Episode Transcript
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You were listening to bb revenue acceleration, a podcast dedicated helping software executive stay
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on the cutting edge of sales and
marketing in their industry. Let's get into
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the show. Hi, welcome to
be to be a re a new acceleration.
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My name is earlien, with you, and I'm here today with Alex
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Jacobach from operatics. How are you, Alex? I'm very well. Thank
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you right. Thanks for having me. No problem at you are one guest
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that I probably the guest since the
beginning of the podcast that I know the
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best somewhere, that I'm actually working
with on the daily basis, because you
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are vp of operation in Europe.
They are Toperatics, but we've had a
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quite a few requests from listen else
and also some of our guests, suggestion
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about sharing some of the best practices
and the intelligence and and giving some of
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her top of our secrets away.
As to our we we manage to do
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what we do. We are toparatic, so we weo be a great way.
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Who Have you're taking into the podcast
and we picked a topic around motivating
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your sales team in stressful times.
But before we got started, can you
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just tell us a little bit more
about yourself and your journey was in operatics.
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Yeah, sure, so I've got
an interesting journey and I think a
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bit of an advocate here in terms
of what we like to do, which
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is, and I think I speak
for nearly everybody in the senior management position,
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which is our ethos. And I
started at the bottom, and by
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that I mean I was employed as
a business development executive. I had a
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couple of clients and I was on
the phone's. I had to earn my
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money by delivery meetings, just like
every new rape to which I found.
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I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the
challenge and I enjoyed being able to book,
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you know, quality meetings for our
clients. I was lucky enough,
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after a relatively short period of time, to then take a small team and
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manage them directly, and then,
as time has gone on, I've been
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able to expand that team. We've
grown as a business. I've learned a
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lot around business and how to run
a small business unit and as our reputation
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is spread and our good workers come
to the for now, after around a
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year and a half of managing a
smaller subset of the team, I was
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promoted to the vice president of a
mere operations. Now we've got around seventy
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people in Europe reporting directly in to
me and a lot of clients and a
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fantastic journey so far over the last
two and a half years and long may
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it continue. Yeah, well,
I've been witnessing the journey and you've definitely
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ever done away from a from appointment
setter, which this kind of the lowest
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can of frank you can get with
you operatics, to now managing the team
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and basically being number one in Europe
from an operation prospective is is definitely impressive.
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So congratulation to you. So what
we want you to talk about?
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We are meet December at the time
well of recording this podcast, and we
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all know that the Christmas and only
days player is often ectic and very stressful
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as people are on the pressure to
meet target deadline and the often lack focused
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to get everything done in take.
So it's extremely stressful for everyone. We
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also have that tly day feeling.
So we know that restore seas and individ
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yours maybe thinking about their Christmas Funny
Day, paying some presents for their familian
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or as at great stuff. It's
a little bit of an interesting player of
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the year. But what would be
your advice to sends executive to kid the
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focus and concentrate their efforts into it, shooting their targets is are getting distracted.
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These are the pressure or the UN
needy Paiot. Yeah, and again
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we get the same kind of thing
in summer, really, and to that
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I say well, ironically, actually, the December in the summer months to
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some of our best months as a
business, and there's a very simple reason
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for that. Is it is exactly
what you just said. They're right,
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and that is people think that everyone's
got that holiday feeling and everybody no one's
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going to be there and everybody shuts
down. But actually that's some of the
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best times to call because because everyone
else thinks that, they don't bother to
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make that extra effort, they don't
bother to reach out, they don't put
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that call in at six o'clock.
And perfect example is just coming into this
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now, and I can say this
with complete sincerities one of our guys,
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but to meetings after thirty of the
UK market yesterday and already we've got a
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response from the client saying fantastic,
can't believe this has happened, and it's
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just a testament because people are around. In fact they're in a good mood.
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It's Christmas. So if people use
that as a negative, I've got
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very simple philosophy when it comes to
motivating and getting people to maybe revisit their
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initial thought structure when it comes to
our this is going to be hard.
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I'm not no, no, no, older that is just already built.
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It excuse. You've got nice and
and they're ready for people. Or if
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you get question on activity, there's
no excuse for not put the same activity
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and if anything, you should be
looking at this as negative to positive,
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and that's one of the yard sticks, I say when it comes to motivating
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any team, regardless of it being
sales. But in our particular environment,
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you've got to look at every single
roadblock as a chance to get over and
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how you're going to do it.
So for me, you look at that
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common theory of no one's going to
be around to say well, actually,
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if everyone else thinks that, then
surely is a chance for me to try,
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and that's what we do. So
it's e easy for me to sit
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here and say that, but I
pushed the team to put that extra activity
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in and also I say, well, what pressure? More pressure we talking
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about here, the pressure to go
and earn money. I mean, there's
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that's what the job is here in
the first place. You've done it throughout
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the year. I'm telling you that
you can do it at this time of
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year because we've proven it as a
business that these are some of our best
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months. That watch. It happened
and I put a couple of incentives in
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place there as well. And Yeah, and I'm happy to say that most
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people realize very quickly that if they
put that activity in, the pressures soon
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go away. Absolutely my activity,
what work. We tend to see with
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then to see prospects and by els
to be probably more inclined to have a
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conversation, I think. I think
must of our clients, and it's going
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to kind of the main next question, but the wrong the accuses of the
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only day. But first of our
clients tend to associate a Christmas player as
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a Dead Bay. And and I
think if you look at it from a
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closing perspective, of course, if
you don't have a deal already in the
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pay plane in octob ill, said
thumber, I even June, I even
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January from the previous from that year, depending on the lengths of your Sol
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say call you will have no chance
to find a new bottomunity and because it
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in December. However, I do
believe in as you said, we see
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through the stats and through the Sixer
twiving and Bost some of piling Christmas absolutely
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from testic paint on Gach. So
that's kind of bitting. To my next
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question, which is, do you
believe that people use the excuse of fully
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day to let kick start some projects? I'll delay some of them after the
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only day. And and then,
most importantly, because I think your answer
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will be yes, most importantly,
Oh, do you think that can be
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avoided? Yeah, exactly. So
I think it's amazing how many times that
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kind of comes up, and the
beauty of that excuse is a lot of
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it's based on some of that maybe
hasn't been here that long or is made
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ten calls that day or has tried
it, you know, let's say,
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for the first week of July,
and then all of a sudden they come
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back and give us that feedback.
It's a myth. It's a myth that
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we dispel on a early basis almost
times, basically, and you've got to
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ask yourself one question where, and
I know you can. You can answer
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it from a sales perspective as well, in terms of new business, which
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is well, I'm working, you're
here, we're talking about it. So
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first of all, you're in the
office and all of a sudden, in
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what world do we live in where
all of the sea level people, all
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senior management, all decide to go
off on a holiday for two months?
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Of course it doesn't happen. I
mean, I don't know anybody that does
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that or has the chance to do
it again. And I just repeat what
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I said before. It's that chance. Where are if people are assuming that,
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then brilliant. Long May it continue. I want them to keep thinking
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that, because the longer that they
think that, we will just keep cleaning
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up and we'll speak to all the
people that are at their desks who probably
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have maybe a bit more time on
their hands in this period because less people
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are bothering to contact them for the
very reasons that we've discussed. So it's
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a myth, easy one to dispel
from my perspective, because the stats are
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there and the evidence is there.
But, like I said, as long
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as it as long as the myth
keeps going, I'd be happy for people
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to keep assuming that, otherwise,
you know, it might get a bit
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tougher for us to do our job. But again it goes to activity and
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it goes to this, the same
kind of things we say. When some
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of our clients actually say, well, I'm not sure, it's a difficult
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period, I'll say, well,
okay. Well, if you have much
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pipeline, have you got what you
need, what you need to close?
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If you don't want to start things
in December because you think it's a dead
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month, we're then going to start
it in January and then there's a ramp
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up period. Well, why don't
we start it now? We're going to
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get some results before genuary. The
moment generally, the second comes, we're
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going to be absolutely on fire being
able to be a step ahead rampart period.
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There is no negative, it's all
positive. Okay. So we've been
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focusing very much on the end of
her and if I had our probably even
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be more relaxed. And thatckening of
the schedule that they've got more thim in
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your fear. So they wouldn't be
more reactive to I can be selling thatches.
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I can be his marketing to Chiss
such as you mail chorus for a
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short touches and all, let's have
great so so appreciate that. We spoke
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about the best section of our clients, while like well, no, we
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constant something in December because it's under
is dead, and you know, ultimately
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I think we discuss and I think
it's fair to agree that they maybe one
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week in December, which is basically
the last week of December, where people
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are getting into the festive fired.
But executives, people will really make decision.
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Even if they are ways, still
need to keep that finger on the
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pulse and maybe more reachable during that
time that any years of time of the
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year. So you see that as
an opportunity. Now let's turn towards the
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AL team and your people, because
that's another element. You know, it's
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all good to have that, you
can have people being available, etc.
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Etc. But you kind of a
very bad mindset in L T in what
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people are just wearing a Christmas jumper, wants to go to our parties,
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wants to have shortter days, the
all that sort of great things that come
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with the festive spirit. So I
want to ask you the question. If
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do you believe in motivation, because
I've seen you in action. And I
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know, as you believe in motivation, and particularly for what we do,
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motivation is key. But how can
you, as a selles video, make
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sure that's your team is feeling motivated
through that festive fire, that that break
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up? We also spoke about the
summer. So let's not just focus on
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Christmas, but let's also focus on
the summer time where people are only day,
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etc. Etc. Because it's a
rumor, it's that Meth. But
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I'll do you. Make sure that
you break that myth and get them to
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deliver, get them to be focused
on what they do. Well, there's
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a I mean there's a business.
We've obviously got certain KPIS and things that
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we have to hit internally here anyway. So in terms of keeping because,
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because you're right, it can be
again, you can talk all you like
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and and get people to believe it
if you like, but the proof,
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the proofs always in the pudding.
But very simply, we've got upset of
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KP eyes as a certain amount of
actions that I expect people to do every
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day and we monitor that. We
Monitor it closely. So there isn't really
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ever going to be an avenue where
people can't put the activity in in terms
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of the motivation. Of course.
Then that in turn goes to making sure
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that they're doing the basics correctly.
So what we would do is will put
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a bit more emphasis, let's say, in those months, around making sure
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that the guys plan ahead make sure
that they structure the day accordingly. So
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a lot of our focus when it
comes to the end of it each day,
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for instance, will be making sure
that the moment they get into work
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the next day, they've got the
next fifteen people that they know that they
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can ring and they've got a chance
to booking it. So why is that
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important? Why does it help with
motivation? Well, if you come into
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the office and somebody's already got two
leads, five leads, seven leads and
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it's not even nine o'clock, then
that motivates you to try and challenge each
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other and it also gives everybody the
confidence that the meetings are there, the
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leads are there, the engagements are
there and the people are there. So
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I think it's a bit of a
Cliche, but it's very true in how
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to motivate a team is success breaths
success and if you see your colleagues doing
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it, just if you're in a
mine. If I'd like to think that
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if you're in my team or in
our team, you're going to have that
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natural competitiveness that comes with being at
every good salesperson hand. So it goes
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back at you know, we want
to go back a little bit further.
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Very quickly. It would be around
one. What do I see in the
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interviews? I want to see that
competitiveness on a see inquisitiveness, honestly,
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curiosity. I want to see energy. So if I've got those things as
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a as a yard stick from the
team, all you really need to do
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is just put in a couple of
incentives. Leaving early, that's fine,
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that can happen, but I think
more along a long time at team incentives
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and getting the team together as one
and understanding the best practices. So what
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we'll do is we'll have a breakaway
session at the end of every day and
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we'll say right, okay, what
work today for you? What were?
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We share best practices and then all
of a sudden everybody feels that are part
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of a successful unit and a team
that's willing to share, as you know,
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share knowledge and everybody's out to look
after each other. You know,
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we're not in an a kind of
a jump over each other, wolf of
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all street scenario. When it comes
to that kind of thing's a very supportive
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atmosphere. So I think if you
create those things, really the motivation comes
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from within and people become self motivated. But you've got to put that environment
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there to make sure people feel that
they're supported. Okay, well, that's
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very good and very comprehensive. Now
in some of the incentive you mentioned,
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if you you mentioned money, name
of Fush are fighting the back and everything.
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If you work the big one and
just for given advise to our audience,
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which one would you say is the
one that drive teams the best to
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get treason sid of them in in
that myth Yud that is is a Christmas
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on the summer? That's a very
good question. So, without kind of
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ignoring that and not giving you an
answer fuck that, I'm going to pick
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a couple of options, if you
don't mind. So what I would say?
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It does come down to the virginal
individual. We know we're all human
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beings at the end of the day. And you know what member of my
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team might be a young man that
wants to go and watch a football game.
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So for me that's a very easy
thing to do. Tickets depends where
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you go. Of course, if
you're a Chelsea fan like me, you
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got to save up for three years
to go to one game. But let's
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just say that. You know,
I know for a fact that that that
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might be as motivation. I'll put
an intensive in there to say, well,
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if you overachieve your target by twenty
percent, obviously we're in sales here.
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I'm never going to say just hit
your target, over achieve your target,
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then you can go to a Chelsea
game. Whatever the next one and
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I'll or the next one will be
right. Okay. It's a mother of
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three take a children to their talk
and to house or something like other zoo.
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So you look at that and you
look at what different things incentivized people
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for number one. But I'm afraid
will it's a lot of the time it's
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money. It and it should be
money. But we got a brilliant job
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right. We've got a job where
you can talk to people, you can
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get people to do things that they're
necessarily didn't want to do when they woke
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up and it's step for their benefit. That and itself is a buzz and
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people actually pay you for that buzz. I mean that's what I say to
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the team to why don't you want
more of it? Do More, and
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when they think of it that way
generally, when they start to see their
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commission, they think, yeah,
actually, this, this kind of speaks
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for itself. Time off is always
going to be a good one, because
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who wants to be at work at
the end of the day? You know,
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we got the weekends, we got
the evenings. You know, what
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more do they want? But it's
tobably on this toy understanding what makes that
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individual take and in time of your
focus, you drive, you are so
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possible. Thanks for answering the question
and I agree with you and I think
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you need to adapt the incentive to
the people you've gotten your team, because
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if you've got an incentive for our
next box, but you've got lots of
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people who don't play video games,
I mean, I would you expect to
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motivate themselves that? That makes perfect
sense and need to adapt to what they
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want in that personality. Now my
other question still around the insanity, because
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I think it's important to produce into
this incentives in place and see people being
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successful this incentives. Where do you
put your focusing time of incentive do you
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put your focus in some of the
productivity or the quality of the production?
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So I guess there is two things
you can do. You can you can
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just get a lot of volumes,
you can get rids of factions, you
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can get people and say well,
look, if you do, if you
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do hundred and fifty actions per day, calls, social emails, whatever,
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touches, which is probably twenty five
sorty possible and what we would expect the
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rest of the year, I'm going
to give you that much money. I
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would. I give you that.
These are that are you actually looking at
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the results of the walk and say, well, look, is you can
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do as many touch as you want, but for me is really the quality
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that matters. Well, do you, or do you focus on both?
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Well, yeah, again, yeah, it's pretty much, I'd say,
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one of the biggest parts of my
job and to use a sporting analogy which
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I hope sums it up, it
would be troubles for show, doubles for
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dough and what I mean by that
is you can in Dart, you can
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hit the travel twenty as much as
you can get down to a finish,
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but if you can't finish on a
double, all of that stuff that goes
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before is a meaningless so what do
I mean by that? As an analogy,
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so you can book thousands of meetings, you can do hundreds of calls,
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but if those are meetings don't happen
and they're not of the requisite quality
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that I expect and our clients expect, it is meaningless. It's a waste
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of time, it's a waste of
energy and that's not how we built our
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business. So absolutely, we've got
some monestor activity because that's our that's our
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yard stick, and then we can
exactly like you said. They're a you
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can start looking at where you can
tweak and help and that and make people
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more productive. But people buy from
people. We build our relationships and sales
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is built on trust. That's why, when you go for high level jobs,
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people want to know what your contacts
are and what your networks like,
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otherwise they wouldn't bother and it's the
same with us. We need you need
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to understand that quality is what keeps
our clients and will always keep our clots.
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Of course we've got on SLA we
expect to hit. We're going to
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lose money if we don't hit that
SLA in a lot of cases, so
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that goes without saying. But you
must always endeavor to do the best job
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that you can and for me that
means that your meetings, if, should
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you put them, are attended,
are exactly as you said that to the
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client that they would be, and
there off with the sole intention of getting
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our wide and essentially close net new
business for our clients. So for me
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that will always be the yard stick
or to which I look to the team.
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Okay, but that that sounds very, very fair. In so we
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spoke about the stressful times and we
had a bit of a focus in the
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conversation because it's worst seasonal I guess, and we're also looking at it from
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from the attic of European business,
because you add of a European operations.
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When do you think are the most
stressful time over the cross of the year?
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And I think you know it could
be stressful time for us, it
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could be stressful time for our clients
because at the end of the day we
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walk with sales people. So I'm
expecting them to be, on the other
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started amount of stress Agen of the
quarter. I'm expecting them to be under
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a certain amount of stress at the
end of the year, but if you
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were to just if we were to
defocus from Christmas and look at the whole
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year, so if we took two
thousand and nineteen, for example, can
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you pinpoint for us an audience,
when the stressful moments are likely to open?
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Because I guess at the end of
the days it's about planning. Probably
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amounts two months in advance of the
stressful moment to make sure, as you
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don't have a dumb terms, it's
communicating with your team and not waiting the
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fifteen of decembers. Tell them all, look, Christmas is coming. Do
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anything about it. So you know
that twelve our listen, not planning.
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Could you, could you pin point
when the stressful moment are from your perspective,
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and all will be into thousand and
nineteen? Yes, and I'll give
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you two different response based on a
reperspective and and I suppose in terms of
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a team and mere perspective for my
side. So for my side it would
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always be they shouldn't be a time
when it should be particularly stressful, very
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simply. But and the only time
it will do would be if I'm not
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planning ahead accordingly. They'll always be
dips. That always been changes let's say
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in terms of our clients needs and
expectations. That's just life. But I
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think if, as long as you're
making sure that you've got a solid structure,
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you plan, you know, like
my resourcing is done a month in
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advance. Things can change and sometimes
I change in my resourcing five times in
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a day. That's what I'm paid
to do. But you've got to keep
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a levelhead and you can't let anything
deviate you from from your end goal,
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which is making sure that you you
plan accordingly. So I would say as
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long as you're doing that, you
should be able to mitigate against any stress
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that may count come your way.
I don't look at it in a seasonal
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point of view. I look at
it from a, you know, a
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language point of view, that it
may be that there's a requirement urgently and
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I'll be honest and I'll say,
look, if we can't do it,
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we can do it, and I
think that that plays a big part in
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it. From a reprospective and again
I can use my own experience. My
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second month was not as good as
my first month and I think the biggest
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challenge that the reps have in terms
of when they find stress is when they're
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not performing maybe to their colleague standard
or to their own personal standard, and
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it's very, very easy to get
to motivated and to not pick up that
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phone like you would have done before. And that's really where people need to
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feel that they've got a supportive environment
around them, and that's where myself and
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the team will revisit things ago.
Right, let's get back to basics a
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little bit here. Let's look at
how you're structuring the way that you work
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and really you take their mind off
the stress and you give them activities to
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do, you give them a process
to follow and by that time they've forgotten
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about the stress because they're embedded in
other actions. And that requires a lot
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of maintenance on a daily basis because, again, you're dealing with human beings
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that are going to be up and
down, just like you know any business
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that relies on a client set,
there's going to be things out of your
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control. As long as you've got
enough in the pipeline, and that means
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that you business, that means pipeline
for our clients and that means net you
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reps coming in. As long as
you're on top of that, then you
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should be at a position where any
stressful events to come, you'll be able
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to already have a plan in place
to mitigate against them. Okay, so
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there is no stressful thing. It's
all about being prepared. I like that.
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Well, it's like that's the duck
analogy. Isn't all this one analogy?
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You know, underneath the water the
legs are flapping away, but there's
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a calm exterior above the water.
Like always say to you, rail I'd
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love black hair when I joined and
now I've got I've got hard any hair
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and it's all white. So I'll
let you get the charge of whether it's
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stressful. Well, main judgment is
it's just to look fromtistic so that we
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all good. So thanks for all
of the legs, I think. I
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think it was justseful and I'm charging
is taking a look from your advice and
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your way of doing things. Basically. Now, if anyone wants to connect
361
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with you, you know doctor long
a little bit more about trading sells team
362
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and planning for dreading sells team and
are around the boratics. What weld be
363
00:22:12.829 --> 00:22:15.700
the best way to connect with you? Well, I probably say linked tin's
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a good way. I'm quite active
on Linkedin. Always free to connect with
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anybody that wants on a sample,
and I'm also also very interested in other
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people's ideas when it comes to their
thoughts and experiences, but it comes to
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either running a team or advice.
Because, yeah, I mean we talked
368
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about the challenges that come across as
and I think anybody that works in operations
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will always know that you've got to
juggle all the things at the same time.
370
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It is a fine art, but
it's one where I would never change
371
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it, because every day is different
and not a lot of jobs. Can
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00:22:47.720 --> 00:22:52.119
say that I'm contactable by the website
as well and all of my contact details
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or linked in. Should anybody wants
to engage with me further, be happy
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to talk. Okay, excellent,
what many things again, Alex. it
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was great to have younger ship today. Thanks right, operatics has redefined the
376
00:23:03.990 --> 00:23:11.470
meaning of revenue generation for technology companies
worldwide. While the traditional concepts of building
377
00:23:11.470 --> 00:23:17.059
and managing inside sales teams inhouse has
existed for many years, companies are struggling
378
00:23:17.099 --> 00:23:22.420
with a lack of focus, agility
and scale required in today's fast and complex
379
00:23:22.539 --> 00:23:29.089
world of enterprise technology sales. See
How operatics can help your company accelerate pipeline
380
00:23:29.130 --> 00:23:34.569
at operatics dotnet. You've been listening
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