No, that’s not the job!

In our line of work, we often hear about how many “salespeople” refuse to sell unless the CEO / marketing department has already done all of the value communication for them. They want the lead to basically already have been fully qualified and committed to buying before they’ll pick up the phone. We see this a lot — and it’s hugely problematic.

Because sales is value communication — that’s the literal job.

Any “sales” where the value is communicated by someone else, is actually order taking. And that’s a $50k a year admin job, not a multi-six figure + comms job.

The latest offshoot of this we’re seeing is salespeople sending videos and emails and thinking that’s going to turn them into a “multi-million dollar closer” — here’s why it doesn’t:

Sending emails and making videos is easy. And there’s very little reward in life for easy work. There are multiple reasons for this — but the biggest is simply: there’s no barrier to entry for easy work.

The skillset required to make videos and send emails is minimal. Sure, there are a few minor technical hurdles — but as a general rule of thumb, anything you can learn how to do, for free, on the internet, probably isn’t particularly valuable.

The skills that make the most money are the intersection of 3 factors:

1. They are HARD to acquire and perform — they take time to learn how to do. They require significant hurdles and challenges to be overcome in order to master them. The vast majority of people who start trying, never finish.

2. They are massively VALUED by the marketplace at which they are aimed — note, I did not say that they are inherently valuable (or every nurse and teacher would be a millionaire), but that the marketplace values them massively.

3. They are rare. Mostly because of the first point, but also for other reasons — mostly because the most rarified factor of all is someone who actually CARES and who is intent on mastering their craft.

So ask yourself: how hard is it to acquire the skillset to make a video or send an email? How rare is it that someone can do that? If a salesperson comes to you and says: “I send emails!” do you instantly offer them a 6 figure salary?

But on the other hand: how hard is it to acquire the skillset to close deals worth tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars over the phone? For that matter, how hard is it to find someone who is willing to consistently pick up the phone in the first place?

To hold their emotional equilibrium when they get objections and to come from a place of service (instead of fear) in answering them?

How RARE is it to find salespeople who deeply care enough about people that they put their own fear of rejection aside and go to battle — not against the client, but FOR them?

And if you found someone like this, how much would you be willing to pay them?

I’m not saying that emails and videos have no place in sales — although frankly, I think their place is extremely limited. (Yes, we’re sending you this via email, but this is marketing, not sales! A totally different beast!)

I AM saying — if you’re looking to hire salespeople (or if you are a salesperson), these activities are not the hallmark of value. Doing the hard, rare and massively valuable thing that no one else is willing to do is where you’ll win, every time.

Leela Cosgrove

CEO, Iron Cage

If you haven’t heard of it before, Iron Cage is a management theory that asks you to look at your business as though it’s a cage made of iron bars (not the most flattering of analogies, I’ll grant- but bear with me!). Each bar of the cage is made up of the things you consciously or subconsciously set as rules in your organisation. like quality of work, KPIs and client interaction. made or issues are encountered – or through letting things slide.

These might include, for instance, things as seemingly small as dress code, language, and inter-personal interactions with colleagues – along with things

Every day, we’re setting these expectations either through conscious management – including procedures, but also feedback when mistakes are

Now imagine that your staff are inside of this cage – are there huge gaps in the bars because of the things you’ve let slide?

Over 15 years of working with thousands of salespeople in hundreds of teams, the statement I’ve heard most often from managers and owners is,

“I just wish they’d manage themselves!”

The unpleasant reality is: they do.

When faced with a culture of tolerance for low performance, high performers

manage themselves straight out – but mediocre staff members will rust-on.

To put it in terms of our analogy – high performers will walk out of the cage through the missing bars, while mediocre and low-performing staff members
will stay inside the cage forever.

The more positive corollary to this is: If you manage the bars of the cage, if you’re clear in your expectations and ramifications for non-compliance (and, of course, assuming you follow through) – the cage becomes self-managing as a place for high performers.

This is a general management rule applicable to every area of business – but the area in which I’ve seen it least applied in almost every business
I’ve come into, is within the sales department.

I find this is typically a mix of a few things – an executive team who are either not salespeople themselves and don’t really get it, or who are really
good natural salespeople, but don’t really know how to transplant that to staff beyond“ spend 20 years doing what I’ve done!”.

In both of these cases, there’s often a reticence to “upset the apple cart”.

There’s an old saying in marketing, 
“I know 50% of my advertising is working – I just don’t know which 50%!”

Which is easily adapted to this situation.
“I know 50% of my sales team is working – I just don’t know which 50%!”

This makes managers worry that if they’re too strong on expectations and ramifications that they’ll lose the good 50%.

Plot twist: your good 50% – aren’t good.

We were working with a company who had an on-the-road team of 6 BDMs across the country, as the pandemic hit. They were being paid $100k +
car + phone and laptop. This is a 20 year old company in a mature industry, wholesaling products to other businesses – traditionally, face to
face sales is expected.

We immediately transitioned the team to making phone calls – doing client outreach to see how people were doing and to offer help where we
could. It wasn’t even about selling anything or presenting product at this point – it was pure relationship and good will building.

One of the BDMs quit immediately (she didn’t want to be on the phone – even though the entire country was in lockdown), and we didn’t replace
her.

This had zero impact on revenue.

Over the following months, we asked the salespeople to focus on phone calls and online presentations, since they were unable to go on the road. As you would expect, the resistance was huge – as is always the case when you try to change the bars in your Iron Cage. We continued to apply pressure – including daily tracking of KPIs and ongoing monitoring and feedback – until all 5 remaining BDMs chose to leave the company.

This had zero impact on revenue.

In fact, we replaced them only with two Customer Care Consultants whose job was just to be on the phone calling clients (for $50k a year) –
and the company proceeded to have record sales months. In Melbourne. In 2020. During Lockdowns.  In an industry that is traditionally kinaesthetic and where face to face sales is expected.

This is not an isolated incident or a particularly dramatic example.

In my experience, this is standard for companies who employ BDMs.

So how do you approach making changes?

The first step in the process of building a new selling format is to challenge assumptions. This obviously makes them masters of their craft – but it can also create blind spots in their sales process.

It’s very easy to get stuck in what I call the Death Knell of sales and marketing departments everywhere – the refrain of: 
“But that’s the way we’ve always done it – it’s just how our industry works.”

The reality is: how everyone else is doing it is almost certainly NOT the most effective way to do anything. This is particularly true in mature markets with long standing traditions.

A lot of owners and executives think that “disruption” is a concept for young tech businesses – 25 year olds who wear hoodies to meetings and
put ping pong tables in their open plan offices. But disruption is really just having the guts to go against the grain – to upset your industry by doing things completely differently to anyone else.

Disruption can make even a small industry player an industry leader in a matter of month. In mature industries, particularly, this is incredibly
powerful – and exceedingly easy. 

The second step in the Iron Cage Method is to manage macro accountability.

Most companies track some kind of macro sales data – they’ll track BDMs against budgets, they’ll look at the number of visits made or the pipeline
of deals scheduled to come through. However, there are often no ramifications for BDMs failing to hit these targets.

Look, I don’t believe in firing people for no reason – frankly, I am exponentially more likely to fire someone for their attitude than I am to fire
them for not hitting their targets. However, if we put targets in place and nothing happens if people don’t hit them, then we communicate to our
team that targets are optional, not crucial.

If you look at your team and you wonder why they seem lackadaisical about making money – this is quite often the reason.

So what DO we do if people don’t hit their targets? That’s when training and mentoring should be stepped up a notch. And how do we know what
to train and mentor them in? Well, that’s when we move into:

Step 3: micro accountability.

Micro accountability means moving from tracking the macro data – or what I call “outcome KPIs” – to also tracking the micro data – or what I
call “insight KPIs”.

We track 31 metrics per operator, PER CALL – about 10 of these are outcome metrics, but the other 21 are insight metrics.

Why would we track so much data?

Because while macro data will tell you whether a team member is performing or not – it won’t tell you why. For instance, we track the length of each call, where the salesperson gets up to in the script and how the call ends.

For instance – let’s say John has a call ends with “send me an email and call me back to discuss further” (what we call an “information objection”).

If John is getting this at the opening of the call – in the first 1 minute – we know that he’s not being engaging or interesting enough in the opening of
the call. “Send me an email” is code for “go away and leave me alone”, when there’s been no conversation.

However, if John is having people say this to him after 30 minutes on the phone, it’s a really different scenario. Obviously, he’s engaged someone
enough to keep them on the phone for 30 minutes – so why aren’t they taking any action (whether that’s a direct sale, or booking an appointment
for a follow up call with a senior salesperson)?

Often, the issue here is either:

John hasn’t built enough value in the call – he’s been engaging and friendly and the person has enjoyed the conversation, but they don’t see
any reason to take an action now. OR, The client has a question that they’re either worried to ask or that they don’t know how to articulate.

Having this information allows us to review with John both how he’s building value in his calls, and also how he’s asking for and handling
objections.

Without collecting this micro data, we’re not able to help John build out his skill set and improve his performance – which would be a shame.

John obviously has the raw materials of making a good salesperson – he’s engaging and people like talking to him. Turning him into a high performer is simply a matter of helping him fill his knowledge gaps.

Unfortunately, how this is achieved in most organisations is by having a senior salesperson mentor a junior salesperson – or in some companies,
it becomes fashionable to find the best performing salesperson and just try to have everyone replicate what they do.

This is a suicidal approach to sales management – because it assumes a multitude of things about your best performing salesperson:
1. That they’re performing optimally – when in all likelihood, they could be performing a lot better.

2. That they’re invested in other salespeople performing well – salespeople are inherently competitive. It’s not unusual for top performing
salespeople to subtly undermine the performance of other team members in order to keep their place in the pecking order secure.

3. Most importantly, my argument against this strategy, is that if your best performing salesperson is also someone who has been around for a
long time, they’ll not only transplant some knowledge into your junior staff: they’ll also fill their heads with biases, assumptions and attitudes
that are wholly unhelpful.

Doing more of what hasn’t been working won’t improve your results.

The Iron Cage Method Step Four is Consistency.

Of course, none of this works if it’s a flash-in-the-pan initiative taken on for a couple of weeks (or months) and then dropped.

Just as you’re asking your team to be consistent in their output and performance, so too you need to be consistent in how you communicate
the iron bars of your company. Once consistent accountability is in place, mediocre and low performers will manage themselves out quickly.

Because here’s a secret that shouldn’t really be a secret: how hard a team member pushes back against accountability is directly proportional to
how little work they’re doing. High performers don’t just welcome consistent accountability – they crave it.

Of course, it’s easy to say,

“Get your BDMs off the road, get them on the phone, have them sell virtually and in group settings.”

But 2020 demonstrated to a lot of companies that this was easier said than done.

Organisational change is a complex and time consuming process. I’ve never been into an organisation where the BDMs responded to this kind of change
by saying,

“Yeah, sure! We’re happy to get off the road and make phone calls!”

There’s always pushback – against accountability, against using scripts and systems, against doing things differently. That’s to be expected –
particularly in organisations where team members have been earning really good money for doing almost nothing.

The question I ask all of my new clients before I sign them up is this: “On a scale of 1-10 – how committed to changing this are you?”

Because this kind of change is going to be massively rewarding – but also exceptionally hard: at least for the first 4-6 months. Anything below a “9” is
cause for concern – and frankly, even a “9” makes me pause.

However: the reality that a lot of owners and executives put their head in the sand around is this – sales is the lifeblood of your business. Without it, you
have no business. Leaving it up to chance is as ridiculous as leaving your manufacturing or supply chain processes up to chance.

Sales is not magic. It’s not an art.

It’s a science.
It should be completely data driven.

When you take control of that data and of the processes, you create the power to turn the money tap on and off at will, with full oversight into how
your team and performing and what help they need to become more optimal on a daily basis.

As we move into the new business landscape that the years 2021 and beyond bring us into, this skillset – the understanding and control of this
data and these processes – will be the difference between companies who continue to thrive, regardless of external circumstances, and those that get
washed away in the reset a tumultuous economy always brings.

The power and the choice is yours.

Control your sales – or leave the life of your business in the hands of BDMs with no real investment in whether it lives or dies.

If you have questions about anything in this method – the metrics we track or how to apply them to your business, I’d love to offer you a FREE, no
obligation 60 minute sales audit.

We normally sell these for $750, but as you might have guessed by now, I’m a tragic for the data. It’s how I make all of my sales and marketing
decisions. And what the data tells me, is that people who bother to sit down and read the entirety of a 4,000 word report are the kind of
intelligent and savvy owners and executives who make excellent clients.

So I’d love to spend an hour with you, looking at your existing sales strategy, how your BDMs are operating, and putting together a plan with
you on your next best steps for implementing organisational change.

Click the link below and we’ll reach out to organise a time to chat

We get this question from people a lot.  They’re looking at growing their sales team and wondering where to find “the good ones”. In most cases, they’re right, their existing team are underperforming — but their approach on finding “good” sales people is often really problematic.

Because the place to find these people isn’t where you think.  In fact, it’s often the last place people look to find high performers.

We had a client who came to me recently with one solid salesperson. They’d hired and lost multiple others, who just couldn’t perform consistently, leaving them with only one who’d stuck. As part of our service, we hire salespeople for our clients, so we got straight to work as soon as they came to us.

We hired three new salespeople for them, trained them using our systems, and got them onboarded. When we hire new salespeople we often start them as appointment setters, while they find their feet. We find that this lower-pressure setup helps them to learn our sales systems and gain confidence in their job before they move onto the higher-pressure role of direct sales.

So, imagine our surprise when in the first week, one of the salespeople had someone on the phone she thought would buy.

Rather than set an appointment, she opened the direct sales script and went for it.

And — she made the sale.

The next Monday at our sales meeting, this was of course brought up and celebrated. As a result, in the second week (while they were STILL supposed to be appointment setting) it became a race — two of the salespeople sold 5 units between them for a total of $25k in sales. The third salesperson set 10 appointments.

Totally unexpected, but we loved it!

So, where did we find these amazing salespeople who just wanted to sell? Well there’s the SURPRISE bit:

Not ONE of these three salespeople came from a sales background.

We don’t hire salespeople — we train new ones. So we found people who were from the same or a similar industry our client was in, and who were incredibly smart, and we TRAINED them to sell.

Time and time again, we’ve found this to be a better approach. Someone who has sales experience but no knowledge at all of the industry, isn’t likely to be a better seller than someone with no sales experience who has deep knowledge of the industry and can impart the value and breakthroughs that close sales.

We have a very strong set of systems, including our script software and the AI-backed metrics collection that runs from that. We’ve been training sales for a couple of decades, so for us it’s a no brainer — systems and processes can be taught quickly. Years of experience in an industry can’t be!

There’s a lot of bemoaning the lack of talent out there at the moment, and we see a lot of people wondering where they can find salespeople who can actually deliver. So there’s the secret for you — we don’t find them, we create them!

Leela

CEO, Iron Cage