Revenue Harvest

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast features your host, Nigel Green. He discusses the top 3 biggest mistakes that sales leaders make when hiring salespeople. A mistake in hiring produces not only lackluster results for the company but also drains resources that could eventually cost you your job. Nigel introduces his 6-step process for hiring that he is excited to share with sales leaders today!

QUOTES

04:31 Mistake number 1: Hiring without doing a job analysis: "You go post it and you immediately start interviewing candidates. Well, the problem with that is you don't really know at this point what you need. And so, most sales leaders get this wrong because they jump to interviewing without doing a job analysis."

05:49 Mistake number 2: Interviewing based on intuition and a lack of process: "You need a defined set of steps in the interview process. You ever heard a candidate say to you, well, mister hiring manager, what's the next step? And if you can't clearly articulate not only the next step but the rest of the steps to the candidate, you run the risk of one, not running a very good process, but two, losing a candidate because it doesn't appear to the candidate as if you know what you're looking for."

09:13 Mistake number 3: Hiring based on biases: "Because you played a college sport, just a college sport, doesn't mean that you're going to be more successful in selling, or less successful in selling."

More about Nigel Green

Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

Do you want a best-in-class sales team? In my book, you learn how seven timeless principles can 2-3X your revenue and turn your sales team into a sales machine. Get it now: https://www.therevenueharvest.com

Website: https://www.NigelGreen.co

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit https://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Ross Pomerantz, Founder and Chief Corpitalist at Corp Capital. Nigel uses satire in his content to comment on the prevalent bro culture of sales. He observes a need for change, from salespeople's motivations at the bottom to the hiring practices of sales leadership at the top. Ross envisions his company as the place to connect founders and CEOs who crush sales to the most talented salespeople who will continue this trend of success.

HIGHLIGHTS

Fighting against toxic sales bro cultures with satire

Self-awareness to integrate diversity needs with sales leadership

Connecting rockstar CEOs with rockstar salespeople

Hire athletes and people who grind for sales roles

QUOTES

Ross: "As a salesperson, I want to be sold by a CEO. I want to work for someone who can sell. Especially if you're going to join an early-stage company, the top salespeople, the early salespeople, they're all founders. If you can't sell me on your company, on your vision, how am I going to go do that when it's your thing? It's your baby."

Ross: "I love sales because it is the great equalizer. I just do think that there are people that are better suited mentally to handle the task of sales, of which there is a lot of mental weight that goes into it. The wait room at 4 AM. You got to go hit someone. Someone's going to hit you on every single play."

Ross: "I would venture to guess there's studies that would say athletes are better suited for a sales role. But I think there's a lot of things that people overlook. I do think the service industry, I think retail. People who grind. That's who you want."

You can connect with Ross in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corporatebro/

Bravado: https://bravado.co/?mrk=8fccfb85

Website: https://corporatebro.com/

More about Nigel Green

Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

Do you want a best-in-class sales team? In my book, you learn how seven timeless principles can 2-3X your revenue and turn your sales team into a sales machine. Get it now: https://www.therevenueharvest.com

Website: https://www.NigelGreen.co

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit https://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Tom Critchlow, a strategy consultant focusing on media companies and early to mid-stage startups with expertise in product and marketing strategy. He discusses how dashboards must treat input and output metrics differently and the importance of being transparent. He also talks about cleaning up data to display accurate data on the dashboard. Speaking to the c-suite and mid-management, he suggests strengthening your executive presence by taking a collaborative approach to diagnosing internal and external factors that affect output.

HIGHLIGHTS

Measure input and output metrics differently on the dashboard

Diagnose internal processes and external pressures

Present metrics your CEO wants to see

Executive presence: Clean your data and be transparent in presenting it

QUOTES

07:15 Tom: "What are the activities and kind of projects and things that we're doing now that will move the needle tomorrow? And this is what Amazon calls input metrics. So these are things that are typically more directly under our control. Sales and revenue and things like that are not directly under our control. We work on projects that will hopefully move the needle on those and hopefully influence them."

08:22 Tom: "Most dashboards will be better off really focusing in on a small number of output metrics, and to each of those, two to three input metrics."

16:23 Tom: "A great dashboard will actually expose the data source to you. So a great dashboard will not only tell you this is the number of leads this month or the number of calls made or the number of pieces of content published or something like that, but they will actually connect that to a kind of you can click a thing and it will show you the data."

26:48 Tom: For us, SEO is three things. It's good product pages, it's producing more content every month, and it's doing good visual PR. You have to boil it down so that the CEO is like, 'Great, I understand what you need. There are three levers that we can pull and I can see that the product or image is not pulling that lever hard enough."

You can connect with Tom in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomcritchlow/

SEO MBA website: https://seomba.com/

Website: https://tomcritchlow.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomcritchlow

More about Nigel Green

Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

Do you want a best-in-class sales team? In my book, you learn how seven timeless principles can 2-3X your revenue and turn your sales team into a sales machine. Get it now: https://www.therevenueharvest.com

Website: https://www.NigelGreen.co

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit https://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Maria Boulden, Vice President and Executive Partner at Gartner. A majority of people now want a digital and seller-free experience during their buying process. This does not mean that sellers are obsolete, rather it indicates that sellers must adapt and meet buyers where they are to sell successfully. This could mean providing information to buyers and knowing the points when buyers would actually prefer to engage a human. Maria emphasizes buyers' behavior of researching on their own to reach a decision and leading them to a decision rather than selling to them.

HIGHLIGHTS

A trend of preferring no engagement with sellers in a buying process

Know how your targets want to buy

Forecasting with machine learning and using verifiers

Offer freemium and demos that don’t involve phone calls

QUOTES

06:46 Maria: "The primary trend I would point to is well before the pandemic, we saw massive increases in online learning. Well before the pandemic, we saw a growing preference for a rep-free sale. And well before the pandemic, we saw the beginning of a disconnect between how buyers wanted to buy and how sellers were stuck selling to the point where a buyer would disproportionately reward a better customer experience even if the product or service was inferior."

18:25 Maria: "The ones who think they've seen it before, the ones who think it's just going to snap right back to the way it used to be, and all I have to do is have one good dinner or just put me in front of the customer again, they're shutting down to the changes that the world has already made."

26:57 Maria: "The most successful sales lead to what you're trying to sell instead of leading with what you're trying to sell. People love to buy. They hate to be sold."

You can connect with Maria in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-boulden-8a778b11/

Website: https://www.gartner.com/en

More about Nigel Green

Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

Check out my book: www.therevenueharvest.com

Do you want a best-in-class sales team? In this book, you learn how seven timeless principles can 2-3X your revenue and turn your sales team into a sales machine.

Website: www.NigelGreen.co

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Alex Griffin, Director of Global Sales Development at Segment. She discusses how they perform their outbound sales and the strategies they use to qualify opportunities and support their SDRs.

Alex shares that cold calling is still the fastest and most effective way to connect with people and that more sellers should be leaving voicemails. She also talks about growing leaders from the ranks of SDRs and what aspiring leaders have to look out for to help ensure their growth in this new role.

You can connect with Alex in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-griffin-8123078a/

Check out Alex's recommendation on Becc Holland below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccholland-flipthescript/

Website: https://www.flipthescript.co/

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

More about Nigel Green

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership

Check out my book: www.therevenueharvest.comDo you want a best-in-class sales team? In this book you learn how seven timeless principles can 2-3X your revenue and turn your sales team into a sales machine.

Website: www.Nigelgreen.co

HIGHLIGHTS

Analyzing SDR's qualified opportunities and conversion

SDR's autonomy, activity benchmarks, and creativity

Tip: Learn to leave voicemails

Coaching is personalized and about good listening

Preparing SDRs for management roles

QUOTES

Alex: "There's so many content, videos, and articles out there about just personalization. It really is key these days when it comes to outbound. You cannot just do generic messaging and spray and pray. You have to be personalized. You have to know who is it that you're sending this email to, what do they care about, and what company are they with."

Alex: "If you're going to pick up the phone and call people and you expect them to give you time, you better know how exactly you're going to be providing them value when you get the chance to talk with them."

Alex: "We pull our SDRs together weekly to role play and we ask them to practice so that they can be prepared, and so now we're doing that at the management level too. We're going to be coming together and doing exercises where we do have an email exercise and they go into breakout rooms and they practice giving feedback on an email"

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Lisa Earle Mcleod, author of Selling with Noble Purpose. Leaders must point toward a noble purpose as their true north because the numbers are lagging indicators of the beliefs and behaviors of the sales team.

The great thing is that you can train for belief and behavior. When people have a strong purpose about how to help others, it stops being about themselves and about others. It is from this core that you can build upon sales skills.

To create a reorientation in your salespeople, start by asking the question, "how will this customer be different after doing business with you?" Finding the answer to this question requires sellers to look deeper and realize that making it about others creates true impact which translates to even better numbers.

You can connect with Lisa in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisaearlemcleod/

Amazon book link: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Noble-Purpose-Earle-McLeod/dp/8126565144

Purpose-Driven Sales: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/purpose-driven-sales

Website: https://www.mcleodandmore.com/

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

P.S. Here are 2 ways I can help you:

1) Check out my book: www.therevenueharvest.com

2) Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

HIGHLIGHTS

Teach a noble purpose to make great sellers

Passion and purpose are two different things

Ask 'how will this customer be different after doing business with us?'

Purpose-driven sales: More effective and more job satisfaction

Share customer impact stories

QUOTES

Lisa: "What we found over time, that first study was the tipping point. This noble purpose is the differentiator for top performers. But, what we found over time, is it can actually be taught to everyone else."

Lisa: "You're looking for that wonderful mix of people who are interested in you, to become sellers for you, because they think oh, this really does make a difference, and also, as leaders, you've got to articulate it and reinforce it on a daily basis."

Lisa: "Sellers with a sense of purpose bigger than money have greater resilience and greater tenacity. And here's why: we human beings are at our best when we know someone else is counting on us."

Lisa: "A customer impact story is different. It's not about your offering and your seller is not the hero. A customer impact story is about how you made a difference in the life of a customer."

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Tim Schurrer, author of The Secret Society of Success and host of the Build a Winning Team podcast. The secret society of success measures success using an almost counterintuitive metric: helping others win.

The idea is that this core of giving rather than taking, of being other-focused, impacts lives more profoundly and considerations like revenue will then take care of themselves. For leaders, serving others and assisting others to win is the foundation you need to create your own winning team!

You can connect with Tim in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timschurrer/

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-a-winning-team-with-tim-schurrer/id1618921345

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

P.S. Here are 2 ways I can help you:

1) Check out my book: www.therevenueharvest.com

2) Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I post daily about sales leadership:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Quiara Neam, Healthcare Account Executive. Misogyny in the workplace still requires a fundamental mindset shift. Nigel shares how he met Quiara when she reached out after his LinkedIn post garnered negative reactions.

Quiara also talks about being a mom in sales and the need for efficiency to tick off all the boxes in her day. Not only does this translate to efficient processes and time management, but it also means creating quality connections built on trust.

You can connect with Quiara in the link below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quiaraneam/

Check out Nigel's LinkedIn post below:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/revenueharvest_things-you-might-not-want-to-do-but-never-activity-6892483436578246656-02kE/

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

This episode of the Revenue Harvest Podcast with Nigel Green features Andy Paul, sales coach, consultant, host of the Sales Enablement with Andy Paul podcast, and author of Sell Without Selling Out book which was just published recently.

Andy stresses the importance of sales leaders to be intentional in reinforcing positive rather than negative sales practices. This means that frontline managers must be guided that their odds of succeeding are better when they devote time and attention to helping their individual sellers.

For sellers, Andy also says that they must stay in the right situations to ensure that they grow in alignment with their personal values. And in actual selling, Andy explains how cognitive empathy differs from mere sympathy and how practicing this can produce win-win-win situations for the buyer, company, and themselves.

You can connect with Andy in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realandypaul/

Website: https://www.andypaul.com/

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sales-enablement-podcast-with-andy-paul/id1046045197

Amazon book link: https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Without-Selling-Out-Success/dp/1989603572

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

You can also connect with Nigel by visiting the following links:

Website (Revenue Harvest): http://www.therevenueharvest.com/

Website (Nigel Green): https://nigelgreen.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

HIGHLIGHTS

Sellers are losing the human touch of selling

Organization leaders perpetuate negative practices in sales

Stay in situations that align with your values

Ask good questions with cognitive empathy: Hearing versus listening

QUOTES

Andy: "I think what sales leaders should do is start looking at how do I define and design my selling process so that I achieve the win rate I desire and then scale that, as opposed to doing what we're doing today."

Andy: "Just be calm and relaxed. Take the information and hear it, process it, decide, okay, what's the best choice now for what I should say? And it's not like you're waiting for 30 seconds and thinking about it. You're in the flow but you give yourself that extra beat."

Andy: "What I talk about in the book is called cognitive empathy, and it's not just understanding how they feel the way they do. It's understanding why they feel that way with that information."

Andy: "The problem is too many people think well, this prospect fits our ICP and I'm talking to personas, we got these personas nailed. I got this and not thinking this is a unique human being working in a company at their own unique set of concerns about the problems they're facing and the outcomes they want to achieve. I need to be curious about that instead of assuming I know exactly what they're going to say."

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:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmcmahon1/

The Qualified Sales Leader (Amazon Book Page) - https://www.amazon.com/Qualified-Sales-Leader-Proven-Lessons/dp/0578895064

To hear more episodes of The Revenue Harvest Podcast, you can visit http://www.therevenueharvest.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.

You can also connect with Nigel by visiting the following links:

Website (Revenue Harvest) - http://www.therevenueharvest.com/

Website (Nigel Green) - https://nigelgreen.co/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/revenueharvest/

HIGHLIGHTS

03:45 Using a common language within the sales team

08:32 Don't be a glorified scorekeeper, monitor deal progression instead

12:00 Holding reps accountable to slip deals and qualifying deals off the forecast

16:19 Hiring based on risk and using Profile XT

26:48 Assessing character in addition to skills

32:09 Hiring sales leaders and dealing with underperforming hires

37:57 Finding the best candidates for promotion

QUOTES

05:28 "We have different definitions of the same words. So I think you can't really communicate in sales, you can't communicate in sports, until you have a common vocabulary for a common playbook."

10:09 "I think it's more important to monitor deal progression than it is to just be a glorified scorekeeper and say Nigel took 12 swings but he didn't get a hit. Who cares, anybody can do that. I don't need a high paid sales leader to do that."

28:10 "If I don't have that type of character, that persistence, heart, and desire, I'm never going to be great at it. And that's the same thing with skills in sales. So I'll move from there."

34:32 "If I think that this person's not going anywhere, why am I joining that company? I'm not really working for the company, I'm working for the leader."

39:41 "When they start to understand that it's not about them, it's about everybody else and the way that they get promoted in this organization is by helping other people be successful, whether that's on their team or outside their team."