Selling Is Human, with Mary Grothe [Episode 755]

Mary Grothe, Founder & CEO of Sales BQ®, joins me in this episode!

Key Takeaways

• Mary Grothe relates her employment, starting at Paychex before she graduated from college. In 2008 and 2009, Mary was the number one sales rep and was asked to help rewrite their processes and methodologies.
• Mary founded Sales BQ® in 2017. Sales BQ® helps build and execute revenue strategies, for B2B companies coast to coast, of up to $20 million in revenue. They build the revenue funnel through the whole customer journey.
• Mary briefly describes the process and how they work with companies to make sure their clients are making “a lot of money.” It starts with IQ — understanding how the product works in the market to solve buyer problems.
• You must be able to express passion, conviction, and enthusiasm and  “know your stuff.” As you provide expert the client will be comfortable with you. Next, show EQ — be a great human being; share an emotional connection.
• Work consistently with BQ — the behavioral quotient. Be reliable, work harder than ever, avoid procrastination, be organized, block out your time, focus on following a good, pristine process for a high closing rate.
• BQ was what set Mary apart from her colleagues at Paychex. She was never satisfied to get by. She always wanted to do her best.
• Mary talks about the pristine process to close. Each person on the buying team has unique buying criteria, based on their role and need. People bought from Mary because she stood apart from other products or services.
• People connect with other people. Drop the formality and fear. Connect with the prospect as they want to be reached. Different people have different emotional needs. Mary describes how her personality style works.
• Mary tells how she teaches BDR teams to have genuine conversations with their contacts. Being natural is better than being restricted by a script. She shares an example of a “better question” for our time of sheltering in place.
• In sales, Mary memorized client questions and what was important to them. Have your sales conversations around the “why” of customer needs. Mary teaches BDRs to have a frame of reference.
• Andy suggests paying BDRs as you pay AEs. Mary, a hunter, would love to be a BDR. BDRs should be better than “entry-level.” Hire brilliant people and bring them to client meetings. Help your people develop.
• One-on-ones are not about numbers or close dates that you already have in your reports. They are about mentoring and developing talent and skills. Work on your team’s mental mindsets.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul  0:00  

Welcome to Episode 755 of Accelerate the sales podcast. Joining me as my guest this week is Mary Grothe. Mary is the CEO and founder of Sales BQ, an outsourced revenue operations company. Among the topics we’re gonna talk about are the top three attributes Mary believes sellers need to have in order to succeed in today’s environment, including a limitless pursuit of winning, hating to lose, and this inner desire to compete and be number one. Mary and I are also going to get into why you need to be able to sell with passion, conviction and enthusiasm. And we’ll get into details about how to do that. It’s all very interesting. Tell us a little about yourself. You’re based where?

Mary Grothe  5:21  

I’m in Denver, and I’ve lived out here for 20 years or so originally from the Midwest but came out here in my high school years and had a really great opportunity to be forced to have to work at a young age. It’s my childhood, which is fine and got a head start on a lot of my friends and peers. I ended up landing a job at 22 years old with a big payroll and HR company called Paychex, and I started there at 22. I didn’t have my college degree yet, but I got to study underneath the first, I guess one of the highest performance mean mid market sales managers in the country. It was a remarkable time since that division had only been around for about seven years or so. I got to work with the number one sales manager whose team was number one in sales. I also did two years as an admin and knew I wanted to get into sales. It looked exciting. I learned as much of the trade as possible just by getting out in the field and listening to Brian Tracy’s ‘Psychology of Selling’ on a cassette tape. Back then 11 cassette tape series and took two Dale Carnegie courses that I just loved, went out into the field, started selling at 24 years old, and I became the number one rep in 30 days. It was a really fun sales career I sold for three years and was the number one rep for the first two years in sales. And loved about that is I just didn’t know any different and the crazy part looking back is that was 2008 and 2009. Interesting timing for this conversation about your high performing sales, being in a down economy. But I loved it. And I just had such a knack for it, I got a really cool opportunity to work with Mike McCarthy, who is the VP of Sales. The division was 300 million on a $1.7 billion Paychex at the time. He asked for my help to rewrite processes and the methodology and even talk down to compensation modeling and revenue share between divisions and conversations that I had normal I guess at early stage in career 25/26 year old probably wouldn’t be having, but then that really piqued my interest and I wanted to get into more business strategy and revenue strategy. I love Paychex and I set out to conquer the world of building revenue for companies and I had my first business for three years and started that in 2011. It was a great first run, I made a lot of rookie mistakes as an entrepreneur, and I went back to Paychex for three years and sold millions. I got married, had a baby. And then at that point in 2017, I said, all right, I’ve grown up, I’ve matured, I’m a little bit smarter this time around, and I have a few more sales years under my belt. I think that I’m better equipped. So we started Sales BQ, and we’re a firm now. We stretch coast to coast. And we help build revenue strategies and execute upon them for B2B companies that are about 5 to 20 million in revenue.

Andy Paul  8:27  

So outsource sales efforts, outsourced sales management as well?

Mary Grothe  8:32  

We start with building the revenue funnel, and we focus on marketing sales, sales, ops and customer success. So we follow the revenue through the whole customer journey. And we do it in three phases build hire drive, we will first rebuild infrastructure systems processes, of course the tech stack, automate things that should be automated, and then we will hire the talent or develop the existing talent internally, and then we stick around for it to be profitable and that’s our drive bays. My team goes on contract with each other CEOs as the VP of Revenue Operations and or Head of Revenue, and they’ll oversee the entire function of the new revenue engine, we build on a period of about 6 to 12 months to figure it out and make sure that they’re making a lot of money.

Andy Paul  9:13  

Okay, so what is a behavioral quotient? That’s the BQ of Sales BQ. So sales behavior quotient. So what is that?

Mary Grothe  9:23  

The BQ, the behavioral quotient, this is something that was very important to me, because people asked me hundreds of times during those very high performing years at Paychex, what makes me different? Why am I selling more than number two and three combined? Why Am I breaking all these records? When really I didn’t feel like there was anything special about me. I was showing up and doing my job. And I thought, why can’t other people sell this way? Isn’t this how everybody goes about it and they really tried to study me and break apart my process and to see what it was that I was doing well and I broke it into three components. One, it’s the IQ component. It’s understanding the product, the industry, the marketplace, the day in the life of the buyer, how you solve their problems. And I’ve written a couple blogs on this, but it’s all about being able to express passion, conviction and enthusiasm, and really know your stuff because people buy from people that give them a sense of comfort by knowing what the heck they’re talking about, and truly ability to solve their problem and move the needle for them. And so that was a passion of mine was knowing my technology and how it served different industries and types of buyers. The second component was an emotional intelligence component EQ, which is being a great human being and really bringing a human component into the sales conversation, not selling out them not showing up and doing a pitch and word vomiting and getting out of there. It was truly connecting at an emotional level because I quickly found that people bought emotionally and they justified that by decision logically. But if you had the emotional connection, people were more prone to buy. And there are ways to create that. But even if you have those two pieces, you can be wicked smart. And you can be an amazing human being and offer a great connection with your buyer. But you actually have to show up and do the work every single day. And that’s the BQ and that’s the behavioral potion. It is a salesperson’s commitment to showing up every single day and doing whatever they need to do ethically, in order to succeed and it’s tiny decisions. It’s prioritization, it’s the get up and go. It’s avoiding procrastination. It’s being organized. It’s time blocking, it’s pre call planning. It’s not working harder than you need to. It’s being focused on having a high close rate by following a very good pristine process. And it’s about doing the work that needs to be done in order to win, not doing the work and saying I did it at the level that was expected of me or doing enough to get by or to fly under the radar. And I felt like EQ is what set me apart. From my colleagues,

Andy Paul  12:02  

Okay, well, then there’s a lot to unpack there. I was just trying to take that all in. So let’s talk about your pristine process to close. So what was that?

Mary Grothe  12:13  

Oh boy, how much time do we have?

Andy Paul  12:16  

Take as much as you need.

Mary Grothe  12:19  

It all comes down to selling the way the buyer needs to be sold to. And I’m going to break that down further, each buyer has their buying criteria. And sometimes you can generalize that based on your title

Andy Paul  12:36  

Is buying criteria, the same as purchase criteria? Sharing decision criteria about this is what the vendor needs to have and he’s been at this price point, which is different from Hey, these are features we need.

Mary Grothe  12:50  

Correct. I think decision criteria is a separate component of these. I think when you look at the individual buyer, so working in the mid market sale, on an average I would have three, four or five decision makers, influencers, team members and users functionaries as a part of the buying team. Sure. And if I was able to get laser focused on every single quote unquote, buyers, or prospects Buying Criteria, because Nancy and HR were buying for different reasons, than Susan and Payroll, versus Mike and Finance, and CEO, Susan or whatever. Everybody had a different role, and they had different buying criteria. And with a different buying criteria, if you asked me, I would get laser focused on how every single person needed to be heard, valued, how their criteria need to be evaluated, what type of proof of concept I needed to give them, and what kind of human connection I needed to create with each of these people. In order for them to say we’re buying from Mary and I heard it time and time again, throughout. In my career in the multitude of things that I’ve sold, that people are buying from me, because I’m standing apart from every other product or service and thinking about, I have bought, of course, as a consumer, but also as a CEO, I’ve purchased a lot of things in my life. And there have been moments where I need the product or service, but I don’t like the salesperson. And it pains me to know that they’re going to get commission on my sale, because I don’t like them. So if you don’t think there’s weight and how much someone actually likes you as part of the sales process and liking you is a product of doing right by them, and answering the what’s in it for me and solving their challenges and speaking their language and aligning with their needs. And as a reminder, not everybody as touchy feely, be my best friend. I’m going to speak their love language that has to do with driving bottom line and results. It’s going to be a completely different conversation than someone else on the other end of the spectrum. So when I think about this top notch process of selling and converting deals, I would say that I would prioritize every single buyer within the equation and make sure everybody’s needs were met across the board because I wasn’t blind to the fact that they had meetings. When I wasn’t there. They had phone calls, they had email exchanges that I wasn’t a part of. So what I was doing in the precious 30/ 60/90 however many minutes that I had with them, and then the follow through and communication in between the steps of my sales process. What was I bringing for that hands down? They would say we are buying for Mary like, I don’t care. I mean, sure that other company, technology may have shown a little bit better in this area, but I feel comfortable with her. I’m buying from her.

Andy Paul  15:48  

This whole idea that people buy from people is certainly nothing new right. But it is increasingly seemingly elusive skill set to develop and installers to learn how to connect with another human being on an authentic basis. What is in your mind to serve the key to doing that because this is fundamental as to your point, if you can’t do this, everything else that flows after is gonna be affected by

Mary Grothe  16:19  

It is. I think about people showing up to do sales. And it’s almost as if they turn into a different person because now they’re doing sales. And I look at how a human being connects with another human being, maybe they’re a friend, maybe it’s a colleague or a family member. Seeing how that person communicates with people that they care about, and then seeing how that person communicates in a business setting. And sometimes there’s so much formality. There’s fear that’s driving a different type of language coming out of their mouth. They’re focusing on their training, their techniques, their skills, if their managers are listening in or the calls being recorded. They’re focusing on the top tracks that they’re using and progression. And they’re stripping out the ability to just have a conversation. And I think that when you’re talking about how did people genuinely build, we work with a lot of BDR teams and I love them. I love top of funnel. I’m a hunter. I’m not a nurturer. I’m very high urgency and fast paced. And because I’m sure you can tell, it’s typically hard for me to build rapport and build relationships. And I empathize with BDRs. And sometimes it’s difficult over the phone, over email, on top of funnels, where you get shut down a lot, unless your messaging is really great or timing is good. And so I love working with those teams because they’re in this mindset, especially if it’s a BDR team that they’re younger in their career, and they’re really cutting their teeth and figuring out sales and they’re following these screens. And steps and processes. And one of my favorite things to do with them is to teach them the why behind what they’re saying and how it falls in resonates with the buyer, and to create more of that human connection through just being genuine and having a conversation. Actually this is a funny story. I was sitting at a public sales seminar, and someone stood in front of the room, a sales leader who was showing a technology and he played two different sound bites. And one was a BDR, who followed a script. The second was a BDR that was just natural and having conversation and fell off the script a few times. And what was very interesting. As the sales leader was going in, he was showing off a recording technology that he really believed in and also a back end process. And he was waiting for the audience to rate the two calls which one was better and he was going for the scripted, recorded follow the process call was better. And by overwhelming response, the audience voted, the other call was better. And it shocked him. And he didn’t know where to lead the rest of his presentation. And it was at that moment, what stood out for me. And that was about two and a half years ago close to when we started Sales BQ. And it stood out for me to realize nothing, no scripting process and whatnot, if we can train, especially this younger generation that’s grown up on so much technology, and they don’t really use phones and they’re not great at eye contact and confrontation. And if we can train them to bring back human conversation and connection, I think that we can really arm them to be powerful. And so some of the work that we do with our BDRs is getting them to have more natural conversations, asking better questions, and then knowing where to pivot and navigate based on the buyer responses and bringing more of that gentle human conversation into the call.

Andy Paul  19:59  

So to encourage that, what’s a better question when opening a call? 

Mary Grothe  20:05  

No, it just depends. I, we custom write these for all of our clients, I can give you an example. So we’ve got one right now that’s working in the world of digital advertising. And in OTT and CTV and programmatic and there’s with what’s happening in our society right now in our economy and everything with the Coronavirus. There’s been a huge shift and a lot of their clients were pausing ad spend and freaking out like we have to conserve cash, we can’t spend money. And so the sales team immediately felt like we can’t make outbound calls. Because who’s gonna buy from us right now everybody’s stopping and it’s like, well, wait a second. What are all these people who are stuck working from home doing their streaming? What do you sell? Let’s have a different conversation. And so in order to cut through the challenges that we’re having right now, we’re having them open up with a conversation and they’re calling direct to agencies, advertising agencies that may or may not have this special to your skill set internally, and so they’re able to white label it, if you will, and bring it forward to their clients. But they’re opening up with a question of curiosity and empathy leading in towards what’s happening. How has this impacted your business? We’re in the same boat. Talk to me about your agency right now. How is this impacted? What are you feeling from it being paused? What is leadership told you? So these are bigger, bolder questions, and this is a specific example with what’s going on in our society today. But if you think about a regular outbound call. Hey, Andy, this is Mary over ABC advertising. We’re a digital advertising firm that focuses on OTT, CTV and other programmatic advertising methods. Do you have 15 to 20 minutes for us to talk about your needs and advertising, what you’ve done historically, the answer is probably going to be no. But if I’m opening up and saying, Andy, you may not have heard our name or ABC advertising, we’re out of Colorado. My name’s Mary. You weren’t expecting my call, I know we’re in a very interesting time right now. May I take a moment and tell you why I’m calling. And then you gain that permission to have the opening call, say, and then you can open it up from that point, which you get the permission to tell them why you’re calling. We work with hundreds of advertising agencies across the country. And within the last week, we’ve had at least five dozen notifications pause or cancel campaigns, what’s happening in your business right now? Because I think we’ve come up with a creative way that we might be able to help you with the stock app on revenue, so you don’t experience such a huge loss. Can you tell me what you’ve had happen just in the past week, what’s happening with your campaigns? So we’re opening up and we’re having a question that’s built off of human interaction, a trigger event, and it’s about empathy and curiosity. And it’s not pushing an agenda on the sales person’s side. That is an outbound message that’s going to get somebody that feels like Okay, wait, you understand what’s going on? You’re bringing me something of value. And this is pressing right now because it’s related to a trigger event.

Andy Paul  23:00  

Well, I mean, I think a great example. But seems like, to my experiences is, that what we’re seeing is that, and you touched on earlier is, that reps are feeling this pressure, right? And I’ve got so many things I need to do. I’ve got you know, X number of conversations that need to be set up that means X number of dials. I got so many emails I need to set up. And it just becomes easier in their mind or safer in their mind just to default to sort of the script. So how do you work with teams to overcome this tendency? And it really starts at the top right, because increasingly the way that inside sales is implemented, it’s become about compliance, right? We’ve got a process, we’ve got scripts, sales really have been reduced to a game of chance, right? If we just do this often enough, we’re gonna get a certain number of results, which isn’t sustainable, right. So how do you start at the top of the managers, look we want to develop the individual capabilities of sales, you might want to have a bill form to the best of their abilities as an aggregate that’s gonna help you more. How do you get the sales manager to serve, open their eyes and lay off and say, yeah, let’s let’s take a different focus on this.

Mary Grothe  24:12  

I’m going to hit on two things that you said there. One, the reason that we default to scripts is if we don’t have it built, if we don’t have the neural pathways built in our mind, and we haven’t stored that data in long term memory. I’ll explain. When you’re under pressure, or you’re triggered, or you’re not sure what to do, you’ll fall back on what you’ve always known. And so if you’re training, just scripts, those might be memories. And that’s what they know. And that’s where their comfort level is. And so if a call is going in a direction or someone says something or they’re triggered, they’re going to fall back on what they know. Now, if you can train capabilities, like you’re talking about to be of the same level of importance, that’s also what gets stored in long term memory. Early in my sales career. I was flown out to beautiful Rochester, New York. Thankfully after the blizzards. But it actually is very, pretty rare for there and I gotta stay up there for two weeks with 20 of my new best friend reps across the country being promoted into sales. And the first thing they had us do was to memorize the Paychex story. And I had it memorized to the point that I still remember it today. Paychex was founded in 1971 by Thomas Golisano with $300 in his pocket in his garage, right? So this traditional founder story, and I memorize, it’s probably two pages long and I memorized the entire story. I also then memorized the technology, not just the features and functionality, but I was memorizing the word tracks and the scripting, that the trainer was training, so I knew what to say when we hit different features. But then more importantly, we were listening to actual client conversations when I got back into the field because I memorize all those data points, but it’s very one sided within when I got into the field and I started selling what I started to memorize, or client questions and client responses of what was important to them? How is what you know, how are these scripts? How are these questions? How are these answers? Why is that important? And if we can memorize the why behind it and build the capabilities around having a conversation behind the why is this important. I feel like that’s the training that’s missing. And in fact, one of our BDR teams right now has a new VP of Sales. And we’re brought in specifically to work with the BDR team, not the rest of the sales organization. And this is a very talented VP of Sales. He has done turnaround, he has been brought in by private equity. He’s very good. And we sat down together, and I looked at him in the eye and said we’re going to focus on training this BDR team that well, to have frame of reference to understand the why behind the product that you sell, how it makes someone’s life better, different use cases, how companies are, I want them to be able to say you know, I haven’t spent a lot of time in manufacturing quite early in my career. But what you just said reminds me of another manufacturing client that we have let me run this past to what we did for them. And let’s have a conversation to see if that resonates. We were able to automate A, B, and C, which resulted in X, Y, and Z. And this was extremely well received by the organization. This is where we took them. Now tell me, what are some of those processes that you have internally? Are they similar to this? Or by telling the story? Does it evoke something inside of you to think of an idea that we can talk about? And he’s looking at me like, I’m nuts? Because you can’t train and BDR to have a conversation like that? And I said, you can watch me. Sure we will train the BDR to have conversations like that because they need to do have meaningful conversations. This is a first impression This is the first line of defense with a prospect. Why are we not empowering them with capabilities to have powerful conversations on the front end? Because then otherwise, they’re just a glorified appointment setter, and why don’t you just automate that through your marketing, but if you want a great first point of conversation, train up this team to be brilliant in that. And it’s really not that hard and they’re really honestly eager for it. Because nobody likes to not know the next answer. They don’t want to have fear of where do I take this call? What do I say next?

Andy Paul  28:13  

Sure. So another approach is just having a conversation about this earlier today is what we hire more experienced people into the BDR/SDR role. I mean, right now we just use it to serve, quite frankly, cannon fodder for the most part. Yeah, we’re gonna hire a bunch of people in those roles and those that survive great, those that don’t wash them out. But why not look at Kevin’s conversation with Aaron Ross what predictable revenue today. Yeah. 

Mary Grothe  28:47  

I would absolutely love to be a BDR. I’m a hunter. And I absolutely believe that there are talented individuals far into their careers that are proven out that they’re brilliant in the opening prospecting conversation, absolutely. And why would you not pay even $100,000 base salary for the best of the best in the business that’s able to convert. It’s three x four x 10 x of initial conversations into a qualified opportunity. Why organizations are willing to spend countless dollars in turnover and churn through entry level without training. I mean, some of this entry level talent, I was entry level talent, but I got all the training in the world. And I had mentorship and development and people that cared about me, and I know that’s why I am where I am.

Andy Paul  29:38  

Well today, but I would argue that in large part based on you and we’ve never met before this call, but based on listening to you, I would say you are where you are, because you listen to your customers. I mean, we fundamentally learn how to sell from our customers, we don’t learn how to sell from sales training. And so you listen, and this is what people I think that are more mature have experienced. Yeah, it’s not to say that we don’t need an entry level sales job we actually absolutely do. Maybe it’s inbound leads just aren’t inbound leads. But sure, yeah, there’s this bias against people to have experience because what happened is so many managers default to quantity, right? We need to have, you know, so many dials so many emails, so many conversations. And they think that, you know, anybody that’s been in for more than 5/10 years is burnt out, or they’re too old to do it or whatever. Right? Yeah, there’s great resources to your point. People, I know you’ve seen some in your office, I’ve met some in your career, I’ve met more because I’ve been a little bit longer, who are just brilliant to that. Why not let these people do that. And then we shorten the cycle for many companies.

Mary Grothe  30:41  

I couldn’t agree more with one of our clients in Southern California. That’s the exact approach that we took. We brought somebody in who is very late into his career, and he is a true prospecting machine. And he’s brilliant and you should hear him on the phone because you can tell how seasoned and knowledgeable. He’s calm. And he’s so kind and genuine and curious on these calls. And he has a lower number of outbound dials per week, because his calls are so good. He’s keeping people on the phone and he’s got a phenomenal conversion rate. He’s more expensive, but you know what they have in their budget to have two or three SDRs, and he’s hitting the metrics for all three of them. It’s just one person. And he’s brilliant in it. And of course, now he’s spoiled everyone. Yeah, so I do believe 100% what you said I think for the right organization, that is the better strategy.

Andy Paul  31:50  

I think more organizations need to look at him, I think there’s several things are playing out. One is sort of immaturity on the management level. I mean, if you’ve got very inexperienced managers, they don’t have the self confidence to hire people, that know more than they do. I mean, you clearly do, I’m sure that I was looking at your team, you’ve got people that have some gray hair in there. So you’re not afraid of that. But that does hold a lot of people back right, as far as I can hire this person, because, you know, they may know more than I do, and I can’t have that.

Mary Grothe  32:22  

Well, that’s a shame. Because I learned the hard way, my first three years of owning a business starting at age 27. Now I think about it, maybe 26 and a half. I don’t remember. But I had a terrible ego back then. And I had come off of being the number one salesperson and I was making a very wonderful income. I had a lot of praise, recognition. I had a very big head, and I thought I knew everything and I thought no one can do it as good as me. So I started a business where I’m doing everyone’s job and I’m the only one that can do everything. And it became very tiring and very exhausting. And it was also limiting me from scaling. I didn’t know how to recruit, I didn’t know how to hire, I didn’t know how to delegate. A lot of rookie mistakes were made. The second time around, thankfully, I had the opportunity to go through those three years. And they said, I don’t have as much energy as I used to. And now I’m married with a baby, I don’t have time for that. I’m not working 20 hour days. And I knew I had to do something different. And that was all in hiring brilliant people. Additionally, I do business development for the company. And I was running into this problem, I’d sell the account and the CEO would look at me and say, and you’re handling this, right. And I said, no it’s going to go to a VP on my team. And there was a big disconnect there and a lot of concern. And so when I started to bring the VP’s into the conversation, sit down in front of them and they realize these people are brilliant, and in many many cases, they’re far more gentle. I consider that to be the biggest win. And I wish more managers would look at it that way. Otherwise, you’re going to be stuck doing the heavy lifting and be the one on the chopping block when your team doesn’t perform, why don’t you just make it easy on yourself and be a great producer and produce a great show?

Andy Paul  34:17  

Yeah, it seems these very messages are hard for managers to get across to managers. And it’s always been the case, but I don’t say it’s any worse today than it’s ever been. But it’s this idea that you only succeed if your people succeed. And so if there’s a moment in your day that you’re not devoting to helping your people get better. What are you doing? But I mean, what’s happened, something we have to start with because we have the tools and technology that would give us so much transparency into the activities that people are undertaking sellers undertaking as we become fixated with metrics, and while they’re vitally important is now it’s still a people game. And so there’s this reluctance I remember sitting at this conference a couple years ago, I tell the story probably too often on the show about VP CRO’s of tech companies, SAS companies sitting up on a diacetyl at a convention conference and talking about the fact that more than one of them that they don’t do one on ones anymore. I find that doesn’t work. It’s like, well, I don’t think the issue is the one on one itself. I think this shows you and yet people think they can get by just looking at the numbers. You can’t.

Mary Grothe  35:35  

How do I just shocked with that statement? One on ones for me, those precious time. That’s development time. That’s connection time. That’s just getting raw in how do we serve you, how do we help you, what is getting in your way? What do you need, it’s a moment for pride and excitement out of a salesperson to share their wins and to get the feedback. And to be fed through recognition and acknowledging their efforts and making that person acknowledged and feeling that they have earned their spot on that team and that you’re fighting for them that one on one time is precious, right? I can’t believe that.

Andy Paul  36:16  

Well, hey, believe it but be if we were to playback your answer. And this is really significant. What’s the one thing you didn’t say takes place in that one on one?

Mary Grothe  36:27  

Reviewing their numbers. You know their numbers because we’ve implement great technology. I don’t need somebody to read me a report that I’ve already read.

Andy Paul  36:35  

And so you got all this talk in the sales industry about we got to do more coaching of our people, get more coaching and what the overwhelming majority of sales managers think coaching is opportunity coaching, we’re going to work through this deal. It’s like, no, that doesn’t help your person get better. How do you help your person get better? What do they need from you to your point before us in order to achieve their goals? How can we help them get better? And, and that just doesn’t enter the equation for most managers on their one on ones? I think it’s about what are we gonna close?

Mary Grothe  37:12  

And it’s correct because that’s what’s coming from the top down to them and they’re missing. Right the point of the conversation, they’re having it, they’re focusing on the wrong end of the problem, because I know with my manager, the way that I was believed in and mentored and developed and cared for as a human being did more good. And because the investment was made and me as a human being and setting me up for success, sure, of course, we talked about deals. We talked about sticky situations progressing, what do I do, this decision maker out of the blue came in I didn’t know what do we do, okay, there’s that but somebody believed in me, and if I didn’t have that mental mindset that everything. That’s the BQ wheel that we work on. How you think fuels how you feel, and your emotional state triggers your actions and those actions dictate your performance. And then that’s the BQ wheel. And if you’re not investing in the mental mindset, you’re not getting your people’s head right, which is going to trigger their emotions which will dictate their actions. If you’re constantly hitting the performance. That’s the fourth part, we’ll go to start at the top and work on mental mindset so that they’re in the game and they’re feeling cared for because the mental mindset will trigger their emotional state. And I don’t know about you, but for me, as an emotional person, especially as a woman, I am like my personality style, I can get worked up easily. And I know it’s always based on the thoughts going on in my head. And I do something with those thoughts. I make a decision on the thoughts on how I’m going to interpret them and what story I’m telling myself right because of the fact that came into my mind like I’m looking at it snow right now. And you know what, I’m home the rest of the day. So I’m looking at the snow. And the thought here is, wow, it’s beautiful outside, look at that snow. And then the emotional feeling is I am so thankful right now that I get to work from home. And, gosh, it feels so good to be in and hunker down, then what do you think my actions are? Well, I’m ready to work, I’m ready to get things done. Inside on this snowy day, I can’t go out. I’m so thankful to be able to work from home. And then what’s my performance going to be? It’s going to be really good. But if I look out the window, and I look at the snow and let’s say my day was different, I had to go out and eat and I’m like, I can’t drive in this car. I’m gonna cancel my meetings. I can’t, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Let me check all the news reports. Well, now I’m reading 50 other news reports that have devastating news in them. And now I’m in this emotional states coming in. This is throwing a wrench in my day. This is absolutely terrible. What happens to my actions, I might be canceling meetings. I’m not emotionally prepared for my meetings. I’m in a bad mood. My execution isn’t where it needs to be. I’m off my game. And then my performance is lowered. All that happened is it snowed today? Right? Why are there two wildly different outcomes and that’s human nature. And that’s how we are as human beings and as a manager, if you’re not managing the mental state, and you’re only focused on the performance component, you’ve missed the entire wheel.

Andy Paul  40:09  

Yeah. Well, I saw your wheels, shares a lot in common with a favorite quote of mine that I’ve had up in my house for ages, from Vince Lombardi. If you remember Vince Lombardi was the coach of the Green Bay Packers back in the 60s. I grew up in Wisconsin at that time. And he was a real quote machine. But he has this quote, and I can send it to you after it’s but it almost reads like a poem says; Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words, Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits that become your character. 

Mary Grothe  40:56  

That’s a good one.

Andy Paul  40:58  

Yeah, but I mean, you have three or four those lines from in your wheel from that? And it’s really important, I think is we have to there’s so many elements in there’s, you know, obviously, thoughts leading to beliefs, beliefs leading to actions, actions into words, or words leading to action, excuse me an action, seeing the habits, but then the sum of all that is our character. And this gets back to how our initially perceived by our our buyers, right, that first conversation we have, they are forming a perception of who you are as a person, your character very quickly, and that’s the sum total of all these other things, right, those other things, I don’t have an after that there, they lead up to it. And very important for as you’re looking at developing yourself as an individual. If your manager working there people’s is this is a sort of a hierarchy, and vice versa. Mercurial. I think that’s you have to keep in mind.

Mary Grothe  41:52  

Cool, huh? All right. So maybe

Andy Paul  41:55  

This has been a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we’re running out of time, but let’s make sure to do again. We didn’t get any of the questions I had lined up asking.

Mary Grothe  42:03  

Oh my goodness, there’s gonna be a part two.

Andy Paul  42:06  

Yeah. Well, if you want, I think that yeah, it was great to meet you and great to hear what you’re doing and obviously, a lot of what you’re talking about, I think resonates and will resonate with a lot of people because it’s it’s sales about people. And that’s that’s fundamentally what you’re, you’re focused on and that’s the way we succeed. So, Mary, great to meet you. Hopefully you do well

Mary Grothe  42:32  

Thanks for having me on today. I will talk to you soon.

Andy Paul  42:44  

Okay, friends, that was accelerate for the week. First of all, as always, I want to thank you for joining me. And I want to thank my guests, Mary Grothe. Until next week, I’m your host, Andy Paul. Good selling everyone.