#BehindTheCurtain: Process Vs. Improvement (The Best Sales Teams Do Both) w/ Logan Lyles

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:04.519 Want to expand the reach of your content, start a podcast, feature industry 2 00:00:04.639 --> 00:00:08.910 experts on your show and leverage the influence and reach of your guests to grow 3 00:00:08.990 --> 00:00:18.670 your brand. Learn more at sweetphish MEDIACOM. You're listening to be tob growth, 4 00:00:19.109 --> 00:00:23.500 a daily podcast for B TOB leaders. We've interviewed names you've probably heard 5 00:00:23.500 --> 00:00:27.379 before, like Gary Vander truck and Simon Senek, but you've probably never heard 6 00:00:27.460 --> 00:00:31.699 from the majority of our guests. That's because the bulk of our interviews aren't 7 00:00:31.739 --> 00:00:36.289 with professional speakers and authors. Most of our guests are in the trenches leading 8 00:00:36.329 --> 00:00:41.170 sales and marketing teams. They're implementing strategy, they're experimenting with tactics, they're 9 00:00:41.210 --> 00:00:45.729 building the fastest growing BTB companies in the world. My name is James Carberry. 10 00:00:45.810 --> 00:00:49.329 I'm the founder of sweet fish media, a podcast agency for BB brands, 11 00:00:49.490 --> 00:00:52.600 and I'm also one of the cohosts of this show. When we're not 12 00:00:52.719 --> 00:00:56.600 interviewing sales and marketing leaders, you'll hear stories from behind the scenes of our 13 00:00:56.600 --> 00:01:00.560 own business. Will share the ups and downs of our journey as we attempt 14 00:01:00.600 --> 00:01:04.549 to take over the world. Just getting well, maybe let's get into the 15 00:01:04.629 --> 00:01:14.069 show. Welcome back to be tob growth. I'm Logan lyles with sweet fish 16 00:01:14.109 --> 00:01:18.900 media. Today's episode is another in our behind the curtain series. I want 17 00:01:18.939 --> 00:01:23.540 to share with you the reason why our sweet fish sales team has started to 18 00:01:23.620 --> 00:01:29.219 implement a monthly sales development process review meeting and why you should be thinking about 19 00:01:29.260 --> 00:01:33.650 it as well, especially if you are at an early stage company, at 20 00:01:33.730 --> 00:01:38.250 a bootstrap startup, or at a high growth start up or high growth team, 21 00:01:38.409 --> 00:01:42.250 at whatever phase you are in your company's evolution, and especially if you 22 00:01:42.329 --> 00:01:47.400 fit all three of those like we do here at sweet fish. So one 23 00:01:47.439 --> 00:01:52.760 thing we've been realizing lately is we've undergone a lot of changes and a lot 24 00:01:52.840 --> 00:01:57.159 of new processes that we've built out from a sales development perspective here at sweet 25 00:01:57.159 --> 00:02:01.310 fish. We've honed our targeting, we've changed the way that we find target 26 00:02:01.349 --> 00:02:06.950 accounts, we've changed the sequences that we use, we've added in more steps 27 00:02:07.109 --> 00:02:12.789 in our sales engagement processes and at the same time our team has grown. 28 00:02:12.830 --> 00:02:16.900 We've brought on new sales people, especially one recently, Travis King, who 29 00:02:16.900 --> 00:02:23.180 joined the team, has an eye for process and has an eye for tweaking 30 00:02:23.219 --> 00:02:27.379 sales processes. So that we can optimize them, and so we've had a 31 00:02:27.460 --> 00:02:31.810 lot of eyes recently on our small but growing team, on the leaks in 32 00:02:31.849 --> 00:02:35.810 the bucket, as we call them, in our sales process. Where could 33 00:02:35.810 --> 00:02:39.370 we implement another touch? How can we delegate more to our sales support team 34 00:02:39.409 --> 00:02:45.240 that's helping gathering contact data and feed to our sales team, all of those 35 00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:47.840 sorts of things, and we want to do what I've heard, you know, 36 00:02:47.960 --> 00:02:53.039 Sangrum, talk about before, is you want to succeed fast and fail 37 00:02:53.080 --> 00:02:57.199 fast so that you can iterate fast and then succeed even faster. At the 38 00:02:57.280 --> 00:03:02.349 same time, we have to make time for both executing and improving. It's 39 00:03:02.349 --> 00:03:07.430 not that we don't want to continuously improve. We have a core value here 40 00:03:07.469 --> 00:03:12.389 at sweet fish of never stop learning. That is constantly in front of our 41 00:03:12.430 --> 00:03:15.300 team, and so we want to learn and use those learnings to improve our 42 00:03:15.340 --> 00:03:20.419 sales process. But if we are constantly you know, to give an example, 43 00:03:20.460 --> 00:03:23.340 we do a daily sales team stand up here at sweet fish where we 44 00:03:23.419 --> 00:03:29.849 talk about our wins, our challenges from the day before and our opportunities and 45 00:03:29.969 --> 00:03:32.810 potential road blocks for the day ahead, and we found that we were covering 46 00:03:32.849 --> 00:03:38.050 those with our small team of three. But then we would get into thirty, 47 00:03:38.289 --> 00:03:43.240 forty five minute our long conversations about tweaking process, and those were good. 48 00:03:43.639 --> 00:03:46.560 But if we're having those every single day, we're eating into a lot 49 00:03:46.599 --> 00:03:50.680 of execution time. We're kind of spreading ourselves mentally thin. As we go 50 00:03:50.879 --> 00:03:54.240 to execute on our process as it stands today, we're thinking, how should 51 00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:59.150 this be tweaked? This and that, and so we've decided that at the 52 00:03:59.229 --> 00:04:02.750 beginning of each month we will run the game plan as we've practiced it, 53 00:04:02.990 --> 00:04:08.110 as we have it laid out for us today, knowing that it's not perfect. 54 00:04:08.389 --> 00:04:12.580 So how do we bake in consistent improvement if we're not doing that necessarily 55 00:04:12.659 --> 00:04:15.180 on a daily basis? So two things, and then I'll get to the 56 00:04:15.259 --> 00:04:20.220 the actual monthly meeting that we've set and the importance of that one. It's 57 00:04:20.259 --> 00:04:24.529 football season, right, so we can call in audible. If you are 58 00:04:24.769 --> 00:04:30.290 executing on the process as it's defined today and you want to experiment with something 59 00:04:30.490 --> 00:04:32.449 small on top of it, you should be able to do that but not 60 00:04:32.569 --> 00:04:38.009 make major process tweaks, you know, along the way within the month. 61 00:04:38.449 --> 00:04:43.720 The second thing is give yourself a spot to put those ideas so that you 62 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:46.920 can free up your mind to execute the task at hand. So, very 63 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:50.319 tactically, what we've done is we have a sales board on Trello for our 64 00:04:50.399 --> 00:04:56.709 team and we created a list of prospecting ideas and sales process tweak potentials, 65 00:04:56.990 --> 00:05:00.670 and so we put ideas there so that we can review them together in bulk 66 00:05:01.069 --> 00:05:04.509 in one monthly meeting. And so that's where this monthly meeting comes in, 67 00:05:04.709 --> 00:05:09.819 is review the things that worked, that we think that we could tweak, 68 00:05:10.060 --> 00:05:14.660 that we could test against last month, without making so many tweaks throughout the 69 00:05:14.740 --> 00:05:17.500 month that we really don't know what's working and what's not working. And again, 70 00:05:17.500 --> 00:05:21.850 it also did tracks from our time and our mental space to just execute 71 00:05:21.889 --> 00:05:26.529 the task at hand, because we want to improve and we want to think 72 00:05:26.569 --> 00:05:29.850 about strategy, but we also have to do the blocking and tackling, and 73 00:05:29.970 --> 00:05:33.170 that's the same for every single sales team out there, but especially if you 74 00:05:33.250 --> 00:05:36.879 are at a high growth team where you're trying new things, if you're at 75 00:05:36.879 --> 00:05:43.360 a bootstrap team where immediate success as much as long term success is very important. 76 00:05:44.079 --> 00:05:46.720 This is a way that we've come up with to keep our eye on 77 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:50.589 the ball short term we by week throughout the month and still execute on our 78 00:05:50.670 --> 00:05:57.110 core value of never stopped learning and never stop improving in our sales process. 79 00:05:57.189 --> 00:06:00.589 So I hope this was helpful for especially early stage sales teams out there. 80 00:06:00.910 --> 00:06:03.980 You know, I've been in sales for ten plus years, but this is 81 00:06:04.139 --> 00:06:10.300 my first time building out a and early stage team from the ground up, 82 00:06:10.980 --> 00:06:15.660 developing our go to market processes from scratch. Thankfully, I've got some great 83 00:06:15.980 --> 00:06:19.170 leadership on the team here at sweet fish and great members of the sales team 84 00:06:19.209 --> 00:06:24.889 that are contributing fantastic ideas and we're finding our way forward together and I thought 85 00:06:24.889 --> 00:06:28.610 that this might be helpful for other folks sitting in similar seats. If you 86 00:06:28.689 --> 00:06:30.930 want to stay connected with me, hit me up on Linkedin. I love 87 00:06:31.050 --> 00:06:34.879 connecting with listeners. I think I'm the only Logan Lyles on Linkedin. Last 88 00:06:34.879 --> 00:06:39.720 name is l y Elies, or hit me up with a follow on instagram. 89 00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:43.519 I'm at I am Logan Lyles. As always, thank you so much 90 00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:49.509 for listening. We totally get it. We publish a ton of content on 91 00:06:49.670 --> 00:06:53.910 this podcast and it can be a lot to keep up with. That's why 92 00:06:53.949 --> 00:06:58.829 we've started the BTB growth big three a no fluff email that boils down our 93 00:06:58.949 --> 00:07:02.660 three biggest takeaways from an entire week of episodes. Sign up today at Sweet 94 00:07:02.660 --> 00:07:09.660 Phish Mediacom Big Three. That sweet fish Mediacom Big Three