The Global Sales Capability Index: What 500,000 Data Points Reveal About Revenue Performance

Speaker A: Spending most of their time supporting the ramping reps or the low performers, whether that's, you know, performance improvement plans, coaching them, you know, up or out, and they're kind of overlooked. It's a big opportunity that's been missed.

Speaker B: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Sales Transformation Lab podcast. Today we have a special episode, one where I've got my co founder, uh, Matt Milligan with me. Hello, Matt.

Speaker A: Ash. It's not often we get to do this.

Speaker B: I know, it's fun, right? Today we are going to unbundle the global sales Index report, a fantastic report that we did recently. Six years of data. Over 500,000 data points and 45 countries were included in this. So I'm super excited, Matt, to go through this with you today.

Speaker A: Yeah. Looking forward to unbundling it.

Speaker B: So one of the most interesting and biggest facts that came out was around performance and revenue. Now every CRO is interested in knowing how to improve their performance. But the data said something really interesting and I want to get your thoughts on this. Top performing reps do six times more quota attainment than the bottom guys.

Speaker A: It's a big number.

Speaker B: And they have a 20% improvement in win rate M and an 18% deal size improvement.

Speaker A: Wow. It's a lot.

Speaker B: Where are you seeing this in clients right now? Are you seeing this across the board?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think 6x is a big number, right? I think we are for sure seeing a widening of the gap between high performers and the rest, um, of the. But when you lay out the numbers and, you know, when you just see the data, it tells such a compelling story. Like 6x is huge. That's, that's a lot. Um, 18% increase in win rate is nuts. You know, if you think the kind of average industry benchmark, if you look across all of our sectors, it tends to sort of average out about 30%. So if there's an 18% uplift, 20%,

Speaker B: uh, in win rate.

Speaker A: 20% in win rate and 18% in deal size. In deal size, yeah. So 20% is a big, it's a big jump. That's, that's a hell of a lot. Um, you know, so, yeah, I think what we're seeing is that obviously there's a lot of talk at the moment around the impact of AI and how AI is helping higher performers do more. Because I think a lot of the early adopters of these technologies have been the higher performers who are maybe carving out extra time in evenings and weekends to help them become more effective. Effective and efficient. Um, um, so maybe that's that's one of the, the drivers behind it. And we're sort of seeing that in some of the, the qualitative insights as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. It's uh, the gap between the A player and a C player is huge. But the other thing is companies are focusing more on trying to get those guys who are really performing badly to become an A player.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But the gap is so far, if you look at this now, six times the difference. So what companies should be focusing on actually is that middle. Frozen layer, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, the frozen middle. Yeah.

Speaker B: Tell me more about that.

Speaker A: Yeah, so, you know, this has been talked about for, for a long, long time. But I think what the latest data in our uh, report is showing that it's becoming more important than ever. And actually like, you're exactly right. You know, we often hear this from frontline leaders in particular. They get dragged away into spending most their time supporting the ramping reps or the low performers, whether that's, you know, performance improvement plans, coaching them, you know, up or out. And actually you got this kind of frozen middle, which is most of the population of the sales team and they're kind of overlooked. That's a big opportunity that's been missed.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. So in a, in a sales team, generally what we see across the data is a natural bell curve. Right. And the natural bell curve is with uh, A players at the other side of the bell curve on the right side and the lower performers on the uh, left hand side.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: But that middle is bell. Right. And that's moving that middle towards the right is kind of like where you're going to get the biggest impact on your revenue performance overall. And how do you focus on that rather than obsessing around the kind of C and the D players or the real slow underperformers in terms of getting the fastest impact.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's like one of our customers said the other day that whoever screams the loudest gets the most attention.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And quite often, you know, it's the underperformers or the ones who are disgruntled or unhappy in the role. And that's where a lot of frontline managers are kind of getting dragged into spending most of their time.

Speaker B: So another big stat that came out from this data map.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Was that, uh, 76% of salespeople lack self awareness and there's a perception gap between them and what their manager thinks of their skills.

Speaker A: Pretty crazy. Yeah. So two thirds, more than two thirds, three quarters. Um, yeah. That's, that's huge. I mean I guess we see this quite a lot, right. We talk a lot about self awareness and it's really difficult to improve your skills and if you don't understand what your strengths and what your improvement areas are. And I think this statistic kind of really hits home that uh, there's a long way to go for the industry in terms of building that self awareness.

Speaker B: Yeah. And what's very interesting about this though as well is that the bottom performers were five times more likely to have a lack of self awareness versus the top performers.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I guess it makes sense. Right? Um, self awareness, what the data point is showing us is that self awareness is an ingredient for self success. Um, so those high performers are you know, using, building that self awareness using that muscle of what it is they need to improve, to move a deal forward, to hit their number more consistently. And then you've got this kind of disillusionment with the lower performers who overestimate their capabilities.

Speaker B: Uh, also known as a Dunning Kruger effect as well. Right now.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah. We get this lack uh, of self awareness in both sides but more so in the bottom performers. So this is quite interesting because most sales teams training, um, and energy put into by sales enablement is focused on the people who shout the loudest. And usually those people are shouting the loudest are asking for what they need and what they think they need. But that's where the gap is. Which is why at Uhubs we never ever just do a single way, um, assessment. We always focus on doing a objective way of doing that. A 360 degree view review of an, in a, of a rep. Ah, we always do a 180 degrees review of the rep where the manager also has an input into this. Right. And we call this the blind spots. Uh, now all our clients love this. Blind spots. Right? Tell us more about the blind spots.

Speaker A: Yeah, so blind spots is a really interesting data point because it's not something that you can read from your CRM, it's not something that you can gain from your call intelligence platform. A uh, blind spot is a really unique data point that looks at the level of alignment between a frontline leader and their direct reports. And exactly as you said, we see that there is this huge perception gap among sales teams. Um, and once you start tracking blind spots, what we see in our customers is that as that alignment improves over time, through better coaching, better transparent feedback and more self awareness, performance levels start to increase as well. And we've actually done some research on that. But yeah, we've seen a, uh, improvement in alignment impact performance versus quota by as much as 25%. So it's really significant.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's so significant. It's a 1.6x difference in terms of when a manager is lined with. With a rep. And a rep is a matter aligned with the manager's thinking. The difference in quota attainment is 1.6.

Speaker A: It's a big, big variable. Right. It's a big factor.

Speaker B: So the more alignment there is with the manager view of the skill set, of the rep, the higher propensity that they are going to hit their quota.

Speaker A: Yeah. I also think it's a really interesting data point to look at for ramping reps as well, because naturally the blind spots are going to be larger when a team member is new to the organization and the manager is still taking time to observe what they're seeing and getting that kind of understanding of where that individual is at. Successful, um, ramp, I think, also shows up in blind spots. We expect to see those blind spots wars decrease as a rep ramps up to target.

Speaker B: But you know what it's like, Matt. Every sales manager thinks they know their reps inside out, but we found that that's not the case. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the data shows it's. It's not the case. Yeah.

Speaker B: Sometimes reps are overconfident. Underconfident. And then when managers are trying to coach that rep, they have this kind of frame of reference that they're using to coach this individual, and the alignment's not there. So the more alignment there is in understanding where I feel I'm at and the manager thinks they're at, the better it is to do coaching to create the safe space, to create the opportunity to, uh, train and upskill in the right kind of skills. And that's what coaching is about, Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I think the other word here is honesty. Yeah, we often hear that as well.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, um, frontline leaders are, uh, always amazed at kind of how honest the qualitative responses are that we get back through our capability assessments. And it's interesting because this data point, you know, 76%, um, data point shows that there's maybe not enough honesty in the manager and team member relationships.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: In the market.

Speaker B: Yeah. And also, I mean, one of the things that we do with our clients where we found there's a misunderstanding, is that they don't understand what capabilities and skills are, and they confuse that with, um, uh, raw activity metrics. Yeah. For example. Right. Just pick the Phone up and do it. And don't forget, a lot of managers as we know, are promoted into management roles because they're good at being a salesperson.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that does. And the fact that they're good at sales is a good thing, but that doesn't necessarily translate to them being a good coach.

Speaker A: 100. It's a different role. Right. It's a different sport almost.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: This, the capabilities that got you to being top of the leaderboard as a salesperson aren't um, the capabilities that will enable you to scale a high performing team and lead, you know, with conviction and provide feedback and guidance and structure and use data to inform your leadership approach. These are all new skills that have to be learned.

Speaker B: Totally. Totally. And the people side of it is really important. Right. Because skills sit with people and they're not something that you could see in the CRM, but you judge or you think you could see in the CRM. If a deal is not moving fast enough, what is that? What's the leading indicator behind that? Because what you see in the CRM is lagging mostly.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And I think this is where you know, most leaders have historically just stopped at uh, CRM dashboards. And that's the concept of the dashboard manager.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then to your point, uh, the behaviors that that drives is just kind of beating do more, make more dials, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but that's not particularly helpful um, to, to the team member. Um, and I think, you know, coaching is a really big gap as well. You know, obviously we talk about that a lot. True coaching.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Actually helping ask open ended questions to help the coachee find the answers themselves rather than just giving them the answers which high performing reps, term managers tend to fall into that trap. Let me just show you how it's done. But actually that's not helping the coachee get anywhere.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And the big risk factor we see there as well is that if that sales manager leaves what they often leave behind is a very, a team with very low capabilities, they have difficulty standing on their own two feet because uh, the high performing manager was doing most of the work for them.

Speaker B: All right, this is another interesting thing that came up. 29% of underperformers that we identified in our clients later on hit their quota.

Speaker A: So 29% of the team members in our data set that were previously underperformers leveled up to become above target.

Speaker B: Correct. Because we continuously monitor how they're doing. And that ability to continuously to monitor, monitor them to the end goal has given Us these clear insights, this longitudinal insight which is very rare actually in industry, get this kind of ongoing insight because training and many of these kind of enable. It's kind of one hit wonder, uh, kind of like let's get in, do an intervention and move out. But to track something over time. And this data point is very unique to us because it's giving you that long term view of our ah, interventions. And is sales enablement and is the strategy actually working?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's higher than I thought it would be.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: If you think about across the entire data set which is, you know it's a significant number here. Right. We're talking about thousands of salespeople.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Around the world and then you're looking at the kind of headline statistics that kind of less than half of them overall are hitting target. But you know, we're actually seeing movement like we are seeing progress. So 30% of the entire population have leveled themselves. Like leveled up. Yeah, it's a big number. It is.

Speaker B: And the challenge is that most people think about looking at teams capabilities as a one off exercise. But you have to do this on an ongoing basis. You've got to have a cadence to track this. Now we're looking at uh, individuals in our data set who've gone through the process four times and it's very efficient to go through because once you've done it, once you get the baseline and then thereafter you're getting this kind of constant data sources that coming in to support the actual uh, change in these

Speaker A: individuals comes part of the workflow.

Speaker B: Correct, correct.

Speaker A: And I think what will be really interesting for the next index is to look at some of the specific initiatives that our uh, customers are running that are helping them move the needle and get that 30% above target that were previously below.

Speaker B: And also in the next edition, Matt, we're going to be including behavior scores directly from call Insights.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's where it starts to get really exciting.

Speaker B: Right. So you can learn something, but then is the behavior changing? So we're now tracking the way the behavior is changing because if you learn something, the output of learning something is to apply the habit of the behavior.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And if it just happens once or twice and doesn't continue, the habit is not there and therefore you're still going to lose the impact of the training, Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: So now we can track that in our platform and you can see that ongoing. So the second edition is going to be even more insightful because we've got extra data layers which will bring out more insight.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it demonstrates why, you know, we call it the, we refer to it internally as the Holy Trinity. Right. Like you have to be looking at capabilities, you know, the knowledge and the skills as one input. You have to then be looking at behaviors which is coming from, as you mentioned, those actual calls in the field. And then you have to be looking at KPIs as the lagging metric that those two things are driving. If you don't have a combination of all three of those things, you're always kind of fumbling a little bit in the dark. And I think we've seen historically most leadership teams only lead and manage through CRM data. Then with the arrival of call recording software the last five or so years, they're using a combination of those two. But if you don't have that capability layer that sits on top, you have no direction. You don't actually know what the specific area of improvement needs to be that's going to move. You know, like you said, what is the capability that's going to drive, result in a better behavior, that's going to result in a better metric.

Speaker B: If you look at your CRM and find a problem, you're six months too late.

Speaker A: That as well.

Speaker B: Because what we've seen in the data set is that the, the capability moves first before the performance does.

Speaker A: Yeah. Depending on your sales cycle length. You know, if you're selling a really transactional, that's true product, a lot of uh, our, you know, travel customers, it might be kind of like you might be a week or two late.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Some of our more enterprise software customers or, you know, logistics businesses, 12 to 18 months.

Speaker B: Which is really important that you said that because this is why longitudinal data over a time frame is really important. Right. Because sales cycles are different for everybody. Right. So having it over the year or two years, three years, you can then see the impact of the interventions and the change. Not just having a snapshot and seeing it move before it moves in the CRM or doesn't move in the CRM in this case, if you're not performing.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. And look, I think it goes back to this. As revenue professionals, we are all very short term. Yeah. We have a very short term mindset. Right. Every quarter is the biggest quarter of our careers. As a chief Revenue Officer, chief commercial, Chief Chief Sales Officer, you're only ever 2/4 away from losing your job. I think it's fair to say we're seeing at the moment more turnover in CXO roles than ever before. A, uh, lot of chopping and changing of CROs coming and going.

Speaker B: 18 months tenure.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: On average. Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's, I mean, maybe for the next index we do a little research piece on that because my. Based on what we're seeing in the market, I would say that's going down even below 18 months.

Speaker B: Why do you think that is?

Speaker A: I think we've got a lot of inflated expectations right now. A lot of pressure on public markets from AI. Um, certain sectors, obviously, you know, software, which we do quite a bit of work with software companies. A lot of, you know, declining public sector valuations on those tech stocks.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Which is putting a lot of pressure and I think that's trickling down. And I think you've then got, you know, obviously we specialize at the private equity stage of the market.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: You've got a lot of assets tied up where private equity firms have invested five or ten years ago.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: There's no line of sight to an exit right now. Um, so they're shaking the tree, you know, and they, they have to try and do something differently to, to grow revenue. Um, rightly or wrongly, you know, but I guess, you know, the all, all of the chief revenue, chief commercial officers we work with, they know that it's, it's the game. Right. It's, it's like football management.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Uh, you get, that's why you get paid the big bucks and, uh, you're next on the line if, if it's not working as the board want it to.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And the challenge that's always been in this industry is that we've always been using data which is old. There's a lack of benchmarks and freshness of data. And here at YOU hubs, our data is really fresh. It's constantly changing. Markets are changing, sales cycles are changing, AI products are coming in. All that changes the way the benchmarks work. What are the thresholds? What are your expectations of your sales team, for example? Knowing those in the context of what's happening in the industry, in your industry as a vertical but also as a wider piece is important.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And I think, look, there's an acceptance that I'm hearing from the market now that the playbook of the last five to 10 years is out the window.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, you know, a, uh, customer said this to me last week. He said whatever challenge he's faced in his career, there's always been someone out there who's done it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: He said the problem in the market at the moment is, is there's no one out there that's done it because we're all rebuilding the playbook in this AI world. We're all really figuring out what works.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So it's placing a lot of pressure on all of us as leaders, you know, navigating businesses through this period. Um, so it's difficult times for sure, but um, it's going to be super interesting. Like you said, we've got this pulse on the industry. We're seeing loads of really interesting changes in the market, even down to like the profile of a successful Salesperson is, is evolving.

Speaker B: 100. I mean we used to think the standard profile of an extrovert who can go out there and do deals is the one that's going to win the game. But what I'm seeing are more, uh, consultative approach to sales and the introverts coming through as ah, stronger salespeople.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: In this environment.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because the skills that they need to have are more around consultative storytelling.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Problem solving, being a trustworthy partner to the person they're selling to. Yeah. And that's interesting because the market's changing fast and the time when everyone was getting inbound leads and inquiries is drying up. New skills like outbound now need to be taken over.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But AES and people who've been in the role for a long time with higher tenure, they struggle with those skills.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we're seeing a rise, like you said, of the human skills.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's like the, the humans are moving more in towards focusing on the doing what humans do best, which is those human skills. It's the relationship building, the storytelling. So yeah, you got this rise of um, agents doing and humans being. Which I think is a really interesting.

Speaker B: But what's also interesting in that context then is that we know everyone's using AI tools and there's a ton of them out there. But if you don't fix the capability and the skills of your team, all you really are doing is adding a lot of AI multiplication on activity and you're still missing out on conversion on your pipeline.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. That was one of the most interesting insights from the most recent index. Uh, I, uh, thought personally.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, we're seeing that. We are. Okay. We are seeing increase in throughput. Agents are helping us do more.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But they're not necessarily helping us do better. Uh, and I think that's the next, the next phase of this transformation that the industry is going on.

Speaker B: So one of the things we've seen um, with Croes thinking is should we hire more people?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Should we Just fire the ones which are good enough. M. Or should we focus on the ones we already have? What's your view on this?

Speaker A: If the portfolio companies have the commercial capabilities to get to that next milestone. And oftentimes when a leader comes into one of these organizations, one of the first problems that they need to solve is figuring out do I have the right players with the right capabilities in the right positions that can get us there. Um, because if you think about again going back to our earlier point around two quarters to save your job, you don't have long to make these decisions.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because ramp times are six months. That's basically, that's your two quarters gone. So you've got to make these decisions quickly as a leader coming into role. So look, I think it, it depends on the organization and it depends on the current capability profile that a leader inherits, um, when they come into the role. I think some of the data from the report that was particularly interesting was the case being made for working on improving capability, um, rather than purely hiring.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, I think the default mode at the moment there's a lot of, obviously a lot of narrative around cut headcount, um, you know, just kind of remove junior talent entirely, focus on experience and but it's interesting because so uh, you know the report looked at some of the data so you know we looked at moving uh, some of that frozen middle. So we did a, you know, a piece of research on 20 mid tier performers, um, who are currently at uh, you know, below quota.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And what's interesting is that if you can lift that frozen middle, um, or underperforming cohort, if you can move those 20 um, reps up into the higher performing quadrant, um, so if you can, can sort of improve their quota retainment by just 20% at a 500k annual quota, uh, that's worth 2.4 million in additional revenue to the business across 20 reps. What's interesting is that if you went with the alternative strategy, so instead of investing in those 20 mid tier reps. Yeah. If you move them out the business and you hired um, well you would require 12 brand new hires. So you get rid of 20, you go out, you hire 12. Even if you get those um, all 12 of those hires successfully ramped and hitting target, you're only looking at a 1.2 million revenue benefit. So you've really got your work cut out. You know, if, if you're culling, if you're, you're getting rid of headcount and you're rehiring you're having to, you're putting yourself in quite a risky position. You've got to really back yourself that you've got the ability and the network to access the right talent with the right capabilities. Um, you've got to back yourself that you've got, uh, a product or a solution and emotion that those reps can come in and sell. And you got to back yourself that there's sufficient pipeline in place for them. Um, otherwise you could go out to market, you could make those 12 highs, and even if you get them all up to speed, you're still not going to be generating the incremental revenue that you are if you get those mid and low performers up to the level.

Speaker B: Yeah. So old strategies of the past no longer are, uh, commercially viable. You come in, see a team, get rid of the ones which are the lowest performers and try and replace them with some new people.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then hope that you hit your forecast.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, in essence, what the data is showing us is that improving 20 existing low performers is worth 12 new hires to your business. And that ties in nicely with the narrative that we're hearing from boards. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The pressure is all about do more with less leaner headcount, use AI to make everybody more efficient.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, I think the key component in this equation is, is how do you figure out who is worth investing in in the first place and who has the capability profile that can make that step up and that leap? Um, and that's where, you know, having a capability benchmark is really, really powerful as a tool.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. Big question, big problems in the industry right now, Matt. And I keep hearing this, pipeline, pipeline, pipeline,

Speaker A: never enough pipeline. I don't think there ever has been enough pipeline.

Speaker B: Everyone struggles with it. But one of the things that we do say is that if you do have a pipeline and you have a strong enough pipeline, if you're not improving the skills of the team to convert the pipeline that you do have, then you're always going to say you need more pipeline. So we need to improve the win rates, we need to improve the sales cycle lengths, we need to improve the cross selling and the upselling. Yeah, right. Because that's what's going to grow the accounts and revenue to the business. Not just trying to say it's about a volume of pipeline. Yes, pipeline is an issue, but how do we, how are you seeing CROs think about this right now?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think quality is for sure an important factor. Um, in terms of volume, I think the other issue or challenge that we're seeing in the market at the moment is revenue, uh, leaders over inflating their pipeline. So the board is pricing so much pressure on them to increase pipeline, increase pipeline, increase pipeline. But like how much of that pipeline is, is real? How much of it is actually shouldn't be in there. It should actually be qualified out because uh, it's either not ICP or there's not actually a clear economic buyer in the deal for example. So I think that's a big risk factor as well is like inflating the pipeline just to kind of appease and satisfy your board. Yeah, very dangerous. Risky business. Because then as you said you could be sort of setting yourself up for failure with really low conversion rates. Um, there's one other point there that's that I think is interesting as well however for you. You mentioned the importance of cross sell and upsell and retention.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: A lot of the businesses that we work with are between sort of you know, 20 and 200 million in revenue. M and there's a lot of talk in the moment around kind of what is a moat, what is a defensible moat. Is it you know, because products, if you talk about here about technology businesses, a lot of features um, are now very, you know, in the market's mind easy to replicate through AI.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Well actually a customer I had with a uh, uh, customer, uh conversation I had last week, we were talking about revenue is a moat. If you're at 50 million or 100 million, pretty hard to get to 50 million or 100 million as a business. So that is in in a way kind of a ah, defensible mode. So retaining that revenue is so important in this current market.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And making sure that you're investing in your post sales motion and you've got the right team members with the right capabilities on that side of the business. Because if you can protect that revenue during this period of um, saaspocalypse AI doom, um that's something to kind of really protect.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. We're seeing when we're building capability frameworks for some of our clients, expansion sales and it is becoming more of an interesting capability itself. And how do you track that? But, but also we're not just seeing the data from AES and SDRs in this data set. We're also looking at CS people and solutions, engineers and people who are involved in sales process to actually increase the sales price, average order value over time. This land and expand motion, this idea of being able to serve a client, solve a problem but also to Expand that account with the sales team, with the CS team, with the solutions engineers. Yeah, it's now becoming much more of a bigger team play with the revenue Org, not just sales and SDRs, uh, and AES, which is what I'm finding, which is really interesting because there's a lot of cross pollination between that uh, and also from a talent management perspective. The thing that I'm seeing is we're seeing SDRs get promoted into AE roles or AES getting promoted in CS roles and Vice versa and moving around. Yeah, retaining talent and retention. But how do you know what skills they have to do that? And one of the things that we noticed from our data set, we helped one of our clients look at this was how do you look at talent mobility within your revenue org? Yeah, to make the most out of people who are really good at um, speaking to clients and consulting with them and storytelling and building out this narrative to be able to expand deals versus somebody who's really good at getting that first deal in.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really big one at the moment for sure. There's just a lot of innovation happening with regards to org design at the moment.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: You know and obviously the examples there you talk through a kind of more software related but you know, even seeing a lot of innovation towards more of a POD structure like you spoke about where actually you know you will have a, you know, maybe a pre sales engineer, you'll have an account executive or a business development manager, um, uh, you'll create this POD structure, then you actually incentivize and commission the pod. So they kind of have a shared target and a shared number to go after, which I think is really interesting model. Um, you know, and then also seeing a lot of innovation on our professional services customers where they're starting to think about the split of business development roles versus delivery roles. How do you get that balance and that mix? Right. There's a bit of a tendency to maybe hire too many bds when actually what you need to think about doing is making sure that you've got subject matter experts that have enough commercial capabilities to uh, source pipeline and close. Close pipeline essentially.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're seeing that with clients right now as you said, where professional services specifically where a certain type of role, a technical consultant or a uh, solutions engineer, they're looking for them to build more sales skills. And sales skills can sound like a dirty word to some of these people. Right. Because I'm a consultant, I'm a technical, technical person. But sales skills uh, are being able to Tell a great story, give compelling evidence, use data to tell a great story and explain to clients how they can make something. Solving problems, really.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: So they actually suited, they're the best people suited to learn the sales skills because they can solve problems, technically understand them. They need those extra skills to be able to persuade, to build a narrative, to carry the deal flow forward, time management, all these other skills which are

Speaker A: also becoming more important for those roles entirely. Yeah. And again, you know, another interesting vertical, uh, that we do a lot of work in is travel. And you think about the kind of unique pressures and seasonal volatility of the travel industry. So much pressure is placed upon certain quarters, certain months.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, and actually what we're seeing is that it's the longer tenure travel consultants that are really able to consistently execute and deliver. But it's taken them five years to get there.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: That's a really long ramp period to wait five years for someone to get up to speed and become confident in their capabilities and their right and their sales abilities. So, you know, anything that we can do to put the right interventions in place to reduce that ramp period.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: From five years to three to two. It's going to make massive difference to these, these organizations.

Speaker B: Yeah, huge, huge. So there's a lot of investment right now from companies and CROs into coaching. But what we're seeing is that number one, sales managers themselves need to improve their skills in coaching. And the data that we hold on the YouHub platform right now, we have a lot of sales manager effectiveness data in terms m of coaching.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is a unique insight that we give our clients. And we're also seeing the investment in managers becoming important, not just the reps and hitting the reps on the head going, you need to improve. What are you seeing in the industry and with clients that we're working with right now in terms of the types of strategies that CROs could think about when it comes to the manager layer, not just the replayer.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really big one. Um, really big topic at the moment, isn't it? How do you optimize that, that manager layer? Look, I think a couple of, a couple of things. The manager role is for sure changing in lots of organizations. So I think we're moving away from a world where frontline managers are seen as purely measurers. You know, they have dashboards and they're measuring their team and then they're performance managing. And I think there's now an expectation with AI for managers to sort of become much more either Player, coach. So you have to be doing some form of selling as well as leading which uh, creates pressures and interesting dynamics on its own. But I think also there's also now an expectation on managers to become builders, to actually use the latest AI tools to build agents for their team. And so almost a little bit of crossover into, you know, AI engineering and rev ops, um, which is a really fluid space at the moment. So the role of the manager is changing. I think that's one point which is really important to think about. I think the second point is just a huge capability gap that we see which is around coaching.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: a lot of managers think that they are coaching, but what the data ah, is showing us is that the reps don't feel like they're being coached. So there's this disconnect in the industry. Um, so you uh, know, I think some of the latest tools and technology have a big role to play in terms of streamlining the manager's workflow and making their life a lot easier. You know, we're talking a lot at the moment about MCP and you know, we're connecting the uhub's data natively inside of the manager's workflow.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: To just really support and really operate as that chief of staff.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: For managers to help them become more effective. Um, and I think the other theme we're seeing in the market at the moment, which came out in the research is also consistency. So how do you get, if you've got 15 managers, how do you get them all one working more consistently as a leadership team? Yeah, you'll have managers over here with their own set of ways of doing things, ways of running one to ones. You've got a different manager here who may doesn't run one to ones. Really difficult as a CRO to build a consistent revenue engine if your managers are all off doing completely different things. Um, it's a big gap in the market for sure, but also I think a huge value creation opportunity if you can fix that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And some of the data that we've produced for some of the clients is to for example create peer to peer learning opportunities for managers.

Speaker A: It's a really good one.

Speaker B: Right. Because when you have managers who are doing two different things and they're uh, excelling in those two different things, why not bring them together to learn on how to do that and cohort those into training opportunities for managers themselves.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And we do this across the reps as well as peer to peer, but for managers specifically, because different techniques, different tools, different backgrounds, potentially different, you know, 10, uh, years makes a huge difference. But the biggest thing for managers is time. Right. And that's where you're talking about the mcp.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And the ability for them to access our data and use it in a way that's really in the flow is important because they just, they don't have time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. We've got managers right now who are prepping their one to ones using our MCP in five minutes with pure data led insights. Right. Using KPIs, using the calls. We're using the uh, pulse technology and using all this data layer to create really detailed, precise coaching opportunities that saves them a ton of time. That's just an example of day to day and how to utilize this and then using it ongoing. The data is fresh, it's coming through and it's always part of we're doing. So we also help with the data that we produce and how you can become a better manager.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is really important. Right?

Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. And I think for like, for those listening who aren't familiar, MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. So this is the, you can think about it as the unified API for LLMs to communicate with third, uh, party tools. So that's really powerful because what it does is it brings the benchmarking data that we gather here at Uhubs and it brings the context layer of the capability framework, which really operates as a framework for managers to lead and coach against. And it brings all of that into their workflow. You know, most of them are spending most of their days inside of tools like Claude. Yeah, they now don't need to go anywhere to access all of this power, uh, all this powerful insight. So it's, it's at their fingertips.

Speaker B: Well Matt, it's been a pleasure, everyone listening. If you want to grab the Global Sales Capability Index, it's the world's first level of data that we have in this 500,000 data points. It's available on our website. Go and check it out. It's a free benchmark report you can download directly from the website. And if you've got any comments or thoughts, feel free to reach out to us. We're on LinkedIn and we look forward to hearing more about the insights we shared here and how you utilize them. And Matt, it's been a pleasure to come into the podcast studio to do this in a hot, sunny day.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's warm up here in the studio. Uh, but yeah, go grab a copy of the report folks, and um, reach out to us and we'd love to do a walkthrough of some of the key insights we're hearing from the market.

Speaker B: Thank you, everybody.