[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: Welcome. This is the Sales IQ Podcast. My name is Luigi Prestinenzi, and I'm on a mission to help salespeople be the best sales professionals they can be. Each week, we'll bring you a different message from thought leaders from around the globe so we can help you master the art of selling.

I'm your host, Luigi Preston NZ, and as always, I'm excited and pumped to share another episode with you before we dive date into today's session. I want to thank you all for listening and for the great feedback I continue to receive. I love learning from the guests we have on, and to be able to share that with you is such a privilege.

So I want to show gratitude and safe. If you liked this week's episode or any of the past episodes we have produced, please don't forget to like, share and give us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also send me a note on LinkedIn or via email and tell me what you like about the show. Some topics that you would love us to cover that will help you in your sales and businesses.

So let's get into this week's episode. This week, we're joined by Jeremy Donovan, the VP of sales at sales loft, a platform which is helping thousands of salespeople engage with more prospects and helping organizations automate some of those frustrating tasks within the sales process. Jeremy has altered five books.

And co-authored one of my favorite books, predictable prospecting with the awesome Mary Lou Tyler. Jeremy is also a professor at the NYU school of professional studies where he helps people master the art of presenting. During this episode with Jeremy, we're going to break down some of the most challenging aspects when it comes to running a sales division, the recruitment and induction pop, he will share with us.

How he finds talent recruits and what he does to ensure new team members are set up for success. So this is a great episode for anyone hiring or for any sales people looking for that age, when it comes to landing that next dream role. So please welcome Jeremy Donovan to the.

[00:02:07] Jeremy Donovan: Thanks. Uh, such a pleasure to be on a

[00:02:10] Luigi Prestinenzi: fantastic man.

I'm absolutely pumped to have you on the show. And, uh, obviously, um, we had your co author of predictable prospecting on the show earlier this year, Mary Lou, who was an absolute pleasure to interview about prospecting and, and creating predictable revenue model, which was fantastic.

[00:02:28] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah, super, super brilliant person.

And it loved interacting with her. And I also loved reading the book that she co-authored with another person there in Ross, which was predictable revenue. So yes, it's a, she's a force of nature. Yeah.

[00:02:41] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah, no, she's awesome, man, to look, I'm actually really excited about today's topic because, um, you know what, we're going to discuss sort of how to, how to find talent, you know, how to find whether it's STR.

Uh, BDRs account executives. Um, how do we find talent? And then how do we bring them into an organization and help them achieve competence in a quicker timeframe? So, and, and this is one where I know that organizations globally are finding it somewhat challenging, um, to find an actually engaged with new talent.

But before we break this topic down, tell us a bit about how you got into the world of sales.

[00:03:17] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah, I would say I'm non-traditional and I sometimes joke that I probably have no credibility because most of my selling experience was. Was teen or pre-teens selling mangoes by the side of the road or selling comic books or baseball cards to my friends, I was always selling something.

I always had some kind of hustle going. Uh, but then I, I actually, uh, the, the quick progression and I started my life as an engineer. Uh, an electrical engineer in the semiconductor industry and worked my way through to marketing and then to sales, but the, the, without going into gory detail, the reason is, is there was a point in time about a decade ago where marketing transformed from the brand and creative marketing to very ROI driven demand, gen based marketing.

And because of my engineering background and my love of math and business, as they intersect, I was lucky enough to work my way into a CMO role in a, in a decent sized company. And that I found the. Uh, sales along the way, because marketing obviously has to partner with sales and then sales right now. And over the course, I would say starting about five years ago and then into now, right.

Is having that same revolution, right. Where math and and sales are intersecting in a, in a really exciting and intellectually challenging way. Yeah.

[00:04:37] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. It's a pretty interesting, yeah. You know, background that you've got, that you've come in from, you know, a nontraditional area. And, uh, coming into that point of, of, of, of, of sales and marketing and your role at SalesLoft, you covering you, do you cover both sales and marketing or is it just

[00:04:52] Jeremy Donovan: sales?

It's mostly sales. So I have a, I have a kind of cool role that I get to do. I get to do three things. One is our sales development teams are SDRs BDRs roll up to me ultimately. Yep. And the second thing is our sales engineers also roll up into me. And then the third piece is just this. The thing that I title myself by, which is sales strategy.

So whatever we're going to do, something that. That takes it's collaborative. It's cross-functional, it's complicated change, whether it's compensation or territory or something like that. I'll, I'll work on that project for a period of time and then hand off to other people to, to execute. So I get to. To touch a lot of things.

And just to circle around, by the way, one of the things I, because I came in late to sales, one thing that I do is I just read voraciously. I'm always reading, you know, whatever the latest sales books are, even if they're somewhat repetitive, as long as I get a little nugget out, I'm happy.

[00:05:48] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. I love it.

And I noticed he did a book review on, um, sales differentiation, which is an awesome

[00:05:53] Jeremy Donovan: book. Yeah. Yeah, I love that book. If you're happy to talk about that.

[00:05:58] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. And Jamie was a closing book as well as just a awesome book. Um, so man, all, um, I want to get into this topic and a, about, you know, recruitment, um, finding talent in recruiting him in and inducting him.

Because again, um, whether you're a business looking for sales people, or you're a sales person looking to get into a business, this is a topic that can help, you know, both corporates. And sales professionals, um, help me understand sort of, you know, because you are passionate about this particular topic, uh, you know, what, when you first started hiring SDRs, um, what did you use to do?

I mean, did you always get it on point and you're hired, you know, guns or did you find it was a bit of a hit and miss.

[00:06:44] Jeremy Donovan: Well, first of all, I'm super glad we're talking about the hiring the practice of higher ed, because that's another one that I think is moving over time from being pure art, to being a bit more science and going, you know, going back in time to I'm 25 years into my career.

So going back 25 years, when, uh, when, uh, I was hiring SaaS, managing. It was, it was very much the sort of gut higher, right? As you have this informal interview with somebody and, you know, maybe they, maybe they, they gave a presentation or something, somewhat artificial, and then you make this decision and you know, you and I were chatting a little bit in advance that, you know, they, it might take you six months to figure out that they're a bad egg.

Um, so there's this big question about what can you do to manage. You know, to make hiring more predictable and, and, you know, there, there is a lot of there I'll pause, but there is a lot of science in that. So, so yeah, I would think I was hiring the bad way before and I, I hope I'm hiring a better way

[00:07:49] Luigi Prestinenzi: now.

Yeah. And you may be able to share with us some of the success that you're having, like, um,

[00:07:57] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah. I mean, the key is, I mean, you know, I try to avoid any degree of self promotion, but, um, I guess what I can say is the ways that that I've learned to modify the way I hire it, actually all did start with yet another book.

Uh, it was a book called work rules written by Laszlo Bock, who was the head of HR at, at Google. And, uh, now runs a, uh, his own company. And in that book, Laszlo cited, a research study that it's a famous Schmidt and hunter study, but what, what that study actually did was it figured out what are the things that are predictive of job performance at, at scale?

Right? Uh, and there, they went through kind of everything imaginable. I remember the. The most, I don't know why don't call it silly or not one, but is, is graph ology. You don't graph biology is tell us about that. Yeah. So graph apology is handwriting analysis. So you don't, I don't think you see much of it anymore, but certain definitely in certain countries, like I think it was very popular in France and other places people would make hiring decisions by submitting handwriting samples.

That were then evaluated for personality, characteristics, and the academics did tests and found out that as you would expect, that's, that's complete. I don't know whether I can swear on the show, but, well, I'll just say complete horse manure, I guess is the, is the best way to put it. There's no predictive correlation between handwriting and.

As you would expect and job performance, but he does identify three things. And this, this is what really got me thinking about how do I apply this in the world of sales? Because the articles written about really job performance anywhere, but the three things, number one is IQ, which is referred to in the academic literature as general mental ability, but IQ, um, and a lot of sales leaders will call that clock speed.

Uh, number two is conscientiousness and conscientiousness. Someone asked me, I thought everyone sort of knew the definition and most people do, but I think of conscientiousness as that. You, you, you say you're going to do, you know, you basically figure out that what you need to do, and then you do what you say you're gonna do.

Right. It's followed a lot of it is followed. And preparation. So preparation, sorry, preparation and follow through. And then the third thing is, and those two, by the way, are relatively quote, unquote, inexpensive to test. You can test with them using like test instruments. Uh, and when I say inexpensive, but it means it doesn't require a lot of hiring manager time to test for those things.

And then the third thing though, does, which is actual job skill, so demonstration that you can actually do that. So those were the three, uh, those are the three things. So should we have a chat about kind of how you absolutely. Yeah. So how you operationalize that? So operationalizing IQ is pretty, is actually the easiest of the three.

There are plenty of test instruments out there that you can give people. The two that I've seen used most commonly in sales. One is called the criteria. It's from criteria corporation, and then the other one is called the Wonderlic. And they're there. I think they're 15 ish maybe minute test that you take maybe 20 minutes.

I can't remember. Yeah. And you're, and the outcome of it is extremely highly correlated with IQ. Okay. So you can, what a lot of companies do, uh, including sales loft, by the way, is just set a threshold that, uh, you know, maybe you set it at the 50th percentile. So, you know, you, you want to take people who are in the top 50th percentile of IQ.

So that's a, that's a screener, a pretty effective screener and then conscientiousness. Yes, there are personality tests that test for that, and actually are shown to have pretty high correlation with people. True level of conscientiousness, but I think in the interview process, just having a conversation with someone about this the other day, uh, little things, right?

Like, uh, they ask a question in the interview. Um, tell me about me, right? Like Luigi, if I was interview with you, you would say like, tell me about me. Then you would expect that I would have gone through your LinkedIn profile probably or listened to some of your podcasts or what happened, what have you.

Right. So that, that that's the preparation test. And then the follow-through test might simply be, you know, did they send out, did they send a thank you letter within 24 hours or a thank you email within 24 hours. And was that. Is it, is it, is it free of typos? Is the grammar good? Is, was it, did it reference specific things that we talked about so that, you know, there are you getting it preparation and follow up?

[00:12:52] Luigi Prestinenzi: Oh, that's an interesting thought about that. So if they sent the followup, then they're demonstrating that the, you know, the good with the follow-through.

[00:13:02] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah. I know people who will not hire. If they don't get it that day send a 24 hour cutoff. And if someone misses the 24 hour, 24 hour mark, they will not hire that person no matter what.

[00:13:12] Luigi Prestinenzi: Well, so regardless of how they interview their skills, their attitude, if they don't do the follow through that, aren't chasing down. Okay.

[00:13:20] Jeremy Donovan: They're out. Because think about it, right. Is, is if this is the, this is probably the most important thing they're ever going to sell as themselves to you for the job.

And if they can't even do the basics. Conscientious thing of sending you a personalized well-written follow up within 24 hours. Just imagine how they're going to treat their potential customer.

[00:13:42] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely. That's a really interesting, okay, fantastic. And then there's job

[00:13:47] Jeremy Donovan: skills. Yeah. So that that's the third, most job skills.

So that's why I was considered to be more expensive to task because you know, you, you need to evaluate it more closely as a manager and that one's really going to vary by the position. Um, I think more and more people are getting smart to this. I, I know from folks I've talked to is have them do.

Something, some aspect of the job. So for sales, you know, let's take SDRs and that'd be talking about AEs after that. So for STR is like, what does an SDR need to do? They need to, they need to research and they need to make calls and calls and emails, um, and, and book appointments. So what people will do is during the interview process, like set yeah.

Set a time and have them cold call. And have them try to schedule a meeting with you. And what I like to ask candidates to do is to try to pitch sales loft. To me, I don't necessarily expect them to get the sales loft pitch. Exactly. Quote unquote, right? Yeah. But, but I that's what they're going to do. So I want to test these sort of practice the way you're going to play.

I want to test them as, as closely and as faithfully as I possibly can. And then I also want them to draft a prospecting email to me as well. Right. So you're really testing what they are going to do in the job. Yeah. And then that was an AA role-play right. I mean, I think. Yeah,

[00:15:12] Luigi Prestinenzi: and take us back a step. So, I mean, these are the things that we do and when I break this down even further, but how do you go about finding talent?

Like, is it just as a matter of putting it up on a job board or do you have sort of innovative ways to find a new. To bring them into the process.

[00:15:28] Jeremy Donovan: I mean, yeah, it depends on them. You know, I've been through a lot of ups and downs of job markets. We're in a particularly tight job market right now where it's become super hard to find people at every level.

And it's. Relatively routine to have to relocate people these days from place to place. And there have been other periods over the course of my career, where it was like that as well, where, you know, there was a lot of mobility of people to, to, to the right places for the jobs. Um, for me, yeah. I would say it's a combination of things, uh, for the, for junior town.

At where, like I'm not as connected with the junior talent. Like there it is word of mouth from our are, you know, more millennial Salesforce or posting on job boards or posting on LinkedIn or that sort of thing. I mean, I think those are the usual suspects. I'll get it like who we do select in a second.

But for the more senior candidates though, I think it's quite different, which is, I think the most, maybe one of the, hopefully more useful pieces of information I shared. I think the, one of the key things that separates people who become, you know, effective sales leaders is that they are collectors of talent and, um, and really, really great AEs are paid well, they're performing well.

So they have no financial incentive to leave wherever they are. Um, they will leave when they get unhappy. Usually with their manager or maybe the company changed its comp plan and an extremely disadvantaged disadvantageous way to them, but something, something someday is going to make them unhappy. And the key, I think, to be a successful sales leader is to basically cultivate those relationships over the long-term.

So that you are the first dial that they make on that day, that they're unhappy and that you're able to bring them into your organization. Um, and, and that lowers the risk so much. I mean, with the, you know, if you hire junior people, you know, that risk of three to six months of compensation, if they don't work out is super painful, but it's not catastrophic.

If you hire a ton of very expensive senior people and they don't work out, like that's a catastrophic. Loss of cashflow in the, in the near term, but even more so than hiring the wrong person. Isn't just what you spend on them. It's the fact that you didn't hire the right person who could have been closing in advance of that

[00:18:01] Luigi Prestinenzi: Tom, that you've taken to, you know, coach and performance manager versus, you know, spending time with your high performers.

So there's always an opportunity. Yeah,

[00:18:10] Jeremy Donovan: absolutely. Yeah. And with the junior people, by the way, also, No, we do like we do screen pretty, pretty carefully. And I'm a having been an engineer in the past. I'm a big fan of data-driven all things, data driven. So we did this exercise where we, we pulled everyone who had ever been a, an SDR BDR at Salesforce.

And then we classify was 1400 of them. 14, 16 to be exact. And we classified them as being successful or not. And our definition of success was that they had been promoted from SDR to AE at Salesforce. And the reason we use that strict definition was because like, there are some people who, who, uh, you know, may have gone from SDR to AA outside of Salesforce, but we figured if they were a successful at Salesforce, Salesforce would have offered them an, a position.

So we, we D we define that success. Then we looked at all this bio data, where do they go to school? Uh, what do they major in? Did they work before if they worked before? What industry they work before? Um, uh, what was their, you know, what job function were they in before? Did they play sports in college?

Like everything we could possibly think of. We took a look at to see if that.

[00:19:34] Luigi Prestinenzi: And what mattered did any of that actually make up, you know, success of a sales professional?

[00:19:40] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah, some, some doesn't some doesn't. Yeah. Um, maybe I'll end with the most interesting ones. So I'll, I'll talk about the other very interesting ones, but not the most interesting.

So the, the other sort of interesting ones, uh, one is where you go to college does not matter. So the college rank does not matter. And your, your college degree only matters if you were, had a stem degree, a science technology engineering or math degree. Yeah, but that's probably just, you know, some degree of correlation with IQ, not a perfect correlation.

And it's extremely hard to find, uh, SDRs who have stem degrees. They just don't tend. Right. I mean, they're much more lucrative for them to just go directly into engineering jobs these days. But if you can find them. Um, and then the, the sector that they had come from, at least at Salesforce, people who had come from professional services tended to be more successful than people who hadn't a lot of that ties to what the particular job was.

So we noticed in the data that there were sort of three jobs that, um, That were in, that were correlated with success. One is having been a recruiter before, like a head hunter. Yep. That they're, they hire a lot of former recruiters there and, and that's the PR that's in the professional services category.

And then the other two are not as much professional services. Uh, but the other two that we noticed in there are journalists. And people who were teachers. So there are lots and lots of other profiles, but I would say the recruiter is probably the strongest signal of success in the, in that Salesforce data.

Oh, well, yeah. I can tell you what, like what's bad actually is to hire people who, who, um, were asked, who were most recently STRs. Like they failed as SDRs. Yeah. Okay.

[00:21:38] Luigi Prestinenzi: So that's

[00:21:39] Jeremy Donovan: a bad profile to hire.

[00:21:42] Luigi Prestinenzi: So can, can we go on that and just say, okay. So how obviously sales loft is growing extremely fast, right? You guys have, I think you've passed unicorn status now, is

[00:21:52] Jeremy Donovan: that correct?

We're yeah, well, verging on it. Absolutely. Yeah. So

[00:21:57] Luigi Prestinenzi: it's, um, you know, it's growing fast. Um, there's some hot competition as well. Um, we had mark recently from outreach.io and a smaller business called auto close. So there's some hot competition that in this space. Right. Um, and it's going to continue to grow given customers it's, it's getting harder and harder to engage with, with inbound leads and also outbound leads.

Right. So. How do you go, we've looked at how you about finding talent. I'm able to share the actual recruitment process that you know, has delivered such success for you in, in actually bringing on.

[00:22:31] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah. I mean, we hit on aspects of the recruiting process already. Um, and, and, you know, bits of the bits of the hiring process.

I think one of the key things we didn't talk about is how critical the brand strength of your company is as an employer. So that's, I would say if, if S if sales loft has a secret sauce to getting incredible people, The, I think the number one secret sauce, it sounds a little touchy feely, but it's is literally our hour.

What it's like to work at our company. Um, I, you know, I used to have this rule and I got it from yet another book it was called so good. They can't ignore you by Cal Newport. And he walked through this framework that basically says, that says lean into your job and be the best you can be, be so good. They can't ignore you.

And that's the best strategy. You know, for sort of professional development. And he says, do that as long as a bunch of things are true. And if, if any of the things that are not true, then you should move. But one of the things he has in there is that the environment is neither toxic to you physically or mentally.

And so basically that the, the culture is a, is a healthy culture. And I live by that rule for most of my career. And then I discovered sales law, which has a truly nurtured. Uh, it has a truly nurturing culture and the, you know, that these days, I mean, it was, I wished it had existed when I was younger, but these days, the, the ultimate way to figure out whether that's true or not is to go out and glass door.

Yeah. Um, but like that, that, uh, that the culture piece is, I think. A, uh, one of maybe a set of things that attract people to want to work for you so that you are able to be choosy about who works for you. I think that's the key. Um, and then I think the other thing is just that there really is the opportunity for growth and progression inside the company.

And, you know, if you take SDRs for example, We have a lot of SDRs sort of operate under a we'll promote you when we feel like it's time to promote your rule. And, and that ambiguity is, is not. So is, I mean, I'll, I'll be overly soft about it, I guess, but that ambiguity is not super helpful. Uh, we actually have a rule that as soon as a SDR has hit 180 opportunities generate.

They become eligible for promotion. Well, and historically, um, everyone who's become eligible has been promoted within days, days, or weeks. So, so like knowing that you're going to go to a place where. Where people are happy to be there every day, knowing you're gonna go to a place where you can grow both in terms of your skills, but also in terms of your earnings and title and so on, like the extrinsics and the intrinsics that attracts talent to us and gives us the opportunity to be selective with IQ conscientiousness and job skills.

[00:25:36] Luigi Prestinenzi: It's pretty great light that you you're quite transparent about what that growth plan looks like. You know, from a, from an employee's perspective. Um, because so many, I see that so many, you know, so many people leave because they just don't know what the future looks like in the organization. And they, they want more and there's no transparency around that.

And I think that's all.

[00:25:57] Jeremy Donovan: EV everywhere. I've been the number one complaint of millennials is like, tell me what's the career progression. Tell me the path. And, and I take no credit for it. Sales law, figure it out before I got there. Just be, give people really, really clear answers on how you get promoted from level to level, not just as, as, as, as a SDR, but also as an.

[00:26:18] Luigi Prestinenzi: Hmm. Yeah. Fantastic man. So we've actually covered quite a lot so far. So, you know, from a, from a sales person, you know, sales, professional, or sales person listening to this, if they're looking to get into a job you're covering, you know, the follow-up is key. Um, making sure that within a certain amount of time, they, you know, send an email.

That references the conversation and they actually show how they will trade a customer, um, that they conscientious and they prepare. Um, what won't want to ask you as well is when those three categories, IQ, conscientious and job skill. What about, um, mindset? How are you looking at at the, at the person's mindset, whether their growth versus.

[00:27:04] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah, the Carol Dweck growth versus fixed mindset thing. Um, I think it's, I mean, I think it's super hard to assess that the other one that, um, you know, people talk a lot about is grit and, you know, certainly, I mean, who doesn't want to hire someone with grit? I think grit and conscientiousness are extremely closely tied together.

Um, it's it's I think it's so hard to assess that during the hiring process, the. You know, I use a, I kind of use those other skills and I don't know that I've ever even really tried to understand whether someone had a growth or a fixed mindset and in the hiring.

[00:27:44] Luigi Prestinenzi: Well, what about coachable? Like if you, if you okay.

Maybe not growth versus fixed, but um, you know ha how do you identify if somebody is coachable?

[00:27:54] Jeremy Donovan: Uh, that I love. Yeah. So yes. And maybe that does get the growth mindset. So coach. It is another one of those sort of top things when you hire someone, the way that, the way that I will tend to do it is, is one of two ways.

One is if I have enough time during the interview while I, sorry, I always role-play. And then I always give feedback at the end of the role-play. Yep. So time permitting, I will role play again with them and see if they were able to absorb the lesson that they were, that they just got. You know that they just heard and, you know, I would say most do, but some don't and that's a, that's a huge red flag if they don't, if I don't have time and you might even argue, this is a better way that I w I will tell the person who's going to interview with them subsequently and who will role play with them again, the coaching that I provide.

Yeah, that all sync back with the second interviewer to figure out whether or not they seem to absorb, absorb the lesson. The reason that there's a good and bad of it, I mean, the reason why that might be better is because when that person moves on to the next interview, They may kind of let their guard down on that coaching and go back to their default habits.

And the best people again, are able to inter integrate that learning and have that epiphany, you know, during the day and, and adapt their process dynamically. The, the, the downside of it though, is, I mean, one of the, one of the bad things to do during interviews is actually to, to bias your subsequent interview interview.

Yeah. So you just need to be, you just need to be sure that you tell them what coaching skill or what coaching tip you had given without really saying whether you were a thumbs up or thumbs down on the candidate.

[00:29:37] Luigi Prestinenzi: That's really good. That's really good advice. So you know, that coach, you know, role-play provide them feedback and see if they've taken on that feedback and how they've adapted their stall, which is fantastic.

So now that we've broken down sort of dev recruitment process, finding talent and. You know, actually identifying a couple of different things to then bring him in. Um, how do you build that speed to competence with new employees to ensure they achieve that, you know, 180 was, was it 180 opportunities?

[00:30:06] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah.

180 opportunities for the STRs and then, you know, certain levels of, of revenue attainment bookings for our, for our AEs. Uh, here, all credit goes to our brilliant sales enablement team, which is led by Sean. Yeah, he's an ex IBM, uh, employee amongst other places. And, uh, the bad is he is actually Dr. Fowler.

He has a PhD, uh, is my partner in crime in many ways, but, but also just a truly brilliant individual. So he's constructed, uh, a three week onboarding program. That, you know, indoctrinates our, our people, not, you know, any, anybody in sales in, in a few different areas. So one, I think of it as sort of four or five areas.

One is get, get a deep understanding of our customer base, what industries we sell to what personas, what use cases they have, what their needs and pains are. Uh, two, obviously as our product, we don't want people feature selling, but we do need them to understand, uh, the product. Three as our company and culture again, because of the values that we espouse and the way we operate, uh, is so important to them.

Um, and for his I'll call it sales skills, right? So that's where some of the role play. And, um, you know, we, we, we use elements of kind of every, every methodology, a little bits of chat, uh, challenger, a little bits of Sandler, a little bits of Miller Heiman, right. A little bits of all the different things that we put together.

And then the last thing is, is professional skills. Which is the soft skills, right? Communication and collaboration and critical thinking and so on. So you know, that three week onboarding program really indoctrinates them into that. And then we have a constant cadence of on the job and classroom based learning.

And, um, e-learning using Lessonly as well. So every, every week people are getting exposed to, to information that helps them be successful

[00:32:08] Luigi Prestinenzi: in their. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I often find a lot of organizations are doing the product stuff. They're doing the company culture, and they're not necessarily spending a lot of time on the sales skills.

And then the, you know, that cadence that. That frequency of learning micro learning. So, you know, any catch-up learning, um, in that onboarding process. And so what, how often I see is a lot of salespeople or, you know, they actually turn into feature sales people because that's the induction that they've been given.

And unless they're those, you know, the top 1% where they've got a methodology. That they're following. Uh, they will just default back into the way they've been taught and the way they'd been boarding to an organism.

[00:32:58] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah, I completely agree. And so much of the default is, is a feature selling, which could, you know, we could spend another hour talking about.

[00:33:07] Luigi Prestinenzi: Absolutely. So, so this is a really, um, a very solid process that you have of, of, you know, recruiting talent and then inducting talent. And from, from your perspective, I know it's never a good thing to sort of let somebody go, but you know, at what point do you say. You know, no matter how much we give training, um, coaching, you know, the mindset or not mindset, but this person just doesn't have the will to succeed and falls out of the team.

Eh, w w when do you make that cold?

[00:33:40] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah, I mean, I think I, I subscribed to yet another framework, which is situational leadership, which is you tune your coaching to the skill and the will of the individual on the, on the task or project at the given time. So, I mean, I think it's beholden on, on the company and on the first line, the direct manager to, to monitor skill and.

In terms of separating people. I mean, the one thing that, that, you know, managers and associates have control over is activity. Um, and it's activity, I think even itself has two parts. One is the activity quantity, and then the other is the activity. Let's call it efficiency or effectiveness or what have you productivity, whatever word you want to use.

So I think what I'm, even when I'm evaluating, whether someone's going to work out or not, At the end of the day, like those, those are the two main things, I guess they could be a terrible, like just a terrible culture fit, but we tend, we screen so carefully for culture in the hiring process that I can't remember the last time we had someone who, you know, was a bad actor.

Yeah. So it does usually come down to activity, quantity and quality, um, with activity, quantity that that's, you know, that's the easiest thing to monitor and coach to. So that one it's, it's unambiguous that if somebody is not meeting, it is consistently not meeting their activity, quantity goals, like they know it and you know, it, I don't think there's any surprises there.

There's no, I think there's very little pain and separation on either side. When, when activity, quantity is consistently low. And so much of the time that conversation is basically. It is a, do you really want to be in sales conversation? Absolutely. And I would say most of the time they say no, like, um, I thought maybe this was the right thing for me.

This is not, you know, I don't want to maintain this, this type of activity. Right? Like, I don't want to be emailing and making phone calls and social touches and what have you. And then, you know, you just have that compassionate and helpful conversation and the economy is so. Right now, especially that, you know, it's yeah, it's super easy for them to find something better and new that's going to make them happier every day of

[00:35:56] Luigi Prestinenzi: their life.

It was going to say, what about when you've got that person? They, they tell you everything you want to hear. Girls coaching someone last week. Performance is not even at 30% of where they should be from a target perspective, analyze the metrics. I'm a big believer in looking at the sub metrics. So, you know, looking, and it was quite clear that the volume of work required to meet target was not.

Yeah. And even from a, you know, even from a starting at time and getting in right on time and then going for a coffee and, and then, you know, 20 minutes into the shift is starting, you know, managing activities for me, CRM, um, and having that conversation about what's required to be successful. And they say, yeah, yeah, I'm ready.

I want to do it. I want to do it. And then they'll just go on a, you know, an extended lunch break. Um, how do you have that conversation? Or, you know, what have you done in that situation?

[00:36:53] Jeremy Donovan: Again, I think that's the easier situation is where the quantity is, is off. Is, is you, I mean, I don't, I'm not sure how it works in Australia or elsewhere, but in the U S you, you basically put someone on a, we call it a PIP, a performance improvement plan that says, like our expectation is that you, along with all your colleagues to the same standards, we hold everyone to is a certain activity level.

And, uh, Like, that's the, that's the stick, I guess the carrot is to understand why, why are they coming to work every day? Right? Like be up, you know, what are they, what are their ultimate goals? And I think if you can align people that maybe you can recharge their will or help them recharge their will. But those again, I think are the easier ones.

I think the harder one is like that same scenario you just described. Which is, um, they say all the right things and they're hitting their activity targets. Their production of opportunities or booked closed one revenue is off. That's harder because that's a, that's like a skill problem. And, um, I mean, I can think of very specific scenarios where.

You know, people just, just again, they did the activities, but they, they lacked a, I can think of an example where for example, someone was very much a I'm going to call them an if, then else kind of person that, that they, they, they could memorize these w what's the worst thing, right? Scripts are terrible, but they would memorize like these little chunks of things to say, and.

And selling, this is a conversation, not a presentation and their problem was they would get to these discussions and the someone would ask them a question. Um, and they, they would just always go back to this sort of script, if you will, which in B2B sales, you can't do. And, and you know, this instance, we coached that person as much as we could, and we just could not get them to.

They were smart too. It wasn't an, it wasn't intelligence thing. Right. They pass the IQ screens, but they, they just were so were so, uh, fixed in their, in their, in their way that they thought they had to have a conversation or it wasn't even a conversation. And they're scripting that, that, um, it wasn't going to work.

So in that case, you know, we, we were transparent about it, but, but same, same sort of deal. And then that performance improvement plan, you know, not only includes the activity, but also includes the

[00:39:26] Luigi Prestinenzi: outcomes. And that, and that's the, you know, obviously lacking a little bit of intuition about where to God, the conversation.

Um, and look, this is another topic that we could have a really good debate around cause you know, to script or not to script. And I'm a big fan of core frameworks. Um, and, um, w when, I mean, you know, core frameworks, I'm not talking about word for word, I'm just saying guiding. There needs to be, in my opinion.

A process where we taking the customer through from point of, you know, entry or point of open to point of discovery to point of, um, decision. Right? And so there are always things that we need to gain from the customer and, and, and scripts enable us to say, well, this is what it looks like, but I'm a big believer that you've got to put your own personality.

You've you've gotta be authentic. You've got it. But then. Yeah, you gotta be able to read the customer and know which way to go. Um, and I'll often look, I actually love that challenge when I have a, uh, a sales person presented to me or professional presented will where they're putting in the hard work. Um, And then not getting the overall outcome and often say, don't focus on the scoreboard because if you can get their first couple, right.

Get your mindset right. Get the metrics. Right. Um, as long as you're open to, uh, you know, building the skill, we can eventually get you to a point of performance. Um, and I, I love, I love that challenge. So you, it's interesting that we both find, uh, you know, one's a challenge one's hard and some are, you know, I really love loving.

Um, so this is really awesome. You know, there's so many nuggets in this conversation and we've probably got two or three posts conversations from this particular episode, Jeremy. So I appreciate your feedback, but I want to ask you a question just about yourself, um, in your career, apart from all these great books that you've read, who's been the biggest influence and why.

[00:41:14] Jeremy Donovan: Oh, yeah. Wow. Um, I'm a big believer in having a quote unquote league of extraordinary mentors. Uh, so I, I have, I have so many of them, but I guess to name a few. One is, um, my stepfather, actually, my mom remarried late in life, so I was already married with children and my stepfather was a retired executive and I would go to him all the time for advice on specific problems.

Um, you know, particularly like, um, like politics and, and interpersonal work related. So, uh, he was a humongous, you know, it's been a humongous influence on me throughout, throughout my career. Um, and then I've just been very lucky to have a succession of incredible managers, uh, especially over the, over the course of past decade.

So, I mean, even one of them right now is my current boss, Sean Murray, who I had met. Uh, while I was, he was actually selling to me or his, one of his salespeople was selling to me at a prior employer. And he had, I, you know, he CA he came by because I think maybe his seller was on. You know, it was on leave.

Maybe she was on maternity leave, I think. And he came by to sell to me and we just sat down and had like a two or three hour conversation about sales. And I had so much respect for him and, and just sort of total coincidence is one thing led to another, and now I've got the opportunity to work for him.

So, um, you know, he's, I learned from him every day. So, uh, so many influences, but I think, I think that's beholden on people to, to find great managers who they can learn. Yeah,

[00:42:54] Luigi Prestinenzi: no. And you said it early, you know, sales people leave a manager, not a company and they join, they don't leave companies. They leave managers for sure.

Absolutely. And mighty, if you could go back in time and do it all over again, what's one thing you do to.

[00:43:11] Jeremy Donovan: Oh, goodness. I try to live a, a contented life, uh, of things that, that, uh, you know, things that I never regret life, I guess, but, but professionally, I guess if I could go back and give myself some advice, Um, I, you know, in my, for better or worse, like in my twenties, I think I was just very anxious at the agitated and striving, um, you know, in an unhealthy way that didn't necessarily affect other people, but it affected my own.

You know, physical and mental health. So I would've just told myself the journey. It's my favorite expression, which is the journey is the reward. So if I had to do it over again, I probably would have learned, you know, when I was 21 and started working the journey as a reward, just tattooed that on my forearm or something.

[00:43:58] Luigi Prestinenzi: That's an awesome of the job. You know what? That's going to be a, a post that I put out Jeremy with your, you know, Um, the journey is the reward. That's fantastic.

[00:44:07] Jeremy Donovan: I was going to say that's Laos too, or something. It's a, that's an ancient Chinese proper. So I take no credit for that one.

[00:44:15] Luigi Prestinenzi: Alright. I'll have to quite the right person.

I may I ask you some, every guest cause it's, um, you know, sales, is it an art or a song?

[00:44:26] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah, the answer is yes. It's, it's both. Um, I think the, the, the science piece of some of the stuff that we've talked about today, right? Like there's this, but even so right. Job performance, the most. Prediction of success of job performance.

If you throw in every variable you possibly can, this is about 25% of the variability of job performance could be predicted by like those three things we talked about. Yep. Which leaves 75% of job performance up to other stuff. And a lot of the other stuff is art. Right. So how does the manager motivate the person?

Um, and then the same thing for selling, right? Is it. Like, yes, there are frameworks. Yes. There are processes. Yes. There are skills. Yes. There are all these things, but so much of it comes down in the end, right. To the emotional side of the purchase and it, and then B to B, especially enterprise selling the buyer is saying, do I trust that this person is going to provide me with a.

And not just a platform, but you know, the whole change. Uh, but, but it's going to sell me something that is going to actually help me improve my business and help me improve my career trajectory. And like that part is not science. That part is definitely art.

[00:45:48] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Okay, fantastic. Well, it's some, I really appreciate you sharing that.

Cause, um, after about my plan is about a hundred of these I'm going to, you know, just put together a bit of a pack around, not, you know, sales, an art or a science and some different, different responses from, from all the guests that I've had because, um, it's such an important topic that I believe that it's both.

Um, I'm, uh, you know, I moved towards. The the out of the conversation, you know, all the, the conversation is the art and just like you, that there's a lot of science that we can use to help us improve that art. Right. Um, and if we're not looking at that data to then say, well, what is my customer doing? How many, you know, what do they need?

Um, how can I help them through that buying process? If I'm not using that data, then I'm not improving. Right. So they go hand in hand. So I appreciate your sharing that with me, man. My, this has been awesome. I've really enjoyed the conversation. There's so many nuggets for both sales professionals, leaders, and business enterprise to take away from this.

Um, but before we finish up, can you maybe share with us where our listeners can find a bit more about you? Some of the books, um, LinkedIn, and we'll put all that in the show notes.

[00:46:59] Jeremy Donovan: Yeah. So I'd be the best way to find me is LinkedIn, uh, whatever books I've written. And I also, a lot of the books I'm reading, I talk about there and everyday actually put a little one sentence post out there called Hey salespeople.

That's a little snippet. Usually data-driven about how to be a more successful sales person. So I definitely invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn and then look forward to. Building relationships with lots

[00:47:23] Luigi Prestinenzi: of new people. Yeah. Awesome, man. Well, again, appreciate the content that you're putting out there.

I really enjoy it. The book, um, for those of you that haven't, um, read predictable prospecting, or I think you've even one about how to deliver a Ted talk. Um, yeah, we'll put that in the show notes, uh, you know, get onto to Jeremy because, uh, I really appreciate you, man. And I want to make sure our listeners get the opportunity to, to, to see.

And he would, I would, I've had the privilege of saying.

[00:47:50] Jeremy Donovan: Thanks. I got a big smile on my face. It was a great conversation.

[00:47:53] Luigi Prestinenzi: Thanks man.

Bang. What a fantastic episode that was Jeremy might think sound so easy. Why is that? Was he born to just run sales teams, recruit the best people and make sure they hit their target? What I learned is that Jeremy is a life. The way he just referenced books shows me how committed he is in mastering his craft, how committed he is into continuing to learn, to get better at what he does.

So my challenge to you this week is what are you doing to master a certain part of your role? What are you doing to master a part in your life that you looking to improve on? How will you refining and learning so that you can be the best sales professional you can be.

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This episode was transcribed digitally, some errors may be present.