About Chet Lovegren: Chet Lovegren is the Founder & Head Sales RX’er of The Sales Doctor, a company that helps clients prevent their revenue bleed from archaic training, coaching, and implementation practices. After working for 7+ years as an individual contributor, Chet started The Sales Doctor in 2020 as a way for salespeople and sales leaders to take a ‘prescriptive’ approach to diagnose and solve problems in their go-to-market strategy. Since then, he’s helped companies raise over $100M in VC Funds and seen over 125 professionals perform at their best, get promoted, and achieve their true earning potential. His foundations and teachings are a combination of his 11+ years in the go-to-market space, both as a seller and leader. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Chet.
In this episode, Nancy and Chet discuss the following:
- Importance of prescriptive approach in sales
- Comparison of sales strategies to medical diagnosis
- Significance of onboarding for new sales reps and managers
- Use of technology in improving hiring processes
- Importance of measuring performance and engagement
- Strategies for identifying and nurturing future leaders
- Advice on managing and leading sales teams
Key Takeaways:
- 90% of what I do is an aggregate of all the information I’ve taken in, eaten the fish, and spit out the bones.
- Try a lot of things and see what works best for you.
- The forgetting curve: within 30 days, we forget 87% of what we learned.
- Empathy does not mean a lack of accountability.
“I like to use the idea of prescriptive because if you’re a doctor and you are doing it right, it’s not a one-size-fits-all all. And the best doctors who have done the most critical work in saving lives have dug deep into the core problems, not solving for symptoms. But why are these symptoms happening? Because you think about if you have a fever, you’re gonna have similar symptoms as if you have a cold, their shared symptoms across certain problems or diagnoses, right? And my favorite saying is a doctor who provides a diagnosis without examination is guilty of malpractice. I think many LinkedIn gurus do this, but many sales teams do it for their opportunities and customers. And if we want to be transparent, honest, value-driven salespeople, let’s walk the walk and not just talk the talk. And so, you have to dig deep into what’s the problem that my customer thinks they have, what’s the problem I know they have because I’m the subject matter expert, what’s the gap in that way of thinking, and how can I get them to think, not understand my point of view critically? You know, we’re in politics season, and I’m sure everybody’s watching all these debates going on.” – CHET
“Yeah, I think one of the best ways to do this is with software. I’m not one to typically plug software, but there’s a tool called Yardstick. Founder Lucas Price has built this incredible tool that helps increase the collaboration between hiring managers, department heads, and maybe individual contributors who are also interviewing people for the role and helps them collaborate in real time so that they have a foundation once that new hire starts to be able to go back and measure, do we have who we thought we had? This way, you can essentially know who you have faster, know if they’re the person you hired, and if they’re not, work with your HR team to get them out of the seat and get somebody in who will be. Because that’s the unfortunate thing.” – CHET
“I’m okay accepting no when making 50 cold calls a day. You want to make 20 cause that’s what’s comfortable for you, and you can do that because you’re sending more video messages and doing much more personalized email outreach, and it works for you; that’s great. Cause I have another rep who can’t convert anything via email, but they’re fantastic on the phone. And so, I say, if it’s working for you, prioritize that. Do we want to try to upscale you on cold email writing? Sure, but if you’re booking 20 appointments monthly to make a hundred cold calls a day, I’m not opposed to that. You’re hitting your number, which might be what you’re good at. And so, I do want to make you better at cold email writing if there are gaps that I recognize, but there’s a whole bunch behind that with email deliverability that might’ve also happened with that gentleman. So, I think it’d be okay with no, but expect why. And remember that empathy does not mean a lack of accountability; you’re not a bad person if you want to instill some accountability in your process. Still, you must pull back the books, use a data-driven leadership model, and show people why accountability is in place. And don’t manage to the bottom 20% of people who don’t want to be at your org anyway. Stop making rules and things that they must follow. Make rules and processes and accountability for the 80% because all you do when you’re reactive, and you manage to the bottom 20% is the other 80% of people that want to be there feel like they’re getting squeezed out and they quit, and they go take $5,000 a year to work somewhere else.” – CHET
Connect with Chet Lovegren:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetlovegren/
- The Sales Doctor: https://www.thesalesdocrx.com/
- Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thesalesdoctor_rx
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
- Website:https://oneofakindsales.com
- Phone: 908-879-2911
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Chet Lovegren, aka the sales doctor, the SDR leader and host of the SalesRx podcast gives sales reps insight into how to effectively time block, where they should focus energy, and tips for opening that conversation with prospective clients. With over 11 years of sales and sales leadership experience, Chet started the sales doctor in 2020 as a way of providing a prescriptive approach to revenue problems and struggling go-to-market strategies. Chet has helped build out sales processes and teams that led to companies successfully raising over a hundred million in venture capital funds. And he provides professionals with the right dose of practical and tactical info needed to stop the revenue bleed from archaic practices and methods. Welcome to the show chat. You know, I love speaking about sales.
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, thanks for having me and that was the best-read intro. Prescriptive always seems to trip people up, but you did a great job with that one. I know it’s a very nonnative thing to throw in when we’re talking about sales, but you nailed it. I want to I want to applaud you and throw like a rock star track on in the background or something. That was incredible. Yeah. [1:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my God, please. It’s practice, practice. That’s it. But okay, I guess my question, let’s start with prescriptive. Why prescriptive and how does that help teams?
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, that’s a great question. I like to use the idea of prescriptive because if you’re a doctor and you are doing it right, it’s not a one size fits all. And the best doctors who have done the most critical work in saving lives have really dug deep into the core problems and not solving for symptoms. But why are these symptoms happening? Because you think about if you have a fever, you’re gonna have similar symptoms as if you have a cold their shared symptoms across certain problems or diagnosis, right? And my favorite saying is a doctor who provides a diagnosis without examination is guilty of malpractice. And I think a lot of LinkedIn gurus do this, but also a lot of sales teams do this to their opportunities and to their customers. And if we want to be transparent, honest, value-driven salespeople, let’s walk the walk and not just talk the talk. And so, you have to dig deep into what’s the problem that my customer thinks they have, what’s the problem I know they have because I’m the subject matter expert, what’s the gap in that way of thinking, and how can I get them to critically think, not understand my point of view? You know, we’re in politics season and I’m sure everybody’s watching all these debates going on. [3:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: And you can tell the difference between a good debater and a bad debater is that good debaters say, this is my policy, this is my stance, and this is why. But it’s like, okay, you’re not getting me to think critically about why I should be thinking that way as well. You’re just trying to get me to understand your point of view. And I think that’s what we do a lot as sellers as well, is we try to get people to understand our point of view, instead of asking them to think critically alongside us, thereby justifying our subject matter expertise. And so, it gets a lot deeper than just like in my business, oh, you’re struggling to generate pipeline? Must be cold outreach problems. No, it could be 10 million other things. So, let’s dig deep into the process together and find a solution. [4:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Before I forget, I downloaded one of your offerings, the top five most common sales objections. And I shared it with my team. In reading it, we all want to ask you, were you or are you Sandler trained?
Chet Lovegren: Not officially, but I think that a lot of the methodologies that I’ve kind of learned from, all kind of start with Sandler, right? Gap selling is a real big one. And that was something where, when you actually look at gap selling, it’s just kind of another version of Sandler. Most every methodology now is a version of Sandler or Hoffman, if we’re really being honest with ourselves. And I always tell, I tell my clients that too. I say, 90% of what I do is an aggregate of all the information I’ve taken in, eat the fish and spit out the bones. Really only 10% is my own ingenuity and creativity added on top of that, which I think as sellers we should be doing as well. Try Challenger, try Gap, try Sandler, try Hoffman. Go back to Ziegler if you want to and take some of those principles. Try a lot of things and see what works well for you. [[5:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay. Now, traditional sales training. You’ve heard horror stories about that. Why doesn’t that work?
Chet Lovegren: Well, there’s this interesting principle called the forgetting curve. And with the forgetting curve, especially when you think about whether you’re hiring an outside person to come in and train your team, or you’re doing training and enablement internally, we don’t typically continue inspecting what we expect or what we train around. And I think every seller listening to this would agree. How many times have we gone through a sales training? And a month later, we’re not even talking about the same topic, but we haven’t really improved much. And that’s reactive leadership. And so, it takes a lot of commitment and intentionality behind what we want to train people on and why we want to train them. And unfortunately, a lot of the enablement resources out there just don’t make sense. Like, why would I enroll my people in a 12-week program where they meet once a week for 12 weeks? Because thanks to the forgetting curve, within 30 days, we forget 87% of what we learned. So, in week five and six, we’re trying to teach SDRs advanced tactics that build off a foundation we learned in week one that we don’t even remember. And it goes the same for new AEs or AEs that need a refresher, AEs moving into the enterprise space or frontline managers. It happens all the time. The other alternative is video courses. Well, unfortunately, video courses are very low engaging. People do them on their own time. And typically, if there’s like some sort of testing module at the end, you can just guess the answers until you get through. And so, reps aren’t really inclined to put a lot of effort and intentionality in there. And somebody could say, well, top reps will. Well, maybe, but I know a lot of top reps, when I’ve been through those video trainings myself, where they’re like, yeah, we must do our 10 minute a day video module training, just click to the end, you probably already know the stuff. And it was in orgs where people would just tell you what the answer was. Hey everybody, I already went through mine this morning, here’s the three answers, you know? And it’s just, you know, so you either have long programs that are highly engaging, but people forget the information after, you know, and it’s a 90-day program, or you have these low engaging, you know, volume plays where people just don’t really get a lot out of it. So, what I try to do is simulate the environment in which people learn the most and retain the most, which is onboarding. And we typically structure our virtual boot camps to be an hour a day for a full week, five days straight.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh really?
Chet Lovegren: And then yes, and then we create a 30-day follow-up call because we get in this repetition where every day you’re learning something for an hour. And if you break out any of the modules, whether it’s cold outreach, which our prospecting bootcamp can go for SDRs and AEs, especially if AEs are full cycle, our sales bootcamp, which we call AE Academy, AEs can go through discovery, deal management, negotiation, and follow-up. I mean, those are four different modules, and you have five days of learning. And you see people showing up every day. By the fifth day we get there, we all feel like friends and we’re laughing and we’re having fun. And we’ve retained a lot of the information, and they can put it into practice while they’re going through it. Instead of waiting for them to go through you know, a community led program by a, you know, LinkedIn guru that basically takes them three months to get through and you’re not seeing results as fast as you want to. And they forget most of the information. We try to compact the information and make it more valuable and retainable. And then we like to do the follow-up call after 30 days. Okay, you put it into practice. What are the nuances that you’re facing? What can we talk through as it pertains to that company and that motion specifically. [8:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Why is onboarding so important for new sales reps and managers?
Chet Lovegren: Well, I think the biggest thing is it’s your way of setting expectations for what’s to be required. Now that doesn’t mean that most companies do it well enough, but this is your opportunity to say, hey, the thing we’re paying you to do, this is what it is and this is what it’s required to be successful. This is the level of knowledge you must have, retain, and execute upon and also build upon to be successful. You go through buyer persona training, like those are always adjusting. So, if you have, let’s say four buyer personas, and you’re selling logistics software, you have warehouse manager, operations manager, building manager, and let’s call it a CFO maybe, or financial leader that your buyer personas. That’s also you are saying, I expect you to be up to date with those buyer personas challenges because they change over time, which means regularly meeting with people in CS, listening to QBRs, hearing what the future state looks like for our customers when we win them. And I think that’s why onboarding is so important because it’s as much an enablement time period as it is an expectation setting time period. So, I encourage any leaders in a performance-based role, sales or CS typically, make that a part of it. When you’re building your onboarding playbook and your enablement materials, make sure that it’s as much an expectation setting exercise as it is a knowledge transfer. [10:28]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, finding the right salespeople, it’s like a needle in a haystack. You know, it’s hard to know 100% when you do hire somebody if you’ve really made the right hire. So, is there a way, you know, to, I guess, snuff out the wrong hires earlier?
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, I think one of the best ways to do this is with software. I’m not one to typically plug softwares, but there’s a tool called Yardstick. Founder Lucas Price has built this incredible tool that helps increase the collaboration between hiring managers, department heads, maybe individual contributors who are also interviewing people for the role and helps them collaborate in real time so that they have a foundation once that new hire starts to be able to go back and measure, do we have who we thought we had? And this way you can essentially know who you have faster, know if they’re actually the person that you hired, and if they’re not, work in hand with your HR team to get them out of the seat and get somebody in who will be. Because that’s the unfortunate thing. [11:37]
Nancy Calabrese: How does it do that though? I don’t understand.
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, so it’s got this really cool intuitive way of basically taking everything you’re probably already doing with like an HR tool when you’re hiring people, scoring, writing notes, things like that. But making it go beyond that process where now every 30 days, those same people are coming back to it and re going through the ratings for the person as a colleague or as a direct support. And when those scores start to slip, there’s coaching that’s provided on, hey, well, is it an observational thing? Is this like a motivation thing that needs fixed or is this a strategic thing? Or did we fail somewhere along the way in onboarding? And it gives you a much better way to measure that performance throughout their first 90 days than just getting their first 90 days and the frontline manager’s like, well, I don’t really think this person’s working based on some data points, but now we must talk to HR. Now we put them through a program the next month then maybe we put them on a PIP, then we get them out at around the six-month mark. If you’re measured quarterly, that’s even longer, right? So, the tool kind of helps people ensure that, they kind of have who they thought they had. And if they have that person, great, we can continue to measure that performance above and beyond that and help them make the case for promotion later. But if we don’t, we can kind of move them out of the role quicker than you would in a standard PIP process where SDRs if you add SDR higher, it takes six to eight months to get them out of the role, typically. An AE it’s a little longer than that. And so, this tool helps you do that kind of within the 90-day mark and it’s by providing you, I mean, you could probably, you know, I’m sure some people can hack it together inside their HR software, just setting up different processes or even managing it on the spreadsheet. [[13:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Yeah.
Chet Lovegren: But the benefit above and beyond that too is everybody thinks they have the right hiring questions, but there’s also hiring questions that are provided, that are relevant to your business and your actual motion. And so, there’s a lot to it. I’m probably not doing it justice because we’re not on a demo for them, but I think finding ways to leverage technology and get people collaboratively together and actually get them to have a commitment to it. Like, look, VPs, heads of sales, CROs, I realize you’re busy, but if you want to have a hand in the hiring process, then you got to have a hand in the hiring process. And that requires you to take notes and score the conversation. I’ve worked at companies where my higher ups wanted to have a hand in the hiring conversation and then I go, hey, where’s Nancy’s scorecard? Oh, well, Nancy was great. Okay, well that’s fantastic, but how are we going to measure that across the four people that are part of this hiring process if you’re not going to do the five minutes of note taking and leg work that it takes for us to effectively measure this? And so, you have to make sure that you get that part right and that everybody’s as equally brought in. [14:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: And if not, then hey, just step aside if you don’t have time for that and let us handle it and trust us to handle.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, so do you think performance metrics should be the only thing considered when thinking about who to promote?
Chet Lovegren: Not at all. And I think performance is important in contrast to the rest of the people on their team. But the devil’s also always in the details. I’ve met plenty of reps that go to club that you dig deep into their process and it’s kind of eye-opening. And you’re like, oh, well, yeah, if everybody was doing that, everybody would probably hit club, you know? There might be some preferential treatment. There might be some ways that they’ve figured out how to work the CRM the right way that other people aren’t. I’ve even caught top reps deleting data out of the CRM, putting it on a spreadsheet and manually working it until it became an opportunity and then creating the opportunity in the CRM so that there were no touch rules behind it that anybody could track. So, I’ve seen it all. And that doesn’t mean that everybody who hits 120% of quota is gaming the system. But there’s a very good opportunity that if, I think of it like Wells Fargo. There’s a reason Wells Fargo was doing great in the banking system and then they got caught. And you see this time and time again when companies, Theranos is another great example, right? When something is too good to be true, you kind of dig into those details a little bit and you see a little bit more. So I think it’s interesting that we have a million ways to measure someone’s performance, but we don’t have many ways to measure someone’s participation and engagement. [16:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: And so that’s something that while anecdotal, I think leaders need to put a bigger focus on. And it’s not enough to just say that’s what we should do. Well, how do we do it, Chet? Well, give people the opportunity to lead certain meetings in every form and fashion. If a sales leader is leading and doing the majority of the talking in the weekly sales meeting, you’re doing it wrong. Find ways to integrate your people and people that are showing signs of being a potential future AE, if they’re an SDR or a senior or commercial or enterprise AE or even your next frontline manager, find ways to integrate them into the conversation sooner rather than later, and have them kind of show and prove because the whole other side of professional development and career advancement is the skillset of being able to also show others how to do it. So, if I’m going to move an SDR into an AE, fantastic. I also want to make sure that person knows how to present, knows how to present to a group, knows how to talk about ROI because when I have another SDR that I want to promote into AE, guess who I’m going to buddy them up with? The person who already did that. And I’m giving my SDR that’s moving into AE a little bit of practice for how they would conduct a demonstration or presentation with a prospective customer, right? So, I think we have a million ways to measure someone’s performance, but no way to measure someone’s participation and engagement. I always look at it like Simon Sinek’s trust-first performance graph if you’ve ever seen that conversation. Top right corner is high performer, high trust. And we tend to value that person. But if you go into any organization and ask who’s the jerk, they’ll typically point that person out immediately. The high performer, sorry, high performer, low trust. High performer, high trust is a unicorn. But what organizations like the SEALs treasure is the medium performer of high trust. They’ll take that person over the high performer or low trust any day. Because as they say in the SEALs, I might trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my wife? So that was always a, I always look at it that way. Like I’m okay taking someone who hits 80 to 90% of quota and moving them into another role or a promotion. If I see other things from a participation and in an engagement, um, factor that I think makes it relevant. And I’ve seen plenty of good SDRs become terrible AEs and I’ve seen plenty of bad SDRs become great AEs. So it’s, they are different skill sets. [18:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: They are different skill sets. Some of it crosses over and bleeds into the other, but it doesn’t, it’s not, it shouldn’t always be an indicator of if this person’s gonna have success at the next level. There are process and anecdotal things that you need to witness first, above and beyond just hitting quota.
Nancy Calabrese: Last question, I mean, why do so many sales teams have a hard time building a solid culture around accountability and performance? What’s the issue?
Chet Lovegren: Because we’re in this phase right now in let’s call it corporate America, where we think that empathy means a lack of accountability. And so, we’re told that by trying to keep people accountable, we’re not being empathetic. And that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If anything, you know, it’s like Uncle Ben says to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. I think of it the same way. With much empathy, you know, much accountability is also required to whom much is given, much is required, right? And I think the first thing I would recommend for leaders is in that motion, we should always be okay hearing no, but we should always expect why, and a solid why. And I think a lot of leaders just go, no, this is the process, this is how it is. I had a salesperson at Pavilion, and she was like, look, I’m just not very comfortable cold calling. And she would do well beyond her number from cold email and video messages on LinkedIn. And I said, look, that’s great. Keep doing what works for you. In fact, I could probably learn something from you that would help the team do better on cold emailing and video outreach. That said, when we do start seeing a dip in that performance, we’re going to have to make up those activity numbers with some cold calls. We’re going to have to do it a little bit more my way, you know? But if it’s working for you this way, that’s fine. [20:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Chet Lovegren: I’m okay accepting no when it comes to making 50 cold calls a day, you want to make 20, cause that’s what’s comfortable for you and you can do that because you’re sending more video messages and doing much more personalized email outreach and it works for you, that’s great. Cause I have another rep who can’t convert anything via email, but they’re fantastic on the phone. And so, I say, hey, if it’s working for you, prioritize that. Do we want to try to upscale you on cold email writing? Sure, but if you’re booking 20 appointments a month for making a hundred cold calls a day, I’m not opposed to that. You’re hitting your number and that might be the thing that you’re good at. And so, I do want to make you better at cold email writing if there are gaps that I recognize, but there’s a whole bunch behind that with email deliverability that might’ve happened with that gentleman as well. So, I think it’d be okay with no, but expect why. And remember that empathy does not mean a lack of accountability and you’re not the bad person if you want to instill some accountability in your process, but you need to pull back the books, use a data-driven leadership model and show people why the accountability is in place. And don’t manage to the bottom 20% of people that don’t want to be at your org anyway. Stop making rules and things that they must follow. Make rules and processes and accountability for the 80% because all you do when you’re reactive and you manage to the bottom 20% is the other 80% of people that actually want to be there feel like they’re getting squeezed out and they quit, and they go take $5,000 a year to work somewhere else. [21:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, I can’t believe our time is up. I could go on forever with you, Chet. How can my people find you?
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place. On my LinkedIn I have access to a bunch of my resources. You can check out my Linktree. There’s a newsletter, there’s free downloads. Sounds like you and your team already downloaded one of those resources. So pretty much, pretty much everything’s there. Yeah. [22:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah. You’ve got a ton of material. I say go to your website.
Chet Lovegren: Yeah, that too. You can get to my website from my linktree. If you just want to go there directly, it’s https://www.thesalesdocrx.com/.
Nancy Calabrese: Cool. Everyone, he’s great. Chet, thanks so much for being on the show and sharing your expertise. I know you said you were a little jet lagged before we started, but it didn’t sound like that to me. [22:31]
Chet Lovegren: Well, that’s what three cups of coffee will do to you. But thanks Nancy. It was a great conversation.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, okay. Oh, it was great. And everyone make it a great sales day. We’ll see you next time. [22:41]
