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Leadership Strategies for Sales Managers Under Pressure · Sales Pipeline Radio

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All right, here we are again.
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Hello, everyone.
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Happy Thursday.
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Welcome to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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I am your host, Matt Heinz.
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Super excited to have y'all here, for another Thursday.
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We've got a great guest and a great topic today.
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We're gonna be talking about the author of this brand-new book, Focused:
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A Leadership Discipline for Sales Managers Under Pressure, and so that
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is 100% of sales managers, Steven.
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It is, Matt.
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So we're literally addressing everybody with this one.
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We're constantly under pressure.
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I wanna meet the sales manager who is not under pressure, 'cause I think we need
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to, we need to capture it, we need to study it, and find out why that is true.
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I'll tell you where to go.
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Yeah.
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Friday on the golf course, you may find a few there.
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Yeah.
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Although, if they still have their phones, they're still under pressure.
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They're still under... Well, then they're under pressure no matter what, but we're
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gonna get to that here in a minute.
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Very excited to have today, our guest, Steven Rosen, the founder of STAR
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Results, sales influencer, sales coach to the stars, author of numerous books,
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including this new book, Focused.
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Steven, thanks so much for joining us today.
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Matt, I'm so pumped to be here and, chatting with you.
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This makes my week.
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Oh my goodness.
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Well, thank you.
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I appreciate it.
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I appreciate being able to get a couple minutes with you to be able to talk
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to people about this book, 'cause I just, I've enjoyed reading and reading
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from, reading your, what you write and learning from you over the years.
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For those of you who don't know who you are, give us a
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quick intro to Steven Rosen.
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Okay.
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Oh my God, I haven't done this in like two days.
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No, I'm just joking.
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Well, I come from sales.
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I'm a sales guy through and through.
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Spent 15 years in sales leadership.
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Well, started as a sales rep and went through all the leadership roles,
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was VP of Sales of two companies, and I believe had tremendous results.
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I had some great teams, and for the last 23 years, I've run my own business
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called STAR Results, and we've evolved STAR Results over time, from sales
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training to sales leadership to now my new era or new thing I'm focusing
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on is sales leadership infrastructure ... which is, I think, a new concept.
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Others may disagree, but I've really spent some time thinking about-
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why things don't work in sales.
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Awesome.
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Well, I can't remember when I first came across you.
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It might've been 2012, I don't know if it was your first book,
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was the first book I saw of you.
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It was 52- ... Sales Management Tips, The Sales Manager Success Guide.
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You also have the Sales Leadership Awakening podcast.
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And so if you wanna learn more from Steven, look him up, look up STAR Results.
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You're gonna find a ton of different formats, for how he's just
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helping sales professionals, sales leaders, sales managers overall.
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I've heard you say this before, and I think this is central
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to the concept behind Focused.
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It's that execution doesn't break suddenly, it drifts.
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You got it.
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What does that mean, and why is that central to this book?
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Well, here's the thing.
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You know, when something breaks, it breaks, and you know it breaks.
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So if you think of every quarter, you know, the company's working
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hard, the salespeople are trying to close up deals, and then what happens
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is maybe you miss on a quarter.
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Well, that goes back.
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You know, the only time we realize that we've missed is when we hit the time.
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Yeah.
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But it's a slow process where sales managers don't coach their reps,
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they don't reinforce training.
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You know, they're not following up on execution standards,
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when pressure starts to build.
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Now, pressure, as we said, is always there, but at the end of
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a quarter, it starts to build, and we drop our standards.
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"Okay, let's see if we can sneak this deal in." And basically, it's a slow process.
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It's like a leak.
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It's like having a slow leak in your basement.
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You don't even notice it until it becomes a big leak, or
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until you walk into some water.
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Right.
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So... The fact is, sometimes we don't even know what's going on, even
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though we think things are great.
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As I read through this book, it's not meant to be kind of like a, I guess
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I would say sort of .. It's more of a field guide, I guess, is the way
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I would kinda describe this, right?
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I call it an operating manual.
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I saw someone describe it as, quote-unquote, "Like a punch in the
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face." And so there's that as well.
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Which, you know, sometimes we need, to sort of get us back on course.
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But I think there was... I, so I found there was three areas
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really critical in this book that I wanted to make sure we touch on.
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Coaching, inspection, and enforcement of standards.
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You got it.
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Those are three-
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Let's talk about all three of those, starting with coaching.
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Perfect.
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And I learned, from one of the best sales managers I've ever worked with,
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'cause I mean, as a marketer, right?
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I'm the marketing side.
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And there's a-
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I get it.
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You're on the dark side, but you
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- Okay.
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We can go there if you want to
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... You play, you play on the, exciting side, too
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Yeah.
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So, yeah, we can ... that might be another episode.
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We gotta get into that part.
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But the-
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I'm teasing you
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... I learned from her that there's a difference between a manager and a
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coach, and too many sales managers spend most of their time in management
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land and not enough time coaching.
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I'd love to have you talk about how coaching becomes... Its managers
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become a multiplier of success when they adopt better coaching principles.
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Well, it's very interesting.
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The role of the sales rep is to sell, right?
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To, work with customers.
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The role of the manager is not to sell.
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It's not to hit quota, even though you know, those are important things.
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It's to develop their people to be better.
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Also hiring good people, but the most important thing they can do
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and the biggest impact they have on performance of their team is
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developing their people to get better.
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It doesn't happen through training.
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Training may provide some data, but if it's not reinforced, it dies.
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But ... we'll get to reinforcement.
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The manager's role, the main role, the main activity they do that drives
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performance is coaching, and everyone would agree with that because every
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single study that comes out says that.
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But there's a problem.
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It's how do you define coaching, right?
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And many SaaS, I won't pick on SaaS companies.
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Yes, I will.
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SaaS-based companies, because they've grown so quickly, what they
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think is coaching, and it drives me nutso, is coaching the deal.
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"Let's sit down and coach the deal."
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And I say, okay, to me, that's performance management.
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Others may disagree, but coaching is developing the skills to close the
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deal, to get the deal, to do good discovery, to do good prospecting.
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That is where coaching comes in, and coaching can't happen where I
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am right now sitting behind a desk.
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The only way in my old days when I used to be a manager, and I wasn't
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the greatest coach, but I was out in the field observing, and that's what,
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to me, what really good coaching is.
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You know, I've been watching a lot of hockey games.
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I'm Canadian, so I like hockey.
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But you don't notice the coach sitting in the dressing room except in periods.
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Right.
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During the game, they're standing on the bench or behind the bench,
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and that's what coaching really is.
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I don't know if I'm answering your question, but to me, that's what
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I'm passionate about, is creating-
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No, I appreciate that ... I appreciate that answer.
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We're gonna move quickly here 'cause we don't have a ton of time,
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but excited to have here on Sales Pipeline Radio today, Steven Rosen.
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He is the founder of STAR Results and the author of this new book, Focused, really a
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manual for sales managers under pressure.
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So we talked a little bit about coaching.
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I wanna move to inspection.
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And you say that, you know, a lot of times when people sit down and
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do one-on-ones, we just kinda say, "Well, how's it going?" Right?
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And so we sorta leave it open to the rep to say whatever they wanna
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do, and you call that failure mode.
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When you talk about inspection best practices for sales
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managers, what does that include?
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It's clearly follow-up.
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You know, it's inspecting what you've agreed to happen.
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So if we look at execution, companies spend a lot of time
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building execution plans.
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I think even marketing helps along with the execution plans, or POAs, we used to
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call them in the pharmaceutical industry.
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If you're not sitting down to look at stuff and actually
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going deeper, it drifts as well.
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Yeah.
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Execution drifts.
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And inspection, you know, is not coaching.
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It's getting into... It's kind of the management part.
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It's the nitty-gritty details, that you can't accept superficial answers
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when you're inspecting a deal and you say, "Who are the deal makers?"
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Or, "How come they haven't sat down with you?" In many cases, the rep will
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just kind of give you a quick answer, but not necessarily the truest answer.
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Or they haven't really thought about that.
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So the manager's job is not to get the deal.
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It's to inspect what the rep is doing.
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Are they following through?
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And I don't consider it micromanagement, because some people are thinking,
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"Oh my God, Steven's saying we should be micromanagers." Right?
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But periodic planned inspection.
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My good buddy Mike Weinberg does his accountability meetings.
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Yeah.
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Okay?
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And that's a standard for me, that every- I do it every month, or I teach my clients
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to do it every month, is sit down and review what you agreed to last month-
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What your results are, what activities you plan, and are you on track?
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That holds people accountable.
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Accountability is key.
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I think inspection is good.
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Is there a line between inspection and interrogation-
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that you wanna sort of maintain?
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Where do you balance?
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You know, so part of it is when I do inspection, you know, I ask a
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lot of managers, "Are your sales reps high-paid professionals?"
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And everyone says yes.
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And then I say, "Or are they burger flippers?"
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Right.
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Nothing wrong.
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I was a burger flipper once upon a time in my life- ... and I was
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lousy at it, to be honest with you.
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But- ... so I once served someone a raw hamburger at Wendy's, and they-
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Oh ... they came back to the window.
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But the bottom line is,
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it is very critical for managers to inspect.
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My expectation is when you have an accountability meeting is the rep
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is responsible to come prepared.
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So you're not interrogating them.
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Their job is to tell you what's going on, what's working, what's not working,
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and what they're doing about it.
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So it's ... not the manager saying, "Why hasn't this been done?"
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Right.
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My expectation is the rep comes, and I know when I used to go see my boss
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if things weren't happening, I'd come and say, "Okay, we're missing here,
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but this is what I'm doing about it."
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Yeah.
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It's a difference in philosophy.
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No, I think it's important, and I encourage folks to sort of read.
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There's more examples of how to do that and some talk tracks
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in the book as well to get into more accountable inspection mode.
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So we talked about coaching, we talked about inspection.
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Let's talk about enforcement of standards.
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So if we premise that this book is for managers under pressure, what
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that makes me think of is, like, the famous, you know, one of the poet
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laureates of our time, Mike Tyson, once said, "Everyone's got a plan
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until they get punched in the mouth."
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And when you get punched in the mouth, sometimes when you get under
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pressure, you kinda go into sort of, like, fight or flight mode.
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Yeah.
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And you just start, like, you, sometimes you throw out the playbook,
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which is, you... The playbook is for those times, not for throwing it out.
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Talk about the importance of standards and keeping focused on
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the process, even under pressure.
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Okay.
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So I'm gonna throw a little bit of a curveball here.
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Okay.
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So to me, enforcement is the missing link.
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Okay?
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And people are gonna say, "Isn't enforcement, isn't it mean? Isn't it
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bad?" But the problem is things break down, and when I talk about enforcement,
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and I know you've mentioned the book is for managers, the curveball
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is it's not really for managers.
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The book is for the second-line leadership who is doing a lousy job on enforcement.
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Yep.
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And that's where the system breaks down.
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The CRO probably looks at what are the key standards.
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I talk of it in chapter five.
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What are the three things?
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So the three things are the three things, and that's what you focus on.
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But where things break down on the enforcement level is
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not the frontline manager.
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It's the middle, where the second-line managers don't really know what
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they're supposed to be doing, and they're supposed to be enforcing
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standards ... even when pressure is on.
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So it doesn't mean calling the rep and saying, "What's
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happening," or the manager, "What's happening with the Acme deal?"
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The difference in the conversation is, "How are you developing Steven?"
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How many days have you spent in the field?"
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Right.
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The conversation changes 'cause you're enforcing coaching.
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If you're enforcing execution, "How is it going with our execution
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plan? Who's having challenges?"
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"What are you doing about it?" And the enforcement component, 'cause Matt,
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I've spent 20-odd years- coaching, teaching managers how to coach.
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So first, I'm just gonna, you tell me how we're doing for time.
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We're good.
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Okay.
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We're good?
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So, you know, first, I would, you know, do an assessment.
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How are you, how are you as a coach?
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Get feedback from the sales reps. Then I teach coaching, and I'd go away
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and, after, you know, six months, the coaching program wasn't being used.
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Then I said, "Okay, I'm not doing training without coaching."
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Meaning I would coach the managers for three or six months as part of a program.
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And that worked pretty good, and then it would tail off.
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Where I had my epiphany after 23 years, I'm a late bloomer, you know.
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Where I had my epiphany is one senior director got up and said,
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"Whatever we learned over the last two days, we're gonna implement."
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And the manager said, "We love it.
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Guess what?
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We just don't have time.
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How are we gonna fit all this stuff into our... we're already busy."
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Right.
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Right?
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'Cause that's part of the issue that I talk about.
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Managers are set up to fail because they're busy.
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So what we did is we set up a task force of, getting rid of low-value activities
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so they can do the high-value activities.
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And this leader, who I love, enforced the system, and that is
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the missing step, 'cause I've seen great results in organizations
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that have included enforcement, and that's where the book comes from.
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I've talked about focus.
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Believe it or not, my... If you go back to my blog- my first
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articles were about focus.
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A different ... shade on focus, but what the key is here, the missing
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piece that organizations forget, is the enforcement component.
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So I'm glad you brought that up.
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I didn't send you a list of questions.
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You did not.
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That is the crux of the book.
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And it's...managers will learn a lot from Focused.
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But it's the second line who get punched in the face.
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Yeah, and there's a level of, sort of self-accountability that
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I pulled from this as well, right?
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Like, it's your sales managers keeping people accountable, but also, like,
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I mean, you cited, 60% of new sales managers fail in the first 18 months.
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80% of sales leaders admit to feeling out of control or drowning.
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And, you know, you can feel that way in any job, in any context, but
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to be able to... You're the first person that has to be focused.
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You're the first person that has to stay disciplined, stay accountable,
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to stick to the standards, not only because you set an example, but because
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you need that for yourself to carve out the time and the space to do the
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coaching, to do the work you need to do to make your team successful.
16:31
You're right, Matt.
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Here's the problem, here's the problem.
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Sometimes the problem is senior management.
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Yeah.
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Sometimes the problem is your reps.
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Right.
16:39
Because managers think, they equate, and I talk about this in
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the book, they equate busyness-
16:44
Yeah
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... with leadership.
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Right.
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They're not the same.
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Right.
16:48
Right.
16:48
You know, clearly they're not the same.
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But how many managers... You said 80 or 90% are overwhelmed.
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It's because they don't know how to say no, so their boss sends them a Slack.
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I don't even know what Slack is.
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I never used it.
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But they send them a Slack or a text message.
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Yeah.
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You know, I'm only one man in my organization, plus
17:06
I get some, some support.
17:09
They send them a note.
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Immediately they drop everything they're doing to respond to their boss.
17:14
Right?
17:14
Because the boss wants to know what's happening with the Rosen deal.
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My answer is, say, "Hey, VP, I will get back to you at our Friday
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meeting." Many managers can't say that.
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They think it's urgent.
17:28
Yeah.
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So they, they replace what's important with what's urgent.
17:33
Well, we are now running out of time, and so we're gonna have to wrap this up a
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little bit, but Steven, I just... This is just a peek of the kinda insight you can
17:40
get from following Steven at STAR Results.
17:43
Check out his podcast, the Sales Leadership Awakening.
17:46
Walk, run, do not walk, and get yourself a copy of Focused.
17:49
This is... It's a fast read.
17:51
It's an easy read.
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It's the kinda thing you can sort of go back and forth to.
17:54
I imagine there are sales managers that have this highlighted and dog-eared
17:57
and sort of highlights sticking out.
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Just sort of it's ... it's the kinda thing that you can use as a pillar to
18:02
remind yourself, of the things that are important and go back to again and again.
18:06
And what I tell sales managers, "Tell your boss to read it."
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Absolutely.
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So they don't forget, you know, what you need to be doing, 'cause they're probably
18:16
pushing you in the wrong direction.
18:18
What I talk about is managers are great; the system is what causes the problems.
18:22
Yeah.
18:23
Awesome.
18:24
Steven, thank you so much for joining us today.
18:26
This has been awesome.
18:27
Give me a couple URLs.
18:28
Where do people go to learn more about you and the book?
18:31
My website is triple W The STAR Results dot com.
18:34
You can find me on LinkedIn.
18:37
Focused is available on Amazon, and if you're a leader of a large team and
18:42
you're looking to purchase bulk, just come to my website, and there's a tab
18:47
called Book which has all the information on the book and an opportunity.
18:51
If you want to implement it through your organization, we offer some very
18:55
good value-added operating components to help leaders implement the system.
19:03
Wonderful.
19:04
Well, thank you again, Steven, for making time, I know you're busy,
19:06
for being here and sharing a little bit about what's in the book.
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Thank you everyone for joining us here today, whether you are live or on demand.
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Appreciate you making the time.
19:13
We'll be here next week for another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
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Until then, thanks so much for being here, and have a good rest of your week.