Journey from SDR to Sales Enablement with Jordan Rickard - Hyperdrive Minds Podcast 34

Speaker A: What led you to move from a closing role into sales enablement?

Speaker B: Yeah, like, why would I want to get rid of my commission checks? Sure, yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to have a larger impact. Sales can feel really siloed. Yes. You directly impact revenue. You're the Ferrari of the business. But it can feel really siloed. You can feel like, oh, I'm here. And I feel like I'm making an impact. But I, uh, also feel like it's just me. This quota and then the fact that that resets like every month, every quarter, whatever cycle you're on can be demoralizing and be make you feel like you're by yourself. It's an emotional roller coaster. You can have a bad conversation with a person and take it home and that's not healthy. Ten years of sales wore on me. I'm not going to lie to you. Good and bad. Right. It definitely provided opportunities for me, but I needed something else. I knew I had more to give. I just didn't know what, you know, the spot opened up, I begged for the opportunity and I was like, I want this, like, I need it now. And then, and then they gave me the mic and put me in front of, you know, the crowd and like, okay, go.

Speaker A: How do you define exactly what sales enablement does for a company?

Speaker B: This is hard because there's not a lot of KPIs. Like, usually with sales, like there's a KPI, right? There's metrics, there's all this list of things, like, I need to make this many calls and it's like a, it's like a math equation. I know if I do this much, I can generally get this result. Enablement is not like that at all. In fact, you almost have to invent your own KPIs. A lot of what we do is alignment, uh, communication, consistency. Part of it is giving them some structure and some frameworks. Right. I think if you just went and said, hey, I need you to do better demos, what does that even really mean? I think poor demos are informed by poor discovery calls. And if you have a good discovery call, you're generally going to have a great demo. The framework around that, like, how do you approach a call? What do you say on the call? And you give them criteria. If you practice at an intensity level of here with no money on the line, then when you actually have to perform, it's natural. A real key difference between a technical demo versus a use case demo or a process demo versus an outcome demo, a lot of people mess this up. They Think it's one size fits all.

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Speaker A: Subscribe today and let's kick your revenue into hyperdrive. Welcome back to Hyperdrive Minds podcast. Today we have Jordan Rickard. How are you, sir?

Speaker B: I'm doing very good, Blake. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Yeah, man, thanks for coming on. I was excited to have you, and I think the audience is going to love you as much as I do. Uh, we've known each other for over 20 years. You ran track with my, uh, younger brother in high school and college, and we've been friends ever since. I've watched your sales career from the start here and always loved your contagious energy and hilarious personality. Every time I hang out with you, um, I feel like, man, I need to spend more time with Jordan. He's awesome.

Speaker B: Love that. Thanks.

Speaker A: Yeah, man. Well, give us a little backstory here. Just the, uh, quick, like, one minute version.

Speaker B: Yeah, one minute version. So, you know, I am a passionate person. I got a degree in photography in college. As you said, I came from an athletic background. I'm passionate about helping people and removing roadblocks. My sales career started being a sales rep. Right. Doing just that. And the last three years has been primarily just focused around sales enablement, so helping with new hires and, you know, existing people, trying to upskill them.

Speaker A: All right, yeah, we'll. We'll get into all that. So, yeah. Your first sales job was at Share file. Is it 2013? It's like the same year I got into recruiting, which is pretty cool. Uh, so tell us what life was like at first when you were just an sdr.

Speaker B: Oh, God. So in the interview process, you talk to two people, and after you talk to the first one, they actually put you on the phone and said, make some dials and we'll see if you can book a demo before your second round. It was 150 cold calls a day or six demos a day. One of those two, and then you could go home. That's changed, right? We don't really live in that world today but, but without a doubt that built up a lot of resilience, that built up a lot of courage in myself and really helped me learn from the failures right very quickly. So that was what life was like at the very beginning. High energy. It was a sales startup. Even though we had just got acquired by Citrix, I still felt like I was in a startup and I still feel like that today even though now we're three acquisitions uh, since then. So hopefully we're at our finally arresting spot. I like where we're at with progress.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That reminds me of my time time. After I got back from the cruise ship I took a job at Sageworks. Same thing like 150 dials a day booking demos and then we had to do our own demos. So I remember what I did was when I first got started they took us through like a one week training but then I got out my phone and press record when I was shadowing all the other senior reps and I've like digested everything they said in every pitch and I made this massive script for myself. Nice on everything to say how to do the demo. And uh, yeah I hit quota a couple of times early on but then I've got referred into my first recruiting job so Dude, I know that $150 a day that world, that'll harden you up a little bit.

Speaker B: Yeah, six, six hours of talk time. I mean it's a lot man. Uh, but uh, like I said I think it, it made me who I am today without a doubt.

Speaker A: So what, what do you think it was that helped you move from small to medium sized business sales into enterprise? Sal?

Speaker B: Yeah. Once you learn how to solve a problem at the base level for a smaller customer it's almost like rinse and repeat. For the larger ones it's just bigger groups right. More people, more teams, larger impacts to the problem and longer sales cycles. Uh so that turn and burn and you know, let's get that sailing quick. That's great for uh, time and a place but yeah, as you move up higher up the line size, you know those sales you know extend and on top of that the conversations become a lot more dynamic. You really have to stay on your toes.

Speaker A: Do you follow like the med pick methodology?

Speaker B: There's something inside me that says use whatever methodology works for you. I've been at this company for 12 years now and we've really never ever had a single sales methodology. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Find what works for you. And in fact, different line sizes need different things. What I will say is that somehow whatever you do has to tie into also how you forecast, because the two are tied together. How you discover how you uncover pain, how you tie the solution to that pain, and ultimately how you forecast. I tell sales reps all the time, you're not just a sales rep. You're also a project manager. You're there to really quarterback this thing from start to finish.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I want to dive more into that. There's a lot of mergers and acquisitions going on right now in the Tech Space and ShareFile. I know they've gone through their fair share of mergers and acquisitions since you started. So what advice do you have for people to try and survive and thrive when their company gets acquired?

Speaker B: Yeah, man. Sometimes you can be the best version of yourself and it doesn't matter. Sometimes they're. They're just. It's a number. But focus on what you can control. There's a lot of people that overlook the fundamentals. And the fundamentals like good energy, doing what you say you're gonna do, actively responding to somebody that asks you a question and not leaving them on read. These seem like they're small things, but they make a real big difference for when you actually run into a real challenge or need to win somebody over. Right. And really build alignment with them. Coming up. I actually just talked about this today, uh, on a training cause. It was about personal development. When I was coming up on my career, sometimes I would go to a leader and ask them a question, and they wouldn't give me the time of the day. They would be just be focused on the computer typing. Yep, yep. All right, I hear you. Okay, here's the answer. And that really had an impact on me. And now if somebody comes to my desk and ask me a question, I'll turn my seat, I'll shut my computer down, like on purpose to really show them that they matter. I mean, it could be the most generic thing ever. Right. Or it could be the most complex question of all time. I still treat them with respect. No job is too small. So the same way I talk to a BDR SDR is the same way I talk to a C level executive. With respect.

Speaker A: Yeah. It reminds me, uh, if you read the Bible, Jesus was never in a hurry, Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: If he came across someone, he was always right there with him. He was never had anywhere to go, anywhere to be. He was just right there, present.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: For that person, take as much time as you need. So it's hard to be that way in real life in a corporate setting when you got due dates and stuff like that. So it's like something you have to actively think about doing.

Speaker B: It's a daily effort and it sounds like it's table stakes, but that's what separates the wheat from the chaff. That's what really makes you different. Right.

Speaker A: Big time. Uh, it's not what you do. Right. It's how you made people feel. That's how people are going to remember you, how you made them feel.

Speaker B: Yeah. Like when you're doing like sales, like people buy from people. Right. When you're working with your colleagues, like building alignment is the number one thing that helps me achieve what I achieve. I almost do nothing by myself. It's almost always with other people. And so if you can't work with other people, you know, you're not going to get much done.

Speaker A: Yeah. I was just curious, is, um, sharefile or the company that is the owner of Sharefile now, are you guys a PLG company? Are you considered product LED growth?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We have components of that. It's interesting. It's really hard to find a competitor to progress. There really isn't one. They do quite a few things. They acquire a company. They acquired us a year ago and they've already acquired somebody else. They grow by acquisition and their primary focus is retention and growth of their existing customer base. But yes, without a doubt we have to also fill the top of the funnel and find new customers. But it's much harder to do that now and much more expensive to do that now than it was when I was making 150 calls a day. Right. That was a lot. That was very easy. We could find a business all day long. But, uh, the market in general for a lot of our technology tools has been commoditized. There's hundreds of one tool that can do similar things. So it's very hard for us to navigate that conversation with people not knowing 100% what they're doing. Which is why you got to ask,

Speaker A: do you ever have to coach sales and marketing on, um, how to get along with each other?

Speaker B: Yeah. So enablement, unfortunately is in the middle. Fortunately and unfortunately, right is in the middle of just about everything. Every department, every interaction. You got multiple stakeholders, deadlines. Of course it's not easy. Sometimes you do have to play mediator. You know, I tend to try to avoid those situations as best I can. But without a doubt, sometimes you're, you're the voice of reason. Sometimes between the Two people also, like, you got to remember that sometimes as a product marketing manager or a marketing manager, you're not always speaking the language of the people who actually are going to be using the material that you're developing. And you can kind of talk over their head and use words that they don't even use in real life. So a lot. A lot of what we do in enablement is simplify that message and bring it home to the people that actually do the work. Now, it helps if you've done that work before. It's not a requirement, in my opinion, but it absolutely helps if you've been in the seat before. I'm sure you've heard the saying, I'm not going to ask you to do something that I haven't done myself.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That goes a long way. And you earn a lot of respect from the people when you've been in the sea.

Speaker A: Yeah. So what led you to move from a closing role into sales enablement?

Speaker B: Yeah, like, why would I want to get rid of my commission checks? Sure. Uh, yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to have a larger impact. Sales can feel really siloed. Yes. You directly impact revenue, and you're the Ferrari of the business. Right. Because you're actually helping us move to the next step, buy the next company, whatever it is. But it can feel really siloed. You can feel like, oh, uh, I'm here. And I feel like I'm making an impact, But I also feel like it's just me, this team, this quota, and then the fact that that resets, like, every month, every quarter, whatever cycle you're on can be demoralizing and be. Make you feel like you're by yourself. And it's a. It's a. It's an emotional roller coaster. You can have a bad conversation with a person and take it home. And that's not healthy. Ten years of sales wore on me. I'm not gonna lie to you. Good and bad. Right. It definitely provided opportunities for me, but I needed something else. I knew I had more to give. I just didn't know what, you know, the spot opened up and I begged for the opportunity and pressured them, even though they weren't responding fast as I'd like. And I was like, I want this. Like, I need it now. And then. And then they gave me the mic and put me in front of, you know, the crowd and like, okay, go.

Speaker A: Love it. Yeah. You're natural for that role. Cause I know every salesperson just loves it when you come in and you got something to share. You've been there, you've done that. You can heal their pain kind of thing, speak their language. So, uh, how do you define exactly what sales enablement does for a company?

Speaker B: This is hard because there's not a lot of KPIs. Like usually with sales, like there's a KPI, right? There's metrics, there's all this list of things, like, I need to make this many calls and it's like a, it's like a math equation. I know if I do this much, I can generally get this result. Enablement is not like that at all. In fact, you almost have to Invent your own KPIs, which is something we did. We can get into that. But like, it's not easy. Right at its heart though, we remove roadblocks for the people to do their job. It might not even be my responsibility, but you're damn sure I'm going to go knock on that door if I need to, Right. Tell me where I need to point my arrow and I'll go there. I also don't come up with the answers, right. I need the answers from somebody else and then I can then work on the message. A lot of what we do is alignment, communication, communication consistency being consistent. Like people have to find answers quickly and sometimes they don't know who to turn to. I mean, I get pinged from every department all the time, random questions, good ones and bad ones. I'm like, I can't believe you're asking this. This is the third time I said this this week, but I got you. I'll give you a, you know, slack this time. Next time I need you to find that answer.

Speaker A: So how do you prove that what you're doing is actually, you know, driving revenue and not just like a call center for the business?

Speaker B: Yeah. So direct correlation to what I do and how that impacts revenue, you're going to lose sleep over it if you try to figure it out. It's an indirect type thing. It's really hard to say Jordan did this and this is how much money the company made based on what he did. Now there's table stakes, things that you can do, Right? Let's talk about onboarding. When we started enablement, we asked all the managers, how long does it take to onboard somebody? How long is it till they're for sale? How long is it till they're actually hitting quota? And that was like a 12 month thing, maybe even longer in like less than three months. We shortened that up to like six, seven months for sale within a couple weeks. Because that's just too long. Right. Like, so there is a correlation there. Right? Right. We're getting people in the seat faster. They're learned, they're onboarded, they're ready to sell, they're ready to hit their quota consistently. But it's hard to really measure those things.

Speaker A: What do you consider, like, a fully ramped sales rep today?

Speaker B: A fully ramped sales rep is somebody who can do their job for the most part on their own. They can talk to a customer confidently, they can hit their number, and some.

Speaker A: It's all about hitting the numbers, man.

Speaker B: I mean, yeah, as a sales rep, I never even really liked collecting money from people. I just liked helping them with their problems and I knew the money would come later.

Speaker A: Good point. Whenever sales enablement has an idea and they want to have everybody adopt this new process or whatever, how do you get, like the veteran reps to actually adopt something new?

Speaker B: We have this thing called a champions group. So like, let's say it was a massive shift. We needed to take a bunch of people from one Salesforce instance to another. That's like, uh, a system example. Right. We create a champions group. Those were sellers from across the business. We align with them, taught them with the impression that they would then go out and teach other people. Remember what I was saying? I don't do anything really by myself. I do it with a lot of people.

Speaker A: So they have some skin in the game, right?

Speaker B: Absolutely. I'll give you another example though, when I join here. I came with one product, Right. I came with sharefile. But they asked me to help a business unit which comprised of multiple products. So I had to figure out, how do I learn these products fast? How do I understand who these people are and help them? The same way I've helped the group I was already helping. And a lot of these sellers had been in the seat for 10, 15, 20 years. How do you come in not knowing anything about the product, not even knowing them, and teach them something new and ask them to push themselves to improve themselves? Not easy.

Speaker A: So trying to figure out how to make things as simple as they possibly can be for a, uh, sales rep to pitch.

Speaker B: Yeah. Part of it is giving them some structure and some frameworks. Right. I think if you just went and said, hey, I need you to do better demos, what does that even really mean? I think poor demos are informed by poor discovery calls. And if you have a good discovery call, you're generally going to have a great demo. The framework around that, like, how do you approach a call? What do you say on the call and you give them criteria. I'm looking for these things.

Speaker A: Is field enablement different from sales enablement or is just, uh, another word for the same thing?

Speaker B: Same thing, yeah. Field enablement, sales enablement, same thing. They just, they call it that here at, uh, Progress, but it's the same thing. My customer is the sales rep and the manager and director that support them.

Speaker A: What do you think is the most misunderstood thing about sales enablement?

Speaker B: That we can do everything or that I can make wave a magic wand and all of a sudden make your system just work overnight? I'm not a developer. I'm not, I'm not a salesforce engineer. I have a capacity to help people and drive projects forward, but I can't do it. All right? There's certain things that I feel like I'm an expert in, and there's certain things that I'm just not. And so a lot of people, they don't know what to make of sales enablement. I would generally say it's even a relatively, uh, new term in the last five years.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is. What kind of technologies do you guys use in that department? And what do you think's like the most underrated tool in the toolbox?

Speaker B: Well, I want to be careful here. I don't think the solution to every problem is another tool. I think they can help move the needle, but I think they can also be a really big crutch for not, like, looking internally, like, how can I improve myself? Especially with tools like something like Salesloft. Right. If it's not intentional, we can end up actually, like, wasting time when we were really trying to save time or AI. Right. A lot of people want to use it. Sometimes they're using it for the wrong thing. And if they would have just tried it themselves, they would have done way better. But because they want to use this thing as a crutch for everything, they end up hurting themselves. We use a number of tools. We're a Microsoft shop, so we have Microsoft Copilot. We're deploying sales agents right now to help reps with competitive intelligence or just sales skills. Sales loft for cadence building or prospecting outreach. Especially with our renewals team. We use a really cool tool. This is more on the enablement side. It's called Wondercraft. The tool helps you create AI driven podcasts. The reason why we use this is, let's say you went to a training. Let's say it was an hour long. We take that transcript from that call. We'll upload the transcript to Wondercraft. We'll add some voices, some sound to it. We'll make it sound just like this, like a podcast, and then we'll give it to the rep and it's a condensed version of that training.

Speaker A: Very cool.

Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, if I wouldn't have told you, you wouldn't even know it's a robot talking. The point is, we wanted to meet people where they're at and not just have a static training. Death by PowerPoint.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, make it interactive. Make it something that they're used to listening to when they're at home.

Speaker A: If you look five years into the future, what part of the sales process do you think AI might actually replace?

Speaker B: I've heard of weird things like AI agents buying. Like doing the buying process with another AI agent. Like, a company is. Takes their AI agent and says, I want to go buy this product now. Go find me. And then those companies have AI agents and they're just like, doing all of the, what's the price going to be? What's the future? You know, and they do all this before they ever even talk to a person. That's freaking weird. And I think that'll only increase, uh, unfortunately. And that's sad, Right? But there will never be a spot, ever, where a person is not going to want to eventually talk to a human being at some point in the process.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I don't think there'll ever be a contract signed, you know, check written without human to human connection.

Speaker B: At least a little bit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah, at least a little bit. The trick is, how do you differentiate yourself from AI? You're yourself. You're authentic, you're compassionate, you're creative, you're curious. AI is none of these things, and it never will be.

Speaker A: Let's hope so, man. All right, well, back to your sales days. Early on, what was like, the best piece of sales advice you were ever given?

Speaker B: Don't take no for an answer. You know, when somebody says, hey, I want that feature. Why do you want it if you don't have it? Is that a deal breaker, man? Often. What? You'll find they were just asking to ask. They actually didn't even care. And in your mind, you're. You're just doing these cycles, oh, my God, I don't have that feature. Oh, my God. I don't know what to say. Understanding the why is the critical piece of enablement of discussions with customers. If you don't know the why, we're out of luck. There's this, uh, framework that we use called the golden circle. You start with why, then you go to how and then you go to what? Like, have you ever watched a commercial? You're like 15 seconds into this commercial and you're like, what the heck is this about? And then all of a sudden it's like perfume. That's literally because they did the why at the end, not at the beginning. And so what I don't want is somebody to attend one of my trainings and not know why we're doing this training until the end. I failed then, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Same way with the customers, right? Like, it's the same way. Like they want to know why we're here.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, get that up front. Yeah, same with a podcast. You got to give them the value, right? In the first three seconds, you got to kick into that value, otherwise they're going to hit next, right? Uh, yeah. And then a lot of people don't realize, the rookie reps, they don't understand that sales actually starts when the customer

Speaker B: says no 100%, you know, overcome those challenges. I watched a speech the other day of a. It was an award speech, right. Famous racer. And he was like, man, I really appreciate this award. You know, I know it's hard to get this award, but I want to dedicate this to all the losers because I've learned more from my losses than I have my wins. Yeah, I love winning. Right. We all do. But in reality, like, what did you learn? Just how to win. When you lose, you want to get better.

Speaker A: Absolutely. A little bit about hiring just for you, Jordan, if you were hiring like an account executive today, what are like the top three traits that you look for?

Speaker B: Let's break it down in sales cycle, of course. Traits for people, right? Can you give me a concise answer? Can you be professional? Can you be personable? Can I trust you? Okay, but let's look at discovery. Do you ask good questions? And then more importantly, are you listening to their responses? Are you just waiting to say another question or are you actually listening to what they said, regurgitating it, uh, reframing it, and then asking them another open ended question to open up the conversation back up? Very few people do that. Can you tell me what your product does quickly? I've been on phones internally with executives for external vendors and they've said, Joe, you got 10 minutes. Go. Some people are not ready for that pressure. If you practice at an intensity level of here with no money on the line, then when you actually have to perform, it's natural. Yeah.

Speaker A: It comes out like clockwork, dude.

Speaker B: 100%. You know the elevator pitch. We start on the bottom floor. By the time we get to your floor, you know what I do, you know what my product does? If you can't do that, I'm sorry, I'm talking about the most complex products. That's actually where people mess up the most. Is it, uh, you know, I have a complex product. I can't do that. Wrong answer. Everyone can. And everyone should learn how to do that. That is definitely what's going to set you apart. Let's move down the sales cycle. Okay. Let's move to demo. People who are unprepared for a demo will always fail. And what I mean by that, Know your customer, know not only what role they are, but what motivates them. You have to know what problems you're going to solve before you get on the demo. If you're not there yet, I'm sorry, you need to do a second discovery call. I like visual aids. I think people who are jumping on teams, meetings, whatever you want to call it, a virtual meeting. And they're not showing some sort of a visual aid. They're missing the ball. Like, take advantage of turning on your camera, showing a deck that you built. I'm not saying death by PowerPoint, but like, if you're talking about pricing, have it on the screen. If you're talking about packages, show me. Oh, I'll send that to you in a follow up. Uh, whoa. Let's do it now, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: There's another thing too, like demos. So there's a difference, a real key difference between a technical demo versus a use case demo or a process demo versus an outcome demo. A lot of people mess this up. They think it's one size fits all. And you actually have to know who's in the room and at what point in the sales cycle is this going to make most sense to use this type of demo. And sometimes it's a. It's a blend, right? A combination of the two. But more often than not, it's. I'm going to start with the use case demo. Get you excited then. Yeah, if you want to know more, we can go into the technical stuff. And I'm not going to show you how to log in to the account. I'm going to already have that up. Why? Why do you need to see me going through my password not even remembering it? Dude, these tiny things make such a big difference. If your customer feels like they can actually deploy this. If you make it sound complicated, well, guess what? That's how they're Going to feel my

Speaker A: neighbor, he's a solutions, like a, uh, solutions architect or like a pre sales engineer over at Databricks. And he was telling me a story about some new sales rep that was building this PowerPoint presentation. You know, leading up to a meeting they were preparing and the PowerPoint that they had put together was like almost 50 pages. And he's like, oh my God. And they were like, should I, uh, should we add this? Like we got to add a couple more because, you know, we got to show him this and this and this and this. And he's like, look, man, we got to get this thing down to like 10 pages max. So we're never going to get through all this.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Like, how do you build the right pitch deck?

Speaker B: Ah, uh, good one. If you have a business unit that has multiple products inside of that business unit, you have got to have an overview deck, high level, but it can't be too high level. Right. They actually got to know stuff about those products, but it can't be too big. So you have got to have an overview deck. Then if you don't have true cross selling motions in place and you're going to develop those later, you have got to have a referral selling deck. Meaning what are the stories, what are the use cases, what are the problems we're solving for that product? If I can't sell it myself and I need to refer it to somebody else in our business, then I need to uncover those things and be able to talk dangerous with my customer. Now, even though eventually I might pass it off, that's not a, uh, one size fits. All right. The last thing is you have to think about who you're talking to. So we're, we're investigating the idea of creating Persona decks or industry specific decks. And I truly believe as you go higher up the line size, your decks need to get smaller and shorter and more concise and more specific. Now if you're talking to, you know, Suzy at the front desk, sure, give her the, the full PowerPoint. But if we're talking to a CEO or a CIO or the leader of a business unit, you've got to talk their language. You got to be concise and ask for feedback. Hey, did this even land with you, man? Like, how often are we just shown and telling. I've been asking people to do this with deals. You know, we, we do shout outs. Hey, I got this deal. Awesome. Here's the deal. Here's the amount of money we made. That's wonderful. But what did you learn? Like More people learn from those things than they do. Like the sale.

Speaker A: Yeah. Back to my time at Sageworks when I had built this big script and, you, uh, know, I was going through. I had the whole demo memorized. But I had to remember that after I showed the prospect, like a feature, right? You have to stop, say, is this something that would be useful for you? And then get some feedback. Right? Because if you just keep going with the demo without asking any questions, then you're just going to get deer in the headlights at the end. It's not going to work out for you.

Speaker B: It's actually one of my categories that I judge reps on when it comes to demos is feedback integration. You know, did you talk the whole time or not and did you pause? And this is especially important when you're on the phone with m. Multiple people. I'm talking about internally. Like, if you're on the phone with your sales engineer, you guys actually both have to be doing that. It cannot be one or the other. If your engineers talking, you can't be checked out. If the customer's asking a question that you don't know the answer to, you need to write that question down and then write the answer down and then be prepared to answer it the next time. And then you can just use the se as like a, uh, hey, keep me honest. I think I know the answer here. Like, that goes such a long way with the people you work with and your customers because they're like, man, this dude's on it. This girl is like, she's an ace. I need. I need her, um, on my team.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard to do, man. It takes a while to hone that skill.

Speaker B: Most people don't even listen to themselves, by the way. You know, reviewing your calls is big.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, you guys use gong?

Speaker B: No, uh, Sales Loft does the recording for us. But it is a requirement for a sales manager to have a weekly call review on their calendar. It's a requirement. And what I mean by that is your whole team's on a call. Let's just say for 30 minutes. A different person goes each week. It's a real call with a real customer. Any type of call, discovery, prospecting, demo, the person whose call it is, they give context. Hey, this is where I'm at. This is what we talked about before I hit play. Everyone listens to it on the call together. Most managers are doing this in their one for ones. And the issue with that, although I think there's a time and a place for individual feedback, the issue with Doing it in a box with just one person is. No one else learns from those things. So you have to do it collectively. And we're trying to set up these people for success. Like, in your career, you're going to have to learn how to give feedback and receive it. And if you don't know how to do that in a professional way, guess what? It's going to be really apparent. Ain't going to get very far.

Speaker A: What are some of the most, uh, common mistakes that you see reps make in some of these audits?

Speaker B: Not being able to take the feedback. They think they don't need to change. I'm good. I'm, um, Hitting quota. Is the goal to just hit quota, or is it to actually exceed quota? Right. That's the goal. That's. That's the baseline, really. Most people don't want to develop themselves. They look externally for help. Hey, I need to get buff, so I'm going to take creatine and pump weights. We need to start looking internally. What can I do to sharpen my mind? What can I do to make my heart more. More empathetic? Be more human.

Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. It takes a while before you don't get defensive about feedback. And, you know, you see it as a blessing. Right. Oh, this is. This is great. This is really helping me. Like, now I love feedback. Even the worst stuff, I'm like, just. Just give it to me straight, Doc. Yeah. What is it, man? I need to know, because if I don't know, I don't know my blind spots. I can't fix it. So I love good feedback and bad feedback.

Speaker B: Well, the problem is a lot of people are scarred. They've had leaders in their life who don't know how to do that and have hurt them.

Speaker A: Yeah. What is the best way to give, uh, constructive feedback? Like, do you use, like, a sandwich method where it's like, good thing, bad thing, then good thing, or how do you deliver it?

Speaker B: 1. I don't try to find something that's not there. If there's nothing to improve, Boom. You did great. Keep doing what you're doing. If the barn is red, call it red. If they really did make a mistake or really need to improve something, tell them, but in a compassionate way. I'm here to help you. If you need more help, let me know. And examples. Right. I tried to personally remove ums from my language and also from the reps. Right. I think it can really lower your credibility. I think. Think it can make the customer feel like you're unsure how do you do that? Right? You just pause. Just pause or fill it in with something else and. Or therefore stop using weak language like kinda sorta maybe. No, we will, we can. Yes or no. Right?

Speaker A: That's so hard to do. I'm bad at saying, um, uh, you know, I say you know way too much. You only know many times I have to edit that out in these podcasts.

Speaker B: Same, same. It comes from not knowing where you want to go. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: It's good to have empathy for sure. Whenever you're trying to guide salespeople, but it's also very performance driven profession and a lot of sales leaders have the mentality. I heard this, uh, quote one time from somebody I reported to, you got to feed the tigers, ride the horses and shoot the dogs. So you give all your best leads to the tigers, right? You feed them your top performers, folks in the middle of the pack, you gotta ride them, right? You gotta be on their ass. And then the bottom 10%, you gotta shoot them, fire them and replace them. You ever heard that before?

Speaker B: No. Uh, but a, uh, saying I've heard is don't water the weeds.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, don't water the dogs.

Speaker B: Yeah, don't water the weeds. Okay. Like, and you need to be able to understand what is the weed. Sometimes a weed can look just like a flower, but it's actually a weed and really serves no purpose and sometimes can be a cancer for the team.

Speaker A: Yeah. Tell me more about that. How do you discover that?

Speaker B: Well, a lot of it is attitude. If you have a bunch of docile people on a team and then you got one stronghold person, he could change the dynamic of any call on a team call. He could bring it down easily. But he also, he or she also could be the person who can change the game and bring those people to that level. But, but do they think they don't have a problem? Often what we see think is that there's one answer to one question and usually there is multiple answers to a question. And so putting yourself in another person's shoes, whether that's your customer's shoes or the person that you're, you know, dealing with internally. Extremely important, big time.

Speaker A: Uh, what are some of your favorite like training exercises to go through?

Speaker B: Love this. Okay. We created this project called Pitch Perfect. Pitch Perfect is designed to work on different stages of the sales cycle, discovery, demo, and whatever call you have after that. There is scoring criteria for this exercise. There's certain categories that we look at and those categories are different for different parts of the sales cycle. And then it's pass or fail, one to five minimum scores. This we get on the call as a group, though. It's a team exercise. It's not an individual exercise. We actually all do it together. The way I start those calls is I say if you're not going, you're on mute. And if you're not going, you're paying attention. Because the question is you were hired for a reason. The question is why, though? What, what do you bring to the table that's going to help upskill yourself and your team? Because, man, if I'm hitting quota and exceeding, but the rest of my team is behind, we're failing, we're failing. And often sales is so competitive that people don't take time to uplift, uh, one another. Best practice, sharing is one of our most underutilized assets. And shout outs, right? Credit where credit's due. If this person is excelling, tell somebody. I've had people come back and say, before you started doing this, this never happened. I never got credit. Not just for doing your job, man, but for going above and beyond. Everyone can do their job. Not everyone can go above and beyond.

Speaker A: You need a hype, man. You need energy. You need a Jordan on your team to get everybody aligned and hyped up. Roaring to go, dude.

Speaker B: Uh, I'll give you one on that. Okay, here's a major shift. Sales huddles, okay? We do one on Monday and we do trainings on Friday like I did today. We start those calls with music and we end them with music. This is a, uh, psychological thing. People join my meetings early and they stay late. What company meeting? Do you know where people do that? Settle, settle. None. And it's for a reason, right? Because they're there just to check the box. But when somebody doesn't know what you're going to play, you know, they like what they hear. You play something different. We have a global company, so I play global music. I play Bulgarian music, Indian music, Costa Rican music, rap, reggae. Yeah, it's company friendly. I really try my hardest to not find songs that are going to be depressing or have curse words in it. But we're also adults. Sometimes one of those songs might be called for also seasons. Right? I change the songs for the season. If it's Christmas time, man, we're playing Christmas music. If it's November, I'm playing November.

Speaker A: Do you play music in the office to keep the energy up?

Speaker B: I'm testing something new where at the end of each quarter, we would typically take like a Friday training off the calendar. I'm actually trying to repurpose that meeting. And, uh, it's called body doubling. It's basically where you have a person that's there to help you get the work done, but they don't actually help you, like, get the work done themselves. Right. They're just there to support you. So take that Friday training, repurpose it. And instead of doing a training, everyone's trying to get stuff done. So let's just play music. Let's just have it going on in the background. You can join if you want. I floated the idea today and I had, you know, like 80 people going, please. Like, I need that.

Speaker A: I like it. So I know we're coming up on time. Just a couple of, like, personal questions, help folks get to know you a little bit. Uh, we're talking about music here. Do you have a favorite band or artist?

Speaker B: So let me pull up my playlist, which, by the way, 463 songs. Okay. That's how many I have saved up now if I'm trying to get work done. I like this artist called Mad Lib.

Speaker A: Never heard of him.

Speaker B: Yeah, he's got an album. It is called Shades of Blue. I have the actual album, like, at my house, the record. But without a doubt, that is one of my favorite albums to listen to when I'm working, when I'm trying to get stuff done. It's got words, but it's a. It's a mix of jazz and hip hop blended together.

Speaker A: Oh, interesting. I have to check that out.

Speaker B: Rakim. Rakim is awesome. There's something to say about somebody who has lyrical talent, meaning a lot of music, especially in the R and B space, is just full of trash. Words have meaning and have power. And I thought always for sure, Rakim, he has lines that live rent free in my head.

Speaker A: Never heard of him either.

Speaker B: Ask me another one. I'll put you on.

Speaker A: All, uh, Right. One more. And then we'll do your favorite movie.

Speaker B: One more. Cake.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love cake.

Speaker B: Right. I will survive. Like, there's just certain songs that, you know, change your mood for the better. Uh, and yeah, those are the people and the type of music I'm attracted to.

Speaker A: Nice. I like it. Do you have a favorite movie?

Speaker B: I mean, any of the, uh, Die Hards? I mean, I watched all those, like a million times.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I love Die Hard.

Speaker B: Indiana Jones Jones, without a doubt. I grew up on westerns, so the good, the bad, the ugly, Shoot them up. Get the bad guys, get the girl. 007 for sure. Even though some of Those old ones, if you look back, they didn't age very well. They're a little racist, but. Oh, yeah. But, uh. But yeah, 007. I mean, there's only one 007, right?

Speaker A: Like.

Speaker B: Like there is no. It looks, uh, it reminds me of that. Like there's really only 1 007. Even though the. There are multiple characters. But I've always liked that. I think movies have a time and place because they. They send you somewhere. Like any art, any good art, it sends you somewhere, right? It transcend it. And it doesn't matter what your culture is. Usually if it's good art, like, it's like food, right? Like, sometimes food is the best way to meet somebody in the middle and get to know them. And I do feel like music is the same way.

Speaker A: Big time. Uh, what do you do for fun, man, when you're not working?

Speaker B: I like to fish. I like to catch fish. I like that alone time, you know, Even though I'm a social butterfly, I think it's important to be alone with your thoughts for a little bit. I always thought it was weird when you were on the plane and you would see that, that little diagram, you know, the adult puts on their mask first, and then they help the child. But I really realized over time, you know, if I don't help myself, I can't help another person.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, 100%.

Speaker B: This one too. I'm reading this one right now. It's, uh, it's called Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, Legacy Addiction by Sax and Pope. This was written in 1923. Ah, they don't even use words like this anymore. It's helpful, man. It gets my mind off technology for a little bit, I think. Woodworking is so immediate, uh, gratification, right? You carve something, you sand it, you feel it's smooth. That feels good, right? That makes me feel good. I like learning things now so that if later, if it's a requirement, I don't have to make the mistakes then when money's on the line or my life is on the line. So, uh, on purpose, learn a process, start to finish. Try it, do it, repeat it, and put it down and put it aside and archive it and then pick up another one.

Speaker A: Always testing and tinkering around, right?

Speaker B: And growing as, like, an individual. We got so many distractions nowadays, man. So many. And they can really pull you away from who we are.

Speaker A: You got any bonsai trees you're working on?

Speaker B: Got a mulberry bonsai. I've had it for seven years. I put it in the state fair last year, I was against really steep competition. And when it was all done, I was like, hey, the winners. I was like, hey, guys, you know, what do I do? Uh, how do I get to be a winner? And they were like, well, what have you been doing? I was like, well, I've had it in this training pot for seven years. It's never fruited. The trunk size isn't big. Like, I like, your trunk size is huge. You know, like, it's like a mini tree. And they, uh, were like, put it in the ground. Put it in the ground and then dig it up every year and trim the roots and trim the tree, just like you were doing in the training pot, but put it in the ground. The first year I had it in the ground, I got fruit.

Speaker A: Nice. Nice.

Speaker B: So it's about that feedback, right? Like, you look at somebody you admire, you look at something that somebody did and find out how to get there and work backwards.

Speaker A: Love it, man. Yeah, the bonsai tree thing, you're interested in a lot of things. I know you're an artist as well. Like, you're a photographer, and you do a lot of things. That's not just got chickens, right?

Speaker B: Got chickens.

Speaker A: Yeah, you got chickens.

Speaker B: Three eggs a day, baby. Keeps the doctor away.

Speaker A: That's right. That's right. You're a really cool dude, man, and I, uh, love hanging out with you. I love bringing my kids over to your house and play with the chickens and all the toys. Your kids are also well behaved. Your wife's amazing. So you're a good dude, man. Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker B: I'll say. It takes one to know one, man. You know?

Speaker A: Uh, thank you, sir.

Speaker B: Takes one to no one. You know, I. I think the same about you. And like I said at the beginning of this call, I miss you. Hopefully I'll see you soon again.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know we try to hang out more, but then, you know, you get your busy schedule. You know, the kids doing flag football and gymnastics and dance, and you're going out of town to see your parents for the weekend. And then next thing you know, it's been three months. And, uh, yeah, that's how life is. We'll. We'll get together. Is there anything, uh, else you wanted to leave with the audience for? We.

Speaker B: Authenticity is very scarce right now. A lot of people are being fake, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. If you want to grow as an individual, start first by understanding who you are.

Speaker A: Not easy to do. Takes time, dude.

Speaker B: A lot of time.

Speaker A: I'm in my 40s. I'm still trying to figure it out, man.

Speaker B: It's from caterpillar to butterfly, man. We all go through it. We all go through it. And sometimes it repeats. Right?

Speaker A: Well, how can people find you, Jordan?

Speaker B: You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm on there. Happy to connect. I had somebody reach out to me today and said, will you be a, uh, a success story? You know, I'm working at this company. I know you guys use this tool in the past. I'm working. I'm trying to earn this customer's trust. Will you be a success story? I was like, yeah, sure, why not? Yeah, I know him, but I also would do that for somebody maybe that I didn't know, too. So, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn and you can catch me outside.

Speaker A: Yeah, catch me outside fishing. I love it, man. All right, well, we'll end it there, brother. Good to have you on. Jordan, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Anytime, Blake. Take care.