Helping Your Sellers Short Term May Hurt Them Long Term

[0:00] You'll get to hear about one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made as a sales leader and learn from it without making it yourself.

[0:11] 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 funnels consistently, reliably full. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, I'm delighted to have Susie Matheson as my guest today. Susie is the founder of The Small Stuff. She's passionate about helping salespeople reach their sales potential by empowering them to think for themselves and giving them the tools they need to be successful. Susie is an experienced sales professional with a proven track record in various industries with a focus on sales training, employee motivation, and team building, she successfully developed and executed sales training programs and implemented employee development and coaching plans. Susie has held sales management roles in paint and coating industries, as well as automotive, where she achieved significant sales growth and improved customer retention. Susie has excellent powers of observation combined with a patient yet clear coaching style, which brings out the best in individuals and groups. Susie's expertise and experience instill confidence in customers, and she is committed to empowering sales teams to understand, adjust, then execute improvements for success. Susie, welcome to Full Funnel Freedom.

[1:31] Thanks so much for having me. That sounded pretty impressive, what you just read. It sounds like I know what I'm talking about. Excellent. Excellent. Well, we will get to that in just a second. I've given the audience the high level of who you are and your background. Tell us your story. Tell us where you started and how you got to where you are today. Yeah, happy to. So thanks for having me on the podcast today. So I'm Susie, born and raised in the UK, and spent a lot of my time enjoying communicating with people, including learning the German language. So when I had the opportunity, I moved to Germany and started working out there. I had some sales roles, selling paint as you've mentioned already and really really enjoyed the communication I had with people regardless of that whether that was colleagues or or customers so I'm one of those rare people who actually chose a a career in sales I didn't fall into it like lots of people did because I just love the idea of hospitality actually if I'm honest I love the idea of of taking customers to nice dinners and sports matches and things like that. And I got to do that on occasion as well. So that was fun. So yeah, so I just.

[2:47] Worked in sales, worked my way up, I suppose, became a sales manager and did that for maybe 10 or so years. And then in 2019, I was working for an American company in the automotive software market. And I had the opportunity to take a break. So I grabbed it with both hands and went traveling for seven months. And it was amazing. We can talk offline about where I went and what I saw.

[3:15] But I think I was in a hostel made out of a shipping container in Da Nang in Vietnam. And I was just lying there on my bunk bed next to another girl from Germany called Rebecca. And I was like, Rebecca, I'm loving this traveling, but do you know what? I'm missing work. I miss work. I miss sales. I miss that interaction with people. But I don't miss those KPIs. So Rebecca said, well, what are you going to do? And I was like, I've got no idea. dear, I don't know anything else but sales. And she said, well, have you ever thought about trying to teach people about sales? Have you ever thought about helping them? And that was the small stuff being born there and then. So for the rest of the time that I was traveling, I had a good few months left. I, in my head, was building ideas and thinking about how I could best launch a company. And that's what I did in October 19. I launched the small stuff, a sales training company. And since then, it's just been fun every day, I have to say. It was definitely the right decision to make. I love what I do. And I'm so honored to get to work with lots of people, including a colleague in Calgary, just down the road from you, Hamish.

[4:26] So the five of us at The Small Stuff now work in helping others to hit their KPIs and helping them to become better salespeople. So that's kind of how I got to where I am in a nutshell. Amazing. What a very cool story. And yeah, a shipping container in Da Nang has not come up on the podcast yet in terms of an origin story. So thank you for sharing that with us. And when we were chatting offline, Susie, one of the things that we had talked about is you had an experience with a company and you were a frontline sales manager, which is pretty much the hardest job in the business because you're getting stuff from on high and then you have to download that to your sellers. And then the sellers are coming back and going, hey, this sucks, or look at what we did, then you've got to translate that up on high. And it was really challenging for you. So would you share a bit more about that experience and how that ultimately frames how you support your clients with the small stuff today?

[5:22] Yeah, sure. So I've been lucky enough to have a lot of sales roles, but I would argue that I didn't really get into full on sales until I joined the last company I worked for, which was an American company selling automotive software. And it was a great job and probably the most stressful job I've had all in one. So I always enjoyed going into work because I loved seeing the people. I loved the challenge. But it was super hard because it was so KPI driven. And exactly as you just described, I was that front line manager. So I was managing the field sales team, the inside sales team, and also the customer retention team. And ultimately you just needed really broad shoulders because you were you were filtering everything that was coming from above and then you needed to decide what to pass on to the team below and so it was a very tricky tightrope to walk and sometimes I I certainly got it wrong you know I gave too much information or showed my well showed my emotions too much which is probably something that I would say actually you should always be able to do in a company but um you know sometimes times I let it get the better of me but in general it was just a very very high tension role.

[6:35] But it taught me the most I've ever learned about sales and sales management so I'm super happy that I did it and that was probably where I got most of my learning for the small stuff because that experience for me was not unusual that happens all over the world we have companies we have teams with targets to hit. We have big goals that we want to achieve. And if we don't know what to measure, if we don't know where those successes are coming from, or we're not learning from maybe the opportunities we've lost, then how are we going to know how to succeed and how to grow? So I truly believe that if I hadn't have had those three years in that company, I wouldn't be able to do what I do now and advise people and help people hit their own KPIs. So So, yeah, that's a little bit about the experience. I hope that was kind of enough.

[7:27] It really ties it together because we've had guests on who are very KPI, right, very data, very. And then we've had other guests on who have been very human, right, very people oriented, right? And I feel you brought a, the word balance is overused, but you brought a really nice, like, yes, KPIs are important. important and the human beings who execute them are also important as is the person who is leading those humans. So one of the other things that we talked about in, from your experience, and like a lot of sales managers who got promoted, uh, you probably didn't get a whole lot of training other than congratulations. You are one, you had shared with me that you were doing a lot to quote unquote, help your team.

[8:14] But you might have actually been doing more harm than good when it came to supporting them in a role. So what was that experience? And tell us a bit more about how you realized that in the moment you might have been helpful, but long term, maybe not so much. Yes, happy to talk about that. So basically, I saw my role as freeing up my reps time to do what they were paid to do as much of their time as possible. So be as effective as possible in that role. And in doing that, what I ended up doing was doing some of their job for them. So especially the admin tasks, especially the I'll go away and create a list of leads that you can contact, those kind of things. I saw at the time as being helpful, which short term they were right. They were really helpful. Someone was in a in a bind. They they didn't know where to start. And I said, well, here you go. Here's 20 people you can call today. Like so um trying to be helpful but what i was doing was i was ending up being their.

[9:12] Administrator who they appreciated and respected i have to say that there was no like disrespect or anything they did like they they liked what i did but i ended up being their assistant rather than their manager yeah and so what was happening is that they were performing they were always doing their activities i mean that was one of the things we were focused on one of the kpis are you making your 40 calls a day right that was what we had as a target um and that was one of many that we measured but what i wasn't doing was equipping them to learn how to do it themselves next time.

[9:44] And so what happened was when i handed in my notice and said i was going to go traveling i actually was lucky enough and i say this lots of people might not see it like this but i was lucky enough to have a three to four month uh notice period which meant that i had a really nice long time for handover. And the company were also then, they had a nice long time to source for my replacement, look for somebody else. And the nice thing was for the team that there was no overlap. So I left before the new manager came in and they actually had a couple of weeks to breathe between us, which lots of people go, oh no, no manager. But actually it worked out really well because in those three to four months

[10:23] where I was still there, guess what? I completely changed my my priorities. And suddenly the reporting for my boss where he needed to know about a forecast or about a deal or something like that became less important. And I focused wholeheartedly on equipping my team with having all of the tools that they needed to be able to do the job without me and possibly without a sales manager in seat for a while. And it was the best gift that I could have been given as me, as a manager, because I use it now for the future, but I also believe for a lot of the team, and I stay in touch with the team. I mean, I left in 2019, so it's five years ago nearly, and I stay in touch with quite a few of them, and most of them are still in role. All but one of them are still in the company.

[11:11] And they're all most of the time smashing their targets, which they weren't doing all the time when they were working for me. So I truly would like to think that me investing that time in them and making them more equipped to be able to do their role autonomously actually has helped them to succeed. I'm going to claim that as mine anyway. And as you should. Yes. We'll celebrate that victory together. So I got to believe though Susie that because I wrote a book on the human side of change that you went from Administrator as you just said.

[11:46] To a Manager a true leader who is supporting the team and giving them tools.

[11:52] There's a there's a window in there where I'm sure you had a little bit of pushback From some of the members of your team when they were like wait a second Susie's not gonna do this for me anymore So how did you manage and how did you get through those rapids when all of a sudden your team was getting one thing from you and then you were actually giving them what they needed but maybe not necessarily what they thought they wanted? So I was lucky enough because of the situation that I could be quite cheeky and say, well, how are you going to do this when I'm not there?

[12:23] So I was lucky enough. But this is a situation that I find a lot of the FLMs that I coach, the frontline managers, sorry, that I coach also find themselves in. And so for me, it's about flipping the conversation. So it's flipping about the conversation to ask a question about what do you need to do? How do you think you would find that yourself? You know, how can I help you to find that yourself? yourself um so asking different questions to kind of lead lead them towards where they need to go because i think you know they say something around like you can give a person a fish and they can feed their family for a day or two but if you teach them how to fish they can feed their family for forever right so um i know that's an i've just i've just butchered a very well-known saying i know that but it's it's true right so it's about making them realize um and you know challenge and And say, what happens if I'm run over by a bus tomorrow? If you want to throw humor in, right? You know, how are you going to be able to do this without me?

[13:24] So I think it's just about, you know, coaching, asking some good open questions to get them to understand why it's important. And also challenging as well. So, you know, what if I'm not there tomorrow? So that would be my advice, I guess, if I'm helping others to do this now. I love that because ultimately it puts the pressure back on the wrap, right? So the seller, sellers are very good at managing up. I know when I was in sales, I was great at managing up. And your story about, well, I got, you know, I would do lists, I would do this. That is the ultimate fantasy manager for a lot of sellers where it's like, hey, I just go talk to people and my boss does all the other stuff. I'm wondering if you've had the experience or what you would coach someone to do when you get a seller who goes into I don't know mode you know because it's all well and good for us to ask the questions of hey what happens if I just you know didn't come back tomorrow I usually say I learned that I got an island from a relative I didn't know about because they died and it was in their will because I don't like killing anybody even metaphorically although I guess my relative had to die. So what do you say? I didn't know them though, so it's okay. So what did you say to a seller or what do you say to your clients when they have somebody who is going, oh, no boss, and trying to still do the managing up thing when you're trying to help them self-discover?

[14:51] Oh, great question. So first of all, I'm totally stealing that about the island. That is much better than being run over by a bus. So thank you for giving me some new material you're very welcome um so i think this is where the personal side of things come into the people so i've listened to a couple of your podcasts you know recently and uh and one of your guests was talking about this like, they're not personas they're people um and and everybody has um you know they're a human being at the end of the day so it's about understanding where is this i don't know coming from you know Is this coming from laziness? Is this coming from helplessness? Is this coming from lack of confidence? Is this coming from the fact that it's just been that way, so it's a resistance to change? There's all sorts of reasons. So I think the biggest thing to do is to really understand where it's coming from. And you can do that using your common sense. You know these people typically, so you may understand the way they tick. Or you can ask some questions around it as well. So if they're really saying, I don't know, you know, go back and challenge and say, well, where would be the first place that you would look? Right. So let's let's do this together. Where would be the first place you don't? And then what? Then what? Then what? Right. What else? Yeah. What else is important for you to know?

[16:08] And if they keep coming back with, I don't know, then, of course, you can help them. I mean, there's a difference between a new hire who's been in the job two days and an experienced SDR who's been in the role two years. So, again, you have to you have to change your approach according to that as well. So it's about them, for me, understanding the human and where that's coming from.

[16:29] You know, are they having some fun with this? Are they pushing back because they're not used to it? So really digging deeper and asking some good questions and yet taking it from there. I love that. And sales leaders, I want to reinforce and highlight something Susie just mentioned is new person versus someone who's been on the team. It's about the human being. It's so we don't lead a team. We have group. We have a group of individuals who have their own hopes and fears and dreams. So reinforce what Susie just said about it's the individual that we're talking to, not an SDR or an AE or whatever that might be. Thank you so much for sharing that, Susie, because sometimes I find that get lost in, well, I lead a team. No, you don't. You lead a group of individuals.

[17:14] So treat them as a group of individuals. So we've got over that whole hump of like, oh, I don't know. And actually, I just read in a book that the phrase I don't know actually shuts our brain down. It actually tells our brain to not do anything like to stop looking um which is why um at i guess at disney they are taught uh to say let me find that out for you uh as opposed to i don't know uh so, Now that we've got over that hump, right, we've got our team on board and they're understanding that they can be self-sufficient individuals. What's that next step that a frontline manager would take so that they can actually

[17:56] be a manager instead of a doer? So once you've got that sorted, and I don't want to suggest that that doesn't take a long time because it can take a long time. I mean, I spent all of those three to four months sitting side by side with a lot of my reps once a week, each rep. So I had, I think, seven reps at that point that I was sitting next to. So that's more than one a day that I was sitting next to and accompanying and sometimes even more than once a week. Right. So there was a very, very big bit of time investment. And then once you're satisfied that they know what they're doing, then it's about holding them accountable to those KPIs that you've got. So we had some really simple KPIs, which I loved.

[18:37] Which were you know one in four people who try a product buy so that means that is our pipeline four times the size that it needs to be because typically our close rate is one in four now some reps had a one in three some reps had a one in five right but in general that's where we were and so you can start to then ask questions to really help guide that going forward and then what you do with the rest of your time well that's when you look at things like upskilling enabling enablement uh development plans um that's something that gets pushed really far to the side, when we're not hitting our numbers right it's first of all ah what are you doing panic panic you haven't got enough in your pipeline make some more calls do some more activities and there's not much point in doing lots of activities if the quality of those calls is not that good so it's about really thinking about what do my team need how can i help them how can I improve not only the quantity of what they're doing, but the quality. So one of the things that we did was I actually spent a lot of time on our CRM system, figuring out how we could make that work for us better. So that you weren't clicking 10 times to create your report or your dashboard, but you had ready made dashboards. So that when you opened up your computer in the morning, you could see your numbers glaring out at you either in green or in red. And it was very simple then to see which buttons to press so it gave me time to focus on those type of things.

[20:02] And getting in external trainers organizing product training doing training myself actually so I I funny enough I enjoyed doing training back then too so you know and helping to really enable them to to do their best that's just a few things I mean I could go on onboarding recruiting like all of that stuff you suddenly have time to do and you're not just doing it between meetings. Right. So, yeah.

[20:28] So let's go back on these personal development plans, because that's one of the things when we work with our clients, it's like, okay, so what are we working on, you know, for this period of time? Okay, so before we get to the end of that period, how are we doing? Let's look at like, what are you working on? Because all of us can continue to grow and develop, even whether we have decades of experience, or we're the number one seller, the top sales leader, whatever in the organization. So when you're looking at building out a personal development plan for one of your sellers, walk us through your best practices. What did you do as that frontline manager? What do you coach your frontline manager clients to do so that both them and their seller are actually on board with this personal development plan and it doesn't become another stick that the seller just wants to ignore?

[21:14] So for me, and there's all sorts of ways of doing this, right? But ultimately, we look at short, medium and long term goals. And for me, development plan is all around where do I want to be in? And that could be my numbers. So it could be as simple as I want to be hitting 100% of quota by Q3. Yeah, that could be a very simple one. That's a short term goal that you can work on and developing and then you break it down and you say, right, what's stopping you getting there right now and you quickly figure out we don't have enough pipeline. So that's a prospecting area and we don't have the close rate is i don't know 15 instead of 25 so they're two indicators which can quickly show you okay i need to support this person in prospecting you know are they saying the right thing are they um ringing up and pitching straight away or have they got a good opener are they using pattern interrupts whatever it is that you're you're doing is to understand that to help them there and with the discovery part so with the close rate it It typically is around discovery, right? So qualification and discovery.

[22:15] Have I got the right opportunities in my pipeline to start off with?

[22:20] And am I qualifying them out if not? You know, am I not scared to say? So that could be something simple that's short term. And that achieving Q3 could be because they want to be recognized as the top salesperson or they want some kind of recognition. Or it could just be I'm fed up of not hitting my quota. I want to get my bonus for once, right? So that's kind of a short term goal. And a midterm goal could be something about the year. So it could be a personal goal. So it could be something around, hey, I want to be considered to be a team lead when the next opportunity comes up. I want to be sent to the States. We used to have a program where you could get sent to the States to join our colleagues there for a week-long conference in Memphis, which I went on once, and it was fantastic.

[23:04] It could be President's Club. You know, there's all sorts of things that people could set as goals that they want to achieve. Uh in in a year and so then again it's breaking it down it's like well what do we need to do what do we need to do to get you there in q1 through to half year first half year second half year those kind of things so um that's that one and then there's the long-term goal is is that question that lots of people hate which is where do you see yourself in three years time or five years time right um and lots of people don't know but some people have a really clear picture of that so it's about understanding if they have a clear picture what does that mean for them, and what do we need to what are the steps that need to happen um to get there so with any type of development plan i think it's important to know what's the goal and then what let's break it down to figure out how to get there and then the next thing is those measures so how do i hold myself accountable how do i hold my team member accountable for that uh or rather how do they They hold themselves accountable and how do I hold them accountable? So stage gates, regular meetings, buy our next meeting in six weeks' time. What will you have done? What looks different? How have you moved the dial?

[24:14] There's all sorts of ways you can do it, but they're ultimately kind of the process that I would take someone through when it comes to development plans. Beautiful. I love that. Sales leaders, make sure you go back and review that and start implementing those personal development plans because, as Susie said, they're incredibly important for every individual on our team so that we're all trying to grow or we are all growing and stretching and improving

[24:36] on a consistent, regular basis. So Susie, having been in that frontline manager role and now you coach among other roles, frontline managers, what would be the two skills that you would really recommend frontline managers and ultimately anybody who's leading individuals, but ultimately frontline managers, what are those two skills that you would really encourage the frontline managers listening to make sure that they're working on a consistent, regular basis so they can be the best leader for their team? If I'm only allowed two, gosh, that's not very fair. Right. So the first one is develop the skill of good questioning.

[25:16] And there's two questions or two good styles of questions, and they begin with the word how or they begin with the word what. Okay. And if you can develop questioning around that, you're going to help your teams to come up with answers themselves. You're going to help your teams to think for themselves as well. And actually by doing that consistently, consistently and that's point number two consistency um you're going to help them to get used to having to do the work so that would be number one is to develop really good questioning styles you know how do you see that panning out what are your plans to make that happen you know there's hundreds of different questions but they typically start with a how or a what and then consistency that's the other second one i said is um regularity you know if you're one week you're You're like all on fire and let's do a stand up and let's do this and let's have a competition. And then there's nothing for two or three weeks later. Guess what? That up and down will follow. The dip will follow. So that's right. The up and then the dip will follow. So consistency is a really, really important piece for teams and for those human beings that we talked about.

[26:24] Regular one on ones, whether that's weekly, biweekly, regular team meetings, whether that's daily, weekly, monthly. However whatever the cadence is that fits for your team um and don't cancel them for something more important yes amen sister yes a thousand a thousand percent and to to build on that uh one of the the things that breaks trust is a lack of consistency there's plenty of data out there that if in in any human relationship right whether you know spouse partner parent child friend whatever whatever, if we have a lack of consistency, whether that is randomly break, like breaking our word, rescheduling, whatever, it diminishes trust over time. And then, you know, as you and I have both experienced when there is a lack of trust, there's definitely not going to be productivity or performance. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen it. I've had it happen to me. You know, you've got this important meeting in with your boss and then they're like, Oh, sorry, I've got a customer call. I need to jump on. Yeah, sure. That is important. But what you're telling me in that moment is that's more important than you. And ultimately, we want to be showing each team member that they are important. They're an important cog in the machine that needs to be oiled and needs to be paid attention to just as much as the customers do that we have calls with. So wherever possible, show them that they're important.

[27:48] Very cool. So that is a great place to transition into the rest of our podcast

[27:53] today because you and I could certainly nerd out about this stuff all day long. I do have a few questions before we wrap up. So question number one being if you could go back and coach younger Susie, go back as far as you like and go, hey, younger Susie, in the future, you'll have had all this great experience. You'll have this amazing company called The Small Stuff. You will also have a bunch of scar tissue and bumps and bruises. bruises what would you coach younger Susie to say or do different to get to the same place with less scar tissue and fewer bumps and bruises so the cliche answer here is I wouldn't change anything because if I hadn't have had all that scar tissue I wouldn't be where I am today however yes I think that one of the things that can get in the way of uh sales success and it certainly did in my uh in my career as well either as a sales rep all the way through to manager is the need or or desire to be liked.

[28:42] If I could have lost that quicker, and I still want people to like me. So but if I could have lost that, being such a driver for some of my motivation in the early years, I believe I would have developed a much thicker skin much quicker.

[29:01] And I would have been able to make some tougher decisions sooner, probably. So yeah, that would be the advice I'd give. love that and yes that whole need to be liked is a is a challenge that all of us as humans face and and leaders especially uh because you know we we want to lead a team and we want our team to be motivated so thank you for sharing that with us final question for you you have already given us so many great ideas and insights today what do you have as a final bit of wisdom a closing thought or something to plug floor's yours oh goodness so um i guess one of the things that i love doing every week is I also podcast so I think that's where I'd love to take people I have the pleasure of chatting with Leon McCowan and Chris Dawson every week and we chew the fat about LinkedIn and other social media posts but it tends to be LinkedIn so we look for sales posts we look for themes that are coming up and then we discuss whether we agree or disagree with them we talk about the lessons we can learn from it and we basically use someone else's material and then And talk about it and claim it as our own in our little podcast. So it's the Sales Dojo.

[30:08] And you can go to thesalesdojo.com where you can find loads of resources, videos from tons of trainers about all sorts of topics. And it's all free of charge. And then there's a podcast which is also called the Sales Dojo Podcast.

[30:23] You can go there and there's tons of information. And I've just heard that we are number eight on the Qatar marketing charts this week. So there we go. Congratulations. Big, big audience in Qatar. Susie, what a great way to wrap us up. We'll put those links in the show notes, of course. Thank you very much for being a guest on Full Funnel Freedom today. Thank you for having me.

[30:47] Sales leaders i had a blast chatting with suzy uh her vulnerability her her humility in terms of sharing about past experiences where you know maybe she uh she was unintentionally uh not helping her team long term but then also how she corrected it uh and and really supported her team going forward is really inspiring for me. I really loved her insights around it's an individual that we're talking to. We don't have a team. We have a group of individuals. And speaking to each of them as an individual, finding out their personal motivations and how we can support them in getting from where they are to where they want to be is really, really powerful and and is something that i know i coach my clients on on a consistent regular basis.

[31:39] Another thing that i really appreciated from her is this idea of not doing it for them right if we are their sales administrator not their sales leader uh that can go sideways very very quickly and and as she said ends up doing more harm than good long term uh and the other really key takeaway way for me was this idea of ensuring that we are making time to create those personal development plans and regularly reviewing them. That's the other thing I know from my experience, a personal development plan often was an exercise in exercise that went in a drawer somewhere. It got pulled out a year later at my annual review and it was like, hey, good kid, you made it or hey, hey, bad kid, you didn't make it. And it wasn't this ongoing conversation. So our sellers need to feel like they're doing things for a reason. And if we get to the point where we're just doing exercises and exercise, that's gonna erode trust. As just like Susie talked about with lack of consistency erodes trust. If we are doing programs with our sellers, personal development plans or scripts or checklists or training, and it kind of just feels like we're checking a box, that erodes trust as well. I'm very curious to hear what your big takeaways are in the comments on social media. So let us know there. And until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[33:05] Thanks for listening to today's episode of the full funnel freedom 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.

[33:37] Music.