Episode 2: RevUP Sales Leadership

McIntyre: Sales gets a bad rap. I think it’s something we should all be proud of. It’s really a skill and a discipline, and a lot of people are terrified of doing it.

Ashcraft:  We had an epiphany one day. We went, wait a minute, we’re all salespeople. Why don’t we create a sales deck for our internal organization?

Shomali: Welcome to Association RevUP, a podcast presented by the Professionals for Association Revenue that will get everyone in your association talking about revenue health. I’m your host, Carolyn Shomali.

Whether you’re an association leader or a revenue producer, each week this podcast series explores a different aspect of revenue health in an entertaining and time-saving way.

In episode one, Jamie Notter helped us explore the business case for culture, the words, actions, thoughts, and stuff that convey what is valued in our organizations.

Notter: Your culture is going to change whether you care about it or not. If you can keep up with the changes and have the culture be aligned with what makes you successful, you will be the place that no one ever wants to leave.

Shomali: In episode two, we’re taking what we learned and we’re applying it to our sales teams as we look at ways to rev up sales leadership.

At the end of episode one, we acknowledge that while it takes a collective effort to improve the culture of your entire association, you can begin to enact change by improving the culture of your team.

So that’s what we’ll focus on today as we explore five ways a sales leader’s actions can show the work of their team is valued.

You don’t need an official leadership title to find today’s conversation valuable.

If you’re a revenue producer working as a part of a team, this episode will help you assess the level of support your work is receiving from leadership or identify gaps where their support could improve your performance.

To lead us through today’s conversation, we turn to Jodi Ashcraft, the Director of Media and Event Sales for the American Psychological Association, and Carrie McIntyre, Principal of Navigate.

Together, they spoke about sales leadership at last year’s RevUP Summit, presented by PAR, and parts of their presentation will be featured here today.

Now, let’s begin Episode 2 and learn how to RevUP sales leadership together.

Ashcraft: My point is that not anyone can sell. We are all experts in this room. And little fun fact about myself, I am not the best salesperson, but I hire the best. I realize that in my role, I’m better at being the coach and the person to keep everyone going, but I’m surrounded by incredibly talented salespeople.

Shomali: That’s Jodi Ashcraft of APA. You could say she leads a sales dream team of sorts for an association that truly values revenue health. Ashcraft’s in-house team is comprised of 12 employees that includes sales managers, a dedicated marketing team, a lead generation coordinator, and a recruitment and job board team.

Whether you lead a large sales team or you’re a solo practitioner, Ashcraft makes an important point and it’s the first one that we’ll cover today.

Treat your team like the experts that they are.

Carrie McIntyre of the Customer Experience and Sales Consultancy Navigate agrees.

McIntyre: You know, sales gets a bad rap. I think it’s something we should all be proud of. You know, it’s really a skill and a discipline and a lot of people are terrified of doing it. So I think it’s something that we shouldn’t shy away from saying that we’re in sales.

Shomali: And she’s right. Selling is a skill and not everyone within your association can do it.

Sales professionals must communicate, negotiate, problem solve, build relationships and maintain them, all while managing their time, prospecting, staying up to date on products and learning the technical skills required by CRMs, sales analytics, email and marketing tools, and increasingly, artificial intelligence.

Treating members of your sales team like experts means giving them the tools and the time to continuously improve their skills. Research shows professional development is valuable for employees and employers alike.

LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report explores this idea. It says the number one way organizations are working to improve employee retention is by providing professional learning opportunities, while also reporting that developing and expanding new skills contributes greatly to employee retention.

McIntyre: The number of things that have changed in the last year about selling because of just the prevalence of, again, all these email sequences and campaigns and people aren’t at their phones and their desks as much and does anyone want to pick up a phone call anymore? I mean, there’s a lot of challenges of trying to break through all that noise. And so I don’t think you can be a good salesperson if you are not constantly questioning, how am I doing? Is there something I could have done better on that last call or, oh gosh, I forgot to schedule the next meeting at the end of the day. Constantly, not only self-critiquing, but looking to other people doing it well that resonate with you, that you can learn from and improve.

Shomali: As a sales leader, simply making yourself available to ideate around how to sell a product and prioritizing ongoing professional development within your team are two easy ways to support the belief that you are working with experts.

Ashcraft:  Within my organization, ongoing learning is mandated. All of us are supposed to be learning at all times. So our whole team, we pick things that we want to learn as a group and we treat it as like a book club. And so we learn together and then we come back together and we talk about what resonated with each one of us.

Shomali: So action one, treat your sales team like the experts they are and give them the time and the resources to continue ongoing professional development. The second idea we’ll explore today regarding sales leadership is to prioritize team psychological safety.

Ashcraft: This is one of the most important things to me.It is so important to have everyone on your team be able to come, come to work, be themselves, contribute, feel like they can be innovative and they’re not gonna be judged, that we’re all in it together and that together we can all be better.

Shomali: Team psychological safety comes down to the idea that asking questions, taking risks, expressing ideas or a new way of doing things and ultimately making mistakes is accepted by the team and will not result in fear or negative consequences to the team members. In episode one, culture expert Jamie Notter spoke about psychological safety as a key component to a culture of innovation. And isn’t innovating something all of our sales teams do on an ongoing basis?

Notter: I have an environment where I can say things and I’m not afraid that I will be punished for it or ridiculed for it. Training and conflict resolution so you can enable people to say, have difficult conversations easily is a big piece of psychological safety. So that I know that I will say, you know, I tried this thing and it totally didn’t work. And I feel like I let you down on this and people can say, I hear you on that. I don’t think you let me down. I appreciate you bringing this up. If you can have a normal conversation and not a, you know, that really pisses me off and I’m mad and blah, blah, blah. Like I’m never gonna say open up again.

Shomali: There’s research to support Notter and Ashcraft’s experience with psychological safety as an essential element of a successful team.

And the most notable findings come from a more than decade old experiment led by a team known for innovation, Google.

Ashcraft: In 2012, Google set out to try to determine what makes the most effective team. It doesn’t matter what they do, if it’s a sales team or not. And they kicked off this thing, they called it Project Aristotle. And Project Aristotle was their way of examining all of their teams for over five years. They looked at everything related to teams and they were just baffled.

Shomali: Because as they examined everything from how teams were structured to the personality traits of team members, the Google researchers found successful teams often varied widely in these areas and in others. As Google researcher, Abeer Dubey, later said, quote, the who part of the equation didn’t seem to matter. So what did?

Ashcraft: What they found was that the thing that made most effective teams, whether they were in a sales environment or product development, was setting norms.

Shomali: Norms are defined as the standards or patterns, especially in social behavior, that is typical or expected of a group. So while a group may be composed of both introverts and extroverts, the group norms win out over an individual’s preferences or behaviors. For instance, interrupting group members versus a structured approach to sharing ideas, or open team-wide collaboration versus smaller group discussions.

There are different types of norms, all of which could be found in high-performing groups. What Project Aristotle eventually discovered is that the norm that was the best predictor of a group’s success was that of team psychological safety. McIntyre says this is particularly vital in the sales field.

McIntyre: A lot of this is basic leadership skills and people management skills, but sales is a fragile environment. You’re getting rejected all the time. It’s hard. There’s a lot of pressure on it. So I think it’s really an important role to have that. One of the other things that Jodi, you had said to me when we were talking about this earlier was, and I think this is a great, important thing too, is being willing to share with your team when you feel like you dropped the ball.

Ashcraft: Oh, absolutely. I tell them all the time, I suck, you know? Seriously, yeah.

McIntyre: She doesn’t, yeah. But I think what’s nice about that is, I think it’s that leadership, like you give people praise. If anything goes wrong, it’s your fault, right? So I think that’s a good leadership skill to have, is like if you are dropping the ball somewhere, it’s because I didn’t anticipate a problem you were gonna have. Which I think leads to another support piece, which is one-on-ones with your team. You know, using those as how’s the pipeline going and what’s closing next month. You know, there are reports for that and team meetings can discuss that, but one-on-ones really more about how are you doing?  What do you need from me? You know, what can I do to help make you successful?

Shomali: There’s one more component to explore as part of psychological safety before we move on, and that’s the idea of financial stability. Consider how your sales environment is either supported or contradicted by the compensation structure. If team members are encouraged to experiment with new ideas, but their attempts at trying new things and potentially failing result in missed bonuses and commissions, then the reality is that’s not a psychologically safe sales environment.

In the case of the American Psychological Association, Ashcraft says that operating without a commission structure supports creativity in her team’s approach to problem solving. You’ll hear McIntyre agree.

Ashcraft:  Because we’re not in a commission-based environment, when sales are down, we can solve that without it directly impacting their livelihood, their bottom line in their home.

McIntyre: It kind of goes back to that it’s all salespeople’s fault when things are down, because they’re the only team member whose revenue is affected if things outside their control are impacting sales. So I’m a big fan of bonuses for the whole team if something does well, rather than just the salesperson getting something and everybody else not really having a share in that same effort.

Shomali: So we’ve explored two ways a sales leader’s actions can show that the work of their sales team is valued. First, treat them like the experts they are. And second, create a space of psychological safety. Both of those actions are internal improvements that you can make within your team.

When we come back, we’ll explore three ways a sales leader illustrates their team’s value externally, both to potential clients and to the rest of the association.

Ashcraft: We had an epiphany one day. We went, wait a minute, we’re all salespeople. Why don’t we create a sales deck for our internal organization? Why don’t we tell them what we do? And that was a true game changer.

Sponsor: At the Professionals for Association Revenue, we value the work and the collaboration of VPC, Inc., an award-winning, full-service boutique production and broadcasting company that brings our annual RevUP Summit to life. VPC guides us through the production process each year to ensure that the RevUP Summit attendees enjoy a high-quality event. Not only do they advise us on production logistics, but they provide top industry broadcast professionals to execute a truly memorable experience. Earlier in this episode, we discussed the importance of treating your team like experts, and VPC shares this approach, recognizing our association expertise and allowing us to rely on their production expertise. The insights you’ve been hearing on today’s episode are courtesy of VPC’s recordings on-site at the RevUP Summit. To learn more about how VPC can help your association, visit their website, vpcinc.net, and give them a call.

Now back to the episode.

Shomali: Welcome back. Part one of the episode focused on internal improvements that sales leaders can make to their teams. In part two, we’re building on that to look at three steps that will enhance our teams’ outward-facing interactions, whether it’s those with the rest of the association or the industry as a whole.

If you are responsible for revenue generation within your association, you understand that your work is foundational to the work of your entire association. The challenge as a sales leader is getting the entire association to understand not only what your team does, but why it’s important. As Jodi Ashcraft said before the break, educating other departments within your organization is the third way to show that your sales team is valued.

Jeremy Figoten is the Managing Director of Conferences, Events, and Sponsorships for the International City-County Management Association. He says educating the rest of your association about your work comes down to a basic sales tactic, showing value.

Figoten: Non-due revenue allows a lot of opportunities in association, it allows teams to hire people, to hire people to generate content, to hire people in membership, to hire people for diversity, equity, inclusion, whatever it’s gonna be. The non-due revenue, it goes a lot of different places, so that’s a big selling point.

I think workload, you’re not gonna have to do this, you can now focus on your job, that type of conversation kinda changes things a little bit.

Shomali: So action three, if you want your sales team’s work to be valued, then show the value. Talk to other departments about the work you’re doing, and show why it matters to them. Educate them on the programs and products that you’re selling, and listen to their perspective. It will improve your sales portfolio, and open the door for collaboration, and a better understanding of what they’re working on.

Figoten: What we have done too is not only the one-on-ones with the department heads, but I do one-on-one team by team, and run through everything, right? Let them see the program, understand it, critique it, you know, listen. We’ve made changes before. But most importantly, it’s listening to them. What are their assets that you can then sell?

Shomali: We’ll hear more from Jeremy in an upcoming episode as we look closely at association partnerships. But his point is an important one when it comes to sales leadership. High-performing sales leaders ensure that their sales team is not operating within a bubble, but rather within the context of the rest of the association. Doing so eliminates the just-go-sell-this approach, which leads to our fourth action step, create sales criteria for your products.

McIntyre:  Have you ever had someone come up to you at your office and say, hey, we’ve got this sponsorship, we’re gonna have to sell this thing? Hey, you, you’re nodding. Yeah, hey, we need a sponsor for X, right? Anyone else relate to that?

Ashcraft: Don’t you dislike that immensely when they say, well, we’re just gonna go do this and you can just go get someone who can pay for it?

McIntyre: And meanwhile, everyone in this room, we all know that the companies that we’ve worked with have pretty much already, this time of year, they’ve already committed all of their dollars, right?  So we know what they’re gonna do and what their goals are for the year.

Ashcraft: If you’re being asked on an ongoing basis to just sell this, just go sell this, one thing that might be helpful, it was helpful for our team, is we sat down and we actually created a sales criteria that we use to walk through different checkpoints when we’re evaluating something. Revenue isn’t always the reason why we do something. The long-term value is their growth potential. Would we be reaching an audience that we’re not currently reaching? Do we currently have relationships with potential people that would buy that product? Can we immediately make connections between the two? But at least we’ve got this methodical process in place that we take a look at. And it helps us when we have to work with our other internal experts and stakeholders, the ones that are asking us, when we actually have to say, that isn’t really the way that we would recommend going, but let’s try this.

Shomali: This is a great place to pause and reflect on how the first four action steps of sales leadership relate to one another. Begin internally by forming a team of sales experts and treating them as such. Then continue to show that their work is valued by creating a sales environment where ideas are shared and mistakes can be made without fear of failure. Next, use your team of sales experts to get buy-in from the entire association by showing them what you do and why you do it. By completing each of these first three steps, this fourth step of eliminating a quote, just go sell this approach, will come naturally to your organization because they will not only understand what you do, but you’re inviting them into the process because that is what sales experts, step one, would do.

Which leads us to the fifth and final discussion for today. This point is one of contention within sales teams whose leaders have a tendency to say, yeah, but this is how sales is done. This is how I learned to sell years ago when I would cold call to meet my weekly sales outreach quota. This sales leadership step will challenge that idea. More sales activity does not always equal more sales.

McIntyre: How much do you love going, hey, we need more sales. You’re gonna have to make more calls, get more emails out, right? Just crank, crank, crank, crank. Sales is not a numbers game. It is in fact a focus game and a relationship game. I don’t know about you guys, but I have seen the rise of all of the automated emails sequences and campaigns is just obnoxious, right? And you can spot a mile away. And I’ve had people I’ve talked to throw me into a campaign and someone who I thought we had a good dialogue with, then I get this off tone email that I can tell was written and it’s just like fizzle, like, oh, that was lame, right? Like, so being able to really be thoughtful and pick the right companies to go after is I think really important.

Shomali: McIntyre relays an experience from her early sales career to drive home this point.

McIntyre:  Early on in my sales career, I was working for a company that exhibited ASAE and at our booth, we had, we was in Philly, and we had Rocky Balboa lookalike at our booth for everyone to come take their pictures with.

And we had a line at our booth, which is, you know, you think it’s the best thing ever, every single person in that line was a meeting planner and we were a technology company and we had to spend hours that night printing and putting the little pictures in the thing so that they could come back the next day and get them and then we were supposed to call all these people that were not a fit.It was literally the worst use of our time.

Shomali: An example where quantity does not match up with quality. Prioritizing relationships, both those with partners and those with members is vital at all stages of the customer journey. If revenue is down, McIntyre says it’s wise to look closely at how your association is maintaining its relationships.

McIntyre: If revenue is down, there’s so many places that could be, you know, how is the customer journey? What happened after they bought it? I worked at one company where we were constantly being asked as the sales team, what are you gonna do to bring in more deals? And I’m like, what are you gonna do to fix some of the problems that keep having my best references complaining and I can’t use them, right? Like these are the things where you can kind of get a little uninspired by your sales leader when they seem completely tone deaf to the fact that sales can’t fix all of the things that need to get fixed. And so understanding is the marketing working for us? Are the customers being handed off in a thoughtful way? Are they having a great experience? Is the ROI there? You know, call a few of them and say things that are underperforming too and say, hey, you used to do this, you backed away from it, what’s changed? Is it something internal to them? Is it something related to your product?

So there’s a lot of places to look before you just say to the sales team, hey, let’s have a contest for more sales.

Shomali: As we wrap up, let’s take a look back at your own sales journey, either that as a sales leader or a sales producer. Based on what was covered today, are you part of an environment where actions support the idea that your work is valued?

To recap, five ways sales leaders can support the work of their sales team. They include treating them like experts, promoting psychological safety, and supporting it with the right kind of compensation structure, educating your organization on your work and inviting them into the process, setting sales criteria to eliminate a just-go-sell-this approach, and finally, understanding that relationship building and not sales quantity is the foundation of the entire customer experience.

Are there other important aspects of sales leadership? Of course, but operating with this approach will help you create a team of top performers. Then it comes down to equipping your team with the sales skills to succeed.

What are those skills? Tune in next week to find out as we take what we’ve learned about culture and sales leadership and put it into action to rev up sales skills.

Shoul: One of the most important things that we talk about and train to is actually having those audience interactions and those audience conversations.Think about all the amazing information that you’re gonna get from those members to then be able to represent your audience, your members and their needs to some of the companies that you’re telling about ultimately the product that you have available to sell.

Shomali: If you’re inspired by this conversation on revenue health and business development for associations, check out our Professionals for Association Revenue member community, where we are pioneering the home for association business.

We’ll be gathering in person in November for our annual RevUP Summit, where you can hear more great ideas from association professionals and partners to help us rev up our business and our associations.

Visit revupsummit.org and use the code PARPOD for a special discount, P-A-R-P-O-D. Our thanks to Jodi Ashcraft of the American Psychological Association and Carrie McIntyre of Navigate for sharing their insights into sales leadership. And our thanks to our supporting partner for the Association RevUP podcast, VPC, Inc.

If you’re finding these episodes valuable and entertaining, share them with your team and together rev up your association business. I’m Carolyn Shomali. Thanks for journeying with me today. I’ll see you next week.