Latest / The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast / Your Best Sales Rep Is a Ticking Time Bomb with Ben Wright (stage 4) - Ep. 410

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Your Best Sales Rep Is a Ticking Time Bomb with Ben Wright (stage 4) - Ep. 410 · The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast

0:00
Scott Ritzheimer: Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again
0:02
to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast, the only podcast that
0:06
grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a
0:09
founder. I'm your host, Scott Retheimer, and today's topic is
0:13
for those of you who either want, or maybe even worse,
0:16
already have an amazing sales rep. Sounds like such a problem,
0:20
doesn't it, because it just might not be all that it's
0:25
cracked up to be, and most founders don't even realize how
0:29
exposed they are until that top rep leaves, burns out, or
0:33
something else happens, and here to help us out, here to not only
0:38
figure out what's wrong with having a great sales rep, or
0:40
what could be wrong with it, but to also find a better way
0:43
forward is the one and only Ben Wright, who is a seasoned sales
0:46
team builder, strategist, coach, and an avid believer that the
0:50
best sales leaders must constantly sharpen their tools
0:52
to maintain a competitive edge. He's built high-performing sales
0:56
teams from the ground up across the corporate world, fast with
0:59
startups and mature businesses alike. Notably, his last venture
1:03
was recognized as an Australian growth company award winner for
1:07
two consecutive years, scaling from $0 to 40 million in annual
1:12
receiving or annual recurring revenue in just over seven
1:16
years. Defined by grit, Ben is a leader who truly thrives when
1:20
stepping up to a challenge, Ben's a published contributor to
1:23
HubSpot and LinkedIn, who brings immense energy to everything
1:26
that he does. He's here with us today. Ben, welcome to the show.
1:30
I'm really excited about this conversation, because, as I
1:33
mentioned coming in, I've got several clients who are dealing
1:36
with this very thing right now, super successful founders doing
1:40
10 million plus a year and dangerously close to peril at
1:46
every single moment of that, because they've got this great
1:50
sales rep that they've written on the back of for years now,
1:54
and they're starting to feel the cracks. What's going on here?
1:57
Why is having a great sales rep potentially such a problem?
2:01
Unknown: Well, first of all, Scott, thanks very much for
2:03
having me on today. And we talk about grit in that intro and
2:07
problems. We've had the trifecta this morning. We have first of
2:10
all, we have my deep, heavy Australian accent, which I get
2:14
asked all the time to, 'Hey, Ben, slow down. I love your
2:16
accent, but it's so deep, so I'll do my best to do that
2:19
today. I also have one great big black eye, and for those not
2:23
watching on video, jump onto video on this one, because
2:26
you'll see a man who has a six year old daughter who has
2:29
managed to break his nose, displace his nose, slit his eye,
2:32
and give him concussion with one smooth move of a surfboard, and
2:37
then the third one is we had some connectivity issues jumping
2:40
on because we are, we are that far apart in the world, so we've
2:44
had a beautiful start to this morning, but from adversity
2:48
often comes great results. So, I'm so, thank you for having me
2:50
on, and certainly my job today is to try and help, particularly
2:53
those founders we speak about, who have one high performing
2:57
rep, both a blessing and a curse. We'll try and think of a
3:00
couple of ideas that they can have that are going to help them
3:03
move the dial immediately to keep their business growing, but
3:06
also protect them. So that's my job, I see, for the next 15
3:10
minutes or so with you. But if we look at a founder who has
3:15
managed to move their sales team from just them, right, they're
3:20
out there, they're carrying the bag, they're doing all the hard
3:22
work into having one person who's running their sales and
3:25
doing, let's say, in this, in this instance, a terrific job.
3:28
The first thing I'm going to say is, well done. To be able to
3:31
move from founder-led sales to a team of selling is one of the
3:34
most difficult steps you can have in any business. It's like
3:37
going from being an individual contributor in an organization,
3:41
to a leader of people, super difficult steps. So, the first
3:43
thing I'll say is, well done. The second thing I'll say is,
3:46
the challenge is only just beginning, because exactly as
3:49
you say, when we have one sales person in our team, we can
3:51
become really heavily reliant on them, and without the right
3:56
processes behind them, and that word is so important, it can, of
4:00
course, elicit a bit of fear into people. Process, what's
4:03
process? What am I going to do here? Processes get really
4:05
complex. Do I need to use AI? Do I need to have it written down?
4:09
How many people have got to be involved in the process? Right,
4:11
it can get that prefrontal cortex running a little bit hard
4:15
for people, but at the same time, process can be so simple.
4:18
So, without the right process, and I'm going to say the words
4:21
simple process behind anyone in your sales team, whether you
4:25
have one or 21 people, like we had in our business at the
4:29
height of our business, having that great process behind these
4:33
salespeople is just so important to be able to build that growth.
4:38
So we might dive into that today to give your founders and your
4:42
entrepreneurs some tips around how they can manage a team of
4:44
one or a team of two,
4:46
Scott Ritzheimer: that's so great. I couldn't agree more on
4:50
a couple points. One, I forgot to mention this earlier, but
4:52
this is now available in both Apple Podcasts and Spotify on
4:56
video, so we've definitely got you covered, so. Everyone can
5:00
see the effects of your six year old, but yeah, in either those
5:04
platforms, jump on the video, it's a great feature in both,
5:07
but no, to the point of today's episode, I think that it's so
5:15
wonderful when you can solve for the being the only salesperson
5:20
that, like, you'll take anything, and when that anything
5:23
happens to be a fantastic individual that can actually
5:26
like outsell what you did, which happens sometimes, like I most
5:31
founders at that level just can't think of anything better,
5:35
you know, and so I think one of the things that's so difficult
5:38
is just kind of mentally how we get stuck in this space of maybe
5:45
you can speak to this for us, but one of the challenges that I
5:48
see is it's really tough to find another one of those and to
5:52
bring them on, and so even if they try and hire out a team,
5:56
the expectations are just so outsized that that they end up
6:00
just keep falling back to this one person, and you can feel
6:03
trapped if it's all down to one person.
6:06
Unknown: Yeah, absolutely. Agree. So, what I might do is
6:09
put to side, for the moment, the piece around how you can retain
6:13
that person. It's so critical, and no doubt you've spoken about
6:16
that in your podcast, but there's ways we can retain
6:19
people through not just salary, through through learning,
6:22
through cultural benefits, through flexibility, through
6:24
lots of different things. Here we probably won't go down those.
6:27
I won't go down that area today. I might look at more around what
6:30
do we do to protect the business, so that if that person
6:33
either stops performing, and I have seen many elite sales
6:36
people stop performing overnight for various reasons, or if that
6:40
person decides to leave. What you do to make sure that your
6:43
business doesn't go from a screaming success into one that
6:47
you know creates a bundle of nerves for you as the owner. And
6:50
I think if we're looking at this, let's take a drive, you
6:53
know, drive down down memory lane for me, where I've had
6:56
businesses which have two types of sales funnels. So the first
6:59
time with that high performing salesperson is a business where
7:03
I'd call it your job in so you're winning deal, completing
7:06
deal on to next deal, winning deal, completing deal on to next
7:10
deal. So that's very much that hunting style business versus
7:14
businesses where you have fewer accounts, but they're bigger and
7:18
they stay with you, and you provide to those accounts again
7:20
and again and again, and this example also works when you're,
7:24
when you have smaller accounts, but lots of them, but they're
7:26
repeat customers, and they're two very different streams of
7:30
sales. One requires the ability to make relationships quickly,
7:33
build confidence, trust, you know, show your knowledge very
7:36
quickly, help your customers out, and then win deals, and the
7:40
other one requires you to maintain and foster
7:43
relationships, so if we look at the situation where you are a
7:47
business owner and you are looking to win new deals again
7:50
and again and again, and you have one salesperson that's out
7:53
there, they're hunting, they're knocking down doors, they're
7:56
calling inbound leads quickly, they build those great
7:58
relationships, and they're closing deals. In that instance,
8:01
for me, where I see leaders have some reassurance that if that
8:05
salesperson is going to move on is where they've built a very -
8:08
and this is so important - a very simple process behind it,
8:12
and that process, in our experience, normally comes down
8:15
to a framework that we call the core three model, or the core
8:18
three framework, which is all about speed, value, and process,
8:24
and if we can build a very simple sales process that
8:27
focuses on speed to lead, so how quickly we're engaging with our
8:30
customers, and that's very much, and we don't have lots of time
8:33
to dive into this today, but it's very much around making
8:35
sure your energy levels in how you contact your customer match
8:39
theirs, so if we can build a process around speed, we can
8:42
build a process that has ingrained into how you contact a
8:46
customer, qualify your customer, get to site, complete your site
8:50
audit, and if it's on the phone or video, that's okay too. Very
8:53
similar process, right? Close out that site visit, quote,
8:58
follow up, win, lose, review that deal where you have a very
9:02
simple process in there. My experience is that it's far
9:05
easier to bring in sales people to then move into, or to repeat
9:10
that process outside of your gun, right?
9:12
You're one expert, but I think the piece that gets missed by
9:15
most entrepreneurs and most founders is that they rely on
9:18
that gun salesperson to do whatever they want, so what you
9:21
end up doing is you get their model of selling rather than the
9:24
business's model of selling, and that's when you're at risk,
9:27
because whilst you don't lose relationships when they leave
9:30
the business, you might lose an active pipeline, but that's
9:33
okay, most businesses are turning over their pipeline 10
9:36
to 12 times a year, so you might lose that active pipeline, and
9:40
okay, but you have to step in as the founder and close that and
9:43
work that, and you have a short sprint where you need to
9:45
recover, but where you've built that process into something
9:47
that's simple and repeatable, it's far easier to replace that
9:51
with a salesperson that will get the job done, so that is without
9:55
doubt my number one recommendation is you must
9:57
simplify into a simple process where you have. Hunting style
10:01
mentality, when we look at the second option, which is, sorry,
10:05
Scott, over there. Yeah, let
10:06
Scott Ritzheimer: me, let me follow up on that, because one
10:09
of the things you say, simplify, and I think that's really,
10:13
really smart, and I really like this idea of the business's
10:16
process, not the salesperson's one of the, one of the things
10:19
I've found complicates that, and this just might be my shallow
10:22
experience. So, feel free to speak into it, but is sometimes
10:28
you just, you don't have a wealth of that same level of
10:31
performance sitting around, right? So, if one person's
10:35
bringing those all in and they do 5 million, and you bring in
10:37
another person and they do two, it feels like the end of the
10:40
world, but it's still 2 million in revenue created. How do you
10:44
know? Like, is there a, is there a simplifying of expectations?
10:48
Is there a level setting of expectations that have to come
10:51
with that process? How do they assess whether or not that $2
10:55
million performer is worth it.
10:57
Unknown: Yeah, look, it is a great question, and without
11:00
doubt, such as life, that we will have different levels of
11:03
performance in any function in our business, operations,
11:06
customer service, legal, finance, whatever it may be, and
11:08
sometimes you do get star performers, and sometimes those
11:11
star performers leave, and I always see that as as an
11:14
opportunity to learn when we get that star performer in to make
11:16
our business better, but when it comes to expectations, the
11:19
simplest that I have in terms of whether or not you have a profit
11:23
generating, not a revenue generating, but a profit
11:25
generating salesperson, is that they are driving 10 times their
11:29
salary into their business. For most businesses, that's a very
11:32
basic benchmark. If you get someone that's going over that,
11:36
well, then they are over performing, and that's when how
11:39
you retain that person becomes really important, as well as, of
11:43
course, building that sales process, but if you have a
11:46
$200,000 a year headcount generating $2 million a year in
11:49
revenue for most businesses, that's a profitable sales
11:52
person.
11:54
Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, yeah, that's really helpful, and, and
11:56
I like that it, it simplifies it to what's necessary for the
12:01
organization to succeed, because oftentimes there's just a lot of
12:04
emotion in the process as a whole, and so I think it's just
12:09
a really helpful rule. So, all right, we've got the hunter,
12:14
that person's got to rapidly create those connections, and
12:18
we've got that side equation. Let's talk a little bit about
12:20
more account-based sales or recurring revenues, what happens
12:24
with the elite performer on that side of things?
12:27
Unknown: So, when we have that elite performer who's built
12:29
those relationships, that's where I see founders get really
12:32
nervous, and I certainly had that in my business. We had a
12:35
team of 21 but off that 21 we had three salespeople that were
12:40
generating around about half our revenue, so we had 18
12:43
salespeople generating 50% and three salespeople generating 50%
12:48
Now, the good news for us was that if one of those people
12:50
left, we were able to farm out some of their work across those
12:53
18, but that's not always the case when you're running your
12:55
own businesses. The strongest recommendation I have here, and
12:59
hopefully, as leaders and founders listening, you've heard
13:02
this before, but it comes down to your execution of it, is
13:05
making sure that you have multi-layer connections across
13:08
those customers, and what that means is that in any business
13:13
that's key account driven, it's never just driven with one
13:15
relationship, because any single point of contact in anything in
13:20
this world, we have four wheels on the road. We have two legs
13:23
when we walk along, right? We could go on examples here
13:25
forever, but anytime in this world you have a single point of
13:28
contact. If that fails, well, then the relationship is broken.
13:33
So, it's really important that you, I mean, let's, and let's
13:36
have a look at larger accounts. If you have larger key accounts,
13:38
generally it's the founders of the business that will step in
13:41
and also have a relationship with with more than one contact
13:44
in that business, so we end up going from a one to one
13:47
connection to a symbiotic, and on video you can see my hands
13:50
moving in some really, really weird way here, right, but we
13:52
have multiple layers of connections where you have 234,
13:56
people in your business, or two at a bare minimum, contacting
14:00
234, people in your customer's business, when you have a
14:04
smaller business, so if you're a founder that's doing
14:05
transactions that are lots of $1,000 $5,000 $10,000
14:09
transactions, where it's really not feasible for you to also
14:13
have a relationship with 100 customers, well, where you then
14:16
have your customer service team, or your operations team, your
14:19
delivery teams having relationships that support your
14:22
key salesperson, then what we're doing then is, if that sales
14:25
person leaves, is we are buying ourselves time, because that's
14:29
the key game here. Good key accounts where you have multiple
14:32
relationships, where they lose one contact. If your service is
14:35
good and your product is good, they won't leave. However, you
14:38
still need to be able to replace that front-end service in a
14:41
reasonable amount of time, so I really like the approach around
14:44
multi layering and multi contacts across these customers
14:47
as ones that you see as an insurance policy to buy you time
14:51
if and when, and the answer is generally when your top
14:54
performing salespeople leave. It happens, it's life, it's
14:56
cyclical. So, there's a couple of ideas in there that can help
14:59
you. Start to generate some stability and stop you having
15:03
that moment at home when you're eating dinner and your kids are
15:06
around and you're not present, so we've all been there.
15:10
Scott Ritzheimer: That's so good. Two more questions. One's
15:13
one of my favorites, and the other is a nice easy softball
15:17
for you. But the first question here is one that asks all my
15:20
guests, and it is, what is the biggest secret that you wish
15:24
wasn't a secret at all? What's that one thing you wish every
15:26
founder watching or listening today knew?
15:30
Unknown: Yeah, so look, I've been asked this question before,
15:32
and I had a number of runner-ups, but I think with
15:36
this topic that we're talking about today, what I'd really
15:39
like to encourage any founder or any entrepreneur to focus on is
15:42
speed, so now I don't know if speed's a secret, but
15:46
implementation of speed is, and too often I see sales
15:49
businesses, even with their high-performing salespeople,
15:53
rely on their heads, as we've spoken about, to get deals done.
15:56
Where you have a process that prioritizes speed, it allows you
16:00
to match your energy with the customer's energy, when they're
16:02
inquiring, you're responding, and when someone's inquiring, at
16:06
that moment you have the greatest sense of curiosity, or
16:09
engagement, or excitement. All right, when you, when you
16:12
quickly get out to see that customer again, you're pairing
16:15
with that, right? When you're asking the right questions
16:17
quickly, what do you need? What are you ready to buy now? Are
16:20
you just looking right? What do we need to do to get this moving
16:22
forward? Who's involved? When do we want to do it by right? These
16:25
great questions, when you're asking them quickly, you have
16:27
engagement from the customer and you're building relationship
16:30
naturally. So, any anyone that's listening that is worried about
16:33
that, about their key one, two single sales people having too
16:37
much of the business on their shoulders, speed up that sales
16:40
process, and you'll find that you'll be able to replace those
16:42
people far easier if something goes wrong.
16:47
Scott Ritzheimer: Fantastic, fantastic. I love you. I'm glad
16:51
you came back to it, because it struck me earlier, and I didn't
16:53
know if we'd get back to it. So, I love this focus on speed. I'm
16:56
sitting here thinking of all the situations where I probably
16:59
would have bought more if they were fast for me, and then I'm
17:01
thinking of all the situations that I wasn't fast enough when
17:03
someone else was interested, so I love that. Ben, folks are
17:07
listening to this, and they either find themselves in the
17:11
position we talked about with that star sales rep, but unable
17:14
to really scale beyond it, or worried that they might cave in
17:16
without it, or they're just trying to grow their sales, and
17:20
they want someone who knows what they're doing to come out
17:22
alongside and help out. Where can they find more out about the
17:25
work that you do? What resources do you have for them?
17:29
Unknown: Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate it. So, we do,
17:31
on a really limited basis, we do quote audits for selected
17:35
podcasts, and we've agreed to do it with the Start Scale and
17:38
Succeed podcast. We're going to put a link up into your show
17:41
notes, where you can book in to have a quote audit, and that
17:44
quote audit, it takes a couple of minutes to do a quick quiz
17:48
there, and then we look at exactly where you've got some
17:51
holes in your quoting process, queue right risk management, or
17:55
your business, or the ability to grow quickly, so that'll be in
17:58
the show notes, and you can jump straight in if that, if you'd
18:00
like some help straight away, it doesn't cost anything. There's
18:02
no obligation. We just do it as a thank you for having us on the
18:05
podcast. Or, alternatively, you can jump onto our podcast, which
18:09
is it's called Trade Sales Made Simple. So, it's a fantastic
18:13
podcast. It is generally directed at trade sales, but it
18:17
applies to so many more businesses than that. And I'd
18:20
probably start when we talk about speed. I'd actually start
18:23
around episode 185 That is a great little 12 minutes, like
18:27
yours short and chunky, around speed and how you can improve
18:31
that in your business. So, that'd be the two ways. And
18:33
thank you very much for giving the opportunity to do that,
18:35
Scott.
18:37
Scott Ritzheimer: Brilliant. Great. Well, Ben, thanks for
18:38
being here. Honor and privilege having you from the other side
18:40
of the world, bright and early, beat up and all, but here with
18:44
us nonetheless. We really appreciate your, your sharing
18:48
with us here this morning. And for those of you watching and
18:50
listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to
18:52
us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I
18:56
did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
19:03
Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer here. Thank you so much for
19:06
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