly become more remote and try and still transact globally it's very important to be effective on video and use video because uh that's the human component if you're not going to be in the office with the person sitting down and you know there's all these now there's all these other reasons for health health concerns to be remote right and all the stories about uh you know get ready to send your workforce home and get ready to work for work remote and enable your work uh your employees to work remotely um it's it's even more relevant than ever before yeah because outside of just being like a quality of life thing now it's becoming in in you know in in 2020 right now unfortunately something that could be a requirement for health and and that that piece of it but anyways um so I want I kind of sidetracked you to start speaking about replays because I want to go back to um the state of sales coaching now uh so within organizations uh we spoke about how replays works and how that's a proper process for coaching and the touch points and the review and helping people understand like a full 360 of how to do remote meetings um but what is what is sales coaching in your experience look like what's the reality on the ground in terms of current state without replays for example yeah yeah yeah my guess is for the folks listening if you're a sales rep you're probably getting less than an hour or two of coaching per month and if you're getting more than that congratulations stay where you are that's an outlier and if you're a sales manager a direct line sales manager my guess is you're probably really really meaning every single week to get up and go coach more but because of everything that's thrown at you you just don't get to do it enough and if you're VP sales you probably think your sales managers are coaching more than they are you know and uh maybe not that's more of a joke but the reality is it doesn't depends on how big the company is but a lot of the bigger the company I'm sure the more assumed uh the more assumed touch points the uh I actually I remember when I first started in sales as an individual contributor I remember a manager um coming up to me and saying hey I'm just gonna sit here for an hour I have to log a coaching hour and uh you just keep doing your thing like it was that so wow organizations are our names but um yeah that's a reality on the ground sometimes well yeah no it is unfortunately and um you know definitely a bigger systemic issue is that that's the thought process and mental for that whole separate discussion but I think you know um here's what we know uh sales reps want to learn sales reps expect to be invested in we know that employee turnover is much higher if they're not being invested in we know that sales managers want to I think where there's a blind spot here there's so many new sales leaders that actually don't know what to coach too so they're sitting down and listening to this call but they're they're coaching to it based on their experience which is great but is it the right um you know what you only know what you know in that case and so I hey when I was a for a new sales leader right you know I was like yeah I don't know what I'm coaching to hear and coach into it like the mileage that I've got selling which is very valuable but you know but outside of that what's a repeatable scalable process I can help with so I think that's the other area that we really are trying to help people is you know let us get in there and just give a template to actually coach too so there's a level of confidence that and this is a process that worked. So how do you how do you build a culture within an organization that actually supports coaching? Well it starts with the um executive and specifically the the CRO or VP sales or SVP sales I think that person has to believe in it you know where I've been in sales organizations and advised for sales organizations or done sales kickoff organizations where the sales leader really believes that you can feel it when you're in the room you can tell when you're listening to calls reviewing calls there's just this openness to feedback and so it starts there and then it's a matter of building the tenants within your organization and to me the tenants are the tenants are number one you need a process number two you need a feedback mechanism so whether you utilizing technology so any of the conversational AI tools that are out there or organization like replays or what have you there needs to be a feedback loop and and there needs to be a system to do that so a checklist for example so for the folks listening I would ask is there a checklist that you have that's being utilized for a discovery call versus a demo versus a commercial caller if it's a transaction emotion to closing call and if not that's a key aspect and then actually building it in the fabric of the organization structurally through making it part of your day or week you know one little tip for folks that are listening that I highly recommend and I've implemented this in many organizations and by the way I wasn't always like I wouldn't always get naplast for being that building that coaching culture I just want to put my hand up for reps that have reported to me over the years they're listening like who's this guy it's like you know what a lot of it is aspirational right because we try hard but I do think that I mean there's so much to analysis sales years but where it has been effective is you know in your sales meetings get your teams in threes get a one person to be the buyer one person to be the seller one person to be the observer and just throw a quick role play at them make them do like you have the person who is going to be the actual customer like just hand them a piece of paper and say okay here are the two needs that you've got the person doing the discovery has to find them and you know whatever it is or pick three differentiators of your organization say okay let's go through customer stories today and let's see how you're going to position and weave in a customer story naturally in a sales discussion things like that so so that's all great and that is what coaching should be but I think a lot of I don't have stats and I listen to a lot of podcasts to sort of speak to also the issue with current state of sales coaching so what is the majority of sales coaching that how do I phrase this what is coaching I'm just going to ask the question that I wrote down ahead of time because I can't think of a better way to phrase it I wanted to get into what is coaching and what isn't coaching that's really what I wanted to because a lot of organizations say they're coaching but they're just looking at deals so what is what is what is actual coaching it's a really good point because often I'll talk to sales manager you guys do call because oh yeah no we do deal reviews all the time like no no this is a pipeline call you know this is actually listening to calls and talking about how that person navigated through the conversation with the prospect in a way that was going to resonate with did they truly understand the need the cost of status quo did they are did the ret articulate your differentiators in a way that's going to resonate with the prospect I mean these are things to me that are important I got into an interesting debate recently with them the assess a leader sort of a influencer out there and like Dave yeah that you know coaching is when you use the inquiry style and you're asking questions I did I agree with that I don't disagree with that so I'm using the term broadly right to say hey you know what it's when you give the you listen and give feedback and and certainly it's doing it in a method that is supportive that keeps their dignity in place that makes them lean in and want to do it like there's a whole aspect of this where you want to create a safe culture where people can be vulnerable and learn right and and to do that you need to lead that way you need to call people on it if they're actually not being respectful to one another and I've seen where that that you know can take place very very effectively if you kind of set the ground rules for what the what the coaching should look like but what was the what was the argument between an inquisitive style and what was the the counterpoint actually I'll be I'll be frank you know it was it was um they're like Dave you don't have a call coaching company I'm like well no we do they're like no but you give feedback to a rep and I'm like yeah well if there's a let's say a rep you know we give feedback to CEOs who are pitching right and but but also first time reps and you know their point was if you're if you're just telling them what to do better after listening to a call or two that's not coaching that's feedback and you know what my answer was I don't care what you call it it semantics the answer is our sales reps get a 10% better close rate after a handful of discussions with our coaches so they don't really care if you call it coaching or feedback but that's why I just I'm sensitive now to that question I'm like oh I want to make sure that your listeners are aligned you and I are aligned that the people may call it coaching or feedback I don't really care what we call it what it's really the result that that actually matters right I understand I understand both points because let's let's talk about the levels of coaching so the level of coaching which isn't isn't coaching is pipeline review and that's what a lot of people label is coaching that's like the base and then you have and then you have I would say call coaching or call feedback whatever you want to call it but then the type of coaching where you're letting the reps come to their own conclusions about what behaviors or actions they should be taking so that's another type of coaching and then there's also activity based management where you're helping the reps understand the activities that are going to drive so like I think that I think that as long as we elevate past just the pipeline review and we can we can you know provide feedback we can have one-on-one sessions with reps where they're trying different things and testing things out without getting that feedback and they're coming to conclusions themselves while simultaneously we're sort of providing them clues and hints on how to be successful because we know what type of actions or activities are going to lead to that success if you can have some sort of blend of all of those types of interactions with your reps it's already better than like 90 I don't know 90 percent of the organizations out there so I think that when you speak about how you engage with the reps are you giving them feedback on calls or are you are you letting them think outside the box and sort of self-manage and and you're just sort of keeping them within you know your course correcting as you see them grow like there's a couple different ways but they're all good so at the end of the day like they're all things that I think you should be doing as a leader this is this is like what replays this is just one one segment of just being a great leader a great manager a great coach yeah that makes sense yeah through all that yeah so I think at the end of the day it doesn't really matter because the like the average the average rep is getting such horrible horrible management yeah anything would be you know a better a better professional experience you know it's actually going to help them and the reason why we all know this like it's usually the best sales rep gets promoted to manager and the best sales rep is a natural and they don't even know what they do to be successful they're just successful yeah how do you coach to that right yeah well that's exactly right we need to empower them to have a system right that works that's one way to do it that's one mitigating factor right in terms of positioning for success yeah no I totally agree and you know like one question I get sometimes like well how could you watch one let's let's use a transactional I could use an enterprise example of a you know demo we we talk about or transactional but let's use transaction it's one company I'm thinking where they do 45 minute calls and it's a discovery and the demo and and almost the trial closed at the end in 45 minutes and you know one of these these folks again the same person I was referring to is like well you can't really get meaningful feedback if you just watch one of those and I agree that longitudinal feedback far better I also think a process is a process for a reason so if the person actually didn't you know open with an agenda or have quote unquote meaningful check-ins as they go through then and then you give them that feedback and they say oh well no I usually do that great fair enough but then if you usually do that it should be a process so you know just make sure you do it every time right because I I've been guilty of that like I we talked to our reps one of our replays one of our hundred points is you know make sure it doesn't matter how senior you are you're still writing down your discovery question at least you know the more senior you get you might just have a couple of bullet points in front of you as opposed to the fullest right you never wanted to seem scripted but when I don't eat my own dog food and actually do that I get caught so it's like when I get caught not following my own process it doesn't work for me so that's why I think a process is there for a reason because it works and if it doesn't work optimally tweak it but don't just ignore it because it's there for a reason and I also think that if I do agree that you know you want to measure there and look at them over several several touch points across a significant period of time but even if you even if you just went in like you said to one one specific sales call you would find that if it if the process has been followed for a long period of time it turns into a habit so these habits that that have gained them success in the past they're gonna keep doing them and you can you can prove that out because again the top tier sales reps who don't know why they're so successful will still do some of these things just intuitively on their calls because they just have sort of figured out that that's how they sell and it just feels comfortable so I actually I never listen unless there's like a really outstanding circumstance like you're caught in the car and you can't get to your desk or like something weird that doesn't normally happen if it's like a regular day regular work hours regular customer you're gonna do what you do all the time yeah you're just gonna do it that's just how that's human nature so I would I would I would contest it I'm sure if I pulled another random call for somebody you know at another point in time two months later a month previous it would be the exact same thing and if I probably looked at every single call there would probably be very few calls and it's probably just a load of BS that they're they're saying that they do this but yeah that's my experience at least and I and like you mentioned that's because I know what my habits are and my habits always default of the same things even if I you know I could be fresh out of bed in the morning haven't had a coffee absolutely exhausted and I'll do the same things is you know maybe not with as much effectiveness but I'll still follow the same process do the same things have the same touch points in the conversation that I would as if I was you know sharp you know after my coffee after a little bit of breakfast whatever later on in the morning so you kind of default what you know you really do well I agree and so that's therein lies the challenge with sales that you know in let's use a sports analogy again because we all love sports analogies for sales of course you know any professional athlete they get to practice way more than they play we don't have that luxury in sales right where it's game time for us rules to the time but that doesn't mean we can't practice sometimes and it's when we practice sometimes intentionally that we actually build what we call replace muscle memory and well we all everyone knows what muscle memory is but what I mean is we use muscle memory role places we call them where it's like hey if you need to build a repeatable talk track technique for handling a pricing discussion let's practice that a bunch of times together as your coach or practice that with your sales leader or your peers are in front of zoom and then play it back and until you get it to the point where it does become muscle memory because if you try and do it in a live game that's not always a success yeah no agree um okay so the one thing I wanted to to speak about uh because you hit a whole bunch of really good points on coaching and I'm gonna open up the floor if you have any other last points but I wanted to speak about participation because true coaching is uncomfortable for reps because if they've only ever had pipeline or view the fact that somebody's actually paying attention to them now is very disconcerning so how do you get buy-in how do you get people to to buy into being coach before you've been able to prove that it's effective yeah that's one that's a tricky one because you know number one the proofs in the pudding but you got to work it to make it work right you got to be able to actually participate and you kind of get what you give in the program so pretty really on if reps aren't interested in participating I I actually just call them on it and if it doesn't change I just go to the leader and say hey probably best to use the replace credit with another it is what it is no problem that's fine they don't want to um but the ones that lean in my goodness um you know uh it is it is one of those things where um we as sales leaders hope to hire people that are internally driven and motivated right that thing that we can't coach and so yes some of the the reps that um we've worked with in the past uh may struggle with that internal motivation 99% don't know and you know what it's it is one of those things where if they're skeptical um their sales leader says well just give replays a chance I've checked them out I've talked to a bunch of other sales leaders I know uh they've got all these testimonials and sure enough they get feedback and like okay I had no idea that I was falling into these bad habits that was helpful I'll do one more call then they do another one and then they start to get addicted like the term I'm hearing from our customers are that they're getting addicted to the replace coaching but let's take the replace coaching out of it it's just people get addicted to good coaching period right if they've they've got someone that they respect that has been there and done that and understands they can help them look around corners because they've been there that is something people will typically lean in on and then they of course start to see the results in their number well that's also why people stay for the manager right and leave for the manager that's that's why because they feel that they have their best interests in mind yeah exactly right yeah yeah um what does an all inclusive world class coaching program look like in an organization from start first interview all the way through to you know year five with the company what what does that look like obviously that's going to be a little bit outside the scope of just three plays but um yeah if an organization is looking to sort of revamp so when now just to make so I've got the right context when you say are you more saying holistically what does it look like are you wanting us to go to the journey of first interview for a wrap through to uh it doesn't really matter because I want you to I want you to sort of answer however however you think it would best be answered yeah well I love that you said first interview because one of my uh processes is is anyone that has ever reported been hired in my sales organization uh would have to go through a roleplay for so actually it actually starts there and if they have a level of discomfort with that it they can self-select out and if they don't you know there's no better way to understand how someone's going to do um then by actually seeing them do it yeah so you know in addition to actually have them usually hang out at the organization for a day before they make their decision I like to see them make it through a roleplay you know for a lower level sales position we're talking about a very straightforward couple like five five ten minute roleplay but for a senior enterprise account exactly if we're talking about an hour long presentation with one or two very senior people in the room on our side um as long along with a couple sales reps and let's see how they handle pressure let's see how they think on their feet let's see how they get creative and let's see what process they follow so that's one thing is we're starting right at the top of the funnel so to speak for employees I um I think that uh I think that is a key aspect coaching culture um the next is a process pick a process and run with it once you've got the process make sure that you've systematized it and that means call coaching forms that means KPIs with respect to all of the sales leaders and sales reps quarterly performance reviews for example right so a sales leader should be just like a sales reps you know need you know expected to x number of calls potentially per week month what have you um the sales leader should be expected to review x number of call reviews per rep per month or per quarter and then that can also extend to I just want to before you that can also extend to going to a customer site once a month or once a quarter depending on the size of depending on the size of the account think that there's a lot of touch points that you should KPI interior into your sales leadership that isn't just like you know spreadsheet managing oh my gosh yes you know and I've lived that myself I I fell to spreadsheet heavy closed door behind a computer man did I lose the respect my team fast this is about the organization I was with Bob I don't know uh a number of years ago over a decade ago and and so yeah for any first time managers listening what Scott did said excellent point like get out there with your people that's number one right your folks want to know a that you could do the job as good as them if not better and they want to know that you've got their back and they want to know that you understand their role and you can't understand you can understand sales but you can't understand their role so you're actually out there with them shoulder to shoulder if it's an outside call or listening shoulder to shoulder if it's inside sales anyway so sorry keep going I just wanted to touch on that point didn't have to be just on the on the call I wanted to get out there once in a while that's what I wanted to drive home but keep going on the on the world class so you have your KPI built into sales leadership is there anything else yeah well and I think within those KPI as you want to do X number of actual training sessions per week month quarter so you know this looks vastly different in terms of who you're engaging for let's say a larger organization where there's a sales enablement team and you're looping them in and getting support versus a startup and but it's just as relevant right so if you're a CEO listening and you got eight people on your team and you just hired your first two reps and you can't afford a sales manager yet you got to find a way to keep those two sales reps challenged and and find a system that works and develop them so it's just as important if you're with a fortune 100 company for a startup with 15 people in two reps very good on the topic of sales coaching is there anything that we didn't touch that you wanted to to bring to the table is your wheelhouse so thanks yeah no I I think I think that covers it I would just say if you know if I were to throw if if someone wants a tactical piece of advice for your next demo or sales discussion go and memorize very very well if you haven't already a few of your customer stories and get those down to one minute and use those too many sales reps say we see this all the time in the demos review they'll do one of three things they'll either say oh yeah I'll send you a case study on that it's like wait no you're the salesperson you've got them on the call like you're actually probably a pretty good communicator you wouldn't be in the sales role like they're not going to open the case study most of the time the second is they actually do share the case study but they take like 10 minutes to say it or the third thing is they don't even share any and you know we actually recommend if you if the folks listening want a bit of a guide three what we see resonate is three to five customer stories in about a 45 minute sales discussion and it's relevant in a discovery call a demo or a closing call people want to know they're in good company they want to know proof point and you want to remove it from you the sales person to move it more to the voice of the customer but that's if you're going to do if you're going to do that many stories in a call you've got to get those stories to sink into the point yeah that's what yeah good no I really appreciate that that was a good chat I want to whenever I close people that listen to this podcast a lot of them are earlier on in the career and trying to learn from sales marketing business leaders so what I like to do is sort of frame up your journey you've given us the background but two two questions I like to ask first one if you were to meet you know your your 20 year old self what would be one piece of career advice that you could give them that youth would find really valuable it would be get a mentor so you know I have wraps asked me all the time or sales leaders what books are you reading and what books can I read it books are great and you know they they they have a big place in my life for sure but where I look back and think of the things that where I've grown the most and specifically my sales career it's when I went out and actually actively got a mentor and I didn't happen until a little bit later in my career like well still early-ish but that was super helpful when I did that and looking at yourself now as a professional were you anything like what you were now when you were in high school yes actually almost to the tee yeah I want to it's funny that you say that I've got a picture of me with like back in my high school-ish days that I keep around and and actually it's funny I keep this thing right here as well so I've got DJ's karaoke this is a karaoke business I started when I was in grade 10 or 11 and I think back to that Dave and I was energized and motivated and it felt like I could do anything but of course made lots of mistakes and it's not until recently that I actually was able to get back into that mindset because life gets clouded right and and so I I wouldn't have confidently said yes probably even a couple of years ago but now I absolutely get good I like that that's that's really good and that's a it's really meaningful because I think that everybody has that energy and that enthusiasm when they're young yeah I think it's very easy to lose that as life throws things at you you know yeah I respect that that's a that's very powerful um the you're okay so again you mentioned mentors you mentioned that's really important to learn and grow but are there any sources that you look to to learn any sort of podcasts audible books that you're into right now that you can recommend for people that want to sort of pick up some new material you know it's funny when when you talk to really really busy people like yourself and I know I they'll tell you they they barely have time to actually do a bunch of learning right like it's almost like a bunch of seeds that were planted earlier now or intuition but you know that the smartest ones will also say they make the time right you hear Bill Gates saying he has his thought weeks where he goes away and all this other stuff for me honestly I've got three little kids and my life is so freaking crazy I actually I all I do now is listen to audiobooks before bed and ones from really interesting people where I feel like I can learn something and I also reach out to people and have conversations and try and learn from them may I learn every day from everyone but you know I have to admit that the pace is such in my life that professional development at the moment is a massive priority for me it's tough it's very tough I've I've defaulted to audio books podcasts to be honest I love doing these interviews because I learn I learn a lot every single time I speak to somebody so that's a really really good source I think that's all I have is there is there anything else you wanted to bring up and if not then how do people get in touch with you thanks no I think I'm good I really enjoyed this it's been a fun conversation people get in touch with me on LinkedIn please hit me up love to hear from you I love talking shop and and feel free to email me davidreplays.com it's r-e-p-l-a-y-z replays.com perfect awesome so that was another episode of the sales versus marketing podcast thank you so much for joining me day if you haven't already please share with all your friends families co-workers peers anybody who you think you'd find a value in learning about sales marketing or business please subscribe or download from any of your favorite podcast sources you can also find this podcast on YouTube as always have a very have a very productive week have a great week and we will speak again soon bye now thanks for listening to the sales versus marketing podcast brought to you by r-o-i-overly delivering strategy technology and insights through both sales and marketing leaders and teams you