Speaker 1Welcome to Revenue Builders, hosted by John Kaplan and John McMahon. Most first-line managers are drowning. They're recruiting, onboarding, developing, forecasting, and trying to hit a number, all in 62 working days a quarter. But Scott Rudy, a three-time chief revenue officer, has spent his career figuring out how to make that job title manageable. He's been through it at companies growing from 80 reps to 400. And what he's learned is that the managers who actually make their number aren't the ones working harder. They're the ones with the right operating rhythm in place. In this clip, Scott walks through what rhythm looks like, how second-line managers should coach first-line managers on weekly accountability, how to set expectations that stick, and why most companies get this wrong. Because if your managers don't have clarity on how to execute week to week, your reps don't either. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2There's a part of all this around great business planning. And I think second-line leaders need to help new first-line leaders take a step back and build a proper business plan with an ideal customer profile, pipeline, lead source, activities, and help them work out a cadence. And I read a book and actually brought this author to a sales kickoff. His name is Brian Moran. He wrote this book, The 12-Week Year. And one of his concepts is that at the end of each week, you have a WAM, a weekly accountability meeting. And the whole idea behind it is peer accountability. And it can also work between a first and a second-line leader. Here's what I said I was going to do this week. Here's what I actually did. And I'm not talking about just yelling at the scoreboard. I'm talking about really helping shape the week or the month and then participate in coaching along the way.
Speaker 3I like that. Brian Moran, The 12-Week Year.
Speaker 2There you go.
Speaker 3I like that, dude.
Speaker 2It's not nearly as good as John McMahon's book.
Speaker 4Thanks, Scott.
Speaker 2Qualified Sales Leaders, the book.
Speaker 4Agreed. Thank you. No, but what you were pointing out, what that really does is helps people understand, were they doing a lot of activity or were they accomplishing anything? Right. Going back to the point that Johnny made where people are like traveling in and they're checking on deals. The issue with the first-line manager, even the second-line manager, is a lot of times they're not development-focused. They're just too forecast-focused. And what happens is I have five to six sales reps. Two of them are ramping. Four of them are ramped. And I'm trying to make the number. So what I'm doing is I'm running around and making a lot of sales calls or I'm on a lot of sales calls, even if it's a Zoom meeting. And the deals that I'm spending all my time on are deals where, like Scott Rudy, my number one sales rep, is going to meet with the economic buyer or he's going to get the purchase order at XYZ Company for a million dollars. So I go spend time with Scott. But Scott doesn't really need my help. He's done 15 of these freaking deals. He knows. In fact, he could teach economic buyer meetings to my entire team. But that's where I'm running. I'm going over there so I could say that I was part of that deal that Scott did. Meanwhile, John Kaplan's one of my ramping reps. John Kaplan has his first economic buyer meeting. But, you know, we don't even know if the deal's really qualified yet. It could be only worth $100,000. But I don't go spend any time with Kaplan on that deal because I'd rather go to the million-dollar deal with Scott Rudy. So, yeah, I'm active. Yes, I'm spending a lot of time. Yes, I'm making sales calls. But am I spending my time properly to help develop my entire team? No, I haven't been. And then I wonder why Kaplan and the other rep that were ramping, they failed. How did they flush out of the company within nine months?
Speaker 5That's the third reference you've made to me about being subpar or flushing out. Like, what's happening on this podcast?
Speaker 4Well, we had to coddle you a little bit, Tom. I'm only joking for the audience. Just joke. That's a pure joke. Kaplan was a stud. Pure joke. Kaplan was a stud. No. I was coddled. I don't mind that. You can understand, though, that that's, you know, I don't care that you're making sales calls. I care that you're making sales calls where you're helping the developer and you're helping the reps.
Speaker 5So what you guys are talking about, which I love, is basically every action you're doing in this downline is to help people get unstuck. That's what I used to try to help. It's all about development. And you could say, okay, why did you go on that call? And, you know, it was in San Francisco. We went there and then we saw Giants game or whatever. We're really honest with ourselves. You know, and then I had to get back. I needed to get back for my kids, you know, recital or whatever. I'm not judging anything that I just said. I'm not. We all have to live. We all have to raise, you know, whatever we have around us. But I think the point is maximizing your time is about helping people get unstuck. So why did you go there? What did you help them get unstuck with? And I think if you keep that front and center, I think you'll, and you have a responsibility to get them unstuck with something. If you didn't get them unstuck with anything, then like Johnny said, you probably had an opportunity to go somewhere else. And if you're really being honest with yourself, your job is to help people get unstuck this week. Are you going? Where are you going this week? And what are you going to help them get unstuck from? I mean, that's, that's just fundamental.
Speaker 2Early in my career with John McMahon, he used to say, it's so simple. It's so simple. Don't complicate. Keep it simple. And I may have gotten the words wrong over the years, but what I heard was, the job is people pipeline results. And that playbook literally has three chapters in it. People recruiting and developing pipeline, create pipeline from multiple lead sources and results, run a good sales process and get the deal. And one of the things that over the years has developed for me that started at PTC was, what we called back then, Discipline Tuesday. And the idea behind Discipline Tuesday, when we were running it back at PTC was a couple of hours of prospecting. And in order to do the prospect, you had to come into the room with a thematic list and a thematic story and a thematic talk track. And the manager would do it too. And then there was an hour, or two of development. And there was a weekly plan for the development based on the skill needs of the group. And then there was an hour or two of medic review and sales strategy review. And I found that later in my career, people said, Rudy Discipline Tuesday doesn't really sound like a very fun thing. Why don't we rebrand it? And so in my last company, my right arm best friend there, started calling it Super Tuesday. And it was a way to give space to a first line manager to attack, not just being in the field and doing deals, but thinking about that pipeline build and development every week. And the second line manager could come in as a guest speaker and help. So that's a little something that has become a part of my DNA along the way.
Speaker 4I like that. So one of the other things too, where if you're not people, focused as an organization where it shows up is when like, because Cap, you said one of the main responsibilities is attract and retain, retain, retain. And it shows up when someone quits or they're going to get, you're going to get rid of someone. And then you ask, I've been asked to come into some organizations where they do have a churn problem and, you know, start asking questions. So then you ask the question and you have the whole chain sitting there in front of you. Okay. We got rid of Joe. Why'd you get rid of Joe? And all you get is he didn't have grit or you get these like answers that you can't really define or attach to Joe in any way. So you start just asking 10 questions about grit and you get all these answers that are all over the place, which means they don't essentially means we don't know why we got rid of him. Okay. So if you looked at his resume, and you interviewed Joe, but he was in a different body, just changed his name and changed his body. Would you hire him again? Yes. Okay. So if you would hire him again, then it's your problem. You didn't develop the person. And when you see that from the first line manager, second line manager, third line manager, they have no idea exactly why they got rid of him. And when you say, what was his strengths? What was his weaknesses? What was his skills that he lacked? What knowledge did he not have? They can't answer the question. You know that they're not, People focused at all, they're not developing focused at all. And that's when you have to start holding people accountable to development of their
Speaker 6people. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Force Management. If you enjoy the content,
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