519. Ashlee Horn, Training New Sales Leaders - a podcast by Will Bachman

Show Notes:

Will Bachman and Ashlee Horn spoke about her practice, which focuses on coaching new sales leaders. Ashlee outlines the problem she is trying to solve that 50% of new sales leaders fail within the first year. She speaks about the lifecycle of a sales manager and why sales leaders are so important to an organization. She explains that she focuses on those who are new to frontline sales management or director roles. She works with star performers who have made the leap into leadership, and star managers who  are now trying to manage teams of teams. Ashlee provides coaching for these roles to help them drive sustained behavior change.

Training Sales Leaders

Ashlee outlines her approach to promoting new sales leaders. She has identified six key areas of focus: building relationships, holding people accountable, multiplying themselves, creating a culture of execution, developing their team, and driving strategic planning. She stresses the importance of building relationships based on trust and value, as well as the need to be able to articulate what makes them successful. Additionally, she emphasizes the need for leaders to be able to hold people accountable and have candid conversations. Lastly, she highlights the importance of creating a culture of execution, developing their team, and driving strategic planning. All of these areas are essential for successful leadership. Ashlee  recommends that salespeople prioritize the highest revenue generating activities, focus on effective communication, simplify complex topics, and use data-driven decision making. She has experience working with technology sales and service sales, specifically SAS sales. 

Time Management for Sales Managers

For frontline salespeople, she recommends they focus on facetime with clients, build pipeline, and take care of customer service activities. For frontline sales managers, she suggests they prioritize their time and get six to ten people motivated to make changes to their daily habits that will lead to success. A good time allocation for a frontline sales manager with eight reps at a tech company may include focusing on individual team member goals, mentoring and coaching, analyzing data to make decisions, creating and executing sales plans, and managing customer relationships.

Ashlee talks about the importance of reverse engineering a sales manager's priorities. According to Ashlee, the majority of the manager's time should be spent on coaching activities that improve customer retention, as this will be the highest revenue generating activity. This includes one-on-one meetings with the team members, team meetings, and individualized programs. Additionally, Ashlee suggested that the manager should spend 70% of their time with the team, observing calls, preparing for calls, and reviewing deals. The remaining 20% should be spent on broader team activities such as setting the vision, having internal meetings, and working with their VP or director to understand their marching orders as a sales leader, and 10% should be spent on understanding clients.

Motivation Coaching for Sales Leaders 

She talks about assessing the motivators of their team members in order to come up with the best solutions for them, including looking at examples of mindsets other than the mindset of the sales rep who was promoted. She suggests looking at the broad category of growth and fixed mindset. This involves understanding how people respond to challenges, failure, and success, as well as their attitude towards change and effort. This can help sales managers come up with a roadmap for understanding different categories of motivation and how to best approach each person.

Ashlee identifies different mindsets that salespeople may have and how to address them to develop an effective coaching strategy.  The first mindset is the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, where the growth mindset individual believes they are in control of their own success and the fixed mindset individual believes external factors determine their success. The second mindset is the individual who is not money motivated and does not want to be competitive. To address this mindset, Ashlee recommends focusing on uncovering what motivates the individual. Ultimately, it is important to understand the mindset of the individual in order to help them be successful in sales, and how to overcome the reluctance to sell to people who don’t want to take the call or listen to the pitch.

Accountability in Sales Management

Ashlee talks about  the concept of accountability in sales management. Ashlee points out that in order to hold team members accountable, managers should be explicit about expectations upfront and use data to ground conversations in facts and ensure objectivity, and that conversations should take place early and often. Moving on to teaching managers to scale their impact,  Ashlee suggests that it begins with simplifying the complex and getting into habits that allow them to effectively and efficiently manage their teams. 

Ashlee explains how sales managers can multiply their impact. Ashlee recommends that they take the tacit knowledge they have and document it into a simple, repeatable process, known as unconscious competence, that can be shared with the team. She also suggests managers prioritize their time and their messaging with the team to align with moving a key performance indicator (KPI). Additionally, Ashlee suggested that instead of spending a lot of time one-on-one, managers should  offer batch coaching sessions with two or three reps who are newer or working on the same skill. She also explains what they should prioritize to be most effective, and  how she helps sales managers with communication techniques. 

Data-driven Decision Making

On data-driven decision making, Ashlee  explains that it is important for leaders to be able to react to data and anticipate decisions for the business instead of responding emotionally. Ashlee then gives an example of a leader who noticed their team was not making many calls and assumed that improving that would help, when in fact the data showed that their conversion rate on cold calls was already high. She explains which metrics they should focus on and which ones should be avoided. Ashlee advises that the front end of the funnel is the easiest to track and that looking at the data can help leaders to identify more effective solutions. 

How Sales Managers Navigate Their Roles

Ashlee talks about how new sales managers can navigate their roles. She stresses the importance of focusing on the quality of conversations, rather than just quantity. As a sales manager, it's important to judge conversations based on the organization's expectations, and setting clear objectives for the call, and if the client is clear on why they should take another meeting. For sales directors, the challenge is coaching through a layer and helping managers foster their individual style. Ashlee also offers advice for independent consultants on cold outreach, suggesting that they should research the customer and approach the call with a point of view. People enjoy being told about what they're excited about, and if the consultant is wrong, the customer will be happy to correct them.

Ashlee shares how to create a compelling message when trying to build a relationship with a Chief Strategy Officer. She suggests that the message be more detailed and have a point of view, rather than a generic one, as that could be seen as uninteresting and not differentiate the sender from others. Ashlee believes that having a point of view is bolder than a generic approach and that it is better to be wrong and have a point of view than not have one. 

Timestamps:

03:51 Structured Program for Onboarding New Sales Leaders 

06:58 Sales Leadership Prioritization and Time Allocation 

09:06 Reverse Engineering Priorities for Sales Managers 

11:54 Effective Sales Management Strategies 

13:53 Strategies to Motivate Sales Teams

15:05 Different Mindsets in Sales Teams 

21:13 Accountability and Scaling Impact for Sales Managers 

26:24 Multiplying Impact and Prioritizing in Sales Management 

28:24 Effective Communication in Sales Management 

32:14 Engaging Participants and Performance-Based Conversations 

Links:

Website: HornSalesCoaching.com

Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at www.umbrex.com.

Further episodes of Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional

Further podcasts by Will Bachman

Website of Will Bachman