Episode 34: How to Build High-Performance Sales Teams

In this episode of The Sound of Automation podcast, we sit down with Kirk Armstrong of Armstrong Sales Coaching. Bryan and Kirk discuss ways to build high-performance sales teams. Listen in to learn the keys to successful recruitment and retention in the industrial automation space. Discover what matters most when it comes to recruitment, training, motivation, and accountability.

Guest Kirk Armstrong
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkarmstrong/

Host Bryan Powrozek
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanpowrozek/

For more information on Wipfli, please visit our website at:
https://www.wipfli.com/manufacturing. You can also contact us here.

Transcript

Kirk Armstrong:

I believe that you motivate people... You've got to give them something to reach for. But some of us are extrinsically motivated by things like money, but others are intrinsically motivated by things like pats on the back and public recognition. So I think you have to understand your people a little bit to understand how are they motivated.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to The Sound of Automation, brought to you by Clayton and McKervey. CPAs for growth driven businesses.

Brian Powrozek:

Hello and welcome to The Sound of Automation. I'm Brian Powrozek, your host. And joining me today is Kirk Armstrong of Armstrong Sales Coaching. Kirk, how you doing today?

Kirk Armstrong:

Hello there, Brian. Doing great, thanks.

Brian Powrozek:

Excellent. Well meeting today to talk about a topic that I know you and I have spent quite a bit of time here talking about recently and understanding, but the idea of building high performance sales teams. In my conversations with a lot of automation company owners and distributors, this topic has come up quite a bit lately that one of the areas they see their business really struggling is in the sales area. And coming from an engineering background myself, I understand that something that might not be second nature to a lot of folks in engineering and fields like that. So appreciate you taking some time and coming in to share some of your thoughts with us.

Kirk Armstrong:

Well thanks Brian. I really appreciate it. Anytime I can have a chance to talk about sales and sales development, I enjoy it. So I appreciate you having me on.

Brian Powrozek:

Excellent. So maybe just to kind of kick things off here, I guess can you give us a little bit of your background and how you got into this world?

Kirk Armstrong:

Absolutely. So many times people that do what I do for a living, sales development and sales coaching and consulting, that sort of thing. It usually stems from somebody that maybe started in sales just like I did and maybe they worked hard at it and it certainly was my case. I don't know if you could have worked harder than I did at trying to be good at sales. And after all, I had a lot of pressure because I had friends and family and in fact most of my family members were in the field. So I had this internal drive to succeed to show them I could do it. Well, you get into the field of selling and boy is it tough. If you've never been trained and had never have had any training, you can suffer through things like rejection and not getting ahold of the people you want to get ahold of and not knowing what questions to ask and what to say and that was certainly me.

So what I did was I found someone like myself that was good at this sort of thing and I was hoping it would make a difference. And not only did it do so, it really changed my life. All of these challenges and struggles I was going through, they didn't immediately evaporate, but they started to get easier and things started to make sense. And I couldn't believe that I didn't figure it out on my own. I thought I was a pretty smart guy, but it wasn't that easy. So once you learn from somebody else you know from anything that you've done and you see there's an easier better way, you start to take that path, which I did. And that helped me elevate through sales, through sales management, vice president, directors of sales with these different companies. And you know what, I kept bringing people like me along the way.

So I brought trainers in and I would learn from them and I learned so much that I got pretty good at this stuff. And that's when at some point in my career I decided, you know what? I'm so good. I thought this sort of thing, the development of people, I think I'll do that for a living. And that's how I got my start, which is I think commonplace for someone in my field.

Brian Powrozek:

No, that's great. And I think it's interesting too just in what I've seen throughout my career is that I go back to my engineering days and we didn't hire true salespeople. It was typically an engineer that saw that as their career path. And so they went over to our sales organization and even though they may have held the title of account manager or salesperson or whatever it might be, they really didn't have that training that you're talking about. And the opportunity to learn those skills that are completely different than what they would've learned in their formal education. And now as we start to see the demographic shift and everybody's competing for this smaller and smaller pool of talent, at least in my conversations with business owners. There's a lot of guidance counselors and teachers and other people who influence the direction that kids are going to take their careers, encouraging people to go into engineering or other areas.

And you don't hear too many people saying, "You should really go into sales." And so now you've got this need in the market and people, they're trying to figure out who can be their good salespeople and maybe they try and bring somebody internally and move them into that role or they look outside, but that's not an area that they're used to recruiting for. So that's kind of what the impetus behind today's topic was. So to jump right into that, based on your experience in the work you do, what are some of the keys to building a high performance sales team?

Kirk Armstrong:

That's a great question. I think you should have a process, and some people might know this step already, but I believe when you go to try to find salespeople, first of all, you've got to know what you're looking for. And once you figure that out, to me, you have a very good interviews with them, that's one leg of the stool, if you will. The next leg of the stool to me is the resume and really getting good at how to read a sales resume because lo and behold, I know this might seem hard to figure out for some people, but sometimes people don't always tell you the truth on resumes of what they've accomplished in their sales field. That's the second leg of the stool to me. And the third one is assessments. Just assessing someone with an outside tool to help you understand not can they sell but will they go out and make sales happen? So I think if you use that three-legged approach, if you will, that helps at least initially.

Brian Powrozek:

And something you mentioned there, especially because you've got some experience in industrial sales. What are some things that if you were in one of these owner's shoes and trying to hire for that sales position when sales isn't your background, so you don't know what necessarily may or may not make a good sale. What are some of the things you might look for on that resume?

Kirk Armstrong:

That's a great question, Brian. There's some obvious stuff where you want to know what they've achieved. I like to ask really detailed questions when I read something on a resume that says number one or grew the territory 150%. I'm not taking that for face value. I'm going to ask a lot of detailed questions about how did you go about doing that? Tell me about some of the accounts that you were able to open or some of the accounts that you were able to grow and tell me how you did it. What was your strategy that you pulled together? Help me understand how you built those relationships. And even to the granular questions when you heard somebody that was objecting or didn't really want to speak to you, what did you do about it?

How did you go about it when you heard the word no. I think testing people like that can be really important in an interview instead of just taking it for face value. So that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for detailed explanation as to what they've done and how they've gone about it so that we can determine am I buying into their strategies? Do I believe what they're saying? And do I agree with how they went about doing it?

Brian Powrozek:

And I like the other point you made about the selection tools. I know a lot of companies use DiSC profile or some other personality profile predictive index to kind of evaluate the individual. And so that's almost kind of that next level of, "Okay, well we know this individual's going to be in this specific role, so let's find a tool that's really focused on that to help you solve some of those problems."

Kirk Armstrong:

So true. Unfortunately a lot of people will hear that, "Hey, you're really good with people, you'll be good in sales." And I just think that's a really bad way to look at it. That's a tiny little component that sometimes will fail that person because we want to test for things like need for approval. What's their need to have to be liked by people out there in the world? What are their buying patterns? Because the way we buy is the way we sell. We know that about people. So to study, do they have a nice personality? Do I get along with them? Do they seem like an assertive person? To me, it's more about what makes up their mental makeup. Are they a self-starter?

Are they hard charger? Are they going to be good at being curious and asking the right questions to uncover what the needs are of the customer? And to me, that's what those assessment tools are supposed to do. They're supposed to teach us not about the personality, but more about their mental makeup and their ability to do the things that we want them to do when they're out there on their own.

Brian Powrozek:

No, that's fantastic. So let's now shift to the next step. So we've found the person and now we've got them in our organization. And I see this a lot too where... And I'll take just a system integrator as an example, that's an organization that's largely going to be comprised of engineers who are doing highly technical work. What recommendations do you have for a business owner who's working in that environment where maybe the sales team is just a small subset of the overall employees? How do you train and develop those folks in the same way that you would train and develop your engineers? It's easy to send them to the FANUC robotic programs and those kinds of things because those are abundant for their industry. But now you've got this kind of niche group of employees within your organization that don't do what the business is set up to do. So I guess any advice on training and developing those people?

Kirk Armstrong:

Another good question, Brian. I think where people make a mistake is where they allow their individuals, let's say it's an engineer, to sink or swim on their own and they don't give them a lot of help. This might sound self-serving, but I'm a big believer in sending people to a long-term reinforcement type training like ours. Where you're going to learn over time, let's face it, we're trying to change habits. We're trying to undo some of the belief systems they have. We're trying to train them on techniques that it's going to be hard to learn in a day or a three-day session. To me, any session or any training that isn't at least six months long where you're attending weekly, you're probably not getting exposed to enough things and you're not able to break habits. I mean, I equate it to other things like karate, judo, martial arts, learning a new language, learning the guitar or an instrument.

No matter how good the trainer is, if you go one time and you're there all day or you go three times and you're there all day, it's not enough. We need to probably do it weekly, practice and come back and practice and come back. So I'm a big believer of A, reinforcement training and I'm a big believer of having sales meetings that expose them to things that they're going to be struggling with. Talk about in your sales meetings about what do you do when someone says, "No, we don't want to see you." And talk about it if you're not training them, train them yourselves and at least discuss some of the trials and tribulations they're going to go through and maybe even role play what you're going to do to get out of those situations. Because without it, what people are going to do is default to their own makeup and they're going to make it up or they're going to follow somebody that they saw once that probably wasn't very good.

Brian Powrozek:

Exactly. I know I can personally attest to the first point of your response there, that you and I have known each other for a couple of years now. And it seems like every time we have a conversation and we're talking about something, I walk away with some other kernel of knowledge or something, I say, "Okay, I can do that a little bit differently next time and just continue to work at it because it's like everything else." It's a skill that as soon as you stop working on it... Just like with working out, if I stop working out, the muscles are going to start to atrophy. All those gains are going to start to go away.

Kirk Armstrong:

Absolutely.

Brian Powrozek:

Great. So kind of somewhat related to that, because I think that when you're talking about employees inside, there's a lot of talk around how do you motivate and incentivize those employees. And it becomes a little bit of that paradox of whatever you measure is what you're going to get. So if the incentives are purely based on number of calls made or dollars of revenue closed, they're not necessarily incentivized to focus on is that a good sale and something we want to pursue. So I guess, how do you recommend businesses approach that issue of incentivizing and motivating salespeople?

Kirk Armstrong:

Yes, it's a big problem right now because believe it or not, things like money motivation are actually decreasing each year. And we study this stuff and we assess people. We know that the money motivation has gone down dramatically through the years. So one of the things I'll say that I want to say that some people won't like, but it's very difficult to motivate people. So when we look for sales individuals, we want self-starters because if you're not a self-starter and you need motivation, that can be a struggle. That's a whole story for probably another day. But the question is how do you motivate people? I believe that you motivate people... You've got to give them something to reach for. But some of us are extrinsically motivated by things like money, but others are intrinsically motivated by things like pats on the back and public recognition.

So I think you have to understand your people a little bit to understand how are they motivated? Are they reaching for that goal that can be satisfied through incentives and money and trips and that sort of thing? Or do they need to be rewarded by intrinsic rewards, patting them on the back and acknowledging their work and making them feel important. I think it's important to recognize that. I think KPIs, as you mentioned, is another excellent tool where you're striving to reach a certain goal, whether it's a leading indicator of things you want them to notice coming up that can forecast versus lagging something that happened in the past. Both can be good, but motivation is a funny thing. The short answer is I think you've got to have goals and you've got to measure them with them so that they understand what they're going for.

One of the biggest complaints I get from individual salespeople about their owners is, "I don't know how well I'm doing. I don't know if they like the type of work I'm doing. I don't know if I'm doing the right things." And that's probably lack of guidance and lack of goal setting.

Brian Powrozek:

And in some way that all kind of ties back into the concept of accountability. That if you don't have clear goals, don't have clear expectations, and then are measuring those. We all hear the horror stories about someone going in for their performance review and finding out that they did something 12 months ago that didn't meet expectations. So accountability becomes a real... And that's across the board in organizations at every level. Accountability is critical, but it's the same as the case within the sales organization.

Kirk Armstrong:

I agree. And the tough part I think for owners is there's a difference between accountability and micromanagement and you've got to be very careful with a really good salesperson if you've got them on staff. You don't want to micromanage them because they don't need the accountability like someone else might.

Brian Powrozek:

Something I find interesting as we kind of talk through this, and obviously we put our outline together a while ago and I didn't even see this thread. But you see that thread run through all of this, that if you start with the selection tool and you understand a bit more about the person, now you can figure out what's going to motivate them, what's going to incentivize them, and then also what's the best way to keep them on track. You mentioned there's going to be certain people that you want to be more hands off, "Hey, let me do what I need to do and I'll get you the results." And other people are going to want to have that regular check-in and the opportunity to let you know, "Hey, I did this today. I made these calls. I closed this business." And that gives you then the chance to provide that pat on the back or the kind of rewards that they might be looking for.

Kirk Armstrong:

Well said. I agree.

Brian Powrozek:

Excellent. So I guess Kirk, last question for you then. If I'm a business owner and I've identified that business development sales is kind of my number one issue that's plaguing me, that I'm not seeing the type of performance that I'd like to see. What's the one piece of advice you'd have for them how to get started in addressing that challenge? And I know that's kind of a tough question cause it all depends on what the real issue is that's driving the lack of sales, but something general that might be a good starter for them.

Kirk Armstrong:

It's interesting if you look at companies that fail, and I think each of us maybe have read articles or books on why companies succeed and fail. There's thousands of them out there. And if you look at why most companies fail, oftentimes it comes down to cashflow issues. And because of cashflow issues, well, why do they have cashflow issues? They're not getting enough business. Why are they not getting enough business? They don't have enough leads. So one of the first things I'd have people look at is just... Before you get into training and quality and all that, are we getting enough quantity of potential new business coming in or at least opportunities. And likely when companies are not doing well, that's why. They're not bringing enough opportunities. Well, that might seem obvious, but the reality is I would first address that problem with my people.

If you have an existing staff, if they're A players, B players or C players, we've got to hold them accountable to the actions, to the behaviors, if you will, that is going to drive opportunities. Once we have the quantity of opportunities where we'd like it and let's say we're not closing enough. Now, we can start worrying about quality and what do we say in these meetings to close more? How do we compel others to move forward? And that's why we train people. But I think initially the biggest piece of advice is make sure you or your people are doing enough of the right things to drive new opportunities, whether it's new business or new growth within existing business that you have.

Most companies are dabblers, they do a little bit some of the time. They go to events, some of the time. They make some calls to good customers once in a while, and that kind of activity isn't usually going to get it done. It's got to be consistent, it's got to be disciplined behavior that you block out time for and you do it. And that's kind of my biggest advice. It might seem obvious to some, but what's easy to do is sometimes easy not to do as a famous guy once said.

Brian Powrozek:

Exactly. No, I think that's a great piece of advice to put a bow on this. So if anyone listening to this podcast, if they happen to say, "Yeah, I like what Kirk has to say and I think that we might be able to utilize his services." Or at least have a conversation about something you said. What's the best way for someone to reach out to you?

Kirk Armstrong:

Sure. Brian. The easiest way is our website because that's where all our social channels are, like Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram, that sort of thing. So if you go to armstrongsalescoaching.com, you'll see all of our social on there and there's tons of information we give for free on how to become better at this game of sales. And we even have a YouTube channel these days where you can go and look at Armstrong Sales Coaching and find us that way for some free sales tips as well.

Brian Powrozek:

Excellent. Well, Kirk, as always, great talking to you. Like I said, I picked up one or two things here just as we've been talking, so appreciate you taking the time.

Kirk Armstrong:

Well, thank you Brian. Always a pleasure and so great to join you today. Thanks.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to like us, subscribe and share on social. To learn more about Clayton and McKervey, visit us at claytonmckervey.com. That's C-L-A-Y-T-O-N-M-C-K-E-R-V-E-Y.com. We thrive on finding the solutions for you.