Ep. 22-How to Lead a High-Performance Sales Org Without Owning Every Deal with Alice Heiman

SPEAKER_02: All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Pre-Sales Unplug, the leadership playbook. I'm Arvi Karkanji.

I'm the founder of Elite Talent, and I really work with SaaS companies to help them hire presales and full-sales talent. But today really isn't about me. Today is about a very special guest that is joining me for the first time. I'm going to introduce her very soon.

But one quick note before we jump in these conversations are live, intentionally unedited. So what you hear here today is real and exactly how it happened. We stream it live, but you can also catch a replay on our podcast across Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever it is that you listen. And of course, if you do get value from the conversation, you'll make sure to follow, subscribe, or leave us a review.

I personally read every single one of them. And if you have questions after the fact about our guest or anything that they mention, I'll make sure to tag them so that you can get your responses. With that being said, I'm super excited today to be joined by Alice Hyman. She is the chief sales energizer, has plenty of experience in sales, help so many companies not only fix their sales process, but also scale it and become successful at it.

And I'm really excited to honestly just dive in your brain today and just help help anybody that's listening and just help them fix their sales process or at least give them pointers. And then, of course, you know, if they wanted to learn more about you, they can come and contact you. But um, thank you for joining me today on my podcast. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks, Arvi.

I'm always excited to talk about sales. It's probably the number one challenge at every company on earth, right? Rarely do we ever hear a company say, oh, we have too much sales, we just can't even, you know, right? We are always uh hearing people say they wish their sales per people had more conversations with people who could buy, they wish they had more leads, uh, they wish the deals were closing faster.

There's always some challenge around sales. SPEAKER_02: Yes, and it's it's so true. I mean, yeah, you even if they are having too many sales, they're always thinking like something's wrong with my sales process that we need to fix. So yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: Well, and that can be just as bad. Sometimes it sounds like a great thing, right? Too many sales, but it's not always a great thing because we have to care for each and every one of those companies that buys from us. And sometimes we don't have the bandwidth or we can't deliver on time.

So, you know, I always say, be careful what you wish for. SPEAKER_02: That's very true. And I can't wait to dive into that. I did want to ask you really quickly to just introduce her yourself and like your journey and how what led you to where you are today.

So our listeners can understand a little bit more about who you are and what you do. SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll try to make it quick because it's it's a long journey because I'm old and I've been around a long time. SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't use the word old. SPEAKER_00: I started as a public school teacher.

I won't dwell on that too much, but it was awesome. 13 years in the public schools. I was a special ed teacher and um reading specialist, loved that. But even at that time, I was very entrepreneurial, didn't even know what that word meant then.

It wasn't really being used, you know. And I had started a nonprofit and a for-profit both while I was teaching, which sounds crazy, right? But I just found a need and filled it, you know, it was that kind of a thing. So uh so I have experience, you know, even before I was out the gate in the business world.

But some of your listeners will have heard of a company called Miller Hyman. And uh that was my father's company. He and Bob Miller founded that company in this in the late 70s. And so I kind of grew up around sales.

My dad was always in sales his whole life. Then he and Bob started this company around helping other companies sell better because of all the experience that they had. And eventually, over time, because I was still in college when they started the company, but uh over time my dad would ask me, Can you do a project? Can you help me with this?

You know, it's a family business, sort of right. You know, kids would help out sometimes too. And then in 1989, my dad bought his partner out, and then he wanted me to come work for him, and I kept saying no. Finally, in 1994, I stopped teaching.

I had, like I said, two other businesses going, a nonprofit and a for-profit, and I left all of that behind and I went to work for Miller Hyman. But what's funny, um, really, Arby, is that I didn't go there to be in sales. My dad hired me because of my expertise in curriculum design and implementation, because his company was doing sales training and he wanted someone to look at the curriculum and kind of bring it up, uh, you know, make sure it was modern and best for the learner and all of those things.

And so that's how I started. Excuse me, but it wasn't that he was hiring me for sales, he was hiring me to do this whole other task, but it just led to that because after I had done all this work on the curriculum, then I was like, well, I need to teach it so I can see how it flows and how it goes. I need to watch the other instructors teach it so I can, you know, take notes and make changes. And and so it just turned into me also teaching these programs.

And then it turned into me working with the large our largest customers, Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, ATT, Dow Chemical, um, you name it, you know, just the big ones, Fidelity Investments, great, great customers working with them. And then it turned into me training all the trainers. So I mean, it was a crazy, you know, like I got catapulted into, you know, from being a school teacher into the business world, into the fortune, the world of the Fortune 500. So it was really an amazing learning experience.

And then from there, I, you know, a couple of years later, I learned that my dad wanted to sell the company. So I got this amazing experience learning how to exit a company when I was in my 30s, right? Wow, and it was the first time that a private equity firm had ever purchased a sales training firm. This was in the late 90s now.

So private equity and venture capital wasn't even a really big thing until just like a minute later when the dot-com started, right? And so that whole thing, you know, blew up and it was crazy. So I, when my dad sold the company, I left and started my own company. And I was working with the dot-coms and helping them scale their sales, right?

Because all this venture money was thrown at them and they had to grow quickly. And I really that wasn't what I had been doing because I had been training Fortune 500 sellers, right? And I move into this crazy world of startup, and it's completely different. You're not training anybody because they don't even have any salespeople yet, you're building it from scratch, right?

So it was a crazy time, but it was so fun. And I learned so much. I I'm so lucky. But after working with a lot of those dot-com startups, and then with venture, I was like, wow, like that is very volatile place to be.

I'd like to work with more mature companies, but I really had learned that I liked working with smaller companies than the Fortune 500. And these, you know, were all sub at the time. They were, you know, zero to 10 million in revenues, right? And so I started looking for companies that were, you know, five to 10 years in business or more, maybe at the 5 million, 10 million mark already.

And and then I really found my my place there with those tech CEOs in that kind of 10 plus years in business, 10 plus million in revenue, and helping them, you know, double their sales and then eventually exit. SPEAKER_02: Okay. I love that. First of all, how freaking cool that you grew up like around sales.

Um, and I love hearing those stories because honestly, I want to do the same for my son. Because I grew up complete opposite. My, I mean, and again, you know, they didn't know any better, but like my family and my parents that were against sales. They're like, oh, you never want to do sales.

And it's interesting because out of college, I actually got offered a sales job. And again, we didn't know any better at the time, but my mom was like, Oh, you don't want to do that, you know, the commissions and you're gonna be trying to convince people to sell, etc. So, and of course, you know, have a completely opposite opinion now about sales. Of course, but I love that you grew up with that.

That's pretty amazing. So, what um I guess a little bit more in depth, like what made you land within that um, you know, 10 to 20 years or 10 to 20 million already in sales. Um, you know, you said the startup world wasn't really like it was like too chaotic, and then this was your sweet spot, and then the five Fortune 500 was like way different. I guess what are the main differences between the three?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, so it's interesting because what we did at Miller Hyman was basically train people in a methodology so that they could improve their sales, and that was all about a complex sale. Companies that were selling things that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, had a long sales cycle. You had to talk to lots of buying influences to get the deal done, right? So I'm heavily steeped in the complex sale.

And what I found is that these smaller companies are trying to sell to really big companies, the Fortune 500 and other in between, and they have a complex sale. Also, they really don't know how to do that, right? So it was like, wow, I can really make an impact here because they don't know how to do this thing, they're struggling. Um, and then also uh by the time you've got your company to 10 years, you you've learned some stuff, you know, some stuff.

These fresh CEOs who these VCs were throwing money at, and even still today, I don't like to work with startups very much. I do mentor a few startups, but only if they have benevolent backers, like if they're a PE firm. I like PE a lot. They're much more benevolent than VC, although VC has changed, but it's still pretty volatile, right?

So I like to work with uh founder-led companies where there's no backing except maybe some friends and family. So most of my clients today um bootstrapped their company and got it to where it is, want to grow it further so they have lots of opportunities to either acquire other companies or uh get some debt or equity financing or exit eventually, right? So it's just a place where I found that I can make a really big impact because they don't usually have a sales leader. A lot of times the salespeople still report to the CEO, or maybe they have um a sales leader, but there's not a lot of process in place.

And so they're everybody's kind of doing their own thing. Yeah. And it's not, we're just not filling the pipeline fast enough or with enough, and we're not moving the deals through the pipeline fast enough or with the right rigor. Too many deals are dropping off, close rates are dropping, things like that.

Uh, so you know, I can fix all of those things. I'm very good at it. I can make an impact in that space. They're trying to sell, you know, do deal strategies to sell to these really big companies.

I know how to do that. And so, in that little arena, I can make a huge impact where, like at a Fortune 500 company, whether it's, you know, hundreds or thousands of salespeople and tons of sales leaders, it's just hard to get your arms around it and make any kind of a shift happen. And in the smaller companies, the shifts happen and and they want them to happen, and they're actively working with me to make those shifts happen. So it's it's just a it's really lovely place to work.

Most of my clients are between like that 10 and 50 million in revenue, and they're trying to get to their next big milestone so that they, you know, they can have some choices to do some different things. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. One of the things you mentioned is that you said that a lot of leaders or even founders kind of unloading, unknowingly stall their own revenue motion. What is what does that look like and what why does that even happen?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I call that when I call that the sales prevention department. And like I tell the CEO, you don't want to be the sales prevention department. That is not a good idea, right? But it's inadvertent, like they don't even know they're doing it.

SPEAKER_02: Right. SPEAKER_00: They don't realize that their actions or reactions are, you know, creating a roadblock of some type. A super easy example is in most companies where they're selling to larger companies, there are contracts. And the small company, of course, wants they call it their paper.

They want their paper. They want to do the deal on their paper, right? Their contract. But the big company wants an MSA, a master service agreement, they want it on their paper and they want it done their way.

So first there's just the negotiation over whose contract they're going to start with, and then the redlining begins. And so that has to go somewhere at this smaller company. Now, the companies the size I work with don't have legal counsel in-house. You know, these big companies do, but my clients don't have legal counsel in-house.

So they have to hire outside legal counsel, or the CEO is looking at the red lines and trying to, you know, negotiate those contracts. Well, that takes a lot of time. And a CEO has a lot of other things they have to do, right? Including sometimes be involved in some of the larger deals.

So when you have a CEO who thinks, you know, they can manage these contracts, they're almost always holding it up because they simply don't have time and they think they're going to do it, and then they end up trying to do it at night when they're tired, and then the next day it's still not done. And now a week has gone by, and the salesperson is like, I could have closed this deal by now, right? Yeah. And you still have the contract in your hands.

Um, now this happens in slightly larger companies too. I had um a venture-backed company that I was working with several years ago that was probably around the$500 million range, a little larger than I usually work with, but they had internal legal people, but they were doing a first in, first out methodology. And so the deals were sitting there waiting for some other contracts that had no consequence, right? And the CEO was allowing this to happen.

So again, the CEO was still the sales prevention department, it appeared to be the legal department. Yeah, yeah. But it's like, hey, you're the only one CEO who can get these attorneys to pay attention. And in this case, it was three weeks illegal.

And can you imagine a salesperson waiting for legal or three weeks to close a deal? I mean, you're losing customers at that point. So it's a simple example, but other things that are easy to, you know, point to are things like a leader measuring the wrong things and the and the CEO looking at those measures and then making decisions about them. So instead of measuring how many um calls or contacts salespeople have each day with someone who can buy from them, you know, a real conversation, right, about with someone who can buy from them, they're measuring how many emails did they send, how many LinkedIns did they send, you know, how many dials did they make?

I don't care how many dials you make. If you make 10 dials and talk to 10 people, hallelujah. If you make a thousand dials and talk to 10 people, if the 10 is your quota, then that's great too. But why would you want to do a thousand, right?

So it's like, okay, like what is the real metric? The real metric is do salespeople have conversations with people who can buy? So forget the rest of it. However, they get there.

If they get referrals, if they make a lot of dials, if they sell send great emails, I don't care how they get there. I want them having 10 conversations a day with people who can buy, right? Or whatever your number is. It might be five, it might be, you know, 50.

I don't know. But you you're measuring the wrong things, you become the sales prevention department because now salespeople are focused on sending more email versus getting a conversation, yeah. SPEAKER_02: Leading versus lagging indicators, exactly, right? SPEAKER_00: And so we we don't want any of that, and that's another way, just leading versus lagging.

So by the end of the month, when we've missed our number, it's too late. Yeah. So as a CEO, if that's what you're counting on, again, you are in the way. You need to get your sales team to set up the leading indicators for you and monitor those.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Speaking of bottlenecks and leadership, you know, with the CEO, um, a lot of senior leaders come up in leadership through sales themselves. Like maybe they were a top performer at some point. At what point do you feel like that experience is more like a liability versus an asset, especially when you're leading a team?

SPEAKER_00: Arve, that's such a great question. And, you know, if you look around at most organizations, leadership is a liability. And it's really an easy problem to fix, but it does cost either time or money or both, right? And so promoting people from within is a wonderful practice if you have done succession planning, if you have, as an HR team or as a leadership team, noted who might be a leader in the future, who has that propensity, who sort of naturally takes the lead, and then you start to develop them.

You might send them to some training, have them read something, have somebody mentor them. So then when you need a sales leader, especially, right? You have been grooming some of the people on your team so that they could step into that role. But that's not how we do it.

We just go, oh, you, you've been the best salesperson. Why don't you go ahead and lead? Do you want to lead? They say yes, they say no, whatever.

If they say yes, you promote them, give them zero training. The only thing they know is how they have been managed, and they either like that or don't like that, and then try their own way, right? Um, and in a lot of cases, we promote people and they're still carrying a quota, and so they're competing against their own salespeople. It's, you know, we just do a we we make a lot of mistakes in this area.

Again, I'll point back to the CEO. The CEO, it it is the CEO's responsibility to make sure there is succession planning going on, that people are being developed, and that you have people in your organization that can be promoted and know how to do the job. And if you don't, then you do need to hire from the outside. But hiring sales leaders is hard work to really find someone who can do the job.

The interview process, we don't, it's not rigorous enough. We don't ask the right questions. Uh, we really don't know how to do it very well. So we end up again with sales leaders who really don't know what to do.

So it's no wonder that salespeople don't hit their target. It's not necessarily the salesperson, it's what they're being asked to do and how they're being managed and coached and developed, which typically the coaching and development is completely devoid. Like there is none, right? It's just managing you to some metrics that somebody arbitrarily set and it's not working.

SPEAKER_02: That's I love that you said that because I see it a lot on the hiring side. First of all, if you have understood so far, like what leads CEOs and founders and leaders to promote the top performers, please share it because I think everybody would want to know. Uh, but outside of that, I will say I see it all the time when when leaders are hiring with me or founders are hiring through me. They're like, hey, I want your top competitors, salesperson, you know, to come over here and like do the same thing they did there here.

And I'm like, that sounds great in theory, but do you have the same processes? Do you have the same leadership? I mean, there's so much that goes on. SPEAKER_00: You have the same territory, the same lead flow.

I mean, this is what's crazy, right? So I'll go back to the first thing, which is why do we promote those people? Because we have no one else, we don't know what else to do. That's fair, and that's just the way we've always operated.

So we just do it because it's easy, right? So it's super simple. There's no, you know, thinking behind it, other than this, we need a leader, this person can lead. Our last leader left, we got to fill the gap, put the person in, you know.

So it's it's really hard. And as you know, finding good talent, there's a lot of people out there, but finding good talent is always difficult. And we we never take enough time. And and part of the problem is the really good talent will go fast.

They want a job, they will get a job. And if you're going slow trying to make sure it's a really good fit, you will miss that candidate, right? And so it's very difficult balance to get those conversations in and that understanding in of who this person is to know whether they're the right fit or not, um, and do it quickly enough so they don't take another job. So it's challenging.

I'm not saying it's not, but we all could learn how to do a better job, right? But then what you just said about I'm gonna hire, you know, the top salesperson from this other company, blah, blah, blah. Well, first of all, why would that person ever want to come work for you? Think about it.

SPEAKER_02: Salespeople are loyal. Thank you for saying that because I say that all the time. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they have gotten to a point where they're making X amount of dollars and they want to continue making that. Now you're asking them to switch.

You're not gonna provide the same amount of pay that they're getting. And if you do, you're probably overpaying because you're not in a position to do that and they haven't proven themselves at your company yet, right? And so it's sort of like recruiting for sports, like for baseball, where you don't want the best, you know, person. You want the one who has that fight in him, that has the right characteristics, that's the up and comer that you can then groom into your company, right?

To do to be that person. Um, hiring, you know, the best salesperson from another company is first of all, it's rarely going to really happen. Secondly, they will not perform at your company the way they performed at the other company because they don't get to steal customers. And believe it or not, customers are loyal to the brand, not necessarily the salesperson.

I mean, plus, there's non-compete and there's just integrity. You just don't go steal customers, it's just not the way it works. So, you're not gonna get somebody who has this big book of business to just bring it over to you. It just doesn't work that way.

If you want that, then acquire the company. That's how you get that. You go buy that company, but their top salesperson isn't gonna cut it. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and by the way, just to clarify, I don't think there's anything wrong with going after a competitor and hiring salespeople from them, right?

It's just, I think what you and I are talking about is just that top performer mentality that you want them to come here and do exactly what they did for that company. SPEAKER_00: You definitely don't want that, but it took them years to do that at that company, it didn't happen overnight, and sure, hire people for your from your competitor if that works in your industry. But be careful, right? Um, because it's hard to switch your loyalty.

And you know, what I've noticed is when we make offers to people, to salespeople at our competitors' companies, the competitor will usually match it. Yeah. And and then the person will stay. So we don't end up getting them anyway.

It's it's a difficult one for sure. I like to stay kind of on the periphery, like you sell into the same market, but you don't sell the same a similar item, you know, and I think that works a little bit better. But yeah, I mean, if somebody from your competitor wants to come over and work for your company and it's a good fit, yeah, go ahead and do it. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, love that.

Um, I'm actually curious, Alice, when you start working with the leadership team, what are like some things initially that you diagnose before you even start touching their strategy or headcount in general? SPEAKER_00: That has changed over the years for sure. But the very first thing I do is I'll have several conversations with the CEO before I decide if I'm gonna work with them or not. And does that take time?

Yes, it does. Uh, does it increase the cost of my sale? Yes, it does. But especially at this point in my career, I don't want to work with a CEO who really is not going to take it seriously and take the actions that they need to take.

You're telling me you want to change, change takes action, right? It doesn't happen around you. You make it happen. And that means you, it starts with you.

You have to change, right? So I really want to talk to the CEO and learn about them and understand what they want, how they got where they are, and then make a decision about whether I think it's a good fit for us to work together. And then, and then before I will, you know, dive in and you know, do a contract with them, I usually want to talk to at least their sales leader and maybe some of the other leadership teams so I can understand what role they play, how they think about this problem.

I know what the CEO thinks about this problem or challenge, right? And the growth, but what do they think? You know, and do they have the same thinking? Because I want to know is this going to be an uphill battle?

No one agrees with the CEO. Um, I want to talk with some other people at the company. And then once I'm like, okay, great, I think we can do this together. I would love to work with you.

We set up an agreement of what the work is going to be. And then I, you know, first off want to find out what is happening in sales. So what, you know, call it a pipeline, call it a funnel. I prefer to call it a funnel, but on that funnel or that pipeline of deals, I want to see that.

I want to see what's in there. I want to see what's the deal. I want to see if it's full enough. I want to see what the uh sales cycle is and what the close ratio is because I want to make improvements immediately, right?

So I want to get those deals moving. And if there's not enough, then the very first thing I do is go to the existing customer base and I want to learn what is going on in your existing customer base? What are they buying? What are they not buying?

Are they happy? Are they unhappy? Are they willing to provide referrals for you and make introductions? Uh, you know, are they are there things they're not buying that they should be buying because their company would benefit greatly, right?

So I really want to examine what's happening in the existing customer base because there's usually millions of dollars just sitting right there. And it's the fastest way to increase sales. Just go to your existing customer base. Even let's say you sell something that's a one-time thing and they can't buy any more of it.

They know other people who can, their own vendors, their own customers, uh, their, you know, their business colleagues. So they are able to make introductions for you. But most companies just completely ignore that. They, for some reason, don't work that process of getting referrals on a regular basis from their existing customers.

And so that's a really important process that most companies do not have in place and need to install. SPEAKER_02: I want to dive if you're okay with it, a little bit deeper to that. First of all, why do you think that is that we have a customer base and you know, we don't go and get more referrals? And two, if part two to that would be can you give us some pointers of like what is maybe the correct way to do it?

Because some of them just might not know. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, RV, I think that's that is so important um to really dive into because I think the reason they don't do it is because companies get so focused on bringing in brand new business, right? Go out and get new customers. Well, that is important for sure, but new customers cost more, right?

And it takes longer. And you know, the the first deal size might be smaller. There's there's a lot of things about that. So, yes, you should have a team who's focused on going out to get new business.

But imagine if that team was fed by introductions, right? So instead of having to go out cold, that team looking for new business could always get it through an introduction. Amazing, right? We all are like worried about you know, our salespeople not having enough conversations with people who can buy.

But if you have a team of account managers and customer success people who are delighting your customers, building strong relationships, you know, delivering as promised and you know, over and above, all of that good stuff, just like it should be, you know, meeting not just meeting expectations, but exceeding them. They have earned the right to ask any customer that they have a good relationship with, hey, here's a few companies we're trying to get into. I'd love to get my my salesperson an introduction.

Do you know this person or this person? You know, do you know any of these people? Could you make that introduction? Right.

We're just not doing it. And so, yes, go out and get new business, but don't ignore the business you have. The the other reason I think people think it's expensive, you know. Oh, we have an account executive, now we need an account manager and a customer success person.

That's a lot of money, right? Um, but it's really not. And when we maintain a great relationship with our existing customers, it's just so much easier. They, you know, we have a higher retention rate, they buy more from us, they renew easily.

And again, we're in a position then to ask them to make these introductions. So why don't we do it? Sometimes we just don't know to do it. Sometimes we don't have our process set up properly.

That's probably, you know, that's probably the process isn't not there. And you know, I'll always say to companies, hey, so do you ever get any, you know, referrals? Like, you know, somebody calls you because somebody referred, you know, them to you. And oh yeah.

I'm like, well, how many do you get? Like five a month? Oh no, like maybe five a year. I'm like, five a year?

How many customers do you have? You have a hundred customers, you have a thousand customers. 10% of them don't, you know, I mean, give you a referral. Like, what is going on here?

So, but you do have to ask, and I do feel that people are uncomfortable asking, they don't know how to ask, and so they don't do it, right? So, first, like I said, your customer has to be delighted. Second, you have to have a relationship such that we could like RV. Hey, you know, I was just looking on your LinkedIn and I see that you know this person.

Do you know her well enough to introduce me? Right. And then you can say, Oh, gosh, Alice, you know, I've been connected to her for years, but I don't really know her. Like, okay, no worries.

Or you can say, you know, I do, I do know her. And then I can say, Well, would you tell her a little about me? And I could even write it for you and ask her if she'd be open to an introduction. And then you can connect us on LinkedIn or email or wherever, right?

But when you think of how much time, effort, and energy is spent doing cold outreach in minutes. I could go through my LinkedIn. If you have LinkedIn Navigator, it's super easy to do. I can pull up RV in my LinkedIn Navigator.

I can see every single person she's connected to. I can sort it out by I only want CEOs. Then I can see the CEOs that RV is connected to, and I can see what industry they're in. And then I can say, Arve, I see you're connected to these people.

Can you can you help me? Right. But you you have to earn the right. You have to know how to ask.

You have to make it easy for the person who's going to make the referral. And again, there's just no process around it. So they don't really do it. SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

And might I add, like when I or like, you know, in your example, if you know me, I'm more likely to respond to your message than somebody that you're reaching out cold. Um, it's kind of funny that you mentioned that my my first sales lesson when I first started learning about sales was if you don't ask, the answer is always going to be no. So if you already have the no, you know, I can come and ask. And then if you give me the no, then it's fine.

But if you give me the yes, then you know that's the best case scenario. SPEAKER_00: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, what's the harm in asking someone who knows you and loves you, who you've done a great job for?

What's the harm in asking them if they can make an introduction? And if they don't know any of the people that you, you know, ask them about, then say, Can you think of a company where you do know the right person to introduce me to? I'd just love to have your help with this. And most people, especially if you've done a great job, they want to sing your praises.

But it's not my job to sit around all day thinking about how to give you a referral. You need to remind me to do it. SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, I love that. Um, one thing I wanted to ask, you you talk a lot about driving revenue profitably, not just growing at all costs.

What does that mean for like leaders trying to, in a way, build a sustainable motion today? I mean, obviously, you're you're in the thick of it too. So you know there's so much changes happening constantly with AI and updates and you know, all the time. What does that really mean nowadays?

What can leaders do to implement that? SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think we overlook profitability sometimes, especially in the early days, right? So you have some VE, uh, some PE or VC funding, right? And your run rate is exceeding what you sell, right?

So that's being fed by that investment. Okay, that can go on for a little while, especially if you're developing something and it's very technical. Yes, of course, that can go on for a little while. Um, but even then, you can always be socializing your idea with the right people who can buy from you later.

So you really can always be selling, right? In that, in that regard. But um, it's not gonna be, there's not gonna be any profit at that time. But once you get to a point where you've got customers and you're moving along and you're selling things, it does need to be profitable.

And there's many, many reasons for that. Um, one, we live in a capitalistic society and we are supposed to make a profit. So, like, get on with it, right? Uh, two, it's very hard on the CEO and the senior team when there is no profit.

Cash flow becomes really a nightmare because we're just moving money around and we don't have enough money to bank ourselves. So we need credit lines and we need more investment, right? And so a healthy company, even if they have backing, always has at least three months of overhead in the bank. So they can draw from that if they need to.

Six months is better, but three months is great, right? So then, yes, if you still need your revolving credit line or you choose to use that instead of your own money, okay, you have choices now, right? But so many companies operate with no cash in the bank. And I just I just don't get it.

I just don't understand it. Now, sometimes it's better to use other people's money because the interest rates are low or there's other reasons, but you should be able to take care of your own company for a number of months, like during COVID, right? If you didn't have any savings, you were in trouble. Now, luckily, the government was helping out a little bit too.

But those of us who had savings, we got through it, right? Because we had saved up that money so that we could pay our overhead for a certain number of months. Um, so I think profitability does a lot of things for you. It's a peace of mind, right?

Your EBITDA is good. If you ever want to sell your company, now this is again a little different when it's VC or PE backed, right? But even at that, they want their 10x number for you. And if you're not profitable, who's gonna pay for that?

Now, I gotta think out of the equation all these AI companies who are not making any money because that's a whole new world. But your business is not that. Your business, right, is not uh, you know, a big AI company who can just spend and spend, and you know, that's different. Your company needs to make a profit.

And when you have that profit again, you can invest it back in, you can save it, you can acquire other companies. You don't need to go get a bank loan, you don't need to take equity or you know, of any kind from venture or PE. You're just in a better, more stable position when you are profitable. So, you know, when you're profitable, you can do whatever you want with your profits.

Isn't that amazing? So I think it's important, but I think we do a lot of deals, unfortunately, that are not profitable and we allow our salespeople to do them, and we really should not. In fact, I was talking to a company earlier today about they have a few partners who get a huge percent of their deal. And these these agreements were made many, many years ago when things were completely different.

But those legacy contracts with those partners are killing them now because they haven't raised their prices enough, right? And the fees were too high to begin with, and now it's actually costing them money to do business with those partners, but they're still doing it. That's not profitable, not good. You have to renegotiate with those partners, and if they don't like it, then they don't have to be your partner anymore.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Well, it's not like you're making money off of that either way, right? So and might I add to that, like when you're profitable, you I feel like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, because obviously you've been around more found founders for a longer period of time. You also can make better decisions because when you're not profitable, you're constantly under pressure to like make decisions to try and be profitable, and you probably make the wrong decisions while being in that pressure or in that position.

SPEAKER_00: A hundred percent. And here's the reason this is how our brain works, right? There's studies that show, you know, when we're optimistic, we make like better decisions. It's like 30% better or something like that.

I forgot what the status, but when we're optimistic, we can't be optimistic when there's no profit and we need to borrow money and our credit line is stretched or any of those things, right? So we need to keep our mindset in a place where we can make good decisions. And when we're, you know, depressed or stressed, worried, you know, there it's too much. We we just don't make good decisions, and so it's really true, and it is your brain chemistry at work.

You need to make your brain chemistry work for you. So you need to get yourself in the right mindset, in the right frame of mind, and more optimistic before you make decisions because you're right, it could really impact your business in a negative way. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I wanted to ask, on the other hand, when we're building teams, right, especially sales teams, is there, and I know there's probably thousands of scenarios because each founder, each company is different, each product is different.

Is there like some sort of architecture on your end when you're looking at them? Like, how do you prioritize hiring first, who to hire first, or is there some sort of framework that you can help guide leaders into who to hire first and why? SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So usually I prevent them from hiring for a bit once I'm there because I want to see what we have, right?

Right. So the problem is maybe we're plugging a hole that doesn't need to be plugged. Yeah. And so here's an example with sales.

You have three salespeople and they're not hitting the number. So you think if I hire another salesperson, that will help the total number. It actually doesn't, right? And so what I before we hire salespeople, I want every salesperson who's working to be at capacity or very close to capacity, right?

So you might want to hire a little head of capacity, but if they're not working at capacity, then you're, you know, you're losing money, you're losing profit, you're losing everything, right? And to add another salesperson to that is just adding cost, and it's not adding deals. So we really have to think before we hire salespeople and even sales leaders, because we have to think what is the capacity of those we have and is it full? So here's an example.

Uh, we had uh I had a client who had some really tremendous inbound lead flow for years, and they had two salespeople who couldn't even keep up with all the inbound. Great, let's hire another salesperson and get them trained so we can manage all that inbound. Now, the inbound slowed to a crawl. No more inbound.

Now these salespeople are no longer at capacity. Now what happens? Well, you want to think like you did before. Well, if we hire another salesperson, our sales will go up because that's what happened last time when we hired another salesperson.

No, because there's no more lead flow. So you're gonna put that salesperson in a seat and they're gonna do what? Now you could say, well, they're gonna do an outbound motion. Okay, well, an inbound motion and an outbound motion are completely different.

And if you hired them to do inbound, training them to do outbound takes time. And some of them won't even want to do it. Right. And they're like, where are my leads?

You know, you used to feed me leads, now I got nothing. And you want me to do a lot of things, right? So we have to be careful on you know thinking about why we're hiring that person, what do we think is going to actually happen? What are we looking for?

I'd rather hire a marketing person to increase the inbound leads and get those two people back up to capacity or those three people back up to capacity and then see if we need another salesperson. Uh, or sometimes if there is plenty of, you know, plenty of leads and the market is really good, yes, then it makes sense. We have, but then then your two or three salespeople would be to capacity and it would make sense to hire another one. Um, but also I think sometimes we hire them to do the wrong things.

Like the world has changed so much, and you know, some things are still the same, but some things are very different. The way buyers buy is very different, but the way humans make decisions has not changed. It's the same psychological process to make a decision as it has always been. That has not changed, but the way they gather information, the way they act, the way they interact, all of those things have changed, right?

So now you're hiring a salesperson because let's say your other people are a capacity, but you hired the wrong kind of salesperson. Today we have to think how does the buyer want to be sold to? What kind of seller do we need to hire that will have the appeal to that to that buyer or that set of buyers? What kind of person do they want to talk to?

You know, and how can that person help guide them through their decision-making process and instill confidence in them so that they can make a good decision, right? Because right now, you know, all the buyer side research is telling us that these deals that end in no decision are not about the seller and their team necessarily. It's about the buyer team not having enough confidence in themselves. Like they've looked at everything and they still can't figure out how or why or should we spend this money?

And then they just go, you know what, let's just not do it. And they don't have confidence in themselves. They didn't gather the right information, they didn't understand their problem thoroughly enough. And so they just end up making no decision.

So a good seller today has to dive in and understand that problem so thoroughly. So they need to know the industry and that company and those people, and they need to ask hard and different questions about the problem because people say, Oh, we want to buy a CRM. Okay, we sell CRM, we'll sell you a CRM. No, no, and no, right?

It's like, oh, well, why now? I mean, CRM has been around a long, a long time. Why are you now buying a CRM? Oh, you know, these things happen.

Oh, well, that's interesting. So, you know, with AI, the way it works today, you know, do you really need a CRM or do you what are you solving for? What's the problem? Well, we don't have the data we need.

Oh, you don't have the data you need. That doesn't point me towards a CRM. Like that might be a whole nother discussion. But the problem is I get paid to sell CRM and they said they wanted a CRM, so I'm gonna sell them a CRM.

Yeah, yeah, not good, right? So we we have to be smarter as salespeople, and we have to hire salespeople who care about humans and who want to help them make the right decision, and that doesn't include us sometimes, but you gotta learn how to do that fast enough, right? Yeah, you're not wasting time as a seller and you're not wasting the buyer's time, but you're pointing them in the right direction and moving on to the next. SPEAKER_02: Oh, this is so good, Alice.

So just to recap quickly, first, I felt like you said, okay, let's diagnose what's happening with our sales right now. Then what kind of sales motion do we have? Inbound versus outbound. And then we can see how what kind of problem we're trying to solve for, you know, and then it's fine because I feel like 90% of the time companies will always blame sales.

And then they're not looking at something like you said, you know, maybe we need a marketing person to bring more inbound leads, which is completely different. And then from there, you're saying, okay, how have times changed? Are we in the same buying or are buyers buying the same way? Or do they have a different, you know, buying framework or buying process overall?

And there's a lot of like buyers' fatigue, I will say, because if I'm looking for a CRM, like you mentioned, there's thousands of options. Like, how do you start to even look for? And I agree. I mean, there's been times actually, and just a couple of months ago, I was looking into switching CRMs and there was just too many options.

And I said, you know what? I'm not even gonna do it right now. I'm just gonna stay put. Yeah.

So I I see that perspective as well on the buyer side. So um, did I miss anything on my kind of four points there? SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I think I think that's really it's there's a lot going on. Right, right.

And we're still hiring sellers the same way we always hired them. We're hiring the same type of seller that we've always hired, and now we bring them in and wonder why they're not successful. The world has changed, we need to change with it. We just can't.

Our hiring process needs to be revamped, right? Again, it's back to process. Like, what is your current hiring process? Is that serving you well?

Look at the last however many hires you made. I can't tell you how many companies I've been hearing, like, oh, yeah, we hired that person, they stayed about a year, they're gone. Okay, a year, what happened? Like, I know people change jobs, that's fine.

Two to five years is gonna be more normal, you know. Maybe three, okay, let's split it. Let's like three years, but a year, no, no one wants to have to change jobs again after a year. That's not fun for anyone.

Think about it, really, right? And so if that's happening, then what does that say about our hiring process, our onboarding process, our training? You know, are we choosing the right people? Are we training them properly?

So we really need to re-look at these hiring processes. SPEAKER_02: And might I add to that that if you have an enterprise sales motion and somebody leaves within a year, you probably just wasted so much money, so much ramp up time. SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about your customers, they just got loose of this new person and now they're gone. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so crazy.

Speaking of that, real quick, what's your opinion on like salespeople and like their short year stint? Because I feel like they get a lot of lack of a better word, you know, shit on them. And it's like, okay, but we have to look at the whole picture, right? If that's been their entire career of like one year, one year, then okay, maybe that is a person problem, but how how do you evaluate that?

What's your opinion on that? SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I think the world has changed. When I was younger, you would never have hired somebody who changed jobs every year. Yeah, wouldn't even consider them, right?

Doesn't matter what the track record is. But I do think that recruiters are out there heavily recruiting the best salespeople. And this happened to my brother. He he would get a new job and do really well and excel, and that he the recruiters would start.

He'd not even be six months in the seat, and the recruiters would start. Well, then these companies are dangling, you know, these lovely packages in front of him. And he's like, I can make more money, yeah. And some people are really driven by money, some people are not, right?

But so he was like looking at these jobs and thinking, wow, okay, sure, if you're gonna pay me that much, I'll move right now. As he, you know, became more mature, he would see the fallacy in that, right? Because you can usually make more money where you are, just go sell more, unless you're capped in some way or whatever, which is you know not typical. So I think I don't really want to hire salespeople who have had especially three in a row, one year stints.

I'm not interested in them. Yeah, but what I do is, and again, this takes time that nobody wants to spend. I go through every job on their resume and I ask them, how did you find this position? Why were you interested in it?

SPEAKER_01: Right. SPEAKER_00: Why did you leave your other position for this new position? And then I asked them, okay, and you worked there for a year, how did you leave it better than you found it? And then what drove you to the next position?

Why, why were you looking? Oh, I wasn't looking. They were recruiting me. Okay, that tells me something.

Or, oh, I was looking because the boss or the this or they changed my commission, or if it's if they're telling me it's somebody else's fault every single thing, then I'm like, oh, definitely don't want this person, right? But if they're telling me, well, you know what? I really didn't feel I could do my best work here because I wasn't prepared for what this environment was, and I didn't know how to help myself, but and I didn't have a leader that was helping me. So I knew I needed to look to go somewhere where they I could have help developing myself.

Oh, very smart. Okay, I like that answer, right? So I go through every job with them and ask them why they took that job, what they thought was better about it than where they were formerly working, why they left. I and I listen to hear whether they're taking responsibility for anything that happened, you know, and what their reasoning was.

And then I say to them, okay, so you say you want to find a home where you can stay and work, you know, maybe three to five years at this place, which is reasonable. What are the factors you're gonna use to make your decision? Because if they can't tell me something clear and clean that makes sense, I don't want to hire them. You know, if they're just looking for their next thing, if they're just looking for more money, because usually when they move, even though the package looks good, they don't make more money at first because it's their base, plus maybe a little bit of a you know, um a guarantee for a couple of months, but then they got to go sell something.

So it's I don't know. I mean, it's it's really hard. It is really hard to hire salespeople because they are selling you while you know, while you're interviewing and you have to do it, right? And learn kind of what's going on in their head, and it is not easy to do, and most hiring managers are terrible at it.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I agree. I think one question that I like to ask as well on that end is um similar to yours, is you know, what are the top three things that are important for you in your next move? And you can evaluate that based on their answer, right? Because it usually they'll say, Well, money, duh, okay, that's your salesperson, I get it.

Then it goes into, you know, a little bit more in depth of like, oh, leadership or having an inbound motion or this or that. And you start understanding a little bit more, kind of like peeling back the layers of a salesperson to really understand what's their motivation for moving or wanting something else. So that's that's really good. Um, I wanted to uh switch to our next session, which or section, which I call the rapid fire.

And it's kind of interesting, I guess, for you. You can um I'll let you decide if you want to answer it from your own perspective or on the companies that you hire or you work with perspective. But um, what is one tool that you or the companies that you're working with can live without right now in 2026? SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, I'm like, I feel like we're all tooled to death.

Too many tools. I so what can we? I mean, look, what does a salesperson need? They need a phone or a video communication, right?

Some sort of way to talk, have a conversation with people. They need a database, someplace to keep the information so they don't forget and it reminds them to do the next thing, right? I mean, and they need a and they need a place to organize their deals so they can see how the deal flow is. So, like, what else do you need?

Oh my gosh, but we have so, so, so many things, right? We need email, yes. We need communication tools, so we need some sort of email, some sort of device to have the conversation, a place to keep our information organized and a way to watch our deals flow, right? To to track our deals.

Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you, but I think AI is wonderful, but I think it's being misused. Um, I call it random acts of AI. Like everybody's just doing random acts of AI, they're using it to write, and they're doing a terrible job, and it's not helping us get conversations with people who can buy. So, I mean, a tool, I I don't even know that's a good answer.

SPEAKER_02: Communication tool. Yeah, you're there. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, tools that allow make it easy for you to communicate. Those are the tools you need.

SPEAKER_02: Love that, and I agree with AI, everything is so AI-based right now that it's not even letting people think, like use their brain cells to think. So love that. Um, what is your biggest growth lever for SaaS in 2026? Biggest growth lever, or something that you've helped implement.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I feel like we have to start listening and understanding what the humans need, right? You want to sell 5,000 seats, but is that really what we should do for this company? Like, I think the the biggest lever is care. Just care about the humans you're selling to, what you're selling to them, and will this actually advance their goal?

If you care about that, you will do better in this market. SPEAKER_02: Really good. What is one belief that you have that maybe most people will disagree with? SPEAKER_00: I think quotas should go away forever.

SPEAKER_02: Really? You have to elaborate a little bit because I think all of our salespeople are freaking out right now. SPEAKER_00: Well, I think salespeople hate quotas, and customers certainly hate quotas too, because I always tell salespeople you're trying to force something because your quota is you know, is this for this quarter? Closed dates come from customers, not quotas.

Yeah, that's good. You cannot force it, you have to do what's best for your customer always. And when we, you know, impart artificial quotas that were not well thought out or based on the market or based on what our customers are actually buying, then all we've done is put pressure on humans to do very bad behaviors, right? What happens when it's close to the end of the month and we're not hitting our quota?

The CEO yells, discount, call them back and tell them you'll do it for less, right? Like wrong answer, right? So, like we have very bad behavior. Salespeople start putting pressure on their customers, they their brains stop working and they stop asking good questions.

So they don't actually know what the closed data is or what the customer needs. Like quotas create bad behavior, and so there we need to rethink that completely and we need to forecast our goals differently based on the market and what customers are actually buying and how they're buying it. Sales cycles are longer than ever right now because of that, you know, lack of decision making confidence that we just talked about, right? Sales cycles are getting longer.

But you know, honestly, salespeople are making them longer. Yes, the customer is also, but salespeople do it because they they're juggling too many things, they're not paying attention, they don't use the tools they have to remind them. And a whole week goes by and they have made no contact with that person who was trying to buy from them, and or they make a contact that isn't that is useless, has no value, and they're just lengthening their own sales cycle. So they're getting distracted, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: If you had it Alice's way, what would it be in terms of like compensation? If what if you had it like your way, what would the compensation cost? SPEAKER_00: I think it's a real rethinking. I think that we need to have conversations with our current customers and learn more about the way they're buying their buy cycles and factor that in, and then use that to predict what our new customers will do.

And yes, I know companies need to grow, of course they do, but enforcing a quota isn't how you grow. Thinking about your market differently, um, perhaps marketing differently, having some events or doing something to gather the right people, you know, thinking about how full your pipeline is and getting it fuller. We don't have to worry about quotas if we have plenty of deals in our pipeline that we can work on. They're all just, you know, we're gonna we're gonna make plenty of money.

Um, do we need some goals? Yes. Do we need some timelines? Yes.

But artificial quotas that were built off of no or poor market research and no talking to customers just because we need 20% growth, the quota is 20% higher, doesn't work. And it never works. And that's why 50% of salespeople are not hitting their quota. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I've heard some crazy stories of um account executives, you know, that I've worked with where they're like, yeah, I had my quota at 3 million, I overachieved it to, you know, 4 million, and this year they raised it to six.

And I'm like, how why like what? Basically, nothing. SPEAKER_00: Sounds like you've already done a great job in that territory. Let's maintain that, let's find a new territory.

Like, like you don't just increase a quota because. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Um, okay, cool. We're we're getting to the end of it because I want to be respectful of your time.

I'm gonna ask you one last question when it comes to hiring and you know, sales skill set. In your opinion, what is it that separates like a true a player salesperson versus somebody that's just a good salesperson? SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is such a hard question to answer. And also, I just want to say hooray for the good salespeople because good, consistent salespeople do meet or almost meet, you know, they get to 80% or 90% of their quota and they do a good job and they're steady.

And a players are sometimes divas, they're sometimes you know, they go rogue, um, they're a little bit hard to manage sometimes. So, in my mind, when people think of a player, first of all, I need to know what do they mean, right? What do you mean by an A player? What's an A player to you, right?

And uh, because I think that again, what are we trying to solve for? Right? What does this person need to be really good at to win in that position in your company? And that's completely different than what it might be from where they came from.

So we really need to talk about what an A player is, what it looks like, what are the characteristics, how they fit in the culture, because we have some A players at some companies that are crushing it on their quota and making everybody else in the company miserable. Is that really an A player just because they bring in the revenue? What if I split that territory between two good salespeople and they really worked it? I bet we can make even more money.

And we don't have this toxic person running around our company making everybody crazy. So, again, be careful what you wish for. So, an A player should be described very carefully, and we should know what all those attributes are, and they're going to be different for every company. And we don't need to have an entire team of the best A players necessarily, but we can have some up-and-comers also and some good solid players, right?

What we want to do is get rid of everybody below that good threshold, and that's where most companies make the mistake. They're just hanging on to those salespeople way too long. It's either bring them up or get them out. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I totally agree with how you explain that.

And I also agree that you should not sacrifice hiring an A player for your culture because they will ruin not just I mean, not just them, but like the entire company. And you're probably as a CEO or leader are gonna hate going to work and trying to manage all these a players that kind of like you said, are divis. SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and I think if we change our if definition of a player, then then okay, because an A player should be somebody who is easy to work with. Yeah, an A player should be somebody who is team focused, everybody wins, and a player should be someone who does a great job all the time and exceeds our expectations some of the time.

Like, think about those things versus just when we think a player, we're like, oh my gosh, you know, they're going to be at 130% of quota. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. We're gonna have to do a part two because there's a lot more questions I want to ask, and there's so much good information, but we'll have to plan for a part two. And I do appreciate you.

Thank you so much for joining, being super transparent and just honestly diving into everything and just sharing your perspective and your experience. Um, I know I'm gonna have to re-watch this and take notes for myself. If you guys are gonna re-watch this later, make sure to have your note taker on. Or if you're old school and still like to use pen and paper, make sure to do that as well.

Uh, but absolutely feel free to connect with Alice. Alice, where can they find you? What's the best way to connect with you if they have questions or maybe they want to reach out to you about working with you? SPEAKER_00: You can go to AliceHyman.

com, or of course, you can find me on LinkedIn. But I do hope if you want to connect on LinkedIn, you will let me know that you heard me here on RV's show. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I appreciate that for sure. Awesome.

Thank you again, Alice. Thank you, everybody, for tuning, uh tuning in, and I'll see you all next time.