AB Podcast Keith Rosen with Paul Kilduff 01032008 96 kbps (AllBusiness.com’s Paul Kilduff interviews Keith Rosen.)

Paul Kilduff: You’re listening to the AllBusiness podcast. I’m Paul Kilduff. If you’re getting this through iTunes and RSS feed or an online streaming-media player, you can hear interviews with other experts at AllBusiness.com.

Kilduff: Coaching your sales staff may seem no more complex than giving a rousing “win one for the Gipper”-style speech. But it’s far more complex than that, says veteran sales coach Keith Rosen, as he reveals in his new book, Coaching Sales People into Sales Champions. Turning your sales staff into a world-class sales team requires a keen understanding of how to motivate each member of the team. As president of Profit Builders, Rosen consults with many Fortune 500 companies to help them achieve their sales goals. What makes a great sales coach? Should you be intense like Bobby Knight or say more laid-back like Phil Jackson?

Keith Rosen: You know, I’m often asked that question and my response is, “A great sales coach is often more about some core characteristics than the actual style.” For some people the rah-rah hyperenthusiastic works great for their team and their culture, for others it is more of a laid-back methodical approach, more George Neutral, if you will, also achieves great results. And ultimately, the one thing that I see which truly makes a phenomenal sales coach and executive coach, if you will, is first and foremost, coaching from your heart not from your head. And I think that’s a tough shift for a lot of coaches to make especially if they’re starting off or they’re even developing their own practice or even if they’re an internal coach for a company, is that initially there are some court characteristics you need to learn. Just like if you’re learning how to play an instrument or for example like golf for the first time. You’re going to have a conscious level of awareness when you first start swinging in that club. You’re going to be thinking about every subtle nuance, how to hold the club, how to stand, how to position your backswing. But ultimately, over time, it just becomes innate, it becomes second nature and I think it’s critical for coaches to know and managers to know that when you make that evolutionary shift, it’s about listening to your gut; it’s about listening to your instincts and coaching from your heart, not from your head. Because that’s where the real magic happens. When you’re using your intuition, when you’re using what your heart truly says and your commitment is pure in terms of really wanting to unconditionally and that’s a key word, unconditionally wanting to support that person in achieving greater levels of success. It’s like what I tell my clients, I have one goal and my goal is your goal. My goal is unconditionally to support you in whatever you want to achieve. I have no other hidden agenda. To me, that’s what makes a great coach. I think the other part of what makes you a great coach which is in alignment with what we’re saying here, is to truly be a model of what you are talking and what you are looking to coach that person on. The clients always say to me, “Keith, I want what you have. I want that great life. I want that great career. I want to be passionate about what I do. I want the financial rewards that follow.” So I think that you really need to be a model. More than any other career, to be a great coach requires being a great model. After all, I know a lot of doctors that still smoke cigarettes. So to truly rise to that level, the more you model what’s possible for your clients to achieve, the more of an impact you’re going to have on the people that you’re working with. And finally, to be a great coach means and I will say this in more of a statement that I share, is you can’t take someone where you haven’t been yourself. So if you truly want to excel as a coach, as a leader, it means that you have to be where that client wants to go. You ought to have been there. So if that person wants to be an incredible salesperson, that means you have to hit some solid sales numbers over the course of your career. If you’re coaching someone on being a great manager, an executive, that means you need to have that experience of what it’s like to sit in that seat. If you want to have great financial success, well, you need to be able to model that. If you want to be coaching someone on time management or organizational skills or being a good business person, you need to be able to model that and I think that for those coaches out there that don’t possess that, you’re just creating more of a challenge and that also speaks to another area of, well, there’s a lot of training programs out there that say “No, no, no. You don’t need to have been where the client wants. You could just ask questions and you can guide them through the use of questions for them to come up with the solutions on their own.” And yes, that is ultimately the core premise of coaching; however, there are times when clients and the people you’re coaching need the answer. After all, someone is coming to you for coaching and they say to you, “Listen, I’m looking to build up my career. I’m looking to build my business. And one of the things I need to start doing is networking and one of the other things I need to start doing is making some more cold calls or even warm calls on the phone. I need to be able to be more comfortable using the phone as a vehicle to help generate new business.” You need to be shown how to do that if you’ve never been how to do that before. Just like golf, you know, the golf coaches are going to say, “Well, just go ahead and swing and just work on your swing that way. Figure it out on your own.” You need to be shown some core fundamentals first.

Kilduff: And it sort of sounds like what you’re saying is that in order to communicate with your sales force, you’ve got to really be yourself and true to your real personality in front of them. Is that part of what you’re talking about?

Rosen: That’s exactly what it is and it’s being that authentic and that vulnerable leader. You know, for you to demonstrate that authenticity and that you’re a human being will speak volumes to your sales team.

Kilduff: Yeah, that’s another point that you bring often is vulnerability-based leadership. Explain that, what does that mean?

Rosen: Well, you know, you bring up the word vulnerability, a lot of people may run the other way. And when I say vulnerability, I’m not suggesting you put yourself in harm’s way. I’m not suggesting you do things which are going to create some collateral damage down the road for you.

Kilduff: Break out into tears in front of the sales force...no?

Rosen: No, to me it’s more about being who you are, being that human being, being that authentic leader and if you notice the words I’m using is being versus doing. You know, let your true authentic self shine. The greatest coaches, the greatest leaders are fully self-expressed human beings. So if you want when I talk about vulnerability-based leadership, what I’m suggesting here is the culture that you want to create within a sales team. If you want people to be forthright and honest with you, well, you need to create that environment that’s going to foster that safe place for them to feel comfortable sharing what their fears are, sharing what their concerns are, sharing what their challenges are, whether in a group or one-to-one with you as their manager or boss without feeling as if they’re going to be judged or be castigated or be punished in any way.

Kilduff: That’s kind of funny, because a lot of times I think that--when I think of a sales force, I think of kind of a macho mentality. And when you talk about vulnerability, that doesn’t seem to fit there.

Rosen: Well, I think the pendulum of extremes swings both ways on this. I’m not saying you walk in and have to give everyone a big hug. I’m not suggesting that, although that’s certainly appropriate at times. I think there’s a median here. I think that you can certainly weave in that power, culture, that culture of competition, that culture of collaboration, the culture of driving to be the best. Absolutely! But the difference here and maybe it’s more of a subtle difference but it transcends into cultures is doing it in a way where people just feel safe being who they are without having to play the pull-it games. I mean, imagine being able to walk in your office without having to worry about playing those games, without having to worry about, you know, the political ramifications of your actions, without having to worry about always being judged, without having to worry about if you mess up or screw something up, you know what, the world isn’t going to come crashing down on you.

Kilduff: So this vulnerability leads to honesty, it sounds like what you’re saying.

Rosen: There is absolute direct alignment there is that the vulnerability that you create as a leader leads to greater collaboration and greater communication among your people and amongst your team. You want your sales force to be honest with you. It’s interesting, I was just speaking to a manager the other day and he was telling me the story about a sales person who started off so promising and so strong and after a year goes by, after reviewing their performances, his numbers just aren’t where they need to be. And I asked him, how did you combat this over the year? And he said, “Oh, I’ll sit down with him or I’ll tell him what he has to do and I’ll tell him the actions he needs to take.” But what they weren’t doing was tapping into that person’s wisdom. They were just preaching. They were getting on their soapbox and just preaching to, you know, the proverbial choir of what they need to do, which is what management does over and over again. And then they wonder why what they’re saying is going on deaf ears. Because they’re not turning it around and asking questions and tapping into that person’s strength and inner wisdom and really understanding where that person is and where they’re getting stuck. You can’t even create that environment if the people that you’re working with, if your team doesn’t trust you.

Kilduff: I’m sure, Keith, you’re familiar with Alex Baldwin’s speech in Glengarry Glen Ross, where they’re having a contest for the real estate sales force and he says, “You know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado, second prize a set of steak knives, third prize is you’re fired.” Does that kind of talk motivate anybody or has it ever?

Rosen: Well, I’m going to answer that two ways. The sad truth is that sometimes it does work. However, it comes at a great cost to the company, to the sales force, to the person being motivated by what I call fear and consequence, as well as to that manager using those type of archaic tactics. You know, what we’re really talking about here--and I think that managers really need to start developing a greater awareness on how critical it is for them to develop what I perceive to be that missing discipline of leadership, which is coaching, which I talk about in my new book, Coaching Sales People into Sales Champions. This is about making a fundamental shift of how you will empower and motivate your people. The old way of doing it is through fear and consequence. It’s motivating people by, “Hey, if you don’t hit your numbers, you’re not going to have a job.” Well, unfortunately it works because, you know what? People are taught to fight or flight when threatened. So unfortunately consequence does work but it comes at a cost to our souls, our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our level of commitment to our job as well as a level of trust amongst our boss and amongst our peers. So the alternative is being motivated by pleasure, being motivated by your dreams, being motivated by your goals. So it really comes out to either a push structure, which is pushing something uphill, or a pull structure or that principal of attraction that we’ve heard about recently. So pushing something uphill is motivating through consequence or threats. It’s like pushing a boulder uphill. The problem is once you stop pushing, what happens? The boulder comes right back down. [Laughter] It rolls right over you. The alternative is a pull structure. When you can tap into what truly drives someone internally and you can exploit that in a positive way. You’re going to wind up developing a team of people that are self-motivated and self-driven. I mean, to me, that’s music to any manager’s ears. Wow! To have people that I don’t have to keep pushing into action to do their job? Yes! Yes, it can be done through a different discipline, through coaching, through that place of motivating by what people truly want. What is at the end of their efforts? What is that reward? What is that when they can realize? If you can get them to articulate that, you’ll have a team of self-generated sales people.

Kilduff: You’re listening to an AllBusiness podcast with Keith Rosen, author of Coaching Sales People into Sales Champions. Keith, let’s switch gears here and talk a little bit about how long you should stick with a sales person who has potential but just doesn’t produce.

Rosen: This to me is management’s eternal conundrum is, “Keith, how long do I invest in someone who’s just not turning it around?” And I think there’s a couple of factors here at play. I think there’s the mentality of management, of how they approach these underperformers and then I think that there is that tactical component as well. And these two need to be married and lived in, in a symbiotic harmony, if you will. So speaking to the mindset first. When I speak to managers that tell me about their underperformers, the biggest problem that they have is they’ll say, “Well Keith, when is enough is enough? When do I cut that proverbial cord?” And the biggest issue I see at play is what I call the seduction of potential. Managers, just like I shared with you about the story of the person that started out strong within a sales team and then he petered out within a year and the manager not knowing what to do or how to handle it, except keep him on. And what do they do? They crossed their fingers and they hope and pray that if they speak to them enough, if they preach them enough, that person will turn it around. Well, hoping is not strategy and what I find more often is managers being seduced by this teaser of potential. That is, they see the greatness in people. They see the person has potential or ability but they’re not maximizing it so they wait and they see and they wait a little longer. And then they wait a little longer because after all, they start thinking, “Well gee, you know, what’s more painful for me? To wait for this person to turn it around or for me to have go out and start hiring someone and recruiting from square one again.” Well what managers need to realize is that the greater cost is keeping an underperformer on your team, someone who could potentially be poisoning your culture through gossip, someone who can be losing sales to your competitors, not managing their territory, their sales correctly, miss selling opportunities as a result of their own sales ability or sales acumen. So managers continue to get seduced by this potential, waiting and hoping and praying for something to happen. What’s missing in that model is certainty. And that’s where the tactical component of a turnaround strategy comes into play. I’m going to break it down to you very simply. Rather than you sit there and try to be the bad guy, which managers are often worried about, you know, they don’t want to have to fire someone. They don’t want to have to put someone on probation. They don’t want to have to be the person that, you know, is the bearer of bad news. Just turn that model around and build in the accountability that has been missing for so long amongst teams. How do you build that in? by having them define what it is they’re going to commit to doing over a four-week period. Now let’s just use four weeks as a good model because I think after four weeks, you’re going to know with great certainty if someone’s going to make it or not. So week one, the person sets the goals and makes the commitment of what they’re willing to produce. Now it could be, you know, one measure could be sales, of course, but if you have a longer sales cycle, that might not be relevant. It might be feasible. So maybe there are other things that person could do. Maybe it’s number of prospecting calls they can make, number of appointments they can make, putting together certain tools in their sales process that they can build out and develop, follow-up calls. There’s always something a sales person can be doing that would keep that momentum going forward. So once those milestones are defined which once again, are defined by the sales person and then reconfirmed by the manager. You set up that next weekly meeting. The next weekly comes. One of two things happen, either that person reached their goals or they did not. Or if they reach their goals and they achieve what they said they’re going to do, you congratulate. You acknowledge them. You have an opportunity to coach them again. Asking them more questions, finding out what’s getting in their way. Is it their thinking or is it their tactical approach? Are they already giving up? Or are they lacking in resource or skill that needs to be further developed? Once you find out what those are, you renew those commitments for the next week. “OK, well, once again, now work the third week.” When the third week comes by, one of two things are going to happen. Either they achieve their goals and their commitments or they did not. You then have a similar conversation. If they achieve their goals and the commitments they honored, you acknowledge and praise them. If they didn’t, you have that heart to heart, maybe go a little deeper with some more thought-provoking questions to really get at the core of what’s really going on.

Kilduff: So you really have to monitor folks that are not really living up to their potential and more closely than you would someone who’s successful, is that what you’re saying?

Rosen: Well, not necessarily. I think that and just to finish my train of thought, on the fourth week, you’re going to know with great certainty, after the fourth week, if that person went four weeks without honoring their commitments, they have now made the decision that they really have no business being on your team. Not you and you have all the evidence in the world to be able to justify your decision to let that person go. You can look in the mirror and say, “I have done everything in my power to try to turn this person around. I have given them my attention. I have given them my support. I have given them the resources.” So now the manager can sleep well at night. The big difference now is that they’ve done this in less in 30 days versus six months or a year or even two years of keeping underperformers on their team. Just as much as we need to monitor our underperformance, we do need to monitor our overachievers and the ones that make us look great. After all, the greatest reward a manager can give a sales person is their time. The time is their reward so unfortunately, managers spend a lot of time rewarding the wrong thing. they wind up spending time rewarding what I call the squeeker, you know, the person that causes more trouble than they’re worth, the person who’s underperforming, the person who’s not honoring their commitments. Reward the overachievers; reward the people that make you look great. Give your top producers that additional coaching and support that they want anyway. That’s what’s going to keep them motivated. It’s also what’s going to keep them producing and most important, keep loyal and committed to you and to the company.

Kilduff: Keith, maybe you talked a little bit about the art of enrollment versus selling and how important it is in today’s world to be enrolling. What is it and how does it differ from selling?

Rosen: If you look at the greatest leaders of our time, whether it’s Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Golda Meir, JFK, Martin Luther King. Even in business, you know, Oprah, Ted Turner, Joel Knight, Bill Gates. What is it about these people that have motivated hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to follow their cause in some way? They had a gift that, until now, which I’ve written in detail in my new book, has really not been articulated and put out there in terms of the tactical strategy and skill that can be developed and that is enrolment. It’s about getting people to buy into a greater cause. You know, for some of these world leaders, whether it’s world peace or eradicating hunger or quality among men, human beings. It was a greater cause and if you noticed, any of these causes were bigger than them. It was something that people wanted to be a part of. It was something that they wanted to contribute to and feel included in. Well, that to me is the big difference between enrollment versus selling. Now I’m talking from a higher level now. From the traditional sense, looking at selling someone an idea, you typically have your own agenda all wrapped up in that. That is, there’s something in it for you if you sell that person on the idea, such as selling your team on a change or having to make a change and there’s a cost to you if you can’t. Well, right off the bat, that creates the very barrier that managers are looking to avoid. You can’t go out and sell people ideas, you need to enroll them. And really, at its core, it’s about having them tune in to WIIFM. What’s in it for me? What’s in it for that person to be a part of what you’re sharing with them? What is the ultimate benefit they will realize? How can you get them to feel not only buy-in but want to be part of what it is you’re sharing and agree with you? That is only done in enrolling people and the only way you can truly enroll someone is by looking at that greater good, looking at what it is that truly they could benefit from and realize and separating yourself and detaching from your own agenda.

Kilduff: It sounds like if you are going to be enrolled, you have to be a true believer. It’s like a religion almost, isn’t it?

Rosen: No, it’s having that unyielding faith and what it is you’re sharing, because people fail to pick up on that and that goes back to authenticity.

Kilduff: What do mean?

Rosen: Well, in other words, if I don’t believe in what I say, people are going to be able to pick up on that just like you could probably hear in my voice, “I am 100 percent.”

Kilduff: You are passionate!

Rosen: Passionate about what I have to share and it’s woven into the fabric of my body, into my DNA. Well, I can’t fake that. That’s me just being truly authentic and that’s the part, and you know, once again, putting all these pieces together we’ve talked about today, which ties back to vulnerability-based leadership. You know, it’s putting yourself out there authentically and being able to feel comfortable sharing yourself with other people, without worrying about being judged and having that belief in what it is that you want them to be enrolled in. But only then, only when the other people can share and realize what the benefit is and to them, that’s when you minimize the resistance to change. And most people, unfortunately, most cultures don’t do a very good job preparing people for change. It’s more of like, you know, it’s my way or the highway. They read about it in a corporate memo and in an email and here is what they need to do or hear the changes they nee d to make. And then the company turns around and wonders why they’re having such attrition among their company and why so many people are leaving or dissatisfied with their position. Because they’re not enrolling. They’re either preaching or they’re selling the idea or they’re making it nonconditional. Or even if it’s nonconditional. It certainly helps in the level of buying and in the results you want to achieve if you can get them to be part of it and have them realize the benefits of what the changes are.

Kilduff: You write about how today’s younger sales people live in a MySpace world. How are they using this technology to sell? How is it that the evolution of selling referred to Sales 2.0 affect how managers are managing their people today? How does this change the landscape of selling?

Rosen: Well, that’s a full question and you know, to jump back to Sales 2.0 for a second, what we’re really talking about here is the convergence of technology and how it is being married to the sales process today. There is incredible tools available today, incredible technology that’s coming to, you know, the forefront now that managers and sales teams can tap into from, you know, CRM applications to automation to business intelligence that they didn’t even have access to less than 5 years ago. And when we’re talking about the MySpace generation, they’re the first to be really thrown right in and embracing all these Sales 2.0 culture. Well, you know, for the manager, they need to be sensitive to this. And it works really two ways. On one hand, your technology can certainly make our selling easier. It could be more automated. It could be more organized. At the same time, we also need to be careful of relying on it too much. You know, I’ve heard many, many instances on managers coming to me and saying, “You know, Keith, I just spent an hour reading through this string of emails that one of my sales people sent me to try to figure out where the communication breakdown occurred between my sales person and between the prospect.”

Kilduff: Yeah, you know, it’s funny. I get a phone call now and it’s almost like, who’s calling me? You know, I mean, what’s going on? Why would somebody actually call me in today’s email world? And at the same time, I really relish those phone calls. And my wife has told me that, in her business, if somebody calls their office, it’s a shining moment, it’s a breakthrough. Wow! Somebody’s calling us. You know, are we relying too much on the internet and not enough on human interaction, the human voice?

Rosen: I think that’s a very important line that needs to be drawn. That we all need to be sensitive to I think that in many cases we are in fact relying too much on emails, too much on technology. In specific instances such as in a selling situation where picking up that phone or going to meet with that person and look them in the eye, face-to-face is really what’s required in order to achieve the results you are looking for. So for example, if a sales person gets an email from a prospect and there’s an objection there or a concern that’s getting in the way of earning that person’s business, many sales people are making the mistake to try to respond to a customer or a prospect objection via email. That to me is just absolute sales suicide. What the sales person needs to do is not hide behind email; you need to pick up that phone and you need to call that person immediately. They now even a reason to pick up the phone and contact them in the first place. So I think that we are in essence, relying a little bit heavily on email. Well, of course, it’s a fabulous communication tool. It certainly makes our lives easier. In many ways, we need to be more sensitive to when it’s appropriate to use email and when it’s not. After all, if you look at many of the problems on communication breakdowns that exist and the arguments that exist between either management and sales people or even between our peers, it’s a result of someone misreading an email or putting a charge on something that the person writing it really didn’t intend.

Kilduff: So it sort of sounds like you’ve got to be dialing for dollars a little bit. Keith, as a last question, I’m going to ask you this, harkening back to the Alec Baldwin speech, “Is coffee only for closers?”

Rosen: [Laughter] Say more about that.

Kilduff: [Laughter] Well, you know, in the speech there, who is it, Jack Lemmon is pouring himself a cup of coffee and Alec Baldwin says to him, “Coffee is just for closers.” Remember that? Have you seen that?

Rosen: Oh yes, I do.

Kilduff: OK.

Rosen: Great movie.

Kilduff: Is that the ultimate reward for a job well done and does little things like that--do they make a difference?

Rosen: Yeah, the little things do make a difference and once again, it’s to me the ultimate reward that a manager can do and there is no greater activity that will yield a stronger ROI than coaching your people. It is the most valuable thing that a manager can invest their time in doing on a daily basis. So coaching, it’s not only for closers. Nor is the coffee. Coaching is for every single person on your team that is truly committed to being the best they can be. That’s demonstrating, that’s living their potential, that’s giving the evidence that they do want to change and they do want to excel. Those are the people that deserve the coaching. You know, coaching is not something you do for remediation. It is something that you…it’s a reward, it’s a perk, it’s a gift you give your people because they’re worth it and because you want to create a world-class sales team.

Kilduff: Keith Rosen, thanks for joining us.

Rosen: Thanks for having me.

Kilduff: You’ve been listening to an AllBusiness podcast with Keith Rosen, president of Profit Builders and one of the top sales coaches in the country. Send your feedback on this show and suggestions for topics and guests to podcasts@allbusiness.com. I’m Paul Kilduff, thanks for listening.