E2: CRO Kevin "KD" Dorsey on creating, developing, and deploying playbooks

Mr. Kevin Dorsey, welcome to the show. Appreciate you taking the time, my man. Let's go. I will always make time for Kyle North. There's not a time that I would not. So I'm pumped to be here, man. This is gonna be good. Yeah, I'm excited and we've got a topic that I don't see spoken about or covered all that much in internet land. And so we're gonna dive in and I think have a great time. Hello and welcome to the Revenue Leadership Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Norton, [email protected]. And every Wednesday I dive deep into the strategies and tactics that drive success for the very best revenue leaders in the world. So join me as I sit down with revenue operators to discuss actionable frameworks that you can implement in your role today with no fluff, no platitudes, and no sales pitches. Today's guest is none other than Kevin Dorsey, all affectionately known as KD. And KD is currently the CRO@Finally, which is a hyper-growth series B startup that is the easiest way for small businesses to manage their finance and accounting. And before KD before finally, KD was the SVP sales and partnerships at Bench, VP inside sales, a patient pop, head of sales development, and enablement at service tighten, just an epic run of really impressive companies. And KD has left an indelible mark on all of them. And KD also launched recently the sales leadership accelerator, which in my opinion is the best platform and community for sales managers to learn the craft. KD gives it all away. I've had access for a while and can vouch that these are some of the best templates that you can swipe and deploy in your business right now. And we're going to go into a bunch of what he's built. So in today's episode, we go really deep on playbooks and frameworks. And so we don't just skim the surface, talk about why playbooks are important. We go really deep into the specifics around how do you build a playbook? What should you build? And most importantly, how do you implement this stuff? How do you get people to adopt it? This episode is a must listen. If you want to drive predictable, repeatable high performance in your go-to-market teams, I learned a ton. I think this is going to be an awesome lesson for everybody. So please enjoy. But first, a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Momentum.io. Momentum is a powerful tool for turning sales and customer conversations into go-to-market data. Using Genai, it extracts, analyzes, and automates customer intelligence across your org. The best part, it's not a new platform for your team to adopt. It integrates seamlessly with your existing stack and writes data back to Salesforce directly. Some of the most innovative companies out there, like Zscaler, Demandbase, Ramp, OnePassword, and even my company, owner.com, use Momentum every single day to capture forecast and turn risk, auto-fill, Salesforce fields, share product signals, and track sentiment. So check it out with a free trial at Momentum.io. The topic of the day is creating, developing, and deploying playbooks, something which you're well known for. And so, before we jump in, give folks your 60-second bio. Oh, man. Kevin Dorsey, everybody calls me KD. At this point, I am blessed to be a husband, a father, a brother, a son, a friend, and a milliter of salespeople. That's what I do. I've been building startup sales teams for the last 13, 14 years now. I've got a couple unicorns under the belt. They were unicorns when I was actually there in building. Not just after the fact. Like, I'll all up in there and I'm working on my third right now. I love this. I'm blessed to be a leader man. I get to work with people and ideally positively impact people and share the insights with people. You know, on the internet, man, so that's me. Very cool. And you have been quietly working on something in the background yet to be announced, which in this pod will drop shortly after that comes out. So tell people what you're up to right now. What's next for KD? Yeah, so two main things are like happening right now or I'll say they're next but now, you know, I just happen like announced everything. So one is like launching the sales leadership accelerator online, like the full community, the course, the program, like all the shit that I have either learned or gotten wrong over the years, like launching that officially, you know, all the modules, all the templates, the community, everything there. So that's one big next now thing. And the second is on the CRO now of a company called Finely, which in a lot of ways, even the name is very serendipitous to me in terms of like finally, like finally a place I feel at home, finally a place that I can be like that last big final run. So I'm a CRO here at Finely and you know, it's SMV and it's really bringing all the tools that SMV owners need into one place. So we do bookkeeping, we do banking, we do payroll, we have a corporate card expense management all in one. And so it just allows business owners to run their business and grow their business in just one place versus 17 different tools. So love the space, love the team already growing already breaking some records in my first, you know, like 90 days here. So it's always fun to be like, oh yeah, this shit works. It's it works like weird. Weird how that goes. So now that's really, really good. I'm really enjoying it. That's exciting. And so I was a small business owner for a number of years. I served small business owners today at owners. So the problem that you talk about is extremely resonant to me as I was the partner that was dealing with QuickBooks and reconciling the bank accounts and all that stuff. So I don't bring it all into one, you know, like I love SMV, man, I've done the enterprise, I've done all that. I love SMV. I love helping business owners, man, like I also I ran small businesses in LA. I ran three personal training studios like so I just have that like in my heart type type set up. So I love it, man, loving it here, loving the team, really some big announcements like come in there that I can't share on here yet. But like there's some good shit popping that I'm on pump for. That's awesome. I'm excited. What is it about SMV that you like so much? So the mission and serving entrepreneurs, but but what about the segment gives you the most excitement? So definitely like just the mission behind it. Like I do, I believe, you know, small business owners are the reason this country is what it is. It's like all these big companies at one point were small businesses. And I think people forget that right. They hire people, they employ people, they put their savings on the line right. Like small business owners are less the small business owners and entrepreneurs. The only people that work 80 hours for themselves to avoid working 40 hours for someone else. You know, it's like they work their ass off to run these things and they don't have a lot of the support they need. But also I love the speed of the deal. I love the speed to impact. I love how fast I can learn things. I love all of that large space to play in. And oftentimes they're just forgotten about it. Like I don't sell sass to sass. I have avoided that space my entire career. Eventually I don't sell sass to sass. I have avoided it because one, I felt like it was over blown to as like a little bit of a Ponzi scheme. Wait, you're not profitable. And you're selling to me who's not profitable. And my growth requires you to grow. That always scared me. Like that just didn't feel right. So I love that the unsexy space at home service is medical, like counting education. Like I stay in the unsexy spaces. I also think there's more time to learn things and to apply things that don't get over blown too fast. Very cool. I have never heard that quote. I absolutely love it and I'm going to borrow it. Working 80 hours a week. Oh yeah. Yeah. The small business work 80 hours for themselves. So avoid working 40 hours for somebody else. You got to be crazy to run a small business. And that's why I love it. Yeah. Extremely resonant with selling to mom and pop restaurant. Well, cool. And I think the other part of SMB that I love and I know we'll resonate with you is the opportunity to have access to a ton of data to iterate to improve, to build deploy and see those fast cycles, which allows you to have a very systems engineering mindset, which we're going to spend a bunch of time on today. How do you? Cool. So you know, you've built your reputation on building and sharing incredible frameworks. And so folks that have taken your courses through Pavilion or your own stuff that you're releasing now. Most people listening to this will be familiar with the wiggle and bipsy and a bunch of stuff that you've built. And so we're not going to get into any of the specifics. You've got tons of awesome content out there, which I'll point people to. But we're going to talk about what happens behind these incredible frameworks. Like how have you built them? How do you deploy it? How do you know what to to spend time architecting versus not? And so there's two topics for today. One is we'll do a primer on about playbooks to just give people a frame of reference. And we'll spend the bulk of our time talking about how to build and deploy. So first topic is groundless. Like what is a playbook? Everybody's, you know, the word gets thrown around so much. So in your mind, what is a playbook? Well, it is funny because in the intro, you're like, you know, this isn't something people like talk about a lot. And it's actually I smile a little bit. There's like, actually, I feel like people talk about it a lot. They don't do it well a lot, right? They're full consulting agencies and all they do is build sales playbooks. And then nothing ever happens with them. So I feel like this actually gets talked about a lot of people don't do it, right? And so when I think about a playbook, what I'm talking about is a documented set of best practices, right? A documented set of best practices is what I view a playbook on. And I think even that would help a lot of people shift what a playbook is if they thought about it that way. Whereas I don't know if people like to say, Oh, the playbook, here's all the things like that we do. Here's like who like is like, no, like these are the best practices, things that need to be done. So that is that's how I define a a playbook, a documented set of best practices. And so what's in there? So like what do you have in a in a playbook? Like how expansive is it? You know, does the entire business have a playbook? Is it scripting? And what types of things are you play booking? Yeah. So in my playbooks, I cover the five piece. So the five piece of the playbook are people and we'll break all these down like people, prospect, problem, process and product. Those are the five things that go into my playbook, people, prospect, problem, process and product. That's my framework for the playbook. And then I go through and all those funny enough, it's in order for a reason. So when you think about people, so the people section of the playbook is about your people. So this is where my standards of excellence go. This is where my virtues and values go. This is where the expectations of the role goal. This is where goal setting goes, quotas, promotion past that first section is about your people. When they open up that playbook, the first thing they should be read about is what doesn't mean to be a part of this org. What do we stand for? What are our values? What we believe? What are our virtues? How we behave as one of the first exercises I'm doing it with my own company here now is like our virtues, right? You know, you know, celebrate the process. Take care of the person in sales, person, seek perpetual growth, own your shit, ECM, every conversation matters. How YTP help yourself, team and prospect celebrate the process? Like those are our, that's how we behave. So that people section is like, this is what it is. People sign this, by the way, like my virtue, you read them, they're defined and you sign it. We agreed to uphold these virtues and hold leadership accountable to them as well. Like that, that my or their. So that's the people section. Right? That's where we have our goals. This is the promote how to get promoted. This is a promotion path. How to be terminated. It's everything. People's that first section is about your people, right? Is your hiring framework in there? So the hiring framework isn't in the playbook, but the virtue or how we hire. So I have a hiring playbook, right? I have like a lesson like what we go through there, but this is like the sales playbook is just about the organ, the people. Okay. So the sales playbook is five piece. And then you can have different playbooks for how to how your managers are managing their team or the hiring. So back to the definition, a documented set of best practices. I have playbooks for everything. Hiring playbook, management playbook, onboarding playbook. Like I have playbooks for all of those things, but it doesn't fit like how people think about what a playbook is, right? The best practices. That's where the wiggle came from, by the way. And we're going to talk about the wiggle, but the playbook is the documented set of the wiggle, a K what good looks like. That's what the playbook is, right? You know, that play to support. That's what the plays are. What you're supposed to do where and what good looks like. So that's what the playbook is to me. Okay. Cool. So this is sales playbook. And then and I think for this conversation, let's let's talk about it even more broadly for because the audience for this podcast is CROs and aspiring revenue leaders. So you've got your sales playbook. And so prospect is about the people you're prospecting into. Give me like, give me problem process product like super grip. Yeah. So problem rate, like how well, like what are the actual problems you solve for the prospect? So the prospect section is the titles, the day to day. That's where the buyer's matrix goes, right? One of my favorite exercises from Jill Conrad, the buyer's matrix. Everyone in my org goes through this exercise of like by persona and title. What do they care about? How are they judged? What does success look like? Who do they report to? Like it's really understanding the prospect. And then the second part is then the problem. How well does the team actually know the problems you solve? So these are the key problems for each persona here are the impacts of those problems. Here's how those problems have been solved before. Here's why those problems exist now. Right. So the problem section is how well can you define the problems you solve for each one of the personas? Right? Because the prospect, that's like the industry level as well. What are the trends? What are the key terms for the main players? Right? That's the prospect problems. That's what problems you solve. Processes and this is like what our days today look like. So what is the sales process? Our stages, our exit entry criteria, our qualification process. This is where scripting goes in. This is where call score cards go in. This is where our one-on-one documentation goes in. Is she diagnosed this checklist? Like that's where like here's how we do our job. Right? My goal with a playbook is if you do it, you're good at your job. Playbook doesn't make you great, but the playbook should make you good. If you do what's in the playbook, you should be good at your job. Greatness comes from going above and beyond on that playbook. But like if you follow us in there, you should be good at your job. Right? And so that process is in there. Right? And again, this is where I'm looking. This will get into how to build it. But it's like how well documented can I make that process? Here's what good looks like for each one of these steps or each one of these things day to day. To some of my orgs, I've literally had like last day of the month process. Hmm. I love that. Here's the wiggle for the last day of the month. You pull the report on all of your closed lost. You pull the report on any of your referrals. You pull the report on X. They get a video at the beginning of the day. Like we're going to define what the last day of the month needs to look like for our org. Right? So that's the process section. And then we get to the product section. There's a reason why product is last in this is because now I can connect product to all those other piece, whereas too often playbooks on where they start with the product. And they forget everything else, whereas now how does the product specifically solve those problems? How does the product specifically align with these prospects, right? And their personas, right? So then the product is at the end. There's not a product training. It's actually how it does the things we say it's supposed to do. Now, just what it does. So that those are the five piece. Awesome. This may seem obvious, but wire playbooks important. Like why should leaders invest heavily in this? Because it takes a ton of time. Because it got you how do you scale without one? Right? How do you coach without what can you imagine? And this is what like I love it because you know, sales gets itself in trouble because we sometimes use too many sports analogies. You know, like we use all these sports analogies. But then you're like, all right, could you imagine talking to a football coach that didn't have a playbook? Yeah. Could you imagine talking to a basketball coach? We're like, yeah, we don't run plays. Like you wouldn't, but then we get sales leaders all the time. I was like, oh, yeah, we don't have a playbook or they do. And it's collecting digital dust somewhere because nobody ever reads it. Right. It's so funny enough now that my team's back in office is about to happen again. You get actually ping people at stagnation and at patient pop when you joined, you actually got a physical copy of the playbook. And it was bright red. It was this ugly ass binder and it was bright red. And you took that when you were a new hire, you took it everywhere. Right. So we actually, if I found your playbook, there was a fine. Like I found your playbook. There was a fine. Because if I found it means you didn't have like you carried that playbook with you, meeting to meeting session to session, that was that was your playbook. Right. They do that in the pros. They do that in the military with a lot of things as well. Like, but it was a physical copy as well. Most people this thing has never used it. Right. So if you're a sales leader without a playbook, what it means at its course, you actually don't have a defined set of best practices, which I mean, you can't scale greatness. You'll just scale suck. And that's a problem or success will be random. I find this is the other. This is the other thing. It's, it's, you'll have such a wide variance of performance in your organization because people are reliant on figuring things out on their own, which can't happen. You can throw certain people into any sales org, no matter what they're going to be successful. And so oftentimes I argue that you should judge a sales leader not by their best performers or really by their worst, but it's, it's that middle section. Like how great are they? Because those are the people that are operating by your playbook and executing and really like driven by your coaching. And we'll get into this into the building, right? I'll, this will probably set us up a little bit. I was talking with a company. company, this is about three or four, not about five, six months ago now, where they say, yeah, like our top three reps, they don't follow the playbook at all. Like what should we do about that? - Hmm. - And in the link book. - Right, exactly. I was like, anyone's ever worked with me, like no, it's exactly what I did in that. So I just called like the KD slow down, or the KD pause, where I'll like, I'll make you say it again slowly. I'll be like, all right, I want you to say that to me one more time, but really slow. And then, the top three performers don't follow the playbook at all. What does that make you think maybe it's actually the problem? Right, you caught it, it's my playbook. - It's my playbook. - If they're not the problem, your top three, those, that's the playbook you need to be following. That's the playbook you need to be defining, and you're looking at it to completely the wrong way. - Yeah. I often tell this to folks newer on my team, is like start with the playbook, but then beat my playbook. And if you can beat the playbook in terms of your conversion rate, so the approach, the efficiency by which you're tackling the job that is outside of it, then let me know and let's update the playbook 'cause I want everybody doing it. - The quote that we start our new hires off with is imitate first, innovate second. - Let me take first, do this, imitate first, innovate second. And we did, I lead the first session for Onboy, always. It's three hours long, it's the first session, it's with you. - Three hours. - Three hours. - Three hours, first session. - Once a month, I run that first session, recovering the playbook, recovering expectations, recovering how to succeed, recovering the virtues and the values, and this is one of the things I talk about, is y'all, I have gotten more things wrong in this than you even tried yet. I need you to trust my mistakes. I think about this every day, every day, for the last 13, 15 years of my life. Okay, imitate first, do what I'm asking you to do first, then innovate, how silly would it be to come into an org that is running, that is operating, that is succeeding, you don't wanna do something differently in the year. That's a silly way to approaching, imitate first, be good, then be great. - Yeah. Most of the reason I chose to do this podcast is now I get to drill people, I respect, with questions for an hour every single week. And this is why, because hearing you say you spend three hours with every new higher cohort, I'm like, I knew I was gonna have something to wanna make me up my game, that's awesome. - No, amazing, I just think speaking to you just personally, as a friend of some way, and how that sets the tone, bro, is unreal. Like, it's like, look, let's call it all out here, we're gonna get you hyped, but also, here are the expectations. Here's how you get promoted, here's what these virtues are. You can hold me to these. If you see shit happening out there, that doesn't match these. I want to know about these things. I am going to push you, I am going to challenge you, right? But here's also what success looks like on the other side, like it sets the whole tone, and then they know they've heard it from you. They've heard it from you, not from a manager, not from a onboarding, not from HR, they've heard it from you, which then also makes some of the any early performance conversations actually very easy. - Yeah. - I just, I want you to go, bro. Remember this? Can we talk about this? - Yeah, you've got people signing it. - 100%. This is your signature? We're back on the same page here. - We're in the process of overhauling our new higher process, and this is gonna go into it, for sure. So, one of the pieces of feedback I get a lot, when I talk to folks about this, is it can feel like just overwhelming. I have no idea where to start. Like, people here, you talk about, there's five P's, and there's a hiring framework, and then there's a playbook for this and that. It can just feel overwhelming, and I think paralyzing for folks. So, let's give some advice to early sales leaders. And where should they start? How should I get going? I want to codify my approach. What are the first things to build? - Yeah, so the first things you start on the people section, the first thing you build are the virtues and expectations. First, hear the behaviors we expect of the organ, and what they mean is the expectation of the role. It's actually doesn't take that long. It's just blocking the time to do it. It's either the people. That's the most important part of the people. You can build everything else out, but like that's the most important. Virtues, expectations of the role. Then you get to prospect, buyers matrix. Go Google it y'all, buyers matrix, Jill Conrad, go Google it, free download, put it in your playbook. Buyers matrix. Jill Conrad, OG goat. - OG. - Oh, you don't, she doesn't come up as much anymore, but yeah, I was learning. - Gee, she's sure. Like that's it, like every buyer's matrix I will forever go through, right? Buyers matrix, go through it. And I'm gonna give a bonus tip at the end of all this. Then you get to the problem. So the problem, right? And this is from Keenan, if you're trying to do this, just the PIC problem, you'll get, right? Here's the problems, here's the implication of those problems. You write those out. And y'all, if you're listing them, you probably should be nodding, because you already know this stuff. The playbook is in your head. The problem is in your head, right? Then you get to process, call scorecards, scripting. But if you don't have scripting, at least call scorecards. Here's a disco scorecard, demo scorecard, pricing scorecard, cold, like, and again, you already know what your scorecard is, 'cause in your head, when you sit down with a rep, there's 10 to 15 things you're listening for on a disco call. Get a magic, I put it on paper, right? Then you get to the product, and the product is basically feature. I've grown up here a little bit, so now it's C-T-D, but it used to be STFW. - Nice, I know. - Here's the feature, STFW. Here's the feature. - Yeah, that's not the fun part. - Here's the feature, now it's connected dots, 'cause I'm growing up, maybe, kind of, trying, but like, so that right there, y'all, that playbook would be better than 90% of the playbooks out there. It gets you started that you can build from, but then here's the beauty, you don't build it yourself. You have a team, guess who helps build my playbooks? - Managers, reps, enablement, everybody. - Regers, reps, everyone helps me build the playbooks. This is not me going into some ivory tower and walking down like Moses with the tablets. Like, hey, I've got reps out here, even then this is all happening when I had a team of like eight, and then like, I was like, how do I build this? It's like, all right, Kyle, you've got Bires Matrix 4, Office Manager. Brian, you've got Bires Matrix 4 controller. Jenny, you've got Bires, like, you just assign them out, and it's gonna get done 80% of the way. We sit in the room, one hour, especially, I mean, this is the recording, I could show it to you. So on my calendar, every week right now, there's an hour blocked with my three main like revenue leaders called the Weekly Whiggle. It's called the Weekly Whiggle. It's an hour. We get together to build, not to discuss, not to chat. Okay, we are working on the call score car today for an hour. You know how long it takes to build a call score car, Kyle? - Less than an hour, that's for sure. - Mm-hmm, done. Done, right? So to give some context to your y'all, as of this recording, I have been in seat for 90 days. As of this recording, I've been in seat for 90 days. Guess what's already done? - The five Bs. - We have virtues of values. Done, goal setting, done, Bires Matrix, done, call score cards for each one of our main calls and our different sessions done. We're right now working through the product, STFW feature by feature, and we've already done the problem set. - It's already done. - And for further context, in these first 90 days, we have already increased close rates by over 38% our ACV has gone up by 17% already in these first 90 days and broken two revenue records. And our lead to clients already almost doubled. - Hell yeah, man. - Like this shit works y'all. You just have to go and do it. And it doesn't actually take that much time. It really doesn't. You just have to block it to do it with them leveraging my team. And what do you think that's done with my relationship with the team? When I pull nine or 10 of them in and say, "Hey, I could use some help with this." So I'll keep going down this path. So I should learn this recently from Patrick Bent, David. I had one of his seminars and he said, "A leader should never do anything alone." I was like, whoa. He's like, if you're ever doing something alone, you're missing. So what I created is like, I created, I said, you know, to the team, I was like, here's the main things I'm working on. If anyone here is interested in these things, let me know. And I created these, it's called Never Alone Slack Channel. So Never Alone Marketing Optimization. Never Alone Scripting. Never Alone On Boarding. Never Alone. And I've got people in there that I guess I hate. I'm working on this. Could you help me out? - Hmm. - And it builds the relationship, right? So leaders, you shouldn't be building this by yourself. Go to the team. And if you don't know, the plays need to be, go shadow your best. Go shadow your best. The playbook should be built off of the best practice, not just the practice practice. Like what's the best practice and do you even know what the best practice is? Yeah. How much of a framework are you giving them to sort of fill in the blanks? Oh, okay. Well actually this is a two-parter because I'm going to go to the end of anxiety other side. One of the biggest shifts I've made with onboarding playbooks is they are filling the blank literally literally filling the blank. So the number one problem for the office manager is and it's blank. They have to fill it in as they go. So this is a shift I made at my last orbit. I'm now doing here because that's going to increase retention. If I just give it to you and I tell you, you just read it. Oh, the number one problem for like the restaurant owner is blank versus the number one problem of the restaurant owner is and then they have to fill it in as you're teaching it to them. It increases retention. So I build the playbook first and then for my new hires I blank things out. So as we're teaching it to them they can fill it in. So that's the actual literal fill in the blank type setup. But on the flip side for frameworks, right? My goal with frameworks is again, it should make you good. Like if you follow this, you'll be good at your job and that is pretty specific. Like there are certain things called it you know make a good disco call. You know. So I'm going to document that and that be the question. The question is really like you want to engage the team and the process of engaging, you know, you tell a rep I need your help to build this part of the playbook. If you give them a lot of white space, they're going to be going sort of all over. So are you saying this is my rough? This is the actual example. Like here, here's one of the ones I've built. Can you go help me build this out here? Right. So it's all to fill in the yeah. Right. Here's what I need for a PIC chart. Right. Yeah. Problem. What that problem causes, what are the implications of that problem? Here's one that I did for invoicing. Yeah. Could you do this for receipt collection? Right. Like it's just but always an example they can fall over then yeah, then they go and do it. But first a word from our sponsors. Are you coming to GTM 2024 in Austin, Texas? It's going to happen October 14th to 16th. I'm Kim Scott and I wrote radical candor and radical respect. At GTM 2024, I'm going to be diving into how you can solicit feedback. It'll give you the opportunity to read minds, how you can give both praise and criticism and how you can gauge how what you are saying is landing and make corrections so that you can have better conversations. Whether you're looking to improve your relationships at work or improve your results at work, this session will equip you with the strategies to excel in 2025. So don't wait. Get your ticket before they sell out. You can get it at join pavilion.com/gtm 2024. See you in Austin. On the fill in the blanks part of onboarding, if you're familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy, I'll send you this. It's exactly what you're talking about. There's certain activities that are going to generate more retention, recall, and skill development. It's a pyramid, just like Maslow's hierarchy. At the bottom is remember. Give somebody information and ask them to remember. Then it's understand, apply, create as the top, analyze, create as the very top. And so the more you can architect your any skill development exercises to the top of that hierarchy. So here's a framework, create a new call script. I'm going to basically throw out those call scripts, but getting somebody to take the principles, like I've got a set of cold calling principles, pattern interrupt, credibility relevance, intrigue, offer, and value. It's like go right your own call script. I don't want them to use that call script. It's not going to be very good. But the process of creation bakes in. Now I understand, okay, I need a pattern interrupt to go from system one system to so that the Blooms taxonomy thing is really interesting from to get your managers to understand. Because that hard thing is we've gone through an education system that's all just remember, remember and regurgitate, which is the worst form of learning. But it's the thing that feels natural to us. So I'll flip you the couple links that I got in my management development book. Okay, so last, we're going to skip that. Let's get into building and deploying. I want to be mindful of time here. So you've talked about the components of a sales playbook. But there's problems that just come up in your business. We have a conversion rate issue here. We've got a problem with employee retention or mishiring. And so how are you allocating your effort around what playbooks to build, what problems you're focusing on? Do you have a prioritization framework for? Because time is very limited. We're in the resource allocation business. So how do you think about deciding between what things to work on? I mean, a lot, like I'll say like within selling, right? As I'm looking at what is the impact of it? So a phrase that I just want is a CRO. That's what I mean. That's what I'm looking at. What is the impact of this problem that I'm trying to solve? So the phrase that gets used often here is volume or volume. Is it a high volume problem, meaning it's loud? Or is it high volume problem, meaning is a lot of it. Volume or volume. Too often revenue years are focusing on loud problems. But it's actually only happening 3% of the time, 8% of the time. I'm trying to look at some of the high volume problems. There's a lot it's happening a lot. So that's my first gamut if I'm looking to where to solve. Is this a loud problem or is this a high volume problem? There's a lot of it. And then from there, this is where all the metrics come in. It's like what metric is it attached to? Like what is what metric is this impact? And I'm a nionicle in terms of prioritization. It's like yeah, whatever show rate might be busted. But you know what's worse? Our clothes. I'm going to let show rate burn a little bit. It's just one of my directors. So I was like so much about leadership is controlled burns. Like all right, the barn is on fire. But if it's controlled, I got to go save the house. And I got to go save the house first. And so it always comes back to a metric for me. So what metric am I trying to impact to help prioritize where I'm putting resources to solve the problem that applies to the playbook too? It's like what's busted? If I look at all the metrics, what's the worst one right now? That's where I'm going to start diagnosing plays. That's where I'm going to start figuring out like what needs to be done to solve it. So I filter it through volume and volume. Then I connect it to a metric and I go from there. Cool. And then what are you using for inputs? So you're developing, say it's a playbook you've never had to design before. So it's not a sales playbook that you have an existing framework, but you know, save inherited a post sales team for the first time. And you need to go build new sets of things for that team that you don't have reference points for. How are you balancing between anecdote and data? Are you participating in calls? Are you relying on the team? Like what is your fact finding look like to start? Yeah, like I mean, use the right word there. It's like I go get my reference points, but I observe. I don't ask. I observe. I don't ask people what they do. I watch what they do because this happens all the time. You sit down at the top performers. I go, what did you do? And they're like, oh, this is what I do. They don't know. They don't. They oftentimes have no idea what it is they do differently than anybody else. Right. So if I was inheriting post sales, quite literally my first step is who's my best person? My first step is who is my best person? Who is the best post sell? And I'm looking at that both in terms of say outcome, but also metrics. Yeah, it's like there's the revenue, but sales leaders, please hear me. Just because someone has the highest revenue doesn't actually necessarily mean they're your best rep. Right. The metrics are going to help you actually know who the best rep is because let's say someone's closing of whatever, a million a month, but their close rates 14%. You know, someone else is closing 750K a month, but their close rates 35%. Who's a better rep to build a playbook around? I'm picking that 35% or more than I am a 14% to build the playbook, but then so back to this, I'm observing. I'm going to watch step by step what it is they do to find the patterns. Right. This is I know not to talk about it, but this is where Bipsey comes in. Yeah. Okay. It's where Bipsey is. You may be Is she diagnosis, process, skill, and you? What are the behaviors of that top performer? What are they do that's in their control? What are the skills of that top performer? What is it they do well? What is their process? How do they work through these things? So that's where I'm going to get my reference point. And again, you can learn very quickly, very, very quickly on these things, especially in remote. I can have you record your screen. I'm getting screen recording played on 2X and watch and document what's occurring there. And I'm good to go. Yeah. There's a concept in psychology called stated versus revealed preference. People will state that they don't like, they don't want to eat sweet foods and bad things. But if you observe them, then it's a totally different set of things. And this is a very, I love your point on observed, don't ask. I think there's some helpfulness in asking all this. Let me clear. I'm going to ask, like, how do you go through this? But I always combine it out with observation, always. Because I can learn through that faster, because I can see what's actually being done. I can't, again, playbook. a document is said of best practices. A practice is something that is done, not just said. I need to see it done that way. And this is, you know, whether this is controversial or not, there are times that I go in to do the thing, right? Like I'll all make some calls, all run some deals. But it's actually rare that that's how I'm going to learn the fastest because that's just me proving. I can do it. I'm actually mean I'm learning the best practice because best practice also doesn't mean I can do it. It means can the majority do it? This is also where playbooks go wrong. Sometimes they're built on this like, well, here's how I would sell. There's stuff you can do Kyle that your average AE cannot do. There's stuff that I can pull off that an average AE cannot. That does not mean it's the best practice. That's what goes above the playbook. That's what we get beyond it. But in there is like, what can the majority do and do well? That's what it is. And do well by a certain point. There's always this ticking clock. We have to get people ramped fast and trying to teach them the master version of some skill versus the, you know, it's just silly. It's just silly. I've already revamped in our onboarding here. I was like, yeah, we get them on the phones in four days and are those always fires people up. I'm like, why though? Why? Why are you getting them on the phone in four days? Well, I get there at batson. No, that's the game. That's that you're putting them into the game when they're not ready. Why one, would we burn those leads or deals, would two, what that does to them mentally? That's not, that's getting them on the phones fast. I get them ready fast, right? The playbook also, if you think about it, those are the answers to the test. They have, they know what good looks like. They know what they're trying to get to to your point. So that also speeds up ramp 'cause they know what they're trying to achieve. Here are some examples of good calls. Like here, so I wish I was at my home office right now. I could bring up a couple playbooks that I have in the office. I just show you, like, we even had specific role play scenarios in the playbook of here's the scenario. Here's what you're gonna practice. Here's what you're trying to achieve. All that in the playbook. Yeah, yeah. We're piloting and deploying this new tool. It's like an AI role play, it's an AI role play tool, but it's built off of all of our stuff. Like it's, it's, it's, it's, or you can put it in the chat. 'Cause I'm using one too right now. And it's called ramp systems. Okay. I'm using hyperbound. Hyperbound. See, I looked at hyperbound and I, I didn't know how custom I could get it to my environment, but I've given ramp calls, playbooks, scorecarding, a bunch of stuff. And it was like, sort of scary accurate. And so we're now trying to, this idea of practice field playing field, getting, giving reps an opportunity to just do way more practice reps. I have this concept of called isolation drilling and a lot of it's from talent code. So progressive resistance, the 60, 80% learning zone. Like I, I wanna be pretty prescriptive about how mock calls and practices done, but reps don't wanna do it. Managers, managers don't like doing role play either. I'm willing to bet that is the case for 90% of people. And so by using a tool to give people, hey, like I need you to do an hour of handling knee jerks and over the course of a couple days. I need you to do an hour of dealing with late call objections for asking for the business. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity to extend. We are in the like four, four days, get people on the phones, camp right now. But that's a lot because of the speed our business is moving at, but I don't actually think it's the right thing from an outcomes perspective. And so hopefully with tooling in place, I can extend that, give people more practice in training and have them more prepared for. - Yeah, we're doing the same thing with hyperbound. My team practices every single day now, every day, entire team, every day. They are in there, my new reps, I mean, they will literally be practicing for three to four hours a day. And that's how I build my onboarding, by the way. Is my, when I look at onboard, I'm like, how fast can I get you ready? How fast can I get you on? So you're practicing for three to four hours a day, even when you have people, right? Because the beauty is if you have a team in place, right? Like, that's literally, they would spend 30 minutes with a rep or a manager the last three to four hours of each and every day, practicing the intro. They just spent 30 minutes with you, practicing the intro. And they're gonna go with someone else and practice the intro. And they're gonna go with someone else to practice the intro, but by the time they're on the phones, they are ready. Like, I have this weird idea that if you can't do it in practice, I know you can't do it in the game. (laughs) Stock one, right? It's like, why would I put someone in the game when I know they can't do the thing? Man, I'm controversial, right? These are why they pay me the big bucks. Just like, why would I do it? So, game when they can't do it in practice. But the two in now makes so much easier. I love it. I absolutely love it. - Yeah, we'll have to swap notes on these tools. I looked at a few. So, do you have a hard stop at the top of the hour by the way? - I can go a little bit over. - Okay. Let's talk about operationalizing a playbook. I think this is the thing that potentially leaders have the hardest challenge with. It's, I've built a playbook and now nobody's using it. And we've talked about one of the problems, which is like, maybe the playbooks don't know that good. And for me, that's about trust building. Like, you have to build enough trust that people can bring you problems like, "Hey, this is like part of the playbook is no good." And that's like a psychological safety thing. But, so let's just say that the playbook is good for this question. How do you operationalize it? So, I've built something new. Like, you're changing, let's say, we're changing BDR scripting, which I'm imagining you've done recently. How do you think about deploying this, getting adherence, measuring, like, what's your process there for a deployment? - So, it's a few places. So, one funny enough, first and foremost, it's through practice. - Mm-hmm. - Leaders hear me out here. The playbook is meant to be practiced, not read. You don't read a playbook. You don't go to football practice and read it. You practice the plays. So, this is the first place that most orgs miss. Is they're not practicing the plays. They wrote it down, is there, but they're not practicing it. That's the first part. Like, the playbook is. - How much is it? - So, how much is it? - How much practice? - Until they can do it. - Okay. - Till they give a frame of reference. So, you're deploying a new BDR script on Monday. What's the volume of practice that you're likely having them do to get that? - If it's scripting, 30 minutes a day. - Okay. Okay, so, playbooks need to be practiced. That's one part of deployment. - What? - Yep. Second is they need to be referenced. Send your people to the playbook. Send them to the playbook. If you're getting asked questions about things that you know are in the playbook, send them to the playbook. Too often, as leaders, what do we do? We just answer it. - Yeah. - Hey, Kyle, I keep getting this, you know, not interested in objection. What should I do? Put our super coach, Capon, and we say, oh, let me. Hey, actually, jumping to the playbook real quick, I think it's like page 13, give that a read and then we can talk about it. Mm-hmm. So, you reference them to the playbook, right? That's the next step is you need to be bringing it up often. And third, we use the playbook in our trainings and coaching sessions, where the scorecards, they're in the playbook, where the persona guys, they're in the playbook, like it's there. So, we actually bring them into the sessions that we are running. But then, truth of the last one, I'll say in terms of deployment to get it like to stick, is the updating of it. If you are bringing it back up and updating it with new information, that also keeps the team engaged with it. Whereas, I got it, this is the new plays that we're supposed to be running, right? So consistently updating it also keeps the engagement in deployment high because they're seeing it more often. In my one on one docs, there's a link to the playbook. It right there in the one on one docs. And there's a link to the playbook right in there. People can go and reference it. So those are the biggest things as a practice it. You reference it. You send people to it. You bring it up often and use it in places and then you keep updating it because that keeps it top of mind. It's too often a playbook. I send the sales playbook and they send it to me and I pull up that version history and I know exactly when the last time that thing was updated. It means I know exactly the last time anybody even looked at that thing. Right? God, I bring it up more often. And how frequently are you updating things? Would you say whenever I learn something new? Right? If I learned something new, I'm updating the playbook and then I'm sharing that information with the team. So this is something where we do the quarterly wiggle. So every quarter, it's called studying greatness is the name of the access. So every quarter, I assigned to my managers either a metric or a process. So Kyle, you've got ACV. Jenny, you've got close rate. And is that person's job to identify who has the highest of that metric or who performs at the best and to study them? What can we learn about their process? What's the bipsy for Kyle on closer? Why do we believe he's closing at 34% when everyone else is at 19%. So every quarter, there's an intentional exercise with my leadership team of can we understand greatness? And almost every time we learn something new, that that person is doing that goes into the playbook. And now full circle back, they were updating the playbook based off best practices from the team, which also gets by it. Hey, y'all, we're changing how we're doing pricing because Julia has a higher ACV than everybody else and we figured out why she presents pricing like this. This is how I want us to work on this now. Playbook is updated, scorecard is updated, practices run over the next like three to four weeks to get it down. Cycle continues. And so you've got an operating cadence for playbook development. So you've got a quarterly wiggle. So that's every manager is going to go study one sort of skill or outcome. Yep. Are there any other operating rhythms that you have in place for playbook development, updating, monitoring? So the development, that's the weekly wiggle that I'm doing right now with my with my managers is reading together every the weekly. That's how we're to build, right? Here's what we're focused on. Actually, there's a doc. I mean, I don't know if this is a, are we doing any video on this or video? All right. I can pull this up here real quick. I'll share this real quick so people can speak. Where did he go? There we go. One of the first docs that I built for my leadership team is project codename, the wiggle. What do we need to establish the wiggle for? Lead handling, need hiring, cold solid social. These are all the things that we have to establish the wiggle for. What are the steps of that diagnosis? Okay. Who's the best at this? Can we define once it's been diagnosed? We have to document it, demonstrate it. So we're literally week by week picking the wiggle, working on it for an hour, right? So this is like that process that we're going through, but it's blocked on the calendar. We get together. We know what one we're working on because also I think you have a job, three different teams. So the wiggle for disco for this team is different than the wiggle for disco on this team. And I need that separated, right? But we're coming together to work on it at the same time just to make sure it gets done because too often people think this takes way longer than it does, right? You know this stuff, right? Anyone watching? You know what good looks like for this? Get it out of your head. Put it on paper. Yeah. And that process is that in your new course? Like how to build a sales playbook is in there. Yeah, how to scale greatness is in there. Cool. Nice. I am a strong supporter of the Katie content. There's so much there's so much bad stuff out there right now. I'll go on the record as putting my name behind your stuff. One of my reps, one of my managers did, I don't know, what of your courses, but a lot of, that's where I borrowed your end of week miracle, whatever you call it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we have our own version of that now, but that was a really valuable course for him. I looked at a bunch of content, right? I mean, I read a bunch of you're in Jake Dunlop stuff, which I like. So. There's a world of crap content out there, but folks should definitely, if you're a newer VP sales even experienced VP's of sales, like you can accelerate yourself vast with borrowing some of these concepts. Yeah. Okay. Last question, measurement. So how do you measure whether or not a playbook is actually being adhered to? It depends on like what part of the playbook, right? But like what let's say like scripting, well, I'm measuring that in the call recordings and the transcripts, like I know whether or not that's occurring. That's what I mean. You will buy the managers and are they like filling a doing a checklist or they score carding like what's with the. Yeah. So that, I mean, that shows up in their one-on-ones, right? So in the one-on-one process, which is also documented of like, here's how we run a one-on-one, we have our one-on-one dot that's updated. Like in there is like, here's what we're working on at the rep. So the manager one-on-one dot for me is, you know, there's team performance, but where we spend most our time is, rep by rep, what's the number one metric? What's the issue diagnosis? What's the coaching plan for it? That's where we spend most of our time in the manager one-on-ones. And so that's where I'm learning what is happening or what is not happening. And then the manager's obviously run their one-on-ones with their reps, same idea. It's the number one metric we're focused on, what's our process to improve it, where we focus coaching wise. So that's my first measurement is within the one-on-one process. But more often than not, the easiest measurement is the metric where I want it to be. Right. Because the metric is where I want it to be, then I can have a strong assumption that the play is being run. If someone is below, right? If someone, let's say, like one of my reps, right, I have a show rate of like 47%. What do I already know, Kyle? I can guarantee they're not running. The plays they're supposed to run when it comes to show rate. And that's also, you know, this is in the playbook, but I don't know if we call it a playbook. That's where the issue diagnosis checklist comes in. So I have an issue diagnosis checklist for every key metric in my work. So if someone has a low show rate, this is what you look for. How far are they booking the meeting? Are they getting the calendar in? I'd accept it. Do the calendar reminders have a problem based language in them? Who are they booking? With, did they establish a problem on the cold call? Did they sell the AE? Did they sell the meeting? There's like three other things. What do you think the odds are? Someone's doing all of that and they're not having a good show rate. Flim to the absolutely zero. Absolutely zero. Unless they're completely cheating the system somehow. Right? If they're just booking fake meetings, well, then show rate is going to be that. Like if you become ungameable. So that's the checklist, right? So number one metric is you diagnosis coaching plan. Megan, that's fast. I can very quickly figure out like, oh, shoot, they're booking them out two weeks for now. Cool. Well, that's all I think. All right. We're coming up on time. So I want to get into a quick fire. What do you wish you knew as a new leader that you only came to understand sort of many years into it? If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice as a new people leader, a new second line leader. One piece of advice. One in one only. All right. Can I do too fast? Okay. Five. Five. Two. Because one one's tactical one's theoretical. The theoretical thing I've said to my younger self is you don't turn people into you. Like you can't turn them into you. Your job is to make them better. And early on in my leadership, I was trying to make everybody like me work like me sell like me. That's not what true leadership is. Your goal is not to make people like you, your people to make them better. That's on the theological side of this tactical side is document the wiggle. So much of the wiggle lives in our head. And we wonder why we can't scale or why we're the bottleneck or why we're have to get involved in everything is because the wiggle is. Between our years, we never documented it. And I think I learned documentation earlier than most. I wish I had learned it way earlier of like this is what good looks like documented is what good looks like document and then update the documents. That would be my number two. So one, don't try to make people you to document the wiggle. That would have changed my leadership life immensely. Very cool. Not in the rapid fire, but how much time a week do you think leaders should be spending on documenting the wiggle and playbooking. on if you have it or not. Like once it's built, it's actually not a lot of time. Right? If you're, so say they owe you that much because I think that's they don't have, and they don't have much. I will throw a question back to the audience first, which is how valuable do you think it would be to have your best practices documented for your org? Yeah. And the moment you answer that question, should tell you how much time it's worth to do. So my recommendation, like I think you know, I've talked about this in the back. I love something called a dark week. Sales leaders, this is going to give you nightmares, but it's going to change your life. So dark week is a week off of work to work on work. So it's you're not in meetings, you're not in the office, you're not in Slack, you're not in the emails. It's like you're on vacation, but it's an entire week dedicated to working on your org. I leave a dark week, more energized than any vacation I've ever, I ever take anything because you get shit done, right? And one, if you did a one dark week, you'd have all this done. One dark week, you'd have literally all of it done. That's when I build out scorecards, that's when I do observation and like like studying of things, going through transcripts, documenting, but if you can't, and also you're like, oh, I can't take a dark week, then that's exactly why you should. Because if you think you've been gone for weeks, going to break your org, your org is not set up the right way. That should actually be your signal, you're the bottleneck that if you aren't there, shit falls apart, that means you don't have your best practices in place and you don't have a leadership system in place to run it. So dark week, you just not get out, but if not at least three hours a week, three hours a week, 90 minute sessions per week until this is all done, it'll take you about a month and a half at most. Cool. Nice. What's the most common advice you give to your new leaders and or mentees? The most common advice is funny, you get the one you're just repeating yourself constantly on. I am not you, you are not me, we are not them, they are not us. I am not you, you are not me, we are not them, they are not us, and it's a constant reminder of we cannot just lead the way that we like to be led, and we cannot expect them to think the way that we think or to operate, the way that we operate. I am not you, you are not me, we are not them, they are not us, that's my number one always, because two often leaders are like, oh, like they're not, they're not doing this, they're not doing that. It's like, okay, but like they are not us, does not matter how you sold or how we did things, that's why you're a CRO, you're better and you're different, there's nothing wrong with that, but you're better and you're different. The rest meet a certain type of coms to come through, that's probably my most common, far and away with coast common. It's not going to be like, what's the cause? As you know, do you know what's cause? Right, the result, right, both good or bad, right? Do you know what's cause, bad result? You can't just tell me the results bad, what's causing it, or do you know what's causing the good result, which is actually where most sales leader submits, they don't know what causes the good. So like we have a phrase, if you can't explain it, you can't claim it. You can't explain why your team did well, you can't claim that success. You need to be able to explain. It's great. I like that. My management team likes to tease me. They'll quote me and say, what drove this? Because I'm instantly saying, somebody brings me something, oh, this awesome thing happened this week and they know I'm going to respond what drove this, because I'm always obsessed with trying to figure out what's on it. Okay. What's the hardest lesson you've had to learn? Releasing control. You control. As a seller, you control, you control your destiny, you control your output, you control oftentimes how much you produce as a leader, as much as you think you're in control, you actually have less control. You can't control things as a leader. You get both systems and process in place, but releasing control. One of the biggest lessons, for sure, it just doesn't always work out. Sometimes it's just not a good fit. Sometimes it's just not the right place for you. It's a hard lesson because our ego is getting the way, our heads get in the way of being like, oh, I'll figure this out. Sometimes it's just not a good fit and being okay, say it's just not a good fit. I was listening to a podcast with this author, Brian Klass, who wrote a new book, which I just picked up, but I haven't read, called Fluke. This quote stuck with me, he's like, you control nothing, but you influence everything. I love it. I think it's such a good reminder. It's like, you don't control how people behave, but you have an insane amount of influence. I think that's an important shift as a leader because you have so much more direct influence as a rep on a ton. Even though there's a lot outside your control, is your patch good? Did you get the right bluebird deals? But it's like selling so much easier than leadership. So much easier. There's probably no way we could go to the bottom. Man, I should just go back and sell. Actually, it was fun. It was easy. This is what we do. Man, we're builders or scalers or coaches or leaders. It's just who we are, but not selling. It was easier. Just what? What's the best thing you've read in the last 12 months? I actually really did enjoy Fritzen Project. That was a very good read. That one was fun. I came back to the Almanac of novel revocon again this year. It's been a couple of years, so that's still one of my most highlighted books. That one was really good. I really liked Fritzen Project. It was a good reference point of the whole concept of the book is where can you decrease Fritzen where you want more of something to happen, where can you increase Fritzen in places that you want something less to happen? And then I'd be no the way. Look at your organ, your processes to go like, okay, where can I make things easier? Because I want more of it. Where can I make something harder to prevent it? So Fritzen Project is a really good recent read. And then Almanac of novel revocon is just phenomenal. Just so very cool. There's an awesome book called Nudge, which is by Richard Thaler, one of the early behavioral economics guys. Very similar thing. Like, how do you add Fritzen? There's another talk that I frequently share by Lauren Nordrin. And so he's a researcher and he talks about like the difference between fuel and friction. He's like, we're obsessed with fuel and giving things fuel to make them go better. But really, we need to think about removing friction. So lots of the same concepts. I'm going to have to grab this one. Yeah. Because he talks about in the Fritzen Project too, just how often adders are rewarded. Choppers are not. And our default is to add something. So something's not going well. Our default is like to add to it. Okay, let's do more of it. Add more people. Let's add more meetings. Let's add more steps. Let's add more when it's like it's the eliminators that actually, and I'm not saying eliminating people calm down everybody. But it's like our defaults to add when oftentimes subtraction is a better process to go through. So it's a great, it's a great, great biology was another good one. B-U-Y,ology. That was also a really good book on like how we make buying decisions. Nice. Cool. So where can people find more from you? I'm sure that lots of people are going to be wanting more. So where should we stop? So definitely LinkedIn, you can find me there, and then salesleadershipaccelerator.com. That's where I'm putting all this stuff and all the content, all the programs, all the courses. Like definitely go there. Salesleadershipaccelerator.com. That's it, my man. That's awesome. Well, appreciate the time. I have a whole raft of notes and I'm feeling like I got to step up my game now. So this was a great conversation. I'm excited for people to listen to it. I think it's going to be a really valuable one. So appreciate your time. Oh yeah, my man. Thank you for having me. Of course. Thank you for listening to the Revenue Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe and you can find a link in the show notes. And be sure to leave a five-star review, share it with your network, and please join me next Wednesday for another great conversation.