Massive Turnover in Your Sales Team is Good?

[0:04] This is the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast, supporting sales leaders and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects. I'm Hamish Knox. In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results, lead a great team, and hit more targets with Full Funnel Freedom.

[0:21] Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, we are getting exciting ideas and insights from Mike Stark at Wellco around how turnover in a sales team can be a good thing. The Full Funnel Freedom podcast is brought to you by Sandler Calgary. Are you tired of consultants and coaches only telling you what you need to do to scale, but not helping you out with the how? Sandler supports our clients not only with the what, but we'll stick around and help you out with the how as well. Go to hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to Sandler for more details. So Mike Stark is a business development and sales leader supporting focused and productive teams to provide the best solutions for our customers in the resource and industrial sectors. Away from work, his passions include live music, road trips, and visual art, which have business parallels and take him away to think and plot what's next. Mike, welcome to Full Fuddle freedom. Thank you, Hamish, and a good morning to you. So I've given the audience the, you know, 30 second commercial of Mike Stark. Give us the 90 second commercial. Tell us a bit more about you, Welco, and you know, what you guys do. So I'm a professional that has been fortunate to work in the BD and sales leadership role for a few decades now.

[1:43] Yes, a few decades. Everything from one wallet companies to large publicly traded ones. The challenges and opportunities have been plentiful. My greatest joy is the human interface, whether peers in the company or valued customers in the office and the field. Welco, in 51 years now, has been supporting our mining, energy, and industrial customers with the best mechanical equipment focused on maximum uptime. And more important now than ever, quality and safety. Now, the table stakes of ESG, which have arisen over the last number of years in the resource industry, have allowed us to move into other areas to support our clients, particularly utility savings through applications and remote monitoring technology.

[2:31] Which has really come on strong in our industry. street. We're working on Wellco 2.0, the next generation of our core business while exploring adjacencies. We're not going to allow Wellco to become obsolete. If we've been here for 51, we want to have another 51 as well too, Hamish. Love it. Love it. Very cool, Mike. Thanks for sharing that with me. So you're distributing, right? You've got manufacturers and you're taking their stuff and sell to your end users. So what are you struggling with right now when when it comes to keeping that funnel consistently reliably full? You know, there's a number of areas, but, and, you know, not to go back to, you know, how the world has changed since March of 2020, but a lot of our distributors that we work for, although they may be designed and technical teams here in contiguous North America, the fact still remains, Hamish, that globally, a lot of these manufacturers are in low-cost manufacturing centers overseas.

[3:27] And the challenge with that in North America is there's a couple of, there's an ocean on each side of North America. And that's the challenge is, you know, aligning our customer expectations with the reality of the supply chain. And again, you know, people always talk about communication, but that really impacts us on delivery. You know, as an example, when I first started here three years ago, a delivery might be 12 to 14 weeks. Now we're in mid twenties to almost 30 weeks. So that's a huge impact. So that really means a lot of customer expectation management or even prospect expectation management. So if you're not working with someone and they say, we'd like to work with Welco, you're going to have to have those conversations right up front. Otherwise, you're going to have to have awkward conversations on the back end, right? For sure. And we've been trying to work with that by looking at our inventory, which is, as an aside, it's really allowed us to look at and use technology. So we were heavy users of Microsoft Power BI and we've gone in for mins and maxes. So we're being proactive.

[4:30] You know, we can see what's been purchased in the past and we're getting a jump on that and ensuring that we have it on the shelf. After all, our legal name is Welco Expediting. And the founders, Rita and Jim, always believe that you have the product on the shelf ready to support our clients just due to the critical nature of their businesses. Fair enough. Well, and I love the fact that you're using data to be proactive. I'm, you know, you know that I'm a huge fan of being proactive and getting ahead of things as much as as much as possible. And love the fact that your your clients could then hear from potential trusted advisor. Oh, yeah, we've got that for you, as opposed to Oh, yeah, that's nice. You know, six months from now, we might be able to to bring that in. So, Mike, when we started talking about doing a podcast together, one of the things that we had talked about is something that is overly is very concerning. For a lot of leaders, sales leaders, entrepreneurs is turnover in the sales team, because it's hard to find a good salesperson. It's hard to keep a good salesperson. And in a period of a roughly 12 months, you had a lot of turnover in your sales team, but you feel that's actually a positive. And I was hoping that you would expand on that for the audience around why, because it seems counterintuitive. Right. So the, the turnover was high in the sales team, You know, coming in three years ago, you know, you always kind of evaluate the team, you know, you understand, you know, kind of strengthen the whole bit. But over time, you know, some people left on their own accord.

[5:59] And so what we, you know, what I kind of decided on is, you know, rather than kind of going out and looking for your, you know, I guess your typical kind of legacy type salesperson is we kind of recast it a bit. So the people sitting on the other side of the desk from us today, Hamish, they are getting younger and they are getting more technical.

[6:19] So in order to match across the table, I took more of a direction of... You know, the technical people, you know, not to dive down deep into the engineering, but they all have engineering backgrounds. They've graduated from various fantastic universities across Canada. And the view that I looked at is I was looking at the person and also their experiences. You know, as an example, we have someone that used to be a TA at the university and came with a big recommendation of, you know, how they work with other people. So I felt that that was valuable. And, you know, at the end of the day, when it comes to, as you know, about the, you know, the sales and the communication part is we can always train for that. So I found that these people that came in to the team didn't come with a huge bias of, you know, kind of, you know, Oh, I have 30 years of experience.

[7:11] So that has been fantastic. Lots of energy, lots of stretch projects for them as well, too. And the other big thing too, Hamish is technology. They are very, very in tune with the technology working on mobile, you know, Salesforce and all of that too. And even using the LinkedIn navigator too. So that's been a big, a big plus as well too. Cool. So stepping out of that, like, Hey, you've got to have gray or white hair and probably got to be male. And you know, probably got to tell me that you got a lot of great contacts in the industry. You took a bit of a step back approach and said, okay, who is my customer? And what do they, what do they look like? And then, okay, okay, how could we match and mirror potentially what that person looks like and what they're going to be talking about and what they're interested in with the salespeople that we're putting in front of you? Did I hear that correctly? You heard that correctly. Youth, enthusiasm, and the grit to, you know, hang in there and, you know, problem solve through, you know, most every situation. Amazing. Now, powerful thing about having a.

[8:15] We'll call it a less experienced sales team, because, you know, that's, that's what they are. They didn't necessarily have these years and years of sales experience is we've got to give them guideposts, right? It's like the bumpers, you turn the bumpers up in the bowling alley, right? So the ball just goes straight down and it's not going to go in the gutter. What are some of the structures that you have implemented to support the team on a consistent, regular basis? Cause you can't just be like, Hey guys go sell. And I know that's not you. What are you doing from a leadership perspective to support this team in getting them to where you want them to be? So the support that I provide them, Hamish, is, you know, as a leader, I want to stay out of their calendar as much as possible. I don't want to go away. You know, I don't want to be the hurdle that they have to jump. So what I've set up with the team is there's two meetings per week. And the first meeting of the week is on Monday, first thing, and it's called Launch Monday. Everyone participates. So we have the marketing group and this is going through and looking at, you know, what's the big deal that they're closing this week. You know, if there was a win, what would it be and how would that look? So they get to publicly kind of state what they're working on. And again, this isn't the laundry list of, you know, here's the 53 deals I'm working on. Like these are the big impactful, you know, if I put this across the line, it's going to be a great week. Yeah. Then on Friday, we go to one-on-one and this is coined the finish line Friday. We like that. So this is where, you know, this is their meeting. I put some parameters in what I would like to hear, how they present, what they talk about, the order, that's all on them.

[9:44] And what I really like about this setup is in between time, when we leave that meeting on Monday, you know, I clearly state each week if I can support you in any way, I'm on Teams, I'm on my cell, send me a text and put it on them. And that way, because I want to get away from the micromanagement part. And because I have other strategic initiatives that I have to work on too in my role, but they always know that I'm there. Very cool. So stay out of the calendar as a sales leader is my big takeaway from that. And brilliant, because the other one is sitting on their shoulder. Hey, what are you doing now? Hey, what are you doing now? Oh, I could give you some insight on this. And you're really stepping back and letting them, giving them permission to succeed. But also it sounds like permission to fail, but if they do fail, it's not, it's not a gotcha. It's a learning opportunity. Is that accurate? That's correct. You know, there, there's no, no takedown here because I always rewind and, you know, think about, geez, you know, 20, 25 years ago, you know, what would my career look like? Or how would my feelings be today? No, don't worry about the feelings.

[10:48] Oh, those squishy emotional things that we have to address on a daily basis. So if we look back and you've led sales teams for, I think I heard decades, what are some of those early warning signs that you've noticed when a salesperson funnel is maybe starting to look a little skinny? It's going on maybe a bit of a crash diet. it that is a great question uh some of the early indicators are uh you know oh you know i have i have a call into them i have an email into them you know they're you know they're they might be on vacation or you know kind of all the you know kind of the guesswork about what's going on sure or you know you kind of hear about the same opportunity week after week after week you know the package is coming next week the package is coming next week so those are kind of you know know, the antenna goes up then, you know, to kind of ask some further questions or make some inquiry as well. Okay. And so that actually ties directly in. So we've, we're starting to hear base. I call it God sent a messenger, right? Oh, I sent an email. I left a voicemail. I think the minute I hear a salesperson say, I think that's an immediate, at least orange flag. It may be yellow. It may be red, but I call it orange because it's a blend of the two. You said asking questions, making further inquiries. What do you do as a leader? What would you suggest the audience as sales leaders do when they're starting to hear these yellow, orange, and red flags pop up to support that salesperson in avoiding the skinny funnel.

[12:15] So the skinny funnel, you know, it is sometimes been my experience when they kind of start throwing out like the long term projects and things like that. They're just looking to kind of cling on to, you know, I have something to say in the meeting and feel that I'm participating and contributing. Right. So I always like to take it back in the conversation about getting down to, you know, ground level activities of, you know, prospecting. Because my, you know, the support that I can offer is to get them back in that headspace to say. And we all know in sales, we can have an off hour, an off day a week, and maybe even a quarter, we kind of get behind. And I want them to get back and have that positive space in their head. And if we can kind of get some early wins, even on the prospecting side, oh, finally, I made a connection. Connection or, you know, site audit, you know, going out and, you know, rather than talking about a package and buying something, you know, kind of more of the consultant side of our business, just to make that connection, you know, share a white paper, a case study, whatever it might be, and not sound so salesy or even desperate, you know, that phone call, oh, please call me back. You know, we don't, I never want to put people in that spot because that can really run you down pretty quick. Absolutely. And that's commission breath, you know, the lonely eyes, the desperation, phone calls, voicemails.

[13:40] That's when the salesperson starts to go into a bit of a spiral. I know from my experience, it's really hard to pull them out of that spiral. And oftentimes it involves them leaving because they just don't think that they're ever going to get out no matter how well they're being supported by their leader. So if we look at mindsets and proactive activities that's you know we if we you know the henry ford if you think you can or think you can't you're right so as a sales leader what what are some of the mindsets that you coach your team to keep locked in when they are going out talking to clients talking to prospects so that they're not feeling beaten up when they hear no on a consistent basis so some of the mindsets going out is uh you know definitely preparation so in our in our crm uh you know when When we look at our, you know, kind of our foundational or basic activities, you know, putting that in front of them and making it very clear. I never want to tell them that, you know, okay, today is all prospecting, tomorrow is all closing. So they have options, again, to, you know, kind of build into their schedule of, you know, kind of where their cadence is at and everything. Being very direct with them as well, too, how they're going to be measured and keeping it very, very simple as well, too. Working on a current opportunity, prospecting and looking at that and having a good mix as well, too.

[14:59] And one of the other things with this new team, Hamish, that I really, really enjoy is a lot of them, they support each other. They'll say, hey, you know what, after the call, I'm having a tough time getting through to this customer. And I know that you've had some success lately, and I just kind of like to hear some tips and tricks. And it's then, you know, I get a smile on my face and know that these are all like the right people.

[15:23] You know, they're kind of melded together, too. So there's that support as well, too. But again, you know, this isn't about the, you know, give up after the first day, a bad day of calls or emails or bad news or the string. And, you know, just, you know, recollect. and you know big thing going go back to the basics go down to your ground level activities and you know keep keep at it it's those fundamentals that you know we we forget when we're under stress we forget that you know when i train muay thai it's footwork right go back to your feet you know and so you know those ground level activities that i'm hearing from you things like, cold calling, things like reaching out to clients. What are some of those other ground level activities that you are suggesting to the team that they execute on consistently regularly so their funnel stays full? So their funnel stays full.

[16:12] You know, pretty much all of them now have been through the foundation. So a lot of them, they have their cookbook. And, you know, so we'll always go back to that cookbook too, because that's where they built in, you know, the recipe of how they were going to get things done. Absolutely. So just asking, you know, asking them about the inquiry of, you know, going back to what they had built and what they had committed to as well, too, rather than just, you know, sending them out to do random activities just to give the appearance of busy. And again, you know, that's not good for the mind either. No, not at all. Because you're not going to see results and eventually you'll get defeated. So in your bio, talking about outside, talking about music and road trips and art, which which give you time away. As leaders, we have so many demands on our time. But if we can't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of our people.

[17:00] So would you be comfortable sharing with the audience a bit more about how those outside pursuits are supporting you in recharging and giving you the space to, as we said, plot what's coming up next? Right. So I can share a story with you that's very, very recent. So this past weekend, I had a a photograph which is on stretch canvas delivered to my home from an artist in canmore when i was out in canmore a couple of weeks ago with my wife kristin this caught my eye for whatever reason i have a thing about bison on the prairies cool so i looked at this one and the title that the photographer gave it to it was willful wanderer and what attracted my eye to it is this picture he took in valmarie saskatchewan he was an older bison it was rutting season he had a broken horn Lauren.

[17:48] And a swollen eye. And what that kind of spoke to me, you know, you're kind of thinking about yourself personally, it's like, yeah, some days you kind of get into a bit of a tussle, you might get a bit of a scuff, but here he was on the prairies, still carrying on and continuing on. So, you know, that's kind of the art part as well, too. So yeah, very, very interesting. And I always like the story around the, you know, what I'm looking at, or, you know, what I'm listening to as well. And, you know, music is no different, too, it can just kind of take you away. And, you know, you get into some of the lyrics and, you know, the appreciation of the minds that put those words together that really, really resonate with your mind or even your heart as well, too. You know, it doesn't have to be everything from the Metallica, but, you know, it can even get into some classicals as well. And, you know, the amazement of, you know, a lot of these, you know, symphonies were written hundreds of years ago. And here we are in 2022, still listening to them. Still listening and still being inspired by them. Absolutely. Yeah, it does give us that space to think and to be inspired and love the idea of being a willful wanderer and continuing to, you know, do what you need to do, even though you may get a little bit beaten up because, you know, that's sales leadership, right? We are getting pressure from on high to deliver the hockey stick or at the very least the forecast that we were promised and we're getting pressure from below from our salespeople to give them, you know, new pricing, new resources, new brochures, new whatever.

[19:16] And, you know, we're, we have that.

[19:19] We do need to step away sometimes and recharge. So Mike, as we're looking at building out your new team, what do you see as the next steps for you as a leader in creating this relatively new team at Wellco to have 51 plus more years of success?

[19:39] So recently, now that COVID has, not that it's gone away, but it's abated enough that, you know, we can get out, is we all attended conference out on the west post recently and so we were together for three days uh you know working a booth talking to our customers a little socialization and i asked them uh so what did you enjoy about the trip the most and all of them came back with we finally got to be together because a lot of them were hired through covid and had never been in the same room before. So I looked at that and I thought that that's powerful. And looking to the back end of this year, when everything remains the same, is getting people back in the room again and really focusing in on building up that team spirit and that culture as well too. And then with them as well, a few of them have been exploring some other technology through LinkedIn, setting things up with Navigator. So, you know, how do you cut and paste that from one or two people and kind of put it across the team and, you know, make those efficiencies as well too?

[20:47] Yeah. Templating is a really critical thing because, you know, all of us are only valuable as our time. And if our salespeople are essentially creating out of whole cloth, every time they go to send a message to a prospect or a client, well, they're wasting time. And having those templates on hand in a playbook or in an archive, I would imagine is going to be fairly beneficial for your team as they accelerate forward. Yes. So-

[21:13] Now let's circle back, put the pressure on you. Mike today can go back in time and talk to younger Mike. Maybe younger Mike is not quite in the sales leadership position, but you can go back and say, hey, you're going to be in this role and you're going to do all these cool things.

[21:27] What advice would you give your younger self to make that path maybe a little, a little smoother than it might've been over the past years that you've been in, in sales leadership roles? Yeah. So when I got into this industry, this is a great question, Hamish, is, you know, your confidence is never quite there. And, you know, so you kind of, you know, revert back to the, you know, kind of the wax on wax off, right? So you take advice, you take direction from senior people, and then you get to that point where you think, yeah, I can go out. And I can remember early on in my career, you know, as oil and gas was evolving and, you know, Western Canada and, you know, great times in the, you know, the late 90s early 2000s is always out looking for you know kind of like the big thing the big project the big po and all that so myself now would tell younger is again i keep going back to engaging the base level activities because a lot of times you know once the big one landed it was always like well what now so you had to take that time to you know again ramp up another big one in the whole bit but kind of in between times kind of that practice and that repetitiveness of kind of the prospecting and the whole bit too. So that would have, yeah, I mean, you know, still successful and, you know, enjoyed the time, but, you know, from a real skill level, you know, kind of getting back to the basics. Yeah. It sounds like stick to the basics, right? That's a great message for.

[22:46] Our audience and as well as for them to, to be coaching their salespeople on, as you've shared a couple of times in, in our chat today. So Mike, you are someone who is constantly learning, growing yourself professionally and personally, you're very big on servant leadership. I'd be curious to know what are you watching, listening to, reading right now to support your own development that our audience might want to check out as well? So right now I have a book, it's called Upstream by Dan Heath, and it's about the quest to solve problems before they happen. Cool. Problems. We all know about those. I was attracted to the question in the inside of the book, why do our efforts skew so heavily towards reaction rather rather than prevention. So I kind of think to myself, so this is all about early warning and early action, allow more room to maneuver, to resolve problems. But sounds simple to me, but fit in all the other activities and deadlines whizzing past us. And this can be a little daunting sometimes as well, too. You get the early warning sign and you think, oh, yeah, well, you know, I have a full calendar for the rest of the day. On we go. And a week later, you know, something kind of quells up. And then the one other part in the book that he covers off is, you know, he calls it problem blindness. This is very relatable.

[24:03] Uh, you know, we've all been in those meetings. We've all been in those groups where people, you say, well, what about this? This doesn't seem right in people. That's the way it is.

[24:11] That's the way it's always been. Uh, you know, kind of, uh, so, you know, that statement, you know, let's just settle and, you know, kind of move on as well too. So, yeah, you know, a fairly light read, but, uh, interesting because there's, uh, never any lack of, uh, you know, issues or challenges that come up in our professional and our personal lives as well too. Absolutely. And we'll definitely include a link to that in the show notes. So I'm putting it on my list as well right now. So Mike, closing thought, maybe something to plug, something to share with the audience about Welco, what you're doing, or a nugget of wisdom around sales leadership that you'd like to share. The floor is yours. Okay, so a little plug for Welco here.

[24:49] We're very excited. In the next 30 days, we're going to make an announcement. We're going to pick up another manufacturer here based in Canada to flesh out our product line and offer some more solutions uh they're a little more adjacent to some of the other items that we have right now too so uh we're we're looking forward to that and that's part of uh welco 2.0 is uh you know we look into the future as well awesome uh well mike i love all of our conversations appreciate you being a guest on the full funnel freedom podcast today and uh best wishes to you and the new team thank you hamish you've been listening to the full funnel freedom podcast i've been your host hamish knox today we have been getting ideas and insights from Mike Stark around how massive turnover on your sales team can actually be a good thing and stick to the basics. The Full Funnel Freedom Podcast is brought to you by Sandler Calgary. If you are tired of consultants and coaches who only tell you the what you need to do to scale, but won't stick around and help you out with the how.

[25:48] Sandler supports our clients, not only with the what to do to scale, but also the how to do it. Go to hamish.sandler.com slash howtosandler for more details. If you'd like transcripts of past episodes, go to www.fullfunnelfreedom.com. Thanks for listening. You can find us on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Google. After you've had a chance to listen, leave us a rating and review. And until we connect on the next episode, go create Full Funnel Freedom. Thank you for listening to Full Funnel Freedom with Hamish Knox. If you want to increase your sales with ease, go to fullfunnelfreedom.com.

[26:26] Music.