#1 - Revenue Rewired x Mark Hemphill

Speaker A: In 2020, you had this like a bunch of reps hiring and all you had to do was be able to fog up a mirror to close the deal.

Speaker B: I'd uh, say the top 1%, they control the deal.

Speaker A: Your post reviewed 2 million times, it's like, dude, nobody clicked on anything.

Speaker B: They set the agenda, they defined next steps, they multi thread early and they forced clarity on the decision process entitled

Speaker A: introduce the problem, highlight the pain, bring up your solution. What's something tangible that the top 1% of reps do and forward. It's. We've really seen kind of this like demand, the switch from demand positive to demand negative. Welcome, Mark. Thanks for being here, man.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me, Dal. Appreciate the time.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I want to start off with something that I think leaders everywhere kind of feel here and there, and that is at P Club, we call it the go to market skill crisis. But essentially, you know, in, in 2020, you had this like a bunch of reps hiring, and all you had to do is be able to fog up a mirror to close a deal. Money was everywhere. You know what I mean?

Speaker B: It was like order great times.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it was great times, but you know, there was a lot more. I mean, there's skill to it, but in 2020, right, it was like, dude, we're just slinging it and trying to get it, but it's changed 2025 and forward. It's. We've really seen kind of this like demand, the switch from demand positive to demand negative. Sellers really having to like upskill. Leaders having to be a little more cognizant of like, who's on their team, are they where they need to be and things like that. You know, we needed sales yesterday kind of stuff. How, how have you seen that kind of impact your world if it's impacted your world like at all?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's uh, definitely, definitely impact. I would say that a lot of the sellers were trained in an environment where buyers had, you know, budget urgency, executive air cover, all those things. Um, and you didn't really have to create demand. It's like you can go to one person and one person get it done, and you could probably get away with doing features and functionality as well. Right. So I think nowadays the budgets are tighter, the deals are scrutinized, executives are involved in more of the deals. So many reps, from what I've seen, they struggle to know how to create business cases or quantify impact, navigate multi threaded buying groups. It's just, it's uh, it's tough. Right? So and just being able to do that and know of doing that throughout the whole deal cycle, they've never had to. So the skill gap, it's not effort, it's more, let's say commercial acumen, deal orchestration, executive level conversations and being able to have those. I think that's where most of the teams are behind right now and we're still working on it as well. It's not perfect. Right? But how do you get to perfect? How do you get to near perfect?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's so, that's so true. Well that let, let's dive into that. How do you get to perfect or near perfect when you're seeing that? Because by the way you're speaking our language at Peak Club, man, it's like, you know, if I'm on a cold call, it's like you know, seller or sales, uh, leaders are seeing reps not knowing how to access, sell to power, not know how to navigate the buying committee, build business cases, multi thread, do deep discovery. Right. So that we can tie it to like outcomes. So I don't know how do you do that? Like how? I mean in, in your org you, it looked like you have a pretty nice sized org, 15, 20 reps, something like that, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean I think it goes to um, you're not just inspecting pipeline, you're building these skill systems with the reps. I would say we, we create here sort of clear standards and expectations on what's discovery quality look like, what deal qualification, what's forecast hygiene, what's the execution rhythm behind the deal. So I think a lot of leaders, they tolerate too much variability and so it's really setting those expectations with the team of what you expect. One of these successes that we started to do at Lean IX was really accelerate us very early, was building okrs, so doing objectives and key results into a quarterly rhythm. So every two weeks we come together as a team to review progress, talk through what's working, what wasn't, identify small meaningful actions that would push us forward. So a lot of the sales teams, you have the top level KPIs or how many demos or how many discovery calls you do. Right. And that's all important but I think to have the specific strategies around. What are the reps doing from a strategy perspective? How many partner ops are you getting? Do we have case studies that are coming out of these? So it's all these little things that move the needle and that's what really elevated us, uh, to go to the Next level. I'm still doing that to this day with X, uh, suite. Um, but it creates strong accountability. It makes the progress very transparent with the reps and honestly made scaling exciting because everyone could see the impact of the work in real time. So it's. Yeah. So I think that really catapulted us to go to the next level.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was, I was. That's funny you mentioned that. I was on a webinar, um, last week and the host mentioned the fact that, you know, having a good team culture is built around, you know, knowing what everybody knowing what they're supposed to do and how they're held accountable for doing it. And you know, just one of the many things I thought of while you were saying that was part of that. And uh, and I think that that's. That's super interesting because a little underlying thread in there that you mentioned when we talked before this podcast was having like that strategy down and you mentioned one of the things that, that you. I don't know if it's thing reps can do better or maybe like a hot take was like selling the competition against the competition better. Right. And how like a lot of reps do that too late. And what do you think? So walk me through what that looks like. Uh, how does a rep start to sell early against that? What is like the. What are like the words sound like? What is that?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I think. And that's one of the things that people might shy away from because it's like, oh, we have the deal and you get happy years. It's like, oh, uh, this is going to close and if you don't know the competition. And I think a lot of, A lot of sellers shy away from competition because it's sort of a known thing. Like you don't want to put them down. Like, you never want to put competition down. That's a big thing. And I appreciate that. I think. I totally agree. Never want to put competition down. But is there a way that you can make it organic, that you're educating the customer on all the ins and outs of what your solution that you're selling as well as other solutions out there and become more of a trusted advisor? So sample talk track could be. Is what most reps will do is like, what other tools are you looking at? And I'll be like, well, I can't tell you. So option B is. Well, you could say instead of that, one of the tools be like, hey, we've been in this space for a long time. We've seen a Lot of migrations from xyz, and that's happened. Uh, the reason why they've migrated is because of xyz, so we're pretty familiar with all the other tools in the market. Would you be open to sharing what you're looking at? Uh, and this way we can educate you on the best bet that makes sense for you. And so by saying it in that way, it's like you now are coming off as a complete trusted advisor. You know what you're talking about. You know, the space. They feel more. More open to sharing. And then you're now on the offense of the deal. So that's why I always say is like, be on the offense when it comes to the competition. Do that early, even discovery. Uh, because then you're controlling the narrative through the rest of the deal. Right. You're not playing defense.

Speaker A: And I love that you said controlling the narrative, like, history is written by the victors. And, uh, you know what I mean? And so, like, if I get to bring it up first, then I get to kind of navigate that. And not in like a, you know. Yeah. And not in like a malicious way. But one of my favorite quotes in sales is where there's no difference, there's no preference. And so, like, if we're just like everybody else, then there's no point then. Then we race to the bottom, then it doesn't really matter and we're good. You know what I mean? And then. Yeah, like, you missed, so.

Speaker B: Yeah, dude.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's crazy. Um. Um, how do you. When you start thinking about new reps or training new reps? I mean, a VP of sales has so many things that they're doing in a day. A CRO has so many things that they're responsible for. Sometimes it can feel like training gets reduced to watching a gong call, sending a slack message. You know what I mean? Um, how do you stay on top of, like, consistent and daily reinforcement, stuff like that?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we. And I see training as it's pivotal. Like, we've. We've done the sales trainings before, and I've done so many sales trainings. We've taken someone from the outside, come in, they do the sales training for a week, and then everybody just goes back to normal business after, like, after that week. So it's like, all right, what do we actually take away from that? And what can we reinforce from that? And it's happened so many times. I mean, you know how it goes, Right? So.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: I think it's. It's really just the Daily rhythm of what are we doing every week, what are we doing daily, what are we doing biweekly and having rhythm of what, Whatever it is. Like, yeah, if you're gonna watch calls, watch the calls. But I think it's consistent around role play. I think it's consistent around real time feedback. If you're on the calls with the reps providing that feedback, like, hey, what did you think happened? How do you think that call went? Um, what do you think you could have done better? And then can I give my feedback? And then, you know, working on that. And that's, you know, that's for AES, for bdrs. My big thing is, you know, being live with them, um, why they're making calls. Right? And even, even showing them how it's done, leading by example. Like if they're struggling with the lead, like make the call and if they pick up, run it and show them like, hey. And then walk them through. Like, this is why I said this, uh, and why did I say this here? And so I think, um, it's, it's being consistent with that. And I know we trying to get heads down and we're trying to hit our KPIs every day, but you have to leave room for maturing and evolving the reps and making sure they feel that because the end of the day it's their paycheck. And if they feel like, oh, what Mark said or the feedback that Mark gave me actually impacted me to get another discovery call or it's going to close this deal, that's what motivates me.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I have, I had a really funny experience. You know, I was involved in a corporation, uh, where we were doing some training and whatever. And I had realized that, you know, we were going over this training, we were doing like daily things and I was like, what's not clicking? And then it came to me, like when I thought about, you know, how I grew up in sales and stuff like that, and it's what you said, it's like seeing somebody actually close a deal or actually get an appointment on a cold call. Like, uh, because it's just different. Like I can read the guide and all this stuff, but like hearing somebody have success and then being able to like mimic that, it's uh, that builds a lot of confidence.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I've seen, I've seen a lot of sales leaders. They, they've watched a movie, read a book, but they're not actually doing it. And they're just telling, hey, team, get out there. And read the script, figure it out. It's like you gotta show em how it's done. Right. It gives em the confidence, you know, 100%. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. I, I love to ask this question to everybody I have on, but in your experience, what does like an elite sales rep obsess over that everyone else ignores?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say the best sales reps ignore the noise. And that's both internal noise, deal noise. They get distracted by process changes, um, you know, internal chatter, activity metrics for the sake of activity. So there's so many things that could go wrong. Like there's, or uh, they have emotional swings inside of a deal. Right. So it's, I think they stay locked in on what actually moves the buyer toward a decision. Right. So whether that's doing a map, like a mutually agreed action plan that you have to do and agree to certain calendar dates of what are we doing when, who's doing what. I would say the top reps spend their time on just very high value selling conversations, customer problems, decision dynamics rather than, you know, administrative tasks like you need to update the CRM. And by the way, I was not a poster child for updating the CRM when I was in ae, so I know how it goes. I'll admit to that.

Speaker A: It's like CRM hygiene, man. We could.

Speaker B: Yeah. Hopefully AI is going to fix that someday. But um, maybe it has, I just haven't seen it. But I, uh, think from, you know, the strongest reps, they qualify the opportunities, opportunities ruthlessly. Like they're in there pushing back understanding. They don't waste time chasing deals that aren't real, which allows them to focus their energy where it actually drives revenue. Right. So, and they, they also ignore like the future obsession. So I would say the elite sellers, you know, talk significantly less about product features and spend more time understanding customers business problems, guiding the conversation around outcomes. Right. So I think that's, that's the biggest thing that I've seen.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. Regardless, uh, of how you feel about Nick Saban, I heard him say one time that he said the outcome is a distraction. And so when you're talking about like filtering out the noise, like a lot of that noise of internal noise or like the outcome noise, um, and that's what it made me think of was like the outcome is a distraction. How do you feel about that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I could see that. I mean, at the end of the day you have to. One thing I always say too is like, don't have commission breath. Commission breath is. It's Me. And they feel that like it's all about me. I'm asking these questions because I want it, I want this. It's like, no, genuinely be curious about the customer and genuinely care about solving the customer's problems. The commission is a bonus. Like at the end of the day, you're here to help them and that's first. And don't, don't put the commission, don't have commission breath on calls. People can feel it.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And uh, I love, I love they call it commission breath because you said feel it. I always tell people you can smell it. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's why it makes them go away, dude. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, now you had said something about earlier, before we got into that, you were talking about tracking metrics just for metrics sake. Tell me more about.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean, like I would say, all right, what, when you look at your day, you have your specific metrics that could be cause conversation. All these different KPIs, top of the funnel metrics. Right. And then at the end of the day it's like, well, the output is how many discovery calls we got or how many demos have you scheduled.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. If you're, if you're hitting your KPIs and you have a lot of met, you're hitting the top of the funnel metrics. You're not getting the demos. It's a skill problem. It's a skill gap. That's something I can help coach on.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: If it's, if it's something like, hey, you're actually hitting your goal and getting your demo schedule, which is the outcome, you're not making as many calls. I get it. Right. You're actually more focused. You're putting more time and energy into calling very specific accounts, being methodical about it. I think that's a, that's a maturity thing. So. And that's, that's still okay. Right. So it's like at the end of the day, if you're not hitting your call volume or conversations, but you're still getting your discovery calls, goals, that's the outcome. That's, that's fine.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I think it's, it's not getting head trash around specific metrics as long as at the end of the day

Speaker A: the outcome is still right. And yeah, focusing on like the results of what we're trying to do and not just like you said in marketing they have that term like vanity metrics. Right. It's like Your post reviewed 2 million times, it's like, dude, nobody clicked on anything. You know what I mean? Or whatever. You know, I made a. I made, uh, 150 calls. It's like, bro, you didn't talk to anybody or you didn't do this, right? It's like, yeah, something's at some point we have to work on. Like, you mentioned, like, the skills or something. You know, use it as a die. It's more of like a diagnosing tool than it is like a thing I need you to hit. I gotta get enough data to see where the problem is. Do you think that speaking of that issue, right, like hitting numbers or like hitting activity metrics. Right. Do you think that that is a widely accepted sales best practice that you think is holding teams back? Or is there something different? Is there like a widely accepted best practice that you think, uh, is just like holding teams back?

Speaker B: So what I've seen is sort of a shift. And I think the teams that are going to survive in 2026 and beyond, and this is my hot take, is that you need a mix of volume nowadays as well as signal and intent data. Yeah. So what that means is you're looking at specific accounts. You're maybe using AI to scan. Hey, these are the specific metrics we need for these accounts. This is our ICP for these accounts. Focus on what the accounts that are great fit versus bad fit or good fit. And using intent and search signal data. So are they clicking on the website? Uh, that they just do a transformation that we don't know about. Like those. And this is just for specifics to us, but using that specific signal and intent data and also volume. Because I think nowadays you, uh, almost have to double the effort on volume just to. Because less people might be answering or answering emails. Because I think AI has really saturated the market from a sales outbound perspective right now. It's. It's crazy just the amount of emails and calls you now have to make, but do that with intent data. So I think a mix between the both of volume and intent and signal data is really, it's going to make teams survive.

Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. You mentioned that outbound is getting crazy. What do you think? If you were going to do outbound, where would you spend your time on? Like, what would you spend your time doing?

Speaker B: Honestly, like, for. For me, it's calls. It's calls having. Making the call that's number one. Right. So it's like you could send all these sequence emails and make all these templates and sequences, which is great. You want to do that. I think you have to multi thread outbound, meaning you got to do sequences, emails, you got to do LinkedIn, you got to do calls. Like it's got to be a mix of everything. But for me, the top line, number one is you got to be making the calls because that's, you got to pick up the phone. Yeah. And it's, that's, that's the biggest thing because that's going to build your business acumen from say you're an entry level bdr, you want to get to an ae. That's going to really toughen you up and make you ready for the AE role. You just have to go through it. It's hard and it's even harder nowadays, but it's going to mentally get you ready and build that business acumen that you need for AE and beyond.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would say, yeah, I would be like, if, dude, if you're an sdr, you're just making cold calls and you have to. Because like I said, I think you're totally right. It helps you become, uh, a better ae because hopefully your cold call guide or whatever you're using is structured almost like a little mini discovery call. Right. It's like introduce the problem, highlight the pain, bring up, uh, bring up your solution. They're going to have questions, they're going to ask how do we move to the next step? And so you're going to get a, you know, a thousand reps or whatever and then, yeah, you're going to be an ae. And now we just have to figure out how to make that, you know, two minute cold call into a 30 minute little discovery. Right. At least at the beginning and then you can move on from there. But yeah, that, that's so, that's so true. I have another question. Just because you've been in, you've seen a lot of reps go through sales and things like that. What's something tangible that the top 1% of reps do? I know we talk about like, you know, I had this, I had Nadia, the CEO of Outreach on here and she was talking about like mindset, right. And I love that because I don't think you can dismiss that. I, uh, want to know from you if there's anything like you can see and like emulate besides just that mindset.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'd say the top 1%, they, they control the deal. So what does that mean? They set the agenda, they define next steps, they multi thread it really. And they force clarity on the decision process. In Thailand, I would say, you know, the average reps React to the buyer. It's more so, you know, the buyer's controlling it. Like, we're doing this. But I'd say, like, the top reps, they choreograph, uh, the buyer. They're comfortable creating tension when something's vague or they give a answer, wish you wash me responds to. To question they ask. They don't confuse friendliness with progress. And they get. They get to the no in the convo. I always say, so, um, like, why wouldn't you go with us? Like, what would you. What would cause you to not go with us? Like, get to the no.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And make them say something. Right. So it's really digging in and peeling back the onion to understand the surface level answers you may get when you start asking those questions. Right. And I would say they're also the best in really doing deep discovery. That literally is the most important part of the sales process.

Speaker A: Yeah, you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're looking at metrics of a sales rep, in my opinion, anyway, you can push back. Let me know what you think of this. But in my experience, almost 90% of the problems can be traced somewhat to how well you did discovery. How well did you manage expectations upfront? How well did you. Like you mentioned. Right. Get to know quick. Figure out what, you know, what. What is going on, what needs to happen. Right. What doesn't work, what will work, all those things. I think, I think that, that discovery one is a big one. Like when we're talking, uh, you know, I make cold calls for P Club when we're talking to sales leaders. Like, that's a big one. Is like discovery. Right. I can almost hear, like leaders get anxiety, you know, like shallow discovery. They're like, I need my heart medicine now. Right? Uh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: You gotta figure. You gotta figure out the discovery. And it's, it's. You gotta stick to the process discovery. You gotta understand the questions. And sometimes it goes off the rails with elaborate responses from the prospect. You gotta dial it back and get in control. So it's like it's back to controlling the deal. Right. So it's just staying in control, you know, and. And not making the prospect feel like that you're controlling it, but asking ways of. And that's hard. That's an art, I would say it's hard to make it feel like they're still in control, but you're guiding them. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. And you know what's so funny? You almost described. So one of my first sales leaders, when I started, he said the definition of a Great salesperson is someone who can control the path of the deal while the customer feels like they're leading the way every step.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. And again, I think when you talk about this stuff and it's really easy for someone like the Alpha Bros or whatever on LinkedIn to make like a super manipulative post, but that's, it's just influence. Like how do we, how do we help maximize our influence to help somebody? Right, because like, you know, it'd be the same thing as like, you know, a firefighter getting ready to help somebody. Like sometimes people do crazy things and you gotta like influence the situation, uh, for good. And so I don't know, that's probably a bro thing to compare sales to firefighting. But whatever, dude, I don't care. You, ah, get what I'm saying?

Speaker B: It makes sense. I get it.

Speaker A: Okay. All right, dude, so tell me about your, uh, when you're teaching a new rep about discovery, what do you, what do you do? What's the first thing you, you try to help them with or the first thing you establish with them?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say that we have to really understand they're going to give you surface level answers, like what's your biggest challenge today? Um, and then like that's basic level stuff and that's. You get a surface level answer. Well, it's xyz and that's what's happening. And it's almost like if you look at the, what's going through the prospect's mind is they're giving you like you go to A to Z. A lot of stuff happens from A to B to Z and they're just giving you the outcome of where they're at right now. So you almost have to go, you have to go back as to why, why do we get there? Like what, how did we get there? How do we get to. I need a tool like this today. I know you need the tool, but what, what actually happened internally over the past 612 months that like. Could you walk me through that? Yeah, uh, dialing it back. So if you have this challenge, you know, yeah, you can go into the basic questions like, what's your biggest challenge? How does that impact the business? You know, how does it impact you? How does it impact you specifically? And getting into the uh, the actual business impact, but what caused it to get to this point? So it is a top down initiative. This is a bottom up. Like you have to build a business case. Like, where's it coming from? I can tell you a lot about the deal as well. So, yeah, there's a lot of questions that are important to really peel back the onion. That's really what discovery is all about. Peeling back the onion.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and then I like how you mentioned not only peeling back the onion, but also when you mentioned while you're peeling back the onion, you have to really understand and define, like, where this all originated from and how, you know, we got there. And, you know, even some of the best, uh, discovery that I've heard is like the, the, the sales rep will, you know, kind of highlight that and then be like, is this where it started? Or, you know, did you come from somewhere else? And then you just, you know, you add that extra layer of being, ah, a trusted advisor, like you mentioned earlier. Um, okay, I want to ask you one question because there's probably a sales rep here or maybe someone trying to get into sales, uh, and you're a fantastic leader. So what trait? What's a trait? One trait that you actively try to screen out of a sales rep if you're trying to hire them. Like, what's the. Is there something that you go to that's like. If, uh, I was on TikTok, I call this a red flag. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I've. Yeah, there's one trait I would say it's, it's lack of ownership. Um, and it usually shows up as like a, ah, victim mindset. Right. So, you know, sales is unpredictable. I get it. There always be challenges. There's tough markets, you know, competitive pricing, difficult buyers, imperfect territories, everything.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So reps who struggle long term are the ones who ultimately immediately look for external reasons instead of asking what they could have done differently. Uh, so it's, it's more so like, well, this happened because this. And it's like, well, what. What could you have done differently? So they, they own it. Right. And they're not, they're not finger pointing with the answer. It's like, hey, I could have done better here. So it's more just the authenticity and honesty of their answer. That's what I look for. Right. And it's the ones that have sort of the victim mindset. It's like, uh, all right, not the right fit.

Speaker A: Yeah. Things that every. Everything happens to them.

Speaker B: Right? Yes, Yep, exactly. It's like, it's not my fault. It's like, well, really? Yeah.

Speaker A: But like, and I love that because, uh, I read that book, the Subtle Art of Not Giving a by Mark Manson. It's a great book. But he talks about that as like it might not be your fault, but it's still your responsibility.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I want you to run towards the problem, not away from that. Like that's, that's how we should be thinking is running towards the problem and figuring it out. Right. So it's the accountability of the problem services. That's, that's one, that's what we're looking for.

Speaker A: Amen. All right, Mark, well, you've been more than gracious with your time. Before I let you go, tell everybody where they can follow you, uh, where you work right now, all that good stuff. Plug whatever you want to plug.

Speaker B: Yeah. So you can follow me on LinkedIn. Mark Hemphill, VP of Sales at Xweet Right now, a company out of Massachusetts. Uh, yeah. Look forward to connecting. If you have any questions, happy to help.

Speaker A: Sweet. Awesome. Thank you, Mark.

Speaker B: Thanks. Dull.