Alice Kemper is a sales and leadership consultant, author, and speaker with more than 36 years of experience in the industry. She is the president of Sales Training Consultants, a company that specializes in sales and leadership training solutions as well as the founder of Sales Training Werks, a do-it-yourself sales training solution. In this episode, Alice goes over her three tried and true actions to help sales teams meet their quotas consistently.

Here are some of the topics covered in this episode:

• Why managers participating in ride alongs is so important
• How to alter your leadership style for different types of sales reps
• Tips for giving your sales reps the most effective feedback
• Advice for Women sales managers in today’s world

About the Guest:

After transitioning from teaching to a career in sales, Alice found success quickly, becoming only the 3rd woman to be promoted to a management role in a company with 870 sales representatives. Over the next 15 years, Alice became recognized as a top sales distributor for two leading sales training organizations. Her latest business, SalesTrainingWerks.com, focuses on training sales reps to achieve sales quotas consistently. Alice was recently listed in Crazy Call’s Top 18 Most Influential Women in the Sales World 2019.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicekemper/

Website: https://www.salestrainingwerks.com

Want to optimize your sales team’s performance? Achieve your sales goals with this proven 7-step method for building a high-performing sales team!

Transcript - The Secret 3 Actions for Sales Teams to Meet Quotas with Alice Kemper

Introducing Alice Kemper [00:00]

Steve: Welcome to Outside Sales Talk, where we meet with industry experts to learn the strategies and tactics that make them successful. I'm your host Steve Benson and I've helped thousands of salespeople all over the world crush their quota. Today, I'll help you crush yours. Welcome back to Outside Sales Talk. Today we have Alice Kemper with us and we're going to be talking about the secret three actions for sales teams to meet their quotas. Just by way of introduction, Alice is a sales and leadership consultant, author and speaker with more than 36 years of experience in the industry. She is the president of Sales Training Consultants, a company that specializes in sales and sales leadership and leadership training solutions, as well as a founder of Sales Training Works, a do-it-yourself sales training solution. Alice was recently listed in Crazy Call's Top 18 Most Influential Women in Sales in 2019. Alice, welcome to the show.

Alice: Well, thanks, Steve. I have to say that I've been binge, well, it's not binge watched. I've been listening to your program for an entire week and I enjoyed every minute of it. And I'm honored to be among the really superior talent that you select for your audience. And I have to also say you are a great interviewer. So thanks for having me.

Steve: Well, thank you. I can't take all the credit. I've got a team that helps me choose the right questions for each person that really tease out interesting stuff from each guest. That's why it's good. I'm not making this stuff up on the spot. There's research involved. So early in your career, you actually made a big transition from education to sales, which I've always felt like educators also have sales skills. So that makes a ton of sense to me. My first job was actually almost being a teacher, but how did you make this transition and what compelled you to do so?

Alice: Well, my mother will tell you that from the minute I could talk and walk, I wanted to be a teacher. So I achieved that goal and I was teaching. And I had already started my master's to be a principal. So I had my feet planted. I knew where I was going. However, we were working without a contract. Four or five years later, I'm earning the same exact amount of money I was on day one.

Steve: Hmm.

Alice: And there wasn't a lot of security on that. And I looked around and I learned three things kind of growing up or when I got into the adult world of working that I like to do three things. I like to live. So I need my rent and my car paid for, my electricity. I like to buy entertainment and girls have to have shoes. And also I like to save. My father taught me about saving. And on a teacher's salary and especially earning the same amount for five straight years, I could not do all three. I could do two of the three. So I looked around and it was like, okay, what can I do without going back to college? And I had a good friend on the tennis court every day at 2:30. And I was home at 3:30 being an educator. And I said, what do you do? He sold for Seagram's Liquors. And so I said, okay, I want a sales job. Not that to be home at 2:30 was appealing, but I learned very quickly you're really not home at 2:30.

Steve: He was probably just taking a little exercise break.

Alice: And I, so I got very lucky and because there were very few, the only job, there were very few sales jobs for women at the time. So I'm dating myself, but I'm very proud of what I did going into the sales profession when there were very few women in it. They were only in cosmetic and pharmaceutical sales. That was basically it. So I got very fortunate and American Greetings. In fact, the sales manager went out on a limb to hire a woman and with no sales experience, except that he saw the same thing, the teaching and sales were very similar. And I was hired as a sales representative for American Greeting Cards.

Challenges of a New Sales Manager [04:35]

Steve: Outstanding. And your first, I read that your first experience as a sales manager was coaching and training a team of 24 sales reps. Tell me about that. What were the biggest challenges there that you faced as a new sales manager and what advice do you have for sales managers that are just starting out?

Alice: So, I had sold for American Greetings for a few years and they promoted me into middle management, which was a sales manager job. And I was responsible for 24 sales reps out of the state of Florida. So what my biggest challenge that I was faced was, one, that this was, I was the third woman in the entire company, a full United States company with 870 salespeople. I was the third woman to be promoted into management. So the first challenge was I had to prove that I didn't sleep with the boss to get the job. That's what was happening in those days and that's what everybody believed. And then there was an older-than-me salesman. I was 27 and they had been selling for years. They were much older than me. Some of them had been even higher up in leadership than me. And then when in Florida was like the retirement place to get your territory in Florida. So the other challenge I had was that I had to prove that I had something to bring to the table to these men, as they were 24 men older than me. And so what I decided was that my something was I was going to be a coach to them. And that I wasn't going to be the know-it-all, this is what to do, this is how to do it. I mean, they knew more than I did and I just found that part of being a coach and being a good manager and leader is just asking a lot of questions. My job is to, I'm going to earn my paycheck through other people now. I've got to figure out how to motivate these people to do the best that they can to earn, you know, what are their goals and so that they can have happy lives and if they can have happy lives, I can have a happy life.

Steve: And what kinds of questions? So nailing down what their goals are, what do you mean by goals? Professional goals, money goals, what other questions would you ask?

Alice: I coach personal and professional coaching, okay? Because we work to live. We need our paycheck to live. So what are your personal goals? What do you want to do for your children? What vacations do you want to go on? What kind of, do you want another house? Do you want another car? What is it? Or do they want to give more money to their, you know, their church or something? You know, everybody's got a variety of goals. So it was very important for me to find out what drove them, what did they work for? Why did they like working? What did they like best about this job? What did they like least about this job? So with having that knowledge, I then can help them fulfill their goals. So it's not always about money. And maybe sometimes I had instances where I ended up not necessarily with these 24, but in other management leadership jobs. I ended up coaching them to find another job because it turns out it's not a fit. And then when it's not a fit, it's not healthy for them. It's not healthy for the customers and it's not healthy for the company. And you need all three of those to be happy and healthy.

Steve: So true and as you know, leading a company, I've certainly seen that. And a lot of people don't understand that. You're better off finding the right people for a role because if someone's better off somewhere else, everyone's better off if you help them get there.

Alice: Right. And the other thing with these gentlemen was that nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. And I still don't know who said that, but I use that all the time. And so when I just sat back and asked them questions about them and then asked them, what could they teach me? They've been around. What could they teach me? And I did bring things to the table that I didn't put out on the table right away. One of my successes as a sales rep, I had 95 drug stores, about three different drugstore chains. And I had 25 part-time employees working for me, servicing the card racks at those drugstores. I had 5% turnover, whereas these men had 80 to 90% turnover. So they spent all their time hiring part-time people, training them, hiring them. They were in a rat race. So I did...

Steve: Mm-hmm. Wow.

Alice: ...bring to them. I didn't let them know right away necessarily. But then when I could show that, that changed their world, that changed their time management, changed everything. So you have to listen and find out personal, professional and then how to give them some tools to make it happen.

Steve: That makes a ton of sense to me. I mean, I think hiring the right people, making sure that they're the right fit once they're there, then retaining the people. You're behaving in such a way that you're able to retain your employees and treating them in a way that you can retain them for the long term is so important for companies. Because if you don't do that, you just end up spinning your wheels. And whether you're a sales manager, you're spinning your wheels on training new people all the time and frankly it takes people, I believe, two years to be great at something. Sure, in three months you understand the product and you've figured out how to move around the territory and who to talk to, but to be truly great in a sales role, you need two years I think. And if you're losing everyone on average after 18 months, you're just never, as a sales manager, you're never gonna reach greatness.

Alice: Right. And then they have to look at also that's what you have to look at the companies. How come you're losing that many people so soon? So it's either the values don't match up, they don't, or they don't feel valued, or of course coming from a trainer, a solution firm person and a school teacher. It's all about the training. Give the people the tools. Like tools. Everybody wants tools.

Steve: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alice: You know, and you're talking about greatness after two years, but think about all the professions, doctors, opera singers, orchestra leaders, people in a band. They practice, they want to learn, they read, they listen, they take classes in any which way to improve themselves. Sales is the only profession, interesting, that there's no requirement for training or requirement for continuous education.

Field Ride-Alongs: A Key Coaching Tool [11:57]

Steve: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's so true. So true. That's one thing we're trying to do here is help educate people. Another thing you've said is important for managers is ride-alongs. And so tell me about why you feel like ride-alongs are so important for coaching and developing your reps.

Alice: Well, so I'm going to tie that in, you know, going to introduce it. We're going to talk about three actions. That's one action. That's one of the three sales managers can have their salespeople meet quotas consistently. And one of the actions is field ride-alongs. And why is that? That means go out in the field, get in the car with them, go on sales calls. Why? Because then you're seeing what's happening. You're hearing what's happening. When somebody comes back in the office and relays the story, he said this, she said that, you're not getting the facial expressions, you're not getting the whole message either. You're not getting the tonal, and they're leaving out half of what happened. So when you're there in the field and you're observing what's actually happening on the job, then you can be a better coach. You go on several sales calls, you watch them. You don't have to critique after each one. You can watch, there are several ways to coach. One way is to coach after each one. The other is watch a few. And then, because you're going to see as a sales manager, you really are going to see, I say 500 things that you're not going to like. And the thing is that one mistake most sales managers make after they go out on a sales call with them, they start pointing out everything they saw that they could have done better. One of my recommendations is observe a few calls and then pick no more than two, preferably one. What's one thing they could adjust immediately that would make the biggest difference? Because you're gonna lose a sales rep if you give them five, six, seven things that they did wrong. They're gonna tune you out and cut you off. They're not hearing anymore. The one thing and talk about, give some options, give them solutions on how to do it, role play, practice, that you fix one thing, you end up fixing three things. So that's the importance of ride-alongs, but along with it, you have to know how to coach on the ride-along.

Steve: Mm-hmm. No, I could not agree more, both on the people overdoing it with feedback and giving people too much to bite off, but also the importance of ride-alongs. And not just, I don't think it's just important for sales managers. I like my VP of engineering to go on a ride-along to really get a better understanding of what's going on with customers. Certainly product management and product people. And even executive leadership. As a CEO of Badger, I go on ride-alongs with our reps and I think it's really important because it's important for me to hear things. To some degree, it's for the same reason that field sales is so valuable compared to selling over the phone. Face to face, you understand so much better what's going on and you can sell so much better and it resonates with us. I think we lose a lot more than we think we do if something is just over the phone or if something is just being retold to us. I think you really want to connect with people and hear things face to face. It shortens sales cycles, builds trust, closes more deals, makes the close easier. I couldn't agree with you more.

Alice: And another thing is when you have, even when you or even the engineers go on, I tell the managers, you're another set of eyes and ears. You aren't there to make the sale for them. But as you're listening and you hear because the prospect or the client goes this way and the sales rep's going that way, then you can just add one question. Just throw in one question, you bring it back around. Because sometimes the sales rep, it’s hard to take everything in, to be listening, thinking about what you're going to be presenting, tying it back in. So there's a value to that. You may ask a question that the sales representative would not have asked also.

Understanding “A, B, C, & D” Sales Reps

Steve: Another thing I've heard you speak about is how a manager wants to change their leadership style when coaching their different reps in their team. And you've talked about identifying your A, B, C, and D sales reps. Could you tell our listeners a bit about your thoughts there?

Alice: Okay, so, you know, everybody wants to have a whole team of A players and we don't end up with that. We think we're hiring all A players and sometimes, you know, based on your hiring tactics, using assessments, not using assessments, sometimes what we see is what we get. Okay, so, and then you have quotas and people need to be measured. So what I like to do with sales teams is, sales reps, you know, whether it's their A, B, C, D, or top tier, middle tier, lower tier sales reps, but they are different. And so how do you coach and lead with your leadership style? The coaching, the field ride, it's the same for all of them, just your A players, you're going to go a whole lot less. So, but what do A players want? They want to feel valued. So, riding in the field with them, going to lunch with them is making them feel valued. And you need them because when you're, as a leader, when you're in a pinch and you need another extra sale, it's your A players that are going to get it for you. And so part of the coaching with them and leading them is bring them into the fold. Ask them their advice. Ask them for their solutions. They know a lot. They're out there. They can really help solve a lot of the company's problems if you just ask them. And they are going to leave if they don't feel valued. That's why they leave. They're making money. They're feeling good. Money's not the answer. That's how you coach and lead them. The interesting thing about what I call your B players, B players are A wannabes. Okay. So they're the fastest track to getting more sales. So again, spend time with them, do the field ride, which was the first action. The second action is the one-on-one coaching. So if you do field rides and one-on-one coaching. Now, the A players, you may coach one-on-one coaching once a month. The B players are going to be once a week or twice a month, but they're your fastest track to turning them into A’s. And then you have your C players and your C and your D players. So they're not cutting it, they're not making quota. There's so much, a lot of books saying that's who you let go right away. And I'm a believer, especially if you’re a sales manager and you inherited the team, is everybody’s got a clean slate. And so until you thoroughly invest the time in coaching and training them, you're not, it’s not your responsibility to do career redirection with them.

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Alice: So work with your, don’t spend all your time. Cause a lot of times companies they let go of their A’s and their B’s and they spend all their time with their C’s and the D’s. Everybody needs it. C’s and D’s need more hand holding, more accountability, shorter timeframes to make the changes that they need to make. And then if they're not doing it, then they're telling you, I'm not cut right for this company.

Alice: So that's how I look at the adjustments for the different A, B, C, D players.

Effective Meeting & Coaching Strategies for Sales Managers [20:24]

Steve: It's a fantastic framework. I remember one of my best managers that when I was at Google had a very similar way of breaking up the world in his mind and just treating people very differently and coaching them very differently based on their performance, I think is something that's lost on some managers, but it's a great strategy. You've talked about the importance of having bite-sized 30-minute meetings. Why is this an optimal length and what should these meetings generally consist of?

Alice: Okay, well one of the reasons, the one that I say 30 minutes or less because today everybody has an attention span of a gnat.

Steve: How can I focus on what you're saying given that I'm reading my Instagram right now?

Alice: Okay, so that's one. The other reason we picked 30 minutes or less is we did, when we went to design the Sales Training Works membership site, the Done For You sales meetings, we interviewed a lot of sales managers, did a lot of forums, and they could go to find out what they wanted, because my first idea was 60 minute or 52, 60 minute or less sales meetings. And so when we had the forums, that's what I presented and they all started having cardiac arrest at 60 minutes. I was like, okay, so why 30 minutes? That was driven by them. And two reasons, they felt that they could take 30 minutes out and do some skill building, but not an hour. And the other tagging onto that, they also in their sales meetings have some information out that they need to do.

Steve: Thank you.

Alice: So they felt sometimes that just takes 15 minutes, sometimes 30. So they could walk an hour out for their sales team and do a combination information out and a skill booster at the same time. So that's where the 30 minutes or less. And I have to say initially, because I go back into the days where we used to take salespeople out of the field for five days sales training, you know, then it was three days, then it was two days. And now I ask, when I call up companies, we want sales training and I say, well, when it's all over, what do you want to happen? We want to have doubled sales. And then I say, well, how much time are you willing to take them out of the field to do that? And they go, just a few hours.

Steve: Okay. Well, that's, that's a lot.

Alice: I'm good, but I'm not that good.

Steve: Right. No one is, turns out.

Alice: So it's back to going back to my days as a teacher. I knew that I might, I was only going to get to keep my job if when they tested in September, they tested out at a higher grade in June. And my first sales manager job I took every Monday morning, and it was a skill booster sales meeting. And mine were 60 minutes. So basically, that so, but at first it was very hard for me. I started having cardiac arrest. What can I really do in 30 minutes? But then I came up with our signature formula to make that happen. It's the 3E accelerator technique. And the 3Es is you have to engage, you have to energize, and you have to equip all at the same time. And then on top of that, how am I going to do that? And I came up with the five, 10, 10, five formula. So the first five minutes starts out with the energizer, but the energizer is, it’s not, everything has a reason. I don't do anything just to do it. It's the aha moment energizer for them to recognize the reason we're talking about objections or the reason we're talking about voicemail messages. So it's a creative way to get an aha in five minutes. The next 10 minutes is spent on here’s the skill, here's the right principles, let's say for objections. And then they do something individually on their own in that 10 minutes. And then the next 10 minutes is group. So now we're engaging again, we're energizing because they're talking to their peers, and we're equipping them because they're doing a practice. And then the last five minutes is just a personal debrief. Okay, I either have an aha moment, I learned something new, or I rediscovered something. One of those two things are gonna happen. You're gonna learn something or you're gonna rediscover something. And then they have to make, what commitment am I gonna make to apply that into my sales conversations? And all that's in 30 minutes and they're good to go. They got energized, they learned something from their peers, themselves. And we have...

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Alice: ...people tell us all the time, it made a difference on the very next conversation. So everything's also relevant. That's another big word for me.

Steve: Alright. So these are meetings focused on trainings is what you've kind of broken down this philosophy or framework for. What about one-on-one meetings with your reps? What thoughts and tips do you have there?

Alice: Yeah, so the one-on-one meetings, they are not about what did you sell for me this week? What did you sell for me today? That's not what they're about. What they are about is finding out what barriers or challenges are in their way right now from moving deals forward, from making things happen.

Steve: I have had over my sales career so many meetings where it was just a report and it's like, I mean, you could have looked in the CRM and it says the same thing. These are the things that are going on right now. Like you could look that up, but...

Alice: So I am, and for sales managers who aren't doing one-on-ones, you just decide you're gonna start doing them. And you can do them when you're riding in the field also at lunch, this is a good time. But what you also wanna do, back to what I did with the 24 salesmen when I first started. What are your business goals? What are your professional goals? What do you like about this? What are you working for? You know, what motivates you? Find out what's going on? And then again, that's how you weave that into it. We had a salesperson once, you know, that, well, one big goal was to go to London, you know, just said I have never been out of the country. And we just broke that down. Well, what's holding you back from going? Well, I need X amount of money to take my family. All right. And then when do you want to go? And then we broke it down. What do you have to do in your business life to get that extra money to do it? And then boom, we're doing action plans that they have to sell X amount. They're looking at their territory different. And they had set a personal goal to go in six months that they were going to achieve. And lo and behold, three months later, they made it happen. They're going to London three months before planned. It’s not rocket science. It's somebody talking. They need, if you're their coach, you're not their manager, you're their coach. But if they have their numbers, even if you want to have the numbers conversation, what's going on? What do you think's happening that you're 20% off your numbers? So it's not a line-by-line account-by-account who's who might close. Where are you with this one? What's going on? You're going to find out so many things. You're going to find out either I don't know. I keep getting this objection. Well, sometimes you find that when they get, I find when salespeople get the same objection, they've done something previous in the questioning to get that objection without them realizing they're teeing up that objection. So you break through that or there's something going on in their personal life. Had you not asked, you wouldn't know what's going on in their personal life. So that's the barriers and you work around that. Don't let them off the hook, but also you engage them. Here's the other difference. Sales managers have taught their salespeople not to think for themselves. You go into the sales manager's office. I have this problem. The sales manager says, okay, I'll fix it. I'll come up with a solution for you. Why is the sales manager there until nine o'clock at night? Because every single salesperson’s come in with a problem and he's, I don't know if you’re familiar with the monkey on your back article for Harvard Business Review, but that manager has all the monkeys and the salespeople come home at five o'clock. And so they learn not to think for themselves. They've learned the manager wants to do it. So you've got this problem, that was the best question to ask after they've laid out the barrier or the problem is, what do you suggest? What's your recommendation for fixing this? What would you do? What do you want to do? And then don't accept the I don't know. Okay? Well, if you did know, what would it be?

Memorable Training Experience and Lessons [30:03]

Steve: Right? Really important advice here. This is fantastic. Can you tell me about a training experience that you've had or working with someone that was particularly fulfilling or memorable or where you learned something especially important?

Alice: For me, this is in college. I was not a good student in high school. My sister's one and a half years older than me, an A student without opening a book. I'm lucky to get C’s with opening books. I just wasn't a good student. Socializing was a little bit more important to me. Go to college.

Steve: Ha ha ha.

Alice: Take an education, minor in psychology, have to take two statistics courses. I don't know what statistics is, so that shows you how I'm a C student. I'm in two statistics classes. I got very lucky. One of my professors said to me, you're a lot smarter than you think you are. And I ended up graduating college with honors. So that goes back to my whole coaching, believing in them more than they believe in themselves. The other ones, what brings to mind is any time it was an interactive workshop or meeting or training that I went through, that made the biggest difference. When it was a lecture, I'm like the gnat, you know, I mean, even that, you know, tune me out. I had a fidget, I had to take notes, I had to do, I was like writing verbatim what they were saying just to stay awake.

Steve: Yeah, I always had a similar experience. I always found lectures very boring, but I think that's probably true with a lot of salespeople. They're driven to interact. They're driven by interactions and that passive absorption of boring material always just killed me.

Alice: Well, but not only that, I don't want to go back, we could talk about our education system. You know, I did not teach that way. You know, my children, I did not teach lecture, I got in trouble with the principal, I got sick, you know, you don't play on the flu, you wake up with it. Three days later, I come back and get in my office. What happened? They were terrible. What? They didn't listen to the substitute. I said, what? I said, well, she wanted them all reading off the same page. Well again, I had A, B, C, D players in my class. Not assignments on Monday. My A players, I worked with them on Friday. They had four days to complete. The C and the D’s, they couldn't read. I worked with them every day. Anyway, so they all had their assignments and they told the substitute they wanted to work on their assignments. So they don’t. You empower people and you give them the tools to do it, rather than wanting to sit there and lecture.

Sales in 60 Seconds - Quickfire Sales Tips [33:22]

Steve: Yeah, you know, that's a great takeaway thought from this entire interview here. There's a lot of similarities between being a teacher and being a sales manager. Well, next I'd like to do something I call sales in 60 seconds where I'll ask you five questions and I'll ask them, you know, rapid fire and then hopefully you'll be able to answer them in under 60 seconds. Okay, so first, what's a common mistake sales managers make during meetings?

Alice: Talking heads. Talk at you, talk two things, talk at you and tell you how great they did it and you should do it like them.

Steve: That's a common problem with humans in general.

Alice: Great. I have five others, but that's my number one pet peeve.

Steve: Well, since that was so easy, give me two more.

Alice: Okay, role play, not real play. When they decide to do role play, they have one or two people come up to the room and, oh my goodness, sweaty palms, you know, people are ready to have the flu. I call it real play, take a real challenge and do it in triads, a buyer, seller, observer. And take a real challenge, not a fake one, not having to sell widgets. Everybody fills out a form. Here's a challenge I have. And they shuffle up the challenges. Don't have to have the person's name on it. Or you put the person's name on it and they do their own challenge. And so they have, the other person gets their challenge card and they have to read it and then treat it like a sales call. And they, how would they do it? And the person whose challenge it was is the buyer. So they can answer as best as they can. And then you have an observer to give feedback. Make it about 15 minutes and then the observer leads a group feedback discussion.

Steve: All right. And what would be one piece of advice to sales managers who don't feel they have enough time in the day?

Alice: You lose that thought. If that's the thought that you don't have enough time in the day, you're going to continue to get exactly what you've got. Okay, because nothing's going to change. And you're just going to be working out of probably that scarcity mentality and you're going to get yourself overwhelmed. So, you know, look at your day, if you're looking at your day that they don't have enough time in their day for training, then they're in serious trouble. But if they just don't have enough time in their day, they just need to really do an analysis of where they're spending their time, how they're doing it, and recalculate that. And a lot of that I think is going to be what we talked about before is they're taking the monkeys on the back of their sales reps. So then I would encourage them to read the article by Harvard Business Review, Monkey on Your Back, and get some learning lessons on how to give the monkeys. I'll give them a real quick tip, if I'm going over my 60 seconds, how to give the monkey back. How to give the monkey back is when a sales rep approaches you with a problem, listen to the problem, hear them out and then say, here's what I'd like you to do. I'm gonna think about it, but I'd like you to go think about it. Let's meet back in 15 minutes and have a minimum of one, if not two solutions for...

Steve: I love it. Well, it's worth going over the 60 seconds when the advice is that valuable. What's your top advice for women sales managers today?

Alice: Be the best that you can and have, and I would say use your voice. Don't be afraid to speak up. Say what's on your mind. I mean, don’t attack or anything or be vicious, but that's one of the things I see women still thinking, I didn’t get asked what they thought.

Steve: What do you mean by that?

Alice: I get back into some of the girl things we were taught. Be nice to everybody. And I'm just saying, you have a voice. You were put in the leadership position for a reason. Use your voice. And I do have to add, if you speak up and you use your voice and they let you go because of that, that wasn't the right place for you.

Steve: Great advice. What is the leadership quality that you find to be particularly important in sales and sales leadership?

Alice: That the sales manager inspires people. So, inspires, inspiring, they inspire people to do things that they don't think that they could do. And that goes back to the other common thread I've said a few times is believe in your people more than they believe in themselves.

Steve: Which movie should every salesperson watch and learn from?

Alice: I'd say Field of Dreams.

Steve: Okay, if you build it, they will come, huh?

Alice: Dream it. Here's one of my phrases. Dream it. Believe it. Achieve it.

Steve: So as an actionable takeaway, what should the field sales managers listening today do as a first step to help their team meet and exceed their quotas consistently?

Alice: Well, first step out of the three actions that they take, the field rides, the one-on-one coaching and the mini sales training, bite-sized sales training. I would say out of those three, start with the one-on-ones. Get one-on-ones scheduled with all your salespeople and find out who they are, what they're all about, everything I said earlier, you know, what are their aspirations, work, not work. Have that meeting first.

Summary and Conclusion [39:52]

Steve: Fantastic. Well, I'm going to attempt to summarize what you've said for all the people driving right now who presumably weren't taking notes. There's so much stuff here. So Alice started her sales career selling for American Greetings where she faced some challenges as one of the few women within American Greetings on the sales side and certainly one of the, I think one of the only, if not the first female manager. She learned to coach reps below her and to form great relationships with them. And she did this by asking questions like, what are your goals? Both, she'd find out their personal goals, their professional goals. She'd find out what drives them. At times she would find certain people weren't a great fit for their role and she could coach them to find a new job. And at other times she could find what really would be motivating for that specific individual and then she could work with them to achieve it. Sales managers need to go on field ride-alongs to observe what's really happening in order to coach their sales teams and be great managers. You want to observe a few calls first and then focus on telling your reps one, maybe two things that they can improve upon and then providing them with solutions on how they can improve on those things. A good framework is to break down your reps into your A, B, C, and D players and create value for your A players by still spending time with them in the field and learning about their challenges and goals. But there's probably a little less, there's less interactions. Maybe it's monthly or bimonthly instead of weekly. With your B players, you're going to need more ride-alongs and more coaching. So maybe every other week or every week, and you can turn them into A players. And then you spend the most time with C and D players to see if you can get them to progress by training and eventually see if you can move them up or if you can help them with a different direction for their career. Skill building or training meetings are best in bite-sized chunks, so 30 minutes or less, and that'll really keep people's attention and ensure that the skills you're teaching are going to be retained. You want to use the three E's in these meetings. Engage, energize, and equip. The meeting should be broken into bite-sized chunks. I think the framework was five minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes. And your one-on-one meetings with your reps should cover what are the barriers or challenges that are in their way right now that keeps them from being as successful as they could. What's holding them back? And most, so many managers spend their time in these meetings just talking about, you know, what deals are gonna close and when they're gonna close and how big they're gonna be. If you focus instead on what's holding you back right now and then as a manager you can seek to remove those roadblocks, your team will be more successful. As a sales coach, it's really important to motivate your reps by believing in them more than they believe in themselves. And that's a key motivational thought. Believe in people more than they believe in themselves, and they may surprise you. So some fantastic thoughts from Alice today. Alice, tell me, where can our listeners read more about your work? How do they reach out to you? How can they engage with you more?

Alice: Well, certainly absolutely. You know, LinkedIn is the easiest place. Alice Kemper, you can find me there. They can certainly email me directly if they went to salestrainingconsultants.com or salestrainingwerks.com, and werks is spelled W-E-R-K-S. But I have something special for you and your listeners because we really have an audience. Your audience really is interested in being successful. And we've talked about the field rides and the one-on-one coaching and, you know, they certainly could engage with me to do that, but they're better off doing that themselves. But with their time deprived and what they don't have time to do is write all that bite-sized sales meeting with the 3E accelerator technique in them. So I've done that. I've got two years’ worth. I’ve got, you know, 104, 30-minute or less sales meetings and all outlined, if they can read and tell time, they can run very effective, the three E’s, the engage, equip, and energize sales meeting. So what I've done for your audience is with the promo code podcast, if they go to salestrainingwerks.com and want to order a year's subscription, they get it for half off and it’ll cost them $187 instead of $379. And they're going to have multiple sales well worth more than that.

Steve: Well, thank you, Alice. That is very generous of you. I love what you're saying here. This has been a fantastic episode of the Outside Sales Talk. If anyone who's listening can think of other sales reps that would benefit from, or sales managers, especially in this case, that would benefit from this episode and hearing about it, feel free to forward this on to them. As always, leave a rating of the podcast on iTunes. That really helps spread the word if you find these helpful to other people. Take care until next time and thanks for joining us, Alice.

Alice: Thank you.