The Science of Building High-Performing Sales Teams

Lucas Price: [: 00:00:00

Or increasing year over year revenue. Joe has a career of experience with skyrocketing scalable business growth. Joe, thanks for joining us today. Is there anything else that you'd like to add in terms of your experience and what you guys do at Influe2?

Joe McNeill: That was pretty comprehensive. I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Lucas.

tance that plays in building [: 00:01:00

Joe McNeill: Yeah, so I think it's. Dramatically important for the types of companies I've worked for, and that's scaling startups, right? If you work for a tier one SAS business, like a sales force or an SAP or a data dog or something like you can go out and headhunt really good talent because you have a ton of resources.

But hiring in general is just imperfect, right? It's an imperfect science. Even when you are amazing at it, you're dealing with people and. People are tough at times, I started my career in staffing. So I understand that, like it's an imperfect science. So development is important because a going out and hiring folks is very resource intensive.

The hiring top performing AEs is nearly impossible for a rapid growth startup. Maybe it's a little easier now with the market, the way it is. And there's more folks than there are jobs, but it's hard to sift through it. And see, it's just expensive. And we don't, us and sales and with growing companies, we don't have a buffer.

r weakest link on your team. [: 00:02:00

And then develop them and early mean doesn't mean right out of college, it could be someone changing careers, right? It could be someone halfway through their career. Maybe they were a teacher and they wanted to move into sales. That's early in there and whatever career path they're joining because, you can train them and you can get real world.

Experience as to how they perform and you can throttle their income that way.

Lucas Price: If we walk through this progressively, so when you're hiring someone into an entry level role, maybe they're earlier in their career, maybe they're doing a career change, what are the things that you're looking for that suggests they're going to progress and become one of your A players in a non entry level role down the road?

Joe McNeill: [: 00:03:00

Like we had SDR is going to recruiting, going to marketing going to finance. So for me, I've always believed in the Warren Buffett quote, right? Hire for intelligence, energy and integrity. I think like you hire smart people. With energy that are good humans and you'll be in good shape.

Lucas Price: One thing I'll add to that is, and I think you covered it with the energy and integrity, but I always, I always encourage companies that are thinking about this issue to make sure that they're not just screening for intelligence, but also screening for effectiveness. bEcause there are a lot of people out there who are very intelligent, let's call it book smart, but aren't within the context of a corporation, they might not be effective at getting things done. And so you need the people who are going to be smart and effective, the go getters with the energy and integrity that you're talking about.

Joe McNeill: Yeah, of [: 00:04:00

Lucas Price: Now they're in your sales organization. And what are the things that you're doing to help them progress and do the career development, be able to move along into, other types of roles.

Joe McNeill: Yeah. So the culture I always communicate that I'm trying to create at any organization I'm leading is, and I stole this from a former CEO, but it's called a collaborative meritocracy, . Where I don't want people in their lane, . I want people. Brainstorming at where we can improve anything, and, if you want to foster an environment of brainstorming, you need to have everybody understand that most ideas suck, like most brainstormed ideas suck and that's great. You get in these environments where people are afraid to speak up because they're afraid their idea sucks.

Your idea probably sucks, but the problem is if everybody's comfortable verbalizing ideas a lot, you'll get good ones every now and then. And I think some people get defensive if it's like, Hey, why do we do it this way? Like, why don't we do it this way? It's there are no sacred cows.

ies, I think too many people [: 00:05:00

You're clawing for inches. And usually efficiency is accumulating a lot of those small incremental gains over time. And you need to empower your whole staff to, to speak up. Like I always say if I have to be the smartest person in the room, we're screwed, right? Like we need everybody's ideas and we're going to go forward with the best idea and you need to not be afraid to be wrong.

And you need to be, not be afraid to screw up. Like for the most part, if you operate in good faith. There's nothing that you're going to break that we can't fix. We encourage mistakes. If, especially in a startup environment, if you're a leader or employee and you're not failing at some things, you're not making mistakes.

need to, you need to go out [: 00:06:00

You need to put a lot of thought into something. You need to have a reason why you think it's a good idea. You need to execute it. They need to reflect and say, you know what? I thought it was gonna work with this way. It didn't. It went sideways on me. This is why I think it went sideways. And this is what I'm gonna do about it.

So for me, I think a lot of growth happens just with how you foster your culture. If. If you have people that have too much ego to speak up when they make a mistake and laugh about it if your culture is too tight, where, you say, Hey, don't worry about what this group is doing, you just stay in your lane and worry about this.

And this is the way it is because, we, you're just starting and we only know this, like you want people to scrutinize your model, because if it can't stand up to the scrutiny, maybe it shouldn't be the model.

Lucas Price: Yeah. I really like that. I like the point you made about small incremental gains. You're not going to come in and have one idea that doubles or triples the business, but it gets 3 percent better. It gets 4 percent better. That accumulates over time to something really big when you play, when you're constantly making small changes.

much bigger than we expect. [: 00:07:00

Let the ideas flow. And that's usually how you get to, the good ideas, like you said, through lots of bad ideas. That's something that I've always struggled with, whether it's my idea or someone else's idea. I, can be like too quick to point out why this won't work or that won't work.

Do you have any advice for how to, turn off that part of your brain temporarily and let the ideas fly?

Joe McNeill: Self awareness is key. Cause I'm, I'm a skeptic by nature. And I'm not a great idea guy. I'm better at taking someone else's idea and making it better, like refining it. So at my last company, I had a partner in crime who was more of He's more of a visionary guy, right?

ke a lot of times it wasn't, [: 00:08:00

It was like an accumulation of just thoughts where, we were crafting this and crafting that. And then we'd just try something. So I think as long as you have, you're self aware of what it is. And as long as everyone there knows what the process looks like, then I think it's okay.

But yeah I'm aware of the fact that I tend to think of why things won't work and he was someone that would think of the why things would work. And it actually worked really well for us to work together because it was a good mix. So I think part of it's having the right mix of personalities.

And the other part is just Yeah. Understanding that there's no perfect idea. There's no perfect strategy. There's trade offs to everything. So you just, you look at your current state and what, how it operates. What the good is and what the trade offs are. And then you look at, maybe the new idea and what you think the good is and what the trade offs are there.

And then you measure them against each other.

ff the critical part of your [: 00:09:00

Joe McNeill: It's our responsibility to share a lot of the bad ideas we've had too. So people know hey, let's just let it fly. Because, this is how we're going to move forward. So from that standpoint, yeah, I think, it does take a little practice though, especially when you're earlier to like, not get emotionally attached to an idea.

If you put a lot of thought into it and not take it personally, if someone's what about this? Cause honestly, the process of validating an idea is pulling it through the lens of criticism. Some of our best ideas we beat up pretty hard early. And then as we beat them up, that just works its way through and survives.

Lucas Price: Getting back to career progression what are some of the best practices you've found in terms of the formal steps for considering whether someone can be promoted, what process they go through to be promoted? Are there things that are things in particular that you think are effective for putting that structure in place?

Joe McNeill: There's not [: 00:10:00

If you have like very complicated selling motion, Then, putting someone as a solo, solo seller into that role straight from an SDR role is probably not the move,. So you need to give people more responsibility, but not set them up to fail.

We've done things in complicated selling motions where we've had them be a junior AE under a senior AE for a year and basically support, some of the smaller pieces of the bigger, complexities of the deal for a year and take on more and more. So I think. as Sometimes people think of career development is like this, I'm an SDR and then I'm an AE and then I'm a manager and it's like these big jumps.

I think if you can start to layer on more responsibility in a more deliberate way, in a more intentional way, it tends to work better.

the least important one, but [: 00:11:00

Joe McNeill: Yeah. So what we did was, we had a AE that was a senior AE that was doing great on a really big territory. . And typically what happens when you're growing is you split off a piece of that territory and you throw another AE in there, right? And so you have the conversation with the ae and you say typically we would split your territory, but here's another proposal of what we could do.

Maybe we increase your quota, you sit on the entire territory, but we give you a junior AE as a resource that AE gets a percentage of your commission. And then you just do the math and it's if you can close 25 percent more revenue this year, having this person supporting you in this way, then it's a win for you.

of. Work that goes into that [: 00:12:00

And if we just sat down and broke down the responsibilities of what this junior could support, it was really helpful and it really helped them. And it was pretty successful. And a lot of times, the junior had a good too, because they got to ride shotgun with 1 of our, 1 of our top.

AEs in deals in cycles, collaborate with them every day. And then they were ready for their own territory. Once that came up,

Lucas Price: And is the junior AE an assistant on every deal that the senior AE has, or do they have their own subset book within that territory?

Joe McNeill: it's a complete shared book. So they're splitting every deal, I think it was 80, 20 was the percentage split. And, sometimes the senior AE would run by themselves and didn't, have the junior help at some things, the junior ran by themselves and didn't have the senior help now, hands on now they were always there to help each other, right.

different ways that you can [: 00:13:00

Lucas Price: What are examples of what the junior AE would do different than the senior AE?

Joe McNeill: The senior AE was running the big meetings. They own, the communication with the executive sponsor, most of the time, most of the positioning and high level strategy and the junior AE was doing a lot of follow up work. They were coordinating with solution consultant, solution architect for the demos.

They were coordinating with. Maybe the champions within the group, instead of the executive sponsors and building relationships there, they're helping with assets they were, it wasn't always a one size fits all, but they were doing more of the quote unquote.

Less complicated pieces of the busy work of the deal, rather than like the high level structure and strategy.

Lucas Price: Do you have a time period in mind where a junior AE would run shotgun with the senior AE? Would it be one year and then they'd be ready to be promoted or it just depends?

ness kind of dictates what's [: 00:14:00

Just wanted to be junior A's. They thought Hey, this, I've gotten a look at what being a senior AE is, and I don't want any part of that. That seems stressful and scary and complicated, but I like what I'm doing right now and they would just stay there. So I think that was helpful too.

So a lot of it depended on, what, how the junior AE reacted to the role, if they wanted more, or if they were happy where they were at.

Lucas Price: When you're going from, let's say, To management or leadership. Is there another like intermittent step or do you not really think of it in the same model that way?

Joe McNeill: There can be, situations where there's team leads, right? I think it's really hard to be a player coach though, personally.

Lucas Price: I agree.

st [: 00:15:00

A lot of times it's more of. It's not even like a formal job title. I think my advice to people that want to be in leadership or want to get promoted to leadership is be viewed as a leader before you have the title at all.

Lucas Price: What does that look like? What are some of the things that where people are saying that about one of their colleagues?

Joe McNeill: At its core, your job as a frontline leader, especially your first leadership job is to empower and support your team, is to make that help them succeed. So it's are you. A person that people come to for help. That's step one. Be a resource be doors open, be slack, open, be whatever be helping your team and that's, helping, I talked about incremental gains.

A lot of those happen organically within the staff. And I think, be the person that's helping. Broker, the communication between the staff where everybody's communicating what they're doing and what's working for them and what they get, where the gains are. And, just be that glue.

Leadership isn't [: 00:16:00

Lucas Price: I agree. I I was never like the very best sales person, early on in my career, but I think one of the reasons I was able to transition into management was that I, for whatever reason, I was a person that a lot of other people came to, for, to talk about their deals and brainstorm on their deals.

And that was something that in my very first. Job people seem to realize early on that I was good at that. I was a good person to go discuss their deals with. And so even though I wasn't the very top salesperson, there was a I was better at helping people succeed than I was at succeeding on my own.

Joe McNeill: A lot of times the people that are the best coaches are the people that, Whatever their coaching wasn't easy for them and they had to be very detailed and very, and work very hard at it. If it's just, Michael Jordan might not be a great basketball coach. He's just what do you mean?

or my sense, like that's it. [: 00:17:00

Lucas Price: Is there anything else that we haven't covered yet in terms of how you think about successfully enacting this type of culture within your organization?

Joe McNeill: you Just can't have any jerks, right? I think Bob Sutton has a book out, like the no asshole rule or jerk free culture. Like you need to create. A very jerk free culture for this to work. Because if you have anyone that's peacocking around or turning their nose up or shaming anybody or anything like that, it's not going to work.

And then, as little ego as possible in the sense that people don't care. You don't want to celebrate whose idea is you want to just celebrate winning as a whole. You want people who want to win as a whole. They don't care who the person is. That was right. Who the person is that was wrong. They care about winning.

he organization. Maybe turns [: 00:18:00

And they say Hey, I have my way that I do it. When you say no jerks, would you think of that as being one of the jerks? Or how would you think if someone told, came to you with that issue within their sales organization, how would you think about advising them on how to deal with that.

Joe McNeill: The lone wolf. It depends on how they lone wolf, . Because they don't have to be going out of their way to help people. But are they answering when people are asking for help? Are they willing to share anything? And I think part of it is on the leadership.

It's to sell that person on what's in it for them for, them to bless the team with knowledge, . Because We all know SAS companies as a whole. That's where my experiences is coming from. That's where my DNA is. It's there's no such thing as stay the same it's grow or die.

n't going to remain the same [: 00:19:00

Lucas Price: Yeah, I agree. So if our listeners are listening today and they're thinking, Hey, I want to do more to make my organization, an organization of career development and of of. Helping each other and Oh, more open to bad ideas to find the good ideas, what are potential mistakes that they should avoid?

Joe McNeill: You need to be somewhat specific and what you're doing. You can't do everything at once, . Because if you try to do too many different things, if people do get change fatigue too. If you're changing too many things too many times, . So it's finding a way to test certain things, finding a way to tinker with certain things in a very non intrusive way.

Making it easy is important. And I think the other piece is just like thinking that you, as the leader, needs to be the smartest person in the room or have all the answers,. I think too many leaders think that they need to be, judge, jury and executioner of every idea, .

g to be doing it. So if they [: 00:20:00

Cause if you're going to force your idea on them, they're probably not going to execute it the way that you want them to. So sometimes being willing to let go of the reins a little bit and test something that maybe you don't believe in a ton, but if the staff believes in it, let it, let them go try it.

And you know what, hopefully you're wrong and hopefully it works.

Lucas Price: A lot of times too, it'll be like one person who wants to go try something that you think might not work, but it's going to be, it's going to impact one person and it's going to impact a very limited amount of their time. And and that case, it's it's let them try it and hope that they prove you wrong.

A lot of times they will.

Joe McNeill: Yeah. And I just think it was like, I always think of what's the worst that's going to happen. What's the worst thing that'll happen if we try this. THis guy's not going to fall. You'll build it. We, everybody's got gong now and they got this and they got that. Like you'll be able to vet it out pretty quick.

A lot of times the answer to what's the worst that can happen is a lot worse on if we don't do something, or if we don't try something that it is, if we try this or try that, or try something else.

ced enterprise seller that I [: 00:21:00

That you're not necessarily saying all of my sales reps are going to be promotions or all of my managers are going to be promotions. You're going to have a mix of insiders and outsiders. Is that correct?

Joe McNeill: Yeah. If you have too many insiders, that can be a problem too. Cause you have just, you get stuck in your own internal thought bubble. Cause like you, you develop most of these folks or your teams develop most of these folks. So you, they came up a certain way and they view the world somewhat of a certain way.

So like mixing in some external blood is always healthy to that. And the big scene, it's mixed external thought is always healthy. So yeah it's definitely not binary of like. Hey, your whole team should be homegrown, but on the flip side, it's not, Hey, we need to up level our sales folks. We need to go higher that entirely externally.

de perspectives to be in the [: 00:22:00

do You have a rule of thumb for. Inside promotions versus outside hires,?

Joe McNeill: It depends on the situation. I think even, in the middle management leadership ranks is really important too, because if you have homegrown talent as leaders that's great, but bringing in and you're coaching them, but bringing in external leaders is super helpful too, because those, the internal promoted leaders and the external leaders tend to be great, partners the internal folks, help the external folks with all of the internal nuance and all the tribal knowledge that's there.

And the external folks. Help the internal folks of sometimes you just need a peer to talk to, . Cause sometimes it's, your leader's going to help coach, you help this, but sometimes you just need to complain a little bit. You just need to maybe not complain, but vent, right? You need someone to vent to and someone that gets it.

And talking to a peer of man, this is just frustrating me that this and this, and then you just move on. And I think that having that peer relationship of external versus internal is super helpful a lot of times cause they really. help feed off of each other in terms of where the others are weak.

Lucas Price: I would imagine [: 00:23:00

Joe McNeill: I let them know that, Hey, publicly, maybe when you and I talk, it'll be different, but publicly, anything that good, that anything good that happens on your team is going to be, the credit's going to go to the folks on your team. And anything bad that happens on your team, you're going to take ownership of that publicly.

or the good things your team [: 00:24:00

We're not going to talk about all the great things Lucas, the sales manager did. In fact, we're probably never going to talk about that. We're going to talk about all the great things your team did. And then when there's mistakes we're going to share them that. Lucas is going to reflect on Hey, yeah, we screwed this up.

We screwed that up, but this is what we're doing about it. We're excited about where we're going. SO I think a lot of times that's really it. And, you see it in the interview process of how much of their communication is I, and how much is we right. How much do they own and how much they, talk about the team.

And it's a little tough because, inherently interviews are supposed to be selfish and you're supposed to self promote a little bit. But you got to assess that out of like, how focused are they on what they did and how much did they talk about their team?

ts of other great stuff here [: 00:25:00

Where can people find you online?

Joe McNeill: LinkedIn that's my main area. So Influe2 company website LinkedIn is Joe McNeil come say hi come shoot me an invite. Love to chat and meet with people.

Lucas Price: All right. Thank you, Joe.