One of the best ways for companies to increase profitability is to reduce the time required for critical processes – the most time consuming being hiring.
If you could cut the time it takes for a new hire to become productive in half, would you do it?
You sure would.
On this episode of Evolved Sales LIVE, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with consultant and trainer, Marcus Chan, to discuss the proven system you can use to help your new hires reach maximum performance in no time.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Marcus:
After a successful career leading B2B sales teams for Fortune 500 companies, Marcus Chan went on to become a highly sought-after consultant, teaching other companies and professionals the skills and methods he had mastered to achieve world-class results.
Today Marcus is probably best known as the author of the International Best-Selling book, Six-Figure Sales Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Overfilling Your Pipeline, Closing More, and Earning in the Top 1% of Salespeople! And, in just the last 5 years, Marcus has trained over 6000+ sales professionals to enter the top 1% of their profession, not by “playing the number games,” but by learning to be the best version of themselves so they create the life they their families deserve.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:04
Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Fisher. One of the best ways to increase profitability for any company is to reduce the time required for completing critical processes. And one of the most time consuming aspects of business is human resources. But what if we can cut the time it takes for a new hire to go from day one to productive in half? Well, our guest today has a process to help us achieve just that. Marcus Chen had a successful career leading b2b sales teams for Fortune 500 companies for more than a decade, and was a 1% top performer. Today, he's a highly sought after trainer and consultant, teaching other companies professionals, the skills and methods he leveraged to achieve world class results. He's the author of the international best selling book, six figure sales secrets, and he's trained over 11,000 sales professionals in just the last five years. And today, Mark is is going to teach us a proven system that we can use to ramp up your new hires or yourself to maximum performance in the minimum amount of time, Marcus, what an honor to have you on the show today.
Marcus Chan 1:08
Hey, droplets, rolling, man, great, great to be here. And you are, you're making me blush here. But I'm just a regular guy who's made a lot of mistakes, whether it's an in the field, sell myself to run a big sales team, but I'm excited to be here. Hope I could drop some some nuggets of wisdom to help people out there really ramped up well, faster, get better results as fast as possible in the recession.
Jonathan Fischer 1:28
Well, it's one of those headaches that everybody in business development deals with. And it's it is time consuming, as I mentioned, and we look forward to hearing how you're going to share with us ways we can improve on that. But first, I'm going to give our live audience a friendly reminder, hey, it's a live show take full advantage. We're going to have a q&a session at the end. Don't wait. Go ahead and post your questions right there in the chat. And we'll circle back and have some Ask Me Anything time with Marcus at the end of our conversation? Well, Marcus, I want to before we jump into the topic of the day, could you share with us exactly how you came by the insights that you're going to be sharing with the listener?
Marcus Chan 2:01
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, early on, you know, I remember, you know, being a brand new rep and just didn't start with zero experience. And the way I was trained up was number one, given a manual run by people who've never done the job before, which you can imagine that's a terrible way to train someone, right. And then essentially, it's kind of thrown into the deep, deep end and said, Good luck, hopefully you can figure it out. And I realized that's obviously not very effective, because obviously, I really struggled. Now, fortunately, over time, eventually started to kind of figure it out. And as, as I progressed, in my career, I started, I got promoted to a leadership role, I realized I could do the same thing to the people that on my team, because number one, it took a long time hire people, right, so by time I hired the right person, they're already going to be behind number two, I also realize, if I just just throw them in the deep end did what did to them what was done to me, it was setting them up for failure. So over time, it started kind of evolving, added things to kind of the system to put together a really simple, easy way to actually ramp reps up very quickly. And it really started really little really, there's really four components really when you break it down. So they make it very simple. Number one, and by the way, it may seem overly simplistic, but I'll go in more detail as well, because a lot of times, most of us fail to execute even the simple. So the first piece is understanding number one, are you effectively hiring the right profile? Do you have the right person, you're actually hiring for that role, because if you aren't clear with that, if you don't have a good proven process for hiring and interviewing, you're going to bring in the wrong people. So even you build a great backend system to put them through. They're going to struggle. So having the right profile, the right person you actually hide for the bank, rec space, etc, is number one, give me number one, then number two, is once you're actually into, you know, into the company, do you have a system to put them through? Right, so I realized very quickly, the first 3690 days, it was absolutely vital. Even in my last company, what I realized was once you open the job requisition by by time we open it to a higher exam placing the role to them in producing at a level that was kind of okay, with the existing system, it was about 157 days, meaning almost six months. So if you're an open territory, that means you're already six months behind once you open that requisition up. So if I can cut that down as much as possible, it's very, very important. So once they come in, is there a system in place to actually properly train them and onboard for all the key fundamentals and make them highly successful that provides them the tools and resources right? So you have those things in place. But on top of that, you also want to make sure that you also are roleplay, which is the third roleplay consistently which means Do you have consistent trainings every single week, even throughout to really test your skills and improve their skills. And the fourth bucket which is really quite simple, which is really simple as having live call coaching. As a leader are you are you watching the calls are you with him live on calls and he coaching effectively and when Are you able to do this and you do all three consistently, not just when they get higher, and that's in first 30 to 30 days, but also in segments in the first 60 days, 90 days, 180 days, 365 days, are you continuing to all throughout even during the multiple years in, when you when you start thinking that way, what happens is their skill set to compound is they're getting better and better and better. But when you have a simple system like that, your chances of success are much higher. But on top of that, not only proves how high level you have lower, you have lower turnover, you have happier you happier reps, and ultimately a better culture that comes about when you actually do something like this.
Jonathan Fischer 5:38
Well, I love that. And I think I think that the simplicity is at the heart of many of the most successful companies on the planet simplifying processes is maybe takes even more genius than than complicated things in some cases. So we've got a really good four part approach four component as a roadmap, you can with a template that you've given us here, Marcus, I want to go through them one by one if we could, and maybe we could kind of absolutely go maybe point counterpoint in terms of like, what typically happens in that area versus what you're recommending, and what you've seen works far better. So let's begin with the first one having the right person that we're the right profile for that position. However, you know, most companies missing the mark on that front.
Marcus Chan 6:18
So a lot of time will companies usually do is they put the job description up, they put the post up, so people apply, etc. And then the hiring leader, the hiring manager, the sales interviews, and they don't have an objective way to really see how good that person they ask some basic interview questions if they have any. And they're like, Okay, cool. Like, you know, they seem like they're pretty, pretty likable, pretty coachable, and they kind of hire them based off that. Now, if you have naturally really good hire, and she thought might work for you, but most people don't, especially if you've never hired people before. So instead, what you really want to have is or just key, first off, number one, what are the key characteristics of pass hires you've made that have the thing that you know, can make them a rockstar? Rep, right? That can be anything from coachability adaptability, you know, self driven, whatever it's gonna be, so you uncover those are. But then number two, are you curating interview questions that help them explain to you what those things are? Or two that display those characteristics? So for example, here, instead of saying, Well, you know, like, you know, are you are you driven? Oh, yeah, I'm super driven. Okay. That's, that's a pretty terrible question as a versus give me a specific example, where you took major issue with no one asked you to at work, and he displayed exemplary results. And you won't listen carefully. What do they say about that? Whatever initiative actually take? Right, that's really important. Also, think about even the roll by itself? What are specific things or skills that you actually require in the role that make them really excel? So for example, most salespeople are quite awful at handling objections asking tough questions. So how can you incorporate those type of questions into the role, or to the interviewer, excuse me, that's doing stuff like doing role plays, right? So for example, I would actually put them through multiple role plays Live in the interview with me to help me vet them out. It wasn't perfect by any means. But it gave me a pretty good idea. So for example, like I would, I would test them, I'll say, Hey, listen, like, let's imagine, let's imagine you just had a great job to discovery did a great demo, you present the pricing, they love you. And they say, you know, pricing sounds good. Sounds good. And they say, Let me think about it. Go, what do you say next? And have them roleplay out loud with you in that same situation. Now, you're not looking for them to do it perfectly the way you want to do it, but she wants to instinctually on the spot, how they respond. They may talk to big game already. But can they actually deliver when you actually putting them on the spot? And they flounder? That's not good. Now, the second note is I personally that was looking for coachability. So they didn't do a good job. I would coach them. And honestly, how do they respond? If they were solid, completely defeated after I coach them? They're probably not very coachable. But if they're like, Wow, that was awesome. Can I try again? Let me try this. I'm with you. Now. The potential might be more coachable because of that.
Jonathan Fischer 9:12
Hmm, I love that. Well, I definitely think that there are some ways we can like pull out somebody's skills in an interview, but it's also seems pretty challenging. Can you maybe give us even more specific of an example? Like what, um, you've got my curiosity piqued? Are you setting them up in sort of a sales scenario and giving them a theoretical objection? Or are you like taking them on personally? Like, what does that actually look like in practice?
Marcus Chan 9:36
Yeah. So if you have a multistage process, right, which is most ideal. So first stage is going to be simpler like just that interview. And you're going to do probably real estate prop hopefully some roleplay with them live and I to eliminate some of their concerns or objections, which is well, I don't know your industry yet. I don't know your product, etc. So I literally say hey, listen, I want you to imagine you're at your current company, selling the same thing. This is what happens. How do you respond? Right? So that's the first as a first stage, they do a good job with that. What do you recommend? Next is? Have them actually gone live sales calls, right? So take them on your top reps, have them go on the calls, and how do they carry themselves? How do they had questions, they prepare, work? Where do they really like? Are they even on time, what's the preparation, because this is also their time to talk to someone on the team to see if it's a good fit for them as well. So all those things can give you a really good idea. Because of that. So for example, back back in corporate, that's what we would do one of the stages where we, we bring him back, and we will feel reps in person, they would hang out for half a day. And they would go into the field with my team, and they hang out, you know, with that lunch together, they go out, they may get breakfast together, they're going to feel to me, the prospects are cold calling together to do all those things. So that way, they're able to get a real taste of the job number one, but also, we got to see what they were like. And not always I'd always have my rep my top reps, I would say hey, listen, have them take over parts of the call, how to do certain parts of it, and see how they feel. Now, if they're like gung ho and ready to go, they're like, Yeah, give me the balls go. Which I like people who are like, you know, who like who have that type of drive? If they're like, wow, you know that, but excuses? Well, again, that tells you something. On top of that, the question they would ask my rep told me a lot about them as well. Because whatever the estimate my rep about would tell me what's probably really on their mind, what's most important to them. And if they're asking things that does seem kind of out of the wild want a higher, you know, like, maybe they just seem like a person, like, how many hours do you work a week? All you have to work 40 hours a week? Oh, really? I don't really like that. I'll work like 10 hours a week? Well, that's probably not gonna fit long term wise, right? That's always probably gonna come in, do the bare minimum and rule out?
Jonathan Fischer 11:53
Yeah, yeah, I like that. I think leveraging the rest of the team is a really powerful way to do it and underutilized, you probably have to have a pretty good amount of trust with the members of your team as well, and kind of have them on the inside baseball as it were on that front as well. The other thing, I liked that what you're saying there is look to be in business development and selling, especially b2b, but in any format is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And so you're not even waiting to find that out. I really liked that about the process. So there's a lot more I'd love to talk about. But we've got three more areas to cover, let's get into the system to put them through. So same thing. Where does that you know, where's that lacking? In most companies, from your experience? And what should that look like?
Marcus Chan 12:37
Yeah, so most companies are the number one, they have an enablement team that puts together some sort of training, which is probably better, it's probably better than having nothing First off, but they have something in place. But is it stuff it's actually theoretical? Or is actually what's actually happening in the field on the Zoom calls, day to day, every single day in the life of a sales professional? Right? I find most time it's not, it was put together by people who maybe hate to say it, maybe they weren't even that good of sales. So no. So they're not able to actually articulate it and deliver it in a way that's actually going to improve their skill set. Right? That's a very dangerous game, right? Or some companies have nothing. And casamento was what like for me was was there thrown into the deep end, because I had, like, good luck. Now, obviously, that leads to very, very terrible results. And I always equate to, if you want to run a high performing sales team, it's like running a high performing sports team. Right? If you have a really good coach, the coach has a system in place, and they take a player who's already good, they put into the system and they're freaking Rockstar, but able to do it repeatedly. So incomes one rep outcomes a rockstar income one rep aka another Rockstar, and you want to think about your system like the same way. And you want to get super granular, right. And I think it's important also how you how you stagger and develop the training. So for example, even for my own company, when a new hire starts, we have literally no joke, the entire sales process, step by step completely broken down, filmed into modules and recordings for every part of the sales process. Now Bastile, you're the first part of that system. The first part is actually indoctrination into massive belief that the solution that we deliver has world class results. That's actually the first thing I think you got to focus on, rather than most companies focus on product knowledge, which that's important to an extent. But what's even more important is the belief and conviction a sales professional has when they're actually having conversations with a sales Oh, the prospect because you get the best process in the world. But if they don't have conviction or belief, they're not going to convey that in their conversation and the questions and anything that they do. So even the first stage of the training, you might make new hires good for my company. It's really indoctrinated. I literally walk them through case study after case after case a testimony and examples of success from our program. And it's from like As from tangible results to intangible assets from actual results from whether it's reps who are 2345 5x in their income in a single year, to getting promoted to how coffee, they feel to the stress reduced to all these things, that's really, really important to them. So I haven't go through all that first, before even worry about the practice, it's really, really important because this now sets them up for success, or oh, I believe in now. So now they're gonna be much more open to learning everything else on how to actually deliver this transformation. So then from there, we go to the opposite, a little bit basic proc knowledge, which is important, a certain set, but something important still, but then actually literally go through everything. So it's not just, you know, in how we make cold calls, or how we do outbound or how we're in discovery, it's literally how do you structure your day? How do you how do you what are the mental models you want to have in place when you think about selling and running these calls. So we'd go to a break down step by step by step by step by step on top of the whole process that's broken down, there's frameworks and templates, they can actually implement very quickly, all the things right, I think, and behind the scenes, I even incorporate 10 Different recorded live calls a B on calls, so they can see how it's actually execute when they see all of it together. So they throw it piece by piece, and they stack the pieces together. And then on top of that, they also then have live calls immediately, with the watch of me going through the thing. And there's even more trained on me taking a live call myself, in dissecting my own live call. Breaking up here, here's what I did here. Here's why. Here's the psychology behind this so they can understand not just what to do, or how to do it, but also why it works. So now you're getting a fully comprehensive way of learning by, by by doing that. And we do we do do that way you actually start building skills, you start increasing skills and knowledge right now, on top of that whole system that they go through, which is all modularized. You know, we also have weekly meetings. So every Monday and Wednesday, you know, we have team meetings, right? So we're doing trade we're discussing and we're very loud, we're very present. So we're keeping the skills ongoings really sharp as results. That's part of the systems. And that's onboarding all the way through. Because the reality is, is I don't know about you, but I can watch a video one time read a book one time, but I'll never maybe temper sentiment Max, I want to watch it a second time. When I read the book a second time, watch the movie a second time, it reinforces I learned new things, right. That's why it's so key to always constantly be sharpening sharpening the axe, sharpen the sword. That's why two is key when you have a system like that. Now you have a common language, you have common skills developing, and we have a baseline to work off and to refine over time with steps three and four.
Jonathan Fischer 17:47
So it sounds like you've got to have a real, a passionate leader to make this work. Would you agree? I mean, you can't just plug this into somebody who is maybe a good teacher, or maybe they're a good organizer. Those are great skills highly useful in business. But it sounds like for this you need a real champion, a real, real passionate person who loves eats, sleeps, breathes sales to lead this thing. Am I on point?
Marcus Chan 18:12
Well, I guess at the end of the day, you have a couple options here, right? You can be a seller who does not do things like this. And what's gonna happen is you'll have probably 3040 50% Plus turnover. So what ends up happening is they'll kill your growth. And you're always trying to chase trying to fill a fill open territory, it'd be way more stressed out. And that you will actually be able to be effective to be a great sales leader, you go from job to job, that's one option. Or number two, you realize one of the core skills you have to develop as a sales leader is how do I make my team the best version of them. And when you realize that this is merely a means to the end, if you will, right. There's many ways to skin a cat this way I found to be most effective for reducing turnover. So for example, I'll give you a very simple example. Right? So, you know, well, it's something that took over a years ago, they typically do about $8 million in total contract value year, right? It was okay, not not very much for the size of the team that they had. I took it over for implement this, this this system, right modified for that category as a different company. And we were from 8 million to 23 million a couple years total contract value every single year. Right. And the difference was because now we had a system to turnover from 50% down to 17%. Right? And that's including people that um, terminate because they simply can't hack it, right. So think about that think wasn't the last time you heard of a sales team who had less than 20% turnover, right? It's very rare, and it's very rarely happens right for the whole year. So and the reason is, because when you have all funds together, the pieces are simple, but they're like fundamental, the fundamental legs of the stool. When you have all together, it builds a really strong foundation and allows you to have replicatable success. And this is actually how I was able to, you know, go from that team of 20 Lean 2020 reps to get promoted lean team of 85 with multiple leaves in between, because then repeating that same system over and over because now at a bigger org, right, but you can't do that system otherwise because you're chasing your tail, but you have to have a system to actually scale and grow your actual business.
Jonathan Fischer 20:06
Yeah, you put me in mind of what one of my friends that a former client of mine says that Grant Cardone that, you know it, it's gonna be hard one way or the other, it's gonna be hard when you don't succeed. And it's hard to succeed, why not just have it be hard and succeed. I didn't quote him directly. But he says something, there's lots of versions of that. And it sounds like there's some work involved. But there's a lot of you're conveying an awful lot of passion. And you almost are, you've got to be sold on it yourself. I love how you focused on that as well, early on when you are coming into a company. And it's like, I'm falling about your rules and spitting out a bunch of facts, and I'm just gonna be judged on my performance that feels very different from this, Hey, we do some great things for our clients. And you're sold on that. And now I've got this, I mean, you can actually feel really good about your service, because I think sales does get a bad name. Because it's all about pushing people where this is more about serving people. I mean, even the way he's describing the training and management role sounds like you know, a true coach. And the job of the coach is to make the player successful, right, if he or she is actually invested in making them, get it done helping them improve all the time, every day, there's a lot more than you can get me excited about this, I love I love all aspects of selling, sometimes it becomes a little too much of a system. This is some really great stuff, though, about building humans. So we got what I'm hearing from you is alright, get plugged the right people into a great system that kind of ramps them into this culture of yours in the right way. And then you have a set of disciplines, that kind of keeps that kind of caught looks like this, right? And then you kind of keep keep the growth going over time. So that takes the form of roleplay. And also live call coaching. So let's get some best practices to the listener on those two to close out our conversation today.
Marcus Chan 21:48
Absolutely. So roleplay is, so I used to call real plane, because I think the mistake people make with roleplay is they kind of say if you're the sales leader, and you're having your rep roleplay with you, as you're the prospect most of my fine, most leaders actually just like an easy prospect. But the truth is, most proxies are kind of hard, especially if you're doing cold outbound. So we would do real plays, I would real play with my team every single week, right? And I still do to this day, right. But there's, there's a way to do it. So for example, if we're going to reteach a new concept, I would teach the concept. And then I would pick two on my team that I knew pi bust me a little bit me really tough to be to be the salesperson or to be the the prospect now I'll be the salesperson, if they're not role play the concept live, and I want them to be tough on me Give me objections. So they can see me do it live and as handle it, running the process I just taught them and then not have them do it. And I'll be the toughest prospect possible, I would we would run with the toughest situations, because why want to do was build their muscle memory, build the rejection, tolerance, and really improve their skills. Because when you start thinking this way, and you practice for the worst possible situations, when you actually live on those calls, it's never all those bad things added up together, it's only a couple of those things. So becomes easy. So let me give you a specific example. So for example, we will play cold calling out roleplay. I'll roleplay prepared, I'm like entrepreneur for four to five knows, four to five knows who pressed how we roleplay. So we real play. And we go through four to five noes. And the first one we do early on, they're not very good. They're not good. Maybe one or two. And then over time with consistency every single Wednesday, that muscle gets bigger and stronger. So over time suddenly before you know it, now they're strong. They can handle four or five noes. And what happens when the next on the phones. Thank you maybe two or three knows. So when they're expecting five, they only get two or three. It's laughable. It's like oh, that's it. That's it yet. Let's go Yeah, right. And that's why the roleplay is so critical. But you have to do consistently the mistake most people make is the only roleplay with a team is underperforming, they only train the teams underperforming. But reality is the top 1% sales teams are top 1% professional athletes of the world. They don't practice when they struggle. They practice all the time, right? Because the truth is, pros practice more than they play. Amateurs play more than they practice. They never practice and they just won't play the game. And thus, they're never ready to show up when it's time to show up. So it's really, really important that you as a leader are building this as part of your system to look consistently early on. And later on as well. So even with new hires, the role plays were much more free with every single day as a new hire every single day, because I'm filling a new early, they're excited. They have a rookie energy. I know it's going to fade. I'm going to make sure early on within the honeymoon stage. I'm going to maximize it. I'm going to make sure we're leveraging the energy in the right way we're channeling it into advancing skills and when the events or skills that way when things get tough because a will get tough. They're pretty strong, they're more bulletproof. Right? And then the last piece is live call coaching. The mistake many, many leaders make is They only listen to calls when there's maybe issues. Oh, no, we're not closing anymore what's going on? Let me let them listen calls, right? If even that, or they say, Oh, I'm too busy for calls, I don't have time to listen to calls. I'm too busy. I got like, Well, no, your number one KPIs results, your team's results, right? What is gonna drive it your team's what's the best if your reps are the best, you can't close every deal for your rep, but you can make your team better, right? So listening to calls me live the calls is really, really important. Because you can see live now, how are they implementing these real plays that you are they're doing? On the off time? Live on the calls? How do you implement these things? You've been teaching them? How are you course correcting? And that's really important, because now you can also number one, not just course correct. But also you can recognize the behaviors and reinforce the ones you want to see keep going. So for example, Hey, you know, you know, Marcus, you did a really good job here without objection. And you what you don't you didn't just try to handle you dove in deeper you empathize them you, they really felt hurt. And you got so clear that their initial surface level objection was even real is something totally different. So really good job of covering that. So now it's a cool, it's reinforced the right behaviors, you're actually being a leader now. And then you can coach the incorrect behaviors, right? And that's really important is this something that's happened all the time, right, so even back in corporate, when I had a sales team of 20, I was in the field with my reps, at least for half days a week, meaning about five, six hours each time I was riding with a sales professional in the field, go into the points with them, not not sending to the clipboard, just like trying to like check mark and judge not at all. We're Team selling. I'm learning from them to learn from me, right? I might say, Hey, listen, this next call out, you run the front part, I run the backend. Okay, and it was let's switch. Right, a good job here. Let's focus on next College. Try focusing on this now. So what happens is, I'm making them stronger over time, right? We do live call coaching, or you ride with your reps, you're hanging out with your reps, it's not about let me beat you up and find all your wrong areas. It's let me reinforce the right behaviors, and also find some areas to help improve. And we can do it consistently. Your reps also now realize you're in it to help them, you actually want to help them get bigger, you want to help them maximize the skills that will improve their livelihood the fastest. So when you actually truly understand that and you realize leadership is about true service, it becomes a different game. If you just sit back and try being an armchair quarterback, then your team will struggle, you have high turnover, and they'll ultimately eventually fail quit you overtime.
Jonathan Fischer 27:35
Well, I'll tell you what, there's a lot of great insights here. And our conversation has already gone by so quickly, Marcus, I love it. There's a lot of great. So I think food for thought for the listener to go further. Like am I missing opportunities to give positive reinforcement reinforcement to my team? Me How important is that? I'm actually getting out in front and leading from the front. When's the last time I took a call it was last time I actually show by example. So you've really challenged the listener. And I'm grateful to you for doing that. Marcus, I guarantee a lot of our listeners are going to want to go further with your insights. How can they best do that? You've got a nice offer for us today.
Marcus Chan 28:12
Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of words. And why don't you find me on LinkedIn, click me on LinkedIn. Also, my book, six figure sales secrets, the Wall Street Journal best selling book, you can get a free copy discover shipping handling by going to the link right below here, which is Bentley bentley.co. Forward slash book, get a free copy right there. So pretty awesome book. So definitely enjoy that they'll help you whether it's for you. If you're a sales leader, or for your sales team as well. Right won't order in bulk or go to Amazon, it'll be easier for book for a sales team to help them absolute crush and sales.
Jonathan Fischer 28:41
Love it? Well, we've, we've arrived at that moment. It's time for live q&a. So we've got a few more people that probably are going to be posting questions, but we've got a few that have already come in. We will veer over to that. And let's kind of get started with one here. So yeah, leave is asking, do your methods have been talking about work better with certain go to market strategies versus other ones? And if so, which? Which is which?
Marcus Chan 29:07
Yeah, good question. I mean, I think ultimately, when I think about what was gonna say, these are frameworks, right? These are frameworks that you want to take and apply, right? I think if we if we take someone say, hey, this applies perfectly to that one strategy versus other, that might be the wrong way. Think about this. Because at the end of the day, nothing's binary, right? It's not right or wrong one way or the other way. It's how can I take the essence of what marks time on the framework can apply to this specific GTM strategy? We started thinking this was interesting. For example, like let's say, for example, if you run a team, it's all virtual remotes, the majority of teams, my team is like, you might like I can't necessarily, I can't go and, you know, get in the car rather than going means like, of course, now, that won't make any sense. That wouldn't work that way. But what can you do, right? For example, can we start putting new software so we can actually start doing call recordings, and then we build into our weekly calendar Every week as a team, we're going to listen to one of the recorded calls and listen together as a team and coaching through it. Right? So you can still apply the principles the same way. I want to get stuck in the exact specific things because it's the concept of dribble apply, that actually help your team improve.
Jonathan Fischer 30:20
Yeah, there's actually I think, I think probably behind that question, it seems like when you're talking about getting out there and getting a lot of high volume of conversations, you probably have to have a pretty good marketing team or really, it needs to be enough going on on that side, right? I mean, can you just make a cold, you know, get a dialer going and do enough cold calls to make this work? That's kind of my additional question. Is that, is that still working today? Are we finding this more difficult? So we got to have a great marketing? Divisions back?
Marcus Chan 30:50
Yeah. 100%. Right. So um, so here's like, I'm also a firm believer. You can have results, you can have you have results, or you can have reasons for not being successful. Right. And I've been part teams, and I've been part organizations where, frankly, the market is not that good. So, you know, you don't hire person responsible for that. Right? So that's gonna be the case. As a leader, are you feeding into that same reason why a teammate can't be successful, that they don't have enough leads? Or if that is really reality? What can you do now? To set them up for success? How can you empower them? How can you teach them how to use Sales Navigator, build highly targeted lists, and so having to do outbound to fill the funnel up? Marketing, for sure, in the perfect world marketing is a perfect align with sales and one feeds the other, that'd be the best situation possible. But in some situations, it just won't be that perfect. So whatever situation you're being thrown into, you want to be able to maximize it. How can I maximize? How can I eliminate that as a problem? So for example, even like, if you were to, I would argue that cold calling still works and people disagree with that. But not cold calling sense of let me buy a crappy, terrible list, upload to a power dialer and start ripping through making calls. That's, that's a terrible way to go about it. Instead, the idea should be more of okay, maybe marketers honestly, good. So how can we generate a highly curated list, right that we build and work off of? In fact, maybe some some people, some people listening out there are watching, they don't even have they don't know what a power that I'll have a power dialer, I don't have this. I don't have these these fancies, these sales things. I don't have this tech stack. That's okay. Well, same, same idea. Okay, what can you do instead? Well, can you go and start searching out and building your own list, maybe it's a Google Sheets of hyper targeted prospects, who are the right ICP ideal customer profile, and start outbound calling those people do your research in advance, right, and build a list properly. So we go down the list, you actually have to have intelligent conversations. So you actually have smart conversations, right? So you can still apply the same thing. But if if the rep doesn't have enough calls, that there's a bigger problem at play here. It could be a marketing issue, that doesn't really matter. Like the problem may still exist. But it's still the responsibility of the sales team, the leader to solve the problem. That's how you want start thing, we started thinking that way. You never worry about leads, and you just worry about, Hey, how can you worry about more about customer success? Be able to deliver what you said you're going to do? Have them deliver on?
Jonathan Fischer 33:26
Yeah, I love that guy. 100% ownership on that. Let's see, here's here's a question from Karen Bailey. She's asking what are your thoughts on structuring sales teams? You know, STRS, versus AES and all of that? I mean, do you have a few favorite ideas as to how that should be done?
Marcus Chan 33:40
Um, you know, I think it's, it's interesting question, because in today's time, you know, I've read different books in different philosophies where it's heavy on this split off of STRS A's. And I think there's pros and cons to each. And I'm gonna say right now, my opinion is probably a little bit biased, in the sense that I was a full cycle rep. You know, meaning I didn't get the benefit having someone outbound for me, I had to do everything I cold called i Little I Coco. I called everything, I fill my own funnel, I filled my own pipeline, I did everything, right. It also made me a better sales professional because of that. So I'm not saying it's definitely a broken model. But I think over time, because depending on the company, some some of these Astilleros I've seen are almost like marketing roles versus like true outbound. And I think it's really important to identify and or define what is gonna be the role that SDR BDR, because sometimes, it might not be the role that they don't think about in terms of the terms to an outbound right. And some of those roles, I think, over wrench over time, like I think we're gonna see, especially with AI and everything else is we're gonna see smaller sales teams. We're gonna have we're gonna see relatively probably, like a smaller SDR team and BDR teams, you know, and there'll be leveraging AI To do outbound, right, eventually to the point where that's not even a thing anymore, right. And it might be just fullcycle AE roles. And there's leveraging AES or leverage a on top of what they're doing, but they're still doing outbound too. So I don't think is a perfect model. But I think is important understand, like, how do you define the role? What are you trying to optimize for that is structured properly to?
Jonathan Fischer 35:22
That, that makes a world of sense. I like that. Let's move on here to so one, in the Agua. I hope I said that right. One, Forgive me, brother mentioned, you said, you mentioned needing to hire the right profile. Are you a fan of tests such as disk? Or, you know, there's several others I could name here, but what are your thoughts on that?
Marcus Chan 35:42
Yeah, I really like I really like this. I mean, I think I'm probably biased. I love those tests. Personally, I think I think you learn a lot about a person. I think when you're when you're interviewing, you're high on my profile. Whenever you're hiring someone, there's like the facts. And the test results. There's kind of like the hard facts, if you will, the logical stuff. And there's also the emotional stuff, too, right? It's like, it's like, how do you actually feel with them as well. So I'll give examples. So if you couldn't tell by just this conversation, even on DISC profile, I'm a, I'm a strong D. I just, I just this is how I have a hard charger, if you could tell.
Jonathan Fischer 36:20
Never Yes, I just
Marcus Chan 36:24
so and I've interviewed people, we didn't have any tests like that. But I could tell based on the content, I'm like, they're probably a D as well. Which is cool, right? Which is cool. But like when when you when you talk with them, just like anything else, even with a strong D, there's good and bad ones, right. And overall, the person now I could I could feel was not going to really align to the rest of the team. Because I think when you're when you're building a strong team, it's really important that number one, you have the right profile, but it's not just for the role, but also for the team. And when the team is gonna go what gaps the team have. So, for example, in the last and last couple years, I was in corporate, you know, I would hire a lot, a lot of people over time, right? And the kind of profile I always say the profile CPU can seem totally weird, but it can add a profile kind of higher intentionally, but it's a very, like, okay, so if you didn't fit this profile, then they probably wouldn't get hired. It wasn't that wasn't like how they would interview but it just seemed that when you see this team, like, everyone looks the same. That's the same, that's dangerous. Yeah, have you have as a homogenous team, the same ways of thinking, same age group, it seemed like every kind of look the same way act the same way, that can be very, very dangerous. And I think it's really important. When you hire people, you are hiring people with different strengths actually lift the team up, because as a whole, they're actually better. Right. And it was interesting was ever I thought I had a very homogenous team. And my team, when I started building, this team looked very different, very different personality types. So like, I'm very, very intense people that are not as intense people that are more emotional, we have more people that are just like, it's like we had, we had a lot of females on our team, different ages, their backgrounds, different gender. So we had like a really diverse team. And if you looked at my team, at the annual sales meeting, it just looked different than the makeup of other teams. Strangely enough, a year or two later, all the top teams year after year after year. Right? Yeah, because we had a diversity of thought that's why I think it's you have to be careful a little bit because the instinct is going to be, hey, there are x profile, we're all gonna hire that. Yes, a much more higher off, you know, characteristics and values, you know, and their beliefs versus just a personality. So take it all into consideration when you make a hiring decision.
Jonathan Fischer 38:47
Yeah, yeah. I love what we're talking about there. The the idea of, it's been a couple ideas in my head, it reminds me of famous sayings that aren't exactly right, until you make one little tweak, like, knowledge is power, great saying, Well, only once it's applied, right. diversity is our strength. Well, only once you really unified on a common mission that it is. If not, it's just a thing. I mean, might or might not be right. So it sounds like you Marshal a team that did have common values. So when hiring, when you use the word profile, you're not really talking maybe about the same thing somebody else might be you it sounds like it's more like a set of values and maybe some life choices. Maybe they want a little more for themselves, and maybe maybe expand out a little bit. What was that core of the profile since there is that diversity around that?
Marcus Chan 39:35
Yeah, so I mean, like, so there's few things right. So like, there's only a simple stuff, like I think will be pretty common across the board. Like, what's top of sales acumen do they have? I think it's important, like instinctually how do they engage with you? Like when you meet them? Are they awkward? or the like? Like, do they prepare for the conversation? Like that's sevens? No, it's totally crazy, but it's kind of shocking that that should be a requirement, right? So that's really important. Um, I want to know, are they adaptable? Right? Do they have good AQ? So like, know what things pivot? How do they adapt to that? So, I might ask a question like this, Hey, give me a specific example of a time when you set plan in place, somebody catastrophic happened. What did you do next? And want to find out exactly what do they do? And also, how do they define catastrophic? Right? Like, I hate to say it, but sometimes it's like, I mean, this is kind of crazy. But like, you know, one of the questions I would ask them, this kind of an example is like, you know, give me give me an example of something that that was really challenges you overcame, you're able to accomplish in life. I just wanted to generally speaking, right? And no offense, if this is you, but sometimes I'll get the extra like, oh, you know, like, I'm really proud that I went to college, and I graduated. I'm like, wait, hold on. So well, they freely give you loans to go to school, you went and party and you graduated. You just got above a deed, that's your proudest accomplishment? Right, like, I'm out. Right. It's like, so it sounds like that. I think it's important point as well. Someone mentioned grit earlier, like, having a level of grit and perseverance is really important. You know, like, that's just like, you know, at the end of the day, I think the the double determine for success is delayed gratification, right? Being able to do something consistently, even when it sucks. And it feels like it's not desirable, you can't see the end, are you able to persevere and push through? Because oftentimes, we know in sales, the hardest territory managed right between the ears. So if we know to be true, that's basically what sales is all time. So if you if you don't have that, what do you actually have? Right, I think, I think is really important, right? How about drive, I want to have a driven, do they expect a lot of themselves, like, the one of the worst things you can do is hire someone who has low expectations of themselves. Because when they performed a certain level, they're going to be good, they're gonna be stagnant, right? Because they're document open, able to push past it right. So I'll give you a really simple example. So and it's not necessarily what they've already achieved, but mostly what that what the goals are. So for example, so I only ask them like, hey, like, what was like, What do you want to make? What like won't be a dream income? And why? I want to find out what that number is. Right? And I'm not looking like a massively high number by any means. But I wonder the reasoning behind it. Rather go on to God, tutor K. Okay, cool. Why is that? I don't know. I guess that'd be nice. You know, like, should be nice to get there. Well, the reality is, is like, that's not that's not great. There's no true wire drive behind that. Right? Versus, hey, I'll make $20,000. And here's why. Because my kid has like 30 different allergies, we go to allergy Institute, it's really expensive. So I want to save up money and take him there to give all his allergies isn't cost X amount. In order to get that I have to know what I do for my family. Do I do for them, because growing up, I never had the opportunity. So there's a fire inside a drive that I can't create. They got to have it. So I can cover some of these things as examples. That it hopefully it puts them in a highest likelihood of taxi be successful. Because, again, if you hire so as a low drive, low, low motivation, they're going to call in sick, they're not going to show up. When things get harder. They're going to give up. We don't want that every time you have turnover. Every time the fires when there's someone like just quits, that kills your growth. It puts you back many months cost you 1000s 1000s of dollars.
Jonathan Fischer 43:50
Yeah, yeah, the average bad hire Sinhala numbers can cost you anywhere from 60 to 120 grand. And so it's definitely something to consider very carefully. Well, Marcus, it's been a value packed episode. I'm grateful to you for being here. Your fantastic guests. You're welcome back anytime. Thanks for being on the show.
Marcus Chan 44:08
Thanks for having me on. It's been a pleasure.
Jonathan Fischer 44:11
Awesome. Well, and thank you to our listening audience. You've made the show the success that it is, if you've been enjoying the content as much as I know you have been go check out some of our previous episodes. Our podcast is called the Evolve sales leader. You can find it anywhere you'd like to consume, podcast, and of course, a big shout out to our sponsor overpass. They are the world's leading platform for quickly hiring business development talent from anywhere in the world. In the minimum amount of time a theme for our show today. It's free to open up your account overpass.com And you can quickly find 510 15 fantastic people to help you grow your company. Check it out. overpass.com Well, that's gonna do it for the show today. We'll see you the next time. Same station, same time signing off. You guys. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next time here on the Evolve sales leader.
