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Today’s show featured an interview with TalentRemedy Managing Director Stephanie Rowsie and Donald “The Sales Evangelist” Kelly.
IES Women in Sales Program Director Gina Stracuzzi conducted the interview.
Find Stephanie on LinkedIn. Find Donald on LinkedIn.
STEPHANIE’S ADVICE: “Put yourself back out there. I was recently at the IES awards ceremony with 200 plus people, dynamic salespeople and sales leaders. I walked out of there feeling like I was on fire. I was like, “I want to be one of these people. I want to be one of these people who get up and show up and have the energy and make conversations and represent my company well.”
DONALD’S ADVICE: “The biggest thing that I go back on whenever I see my motivation wane, is I look back at why am I doing what I’m doing? This couldn’t come at a better time because of stuff that we’re doing within our organization, and also things that I’ve done in my personal life. I feel that for me though, I go back and evaluate the why. Why am I selling this? Who am I selling to? Do I enjoy this?”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Gina Stracuzzi: I am super psyched to talk to our guests. It is a real thing. We have lost our mojo and it’s time to get it back. These are two of the highest energy people we know. We’re going to have some fun with this conversation. As I like to do, I’m going to ask our guests to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about how they got to where they are today. Stephanie, why don’t you go first?
Stephanie Rowzie: Thank you, Gina. My name is Stephanie Rowzie. I am a co-founder and managing partner of TalentRemedy. TalentRemedy is a direct hire recruiting firm that my business partner and I founded back in 2012 with the thought process that we wanted an innovative way to offer a recruiting solution to business owners that they had not experienced before. One of my key roles in the organization is client acquisition. I am out in the community, a business community on a daily basis, developing relationships, referral relationships, prospect relationships that ultimately will lead to clients. I also serve as the president of NeXco National, which is a lead share referral community that also offers professional development and introductions to prospects and centers of influence. I’ve been in that role for about a year, but a member of the community for about six years.
Gina Stracuzzi: Thank you, Stephanie. Donald, welcome.
Donald Kelly: Thank you so much for having me. I run a podcast called The Sales Evangelist podcast, and been doing that since about 2013, officially. Subsequently, we created an organization early on at that time, a sales consulting firm and training called The Sales Evangelist. Primarily we work with individuals in the B2B space. A lot of them typically are in a technical sales of some sort of software and looking for ways to be able to improve. A lot of it’s top of funnel education. How do I find more people to connect with on LinkedIn, or do my cold outreach, or improve my cold calling, my cold outreach strategies and tactics? That’s where we spend a lot of our time.
Subsequently, over the years, we started creating content and content is a huge top of funnel activity for us. We created TSE Studios as well. We’ve really been spending a lot of time with that, helping brands develop their own content identity and helping them with podcasts and it’s fun. That’s our other organization, TSE Studios. That’s what I do, I spend time with, and I’m down in south Florida, enjoying with my family.
Gina Stracuzzi: What we’re going to talk about today is getting that fire back, pre-pandemic fired out. Let’s make no mistake, we were all going at 110 miles an hour and a little bit of backstepping to catch our breath is probably not a bad thing, but something else shifted along the way. People are just having trouble feeling it. That’s what we want to talk about today. I would like both of you to answer this first question. What are some of the things that you do to get motivated when you see your enthusiasm wane?
Donald Kelly: The biggest thing that I go back on whenever I see my motivation wane, is I look back at why am I doing what I’m doing? This couldn’t come at a better time because of stuff that we’re doing within our organization, and also things that I’ve done in my personal life. I feel that for me though, I go back and evaluate, I hate to make it sound cliche, but the why. Why am I selling this? Who am I selling to? Do I enjoy this? Oftentimes, salespeople find themselves in positions where they may have a golden handcuff. They’ve been in a role for a while, and they make good money, and they don’t necessarily have a huge drive or passion for that anymore. Without that, it makes it very difficult, but they can still limp along.
I think those leaders may see them in a situation like this and they say, “Well, they’re just going through a rough spill. I’m not going to necessarily push anything against them. They do all right and we’re going to keep them, they’re going to break through with it.” But if you don’t have a purpose, if you don’t have a reason behind it, it’s going to be really difficult for you to do it. I’m not saying it’s money. Money is not the reason alone. It has to be something greater than money. I think Zig said it, money’s not the most important thing in the world, but it’s right up there with oxygen. I wouldn’t lie, it’s right up there. But what is it you’re going to do with that money?
For us, that may be traveling or maybe doing something really cool with our family, but we have a focus at the end of the year or New year, we make a goal of what our goals are for that next year. That helps us with that. Then also, professionally, there’s certain things that I want to attain to. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean I want to go buy a new car. That could be your thing, and that’s fine. But you must have a why that’s going to help you. Even company-wise, we want to help a certain number of clients, and we want to help a certain number of clients in the South Florida area with our TSE Studios. That’s given us a more of a drive for the next year of those people we want to impact and help. That’s what I start to evaluate first when I feel that there’s a wane or a decline in my performance.
Stephanie Rowzie: I actually have two things that I think about when I start feeling a little unmotivated. The first one is, it’s my mindset. I feel that’s where it all begins, is in your positivity and getting into your head saying, “I need to make sure that I’m doing the right activities and have the right mindset when I am approaching my prospects and my clients and my referral partners.” I truly believe that it starts with your mindset, and you’ve got to be in the game. I have a great philosophy for myself. I’m either in it or I’m out of it, but if I’m in it, I’m thoroughly in it. That’s the first thing, especially when you’re a salesperson, because you have to have that confidence and you have to have that drive, and it’s got to project your energy and how you share information has got to be very positive.
I think the second thing is, I agree with Donald, you’ve got to have a why. Being in the recruiting industry, everybody after the pandemic has wanted to have a purpose deeper than their job. But the reality is not every job has great purpose. What I share with people is your job may get you to the place you want to be with your own purpose. It may be through community service, it may be through a charity, it may be through your church, but your job can help propel you in a couple of ways, with your connections, with your energy, with your financial contributions. I do say, know your why, but understand it may not always be in your job, but your job can help you get there.
Gina Stracuzzi: Donald, what advice do you have for sales leaders and managers these days to help them motivate people that they see unmotivated? Because thinking about both your answers, it’s like, what if you feel the why, but you can’t get your mindset there for whatever reason? If you’re a manager and you’re witnessing this, what advice do you have for them?
Donald Kelly: It’s going to be an unpopular answer. Someone that not only has managed people but also has helped clients and also have been the individual contributor, and I think this conversation needs to be had, sometimes it’s just not a good fit. Some people are just not a good fit. The idea that I find is be willing to hire slow, fire fast. Does this fall in that category? You want to make sure you’re making the right decision with the person you’re bringing on. But oftentimes what I find is that sometimes companies take forever, linger so long with letting somebody go who’s not working because of the hopes that they potentially will work. But if it hasn’t worked for six months, what change is going to happen?
Again, if the company has put stuff in place and they have enablement, and they are working with this individual, and they’re trying to help that person, there’s only so much that you can do. As someone who does education and enablement and you’re teaching salespeople, honestly, I can’t give you desire. There’s no way that I can give you desire. I can give you the skills, I can give you the tactics, I can give you the strategy. Motivation is temporary. I can get you motivated and excited for a little bit, but if you don’t have that desire to do that thing afterwards, it really becomes challenging.
I would say for leaders, first off, if the first thing you want to do is, you want to make sure that person has one-on-one, where you’re working with them and helping them to identify, and maybe they can have some breakthrough. It’s probably not you individually as a leader, perhaps you have an enablement department, or perhaps you have outside coaches that can best help that individual to help discover and guide and to find that true deep-down meaning. But they should be taken care of in that sense, and should be helped. That’s the first thing that I would say.
Two, once it can help them to identify, even if it’s goal-oriented, goals they’re trying to accomplish, if you can help them to get to that point, then fantastic. But after that, if the person isn’t doing their own part, it doesn’t matter how much more coaching you do, it doesn’t matter how much more people you have in the process, that individual probably is not going to be a good fit.
I think about it like teams. I’m a big Miami Heat fan, and I love my South Florida sports team. Go Panthers, you saw that. But the thing though that we are discovering, the challenge that we’re seeing though, when it comes to our team, is that sometimes organizations carry people on the team that shouldn’t be on the team. You need to be in a position where you need to say, “This person is not helping us win a championship, therefore we need to let them go.” It may not be a good fit at certain times. I remember at one point, D. Wade, at the height of his career, was a starter. But then at a certain part of his career, D. Wade wasn’t necessarily that big starter anymore. His career shifted and adjusted, and he didn’t have the playing time that he wanted, but he recognized that he needed to change, and he evolved for the best of the team. When LeBron came, LeBron became that leader of the team, so to speak, and D. Wade shifted position. It was for the benefit of the team that we saw that success.
I think sometimes in companies, we think about it as a family, but maybe I’m just this evil guy, but we are not a family. We’re not. We are a team. A family, you can’t fire your mom or your brother or your cousin, they’re family forever. But as a team, if somebody’s underperforming on a team, they should be able to make the decision to say, “Coach, I’m not doing so well. Put Joe instead of me,” and that’s okay. I think that part, it’s a hard pill to swallow. If I were to go back and wrap this all up again, one, make sure the individual has the proper coaching and training. Then two, if you’ve done all you can, evaluate. Is this person a good fit for the team? Because you’re not a family.
Gina Stracuzzi: Stephanie, the employers that you’re working with, do they talk to you about underperforming people and trying to spot the people that have the fire in their bellies already? How successful are they at actually pinpointing that?
Stephanie Rowzie: Well, it’s interesting because it definitely is an epidemic, as you had mentioned, Gina, especially in the sales field, that people are not performing at the level that they had in a lot of the companies prior to the pandemic. I think there’s a multitude of reasons. Nervous energy that we had, uncertainty, change. People oftentimes have a hard time really processing that and then getting back onto the right roadmap in their career. But we don’t talk so much about underperformers because we are more about finding the talent, talent acquisition. But what I did tell our employers is with new employees, it’s extremely important to have a good onboarding process. Some of that does include, for salespeople, sales coaching and mentorship early on to ensure that they are going to be successful.
As Donald shared, desire, you can’t teach that, but you can do some behavioral interviewing to identify those characteristics. I think when you’ve had star performers and then you’ve seen a decline in them after the pandemic, that’s when you really need to be sitting down and having some honest conversations that are non-threatening about where they are, just like a professional athlete does with their coach. Where’s your head? What’s going on? Really figuring out if they still have that burning desire, as you said, to be successful for the organization. If not, it may be a situation where you have a conversation about how can we help you exit the organization and be successful someplace else. But I do think that sales coaching and training is instrumental and extremely helpful to many folks, and it shows an investment on the part of the employer when they’re able to offer that, whether it be in-house or it be a hired person that’s an expert in that field.
Gina Stracuzzi: Fred and I talked to a sales leader a couple weeks ago, and he was saying just that, “We have a couple somebodies that were doing really well, and now they’re not anymore. We bring them in, we coach them, we give them a little extra training, and then they’re good for a couple months, and then they’re back to not being so great.” I think to Donald’s point, sales organizations may have some hard choices to make because I think the pandemic did give people the sense that, we’re all family, we’re all in this together, rather than the team mentality that you were mentioning, Donald. I think things will have to shake out because, to your point, Stephanie, people aren’t making their numbers and there’s only so much adjustment you can do before everything starts to suffer. It’ll be interesting to see where the next couple months go, but that’s really what this conversation’s about. Like, how can we help people?
Let’s switch our focus a little bit and take it into your wheelhouse, Stephanie, of networking. Although, Donald, I’m sure, you do a lot of networking too. Stephanie, how do you use networking to stay motivated?
Stephanie Rowzie: I will share that I think one of the biggest strengths that good salespeople have is they’re good networkers, and they get energy off of other people, through conversation, through connection. I think with the pandemic that a lot of salespeople got very isolated because we went into a very virtual environment. They weren’t going out and meeting their customers. They weren’t meeting their internal team or their bosses. When people get isolated, they tend to withdraw. You have to force yourself to get back out in the community. I’ve actually taken a two-pronged approach. I do a lot of virtual networking. It’s more efficient in terms of being able to sit in front of a Zoom call, meet 12 other people, talk about your value proposition, learn how you can help them, how they can help you. You don’t have to get in your car and drive everywhere. But I don’t want to discount how important it is to get out face-to-face too.
I belong to neXco, which does virtual networking. Then I go to other specialty industry events where I’m able to meet with business leaders and thought leaders in the industry and get in front of my peers that are doing sales and also selling other services that I can build referral relationships with. It’s really two-pronged, but even with that though, you have to get up and show up. On Zoom, you’ve got to have energy, you’ve got to be excited about what you’re doing, and you’ve got to be present. I think a lot of times in virtual networking, people are typing emails, they’re reading their phone, and I share with people, be engaged, be present. You’ve got an opportunity to make these folks hunters for you. To go out in the community, be stewards of your business. Make sure they feel like they want to help you be successful.
Then the same thing when you do in-person networking. I can’t tell you how many times I go to a networking event and people don’t approach other people. You got to be willing to go up and shake a hand and introduce yourself, begin a conversation and truly listen, listen to what they have to say and make them feel important. Then when the time is right, you interject what you do and see if there’s a partnership or some way you can help one another. Then interesting enough, nobody carries business cards anymore. I agree, it’s great to be able to scan your QR code, but also have a pocket full of business cards, because when people put that on their desk, they remember you. They might not always remember you when they put you in a CRM and your name isn’t popping up periodically for them to reach out to.
Gina Stracuzzi: I’m guilty of that too, going to events and then getting all these QR things and then totally forgetting to even look. Sometimes LinkedIn isn’t the most friendly. You go back and you can’t even tell who came in where, because you’ve got people that are reaching out to you and people that you put in while you were there, and they’re all mixed in. Unless you’ve made notes right then, and then that’s rude too, because then you’re back on your phone and doing things. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I’m going to fish mine out. Donald, what would you like to add to this conversation?
Donald Kelly: I think the idea of the networking side is definitely helpful for motivation because of peer pressure. In our organization, our sales side of the house, we have a mastermind. The sales mastermind, the way it’s designed is that individual sellers will come in. It’s not a training program. We’re not teaching you how to sell. It’s literally a mastermind. An individual may come in and say, “For the next three months, I’m trying to hit $250,000 in revenue.”
Now, with most of these people being at home, being isolated by themselves, because now the sales we’re being more efficient. We’re being more effective financially, so we’re not in-person anymore. But when you’re home and you’re isolated, you’re not hearing what Mary’s saying on a call. You’re not seeing Dave close something. In our office, we used to ring a bell. Those things don’t happen as much anymore. You’re seeing numbers only and you have these weekly calls that you’re getting on, but there’s something about being around that energy, that pool. We’re tribal in so many ways in our way that we behave. I feel that the networking piece helps.
The reason why I bring up our program, what we notice is that when we had a lot of these people in the pandemic who were working isolated and being by themself, they weren’t necessarily performing. But once they started being a part of our group, they started performing better. They had a goal that they set. We helped break down that goal into micro goals. Then now every week they’re focused on that. Then they came back to the group session every week, and they’re reporting on how they did on that micro goal that’s helping them accomplish their big goal of $250,000 that they’re trying to close.
Maybe they say, “Yeah, this week I did X amount of LinkedIn outreach. I had so many conversations, I went to this event, met with these people, and so forth. I changed the way I did my emails,” and to get feedback. But that networking with other people allow them to now have other measuring sticks to look at or others they can learn from. It’s the same idea when kids go to school as well. Our son goes to a Montessori school. The way they have set up their education is that you’re learning with people from different age limits. He may be able to learn with the three-year-olds, but he’s also learning from the five-year-olds and six-year-olds. He’s learning a lot more from them because of this communal idea. That’s what’s happening, rather than just being with your own company, you learn from other people.
I really feel networking does help with that. I really feel that you are seeing numbers from other people in other industries get you to perform at a different level as well rather than just being isolated. That’s one factor I always encourage people, and if you don’t have that within, and you don’t need to go to a formal program. Anyone can do this by finding some of their colleagues on LinkedIn, friends that they know, and just have an accountability with each other.
That’s another huge way that I found to be an increase in performance, is when somebody can have an accountability. I think sometimes in some way, since that pandemic, hopefully I don’t get any hate mail, but I think sometimes we get a little bit softer where we are not pushing as much in some of those areas. You still need to have a high level of accountability in sales. We’re the front line, we get paid the most, and we need to have accountability. Not saying you need to be jerks and to be mean and yell at people, but there’s accountability. How are you going to get X number? What will happen if you don’t do that? What kind of challenges are you facing that we can help you to accomplish it?
But when I look at with accountability, sometimes we don’t take advantage or utilize that enough within our teams. But when I have accountability in place, it improved it. I think it was Pearson Law who said it, “When performance is measured, performance increases.” When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of performance increased significantly. There’s this power of reporting back, of this accountability, of this measuring. It allows for us to be able to really improve because now we have something that we are personally measuring. Accountability doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a top down. Accountability is from my side up. Because if I’m an athlete or a salesperson or a performer, I want to be better in it, and that’s where the desire comes in. But if I know I want to be better, then I put those accountability in place for myself.
I remember once I went to my manager, and I tell my manager like, “Hey, this is what I’m trying to accomplish.” Now I had that accountability. I told her about it, but then every week she would ask me, “How are you doing on that?” She didn’t set the measurement. I set the measurement, and it’s something that I worked towards. I feel like that doggedness, that gives you that drive.
I think also, to go back to this bigger issue, and again, all theories here, but from my evaluation and working with teams and so forth, what it comes down to is life has become a lot easier in so many ways with the pandemic. Because of the easiness of ways that we can go about doing things, that has translated into lackluster performance. To go back to what you were saying there, Stephanie, with in-person visits, we don’t necessarily have to do those anymore. Now we’re just chilling at home. If I have to make a cup of coffee and then I jump onto my Zoom meetings, and I start making phone calls or doing things, and then I’m done. I don’t talk to any humans and I’m playing video games or listening to stuff in between, and doing some laundry and then maybe do some more calls and so forth, and that’s the end of my day. I get an appointment booked or whatnot. There’s no drive to do stuff.
Physically, I think there’s that drive of, “Now I have to get up at six o’clock. I have to do my gym. Then I have to get ready and take the kids to school and get to work in the office by 8:30.” I think that routine allowed for us to be able to have that drive. Then naturally in a workplace, you had the opportunity to have accountability with people around you and to mingle. But I think some of that, and I’m not saying that’s what we need to go back to, but I’m saying because of some of that, and we went to this world where we don’t have much resistance, no wonder why we have people that don’t have a big of a drive or passion, because why get up any earlier?
Gina Stracuzzi: To your point, you would get so wound up doing all those things by 8:30, and dealing with traffic. You get in there and it’s like, “All right, let me at’ em.” There is something to that.
Stephanie Rowzie: I love Donald’s thoughts. I think he’s right on about that. I think what a lot of people don’t realize, especially salespeople, is this is a great time for them to be wildly successful. The reason is because so many people don’t have that drive right now. They’re still trying to figure out, “How do I get my mojo back? How do I get my direction back?” The opportunists are going to show up and they’re going to show up really strong, and they’re going to end up being wildly successful while these other folks are still trying to figure it out. If they can get their mind to that place and realize the opportunity in front of them, then those are the ones that are going to rise and really shine right now.
Donald Kelly: In our world, what we are seeing also is the over-reliance on tech, which make it even more less important for me to do stuff. I hope this doesn’t sound wrong, but I love my technology, I love ChatGPT. I love utilizing all the different sales hacks and tools that I have. I realized that there can be this overreliance, and when there’s overabundance of technology, your tech stack becomes bloated or the things to perform your work becomes bloated. Then I’m not necessarily having that drive to really do stuff. I’m being led by the tools rather than me directing and leading the tools. I’m going to my CRM.
Gina Stracuzzi: That might be a good tip for them in terms of one final action tip, and perhaps yours is move away from technology so much and get back to the fundamentals. Stephanie.
Stephanie Rowzie: Put yourself back out there. I was recently at the IES awards ceremony with 200 plus people, dynamic salespeople and sales leaders. I walked out of there feeling like I was on fire. I was like, “I want to be one of these people. I want to be one of these people who get up and show up and have the energy and make conversations and represent my company well.” I would say put yourself back out there, networking virtually and in-person, and really put together a plan for yourself, as Donald said, small micro goals, and hold yourself accountable to that. That would be my plan.
Gina Stracuzzi: Well, thank you very much, Stephanie and Donald. You’ve been fabulous guests and given us a lot to think about as we try to pull ourselves out of the molasses of-
Stephanie Rowzie: That’s a good analogy. It’s like molasses sometimes.
Gina Stracuzzi: Yeah. It feels like it, doesn’t it? Well, thank you very much and let’s do this in a year and see how far we’ve come.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo