Transcript

Sales Process Predictability

[0:00] It's not working, right? I understand why, as a sales leader, we want to have that degree of predictability around our process and the results that it's going to generate to appease our shareholders and or the board, which is, let's be serious, that's who the sales process is designed to serve.
It has nothing to do with the seller, right? And it has nothing to do with the buyer.
Here. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast.
If you are listening to this, you are likely leading a team responsible for generating revenue.
Purpose of Full Funnel Freedom is to support people like yourself and keep your.

[0:42] Music.

[0:42] Funnels consistently, reliably full.
Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox.
Today, I am delighted to have Amy Rehovchek as my guest today to talk about mental health and burnout, not only for sales leaders, but for sellers as well.
Amy has over 15 years of experience leading training and coaching sales teams in the technology sector.
She is a force to be reckoned with in B2B tech tech sales.
Amy's approach to sales is both revolutionary and rooted in profound understanding.
She has championed the movement from legacy sales tactics, opting for methods prioritizing genuine connection, buyer-centric experiences, and stellar win rates.
Amy spent 15 years as an award-winning strategic AE in the legal technology space, C-level through one legal tech acquisition, and pivoted into sales enablement.
Her foray into podcasting is the host of the Revenue Real Hotline, which I've listened to and massively enjoy.
And her involvement in community building initiatives like RevGenius and SalesCast are just a few examples of her dedication to advancing the sales industry.
Amy's advisory services are a beacon for tech startups and legal service providers navigating the complexity of modern sales.
Amy's vision is clear to revolutionize sales, to prioritize the buyer experience, and to deliver results that are not just impressive, but What transformative.
Amy, welcome to Fault on Freedom.

[2:12] Oh my gosh, that was a lot of words. Note to self, like change for being read on podcast.
It's an honor to be here, Hamish. Thank you for the invite.
Yeah, and I will tell the audience that you are the first guest that I ever cold reached out to.
So I saw you on LinkedIn, one of my connections, liked or commented on a post that you had, read the post, and I went, this is somebody I would love to connect with.
And so did a cold reach out and had that little bit of nervousness of like, will she or won't she?
And you very kindly responded back and we got to know each other offline and we're here today recording. So thank you for responding to my cold reach out.
And I'm excited to talk to you today about burnout from a sales leadership perspective.
But before we get to that, round out that introduction. It might have been a lot of words.
That was a bit of a summary. You've done so many amazing things in your life and career.
Tell the audience a bit more about how you got to where you are today. day? Yeah.
So, I mean, it all started back in a beautiful summer day in June of 1983. No, just kidding.
But in all seriousness, I was raised by a sales VP.
And so in many ways, I thought what I thought very prepared for the profession.
But just as a quick caveat, like I, I was asked at our dinner table every night, when did you feel butterflies in your stomach today?

[3:39] To help us to think differently about those feelings of discomfort and more specifically to seek them out, or at least that's how I interpreted it.
So there was one, I was going to actually go into government, like working on campaigns, that was going to be the direction.

[3:56] But after I worked one campaign right out of school, and I realized when our guy lost in the primary, it's like everybody around me literally picked up their desk and moved to the opposite man's campaign.
And I really struggled in that moment. Like we just spent the past four or five minutes or four or five months competing against this person.
How, like, I just couldn't understand how people could shift their loyalties that like literally that quickly.
Cause one campaign goes down the other literally doubles in size.
And so, you know, enter, enter sales.
And that's, that's what I did. And so I, I sold enterprise and then strategic, uh, legal data, actually, for about 15 years, or at least I sold for 15 years.
I did five years finishing at Thomson Reuters.
And it was...

[4:46] Spectacular. It was spectacular. All the beautiful things that this profession affords, I got to experience.
And so from there, there was a startup that kind of snatched me up and we were able to see that through to an acquisition and then pivoted to sales enablement.
But right before that pivot, and the reason for the pivot was I had, after spending 15 years of carrying a quota, essentially.
And every quarter having that reset, I burned out. Let's be serious.
And I didn't, at the time, understand really what was happening.
It was right in the middle of me too. And there wasn't a lot of people talking about burnout at that moment and the implications of our workplaces.
And let's say the lack of management training in tech sales in particular to really support like true performance coaching.
And so all that being said, I got a firsthand experience of the importance.

[5:47] Of both talking about it and preparing our teams to be able to handle the mentals in a healthy way, as opposed to like toxic positivity or just push through it or, you know, all that crap that we can probably relate to.
So with that, I'm going to pause, Hamish. Well, and I appreciate your vulnerability and sharing with our audience of sales leaders around the world that you have gone through this.
And I would expect that there's a few heads nodding as they are listening to this, wherever that might be.
So speaking of, you know, this time of being in the middle of Me Too and there's lots of conversations starting, continuing.

[6:27] Tell us a bit about how that conversation started with you.
Like when you had this aha moment of like, oh, I'm burning out or I've burned out and you attempted to start that conversation, what was that like then and then what is your experience now with having or trying to start those conversations well one i didn't have any uh awareness that it was burnout at the time and and really i think the challenge was that i had been working so hard to suppress how i felt right with selling all the stress all the all the things that come with that and so i really My goal was to feel essentially nothing.
And what I came to find out is that when you aspire to feel nothing bad, you push out the ability to feel anything at all.
And so I think with me too, though, and I mentioned it just to put a timestamp on it, but also….

[7:25] I had internalized a lot of the experiences that I had, you know, selling while a woman, and I didn't realize how widespread those experiences were.
And so if anything, like trying to talk about those experiences up until that moment was something that was not very welcome or believed, acknowledged, whatever.
And so then to just get that mass validation and realize like how big a scope of it is, that felt good.

[7:53] Now for me though, So looking back and what I've learned about my experience is the importance of being able to emotionally regulate regardless of how you're feeling.
And one, to not fight so hard to the feelings that are the emotions that are coming up and instead to not lean into them per se, but recognize that they're temporary and that they're passing by like clouds in the sky.
And so by pushing back or by fighting them or by not acknowledging them, I personally have made them significantly worse, actually.
And so, yeah, but I've learned a ton as they as you do when you make a lot of mistakes in many ways.
And so this is why I enjoy talking about this now, because it still is stigmatized in many ways, but it doesn't have to be.
And it certainly doesn't have to be as painful and as, let's call it, catastrophic as it was for me personally, or at least perceived to be at that time.

[8:58] Fair enough. So let's talk about some of your learnings on this journey.
So from the time that you, you know, experience your own burnout to your pivot and now what you're learning today, what are some of the things that you have discovered about burnout, especially as it relates to sales leaders?
Gosh, there's so many things like I could spend hours just answering that one question.
But I want to bring it like the big thing for me right now is how harmful it is when we have when we strip all creativity and autonomy out of the sales role and leaving people zero room to make decisions about how they choose to prospect, how they choose to engage buyers and opportunities.
Opportunities, instead favoring this, like, let's manage what someone is doing down to the day and task, right?
And that is a recipe for burnout.

[9:56] There's also a lot of science right now about how micromanaging is one of the worst things that you can do.
And so between those two things, It's just, it's not working, right?
I understand why as a sales leader, we want to have that degree of predictability around our process and the results that it's going to generate to appease our shareholders and or the board, which is let's be serious.
That's who the sales process is designed to serve.
It has nothing to do with the seller, right? And it has nothing to do with the buyer.

Buyer-Centric Approach

[10:32] But I think the best part about this conversation right now is that while it hasn't been working for salespeople for a long time, and we are like the dead bodies, right, that we just burn through, it's just egregious.
But also, it's not working for the buyers either. And I think finally the buyers have become very loud about their lack of desire to interact with salespeople, the lack of value, perceived value in interacting with salespeople.

[11:03] And I think that that presents a massive opportunity to sales leaders who are ready to operate differently, both as a service to their clients and their potential buyers, their prospects, as well as their own teams.

[11:16] Yeah, I love that because ultimately, if we get into check the box mode, right?
Oh, I did 100 reach outs today or I had 27 conversations today or whatever that that's, you know, management by spreadsheet. And we all know that that doesn't work.
It still feels good, especially for lazy leaders, but it doesn't actually ultimately do anything.
So tell us more about this stripping away of creativity, because this is a really fascinating thing, because I never experienced that as a seller.
I was given the freedom to hit my target in the way that, you know, as long as I hit my target, I had the freedom to go do that.
Well, we come from a certain generation, Hamish, so I'm not going to interrupt you, but that may have had something to do with it. Yeah, that's fair.
That's fair. So tell us more about this stripping away of creativity.
What is that really looking like from from your experience? So I want to put a caveat on this.
I come from the same school of, let's call it sales education as you, Hamish.
Like the best piece of coaching that I got from a mentor was, Amy, your job is not to like stalk people until they give you meetings.
Your job is to become so front and center in the market that when people are ready to, and to educate on your business problem so that when people are ready to undertake that business problem, you are the first person they think of.
When I pivoted into sales enablement and went a little bit, let's call it downstream of the startup ecosystem to a little bit younger, newer organizations.

[12:41] I was really floored to see how the SDR model played out.
And like, here's a perfect example. I implemented outreach twice.
Both times I had to not fight back, but advocate hard for why we shouldn't write all these emails for the SDR team to just like mass.

[13:06] And understanding that there is so much power that a rep can have when they are able to research the organization, research the leads, come up with a hypothesis about how you can help not only what the problem is, but a hypothesis and a unique perspective about how the company can help them.
It changes the dynamic of the experience with the buyer and it also it's more effective.
And so to see the opposite of that playing out and that's just cold email right now we can look at cold calling and the number of sales leaders right now that are not getting the results that they want. Right.
Those those tactics are not converting as well this year. Finally, thank goodness.
But their answer to that is to force or insist that the team make more cold calls.
So maybe 100 a day to 300 a day are some of these conversations that I'm having.
And it's like, instead of stopping and saying, okay, why isn't this working?
Or more specifically, like the average win rate right now in tech sales is 17%.
And like, it's even the conversion rates on cold calls.
It's like 1%. It's wild. And so I just don't see enough people stopping and pausing and saying, one, who says it can't be better?
And applying a little bit more courage on the let's try something different front.

[14:34] It's not working for my team. The buyers are not happy.
Leadership at the organization is not happy. I know my next is going to be on the chopping block, but the average tenure for a sales leader is 17 months anyway, 11 for a rep. Like, why not try something different?
And so and again, though, I want to convey hope in that and excitement because there are leaders that are really fighting again, not fighting against this, but are making huge progress to establish different ways of operating, whether this be the evangelism, whether this be the community plays, whether this is thinking differently about demand, creation and capture.

Revolutionizing Sales Priorities

[15:13] So on the marketing side of things. And so with that, I'll pause.

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[15:48] Now, back to the show. I love this idea of demand creation, right?
Because we were in a demand fulfillment world for a very long time.
And it was pick up the phone and close the sale, you know, almost.
And now we actually have to reach out to a buyer who, as you said, might not be thinking about us, probably is not thinking about us, although they have a problem. them.
So what I'm curious about, Amy, is as you're working with your clients and the leaders and the sales teams that you support, how are you helping them think different about how they go out and re-interact with their buyers?
So the buyer actually welcomes that interaction as opposed to rolling their eyes and going, oh, great, yet another sales call that sounds like all the other ones I get every day.
It's designed to serve the seller, the marketer and the company. What a great question.
I think there are a couple pieces to that. The first is to align, recognize that there are, contrary to our understanding about the sales process, which is like this linear thing filled with stages, like that's not how buyers buy, right?
And in fact, like buyers don't buy in a linear capacity.
And so we really need It's almost like rip out the sales process from our thinking, our CRM, and substitute it for the buyer journey.

[17:12] And so that's step one, right? How can we design systems, dynamic systems that are truly designed to serve the buyer and not forecasting and or the VCs or shareholders or whatever?
So that's number one. Number two then becomes, okay, what are the stages that the buyers go through generally? And what are the things that they need to do during those stages?
So let's, there's a couple different variations on this, but let's say those three stages, awareness, consideration, decision.
And so when it comes to creating resources for the buyers, it depends on which stage of the buying journey that they're in. Right.
And and then I'll finish with this third piece.
And that is that we've got far more buyers that are in learn mode as opposed to buy mode.
And when when a buyer is in learn mode, let's say in awareness.
Right. They're trying to learn about their problem, like the root cause problem, the downstream effects, different perspectives. Like, is this a people problem?
Is this a technology problem? Or is it a process problem?
And that's where I think dark social is such a big factor in understanding the implications of that, both as a marketer and as a seller, critical moving forward.

[18:30] But then it becomes about the content that I'm producing, the outreach that I'm doing, is designed to educate the market and to help them make progress.
Progress, right? And so there's also an implication for sellers of being the first to the table, right?

Embracing Buyer Guidance

[18:48] Helping that buyer to understand the problem and really get at the most important thing and help to kind of guide that process.

[18:56] What's different, let's call them general sales plays, will almost wait until the buyer is in decision mode, right?
Look at the the current state of buyer intent data or like a G4, right?
Which is where it's a signal the company's researching and they're about to make a decision or they're about to buy.
And often that's where a lot of outreach will begin, right? If it is a true inbound.
But at that point, often it's been my experience that the buyer has already picked a favorite seller and a favorite provider.
And so then the challenge then becomes how do we figure out how to move are that both the content that we're creating, the messaging that we're putting out there, like upstream, it may be confirmed that there's a problem taking place before we try to, you know, ban them or anything ridiculous like that.

[19:47] Yeah, you and I are completely aligned on this. And it's almost like the, yeah, we get that intent signal. And it's like, want to hear about our company?
It's like, no, no, I already, I already did that like months ago.
Like you're, you're way too late to the table. I've already figured out who I'm going to work with, but sure.
Give me all of your information and free consulting. Happy to take that online.
I am curious to know more about dark social because for some of our audience, they might've been like, is that a bad thing? Do I get drugs on there?
Like I thought that was that silk road. I thought that got shut down.
So what is dark social? Tell our audience a bit more about that.
For those that, for companies that have figured out how how to measure the true origination, point of inbounds, right? Because they have built in like an open text field on their website.
Like, how did you hear about us? And then like, let literally let people say they are starting to report that somewhere between 80 to 90% of their inbounds are coming from this place called dark social.
And what dark social is, it's just the, the conversations that happen behind the scenes that the company is not a part of, right? And what do I mean by that?
So a buyer's in awareness phase, right?
What is the first thing that most of us are gonna do when we have an inkling of a problem?

[21:08] We're gonna tap into our network. We're gonna call, we're gonna phone a friend, right?
Peers that are working our job in other locations and asking them, hey, have you encountered this?
What did you do to solve it? And have those conversations.

Impact of SDR Model

[21:23] Organizations and so what that it becomes like this first step one of the earliest let's call it jobs to be done as a buyer in the buying process now this idea of phoning a friend or tapping into a peer network is absolutely not new right that's been a long turnaround since that was a thing when we were so had selling image totally um but what is different today in particular is is how much simpler it is to reach those people.
And we reach a broad set of those people. Now, this could be LinkedIn.
This could be conversations that are happening in Slack communities.
This could be conversations that are happening in live meetups, like a pavilion, just as one example.
And so the dark social is just the conversations that take place that the company cannot control.
Now, they can absolutely influence them, which is, I think, a different conversation. Mm-hmm.
But then the challenge becomes for forward-thinking marketers and sellers, how do you tap into those conversations?

[22:26] How do you go to, well, one, understanding where they're taking place and go to become a part of them?
And so I think just to put a bow on it, this is where the rise or the importance of subject matter experts from the sales perspective becomes so much more important, right? Right.
Because then you can have subject matter experts that go and join these conversations to influence the direction of them.

[22:53] And with that, I'll pause there. Hopefully that answered your question.
That was really cool. Yeah. As you were talking, I was like, yeah, we called it word of mouth.
That's what that's what we called that way back when. Right.
So and also having this idea of being an influencer.
Right. How do you influence those conversations so that when people are talking to go, oh, I saw this really cool article from Amy or, you know, So Hamish put out a message on Instagram that really resonated with me about a problem that I'm thinking about.
So the leaders, as you're listening to Amy share about this, what are your sellers doing and how are you coaching them on being present in those conversations when you may not actually be present?
So Amy, you and I obviously can nerd out about this stuff all day long.
And both of you and I are highly scheduled because we have lots of clients to support as well. Well, so a few questions to wrap us up today.

[23:44] First question I ask everybody is, if you could go back and coach younger Amy, go back as far as you like, and you can say, hey, younger Amy, you're going to have this amazing career as a seller.
You're going to be this great podcaster, et cetera, et cetera.
You're also going to have a bunch of scar tissue and bumps and bruises.
What would you coach younger Amy to say or do different to arrive at the same place, but with fewer bumps and bruises and maybe a little less scar tissue?
It's not that big of a deal.
Say more it's not that big of a deal um i as a neurodivergent or neuro spicy um it's a lot easier to get lost in the feels um and the big what feels like the bigness of each event let's call it like even an objective event like it just feels bigger and so what i would go back to and say to younger Amy, is it doesn't matter that much.
Even if the company goes under, even if you lose your job, even if you win the Spoccia Award at Thomson Reuters competing against 50,000 people, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter as much as you're making it out to be.

[24:57] So chillax and enjoy the ride. I love that. It's a message that I give to my daughters on a regular basis.
And they're almost 12 and just turned nine.
So challenging, right? They're not as developed as we are cognitively yet.
And hopefully someday that'll resonate. So I appreciate that insight.
Amy, what have you read, listened to, or watched, whether it's recently or in the past, that you would recommend the sales leaders listening check out for their own personal and professional development, aside from your podcast, of course.
I just picked up Adam Grant's new book, Hidden Potential.
And I'm only like two chapters in, so I'm like not even ready to speak about it. But I would highly recommend this one.
It is challenging me to think differently about what talent is, where it comes from, and how it's cultivated.

[25:46] And in true Adam Grant fashion, He is a disruptor in all ways in the best possible way.
And so, yeah, Adam Grant's new hidden potential.
As we start to reconsider our workplaces and the talent pools that we're pulling from and expanding those talent pools to be more inclusive or less exclusionary, depending on who you ask, right?
I think it's just, and it also takes down a bunch of myths about where competency comes from.
Very cool. I'm a huge fan of Adam Grant. We'll make sure to link to that book in the comments.
So Amy, you have provided us some amazing ideas and insights today about burnout and creativity and following the buyer journey.
What do you have as a closing thought, a final bit of wisdom or something to plug? The floor is yours.
Right now, we're in a pivotal moment in time in many ways. and just across the board.
And so for anyone that is considering the road ahead, I would challenge you to think or remember that no great breakthroughs, no great wins come from doing what everyone else is doing.

[27:02] But from that perspective, there is a way to expedite both the pace and the execution around, let's call it an effective strategy.
And so test small.
Test often and focus on delivering for the buyer and the buyer experience.
And they will not lead you astray. I love that. Amy, I very much look forward to carrying on our conversations offline.
And thank you for sharing your ideas and insights with our audience of sales leaders today. Appreciate you being a guest on the Full Funnel Freedom podcast.
Oh, thanks, Hamish. And I'm honored to have been the first cold outreach person. Woo!

[27:47] Sales leaders, what an awesome conversation with Amy.
Her energy and her insights into a wealth of things were really inspiring for me today.

Allowing Seller Creativity

[28:00] So my takeaways from listening to Amy, number one is this idea around allowing our sellers to get to the mountaintop, that is their target, in their own way, which includes being respectful of their buyers.
So when we eliminate creativity and we're saying, you know, just follow this sequence, just copy and paste these emails, just leverage this AI tool to, you know, send out this pre-approved messaging message.
We're doing a disservice to not only our sellers, but also to our buyers.

Disadvantages of Automation

[28:39] And to be quite frank, in that scenario, we don't need sellers because it's really just all automated.
And we could probably have an AI do 80% of what the sellers are doing.
And that's not what I'm recommending at all. That's literally what we're doing to our sellers is we're basically turning them into robots. So let our sellers be human.
Let our sellers be human and let them interact with other humans, their buyers, in a much more effective way.
We can certainly give them support and coaching and guidance and templates and frameworks.

[29:10] Ultimately, we want them to get to the mountaintop. And how they get to the mountaintop shouldn't necessarily matter to us.
It should be as long as you are getting to that mountaintop where you're having a genuine conversation, you're booking a real qualified discovery conversation.

Genuine Buyer Conversations

[29:26] You're working your buyer through that process in the way that matches with where they're at as amy described where are they at in the buyer's journey and ultimately helping that buyer make the best choice for them whether it's your organization or not the other thing that really stood out to me is this idea around burnout and how number one a lack of creativity and micromanagement which can feel good in the moment can really contribute to burnout not only for our uh us but also for our sellers and so as you're looking at yourself and and you're looking at your sellers and their productivity and their energy levels, where might burnout be fomenting underneath the surface and that could bubble up at an inopportune time?
So I'd love to hear your biggest takeaways from this episode in our social media.
Thank you for listening. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.
Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Full Funnel Freedom podcast.
Podcast you can continue to support us by leaving us a review and a rating sharing this episode with a couple of sales leaders in your network who you care about i'd love to connect with you i'm easy to find hamish knox on linkedin also if you'd like a free 15 minute call with me go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to sandler until we connect on the next episode go create full funnel freedom.

[30:53] Music.