TOO MUCH FIREFIGHTING? TIME TO LEAD, The Global Sales Leader Podcasts ep 91

Speaker A: Hello, good morning, good evening and good afternoon. And wherever you are in this wide wonderful world we live in, you are very welcome to the global Sales Leader uh, podcast. I'm your host, Jason Cooper. Every time I run this podcast, I only ever speak to people that I do want to speak to because I find this extremely exciting to speak to some phenomenal guests from around the world that I can selfishly learn from and impact what I do, but then contain that ripple effect forward so it impacts other people's lives as well. So looking at the areas I'm deeply fascinated by is the process of psychology, human behavior, behavior, behavioral economics, and how these disciplines influence the process of people skills and sales. Sales leadership and performance. Sales is obviously perceived as ah, a methodology, a process. But the real edges always come down to people, how we think, how we behave and especially under pressure and how leaders can create phenomenal environments where teams can constantly and consistently improve. So Stephen. Yes, Stephen Rosen.

Speaker B: I'm here, you're here, you're.

Speaker A: Well, you're very welcome. I'm going to give you a little bit of a synopsis, Stephen, and then I want you to fill in the blanks that I will probably miss out on. And it's absolutely snowing now. When I first spoke to you before, it wasn't snowing. It's actually snowing proper.

Speaker B: It must be coming from Canada.

Speaker A: I think I'm blaming you. It's the Canadians.

Speaker B: Yes, it's always us.

Speaker A: So Stephen has spent years studying one of the toughest roles in business, the sales manager's role. In his latest book, what is that? Focused. Yes, A thought leadership discipline for sales managers under pressure. He explores why so many capable sales managers end up trapped in constant reaction firefighting deals, responding to internal pressures and solving problems instead of focusing on the most important thing is leading their teams and help them, inspire them to help them smash their numbers and all of the things that they should be doing. And we're looking at uh, today we're going to explore these ideas or some of these ideas and a little bit more and how I impact leaders can talk about sales leadership to create focus and discipline, but that's a little bit about you. But I want to dig a little bit deeper before we get into those fundamentals stuff that everyone should be doing. Well, what got you to where you are now, Stephen? I'm fascinated by your steps to being a high performance leader and, and uh, thought leader in your field.

Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me and uh, it's great to, to be with you. Um, if I go Way back, way, way back. Uh, I started as a sales rep and never wanted to be in sales. It was, you know, as a finance guy. Uh, I wanted to be doing big deals and mergers and acquisitions. But when I moved from Montreal to Toronto, I needed to pay my rent and took uh, a job in sales selling over the counter products to pharmacies and supermarkets. And I was very fortunate that uh, to uh, you know, the company was growing. I had seven jobs in seven years. And I went from a sales rep to running three divisions as VP of sales and marketing. So I was kind of a go to guy. Didn't know what I was doing, but

Speaker A: I'll make it happen.

Speaker B: And their focus goes way back to that. I never really reflected on it until I started my own consulting organization. But um, the one thing that I did because I was never trained for any of my roles. So from rep to regional manager to national manager to VP to adding other divisions. The one trick that I realized and I coach clients on it and it's not complicated but I call it the three things and what I learned, uh, if you asked me how focus came to be, if uh, my belief was if I focused on three things, if I figure out the three most important things, even if they weren't the most important, they were close. And I did those extremely well, success would come. And that was my trick to success. And I break down on my whiteboard. I have whiteboards behind me, probably just off in the corner here. But when I was in industry, uh, there we go. So I call it a focus board. Actually I wrote an article many years ago calling do you have a focus board? But so not to make a long story longer because that's what I'm doing.

Speaker A: The three. The power three.

Speaker B: Power of three. So when I went in my own practice, I used to write 22 years ago about focus focus. Uh, you go back on my blog, I think I still have those focused articles up. Fast forward 22 years later. Even my coaching course that I developed 10, 12 years ago is called Focused Sales coaching. I have a program for sales execution called Focused Sales Execution. So I've been living focused for pretty much all through my career because I believe that's one of the keys to success. Now focused isn't only about the three things, but that's how I've kind of got there because that was a belief. You know, again, you know we're as, as we're promoted, especially in a sales organization, uh, there's very little training. As you move to the top, you gotta sink or swim. Pressure's on, you gotta produce, and then it's figuring out how. And for me, focus is critical. And what I've realized, seeing the same pattern in organizations for the last 10 years, especially through Covid, is that most organizations are not focused. They're trying to do too many things and be a jack of all trades, as opposed to a master of a few.

Speaker A: Uh, so let's break that down, and let's break that down into the power 3. Because we know the power 3 is linguistically very powerful in influence. And it's also politicians would do it to influence and persuade. You have a look at all SaaS, products that are selling. They do it in 1, 2, 3, starting to amend into a story. So there's lots of power of three. So let's break that down into your world of the power of three in

Speaker B: terms of what are the three things to be successful? Okay, so that's a great question. So for sales leaders, uh, you know, one of the biggest problems is they're rewarded for doing things, for being busy, for being responsive, and for stepping in and rescuing deals. And the whole point of focus is that is not their job. Their job is to lead, as you said earlier. Uh, and what that includes to me is coaching and developing their people to be better. Not m necessarily coaching deals, but coaching behaviors and competencies. Two is holding people accountable, which is having regular meetings to keep things on track. And the third component, in my opinion, is execution. Uh, and execution should only be three things as well. So to me, the three things that managers do when they're leading their team is not rescuing deals. It's not being the most responsive person in the world. As I tell many clients that at the end of the year, if sales aren't there, no one's going to say, oh, my God. Stephen got back to me within five minutes when I sent him a note. They're going to say, steven missed his numbers. So I really try to get to the heart of what's going to make sales managers successful. And in the process of doing that, what I realize is, uh, the system doesn't reward that M. I don't call it a book. I call it an operating system or an operating manual. Because what corporations are, the next level of management rewards is responsiveness. Oh, what's happening with this deal, Stephen, can you let me know? Stephen, who's the manager, says, okay, I'll let you know, but I got to drop my coaching session I had with John. Right? Or I'm so busy that I can't coach you know, many times I hear that, and I go, and I kind of think, I'm teaching you how to coach. I've given you the skills, but you got to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm jumping in there. I've noticed, and I notice in your book as well, that, uh, we give the people the tools, but they don't absolutely follow up with it. It's so powerful. When you do coaching, you do coach really well. And it's something that I believe, uh, by coaching, you can impact their world by asking some really good and great questions that will pick up something in their brain and spite them. But, uh, what's stopping them from doing that? That's what I'm always curious about.

Speaker B: From doing the effective coaching.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, you know, it's interesting. It's an interesting question because, um. Uh, I think if you ask most sales managers and you ask the next level, whether it be CRO or VP of sales, is coaching important? The answer is yes. If you ask the VP of sales, do your managers coach? Oh, yes, they do. If you ask the sales reps, does your manager coach you? Uh, not very often. So there's. There's a disconnect. Right. Between how often people think they're doing it versus how they're doing it. So originally I thought it was an issue of training and understanding how to coach, because I know when I was in industry, I wasn't the best coach. I've learned coaching over the last 20 years and probably could do better at it, but I wasn't a great coach. I was a lot of other things. So. So one, when I started my business, I started training managers how to coach. I had a coaching methodology, and I realized that was great, but it dissipated like most training.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: And for the last, I don't know, 15 years, I've said I will not train unless I have a coaching engagement to follow up and reinforce.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: And that's worked well, but it's not perfection. And what I realized is companies who, the head of sales would sit in on the coaching and get up there and say, whatever we've learned over the last two or three days, we're going to implement. And that's the enforcement component question jumping in there.

Speaker A: Uh, because what I've noticed in some organizations compared to others, is if it's coaching culture from the top down, everyone, the CEO, uh, he's coaching their team and their. Their coaching and their coaching and their coach, then there's a coaching culture, and everyone's respectful for this. But if I taught you how to Coach, but I don't follow up. But my manager, manager isn't coaching me, then it's almost lost and dissipated. And that's the frustration. And for both of us, because we both see the power of it, um, we could be certified in this, that and the other. But if you're not practicing what you're doing, you're not impacting your team's performance.

Speaker B: Precisely. And so the sort of the final agreement, uh, ingredient is what I should say, uh, to me is, you know, certainly the learning component, the reinforcement. But what's missing, I believe in most organizations is the enforcement.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And enforcement doesn't have to be punitive. It has to be systematic. It has to be on key things. But the conversation between the sales manager and the next level, whether it be VP or CRO, changes. It changes from, how's it going with the Smith deal to have you coach Johnny, what are you coaching him on? How is he progressing on those one or two or three key skills? And how often are you out there helping your people get better? And that has to be regular, disciplined conversations because then it triggers that, hey, my manager's going to ask me, xyz. That must be important. And right now, because we live in, uh, you know, pressure's high, especially in the SaaS business march right now, uh, when we're recording this, this is a busy time. And what's the first thing that happens when you're trying to close the first quarter?

Speaker A: Coaching drops.

Speaker B: It doesn't hold. And that's where, you know, if we talk about the three things, it's really up to management to make sure your three things hold. Because if it doesn't hold under pressure, it's not really part of your three things.

Speaker A: And it should be. If you have a meeting, it stays in the calendar, even if it's the last day of the month. Because we know, uh, uh, and I taught a whole load of sales on Friday and it was the last day of the month and I knew that they were under pressure. And, um, I just banned mobiles and laptops in the workshop because I thought the only way you're going to impact your world is to listen, to understand and write it down and journal everything else. But, uh, I want your Monday to impact. If you haven't reached Target by now, today, don't leave everything to the last day. Your clients and customers will know that, uh, anyway.

Speaker B: And you condition them. Yeah, yeah, uh, precisely. So, you know, it's very hard with all our technology because we have slack, we, uh, have texts, we have the Old voice messages. I used to call them for voice messages constantly. Now it comes also on email. People are bombarded. And if you don't respond on one of these platforms and someone sends you a note on the next platform because they want a response. So we've conditioned our people that responsiveness is more important than development.

Speaker A: I agree. And, um, I was actually. As you were saying earlier, we gone into the world of being fatigued. Our brain is overloaded with data. Now you alluded to that as well. So decision making fatigue overrides our, uh, uh, neocortex, which is our main crunch of our brain, and we're just overwhelmed with data and too much information. And that brings on pressure and high levels of cortisol.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: Uh, yes. So how do we manage this as a sales manager to that fatigue, that decision making? And we're constantly meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting, and there's no break in between.

Speaker B: You've just described the life of a manager.

Speaker A: I have, I have, exactly.

Speaker B: So you're the solution. Or at least my solution is number one. Uh, you know, this whole concept of rewarding responsiveness and busy work because they're all busy. It's not, they don't fail because they're not trying or because they don't care or they're not talented, but because they're being pulled into meeting after meeting after meeting. And the first thing which is very uncomfortable. So, uh, I'll just say focus is not a motivational book. It's an operating manual that's supposed to smack you in the head and say, oh, my God, this is what you're doing. Maybe you want to change. Because if you change, you're not going to work harder, you're going to work smarter. Okay. And the thought was most people are uncomfortable saying no.

Speaker A: Yeah, Agree. Right.

Speaker B: Or saying, I'll get back to you at the end of the week since their boss or what have you. And the solution to that is. Or even telling your rep that this is the standard that I expect. Right. Those are all uncomfortable phrases, but you have to get comfortable with them if you want to be a, uh, really good sales manager, because those at times are not the priorities. But we get sucked into the vortex of minutia. And so saying no is important. Filtering out some of those meetings so you're not booked meeting to meeting to meeting. And I think you said this either when we were talking earlier is you got to block your time. If you want to coach, put it in your calendar, but don't let anything displace it. Don't cancel those coaching sessions. So the managers who are overwhelmed, it's not a time management issue, it's a priority issue. And that's why I talk to the three things. Because what you should look at in your calendar is how many of the three things, whatever those are. I don't tell companies what they are. They come up with them themselves, but they protect that and they live. And if you look at your calendar and whatever the three things are. I mentioned what I think the three things are. Coaching, accountability, meetings and execution. If those three don't take up 50 to 60% of your calendar, you're working too hard because there's so much minutiae that you're dealing with that doesn't impact, doesn't move the needle. That's what you're paid to do.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I totally concur with that. Uh, they are paid to look after their team.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Challenge can be. There's a lot of sales managers inverted common that are also producing revenue as well as managing their team, which I think is, I don't know. It's either you manage a team or your revenue generating. What are you, what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker B: You know what? I was going to use a, uh, good, uh, New York expression. If you're doing both, forget about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: It doesn't work. It just doesn't work. So first of all, if you're doing both, you're going to default to selling. You're not going to lead your people, you know, and it's not the blame of anybody. But if you can't afford to have a dedicated sales manager, then, you know, don't have one.

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.

Speaker B: Let the president, uh, do it. Uh, but really part of the problem as I talk about is they're not focused. They're, they're rescuing deals. In many cases, you know, they're top reps who got promoted into it, and they like nothing more than to be the savior, to be the hero of the deal, to rescue it. Say, hey, I helped Johnny close this deal, but by closing it for him, um, what's Johnny going to do the next time he has a similar issue?

Speaker A: Can I come to that? Can you help me with this deal?

Speaker B: And then you get busier.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And your day is blocked off with supporting your people but not leading and developing them. And to me, that's the crux of focus.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because you want to help people. Think. What's the analogy? If you give people, if someone's hungry and give them fish and they keep asking for more fish because they're hungry. But if you give them a rod, they go out and do it themselves and learn how to survive on their own. And that's probably the same analogy as

Speaker B: the sales manager 100. Teach a man how to fish, he eats for a lifetime.

Speaker A: That's it. That's that. I got there in the end. I'm glad you jumped in with that because.

Speaker B: Okay, no, no, you explained it well. It's just, uh. Anyway, so. But it's true. That is their job. And in the short term, when it's the Friday before the end of the month, uh, is that where the month ends?

Speaker A: No, it doesn't.

Speaker B: Okay. I, uh, was just checking March to see if it ended on a Friday. In the long term, if you teach them how to fish, if you teach them how to close, if you coach them on that, your life is going to get easier over time. But if you're constantly jumping in closing the deal, you're going to be overwhelmed, you're going to be burnt out. So the approach that I take is it's not a talent issue, it's not an effort issue. Managers are working harder than they've ever worked before. Right. So what is the issue? For me, the issue is the system rewards the wrong things. And then, uh, managers just don't say no. It's uncomfortable to say no. Uh, can you help me with this deal? Well, before you call me, why don't you tell me how you're going to close the deal as opposed to asking me? And that takes some time. It creates some discomfort for the manager to say that. But everyone who I've coached who tells me they're too busy, I say, okay, when your rep calls you, what do you do? And my answer is, ask for two solutions. Make sure they're thinking as opposed to coming to you for the answers. Because that's bad coaching.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's. It's, uh. There's two distinctions, and people get this wrong. There's coaching, which is asking some good questions to unpeel the onion to get to the juicy part. And there's mentoring. Mentoring is totally different, as we know. If you mentor, you're sitting next to them and you're helping them, whatever. And we have to do an element of that in some degree. But pure coaching is asking them some really good, relevant questions to help them think. What would you do if you. How would you normally close this deal? Just suppose that you could close this deal. What would that look like to you? Or something like that.

Speaker B: Like 100%, you know, what are your thoughts? How. How can you take this to another level? One of my favorite ones I talk about in the book, which I must have picked up from someone along the way. It's not a Steve Rosenism, but I use a very simple questioning format. So, you know, someone comes to you, it's their biggest customer. If they close it, they make their year. But given reps, are busy, they don't do what I call exhaustive thinking. Yeah, they come up with one or two things that they're going to do. And I take a very simple approach. I, uh, coach managers on this. And you ask, what else can you do? And then you ask it again, what else can you do? And then you ask it again, what else can you do? And then maybe you ask it a fourth time, because what you're doing is you're drilling down, you're peeling back the onion. And then if the person is, like, totally exhausted, you ask, is there anything else you can do? And it's. I picked it up along the way, and it's very powerful.

Speaker A: It's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Because then, um, because they keep answering the question, then they keep asking a different way then. A different way than a different. Until you get to where you need to be going to.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So the level of thinking deepens as opposed to superficial. Because we tend to be superficial on our answers, even when we're doing a deal review. I need to speak to this person. Okay. Is there anybody else you need to speak to? And we tend to miss some of those things because we think if we do one and two, we're set. But, uh, if it's very important, what you want to do is you want to deepen that thinking.

Speaker A: So it's the vagueness of the answers that you get, and you, you just don't accept them until you get the right answer.

Speaker B: Well, see, here's the thing. I was agreeing until you said the right answer.

Speaker A: Oh, they're right. Um,

Speaker B: because I don't always have the right answer. As the manager, your people know better.

Speaker A: Yeah, they should do.

Speaker B: The problem is you're not challenging them to think. And guess what? They don't want to think that they.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And. And if you can get people to pause and think, you can make them very powerful. And if they start to know that you're going to ask that question or those series of questions, they come prepared. Yeah, because sometimes it's a lack of preparedness because the standard is, okay, you can just come to me with your, with your issue and I'll help you to me, the standard should be I, uh, come prepared to discuss with solutions. You know, I'm going to say this and uh, I don't think it's controversial, but a lot of times I ask managers who jump in, uh, are your sales reps high paid professionals or are they burger flippers?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: So my point is, and nothing against burger flippers. I did that as a job when I was in university. I was my burger flipper.

Speaker A: I was.

Speaker B: Yeah, right. They're high and they say, well, they're high paid professionals. Well, treat them as such.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, don't treat them as someone who is doing menial work. They have the answers. Your job is to help them facilitate, pull out the thinking that they may not be doing.

Speaker A: So jump in here then. As I was thinking the difference to help people think differently from an order taker, uh, to a proactive person that can actually actively go out. Because I've worked with some people and they get all of these soft leads coming in, which is great, but they're not actively proactively going out and hunting and gathering when they should be doing a bit of both. So, and I've seen it a few times and I'm going to, okay, we're gonna have to really drill down here and get them in a different sort of system to make them more proactive as opposed to, because this stuff that comes in, which is great and uh, lovely warm leads coming in, but it's not gonna be there forever in a day. So you, you have to, you have to change your attitude or change. I think we spoke about change a little while ago. What are your thoughts on, uh, that?

Speaker B: So you know, that's an, that's an age old issue and companies have tried different ways. They've tried SDRs, BDRs, whatever Rs there are. And one of the, like the biggest challenge in management is coaching.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because managers for whatever reason don't do it. Prospecting is the equivalent on the sales rep side. And so I think, okay, some people may not be proactive because I tend to hire people who are proactive who are going to find a way to make things happen. But assuming you don't have those people, most sales managers do not coach, prospect. They don't sit with the rep when they're smiling and dialing. So how do they know how good they are at it? How do they coach them to be better at it? And people think I'm not, say I'm a little bit not so. But uh, you know, with zoom, a lot of calls are Made on Zoom these days in a post Covid world. And I ask managers, do you sit in on prospecting? Do you, do you coach on prospecting? Coach, right. Not rescue, but coach. And in most cases, nobody's coaching that. I would say maybe 5 to 10% if we're lucky. So if you want to improve that proactivity, uh, you've got to make it important. Which means the rep needs to block the time and the manager probably has to block time with them. And also, you know, we have all types of apps that record the calls. Do they debrief, do they coach from that? So there are many tools to coach the prospecting to make reps more proactive. And my sort of hypothesis is it doesn't happen.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally concur, uh, with you. And it's, it's such a shame that it doesn't happen because I know and as you know, when it does happen, the impact is incredible to the organization.

Speaker B: 100. So much time with the rep too, because you make them so much better. The, you know, until that happens, reps. I forget the statistic because I wrote a few articles on, on it, um, about a year and a half ago is like 60 of sales reps hate prospecting.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Don't dislike it. They hate it. Yeah, I hate, I hate prospecting. That's why really quick.

Speaker A: That's why I wrote.

Speaker B: No, I'm teasing, but I'm not. Uh, right. But it's not easy to do. And unless you enforce it. If it's a critical factor for success, if it's one of your three things, hey, we need to be prospecting more. We need to generate new leads. We can't rely on marketing. Then, uh, you need to coach it. You need to hold the rep accountable. Uh, I need to make sure they're executing.

Speaker A: And there's so many easy wins by doing it. If marketing's been doing their job for ages and there's a whole heap of names in the database that are already there that had been contacted and, uh, just recontact them again, as you say. And it is a fear. It's an imposter syndrome, and it's the fear of failure. And, um, it's, it's like standing up and presenting in front of people. You have that eyeballs and that fear of people thinking that they're laughing at you or the rejection that you're going to get when you do stand up. But it's the same when you pick up that phone, uh, and pick up that phone. It's been going back A few years now. You pick up one and then ring, ring. But you know what I mean?

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you're talking about the dial phone, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Dialing and dialing. Yes, I do remember. Yes. Yeah. So part of it comes down to what do you enforce?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, you know, what do you inspect? And again, when the pressure's on, a lot of these things drop by the wayside. You're scrambling. And so you're moving from a structured approach to sales that, you know, makes sense to chaos. Yeah, right. Oh, we got to close.

Speaker A: It's.

Speaker B: It's March 28th, 7th. Or, you know, where are we at? Where are we at with this deal? Where are we at there? And then we make bad decisions.

Speaker A: And as we know, stress does build in. Like, uh, if again, I think we talk about overwhelm, once stress actually happens, you forget. And when you're under pressure to hit the targets as a manager, to hit the team targets, and you're firefighting, but then your communication goes right down the pan because, um, you cannot think strategically because you haven't been given the space to think.

Speaker B: Yes. And, you know, one of the other problems just alongside with that is nothing usually breaks. If you're not coaching, nothing breaks if you're not inspecting, nothing breaks quickly. It's a slow erosion of performance. And that's why, oh, it must be a talent issue. We don't have the right reps out selling for us or we don't have the right managers in place. That's the reaction from senior management. Right. And the problem is that if you're waiting to identify the issues with your CRM and all the reports that you get, you're not going to identify the issues. And so I talk about performance drifting because we're not doing the things that drive performance consistently.

Speaker A: Yeah. Question that I always love to ask. This point of the if you are interviewing you, what sort of questions would you ask you?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, that's a good question. Geez, I wish I prepared for that.

Speaker A: Uh, I haven't been on an interview

Speaker B: in a long time. Well, give me an example of, uh, a time where you had a. A difficult situation and how you went about proactively resolving it.

Speaker A: Go ahead, answer that question that you've just asked yourself.

Speaker B: Well, uh, to me, it's about being persistent, doing your homework, and really finding a way to make things happen. Getting in front of that individual. Sometimes that's the challenge. So it's constantly thinking of innovative ways to overcome obstacles. And that's what I look to hire for when I Help companies hire the salespeople who can be proactive and can find a way or will find a way. Not just can, but will find a way to make things happen.

Speaker A: So based on that, um, interviews. Because some salespeople are just, they give default. What's a really good test to find a really good salesperson?

Speaker B: Now I don't want to be self serving here.

Speaker A: Just curious to know because we can. There's interviews and interview techniques and all of that. But uh, how do you really know that that is the right person? Because I've read a few things about that on really giving them the nose and giving them say no, I don't think you're good enough. And you don't think it's how they respond to that. On resilience. And I said I just don't think you're going to be great at this organization is how they overcome this and how they can bounce back into that conversation in an interview question.

Speaker B: Those are some really good ways.

Speaker A: I won't give us one. Give us one.

Speaker B: Well, here's the one that I was going to give you because I'm a firm believer this goes way back over 20 years ago when I went to work for a uh, company called Biovail. They profiled me when I was VP going for the VP of sales role.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Okay. So they use a psychometric profile. And I came out, uh, the guy who debriefed says you have a killer profile. I said oh, let me look at this tool. And uh, for over 20 years I've, I uh, used it in industry. I've used it as a not, not to eliminate uh, interviews because I think you can learn a lot by how someone responds. I think your, your question's good. Uh, it's great. It's a great question to get people to think and how they respond to a difficult situation. But I also think there's other ways to elicit stuff because sometimes it's really hard to pull stuff out of people.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I'm not saying it's the be all and end all, but the first thing that it looks for and the one that I use, and I'm not going to mention the name is someone a self manager? Are they proactive versus reactive? And I want people who are going to proact, they're going to find a way to make things happen. I call it drive, but you can call it whatever you want. That's what I look for. So to me it's a validation. If I've got good candidates to see, do they have the drive to succeed. And that's hard to elicit. It's hard to tease out in interview

Speaker A: questions, maybe something, uh, because nowadays they have four or five interviews or whatever. Are they coachable? Do they want to grow? I think come back to the complete circle, and are they focused? The name of your book, lovely book that's being released this week, is it?

Speaker B: Well, we're. We're in week two now, so it's exactly over. Exactly over a week.

Speaker A: So transactively, it's been released two weeks ago. When this has been released, they would have been a couple of weeks ahead. So, yeah, focus and, uh, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation is just a different frame of what you've said is what's internal to them to find their own success within the organization. Are they coachable? Can they learn to grow? And are they okay with asking uncomfortable questions either about themselves or. Or are they willing to ask their manager to help them grow as well?

Speaker B: So, again, uh, I have a friend who we've worked together as managers. At one point, I was his boss. And other points I've coached him. We speak almost every day, and I learned a lot about hiring from him. And he'll still say, what you hire for is the skills you can't train.

Speaker A: Love it.

Speaker B: You know, and we started as reps together, and we were regional sales managers together, and he brought in a whole bunch of really good people in his region. And he looked for. Not for experience, which I call the plug and play. Right. A lot of managers default to someone who knows the industry, knows the customers, has been around because they can just plug and play them. He looked for the right ingredients, and I learned a lot from him on what to look for for hiring.

Speaker A: Love it.

Speaker B: Go ahead.

Speaker A: I was going to say one last question, uh, but did you want to finish off what you were saying?

Speaker B: No, I'm just gonna say attitude over aptitude is critical. So give me someone who's hungry.

Speaker A: Yeah. Attitude. Have they got the right attitude?

Speaker B: Yes, sir, you got it.

Speaker A: Speaks volumes. So, um, I always like to give people a gift forward, but based on you, because I always want to learn from others like yourself. If you were to give a gift forward to someone or people listening to this, in terms of ideas, thought, or whatever it is that you have in your mind right now, what would that be?

Speaker B: Well, again, uh, the. What I call the three things or three critical success factors. You know, if you're planning for a year at a VP level, at a regional level, at a sales rep level, ask yourself the question what are the three things I need to do incredibly well to be successful? Write them down and figure out how you're going to achieve each. It sounds like simple advice, and it is, but it works. Uh, also, you need to follow through on it. But. Of course. But to me, that's the advice that when coaching and. Oh, my God, that's brilliant, Steven. It's not. It's very simple. But people try to over complicate what they need to do, and they do too much. You know the old adage, I think I said earlier, the jack of all trades, a master of none. Become a master of three, and you will. That's a good line. Become A master of three and you will succeed.

Speaker A: Yeah. Keep it simple.

Speaker B: 100. Uh, and, uh, you know, I joke, some people are very good strategically. Their minds are just very good at moving pieces on it. I'm about execution, about making things happen, about implementing, and that's the way my mind operates. I'm very good tactically, very strong.

Speaker A: Yeah. Impact, everything. So, Stephen, how can people find out more about you?

Speaker B: Okay, well, the first thing is focused is on Amazon, across the world, selling. There's copies out there, love. If you get the book, drop me a note and tell me what resonates with you. I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit. You could find me on LinkedIn, Steven Rosen, or on my website, uh, StarResults.com.

Speaker A: that's absolutely awesome. I've had. I've really enjoyed our conversation.

Speaker B: Likewise, Jason. It's been great. And, uh, maybe I'll come. You'll invite me back again?

Speaker A: Yes, I definitely shall. And maybe I'll get your brother on as well at the same time.

Speaker B: Uh, brother from.

Speaker A: From another brother from another mother. People that probably don't know that Keith Rosen, that I've had as a guest before. I had a little chuckle with this before we started, uh, the conversation. They're not related. They're both into impact in the sales world and organization. And, uh, I think that's phenomenal, is give that gift forward and keep people thinking, keep people learning. This is why I do what I do is so I can learn from people like yourself, Stephen, and help other people to get them to help them to get what they want. A lovely Ziggler quote there, uh, in Impact Forward. And this is all about this podcast. So, Stephen, I do thank you.

Speaker B: I thank you for, uh, for allowing me to share my thoughts and, you know, be here with you.