How to use Systems to Accelerate Sales, with Mike Kunkle [Episode 460]

Mike Kunkle, widely recognized sales transformation strategist, practitioner, speaker, and writer, joins me on this episode.

Key Takeaways

• Mike defines the systems approach to sales, a logical way to set up an organizational environment that supports the sales function. Mike cites Kurt Lewen and Geary A. Rummler on behavior, environment, and process.
• Mike discusses the difficulty and complexity of sales, and focusing on the buyer journey and the problems to solve. Mike quotes Tony Robbins about the path to success. It helps to analyze the top achievers, and learn their behaviors.
• Mike talks about global studies made by Learning International (now Achieve Global) about behaviors of top sales performers, that Learning International then used to build their programs around those sales competencies.
• Mike says compensation is not what makes the most difference in sales. He lists his Fantastic Four systems that have the most effect on sales success. He also notes that the top 4% of sales reps are so good, they are above systems.
• The bell curve of sales still has not shifted in general, but the companies at the top end are not always the same companies. Mike tells how the top companies get to the top.
• Psychometric tests may not be widely used for hiring, or be used effectively. Mike suggests researching the tools and their application. Mike shares successes from when testing tools were used well, and thoughtfully.
• Management by anecdote does not match intelligent management backed by the scientific application of data. Tools and processes work to boost management success.
• Aligning the buying and selling processes assumes the buyer knows their best practices for buying. The seller may need to guide the buyer in learning their own process. The vendor must be flexible and agile to align to the buyer need.
• Individualized buyers, and company environments, make every buying process different. Mike refers to Aristotle as the first sales trainer. The key is to understand the individual and their goals.
• Mike is a trainer by being a subject matter expert, a seller, and a manager, not by the training profession. To be sure of his system, he verified it and measured results. He researches and plans in his work to drive up performance.
• Mike’s system includes a learning system, and a managing system, as two of the four system pillars, so the human element is counted into the methodology.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul  0:00  

Hi friends. This is Andy Welcome to Episode 460 of accelerate, where I hold in depth conversations with today’s leading experts in sales, marketing and leadership. six days a week. Let me ask you, are you in a sales slump just a little bit slower than you want? What happens to all of us and usually happens more frequently than we’d like. But that’s the case you need to visit accelerate.fm forward slash Spark. Find out how to restart the engine on your sales machine by downloading my step by step guide titled How to spark a sales term. It’s based on interviews with over 300 of the world’s leading sales experts right here on the show to accelerate, right taking their recommendations about how to turn around sales and pack them into this free guide, a jam of actionable advice that you can use right now. So that’s accelerated by FM four slash Spark. Download your free copy today. Tomorrow, may 18. I’m going to be in St. Louis, talking with the drive 2017 conference. If you’re in the area I urge you to attend. There’s a great lineup of speakers and workshops. It’s organized by Jim Everland, and Nicole and all of our friends over at top ops. For more information, go to top ups.com Ford slash drive hyphen 2017 top five To POPS comm forward slash drive hyphen 2017. I’ll get another great show today. Joining me to talk about sales is my friend and tribe mate Mike Kunkle. Mike is a widely recognized sales transformation strategist, practitioner, speaker and writer. He spent 22 years as a corporate leader consultant helping companies drive dramatic revenue growth through best in class learning strategies. And I’ve invited Mike onto this accelerate because he is one of the most thoughtful people about selling but I know his frequent writings he consistently puts forward a well thought out big picture detailed systems approach to selling the system’s approach to selling the forces are really to rethink your own preconceptions about how to get the job done. So looking forward to talking to Mike Mike, welcome to accelerate

Mike Kunkle  3:47  

Andy. Thank you very much. Hello, listeners. I’m glad to be here in a great intro and he just like my mom wrote it.

Andy Paul  3:56  

She did, actually so yeah. So, you’ve been publishing a really interesting series of articles on LinkedIn titled transform your sales results with a systems approach. So, define, first of all a systems approach.

Mike Kunkle  4:15  

Well, I mean, I hate to use the word in the definition, but I think of it as just a sort of a logical, systematic way to set up an organizational environment that supports a particular function or objective. So you know, it’s going about it in a systematic way. So I think I can’t actually remember now where Andy the I first heard that behavior is a function of the person in the environment. It might actually be Kurt Lewin, who first wrote that but I’ve seen it in a lot of performance improvement writings over the years. And when you think about that, if you find the right person and then you Put them in the right role. And then you create the right environment around them, you have the maximum chance for success. And that environment is what I think about creating most often in organizations. I’m Gary rumbler, and am fond of saying that if you put a good performer in a bad process, the process wins almost every time. Yeah, with whether it’s process systems methodology. Those are the things that I tend to try to create in companies to support the selling process to support the sales management process to support buying and make buying easier, so that you can take an average performer and you know, we all like to think and studies show that, you know, you ask people if they’re average or above average, everybody thinks they’re above average, but the bell curve teaches us otherwise, right?

Andy Paul  5:56  

We’re gonna dig into that, by the way. So that’s a great segue because One of the things that I want to start off our conversation with is because this relates directly to systems so that given all the new technology that’s, you know, flooded into sales and other fields in the last several years, decades. Yeah, we’re a lot more data, right? About Oh, yeah. What’s going on, and excuse me. And so, you know, let’s look at some of that research. You quote some of it in your studies. 61% of new salespeople take at least seven months to ramp up 43% of sales reps, Miss quota and that that number, you know, we know gyrates, but roughly around 50% Yep. 25% of forecast opportunities and then no decision and I’ve seen I’ve seen a report last year that that number as high as 80%. I know. a consulting firm reports sales turnovers at a five year high. Forrester publishes an annual report and says, you know, b2b close rates continue to drop year over year over the last Five years. Frank cesspit is, you know, from Harvard was on the show, I’ve said the others $90 billion a year spent on sales in the United States, 90 billion. So we take all that together. What’s interesting is the size. Look, we’re in the sort of golden age of sales. We’ve got all this insight from the data into what’s happening. We’ve got all this great technology to help, in some respects, facilitate communications with our customers, and yet we’re becoming less effective. Right, the data points to sales in general are performing less well year over year over year. So what’s your thought about what’s happening?

Mike Kunkle  7:42  

Well, sales have always been complex, right? Because it involves, you know, helping human beings make decisions or you know, in the early days of sales, it was manipulating and, and trying to convince human beings to make decisions and we’d become a much more buyer focused marketplace today where you know, sales is trying to help people make new decisions. But that alone is complex. And when you start thinking about the types of problems that we’re trying to solve in today’s environment, and you know how complex businesses become in the economy in the marketplace, it’s, it is a tough business environment. Today, you look at all of the companies in the fortune 100 and, you know, look back how many years that they’ve actually been there or how many that were there once fell off? Right? It’s, it’s, it is so it’s a tough environment yet in sales, rather than step back and take a scientific Look at that. I mean, I think I think about Tony Robbins sometimes and, you know, people say Mike, you’re a Tony Robbins fan and you know, Tony is incredibly logical. He fires people up because people don’t want phone calls. Right? But, you know, Tony said in a book years ago that I read that if you want to Want to be massively successful at something? Find out what the people have done to be successful in that, and use them as a shortcut to do what they did. And there’s such an incredible sense in that I don’t know that I could say because of that, I started doing top producer analysis, but I realized at some point, hey, I’m doing kind of what Tony did. Because I’d go into organizations, I’d study the top producers inside that company with that product set in that you know, that customer base, the problems they were solving the environment they were in, and what were they doing differently? It reminds me of John Kotter who says 70% of change initiatives fail to produce the intended result. We know what that means. 30% are achieving the intended result. So what are they doing? And we don’t seem to do enough of this in sales, we will push harder, faster, longer, you know, trying to do the same thing over and over and over and over almost like Einstein definition of insanity, rather than step back in systematically build an environment that will help their organization do the things that the best sales organizations do. Taking a look at that 30% that succeed, or the ones who are getting much higher than average win rates, the best in class or world class companies, and then taking some of the things that they do and bringing them in and implementing. Now, why don’t companies do that? I think because a lot of times senior sales leaders are promoted up through the ranks of sales, right? You do well in sales. And the first mistake is you get promoted to manager without any preparation for being a manager. And then generally you work your way up the chain. And you know, so there’s not a lot of education around the most successful ways to manage sales, the turnover rate of 18 to 24 months puts an incredible amount of pressure just as making the number, right on senior sales leaders. So there are a lot of knee jerk reactions. There’s a lot of thrashing. And you know, not enough. Now there are some, right I mean, I look at, you know, some of the stuff that gets published from sales benchmark index sales benchmark index, that I look at the people that you talk to Andy, on this show, there’s, obviously, a lot of good stuff happening. But the bell curve in that middle, that big glob of people in the middle are thrashing about not stepping back and saying, Okay, let me push aside the 18 to 24 month pressure. Let me take a look at the sales ecosystem. Let me start to replicate inside my company the things that are truly producing the best results. Let me try to pick the ones that are the 8020 rule the 20% of what I can do to get 80% of the results. Let me try to find some low hanging fruit to give me the runway. To get me past my 18 to 24 months to do some of the other larger things, but let me create a long term plan, and then execute against it to radically improve and transform my Salesforce. And I just simply don’t see or hear about that kind of thinking enough in sales organizations.

Andy Paul  12:19  

What is one of the issues though, that that a lot, excuse me that some of what the 20% to the top 30% do? To your point earlier, it’s, you know, this is a complex human to human business, but maybe what they do is difficult to replicate.

Mike Kunkle  12:39  

Well, I think that’s true of the top 4%. So I’ve been doing top producer analysis for about 15 years and I remember way back when I was at Hyatt Hotels Corporation, we were using some of learning internationals materials now learning international came out of Xerox learning system they became global all that right. But the one thing that They did learn internationally at the time is every five years, they did a global study on what top salespeople were doing. And they use what they learned in that study. Miller Haim is doing some of the same kind of things today. Right? They use what they learned in those studies to build their programs around those competencies. Right. So that, you know, that kind of that kind of thinking does exist and does happen.

Andy Paul  13:28  

Well, is it? I guess, part one, I think it is time to really start rethinking fundamentally how we conduct sales and in a more dramatic fashion. I mean, there’s some things we seem to hold on to for so long. That again, if you look at the data, and, you know, being careful to say, look, you know, we’re not sure it’s it’s correlated or it’s causal, but in nature, but yeah, you talk about Yeah, does compensation matter? And then use news Make the same usage? Of course it does. But if you look at what’s happening in the industry, common sales and strict compensation really doesn’t seem to move the needle.

Mike Kunkle  14:09  

I don’t think it’s I don’t think it is the system, I mean, of all the systems that exist out there that you can tweak and play with. I have found over the years that if I get four of them, and I call them my Fantastic Four of sales symptoms, and that I that I pray that Marvel doesn’t sue me, because I’m a fan, but I think of them as the selection system, creating a selling system or selling support system, a learning system into sales management system. And I think if companies would step back and get those four things, right, right, and the order that you do them in your company might depend upon where your greatest challenges are, I don’t have a stock recommendation. That would be something that would be, you know, individualized but if you get those systems right, then you can worry about doing the ancillary things around them afterwards and align all of the systems and all of the performance levers in your company. And you know, to go back to your, you know, can you replicate? I wanted to finish that thought that of what I’ve learned in, in studying top producers is that the top 4% and this varies from company to company, you know where the statistical break is, right? So it could be the top 3%, the top 7%. But generally, as I look back at my 15 years of analysis, there’s sort of like a magical cutoff point at the top 4%, which is interesting, because that’s the top 20 of the top 20. Right. That group seems to be doing things almost by force or personality or magic, and I’ve found that it’s very difficult to take what they do and replicate it. You can however, try to hire more people like them if you create a profile around them. If you look at the rest of the top 20, which would be the remaining 16% of the top 20. Those people tend to be the mere mortals who have figured out the magic sauce again in that company with those customers with that product set in that environment. And if you take what they do, and you start to create continues stop start plans compared to the middle, you can tell the middle producers what to continue doing that they’re doing just like top producers, you can tell them what to stop doing because no top producer is doing that you can tell them what to start doing and start doing differently based on what how they compare to top producers and you can create a gap analysis plan to close the performance gaps between your middle and your top. If you get that big group in the middle to move up. magic happens. So you know it’s a huge lift in results. And I have found that the selection systems, the selling support systems, the learning and sales management systems really support that and help get the middle moving up because like Gary rumbler saying if you pick a good performer against a bad system, a bad system wins, right? If you create the systems that work, you can then start to take average performers and get above average performance out of them.

Mike Kunkle  17:12  

That’s what I’ve seen work.

Andy Paul  17:14  

Right. But it doesn’t seem like we’ve ever fundamentally shifted the bell curve in selling. Right? We’re still

Mike Kunkle  17:20  

well, by and large, no. And by and large, I think the bell curve still sits where it’s always been, but the companies who were at the top end of it, not all of them were always at the top end, right? You know, and we see companies make strategic mistakes and get themselves out of there. But the ones who are getting there are getting there. I see through one of two ways, the right place, the right time and the company explodes. And then there were those who were sort of doing the Jim Collins Good to Great thing where systematically they are building the machine to move them into that category. So what I’m saying is, why not apply that same thinking about how we would improve sales performance inside a company across the industry and say, Hey, folks, if you build a selection system as selling support system and effective learning system, and a sales management system and you implement these things we can with it, then it’s sort of like the old saying that the rising tide lifts all boats. And I think we could see a shift in the bell curve. But we’re certainly not seeing it today. But it’s because not many people are sales leaders or companies are actually trying this systemic approach toward improving selling.

Andy Paul  18:32  

Right. Well, let’s talk about hiring for a second. Because, again, you talk about that in depth in one of your posts. And

Here’s sort of a conundrum as I see it. I mean, you talk about making sure you’re using statistically validated psychometric assessments in your part of your evaluation process for candidates. But when we look at the performance curves, now CSO insights, same things. Yeah, 46% of reps. Don’t make a quota. Let’s just say it’s 50%, just to make the math easy is, is have to assume, to some degree, we are maybe built into your assumptions that managers are ignoring the results of the psychometric assessments because if they are truly statistically validated if you hired everybody, according to the assessment, theoretically, you should be getting better performance across the board than you get if they’re validated that way.

Mike Kunkle  19:26  

Well, I don’t have stats to show what percentage of sales organizations use these tools. And I do know many who use the tools who don’t use them effectively. So again, it’s a matter of how well you can execute a great strategy. Right? And I would also caution listeners that you know, they want to go check out these tools, and they want to understand how to most effectively use them in a selection cycle. I personally and most assessment companies that you speak with, you know, don’t use them as is an end all be all decision. They don’t use them as a completely rule out factor. They use them to continually inform the selection process to know where to dig in deeper with behavioral interviewing questions or what to look for in simulations or what questions to ask references. Right. It generally should be a third of the buying decision. Now, having said that, though, right, to clarify back to your question. 30. Sort of Yeah, sort of the hiring decision. I just don’t think that enough organizations are taking that scientific approach and when they do, they’re doing it somewhat lightheartedly. I’ve implemented environments where they were very serious about it. And I’ve seen a 75% new hire turnover rate dropped to 25% in six to eight months.

Andy Paul  20:46  

What would you say on the outcome side, though, in terms of sales?

Mike Kunkle  20:50  

Well, new hires ramped up twice as fast and production levels were twice as high. And as when we started to take what we were Teaching them in addition to how we were hiring. And we started to assess the rest of the Salesforce and use it as a developmental opportunity as opposed to hiring because obviously, they’re already there. And we started teaching them the things we were teaching the new hires, we saw radical growth in the organization to the point where year over year, when we did the ROI analysis, the CEO and the CFO were willing to attribute $398 million of growth to the six projects that we had done, part of which was the, you know, the selection system and using psychometric assessments, behavioral interviewing, simulations and the right right kind of background checks, to ensure that we were bringing in the right people for the role. And you know, at one point, that company when I started 11% of the top producers were producing 94% of the revenue, we radically changed that to more of an 8020 model. So, you know, I do know that it works. I’ve also seen it though, where I’ve tried implementing those systems in sales managers railed against them, because it didn’t align with their gut feel, which obviously wasn’t working, but no one seemed to care about that. Right. And so, you know, they would have said, read the economy, right? That’s right. Yeah, they would second guess the tools and they would fight against the process. And they’d wind up right back in the same place that they were, except then when their reps failed, then whether or not they actually used the process, they would blame the process. Right. So you see those kinds of self defeating cycles that a lot of organizations, especially where you don’t really have top down support, or the organization has difficulty staying focused and executing initiatives effectively. When you get it right, though I you know, I’ve seen you know, real results and real transformations occur.

Andy Paul  22:46  

Yeah, well, I think sort of the bottom line with this hiring as well as other systems, you’re talking about the force social systems is that we have to get beyond this thing about managing with gut managing by anecdote Because that is really one thing that’s really holding us back. I don’t think you, I’m not of a mind saying, look, we’re going to completely turn it over to the data because there still is a human aspect to it. But you’re foolish if you’re not taking advantage of these tools that exist, like the assessments and simulations and things that you detail in your article, as part of your hiring process to make a better, more informed decision.

Mike Kunkle  23:24  

Right. And we could say the same about tools and processes for opportunity management or for strategic account development or anything else, we want to aim at that right. There were fewer tools and processes and methodologies that if we adopt them, we execute effectively. We could radically change behavior and performance at any one of these systems.

Andy Paul  23:47  

So one of the things you wrote about that, that we hear about all the time, and we talk about all the time and people write about all the time, is aligning the selling process to the buying process. Logically makes great, great sense. But, you know, as they talk about playing the challenger customer and other people talk about their work, part of the problem is the buyer oftentimes doesn’t know what the process is doing. It’s not monolithic. It’s situation dependent. Maybe they’ve never purchased this type of product or service before. So in many respects, yeah, we can say we’re on line two, but initially, we start on sometimes almost having to help the buyer understand what the process is.

Mike Kunkle  24:27  

Well, that’s, that’s part of the consulting process that I think sales is becoming but I would, I would say this, Andy. So let’s say that you have a very flexible series of buying processes based on the customers that you serve. And let’s say that, you know, you need to be agile, and sort of aligned to those as you go. I think that’s becoming more and more of a norm. So maybe, maybe in a CRM system, you would have to generically, you know, do How at least you’re going to track your sales process compared to the average buying process that you go through. I think where the magic can still happen where I don’t see this happening today is focusing on the buying process exit criteria. And if you even

Mike Kunkle  25:18  

learning

Mike Kunkle  25:19  

Why stay on stage right, so what are the exit criteria for the buyers? And you know, you can get to that at a high level with buyer persona work and buyer journey work and you can document, you know, exit criteria and verifiable outcomes. But from a sales perspective, if you’re in a deal, you know, and you’ve got to scope out who the decision makers are, you’ve got to find out their decision process and decision criteria and what do they need to see hear, feel touch and believe in each stage to feel comfortable moving forward to the next stage with you and that may be different for each of your buyers. To me, this is absolutely the crux and real work of selling It amazes me that I just don’t hear more about it. Because it removes the superstition of sellers doing things that they think are the right things to do or the thing the latest book told them or the things that their manager wants. And it focuses entirely on the buyers in my deal, what matters to them, what they need to see, hear, feel, touch and believe and feel comfortable to move forward with me. And then the livering that for every single individualized buyer to move the deals forward

Andy Paul  26:30  

is a term individualized buyer. Right?

Because it is different for each of them.

Mike Kunkle  26:37  

Absolutely. And in different companies they’re very different political environments and people will you know, we thank Aristotle, right for ethos, pathos, and logos. The first sales trainer, because you know, is still today it’s no different humans have not evolved as much as we like to think we have. We, you know, if you make a logical argument, if you make an emotional appeal and that logic backs that and you’ve established credibility. You know, that’s how you make an effective case and presentation. And if you do that from the other person’s point of view outside in with your buyers and understand, you know where they are and why there’s pain there and where they want to go and what the positive outcomes would be and you know, how do you how are you going to work with them to co create a solution that will close that gap. And you can do the ethos, pathos, logos thing throughout that process. You then finally are not ignoring that as logical as we are in business people still make emotional decisions. And we very often don’t like to talk about that is sort of like you know, money people get hung up talking about money or budget or costs or things and we get, we kind of shy away from talking about emotions because oh my god does touchy feely and I certainly don’t want to go there. yet. There were emotional factors and pressures that people feel. I think about something Wayne wires said years ago that struck me said, you know, when you squeeze an orange, what comes out? The juice comes out, right? Why does that come out? It’s what’s inside. And people are the same way if you squeeze people, right, whatever comes out is kind of like what’s inside. And people in corporate America, people in business today are probably more squeezed in a variety of ways than ever before. Right? So there are tensions that they’re feeling and there are pressures that they’re under. And if you can, you know, without being obvious without doing it to be manipulative, if you can understand that individual in their world, and what matters to them and how they’re measured, and what their fears are and what they want to move toward, and then you can work with them to deliver the things that will help them get what they want. And you know, not all of our solutions will magically meet all of those needs for everybody. But if you understand that the best of your ability, along with all of the other factors in decision criteria for each of your buyers, As you have a much higher likelihood of success, and you will separate yourself from the pack of other sellers by a wide margin, because it’s very few people who are truly focused on selling to the whole person,

Andy Paul  29:13  

right. I agree. 100%. I’ve written about that. I think it’s absolutely important. And I think that one of the problems was that companies set up their processes, they define their processes, and train people to processes. But yeah, it’s all about asking the customer for something, right? Rather than investing, serve and building into your process time near the beginning to say, look, we really need to understand this customer, to the degree that you talked about terms of how they make decisions, what are the things that are important to them, you know, define our exit stairs or exit criteria per stage. Before I really get into the meat of how we are moving them from stage to stage?

Mike Kunkle  29:55  

Yeah, well, I mean that you know, I I got into the training profession years ago, through being a subject matter expert, and being a seller and a manager. And so I didn’t have much familiarity with the training profession as a whole. I worked for some guys in a very well run company at the time, who believed in training, but they wanted to know that there was some kind of result from it. They were getting a return on their investment. So I immediately had to figure out whether what I was doing was working or not, and if it wasn’t, why not? And how was I going to pivot? And, you know, kind of create a learning lab where, you know, I got to experiment and keep doing things and tracking results, until I figured out what was working. Now, you know, I don’t mean to disparage the training profession. But one of the things that I learned years later when I started to get out more into the profession and learn more about it as a whole, is that people were talking about, oh, we should move from training to performance, you know, we should get it seat at the table. And oh, we should figure out how we are, you know, going to actually make something happen and create ROI for our training projects. And I learned that a lot of the industry wasn’t doing that. And I didn’t know any better. So I did it out of the gate because that’s what my management team was asking for. I made a lot of mistakes that I bumped to my knees and I skinned my elbows and I figured things out and we pivoted, and we learned together and they gave me the leeway to do that, and figure it out. But that’s where that’s where a lot of these systems that I’m using today started. And then I’ve been able to refine them over the years and build on the work of others and, you know, continue to experiment and implement them. And, you know, that’s how these four systems kind of came into being documented. And for me to be able to talk about them today. It all really started from that work. And I think that there’s a lot that’s done to organizations today that’s very reactive because of the pressures or because of someone’s knee jerk reaction. I think that Scott San Tucci, Brian Lambert, Tim Oh, hi people from the sales enablement society, they refer a lot to random acts of sales enablement, right? Are these sales enablement, leaders being the VPS of broken things, right. And they’re very often put into difficult situations where they just have to do something reactive to plug a hole, and they’re not able to step back strategically and say, let’s look at our organization. Let’s look at these systems. Let’s see where we’re strong and where we have opportunity for improvement. That’ll help me know where to start and let me get a plan going about how to improve each of these systems across my organization, and over time, radically drive up performance. And I know, I’d like to continue to talk about this Andy until I’m blue in the face. And until I see movement in this direction, because I think this is how we You’re going to elevate the sales profession?

Andy Paul  33:03  

Yeah, I think I agree. I mean, I think that, that it’s certainly the bulk of it. Right. I mean, I still think there’s so much work to be done at the individual level, in terms of just basic behaviors and habits that have to work within the systems that you talk about, because you’re gonna have the systems and if people’s behaviors, habits, instincts are completely wrong, the system’s not gonna save them.

Mike Kunkle  33:28  

Well, that’s true, right? But that’s, that’s where the selling support system and the learning system sort of come into play is by having the sales process and methodology by using the technology to support that and, and then by having a learning system where managers are engaged to help people remember what they were learned, because if you don’t remember it, you can’t use it, help them transfer it to the job, because even if you remember, it doesn’t mean you’re going to use it. And then when they use it, it doesn’t mean they’re going to do it well out of the gate right. So then the managers can coach them to mastery. And so if you plug in an effective learning system to support the best practices that you’re teaching, or hopefully that you’re teaching, right, based on top producer analysis, and then you have the sales management system in place, where the managers get into a, an operating rhythm, and part of that includes one on one coaching and doing it not haphazardly, but using a technique like Rome, right results, objectives, activities and methods, what are the results my rep is getting versus their objectives? If there’s a gap, what are the activities they’re using to get those results? And how much of those activities and then what’s the quality or the methodology or the quality that they’re using? Right? And so if you take a look at that, and if you start with analytics, so you know where to go, coach, so many people go coach randomly. I’m just going to ride with Bob today and we’ll see what happens right. But if you if you look at a report that shows the conversion ratios across the pipeline on the last year Three months or whatever your sales cycle is for top producers, for middle producers, for my team as a manager, and then for Bob on my team, I can look right up the line right to see the conversion ratios. And I can point out places where Bob is not doing as well as even the middle producers, let alone the top producers or the rest of my team. Now I can say to Bob, hey, Bob, I want to see you, with customers between this stage in this stage rather than I want to ride along with you and coach you, right. And so if you can target that if you can get the other systems in place, but the system then becomes self perpetuating. And it does deal with competencies, right down to the frontline salespeople and what they’re doing, you know, to meet buying process exit criteria, and how they’re using their skills in the sales methodology. So if you implement all four of the systems, it will, in fact, get down to that level.

Andy Paul  35:57  

Okay, I urge people to go check out Mike’s posted his articles on LinkedIn talking about his link systems to transfer our transform your sales results with a systems approach and how the four parts already when we’re recording this site, I took away that there’s gonna be more

Mike Kunkle  36:14  

one on ones coming. I’ve done the overview selection selling learning and I’ve got the sales management system yet to publish.

Andy Paul  36:21  

Okay, well, good. Well, people should check that out. And Meantime, Mike, thanks for joining us today. Tell people I can find out more about you or connect with you.

Mike Kunkle  36:28  

Mike Kunkel calm or you can just find me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn slash in slash Mike Kunkle all one word. Come in, come and ask to connect to let me know that you heard me here on Andy show accelerate. Happy to do that. And Mike at Mike Kunkel calm if people have questions or want to talk about some of the system stuff.

Andy Paul  36:52  

Excellent. Well, good, Mike. Again, thanks for being on the show. And friends. Thank you for spending this time with me today. Remember, join me again tomorrow, right here. Until then really appreciate it if you get a minute to go to iTunes, subscribe, leave a review to accelerate. I want to hear what you have to say about the show and help us make it better for you. And so thanks again for joining me. And until next time this is Andy Paul. Good selling everyone.