The Top 5 Sales Leadership Mistakes and How to Fix Them

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode 21 of the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And in this episode, we are going to cover the top five mistakes in sales leadership. Okay. Now look, Brooke and I have both had a very deep background in sales, but not just selling. We've had a very deep background, both of us. In fact, actually decades of experience in sales leadership. We have been sales leaders at the very highest levels in some very big organizations. We've been sales leaders of our own small, tight-knit sales teams. We've had the opportunity to work with amazing sales leaders.

1:25 We've been sales leaders. We've had the opportunity to work with some really shitty sales leaders, and we've seen everything in between. And what we really wanted to do with this episode is to prepare you for sales leadership. If you're in a position right now where you're thinking about building a sales team at some point in the future or maybe very soon... Or if you're already in sales leadership in some way, shape, or form, whether you're a business owner and you're currently leading a small sales team or you are a sales leader currently inside of an organization, we really want to give you the benefit of our couple of decades of experience in sales leadership and show you the top five biggest mistakes that we see sales leaders making today.

2:11 and teach you exactly how to turn them around and do it the right way so that you and your team can win. So buckle up for this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. This is episode 21 coming your way right now. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. Good to see you, brother. Welcome, welcome. This is going to be a good episode. I'm so stoked to dive into today's episode as we're going to be going through the top five sales leadership mistakes that we see business owners and sales leaders making.

2:53 Let's go ahead and dive in here, dude. And I think, you know, just before we start, I just want to kind of preframe by saying that, you know, both of us have had a significant amount and several years. I mean, actually, we're like between the two of us going into decades of sales leadership at this point where we've not only, you know, been sales leaders in many, many, many different situations, including currently. is giving you the things that you need to avoid if you want to be a fantastic sales leader, whether you're leading yourself right now, which by the way, you are a sales leader, if that's the case, whether you are the business owner and you've got a small sales team, whether you are hiring somebody or currently have somebody in a sales leadership capacity, you're going to know the top five mistakes that either you or or they are going to want to avoid in doing that.

3:48 With that said, man, let's dive in. So number one is overinflated or unclear expectations. What do we mean by that? Yeah. So you get what you tolerate. And so there's so many, I mean, just going back in the course of time of people I've worked for, where it wasn't clear in terms of what their expectations were, whether that might have been conversion rates or how they wanted the experience of a sales engagement to go, or what bonus structures were going to be and when payouts were going to happen. You know, what was clear in the sales leader's mind was not always very clear in terms of how they communicated that or articulated it to us as a team. And so being able to not only communicate to your team what it is that you're trying to convey, but you've got to be really good at getting verification on the other side of that.

4:38 So it's a matter of, are you clearly articulating expectations? outcomes, the rewards? And is your team able to communicate that back in the same exact language? If they can't, they're unclear. If they're unclear, think of it like you would a military team. You're out in the middle of battle. If you go, hey, I need you to go over there and check out that location to see if there's any bombs. If they look at you and you think that they understand what you just said and they start walking the other direction, that's what most sales teams are doing. Right. So you've got to verify. So there's an element of communicating, clarifying and verifying. As far as in your experience with this, because I know we've had both the opportunity and the I don't even know the word we would use for that.

5:20 We've worked for some amazing leadership. We've also worked for the other end of that spectrum. And we've also had the opportunity to be sales leaders, to your point, decades, which makes me feel really old. Thanks, bro. Yeah, we're always here to do that. You know, I think that there are a couple of words that come to mind for me when we're talking about overinflated or unclear expectations. One is standards. It's so important to have really, really clear standards as a leader of any kind. But especially when we're talking about sales. More often than not, sales leaders or business owners don't have clear standards and or they may have standards that exist only in their head and they haven't properly verbalized that to their teams.

6:06 So, you know, when standards that they have in their head are not being met and they run around, you know, having a cow about it, people are going, wait a minute, I don't understand. I didn't get this memo. The other one is certainty. When we talk about salespeople, certainty is paramount. You remove certainty from a salesperson and you got a serious problem, a serious problem. And that is a top-down mentality. You have to make sure that you are conveying certainty to your salesperson and that then will transfer. And I think that, you know, one of the things that I would say about that is that certainty isn't just certainty in like, oh, you know, you're doing a good job or I know you can do it, you know.

6:55 We build certainty through clear standards. Hey, if I want to hit my sales quota for the month, I know I need to get to five. If I don't, this is what happens. I get a write-up, right? Okay, if I don't hit it the next month, then this is what happens. Or hey, I know I need to have X number of slots available every day for sales calls. If I don't, This is what happens, right? And more often than not, everything is just all over the place and willy-nilly. There's not clarity. There's not certainty. And you get salespeople way up in their head before they've even gotten on the phone, which is a massive, massive problem.

7:41 Well said. And I just want to kind of put another angle on this. What is in your head as a sales leader may feel black and white to you, but it might come across as gray to your team. And so you want to make sure that whatever you're communicating, it is crystal clear, it's concrete, it's tangible, it's the thing you can put in a wheelbarrow and walk it out of the parking lot to some extent. Your team needs to know if I don't hit numbers to your point, Ryan, like if I don't hit my metrics, this is what's going to take place. If I do hit my metrics, here's the other end of that spectrum. There's a lot of people that don't know, hey, if I hit this number, like I don't even know what the reward is on the other side of this thing. Because oftentimes we as leadership, we only focus on what's not working and we forget to let them know there's this incentive at the end of the rainbow if you kick some ass.

8:25 So you want to couple both sides of that, but you want to be really mindful of what is your team's needs as it relates to expectations and communication versus how do you just manage and how do you just communicate stuff? So yeah. I think that's so important. And I think as well that it has to start at the very beginning. When we talk about, you know, clear and sensible expectations, we need to start that process at the moment that somebody walks in the door from the hiring process to actually hiring them, to onboarding them, to getting them into sales engagements. It's got to be clear all the way through. And I'm, You know, I think we've kind of touched on kind of the gray area, the gray matter, as opposed to black and white.

9:06 But what we haven't touched on is the overinflated piece of the puzzle. So this is something that's really important. You know, not only do we have to have clear standards and targets and expectations, they've got to be reasonable. Right. So often we watch business owners and sales leaders create these ridiculous expectations that, you know, and standards that people can't rise or live up to. And that feels incredibly deflating. If you think about yourself and think about any time where anybody has ever placed an expectation on you that you truly believed wasn't possible to hit, it doesn't feel good.

9:46 Yeah. Because you feel like you're constantly running uphill and getting nowhere. And I think that it's really important as a sales leader and a business owner to ask yourself, what is a target? It's the same thing that we would teach people about setting personal goals. What is a target that stretches me, that I know is aggressive, that's going to force me to grow and expand and get better? but that I actually believe I could hit if I was on point and focused and had the necessary support and help that I needed to get there. You want your salespeople to be in exactly that same position. And that starts by not giving them expectations that are overinflated.

10:29 And one little piece that I want to mention is... For those of you that are the business owner and at some point you're going to hire a salesperson, one way you can overinflate your expectation is expecting that your salesperson is going to sell like you. Newsflash. I get it. It ain't happening. It's one of the biggest, biggest mistakes that we watch business owners make is they bring on a salesperson, either A, because they want completely out of their sales or B, they want to free up more time to work in their business, which, you know, are on the business, which they should. But then they expect that, hey, I'm closing it, you know, 50, 60, 70%. I think my salesperson is just going to come in and be Johnny closer and kick ass like I'm kicking ass.

11:13 Yeah. It doesn't work that way. And you need to make sure that from an expectation standpoint, when you hire a salesperson, that you set your expectations significantly lower than you would set them for yourself, especially if you're closing at a serious clip, you know, anywhere above 30%. No, I think that's a really huge distinction. The other part, I think that so many, especially when somebody's bringing on their first salesperson, they usually bring them on and there's this feeling of like relief of like, oh, I don't have to do sales anymore. And it's like they let go of the baton and they walk out of the arena. Yep, yep. You know what I mean? So you have to stay in the game.

11:54 And yes, you got to have realistic expectations. I know there was actually a company we were consulting. This is like a little over a year and a half ago. And the business owner, they mistook minimum standards. for targets. So again, this goes into clarity of communication. So they're coming in going 30 enrollments a month, 30 enrollments a month, 30 enrollments a month. Meanwhile, no one's ever done 30 enrollments. That person had never done 30 enrollments themselves. They didn't have enough leads. It just based on a, like even a ridiculous conversion rate, it wasn't going to happen. And so they were slanting the seed in their sales team's heads of, you know, That's the minimum standard, which has never even happened before.

12:34 And so they're all judging themselves internally and they feel like they're not doing good. And they also all felt that they were going to lose their job. And so they're walking on eggshells. They're petrified to do anything. And here's what ultimately ends up happening. They get into the calls and they go into scarcity and they beat the tarnation out of the leads because they're trying to get to a number that's unrealistic. And guess what? You as the business owner, your brand is going to start to take massive dents if you've got a team that's got scarcity. And they've got the, again, communication. Goal versus minimum standard. Two very, very different things. Yeah. So well said. And I think that brings us into number two. As we talk about energy and environment, the second biggest mistake that you can make as a sales leader is not setting up your environment for success.

13:24 Now, there are a lot of I want to make sure that we're really clear about this, because there are a lot of different pieces that kind of fall underneath the umbrella of environment. So, Brooke, let's give a little bit of clarity on, you know, what does the sales environment look like? And how are people screwing that up? How is it not set up for success? Yeah. You know, there's a couple of different angles on this. The first is, you know, one of the things we like to say is the way you bring people into your organization is very likely how you're going to move them out of your organization. So if you bring them in in a messy way and it's chaotic, be prepared for them to go out messy and chaotic. Now, in addition to that, you know, I liken this to my wife this year. I don't know if I shared this with you, Ryan.

14:06 My wife got really into gardening this year. So her big vision is she always wanted to have grow boxes and the whole vegetable garden and the whole nine. The not so fun part of that is I got to be the one to build the boxes and move the dirt and set the whole thing up. But within that, what happens a lot of times with the environment as it relates to a sales team, imagine you had a garden and you didn't ever pull the weeds out. And imagine you start planting seeds and you come out the very next day and you don't see that there's any fruit growing out of your garden. What a lot of sales teams will do is they'll go, well, I planted 100 seeds. Right. I should have at least 20 trees with fruit on it right now. Like what the hell's going wrong? And then you start digging out the seeds and you throw them out.

14:47 And that's what most sales management does, right? They expect that immediately that they're going to have fruit on the tree. They're going to expect immediately that it's all going to look the same. They're going to expect that the tree is going to grow in the exact same manner as the other trees. Because I've got a salesperson over there that's getting this result. Therefore, this one should get the same exact result. And the biggest thing, this is the part that I think is the most challenging. stomp and throw temper tantrums. They'll punch the dirt. They'll yell at the dirt. They'll restrict the water from the dirt. They'll take some of the nutrients away and go put it in the other side of the grow box. And that ends up becoming the culture that happens on a sales team. And so you have a lot of people, seeds, that are like, Hey, am I going to get fed this week? Are you going to take away the good leads?

15:28 Are you going to only give them the good stuff? Am I going to lose my job? Am I in? Am I out? Should I grow? Should I go plant myself in somebody else's grow box? Right. And so we get this culture of Matt, to your point, you mentioned the word certainty. We have an environment that is not set up to succeed. And so what that translates into tactically or strategically, you want to recruit and set the frame for your environment at the point of recruitment. Set the expectations. Be clear. Here's the opportunity. Here's how we're going to support you. Also tell them about the skeletons that are buried somewhere underneath the grow box that might show its ugly head and scare them. Like if you can get that out of the way before they even start, it's not going to be an issue a month or two months from now when it's like, wait a minute.

16:11 There's ebbs and flows with leads. What? You told me I would have leads for forever. Okay. So recruiting, onboarding, the way that you manage and train ongoing. Yeah. And this is a huge one. If they're not producing, it goes back. We're going to say this over and over again. If they're not hitting the expectations that are clearly laid out, they need to know what that plan is and how they should show up because you've laid it out before they actually don't perform. I love that. And I love the way that you kind of paint the picture. First of all, great analogy with the grow box and the seeds and all the things. And I think that one of the most valuable pieces about what we're saying here is that if you're listening to this, you get the sense that this is a holistic thing here, right?

16:52 It's not just we do one thing one way. It's what is the culture? What is the environment? that you're setting up that people are walking into. And how does that support them? How does that support you? How does that support the team as a whole? How does that support sales outcomes? How does that support company outcomes? All of those different things are really important. And you need to make sure that you're doing what it takes to set yourself up and your team up for success. Yeah. From the very moment that you start interacting with that person until, you know, I mean, hopefully you have a nice long relationship, but until the day that they walk out the door, if they do at some stage of the game. And Brooke is absolutely right.

17:33 It's like the old adage, you know, when we talk about food, garbage in, garbage out. I love that. So, you know, number three is this is really an important piece. And I think one of the most misunderstood concepts and leadership in general, and man, we see this all the time in sales. And that is that we find most sales leaders don't know the difference between coaching and management, and they don't know when is the appropriate time to do one or the other. So I want to first tackle the difference. What is the difference between coaching and management? So in my opinion, and I'm sure there's, there's angles on this.

18:13 Coaching is helping somebody explore, figure out their own answers. It's asking them really good questions. It's helping call to the highest version of themselves. It's helping really, it's lifting them up. And it's also in a space that's safe to do such a thing. Yeah. Managing moves more into some of the tactical, strategic. It's setting outcomes. It's holding people to the line. It's also not looking at just the individual. When you're managing, you have to look at the whole. Coaching is oftentimes way more on the individual. So here's an example, coaching a team of five people. That's kind of a funky thing if you think about it, because you're trying to lift up all of them.

18:54 Then reality, in my opinion, coaching should be something that happens in a one-on-one scenario. Managing is something that happens with the team. So here's a classic case example. So worked for a specific company. I won't say the name because I signed an NDA, but on the first day, come in, gentleman walks into the sales team meeting 15 minutes late. Everybody else is there on time. He walks in 15 minutes late. Okay. Sales manager goes, dude, where have you been? The salesperson flips him off and goes, F you, I'm out of here. And he walks out and leaves. In my head, I'm like, oh, that dude's fired. Nope. So that guy comes back in, five minutes left in the meeting, sits down with his arms crossed.

19:34 Nothing is said. Nothing happens. Everyone went on their merry way. That sales manager showed his whole team. I'm tolerating that behavior. He had a moment in time where that should not have been a coaching moment. That should have been a, I'm going to manage moment. That's not allowed. That's not tolerated. And I'm going to set a precedent for my team. But instead he just let it roll. And what happens in this, you and I were talking about this before we kicked in. What I see happen a lot of times is managers will show up the same way they show up to their kids. Like the same way they parent is how they manage their team. And so guess what? That person, that sales manager, he let his kids get away with murder and he also let let his sales team get away with murder. So my inputs on coaching versus managing, in my opinion, coaching should happen in a one-on-one situation.

20:18 Managing should be happening where you're setting precedent, you're setting standards, and you're holding the line for the whole team. I agree. And a couple of little nuances that I want to give here. I think first things first, one analogy that I'd like to give so that you understand this is think of an NFL football team and think of the general manager and the coach. So the GM is going to be responsible for all of those tactical pieces. He's looking at the team as a whole. He's looking at the performance of the team as a whole. He's looking at how much are we paying each player. He's looking at who's available on the free agent market. He's looking at day-to-day operations, again, ops of the team.

21:02 And whereas the coach is looking at... Hey, we got game day on Sunday. What's the strategy to go out and beat the dirty Raiders? Sorry for you Raider fans. What's our strategy? How can I get in front of my quarterback and make sure that he's seeing the things on the field that I know he needs to see in order to execute? How do I need to coach up my linemen to compensate for this badass linebacker they've got on the other side of the field, etc. ? So I want to give you guys a really clear distinction here. Sometimes if you are the business owner right now and you don't yet have a sales team or you have a small sales team and there is no one between you and the sales team, currently you are both.

21:48 Now, what's really important is that you cannot wear and should not wear both hats at the same time. That's not the way this is designed to work. It's designed for you to manage when you need to manage and to coach when you need to coach. In addition to that, when you do bring on people to help you, one of the biggest mistakes that we watch people make, we've done multiple consulting gigs for sales teams where we have somebody sitting in a sales management position that is attempting to coach the sales team. It does not work. That person needs to be focused on the operations. If the general manager of the football team decided to come down and start coaching the players, the coach would have a shit fit.

22:34 right? Because that's not the way it's designed to work. You need someone who is going to actually manage the operations of the sales team. And then you need someone who's going to actually do the coaching. That's exactly why the best sales teams in the world have got a good structure and hierarchy in sales leadership. They have someone at the very top, either the CEO or business owner or a vice president of sales. sales or chief sales officer that is driving the overarching strategy of sales inside of the company goals and outcomes. Then you've got a sales manager that is running the day-to-day operations of the sales team. And then you've got a sales coach that is coaching up each individual member of the sales team.

23:19 If you've ever been confused about it, You just got the quick sales leadership 101 hierarchy there. And you got to make sure that those are separated. And if you are currently a business of one and you're about to bring on a sales team member, you need to make sure that you clearly wear each hat when it's appropriate. That might be the world's best metaphor ever. It so clearly lays it out. But yeah, man, it's definitely one of those pieces. And there's times where you have to step into both. You just have to be really conscious of who do you need to be in the moment for the outcomes you're looking to accomplish. So yeah, coaching versus managing, super critical. What's the next one, brother? Number four is sales leaders oftentimes don't find the sweet spot.

24:00 Between autonomy and micromanagement. And most sales leaders are going to go typically polar opposite end of the spectrum in either way. They either are like super lax where it's like, oh... go do whatever you want. And I don't ever check in on you. And we don't even have like calls where we make sure you're on track to hit your goals. And you know, there's almost no management or oversight at all. Or they run completely the opposite direction where it's like every minute of every day. I'm listening to every call. Oh, hey, hey, you know, you should have done this. Why didn't you do that over here? Hey, I need an update. Give me an update right now.

24:42 Oh, hey, I just listened to one of your calls. This is happening. That's happening. Like where the person doesn't have time to breathe. So how do we find the sweet spot between the two of those where a salesperson has the proper amount of autonomy, which, by the way, if you didn't realize this, here's another big newsflash. It is vital that you give your team autonomy, but there's a proper amount. and where we manage and we oversee, but we don't squeeze the life out of our sales team? How do we find the sweet spot? It's a really good question. So what I've always done with my teams is, one, I always ask...

25:26 each of my salespeople, hey, how do you like to be managed? Do you want me to be on your rear and holding you to task? Because there's some people that are like, hey, I want you to kick my... It's kind of like the personal training. Do you want somebody who's yelling at you to push harder? Or do you need somebody that's like, you've got this. You can do it. You know what this reminds me of? You've seen So I Married an Axe Murderer. Yeah. Kid, move. It reminds me of the friend. I can't remember the friend's name, but Charlie's friend who is always going to the police captain. It's like, God, Captain, you're too nice. Can you just fucking yell at me or something? Like, so awesome. That's what it reminds me of.

26:06 We got to add that to the list, bro. I totally forgot about that movie. It's so good. It's like Sputnik. Yeah. Look at the size of that boy's melon. It's huge. Yeah. like a waterman on a toothpick. Go cry yourself to sleep on your huge pillar. And we're totally off track. What are we talking about? Okay, so the first thing is always ask my team, how do they want to be managed? Within that, the way I played it, if people were hitting our standards, I gave them as much autonomy as could be humanly possible. It's like, you have complete freedom. We would have check-ins maybe every other week, as long as they were hitting the standard.

26:47 The moment they were under standard. Now, I want to highlight this. Under standard. Under standard. That sounds like I'm saying a word wrong. If they were below standard. If they are under standard or anything, the wheels have completely fallen off. If they're below standard, Lord help me. It needed to be over a window of time. So them being below standard for a day did not warrant, oh, crap, we're doing daily meetings. Oh, now I'm going to be listening to every call you do. Oh, now I'm going to be asking you every single question. Now I'm going to have you in one ear when you're talking and I'm going to tell you what to say. Like below standard was if they were below standard for the month. Okay, so I'm going to say that again. They didn't hit their KPIs for an entire month.

27:29 Then they went into what we would refer to as like a coach up or coach out scenario. Within that, if they're hitting standard autonomy, and I'm just touching base with them. Or if they told me to manage them in a particular way that would serve them best, I'm managing them according to their request. So again, it really came down to you have autonomy until you need support or additional coaching or additional management. Yeah, this is so important because let's circle back to the standards and expectations, right? We need to set clear standards, but then we need to make sure that we actually like adhere to those, that we have the integrity to say, hey, the standard is that, you know, I'm going to ask you to hit 10 sales a month.

28:18 Okay, we're in month three and you're at four. In most cases, and Brooke just said it, We find this all the time. People start freaking out immediately. And now guess the message that this sends to the salesperson. If you have a really good salesperson, let's just say, you know, I'm going to use this as an example because I think it's a really powerful story. Example, I had a conversation with a salesperson on a team that I lead just the tail end of last week. And it's been a rough month. Like, you know, he's been about half of his typical conversion percentage. And, you know, in the last couple of weeks, it was something like 30 completed calls in one sale.

28:59 It was rough. Certainly not what I'm used to from this person. Now, again, this happened over a couple of weeks. I have not one time, not once, have I reached out to him and gone, my God, Joe. What's wrong with you? What is wrong with you? What the hell is going on? After he didn't sell something for two days, I wasn't on the phone or, you know, in messaging going, geez, Joe, you need to get on it right now. Joe, you know, you're going to be on probation if you don't pick it up here before the end of the week. I haven't reached out to him once. We've had connections before. like we normally do, like the expectation that I set. We've had connections. And when we spoke at the tail end of last week, I did decide to address it because enough time had gone by.

29:44 And basically, I just said, you know, tell me a little bit about what you feel like is happening. And he said, yeah, you know what? I'm going to say, yeah, It's just a funky month, man. He goes, I can't really put my finger on it, but I've just had several this month that are literally right there. And like the domino just hasn't fallen yet. And I know when that first one does, like it's going to be a cascade, but it just hasn't fallen yet. But I'm working my buns on it. I'm doing all the things I know I need to do. I'm not unconfident. I have full confidence that everything that is supposed to happen is going to happen. I'm just asking, you know, that, you know, like, just trust me. My response to him, okay, I trust you.

30:27 That was on Friday. Got two sales over the weekend. You didn't tell him that you've got somebody else that you're recruiting and that there's about to be an open seat on the bus? Yeah, I said, you know what, Joe? Trust you. How the hell can I trust you when you've only sold one fucking deal in the last 30 completed – Do you know how much this is costing me, Joe? Do you know how much these leads cost? You're burning me through phone calls. There's no way. You've got three days to turn this around. And if you can't listen, your job's in jeopardy. No. I said, I trust you. Three words. That's it. I interrupted you right before you're about to share the results because I think this is. Yeah. So that was Friday afternoon at 430.

31:08 Over the weekend, two sales. Monday, he doubled. So here's the point of this is that when you set an expectation, it's vital. Just like anytime we set a goal for ourselves or our company or our team, of course, we have to check in. If we don't have checkpoints, regular checkpoints. then we can't figure out if we're off track. And sometimes we will be off track. And sometimes, yes, there is coaching that has to be done in those cases. But from a management perspective, you need to learn to set clear expectations for your team. And then actually deliver on you deliver on your side of those expectations, which is here's the job that I'm asking you to do.

31:52 These are the standards. These are the expectations. We're going to have these set check in points. I'm not going to be crazy and freak out on your ass. I'm going to trust you. And if for any reason the expectations or the standards are not met. Okay. We have a very clear process of what's going to happen after that. And I will live up to my side of the bargain on that side as well. Because if you do that, then guess what? They're going to do that. And here's the other key piece. You know, one of the things that Joe said to me was, listen, man, I know there are going to be some people probably, you know, that are thinking, man, what's going on with Joe? What's happening with our boy?

32:33 I can assure you. I'm looking at the bills that have to be paid this month. You know, the kids need to be fed and mama needs new shoes. So I can promise you that I'm fully aware of, you know, needing to get there and I'm doing all the things. That is so... So important. Now, first of all, he didn't need to say that to me because I already knew it. But that's such an important lesson for a sales leader, because oftentimes we make the mistake of believing that the salesperson doesn't really fully grasp the weight of underperformance. If that's truly a problem, you got a much bigger problem, which is you got a shitty ass salesperson.

33:14 That's an even bigger problem. Most of the time, they do understand the weight of it. And you just further dumping on them only makes it worse. And you drive them further into that hole of lack and scarcity and uncertainty and need and difficulty. And it shows up on their sales calls and they never recover. autonomy, and micromanagement. Number five, number five, the Cinco. We've got different types of leaders, right? And one of the biggest mistakes that we see sales leaders make is that they are a title leader versus a servant leader. Brooke, define that.

33:55 What is a title leader? What is a servant leader? Yeah. So anyone who's ever worked in the military, right? Like you've seen somebody who got rank because somebody else above their pay grade gave them that rank. It's like, poof, you're now an E3 or I didn't serve in the military. You know, my haircut is very misleading in this. However, I'm assuming that E3 is going to be... That is a rank. Yes. It's a rank. I'm in the ballpark. Okay, cool. I'll roll with it. There you go. Who knew? But you have somebody who, because they have the title or because they have a certain amount of stars on their lapel, they pull rank, right? We've all heard people say that. Are you pulling rank? Are you using your title as reason to why you have to listen to them?

34:36 And what happens a lot of times, it's like, hey, I'm your manager. Therefore, you need to go do this thing. Or because, hey, I'm your boss. Go do this activity. And we'll oftentimes see this. This usually actually will happen. It happens with all different parts of the disk profile. But where I've seen it come up more than than some of the others is if you have a really high D person in leadership, because they're moving quickly and they want to get to the finish line rapidly. the way they'll communicate things is like, go do this thing. And if the person has questions, they go, don't ask questions, go do it. Now, what it comes across as or what it creates a culture of is that that person in leadership is just barking orders. They're just telling people what to do because they're the boss versus... The other side of it with being a servant leader, servant leadership is you're willing to do the same job you're asking them to do.

35:21 You're willing to get your hands dirty if they don't understand it. You're willing to jump into the heat of battle for the sake of your team members. You're willing to get curious versus being critical. You're willing to do whatever is necessary to get the outcomes with your team members versus standing at the top going, do that thing. We either live or die and it's up to you. And then they cross their arms. Yeah. And then they put the carrot or the stick into the mix. That was so good, dude. And I think it's the difference between, come on, let's do this together. Come with me and go do this. Because I said... Right. And, you know, one of the things that's most important as a leader is to be able to, when we talk about influencing people, right, and true masters of influence understand how to create a with me culture instead of just a do it culture.

36:18 And a with me culture truly requires you to be on that level where you're going, you're in it. The best leaders are, you know, first one on the field, last one off, right? Using another military analogy. And, you know, it's vital in sales because so often, you know, listen, one of the things I think is so important. And if you are running your own business and you've done your own sales, you know, listen, we talk about the fact that sales is for gladiators for a reason. It is hard. It's not an easy game to play. And so when you're running a sales team, it's absolutely vital that you make this a with me conversation.

36:59 Because when you do, that's really when you have the opportunity to set the tone of a culture, to create a movement, to truly have... you know, standards and core values and beliefs that mean something that people on your team actually, you know, grab onto and believe in. When you can do that, people will run through a One of the things that I want to mention, I remember when I've always been obsessed with leadership, and we talked about this on the show before, but one of the things that I came to a point when I was between my business in oil and gas and getting into coaching, and I really looked at...

37:43 the qualities of the people that I truly admired in leadership. And one of the ways I would describe that is quiet strength. And I remember when I was working for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, there were a lot of, I came in and was working with them the year that Tony Dungy got fired. And then, you know, right after that, John Gruden came in and they won the Super Bowl. But I worked with so many of the players. I heard story after story after story about the way that Tony managed his teams. That man held the ultimate amount of respect. In a locker room full of testosterone-fueled, you know, freakazoid athletes, he would walk in and never raise his voice.

38:30 And I remember Derek Brooks, who's one of the best linebackers of all time, Hall of Famer, incredible player for the Bucs. I remember him talking about how he didn't need to raise his voice for you to know that he was upset. And even more so, it wasn't that you felt that he was upset. You knew he was disappointed in you. And that was like... Right. It's like that dagger in the heart when your parent says to you, honey, I'm not mad. I'm disappointed. It's like, oh, right. But he didn't need to yell and scream for that to happen. And I think it's so important that as a leader.

39:11 We don't have to be carbon copies of Tony Dungy. We don't have to have all the personality traits. You know, all of us be robots and be exactly the same. But what I do think is vital is for those of us, especially if you tend to run red, and you tend to run around in that high D state of fast pace, just go do it because I said, I want to invite you to at least spotlight and work on your ability to influence people to get them to come with you instead of just telling them to go do. Because even in more of a high D fashion, that is going to be far more well received and you will get further faster in Well said, man.

39:56 Yeah. The way that I've always looked at running or leading a sales team, and actually it's not even just sales team. It's leadership in general. And this is true for our families. This is true in our friendships. This is true in business. My job is to take arrows so that my team can keep advancing. If I can do everything I can to protect their psychology, if I can do everything I can to help manage the environment so that they can thrive in that environment, if all I have to do is just be that barrier outside of there so that they can keep moving, if I can do that at the highest level... I know that they will continue to move forward and they will serve more people and they will help us advance and grow the business. It's when we get into it and we let them take the arrows, like very quickly, if you're in that game of always recruiting, if you're a sales leader and you're having to put people on your bus over and over and over again, you're doing something wrong.

40:48 So hang on, stay there for one second. This is so important. Say it again one more time. Let it sink in. If you're always having to recruit and move people on and off your team, if you're in that conveyor belt of recruiting for your sales team, you're doing something wrong. You're controlling the wrong things. You're controlling the people instead of controlling the environment and controlling the bigger piece. Here's the good news. The problem is you. That's the good news. We should start the episode with it. The world's sure it is a podcast. No problem is you. The end. The good news about that, though, is that if you are in that situation right now, some of you are kind of going, oh, shit.

41:33 Yep. I've got a revolving door on my sales team. Guess what? It's not that there are no good salespeople out there. It's you. And here's the beauty of it, though. If it's you, that's something you can fix. That's something you can fix. And one of the things that I want to give you, let's just say that you do find yourself in a spot right now where you know you have a revolving door on your sales team or you know you've run people off. Look, if you choose and decide to take on the responsibility of being an incredible leader and go inside instead of blaming the external circumstances, you will win. And you will find the right way. And you can take all of the experience that we just gave you and all of these mistakes, turn them around.

42:15 And you've got the opportunity to right the ship. You can do that for yourself. You can establish that culture. You can set clear expectations. You know, you can set up your environment for success. You can make sure that you find that sweet spot between autonomy and micromanaging. And you can become a servant leader. All of that is within your power. Yeah. And if you're just starting, congratulations. You just got the book on how not to do it. And now you can take this, flip it, and make sure that you do it the right way the first time around. Brother, anything that you want to leave these amazing people with before we wrap this one up? I was just going to say that was like the most impressive recap I think I might have ever heard. Like that was legit, bro. That was great. You're welcome. Just kidding.

42:55 Head. Head. But no, man, there's so much gold in this. And I think oftentimes, you know, one of my favorite books is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. So good. Yeah. Audiobook, my favorite. Part of why I love it so much is it's the roadmap of what not to do. And there's so many things that are out there that are always telling you what to do that it's kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that. But it's honestly, it's how to avoid the landmines is oftentimes more important than knowing how to take a step. And so I think that this episode is so powerful for anyone who is, again, you summed it up in the beginning. If you're a team of one, make sure you're not doing this shit to yourself. Make sure you're not building bad muscles, bad habits, so that when you do scale and you bring on a team, you don't carry that over.

43:39 If you have a team and you're in leadership, check yourself. Really go back and listen to this episode over and over again. If you're in that position that's even higher where you're running a company and you've got a sales manager that's in this role, use this episode, share this episode with them so that they can learn these mistakes so that they don't create a culture of disaster in your company. So with that, yeah, that's all. That's all I got, man. I'm out. That's all she wrote. Guys, thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. And until next time, be great. And we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

44:20 And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.