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The Evolution of Sales Force Effectiveness with Tom Hill · Disengaged

• James A. Seechurn: Okay, Tom Hill, good to see you. Tom Hill: All right, see you James. Thanks for having me. James A. Seechurn: And are you ready to talk about Salesforce effectiveness? Tom Hill: I mean, day goes by where I'm not ready, right? I mean, kind of made it my passion So ⁓ yeah, let's do it when ready. James A. Seechurn: Hello and welcome to another episode of the as discussed podcast. Today I'm joined by my friend Tom Hill. Tom is a very intelligent, very experienced Salesforce effectiveness advisor. A few years ago, he founded his own firm revenue shift, but before that, he was the leader of the Salesforce effectiveness practice at Cornferry and then at Lotus Blue Consulting. Excellent. Let's dive in. so much we could talk about because you cover so many areas in your business. So there's a lot of questions I have for you as we go through this. ⁓ just want to start with a big one. How is the world of sales ⁓ Salesforce effectiveness changing? Tom Hill: All right, well, let's start at the top here. Love it. I think it's changing. ⁓ at a higher velocity than it has in the past 15 years that I've been at this and even longer. I think just with the rate of speed with which everyone's kind of expecting progress to happen, particularly with AI, can't go an hour or two without someone talking about AI these days and what that means for. James A. Seechurn: So we had plenty to talk about. we talked about the changing nature of Salesforce effectiveness and the changing nature of sales role in particular, ⁓ how really shifting away from a point in time transactional role to something that's a lot more ⁓ collaborative, lot more consultative in nature and what that means not just for pay, but also for how we organize sales organizations and how we define these new roles that are appearing in the marketplace. So without ado. Tom Hill: You know, not just the macro economy, but obviously sales in general is huge. think there's a lot more pressure on organizations right now, particularly SaaS organizations with their valuations and trying to sort out what that means. And I think a lot of the old of doing things, old being, you know, five or 10 years ago, mind you, not, you know, 50 year old adages are kind being rethought in terms of what's working, what's not. James A. Seechurn: I give you this episode of As Discussed and I hope you enjoyed. Tom Hill: What needs to change and I think it starts not just with your sales and kind of the world I live in with, know, making sales teams more effective, but also the entire. You go to market strategy and stack around that everything from pricing to. You know, how we think about customers and the customer journey to, you know, how do we serve our how do we actually then serve our customers and deploy them? you with our sales team, you in the field. James A. Seechurn: And what's driving all that change? So AI is obviously a part of it, but is the relationship between the buyer and the seller, that changing relationship the thing that's driving the for sellers? Tom Hill: I think it's driving part of it. a larger part of it than we know. It just feels like, and you're talking to lots of clients and kind of what's on their plate. It just feels like they're being pulled in all sorts of direction and that the ability to have clients kind of focus or being able to make singular decisions ⁓ is of up in the air. It's much more of a team sale, a team decision at companies. ⁓ So there's much more stakeholder management at play than there ever has been before. So I think that's a big part of it. was talking to one of my clients a of weeks ago and she was saying, I ⁓ get 200, call it, email messages, email spam messages from, she's in the ⁓ HR space ⁓ HR tech. And just ⁓ one part of world of SaaS, ⁓ She's like, I can't keep up with it from an inbox stage. She's like, so unless I've got a situation where, you know, I have that exact problem at that exact moment when I see that, one email, like it's all just cast aside. And so I think we're kind of moving from a, a situation where, um, you know, everyone was trying to drive efficiency and drive scale and automate things. And obviously there's still a big push on that. But I think it has eroded trust between a buyer and ⁓ organizations and selling entities. And so we've seen much more of emphasis placed on kind of the face-to-face and the human-to-human interaction, which has a profound impact on what it means for sales, what the role ⁓ is, how to be successful against it. James A. Seechurn: interesting because to your point, the notion of that kind of knock on the door salesperson or send an email salesperson outbound outreach, ⁓ it's difficult to do that. ⁓ The of someone turning up at the front door of an office and trying to sell something doesn't really exist anymore. But you finish by saying that interpersonal aspect, that relationship, that human element is still the thing that matters. ⁓ I guess my question then is how do you reapply those traditional sales skills, the ability to form those customer to business and business to customer relationships in a world where people don't answer emails and you can't pick up the phone or you can't knock on the door. How do you bring those skills into the modern sales world? Tom Hill: Yeah, well, a couple of different ways. And I think organizations are still trying to largely figure that out. But I think what we've seen ⁓ ⁓ kind of growth in what we've called kind of the full cycle account executive. So full cycle AE, where it's really moving a situation where you had, you know, a BDR team, you know, at the end to generate pipeline to a seller to kind of close. then handing it off to an implementation team and a customer success management. And maybe the seller would reengage around renewal or upsell opportunities through a world where the seller is more end to end than they were before. So in some ways kind of bringing back that old school based seller ⁓ they have the trust built in with the customer at the front end, because they're often trying to you scope out and match the solution to the problems and outcome problems looking at the clients looking to solve and outcomes they're looking to achieve. so being ⁓ more embedded kind of end to end, which has a ⁓ impact for role specialization and what that means. So that's one ⁓ way we've seen organizations try to deal with that. Yeah. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. So the role, the shifting role. So I do want to talk a bit more about the nature of the role. So traditionally, and I think SAS kind of cemented a bunch of roles into everyone's consciousness. Like there's an account executive, there's an account manager, there's customer success, there's solutions, implementations, consultants, all that kind of thing. But at the same time, the is shifting to a different style of consumption. So we talk about the consumption-based sale, which there's increasingly more of. ⁓ Maybe in fact, before we go on, just so for anyone's listening, could you just talk us through what consumption based sales actually is for anyone that's maybe not as familiar with that and why that changes the sales cycle? Tom Hill: Sure, no problem. So consumption or usage-based models kind of exist to operate bit more of kind of a pay for what you use, pay for where you go. So think about it more in terms of energy bill at right? ⁓ Than kind of a traditional SaaS model where you're paying a license or a number of seats kind of in advance. And then it's the company, ⁓ the customer's responsibility. to get the most out of the product and services that they sell or they purchased. And so the consumption model is kind of a shift we've seen in a lot of traditional software organizations. it's been around a long time, but it's kind of growing a bit more in terms of its prevalence and usage to better match and up what you're buying for what you're using. So it's a bit more of kind of a meant to be a bit of a closer connection between You what you purchased in the value you as a customer. And that has ⁓ for as you kind of teased out here, you the sales organization and what that means, and we can certainly dive into that as well. But it also has implications for ⁓ and the selling organization to. You match up that how do we recognize revenue and how do we, ⁓ You kind of forecast our business if we don't necessarily know that, you know. customer A has bought a $10,000 license for a year. We know we're going to get that revenue and so forth. Whereas consumption, it's tied to how much they actually used of that product and services. So it might come in at six grand. It could come out at 12 grand. it creates a lot more uncertainty then too for the seller and also the buyer in terms of how do we think about what How do we think about what's actually going to, um, uh, the clients can actually buy and use, and then therefore what they're going to get out of the service and, um, kind of has causes a constant, uh, effect of needing to constantly prove itself out over time. Cause you're kind of paying for it as opposed to doing a retrospective like you would in an annual contract software contract. It's easier to kind of gloss over, Oh, you didn't really use it this much or not. It's. of a direct you see it every every time and it fluctuates. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. So to your point, I think you said at the beginning, it's matching up what people want with what they buy, which feels like a really obvious thing to say. Um, you know, but the, kind of the SAS model ARR, which really took over Wall Street when SAS started being kind of running things. ARR has been that word for so long. to your point, that is expected because it's contracted and particularly with enterprise ARR, you know pretty well what the expenditure is going to be and what the cost is going to be as the buyer, as you say, but. It does feel like, particularly with advances in technology and being able to monitor usage and quickly adapting to clients' needs, ticking on and off services and options and volume and things, that the world is moving more towards this model of better truing up what people are using with what they're paying for. So to your point, then, so. This is changing the sales model, typical sales model. know what? I'm gonna pause for one second because there's a truck going outside and I'm worried that's gonna... Tom Hill: No problem. James A. Seechurn: was I? So companies then, for ⁓ the effectiveness model, that means that there's much less predictability ⁓ in a seller is selling. ⁓ So don't know the value. traditionally you'd be able to use that ARR number to set quotas and to pay sellers. But now at the point of sale, you don't have as much certainty ⁓ over much that customer's worth. Tom Hill: That's right. James A. Seechurn: as a sales organization, how do you start? Where do you start? But you can talk about compensation and incentives at some point, but just broadly speaking, how do you adapt to that as a sales org because that breaks down a lot of the traditional notions of planning and goaling and quota setting. Tom Hill: Well, I think it's a great, great question. And ⁓ when we've worked with clients on this, they come to us with, ⁓ got a incentive problem. but we've often found it's higher. That's a symptom and not a root cause, you know, cause as you alluded to James in the fact that you, probably a role issue you need to sort out. And then if you're James A. Seechurn: You Tom Hill: looking at your roles and what that's going to be different than, you know, what does the coverage model of those sellers and the new responsibilities look like? And then how does that change how go to market and figuring that out? So there is a need to oftentimes kind of relook at all those things, ⁓ not say that everything's a grand thing to do, but you would often kind of brings out some issues or some things a bit under the surface that may not have been there. But either moving to a consumption-based model or trying to optimize around the reality and realizing that there's more work to do here to get it to where you need to go. And so what we often advise our clients with is you're really taking a step back and understanding ⁓ where the value created. in the new world with that customer journey? Does the seller's world and role need to expand for that? How much revenue is potentially at risk if we keep the existing model with an implementation, CSM, et cetera? Or do we need to move in effect to a more hybrid-based model where AE becomes AE slash AM ⁓ to ensure the revenue James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Tom Hill: Kind of comes in as expected and some people are. Then you've got the whole sales and equipment aspect on top of that, where might have the right people. For that new role, and they might not want to be in that role. ⁓ might, they might get all their joy out of. Hunting new accounts and everything, so there's a lot of ⁓ impacts for for something around the consumption model. James A. Seechurn: All Yeah, laughed at the start there because you said that a lot of people come to you with a compensation problem, but it's actually something else. I feel like ⁓ in Salesforce effectiveness or sales comp and everyone has exactly the same experience. It's often that people will look to that sales incentive plan and try and fix something about it in the hope that if you just change the number, then it will change the behavior and get to what you want. Tom Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's partly just because it's documented. You can kind of see it. You see the results. You've got a kind of comparison point year over year from a plan perspective. Everyone loves playing sales comp consultant at client side too. And they all have a lot of good input for it. James A. Seechurn: You Tom Hill: But the role problem or something further upstream is harder to solve. I think there's also a tendency to, for some organizations to try to let the sales incentive plan act too much like a performance management system or to paper over other sorts of either, whether it's sales enablement, training and development, whether it's our product market fit, can over a lot of other things for an But you In light of all that, there's always a few things when you're talking about consumption model that organizations need to fundamentally change just because you go from, often go from you kind of a set defined revenue figure to one where it's more an estimated contract where you're trying to best understand. And then you figure out how, what's the length from your time of signature to first piece of value client's getting to ⁓ some sort of true up. you down the road to get you kind of a proper motion set up of what you expect for the company, the customer to kind ⁓ build into with products that they're using. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, so this is where I want to dig into it a little bit and the psychology of what incentives do as well and relating that to the types of roles we're talking about. So traditionally, traditionally and even more recently in the SaaS world, have hunters and farmers, like a lot of companies want that. And a lot of that comes from the need for growth here at all the time. We need new accounts, we need new logo, we need growth, we need growth. course, that's balanced against the popularized Salesforce model of customer success, which is that growth is only so good as keeping clients that you have. And if you're... Tom Hill: Yep. James A. Seechurn: churning at the same time. It doesn't matter how quickly you grow, you're never going to build a business. So customer success came along to sort of address the churn aspect of that kind of endless growth. But now if you've got a situation where don't know what you're selling at the time of sale, what you're trying to do is really introduce a client into an ecosystem now with this new model in. So the goal is to bring that new name in. ⁓ But then the real goal is to maximize the lifetime value, as we call the LTV of that customer. And that takes a group, a team of people, not just trying to pick up the phone and sell them stuff, but making sure they're using the product and using the features like customer success, making sure they're renewing and potentially accessing new features or new products like an account manager would typically do. But it's almost like it's everyone's responsibility, which is I think kind of where you started, is that role stratification. If we chart the direction of the sales model. Tom Hill: Yeah. James A. Seechurn: and so it's natural in that say five or 10 years time. What those roles start to look like? In fact, finish up with that question first. What are the roles going to look like in ⁓ a post AR world, shall we call it? Tom Hill: Wow. You're going to ask me to be Nostradamus here. This is a little tough. Yeah. But I think you, before you answer the questions, best I can, I think there's a few other key things you kind of hit on there. that's, the game has changed for sales organizations where the model used to be add more headcount, get more sales. Right? Because you had more coverage and more people to call on and... James A. Seechurn: Thank you, sir. Tom Hill: Everyone was looking to drive out some, drive some more efficiency and so forth. And now organizations are really trying to kind of sometimes peel back their tech stack and peel back other things to say, you know, are we getting the right value? this, you know, helping us from where we want to go? And so that model of just adding headcount to help hit a number is just not where it used to be. And I think you see that then in terms of the rationalization of not only sales roles, but total sales headcount these days. You kind of then to build on your question around what does the sales roles in the future look like? You know, I think there's a big case to be made on the side and what that's going mean for organizations and kind of having that you help you. I also believe that. James A. Seechurn: Sorry, sorry, while we're on the agentic, could you just elaborate on what agentic is for anyone listening? Tom Hill: Yeah. I'll do my best, but I'm not sure I even have it solely but it's essentially a automated tool to help individuals run and perform tasks to make them more efficient. At least that's my understanding of it. there's more you want to round out on that, ⁓ would... ⁓ Fair enough. ⁓ I'm an AI James A. Seechurn: anything else that's as good as what either of us are going to get to so that's fine. Tom Hill: You know, I think the, point here, in terms of what it means for sales and, and what that's going to look like is, you know, there's going to be more, automation to help do the job, for people going to take out the busy work and so on and so forth. I still think you're going to need sellers and I still think going to need customer success, even though we're, we've talked about kind of the consumption world about kind of that hybrid. I still think you need. you know, some supporting individuals, whether that's kind of mini CSMs or others, you being in place at the customer to help them really, really drive value for it. In terms of, you know, kind of massive changes for, you know, sales organizations five years from now, I think it's anybody's guess just because, you things are moving so fast. I will say that we have a tendency, we, in the space, And when people talk about you focus on tech organizations first and foremost, mostly ⁓ tech organizations. And that sector has kind of been at the forefront of sales innovation and sales effectiveness innovation in the last 20, 25 years. And so I think ⁓ all have a tendency to kind of fixate on that and think that that means change is going to happen massively for everybody else, know, at the same time. And I think there's a very long tail, particularly outside of technology organizations. We've got lots of clients in, you know, the med device sector and those in insurance and financial services and others in manufacturing. And they're way further down the track on that, on that tail. And I think part of it is Just their data sophistication in house isn't quite the same as it is at some of the massive tech organizations that have a lot better data capture of what they can do, can see, can project and so forth. So they can AI a little bit more effectively than an organization that doesn't have as much. mean, you think about the of the old adage of ⁓ garbage garbage out. If you don't have a lot of good data to start with, you're building a machine learning model. off of bad data is just going to optimize either your bad outcomes or kind of your bad data. So I think there's just a way to go here before it's, you know, ⁓ all part of the ⁓ by ⁓ leading the way. ⁓ James A. Seechurn: ⁓ to your point, some of those industries as well, like tech has changed the relationship between buyer and seller. To your point, financial services, the medical industry ⁓ still much more driven by the expectations of the customers, much more face to face time ⁓ There's a different way of buying and selling that you can't just replace immediately. I agree. It's taken some time for that. For example, customer success. ⁓ revolutionized tech, took a long time for other industries to pay attention to that, even though makes a ton of sense and the data kind of proved it. there is a lag than most people expect, I think, when it comes to picking up novel concepts around sales and Salesforce effectiveness. Tom Hill: Yeah, I think that's well said, James. James A. Seechurn: So in that light then, is there a role for the traditional hunter? if there is, ⁓ do you ⁓ and goal it? So again, if the job of the hunter is to find new logos... And just to take a slight back step then, so you have a BDR or an SDR before that, a business or sales development rep that goes out and finds those leads, they hand it to a hunter. The hunter closes the deal and theory they hand it over to an account manager who looks after it and a customer success manager who makes sure the customer's using the product and getting the most out of it. But that hunter kind of relies on that personality, that hunter personality, the person that... Tom Hill: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: goes out, celebrates, lands a big deal, rings the bell, and then moves on completely. And you kind of want them to, because you want them focusing on the next new thing rather than turning themselves into an account manager. But in a world where dollar value in some scenarios is actually zero on day one, and you're really expecting is the team to work together to then maximize the take-up of that product, is there a role for a hunter in that kind of world? And if so, what does it look like? Tom Hill: Yeah, I think the answer is still yes. though we talked about kind of that full cycle AM, that doesn't mean they're always doing all the hunting. And I think in particular with you, ⁓ can kind of those ⁓ hunters they're ⁓ particularly game hunters as well. That's a very long sales cycle involved. And you tend to, I found it better when you've got those hunters of being able to focus on that. nonstop, as opposed to a hybrid role or some of the other kind of key account management roles that internal customers were kind of balancing other things going on, you know, either putting out fires or planning for the future, producing new products and so forth. And so I do think there's a world for big game hunters still in particular, because it can mean a massive amount of change for a business if they land an account. And I think You, when we're in a situation now where it feels like we're at the start of the next version of our tech revolution with AI machine learning and everything like that, there's going to be a lot of new products brought to market or try to be brought to market. And you need someone to open doors and kind of do a little bit more of a visionary sale at the, at the front end with it, which oftentimes those hunters have that, competencies in place to really be successful. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Tom Hill: more so than other types of sales profiles or archetypes that we sometimes see and associate with. I don't see it going away. And I think companies like the idea ⁓ of a few people brought in. Oftentimes, it's probably going to be even more so focused on what their personal network is and what doors can they open. And that's going to have to drive more of the impact itself, which has an implication, by the way, for pay. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Tom Hill: When we talk about sales compensation, we often try to associate level of impact does that seller have to influence not just ⁓ of pay, but plan, design type, acceleration, upside, kind of all goes together then kind of a more mature business that might be a bit more well known in the market and other factors help influence the sale more. So there's a lot to ⁓ unpack James A. Seechurn: Yeah, I want to come back to the pay implications as well, because I do think there's a lot of legacy assumptions around how you pay people that probably need to be challenged a bit even in sales. But to your point on the Hunter, even as you're answering, you're kind of drifting up in the market segment a bit, you know, the big deals, the big game hunters and the enterprise deals. But as you're talking, I thinking, but what about the mid market and the market that also used to have hunters, but now is increasingly automated? Tom Hill: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: by AI-based BDR qualification and sales experiences where you just log on and buy your thing, which never existed 50 years ago. So does mean that the role of the hunter might be more minimal and more strategic, perhaps, if I'm inferring ⁓ what getting to there? Tom Hill: think there's, I think probably yes. But I also think we've not really proven out yet how well all this machine learning AI ⁓ is getting for organizations. So it may mean that it can simplify a few tasks, but then you still need a mid-market hunter. to face to face with the client. I think that gets back to one of my central points I made early on is the importance of face to face. And I don't see that going away. And it probably doesn't go away for mid-market, despite all those advances and so forth. So yeah, I guess probably more of focus on kind of the big game hunters, certainly. But I don't think mid-market is ⁓ you know, that's a dying place or anything like that. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, so if you're a mid-market hunter out there, you're safe for the time being. says so. ⁓ any luck, it'll be more fun because hopefully we can use that AI to free up those really talented salespeople to actually sell and not spend their time ⁓ all the... Tom Hill: Yeah, sure. James A. Seechurn: operational side of it and the qualification side of it you can actually focus that talents on closing those deals that you need them to close and that and then hopefully we can get more out of the talent that we have. Tom Hill: Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting point. And one of the things we on most of our engagements is time and motion survey. So you think about way back in the day, would have just like, know, ⁓ task-based oriented and have like a stopwatch and something, you know, before you and I were born here, right? ⁓ And James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Taylor started all this. Winslow Taylor did that time and motion analysis and the scientific management. Tom Hill: Yeah, right. Right. But we craft a survey that's built around kind of selling activities, non-selling activities, customer facing, non-customer facing selling activities. And, there's subcategories under that. And what we've really found is, you know, we've got people to kind of break that up and we factor it into like your percentages, right? Like think about a hundred pennies and how you would allocate that in various buckets and then allocate sub buckets against that. You can then you turn that data around and compare that against high performers and really understand, okay, where are our gaps? Where do need to fill in, in terms of other development or other issues resolve? But it also points to every organization tries get rid of non-selling time. It's always going to be there, but ⁓ where can we that? And the time and is helpful. for organizations we found help them not just kind of with role design changes ⁓ contemplating making, but to understand where can we unlock little bit more value in terms of the few things ⁓ that might make a and ⁓ then therefore what are areas we need to focus on using an AI tool or something to streamline and automate so we can have more customer facing time. I think that's what customers are always. or clients are always striving for, but it's easy to say it's a lot harder to do. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Well, and to an earlier point, it's a lot harder to do because of how consultative and multidisciplinary the sales cycle is now, isn't it? You don't get to sell and move on. You don't get to hand over a CD. like you used to at one point, you're selling a solution and a service and an ongoing network of support. So by definition, you're going to have to spend time chatting with your SDR and chatting with your account manager and chatting with your customer success manager or multiple potentially, and implementation specialists for deployed engineers is on the rise as well. So a bit of ⁓ ongoing fight, I guess, to do that and... maybe even a somewhat losing fight as well because the nature of sales is much more collaborative now than it could have ever been some time ago. So you're always going to have to invest a lot more time into working with your colleagues, which a lot of sellers don't want to do. They want to just go out and sell, right? You kind of have to work with your colleagues to figure out solutions in a lot of these environments. Tom Hill: Yeah, it's much more a team sport than it has been or ever was. I just the way we all work together within an just with clients when they're not doing a project with us, but in general, they're working, you to make and they've got... You'll find that the HR teams got finance in their meetings and you know, if it's an operations issue, know, there's safety and other, sorts of organizations and functions in there helping to figure out what the right way is. And think some of that's a little bit kind of. Collegial let's, let's make the right decision together, get more voices in the room, help, help do that. And some, sometimes it can slow an organization down. I'm sure you've worked with clients where you've got. you have 10 or 15 people around the table and it's like, well, we've got too much of a designed by committee situation here. is not ideal. So it's really about striking the right balance of that, but it's definitely a high orientation to team-based ⁓ in general in the workforce. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Yeah. I think just a little segue on that one as well because you're right, there are more stakeholders involved in making decisions and to your point, designed by committee has to be avoided at all costs otherwise nothing happens. But there's a difference between having the right stakeholders and the right decision makers I think as well. it's one thing to have a group of 10 or 15 people if you've got one person making a decision, listening to the opinions and then making a decision. It's another thing to have 10 or 15 people all trying to make the decision. ⁓ that's the latter scenario is the one I tried to of way through fairly rigorous governance frameworks with projects by saying you have to have a decision maker because we're dealing with non-demonstrable solutions, aren't we? There's no proof when you decide to go one way the other, which is going to be the right way, which means that someone has to either find consensus or make a decision. I think that in the sales comp process in particular, I find that's very common issue designed by committee. Tom Hill: Yeah, it certainly is. And one of the things we found is when we're talking with clients or even scoping work, some of them want to think about it as being 80 or 90 % on design and 10 % on change and new kind of governance. really, it's especially the tricky ones, it's more 50-50 in that you're bringing stakeholders along internally and externally. ⁓ to kind of get to a decision point and a, and a consensus, you say, ⁓ of what the right direction is, you know, for the organization to move forward. and so, yeah, the governance pieces often overlooked little bit too much in terms of its importance, not just from a HR and reward standpoint. Certainly sometimes we get called in when they're trying to get a seat at the table. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Tom Hill: And other times it's about, you know, how do we make sure we avoid a Fox in the Head Out situation or another situation where, um, you know, one group has too, too much influence on setting the plan, setting the goals, you know, kind of making kind of unilateral decisions. James A. Seechurn: yeah, it's I feel like when you get a when you get a sales incentive plan to review, you can tell when it's been decision by committee, but you can look and go like, I think finance made that one, I think HR probably put that in there. And you look in the plan, so it's legal put that in there. But that doesn't, ⁓ that make any sense with the plan mechanics. Well, you can kind of see the fingerprints of decision by committee all over the plans when you look into it, which is sort of giveaway for the overall sales cycle, I think. Tom Hill: You're right on that. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. ⁓ go back then to let's think about ⁓ you incentivize these behaviors then. ⁓ Again, and just a little bit of context here, I always like to remind anyone listening what you can and can't do with financial incentives because there's a tendency to think that if you incentivize something, then someone will do it and they'll do it to the best degree possible to the best quality. So if we add this, they'll do that. If we add that, they'll do that as well. we have this, they'll do that as well. And that's when you end up with these giant plans that have all kinds of metrics. You have to use Salesforce. You have to have a customer satisfaction score. You have to your quota. But only if you do this at the same time, you get these really kind of complex arrangements. that if you gave to a computer with Boolean logic, they would probably subscribe to that, but if you give it to a human, they just tend to get disengaged. So then the research says... Tom Hill: Yeah. James A. Seechurn: that it's going to happen. It's pretty accurate. It says, look, if you give someone simple financial incentives to increase volume, they will increase their volume. However, it also says that if you give people incentives to solve problems, then they will be less good at solving those problems. They'll just get to the solution quicker. So in a collaborative sales world, as we keep talking about, you have to work with a lot of different stakeholders. That involves problem solving. involves fixing things not as quickly as possible, but in the way that maximizes the highest. lifetime value for that customer and the research tells us that incentives might work against that goal of finding better solutions for your customer. do we in a from a now we're just talking about incentives but from an incentive design perspective how do we balance what incentives can and can't do ⁓ it comes to plan design? Tom Hill: Well, I think it starts with you outlying a few guiding principles that of what the organization is trying to solve for so that everyone around the table has a common framework and way of looking at things that. to assess any potential changes and what those may or may not mean for an organization. ⁓ tend to start with that in terms of what do from a plan design perspective. You certainly, ⁓ when run an organization that has four or five or more measures, you're kind of scratching your head saying, know, kind of what are you doing here? And We find the best plans themselves kind of get back to what's the organization trying to solve? What's the role trying to do? And then what's the proper way to, to, to incent, incent those various behaviors and then putting in the right plan, you know, mechanics to ensure finance happy, it's fair for the employee and associated things with it. And I think the other piece around plan design in particular that you know, comes up in every interview we've done with every client ever is, you know, from a seller perspective, you know, are the goals fair? And, you know, the quote is right for us that, you know, has a huge impact of where things are. You know, but generally, you're kind of trying to keep it simple. It's a good place to start, you know, kind of one or two measures. If we have a third, let's argue about that and see if it's really worthwhile. James A. Seechurn: Right? Tom Hill: And then really trying to align that. We've seen some organizations, you shift over time, it comes and goes and depends on the sector too, of trying to tie the sellers back to a larger number as well. Some of that's a measurement thing and some of that kind of gets to your, part of your question around, you know, a solutions based organization or a situation for our client to make sure they win. So it's not, you know, a situation where we're just trying to. stuff sales down a client's throat to hit our own number. think there's been a few cases of that in the past that have blown up pretty, pretty loudly. I organizations are certainly trying to avoid being the headlines on that. And part of that that you rise of ⁓ a bit more than we even saw ⁓ years ago from So I tend to start that. James A. Seechurn: Right. Hmm. Tom Hill: from a design process and kind of work with the clients on really getting into what are we trying to solve for here and ensuring we have that connection between role and plan before we move forward on ideas. James A. Seechurn: Thank Yeah, yeah. And I want to come back to the quota setting pieces. I believe you have a good example of the challenges with set and what a quota can go from being a goal to being a financial control to being a target to being a ⁓ of political component. ⁓ quota setting is always a challenge. But point as well, think coming to try and put too much stuff in the plan as the sales cycle gets more complex and as it does get more Problem-solving in nature and more team oriented in nature There's a tendency to put all of that in the plan as well to try and control for those finer aspects of good quality selling by adding incentives and claw backs and linkages and that kind of thing, but you mentioned that the cycle is still part of it. there are guardrails in the sale cycle, bid review processes, managers are there to make sure they hire the right people and those people have ethics and think about the right needs for the organization, not just the commission. So I think that, I don't know if you see this a lot, I feel there's a tendency to try and fix that. As soon as you see a plan, think, okay, that's where everything needs to go. Tom Hill: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: And then that's when you start seeing these really, really complicated plans that don't really solve for anything. But there are all kinds of other parts of the Salesforce effectiveness model that can help with some of that as well. Tom Hill: Yeah, absolutely. When you can avoid having the plan be your performance management system as well, ⁓ a really good thing. And it's to have a coaching conversation face-to-face with someone ⁓ on they're doing. It's lot easier of point to the plan and ⁓ let the numbers the talking, right? I mean, we're all in sales ⁓ in some way, form, but ⁓ with SFE, ⁓ James A. Seechurn: Right. Yeah. Mm. Tom Hill: You that's one of the things I really like about This space is you've got some hard numbers to go on. ⁓ but that doesn't mean the intangibles, the, you conversations, need to fully stop because we can kind of measure a sales number versus a target and feel good about it. And you know, need just as much training and development as engineer and your, your finance person, obviously on different things. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tom Hill: but they're just as focused on their career path and what it means for them as you're an engineer going from a junior engineer to a mid level to a senior engineer. I think sometimes that gets overlooked because people like to anchor on the incentive plan, but you know, it's so much more to it than that in terms of what, what, what sellers really want. They want, they definitely want to get paid. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Tom Hill: They want the joy of winning, right? They want an incentive plan to motivate them, but they don't want that and nothing else. You know, there's more to it. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, exactly. The joy of winning that sporty kind of mentality is something that came up with a previous conversation with James King as well, that there is a There is a gamification around the sales was there's a fun to be had by selling and closing. And just because there's competition doesn't mean you're trying to beat everyone. Well, you might be trying to beat them, but it doesn't mean it's unhealthy. There's a healthy competition in any good sales function. And I think that's a really important point as well. They're not coin operated or at least not as coin operated as everyone would love to believe that salespeople are. They're still humans. They still respond to the same levels of engagement. They still need to be challenged. They still need to be enjoying their work. They still need to be feeling like they're making progress. progress, just because they get their paycheck doesn't solve all that stuff. don't know why, but there's a tendency to forget all of that with salespeople. It's just like give them a quote and let them get on with it. Why wouldn't they sell as much as possible? Tom Hill: Mm-hmm. It probably just gets back to a view that, because they're paid on a scheme or plan or whatever, that we can overlook all those things. In some ways, yeah, I think they're just, you have to be a little bit of a different sort of animal than someone in a corporate setting ⁓ to be good at that job and like it. James A. Seechurn: It's almost like they're not one of us. Hmm. Tom Hill: But there's a lot of sacrifices they make too that don't get seen about, you know, they're on the road, they're, you know, their evenings and everything else. So it's not an easy job by any means. James A. Seechurn: ⁓ Very few sellers are lazy. They're that kind of They're not normally that mentality. They want to be doing things. They're quite self-driven people. So if you one of those people and they look like they're being lazy, it means you've done something pretty impressive, I think, to iron out that mentality to keep going out there and selling at that stage. ⁓ And oftentimes, I think it comes down to terribly set which we should... probably talk a bit about next. So quota setting is this common cold, of the incentive plan. How can we fix it? Tom Hill: Sure. through good governance, through good data good testing and methodologies against it. We a project a couple of years back now with a and we did plan and we were looking at it and we're like, something's, ⁓ when we look at data, like, something's not adding up here, you know, in terms of performance and so forth. And we started asking questions and digging in the hood a little bit. And we found that they were had quotas to assess people, but then they would change the quotas quarterly as a way to essentially deliver pay to the sellers because they were good guys and good girls. And they were using that to basically the quota plan quotas to basically move the goalposts. quarter to quarter. And so what they ended up creating an issue, which they didn't realize was they were actually really demotivating their top performers because the top performers would have a bang out first half, first quarter, first half. The goalposts would move further down the field from them. And then they would then be performing below target and get less incentives. And then other individuals in certain markets where they were struggling, had their goals brought down a lot. And then they were overperforming a little bit and kind of catching up from a pay perspective. And so it was creating a double ⁓ sword that was ⁓ bad for the company. Cause then the top performers were demotivated and leaving. And then the bottom performers were sticking around because they thought they were doing okay. And so you roll that over enough years. ⁓ And you run into a situation where you have no more A players or very few of them, not enough B players and lots of C players. And so they didn't think they were doing anything wrong with how they were managing quotas. so we had to bring a lot of different analyses to the table to help them understand what the implications were from the finance team kind of unilaterally with sales leaders. James A. Seechurn: you Tom Hill: approval. I don't think the sales leadership knew what those downstream implications, how that was actually affecting, nor did finance, but what ⁓ goaling methodology was doing ⁓ costing them from a business standpoint. And so we had to spend a lot of time kind of ironing that out for them and building a flow and a process for them to understand, here's how you should set goals, which was probably pretty good at the beginning of the year. But then you in particular, how are you handling exceptions? When and what conditions will you do kind of a mid-year review in certain markets? And so they didn't have any the structure to be able to set quotas properly. And so their plan in itself was falling way flat and causing lots of implications with with the sellers particular and they had a ⁓ pretty big turnover issue because of it. James A. Seechurn: So not the right way to get it done. So ⁓ than actually looking at the market opportunity, ⁓ was more of a case of looking at what someone sold in the previous quarter and then using that to tink with the quotas in the next quarter. that was that pretty much what their methodology ended up being. Tom Hill: More or less, yeah, that's nice, easy way to think about it. And again, this was a manufacturing company. ⁓ there was ⁓ sorts of complications and it was kind of in the building material space. So there was some tie back to new housing starts having an impact, which varies by different ⁓ geographies in U.S. and so forth. And we did encourage them to really dig into the opportunity. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Hmm. Tom Hill: aspect of the equation that you mentioned to really say, you're not just setting the goals, set the goals, but where are we ⁓ over under penetrated and what does that mean for our sales team and should we tweak our goals a little bit further? James A. Seechurn: Yeah, yeah. So, when we think about the right way to do it, then, there's, there are top down and bottom up mentality is around quotes setting, right? And when we talk about that, we mean there's the number that the CEO wants that comes from the top, but there's a reality of the market. So I was wondering if you could talk maybe a bit more about the bottoms up methodology or the data or the types of. that makes sense when it actually comes to setting realistic market-driven quotas. Tom Hill: Yes. So what we'd like to do is a few years worth of historical data on a territory ⁓ territory basis or seller by seller based on account assignment. And put together a model against that and do some Monte Carlo simulation around outcomes as well to understand the variability of goals and the performance against that. Not all companies can do that because they might not have enough sellers or enough, you know, kind of monthly or quarterly data turns to really kind of see variability. But that give you a sense of how much do and performance fluctuate in a given range, which then can give you some anchor points around you on a count by account or territory or rep by rep basis, what what things should should be in do. And so that's where we we like to start from. But as you say, kind of that bottoms up is, is not just kind of taking some of that course data, internal data, infusing maybe some external data, if it's available, some, or some sectors, it is very available. You think about companies getting data from CHS and everything else is kind of the king of that to, ⁓ other sectors where there's other macro trends that have a large impact of it down to... other sorts of sectors where it's a little bit harder to do. So that, that varies quite a lot, but then really kind of saying what does, in a given territory or area, what does the potential look like in that, right? Someone might be doing $10 million in a $12 million opportunity territory, which is really, really good. Someone else might be doing $20 million in a $200 million territory. Which means one, maybe we don't have the right person, but maybe two, more appropriately, maybe we don't have enough coverage there and we need a second or third person to divide that up. And we need to segment our accounts and think about A's, B's, C's as a simplistic way to think about it. So all of that feeds into some of the bottoms up. I ⁓ think the piece for bottoms up that's really important is the direct kind of feedback and Intel on the ground. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Tom Hill: that comes through conversations with sales management in terms of, okay, this is what the data says and is showing, but what else are you hearing from customers in terms of what's going on, right? In terms of, is there more opportunity here? Is there less opportunity here? Where might we be able to unlock and unpack further growth? And so I think that's the other kind of leg of the stool to think about from a bottoms up approach. James A. Seechurn: feel like that gets dismissed regularly, the actual human data point, the people that are close to the cell, because the assumption is, they're just going to make it look really low so they can overshoot their targets. Whereas in reality, some of the best quality data I think you can really get. And I think it gets overlooked perhaps too often. Tom Hill: I think you're right. Because it's qualitative, it's not necessarily sitting in the CRM. Even if there are some fields for a seller to fill out, may not be doing that because that's one of the lower value things if it's just in their head. So that's a little harder to unpack and get to a place where organizations can feel good about. But you're obviously going to... in a design meeting with people, they're all gonna have different points of view and perspectives on And the outcomes are those that ⁓ are built around framework and some ⁓ guidelines, and then sure the number of adds up, which ⁓ often means some amount over-assignment of quota tends to happen ⁓ at the individual level. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Yeah, and I want to come back to that as well, this over assignment and how you reconcile different expectations. But I do want to call out something. But in your answer, think you mentioned the territory, the size of the territory, you mentioned segmentation. I think if I read between the lines a bit, as soon as you start talking about quota setting, you have to think about those things as well. have to think about the coverage model. You have to think about the roles you've got and the hours in the year as well. The hours in the year by the typical to close by the close rate tells you quite a lot about how much someone is ever really reasonably going to get to in a given territory. ⁓ So one my takeaways from what you said is that you can't just look at quota setting in isolation. You've got to think about how it impacts the shape of the sales coverage model in a way. Tom Hill: Yeah, it's connected. Yeah, it really is. ⁓ James A. Seechurn: It's all connected. So then the question I wanted to ask is I'm really curious about what your thoughts are on this one. So often you get a scenario where there's a business unit leader or a CEO that wants a number and it could just be picked out of thin air. They want to get to 10 billion, whatever. They want to double their revenue, whatever it might be. And a CRO or the sales head, whoever they may be, a big part of their job is reconciling that expectation with what? can be done and you mentioned governance and you mentioned process. So how do you go about almost institutionalizing a healthy tension in that dialogue between top-down expectations and the realities of bottoms up market potential? Tom Hill: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, it's not easy. It's why CROs are frequently turnover, right? Because there's a lot of pressure on that role and everyone's instantaneous success, which is ⁓ hard do. And so ⁓ the best are ones that are able to navigate that situation James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Tom Hill: bringing their outside experiences to the table, bringing their point of view on product market fit and gross, the gross strategy. but then also kind of connecting, you know, okay, you want me to hit this number. These are the few priorities I need as a CRO to, to help hit that number. And that might be additional head count, right? That might be an investment in some sales training. You know, that might be. you've taken certain things off the plate or reconfiguring some of the roles or taking part the ⁓ customer organization that might be sitting somewhere else into their and so forth. so what I've tend to see is the CROs that navigate that and build the case and bringing external in particular around, hey, this is what you want to achieve. We hired some consultants help us think through ⁓ the market looks like in terms of what typical quotas are for our competitors. What kind of typical pay ranges or even cost of sale, which is a very tough metric that everyone wants to try to anchor on, but it's hard to do. But in particular, kind of quota expectations is one can kind of get to and unpack a little bit. And that can kind of help. set the table for what might be typical in a various sub segment of the market. So I'm not talking about your, your big Radford number, which, which has, you know, hundreds of all over the map and what they do kind of interesting, but doesn't really, you're kind of a digital identity company you're a, you know, FinTech, you know, doesn't quite narrow the market enough to really help you understand what you need to do. So I think the best one's start with some external data to kind of set the framework in terms of what the landscape looks like, and then build out the path and chart the path for growth ⁓ and what means. So ⁓ we were with an organization recently that has a big number dropping on the CRO's plate and James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Tom Hill: ⁓ one of the things we found with working with them is they needed to put a little bit more emphasis kind of recasting some of their roles. Again, started with an incentive problem, but this one turned into a big, role issue, recasting some of the roles because they had too many strategic account managers and not enough mid-market sellers. But then they also didn't have enough people focused on kind of new business growth. So we helped them, you know, think through and build out the framework for. a new business Hunter team globally. and so that's how they were, he was able to, in this case, justify the big growth number he had. Laid on him to say, I can do that. think we can get there, but here's the three things I need from my sales team to do that. And it wasn't just the model of, I can, I'm to add a 40, 40 people had count to hit the number. It was kind of recasting some of the roles around that. ⁓ customer buying journey where they could better the seller's time and areas to do ⁓ more cross sell while also still making an investment on a hunter team ⁓ around it. James A. Seechurn: that's a really good response. Like, yes, I can do it if, and then proceed to list what you need from your CEO to deliver on the number they want. And it might come at more expense or it might come at a channel with a slightly weaker margin even to get to that top line number that they want if there's too much saturation in your current territories. But the opposite side of that is the CRO that just reluctantly agrees to the number. And I've seen that happen and it's such a shame because you basically immediately demotivate the CRO, who now knows they've got a number that they can't realistically get to, but that same lack of energy spreads throughout the sales organization with a bunch of sellers who get given quotas who also know they can't get to those numbers. So you immediately start the year. with a demotivated sales team, which is the exact opposite of what you want from a sales team. And it's just because that there's that lack of reconciliation. it's so important. then again, you'll get someone that says, we need to redesign our sales plans. Well, until you fix the quotas, it doesn't matter what you do with the sales plan. If people don't believe it's achievable, they're not going to use that. We'll see it as a source of motivation. Tom Hill: Yeah. Yeah, I I think you're totally right there. the last thing, the last thing you want is the sellers walking out of the kickoff saying, well, maybe we'll have a better situation next year, right? We'll have a new baseline, right? terms, in terms of, cause they know, they know what's real and not. They talk to customers every single day. got a good sense of their patch, what the opportunity really is ⁓ and, and, it. And take to get there. So, so, yeah, you do need CRO to be able to manage that situation. And it's not always their fault. Like, sometimes it's the board coming down, right? With it. And I think we're probably going to see this a little bit more too with, you know, as PE continues to buy more things up and put lofty goals on that's going to increase the pressure to deliver and deliver right away. And so it's ⁓ an easy situation for sellers or ⁓ the in that circumstance. James A. Seechurn: I feel for a lot of CROs, particularly the ones that have got there by being good sellers and haven't necessarily had the opportunity to learn from the more political ⁓ strategic CROs do the things that you were describing. Because if you haven't really been shown, then it's quite a stressful situation to be in. If your skill is selling, the skill of selling isn't actually that useful in that scenario. When you're being asked to balance those expectations of different people, it's really a political skill or an analytical skill that comes in to fix that. Tom Hill: Yeah. I also think just the nature of the CEO is different than it was before. I mean, it feels like way back in the day, the top sales person had just a good chance to get the CEO job as anybody else. Nowadays, it feels like it's the CFO or the chief operating officer that gets that job and they have a different worldview. on things and they have not spent as much time with customers. And I think that plays into some of those dynamics ⁓ as in terms of when it comes time to eat the number and try figure out how to get there. James A. Seechurn: area I wanted to ask you about then as well is the longer sales cycle. Again, ⁓ into what we talking about earlier, the changing nature of sales. It's more complex, more collaborative, and we often see these slightly longer sales cycles. We see these forward deployed engineers. Arguably it's a ending sales cycle. And I believe you an example of what happens in those scenarios, particular around crediting and the number of people that need to get involved. in that sales cycle and rewarded for it, or be goaled on that do companies solve that problem? Tom Hill: Yeah, well, it's not an easy problem to solve. There's a couple of different ways that we like to think about it. the example you kind of teed up here, it's a defense contractor. So they're selling a little bit more services, ⁓ but around technology as well. And long cycle, you know, to government entities oftentimes as well. number of kind of B2B commercial engagements. And a sales motion that was more of a a door opener, someone that could spec out the government requirements in many cases. You're working with solution engineer or a sales engineer ⁓ as well. And then they'd have other people of working on the deal and internally to try to solve it. And so when we were working with them in particular, we were digging into it and they had, some cases, 30 to 35 people paid on the deal and getting some amount of credit across a variety of roles inside the business. How many different roles? This was 16 to 18 different roles. James A. Seechurn: How many roles is that that we're talking about then? Yeah. 16th, I couldn't even name 16th, 18 different roles. Tom Hill: because they were outside of your traditional what you think about would be eligible for a sales organization. Right? So in situations like that, the first thing you need to break down is more about eligibility than anything else. What part of your job? What is ⁓ thank you? Maybe we'll give you a spiff for contributing, or maybe that's you part of your corporate AIP. ⁓ James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Tom Hill: or something like that, as opposed to a true sales incentive with more pay at risk. they had a situation where they had lots of different rules that could jump these incentives. And it was also creating an issue where because these were long sales cycles and they're massive deals, so they didn't happen very often, they had other people kind of jump onto deals to kind of credit ride a little bit. ⁓ ⁓ and it ended up lowering the pool that was available for those that really had the impact. talked earlier on about impact being really important to pay mix and opportunity and acceleration. And so that created a demotivating situation for the individuals that you spent a year or two. Banging out this massive, massive deal and then getting an award was like, okay. And. James A. Seechurn: it's almost like creating resentment as well because the reason your award is not great is because a bunch of teammates have got their hand in the pie at the same time so it's almost creating toxicity I imagine Tom Hill: the There was a lot of fundamental issues and that's certainly one that you drew on there. So yeah, those long sales cycles are tough and sometimes will tackle that with still basing things around an annual goal and a target and trying to set about the framework for you kind of a revenue credit model built around that. They might throw in like a key sales objective or two, which we think You aren't great, but sometimes you have to just kind of deal with it and take it. We tend not to like upside on those pieces of the plan. But the other way to think about it too is you're not doing things off of an annual plan, but doing off of a deal by deal basis. So you get kind of a, hey, you may not get a lot this year, but your reward next year, deal with plans, going to get. outsize reward for that. So you tend to have to communicate to sellers, you got to think about it, they need to think about it in terms of a longer cycle as well, which therefore often means you need to increase the base wages relative to market to account for that. there's some some give and takes with those. But the those are the three common ways we try to approach it in terms of mix, in terms of a deal for deal plan versus an annual plan versus James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Tom Hill: kind of solving for eligibility in particular, if they've got a lot of credit hoppers going on. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, and the deal by deal one. then really that's starting to break apart the notion of annual quota setting, which a lot of people are very attached to, right? But because if you've got a deal that takes more than a year, by definition, it's very difficult to then set an annual quota, because you're prorating something that doesn't really make any sense. So at that point, are you more thinking about kind of commission-based incentives based on deal size and maybe not quite worrying as much about the target or the OTE or the total cash? Tom Hill: Yeah, you're not worrying as much about the OTE. You still have to have, I call it like an expected OTE. That's not, you know, kind of mathematically formed, but it's, it's like, if you were interviewing for the job and you're like, what can I expect to earn? That would be the number, but it's not necessarily anchored in, you know, the market or defined pay structure built around that. But you are, it's either acting. directly as a kind of commission rate, you know, to the rep, or you think about it more in terms of it funding a certain size pool based on how big the deal is. And maybe there's another, lever around that around gross margin or something in particular that kind of impacts that pool size and then building kind of a framework around how ⁓ credit is split and either the pool is split or how credit is split. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, which kind of makes sense as it is more of a team effort, doesn't it? Because are essentially talking about a team based incentive at that point of some nature, even though not everyone might get the same amount. But because it is one ⁓ unique quantifiable and there are ⁓ names in attached to it that you can quantify, ⁓ it's almost more of that team type nature, which probably makes sense given that there is so much interdependency, right? And a lot of these long sales cycle big whale deals. Tom Hill: That's right. And you see that also in professional services organizations too. Some of the larger ones I've worked with at and with have had kind of a sales credit framework that if you do activity, it's worth somewhere between this range and minimum and maximum range. then the individuals on the deal have to work it out and come to an agreement. James A. Seechurn: I like that. Yeah, there's lots of documented examples of people working out how to split the profit of companies that basically said, well, you figure it ⁓ You can split the profits once we've taken what we need ⁓ you figure out how you want to split it. And most of the time, people react by splitting things evenly, even if there aren't disproportionate impacts. if people left to their own devices to share the wealth, they tend to split it pretty evenly. Tom Hill: Yeah, my, my colleague had a client back in the day. And they had it written in their rules. That was, you know, you guys work it out how to settle it. If this comes to if this comes to me to solve for the numbers reduced by 25 % and then I'll decide. James A. Seechurn: I love it. Yeah, that's my fee. I like that. mean, it really comes back to the participative workforce, the idea that, well, why don't we just trust our employees more to figure things out? Why are we so afraid to let them? do these things while we always feel the need to dictate how they should or shouldn't earn. And it is interesting that the more you do that, the more egalitarian the response does tend to be from employees. You expect that there is going to be this sort of individualized incentive structure that's going to be the most motivational thing. But when you actually let people decide on the team, they tend to go the opposite direction and go more team based. Tom Hill: Yeah, it have a profound impact. think you're right about that. ⁓ still need some like everything, some governance ⁓ proper structure around that to handle exceptions or some sort of nothing as severe as my one example I gave you to resolve disputes. But in those situations, if ⁓ someone feels like being cut out or being advantage of. they might not be so willing to partner and help that person. might work with the other sellers on the team and help them, right? So it can a little bit as a ⁓ free and free system in some ways as well. James A. Seechurn: So one last question for you, Tom. If someone is listening and they're entering into the world of Salesforce effectiveness, maybe they're not a seller, but entering into this world and they're trying to help their company be more effective in this area, what do you think they should be most focused on? Tom Hill: That's not an easy question, James. That's okay. Yeah, no, that's good. It's good. If someone's trying to help their company in this space, think it starts with, part of it starts with understanding how the company truly makes money and the impact that sellers ⁓ have for the that sort of context. And I think that can be obtained through James A. Seechurn: I don't ask easy questions. Tom Hill: some interviews with leadership as well as individual sellers to just kind of understand how the role works, what makes the sale, what are some of the things you as James the seller do that make you effective, what doesn't work so well. And so think that contextual piece is really important. Then I think probably where you were wanting me to go a little bit more in terms of the analysis piece of it, I think there's just a lot built in that organizations have kind of data wise in terms of, how does performance look? How does performance look over time? How do we look at the compensation costs of sale, which, you know, I said is a metric to be wary of. We find it's better as an internal metric from a quarter to quarter basis than an external metric, because there's lots of different ways competitors go to They might have more partnerships versus a different distribution model and so forth. so kind of benchmarking costs around that is And think it's coming to the table with here's a few things that I found and I'm seeing as a new practitioner in it. ⁓ And here's some I'd have and some things that I'd want to better understand as opposed to trying to come in with a position of. you know, hey, we need to sell things. You have to remember if you're talking to the sales leader, leadership in particular, they're negotiating all day long. And they're really good at reading people. And so I think there's a lot of benefit to kind of coming in at the start in a place of understanding and still providing a point of view as a way to James A. Seechurn: What? Tom Hill: you impact change. And I'd say a lot of times, any sort of changes the sales organization is going to take when it accounts to their sellers, is going to be a little bit more evolutionary than maybe revolutionary. Just ⁓ the way process change ⁓ in general, think takes you more time in terms of then how it impacts sellers and how they ⁓ talk to and with their customers. ⁓ that does not, not a switch that just kind of turns on in terms of making a change. So I think there's just has to be an expectation that it's going to take a little bit longer than the people around the table might want. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, yeah. And even if there's a change that makes sense, if you move it too quickly and don't explain it right, it will be perceived negatively. The minute you change too much too soon, a lot of sellers will have the reaction of, well, that means they're trying to find a way not to pay me or they're making it more difficult or this is going to get more complicated. So it's easy to underestimate, I think, how difficult it is to manage change from one year to the next in the sales organization. Tom Hill: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We, when we do communications for organizations or rolling out plan design changes, we often couple that with a one pager of here's the things to continue to focus on, like three things. Here's the three things to focus more on and here's the three things to focus less on. So it's not saying stop this all together, but it's trying to kind of pivot and move the, move the, move team a little bit forward. in terms of the direction the CRO wants to take. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, I like that. I might steal that for myself as well. it the three, so the three things that you don't need to change, the three things that you... ⁓ Tom Hill: What to continue to focus on, three things to focus more on, so of focus, and three things to focus less on. James A. Seechurn: Like that, okay, if I use that I'll credit revenue shifts with a registered trademark in the corner. Okay. I also want to come, think that the bit you said at the beginning of that answer, I think was really good as well, is just understand the organization. just take the time to understand the organization and what you're selling, who you're selling it to and who it is that selling in. And I think it's very, very easy to skip past that step. But especially I think if you're new to an organization, the value of someone new and the fresh perspective. Tom Hill: Yeah, it's okay if you don't. It's all good, James. ⁓ James A. Seechurn: is so powerful and it gets sucked out pretty quickly if you're not careful, careful because they can get very quickly institutionalized. But combining that new perspective with an understanding of what's currently happening, to your point, will cause questions to be raised and they should be raised and they should be discussed. But the understanding is so important rather than just a dive in with a preconceived notion about how to do things better to take the time to actually understand the history and the wheres and the whys of the situation right now. Tom Hill: Yeah, and I think that gets back to many of the themes we talked about here around kind of stakeholder engagement and lots of people involved in collaboration. And I think, you as you kind of summed it up, that is the starting point for collaboration is, you know, kind of building on the belief of, we're trying to come from a good place and solve this together. And I, as being new to the organization, you know, am coming to, to try to understand as a foundational element before we even entertain where go from here. James A. Seechurn: think that's a healthy and useful ⁓ of advice to finish on. So Tom, I'll say thank you very much for your time. I think there's some really interesting guidance here that I'll be thinking about. And hopefully we can do this again in the future. Tom Hill: I'd love to, James. This has been a real pleasure. All the best. Take care. Bye. James A. Seechurn: Okay, thanks Tom, take care. Okay, bye.