How Zendesk Grooms the Next Generation of Sales Leaders
Beyond assigning clients and setting quotas, sales managers are required to have strong people management skills despite having limited training in leadership. This lack of management training can lead to high employee churn and a failure to hit revenue goals.
Zendesk, a software company that created a system for tracking, prioritizing and solving customer support tickets, recently went through a growth period wherein training for sales managers and leading from the front became a heavy focus. And with 2,000+ employees, offices around the world and a $9.5 billion market cap, the stakes are high.
Jaimie Buss, VP of Sales, at Zendesk, recently spoke at FirstMark’s Annual Sales Summit about lessons learned from the growth at Zendesk. Below are key insights from her talk:
A good sales organization starts with the people
Before diving into processes, strategies and sales goals, you need to look at your people. A successful sales organization needs the right team and tools so team can maximize its success. “It costs a lot to replace an employee,” states Buss. “In fact, it’s estimated to cost 6 to 9 months of an employee’s salary to find and train a replacement. And churn affects revenue and recruiting, so employee opinion matters.”
The №1 reason people leave their job is frustration with their direct supervisor.
Not only do you need to have the right sales staff in place, but you need to ensure your managers excel at supervising a team. The number one reason people leave their job is frustration with their direct supervisor.
“When a sales rep does well, they eventually are promoted to management,” says Buss. “But being a manager is a much different job than being a sales rep. When I first moved into management, I was good at sales, but I wasn’t really good at leading people because no one taught me how to do that job.”
It’s essential to train your employees on how to lead when they make the leap from sales to management. It will improve your overall retention rates and build loyalty, so employees don’t jump ship when the tides turn and the going gets tough.
Gauge the health of your sales organization
Before you can train your managers, you need to gauge employee engagement with a survey. Buss recommends a survey from Gallup Press with 12 simple questions. This will give you a rough prediction of what attrition might look like during a company rough patch.
While a survey will be a great indicator of how your sales staff is feeling as a whole, you’ll still want to regularly log time with individual members of your team and encourage managers to do the same with their direct reports.
“One-on-ones are really undervalued and it’s because they’re often done poorly,” explains Buss. “These meetings should be conducted regularly and shouldn’t consist only of pass-downs. That time should be used to get a sense of where your employee’s head is at and help them understand how he/she will fit into the organization as a whole.”
Ride-alongs are another great way to understand how individuals work, as well as see what challenges are ahead. Buss claims the key to an effective ride-along is to set expectations in advance. Determine whether you’re there to listen and observe or help close the sale. This will help employees feel empowered and confident.
The key to an effective ride-along is to set expectations in advance.
Understand what makes a good manager
Next comes the challenging part — understanding what makes a good manager, executing on it and training your managers to do the same. Buss lays out four key steps to establishing a strong sales management team: set & share expectations, equip employees with the right tools, recognize small achievements and communicate career paths.
1. Set and share your expectations
What seems like sales 101 to you might be totally foreign to another sales rep. Don’t make assumptions about how people work both internally and with clients. Set expectations and clearly communicate them to your team to make sure everyone’s on the same page. This can be anything from how many times you expect field reps to engage with customers each week to how they format and share agendas for internal meetings.
“Don’t be surprised if you have to tell people what your expectations are to a much more granular degree than you think you should have to,” advises Buss. “I don’t look at that as micromanaging. I look at that as setting clear expectations.”
2. Equip employees with the right tools
Buss notes that you should always make sure your sales team is properly equipped. Make sure your reps have the tools needed to be as efficient as possible, allowing them to spend their time closing sales — not breaking down internal walls.
“If you have an outbound or inbound sales development team with high velocity, then look at a tool like Outreach so they can run their own outbound campaigns,” suggests Buss. “If you have an enterprise offering, do you have the people in place to support those deals? Do you have the right tools to structure quotes or projects? Make sure you’re asking yourself these questions and checking in with your team to make sure they feel supported.”
3. Recognize the small achievements
In 2008, Google launched Project Oxygen, an effort to determine what makes a great manager. The number one complaint employees had about a manager: not recognizing employees’ achievements. Buss preaches the importance of celebrating the small things.
“If the team does an awesome job at a conference, I send out a little summary to the office,” notes Buss. “It’s easy enough to praise the sales rep with the highest numbers each quarter. It’s the small, in-between things that are harder to notice that need more recognition.”
4. Communicate career paths
No matter how senior the employee, chances are they’re looking to the future wondering, “What’s next?” Whether that’s a promotion, the opportunity to learn new skills or a lateral move into something that interests them, growth is constantly on the minds of your best employees. Not only will clearly articulated growth and career paths within your organization keep employees happy, but it will make your job as a leader easier, as well.
“Build a system where you can promote from within,” urges Buss. “I hire interns who move into inbound SDR roles who then become outbound salespeople who then go on to be mid-market or enterprise reps. Even if I have an open role with no one who’s ready to step in, I groom the best candidate and wait a month. It’s still much faster than hiring externally.”
Don’t shy away from performance management
Once your sales organization is up and running you’ll undoubtedly run into performance issues. This is where your leadership skills are tested the most. Start by acknowledging common performance management pitfalls, three of which, Buss identifies in her talk as (1) the heat shield, (2) the cowboy and (3) the buddy.
The heat shield is the person who falls into the trap of trying to protect his/her team from lost accounts — even when moving accounts around would be more beneficial to the business as a whole. When a person or a team is stretched too thin and can’t provide the level of service customers expect, then it might be time to move that account. The employee who loses the account won’t be happy, but you ultimately have to do what’s best for the entire organization.
Managers can also run into trouble when they have a skilled sales rep who is using their deep knowledge and experience as an excuse to run their own playbook. As the manager, you have to be able to see the big picture, create a playbook that helps your team achieve their goals, then make sure your team is sticking to the playbook. The cowboy allows team members to run rouge, which ultimately will affect your numbers.
“The buddy is fairly self-explanatory,” jokes Buss. “He’s the manager that doesn’t want to have the tough conversations. But unfortunately, it’s a part of the gig, and by not providing candid feedback you aren’t doing anyone any favors, you OR the rep.”
When you do encounter a performance issue, bring in HR as soon as possible.
“You need to be in lockstep with HR,” notes Buss. “Otherwise you could get to the point where you need to terminate someone, and HR says, ‘You don’t have the proper documentation. The company isn’t willing to take the risk.’ So HR is where you want to start. And be sure to follow up every conversation with an email, so you do have proper documentation if you need it.”
When giving constructive feedback to struggling employees, Buss encourages clearly communicating and only speaking to issues you’ve witnessed firsthand.
“Part of being a good manager is being a good coach,” states Buss. “Guide them to the answers rather than simply stating what you want them to do. And make sure they have all the information they need to be successful.”
FirstMark’s Annual Sales Summit is a private conference that gathers global sales leaders from across the FirstMark family to learn from each other and from accomplished CROs from breakout companies like Zendesk, GitHub, Square, Okta, HubSpot and more. Click here to learn more about the FirstMark Platform, which connects our founders with talent, customers, and expertise.
