How We 2x Sales Revenue & Reduce Sales Cycle By 50% | Pieter Leenhouts - 2032

Imagine doubling your close rate and cutting your sales cycle in half. That's not a hypothetical. It's exactly what Pieter Leenhouts https://www.linkedin.com/in/pieterwleenhouts/ and his team did at Tax Guard, a Cogency Global company that sells to banks and financial institutions. Pieter walked me through exactly how they pulled it off, and it wasn't magic. It was math, structure, and a relentless focus on the front end of the pipeline. Why Their Sales Cycle Was So Long To Begin With Tax Guard's solution was new to the financial institutions they sold to, so reps had to spend real time educating buyers before those buyers even understood why they needed it. That education requirement, combined with deals that stalled out with the wrong contacts, created a long sales cycle and a lower close rate. Fixing it started with the pipeline itself, not with pushing reps to work harder. Give Every Rep the Right Size Pipeline, Not Just More Deals Pieter's team found that around 120 opportunities was the right pipeline size for most of their account executives, though the number flexes based on how efficient a rep is. Instead of leaving reps to self source every opportunity, the team loads a portion of that pipeline for them, so reps spend more time working real opportunities and less time hunting for net new business. Their market of five to ten thousand financial institutions is well defined, which makes it possible to plan pipeline size with real precision instead of guessing. Split the Pipeline: 70 Percent Pre-Handraiser, 30 Percent Post-Handraiser Of those 120 opportunities, about 70 percent sit in the pre-handraiser stage, where reps are still working to connect with people. The remaining 30 percent sit in the post-handraiser stage, where there's already an active, ongoing conversation with the customer. That split keeps reps focused on outreach without starving the deals that are already moving. Marketing and Sales Load the Pipeline Together Pieter is careful to point out that loading the pipeline isn't a sales-only effort. It's a collaboration between sales leadership and marketing leadership. Marketing helps identify and prioritize which accounts and departments actually fit where Tax Guard's solution applies. That partnership is part of why the team can hand reps a healthier mix of fast cycle and slow cycle opportunities instead of leaving it to chance. Why They Kept AEs on the Full Buyer Journey Instead of Handing Off to BDRs Because their solution requires ongoing education, Pieter's team decided against using BDRs or SDRs to book appointments and hand off to AEs. The same person a buyer starts talking to needs to stay with them as a trusted advisor through the entire education process. Pieter is clear that this only makes sense because of how complex and unfamiliar their solution is. A more transactional sale can absolutely work with a BDR handoff. The Cadence: 17 Touches Over 70 Days Each opportunity in the pipeline follows a defined cadence, roughly 17 touches over 70 days, with three to five contacts tied to each account. That structure turns follow-up into a math exercise. Once you know the number of opportunities, steps, and contacts, you know almost exactly how many activities a rep needs to complete each day. The cadence isn't automated. Reps still show up and do the work themselves, which keeps the process personal instead of robotic. Personalization Is What Makes the Math Work Pieter gets five to six hundred pitches a day himself, so he knows exactly what gets ignored: generic, unpersonalized outreach. His team uses AI to gather background information quickly, but the personal touch, referencing where someone went to school or what they care about, still has to come from the rep. That combination of structure and personalization is what actually breaks through the noise instead of just adding to it. How They Catch Reps Who Are Gaming Activity Numbers To catch reps who rack up huge activity numbers without real substance, like hanging up before voicemail or blasting the same email to everyone, Pieter's team looks past raw activity totals. They review call recordings and email engagement to see whether real conversations are actually happening, not just whether the activity got logged. The goal isn't to catch people doing something wrong. It's to find the reps who are getting real engagement and figure out what they're doing differently so the whole team can replicate it. Weekly and Monthly Rhythms Keep the Team Accountable Every rep gets a weekly one on one that covers both big strategic issues, like what's happening in the market or with competitors, and specific opportunities that need a plan to close. Once a month, Pieter's team reviews the front end metrics as a group: how many people are in cadence, how many emails are opening, how many real conversations are happening. They also track Net Promoter Score to measure how the sales experience actually felt to the buyer, not just whether a deal closed. Their Tech Stack: Salesforce, Gong, Gong Flows, and Delighted Salesforce is their core CRM, and Pieter says most of what makes it powerful is what gets plugged into it. Gong records and analyzes sales conversations, which lets the team track things like how often pricing objections come up and coach reps faster than they could otherwise. Gong Flows adds structured outreach sequences with AI built in, and Delighted measures NPS so the team can see how the buying experience felt from the customer's side. The Numbers Pieter's Team Watches Every Week Close rate and pipeline velocity are the two headline numbers Pieter checks first, since they show whether the whole system is working. Underneath those, his team tracks how long deals sit in each of their seven pipeline stages, with alerts when something sits too long. They also watch the quality of the opportunities reps are given and how well each rep prospects into the right people, since strong activity numbers mean nothing if they aren't pointed at the right accounts. "Activities create opportunities, opportunities create sales. The only thing we control is our activity level." — Pieter Leenhouts Resources Connect with Pieter Leenhouts on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pieterwleenhouts/Learn more about Tax Guard, a Cogency Global company. https://tax-guard.com/Keep track of your sales activity and boost your results with the Prospect Pro sales tool. https://prospectpro.io/Step up your sales game with Sales Mastermind. Get accountability, stay motivated, and tackle the blockers keeping you from hitting your goals. https://thesalesevangelist.com/sales-mastermind/Visit Blue Mango Studios for help creating podcast production content. https://bluemangostudios.com/Join our LinkedIn cohort and learn to prospect the right way. https://thesalesevangelist.com/linkedin-prospecting-course/ Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/cx/20/09/sales-navigator-podcast?src=re-pod&trk=tse&veh=tse&mcid=6897323946090332160. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey http://thesalesevangelist.com/survey. https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/lc5yAa8P We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-evangelist/id788738885, <a...

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• 1:53Speaker 00

  Imagine doubling your close rate and reducing your sales process by 50%. You'll be doing some pretty good things, right? Within your organization, making some good money. Peter and I, we connected about this exact same thing because that's what he did in his organization. And he is humble about it, but what they're doing, it's remarkable. And I can't wait to tell you all about it. Check it out.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Calley, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. On this episode, we have the one and only Peter Leehouse, and he is the VP of Sales for a company called Attack Guard. And Peter sells to the financial space. We've had an opportunity to connect and Peter shared with me what they were doing with their team. Like he took a team that doubled their close rate and they reduced their pipeline, the sales cycle by 50%. And it didn't come to like any magical beings or anything crazy. It was just like straight math and science and just working with humans. And it's fantastic what happened as a result of this.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  If you're a sales leader, this is a must episode that you should listen to. I won't take much more time, but if it's your first time listening to our podcast, subscribe, because we're going to drop stuff like this all the time for you. If you've been listening for a minute, please go ahead and take the link and share it with somebody else that can join. And as we dive in today, listen to how you can apply these things to your sales effort and to see how it can help you to thrive and to succeed. Check it out.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  Welcome to the show, Peter.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Oh, well, thank you, Donald. Great to be here. Look forward to our conversation today.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  I'm definitely looking forward to this. You know, in particular, the idea of what you all did is what's fascinating to me. How you were able to not only, you doubled your close rate. And that was pretty remarkable, especially in an era where we want to get more from our account executives. No matter what side of the line you're sitting on or what business, we want to get more business coming in. So I'm excited to go through this case study, so to speak, and see how you did it. I bragged about you a little bit in the beginning, but tell us a little bit more about what your role is right now.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, thanks, Donald. It's been an interesting journey. Look forward to talking about it. My current role is the Vice President of Sales for Cogency Global, which is kind of a mid-market company that provides business services to a variety of clients. I really focus on our financial services clients, which are large banks and all kinds of financial institutions.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  All right, so you got all the data here. Here's where I want to go into with this. You guys chose an approach that led to amazing results. This result was, we saw as your organization, I'm quoting you, 2X the close rate and you reduced the sales cycle by 50%. Everyone on this call right now is wanting to know, Peter, what did you do?

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Tell us the problem, what you guys were seeing, and then how did you go about it? I know it's three main focus we want to look at, but this floor is yours.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I'm no miracle worker, so whatever I'm going to do is very replicable for anyone here. So I'll just share our journey and kind of where we are. So our solution was a new solution for financial institutions, something that they weren't using before. And where there was a fair amount of learning and education that you need to have those customers to understand why they would need this solution and how they would implement it in their business, right? And so that gives you more opportunity to shorten. If you're more efficient in the way you can communicate the message and set your reps up for more success, you see a higher close rate and you're going to see shortened the sales cycle.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  And so when I joined the organization, what we saw was a long sales cycle because it took a lot of education. And you went down the path of the number of people that were just never went anywhere. And, you know, because of that, we also had a lower close rate. So in looking at that, it was like, well, first of all, let's look at the pipeline. And what can we do within that pipeline to increase the velocity of what moves through the pipeline? But more importantly, on the front end of the pipeline, let's make sure we put the right type of opportunities and the right type of things in the pipeline so our reps can be successful. So one of the things that we noticed is that we have good AEs, they're going to be very aggressive, right? And I call them flag planters.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  So they look at a bunch of accounts, they're going to plant a flag in. It goes like, that's my, it's an opportunity that's sitting in my pipeline. And we go like, okay, let's make sure, we make sure everyone has a healthy pipeline. And we look at those opportunities on the front end. And instead of them loading their own opportunities, we load those opportunities for them. So that's one of the things we did. We looked at the quality of those opportunities. We made sure that each AE for our business, we said around 120 opportunities is about the right size of the pipeline. And of about those 120 opportunities, 70% of them are going to sit in what we refer to as the pre-hand raiser stages of the pipeline, which means we're reaching out, we're trying to connect with people.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  On 30% are going to sit in the post-hand raiser where we're engaging customers. We have ongoing conversations to forward to deal. So that's really how we looked at the pipeline and said, let's increase the quality of the pipeline. Let's make sure everyone has an equitable pipeline and put that in. So that was one of the key things that we looked at. Now, not every rep has 120. Some reps can manage 200 opportunities because they're extremely efficient and they're much faster. And some reps will struggle at that 120, but you know, like we found 120 was kind of the right size for, as an average for most of our AEs.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  So we'll stay on that point there. So you guys were helping them to get those other deals. I mean, I have 90 deals in my pipeline right now. Am I going to get help from you to get to that point, that 120? Or is that you're going to coach the rep to get more pipeline, more right deals in the pipeline? Help me understand that part.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's a great question. So if you, if you think about it, the type of organizations we sell to our financial services organizations and that universe is pretty well-defined and finite, right? And so depending on how you slice it and dice it, it's anywhere between five and 10,000, you know, organizations that you run after. And so what we do is like, we understood where our solutions fit within those financial institutions. We understood who the right people were to go after and which departments of those institutions served as applicability as we went through it. And so then it became just a math equation to say, here are the ones we're run after. We also had a good sense of what were the ones that were fast cycle opportunities versus the ones that were slower cycle opportunities.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  If you're going to send to a very large trillion dollar plus bank, those opportunities are just going to move slower because of regulatory and all kinds of reasons versus a small nibble alternative finance company who can move much quicker to implement this that. So you want to give a balance of those opportunities. And yes, we would give that to this rep. So if you were sitting at 90 opportunities, which nice job, by the way, Donald, getting 90 opportunities to your pipeline. So I hope you're forwarding them. And so we would say, hey, we're going to give you 30 extra ones to really run after it. So yeah, we would manage that for you. And we was actually, when I say we, that's, it's always an easy way to say that. It's really a collaboration between the leadership in, of the sales team as well as the leadership of the marketing team,

• 9:42Speaker 01

  who's were very tied together with the marketing team at this organization, which is really, really important as well.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  This is awesome. I love that. So it's more, we're not telling the sales rep, you have 90, go and find another 30 deals that you need to add to it. We're going to help you because I want you to focus on working these opportunities towards net new business. I mean, I'm sure there's still some self source stuff that they're going to do, but it's not now your majority of your time is to go cold call. I want to make sure you're focusing on opportunities.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, you know, sure, there's stuff that comes in. They go to, you know, conferences and everything and they have stuff to have opportunity to put stuff in the pipeline. But yeah, we're going to make sure there's 120 opportunities in there. And the reason why we focused AEs on that, because people always ask me, why didn't you get a BDR and SDR really to set up the appointments for your team? And that's a great question. In our industry, what we found, and especially with the solution that we had, is that education piece. This is a new piece of information technology that they need. You don't want to have that handoff. You want the people that the people who are reaching out to those AEs, those same people want to be on that journey with that same AE as that trusted advisor.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  So that's really important part of the cycle for us as well.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  I like that because I feel sometimes every business is different, more transactional sale. I'm selling a CRM for lack of better words. Like I can have an AE, I mean, a BDR, run that motion for the most part there. But when you're, again, more complex, and I think that's important for leaders to understand that no two companies I found are created equal. You have certain things in common, but there are different ways of it, especially industries more so, probably the best way to look at it, behave different.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  What you sell and who you sell it to are things you need to look at when you create your sales motion, right? So I'm going to share some things that have made us very successful here. I want people to take away the things that go like, oh, that makes sense in my environment, but don't try to force fit it in an environment where it doesn't make sense. Every sales motion needs to be different based on the market you run after and the solution you're selling.

• 11:58Speaker 00

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• 12:39Speaker 00

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• 13:01Speaker 00

  Going to that opportunity, because I know somebody is listening to this and they're like 90, 120 opportunities, 70 of them are not, you know, moving right now. You see, why don't you just focus on less opportunities? How did you determine what is a good opportunity or not, though, Peter?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, that's a great question. And I'm not going to do the math for everyone here. But so if we think about a 40 hour work week, right, which, you know, is probably a good assumption. Some people put 60 in, some people would put 30 in, but let's go with a 40 hour work week. It becomes a math exercise, right? So one of the things that we learned is that if I give you 120 opportunities and say, go run after it, and here's some materials to reach out, you don't create that repeatable discipline as well as the learnings that you need for your team to be successful. So we're very prescriptive in a way that we want the initial outreach to happen. And so we have what we refer to

• 13:56Speaker 01

  as cadences. And the cadences would look like something like this, like as, and I'm throwing this out, a 2070 or a 1770, where you basically said, there's going to be a minimum of 17 touches over 70 days, right? And then each cadence, each opportunity will have somewhere between three and five people attached to that opportunity. So when you start doing the math, right? And you start doing, okay, I have 120 opportunities, 70% of those are ones that I have in a cadence. There's this many steps in this many days, and there's this many people attached to it. You do that math, you go like, this is how many activities they're going to have in a day. There's how much are you going

• 14:39Speaker 01

  to spend on those activities? These are not automated activities. These are just things like you show up, you jump in your software and go like, I need to do 40 things today. There are going to be email outreach, there are going to be phone calls, there are going to be social media outreach, and they need to be personalized. Because that's the other thing that we learned. You can't just, like, I can hire AI, and AI is pretty good. But if you don't really dig deep and you look at your prospects, you understand where they went to college, you understand what their hobbies are, and you customize the tagline that really speaks to them, that really makes you stand out. That's not something AI is going to do. That's going to take a personal touch of an AE. They can use AI to get old

• 15:23Speaker 01

  information there, but how do I create something that's going to break through the cloud? I don't know about you, but I get pitched every day. I get 500, 600 emails a day, and most of them are someone pitching me on something, right? And the only things that are going to get my attention are things that are really unique. Either they address my problem in something that I'm really trying to figure out, or they connect with me on a personal level. It goes like, oh, this person really took the time to do that. And that's how we challenge our AE. So we hold them accountable, but a cadence, it becomes a math exercise, which only have so much time and so many outreaches you can do. They walk in during the day, they see the outreach on the free hand raiser stages, they know what they need

• 16:05Speaker 01

  to do, and it needs to be personalized. So if you do this well, it becomes a math exercise. What can you rapturally do? And so that's kind of how we do it. So is 120 the right number? It depends. It depends what your cadences look like, how much personalization. But for us, that was the right number, and really math drove that. I find that sales is more and more a data exercise. It's still, we connect with people, we need to be personal with people, we need to make sure we understand their pains and we can solve their pains. But what, everything that underlies there, the discipline, the follow-up, that becomes more and more data driven. I think that's really important.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a, it's been argued, you know, is it a science? Is it an art? It's a combination of both. The more I see it, and the more I've, you know, working with in leadership positions, there is a definitely a science part to it that's more so than the art form. And I hope I don't get any flack for that, but I would probably say maybe like a 60, 40. Because especially right now, yeah, you got to understand data, you got to understand, you know, where to plug people, where to find people, the process. If you don't have that science part down, it doesn't matter how artistic you are at asking effective questions and to communicate. If you can't get in front of people, it doesn't matter at that point. So that's 60, 40, I'd probably put it right now.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's getting harder and harder to connect with people, right? You know, there was a time where it was easier. It was becoming harder and harder. And so you need to use all the tools at your disposal, including technology, AI, and then that personalization to really make that connection. Like I said, we're both pitched a lot. It's hard to stand out.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  And it's definitely difficult. If you're, yeah, you can see, you can sense it from a mile away to being in sales. So it's tougher. I have a question. When it comes to your, you know, keeping sellers accountable, you're talking about some of these, you know, outreach activities. I had a, I'll tell you a quick story. There was a story of Mike. I worked at the company. Mike was new to the organization and Mike was killing it. He creamed us with his outreach activities. Every day it was just like monster numbers. While we were doing our 40, 50, Mike was 120, 100 plus. And I was just like, how in the world? What are we doing wrong? Well, Mike was just, when it came down to it, he was gaming the

• 18:31Speaker 00

  system. He would make a phone call and then didn't leave voicemail, just like hang up. And he just kind of just like burned through, didn't really send, took the same emails and just like blasted out. So Salesforce looked great from surface, but two weeks later, Mike still didn't have any conversation or have any real depth to it. I mean, how do you make sure you don't fall into the danger of like, hey, you know, seller, you did all of these activity? How do we make sure those activities are meaningful? I think you kind of hit on that already with the personalization, but go deeper on that. If I'm a sales leader, I'm a manager underneath you, working with my team, where's the fine line between Donald, you didn't hit your number versus Donald, you had some really good meaningful conversation, but you're shy of that number? Help me out with that.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's a great question, right? And the mics of the world, they're out there, right? Unfortunately, eventually outcomes will catch up with them because that's kind of what's going to happen. But you want to catch Mike earlier before you go like, there's no outcomes there. And quite frankly, I think most reps want to work hard and want to be successful and don't want to just leave messages, right? Like if you have the right plan, people are going to work hard and it's there. But here's what we do, right? So we look at it on kind of like three different levels. First of all, we do a monthly review where we look at all the metrics that we're using on the front end of the pipe, right? So we look at how many people are in a cadence, how many emails were opened, how many conversations were had, how many sales touches?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  And the reason why we look at that is not, I mean, clearly you want to make sure people are doing it. They're not missing any steps and they're being successful there. But what's really what we're looking for here is patterns. Where is success and why are they successful there? And where do we see less uptake and why is that happening? We can listen to all the conversations. We can look at all the emails and we can start seeing patterns. So if someone has, is running that 1770 cadence, right? And we see that there's a few reps at step 16, they got real engagement there. Then we dive deep and go like, why is that engagement there? What are we seeing and how can we replicate that for the rest of the team? It's not so much goes like, here's the hero salesperson, let's celebrate them.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  It's more like, how can we replicate the success we see? And what are the things that they said in a conversation that stood out? And how we replicate that in the cadences? So it becomes a continuous performance loop. So we look at it at a micro level so we can see success and we see pain points. Then we dive deeper with the individual reps. So we understand the success and we understand the pain points. What's holding you back? And we have that in weekly one-on-one conversations that we can look at it as well. And then ultimately, what we also do, which I don't know if it's is unique. When we started doing it, it was unique, but we started using a piece of software, name doesn't really matter, but that we can measure NPS. So it's not so much like, oh, you closed the deal, it's great.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Listen, you can close deals because you have a great product that works really well. And you just get in front of the right person and they make the decision. What we want to understand is how did the sales motion work for the buyer? And NPS is a really, really good way to measure that. So now you've got a complete feedback loop where you were like, where's success? How do our customers or users enjoy that journey? And it really kind of beats upon itself and we improve it all the time. Now, most of my time from an analytical point of view and the marketing team time is spent on those pre-hand raiser stages, right? Because that's what we want to understand. What is engagement look like? Why does that engagement happen? But the backend of the pipeline, I wanted to dismiss that.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Once someone says uncle, so to speak, they're like, I'm going to listen to your pitch, right? You know, you want to find, you still want to coach them through it, right? Like you want to understand what success looks like there. So yeah, that's where I spent most of my time.

• 22:24Speaker 00

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• 24:27Speaker 00

  You did mention earlier, and I mean, all the sales leaders listening to this, trying to just, they're thinking about their tech stack right now. When you're looking at the micro activities that's coming through CRM, what CRM are you using for that? That's helping that lead, you know, to help measure some of those front-end activities?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Well, like most organizations, we use our CRM Salesforce, right? And I would say probably 80% of people listening to it, they use Salesforce. But the great thing about Salesforce is it's a fine platform. All the things that plug into it actually make it quite spectacular. So for us, we use Gong and Gong Flows, right? So we started using Gong to record and just listen to conversation, replicate training and success. And then when Gong, you know, essentially said, we can go broader and add a lot of sales loft functionality to it. You start using those flows and then they have AI added to it. And so we use that whole suite as well as delighted to measure that NPS. So that's kind of the suite. So we have Salesforce Gong, Gong Flows, delighted.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  And then we have a whole bunch of other stuff like Zoom Info and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. And you know, the list goes on, but it's all about getting that data in front of our salespeople and then being able to measure, listen, you know, all those kinds of things. So it's, and Gong is just amazing, right? Like you can track for words, right? Like the things that I'm, if I'm going to say, how often does price come up? I can look that in the pricing conversation, see those things come up. You know, what are the objections? I can put objections in there and get the list of objections. So it really speeds up everything. You know, my team also started using the thank you AI notes that Gong writes, which are actually quite good. They're not perfect.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  And I would hesitate anyone just saying send and you want to personalize and look at it and make sure you capture it. But there's all these tools, right? Like me, and you started to sense it, how do you speed up the sales cycle? Like I said, you know, I'm not a magician, right? Like we're just using tools and processes to get this done. And then it's two ways, right? You have the tools, the processes that make you efficient. They also allow you to coach your reps and get them better quicker. So I can hire more junior reps, see the gaps and get them up to speed quicker. So instead of hiring, you know, the senior warhorse at like half a million dollars, I can hire someone that can really have an impact and I can coach them quicker. And that's where technology really helps, right?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  And so I can go on and on and on. Like I said, you know, what's exciting to me is the tools and the technology that's there now for all of us to get better and get people up to speed quicker and look at problems quicker and solve them.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  I love that. So many good stuff. The last thing I want to get from you before we wrap up here. This idea you told me, you have a continuous loop that you do with the organization, how the whole team is improving, what is not working? Is that tying back to that again, from our weekly one, our monthly one-on-ones? Or how often are you doing that assessment to feel where we are and where we're going?

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, great question. So weekly one-on-ones with the entire team, right? Either done by me or one of the directors will report to me and, and do that is very key. And, and that's really, most of the one-on-ones tend to be focused on some big strategic problems as in, here's what we're seeing in motion, here's what we're seeing from competitors. Have those conversations and then look at the latter part of the stages, kind of the post-hand raiser stages. We, you know, look at very much specific opportunities and it was like, what's holding that up? Are we making sure that we're creating that role of a trusted advisor or solving for the pain? And then, you know, one of the things I've also learned is that AEs will fall in love with opportunities, right?

• 28:11Speaker 01

  You know, like I've been in sales and I would fall in love with opportunities. It was like, oh, this is a million dollar opportunity. It's going to go over the finish line. I get all the right signals, but are you really, right? And so challenging your reps to say, are you still seeing those buying signals? Do you have a plan to get it to closure? Is this agreed upon close plan with your buyers or with your buyer or buyers or decision makers, influencers? Have they all agreed to it? Have you tried to close it? All those kinds of things. So that's what the one-on-ones are for. And then together with the marketing team, sitting and looking holistically at all the data and all the information, what's working? What's, do we need to replicate? What needs to improve? Let's try this.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  That then becomes more of a like data exercise, looking at all the data, listening to the conversation and then bring that back in the coaching conversations with reps that are struggling with the front end of the pipe. So that's kind of what we do to improve and continue to improve that. And it's very data-driven and we can see it. We can make tweaks every week and then we can see like, did it make a difference, right? Over the next one, two, three weeks, did we read this right? Or did we read this wrong? And then continue to improve that. That's exciting.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  What would you say the, the top five maybe key indicators that measuring points that you and your leadership team are looking at to just ascertain, are we doing good or not? If you wrap that up in the last, you know, your last few words here, what are those five? And maybe it's more, maybe it's less, but you can say, I can wake me up at three o'clock in the morning, I can ask any of my directors and they can tell us where the team is at based on these indicators. What are those?

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I did, you know, the two things that we look at is just, you know, or two, there's multiple things you look at, but

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Close rate and a velocity through the stages of the pipeline are easy metrics for us to look at to say, is that still working? There are high level metrics, right? Underneath there are kind of sub metrics of that. It goes like, how long that stuff, you know, we have seven stages that our pipeline looks like. How long is stuff sitting in stages? We have alerts when it sits in a stage for a certain period of the time and see if it's at, so we look at that as well. We look at the quality of the front end of the opportunities. Are these truly opportunities that we gave to our reps at a real quality opportunity, something that is closable and there's a real opportunity there. And then also our reps, like, we don't do all the work for our reps. Our reps are responsible for putting the right

• 30:45Speaker 01

  people in, in the cadences, making sure that they do the right research on the organization or running after the right department there. So we look at those things as well. And then there's activity level, right? Like, one of the core tenants of sales has always been activities create opportunities, opportunities create sales. The only thing we control is our activity level, but it's not just pounding away at phones, but because clearly Mike hit the activity level just fine. It's the quality of those activities that's just important, that important. So that's what we look at.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Listen, this was amazing episode. Absolutely loved it. A lot of great insights. If folks want to learn from you or to connect with you or to see what you guys are doing, what's the best way for them to do so?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  The easiest ways for me, and I'm sure you guys will provide that, to just connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, you can ask me questions. That's the way I connect professionally with people. I would like to do that. You know, I am in sales, Cogency Global is the company. My name is Peter. Find me there. If you want to buy anything from us, we'll be more than happy to do that as well. But, you know, the easiest way is LinkedIn to connect with me.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  It's been a pleasure, Peter. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on our show today.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for your time, Donald. It's been fun.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Hey, that was Peter. I am just like, mm, mm, mm. It was so good. Good, good, good episode. A lot of great insights. For me, I took away some of those data points, being very religious with that, making sure I'm doing the one-on-ones with the team and then the strategy of how we're going about it. As my, my team have to write a number of opportunities in a pipeline and are we measuring how fast those deals are moving through the pipeline? You have to be a scientist if you're a sales leader nowadays. And if you can do that effectively well, you're going to have better results on the backend. Now, if you haven't done sort of connect with Peter, tell him you heard of him here on the Sales Evangelist Podcast. If you haven't subscribed to the show, why not? Go ahead and subscribe. And if you have subscribed, thank you so much. Tell one other person about it and connect with your homeboy on LinkedIn. It would mean a lot. Listen, I want you to thrive. I want

• 32:43Speaker 00

  you to succeed. You can't do so if you don't know your numbers. You gotta know your numbers and you gotta be on top of that. If you want to figure out how to use LinkedIn more, check out our LinkedIn prospecting course. We show you how you can use that to be more effective in your sales efforts. Most importantly, we want you to raise your level of thinking and we want you to go out and do big things. See you on the next one.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershun Obayal. Our video engineer is DeSarun Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristy Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Sales Podcast Network.