227: Brian Trautschold on How Gamification is Taking Over the Sales World

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James, Say What Sales Buckley, and this is your Make It Happen Mondays episode with your host, Jon Barrows. Big shout out to our partners, Sales Loft, Proposify, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Gong, Vidyard, and Chili Piper. These partners all deliver proven sales value to the sales community consistently and drive results that add value to the salesperson's clients. These are great companies to work with and valuable tools and services that are designed to help you sell better. Check them out today. Today, we're bringing an old friend to the table, Brian Trotschold, co-founder of Ambition, knows a thing or two about motivation. This is what drives people to push harder, and Brian's sales gamification technology is a driver for that one more call, that one more email, and that coveted spot on the leaderboard that reps work so hard for in their day-to-day routines.

Jon's had some leaderboard experiences that he'll talk about recently as well, so let's pass it to Brian and JB to get ahead in this week's episode of Make It Happen Monday. Go for it, fellas. Good afternoon, everybody. This is Jon Barrows. Make It Happen Monday, hopefully at a fantastic weekend. Mine was super interesting. I actually went to see the Dave Chappelle show for the first time, and it was like the first time in public with a whole bunch of other people, and Dave Chappelle was back to being Dave Chappelle. Holy shit, was he funny, and I went down and gambled at Foxwood. So coming off of a little bit of a high here, and I am excited to have this conversation because it falls in line with my changing opinions about certain things.

So Brian, co-founder and COO over at Ambition, how are you, my friend? Man, I'm great. It's good to hear from you, Jon. Sounds like a fun weekend. I have nothing to report other than it's just smoldering here in the southeast, but good to be back with you. Yeah, it's great to be back with you too, man. I mean, we were just talking before we jumped on here as far as how travel's gone away and miss a little bit. And for me, I don't miss it at all, but I do miss a little bit of the conferences, and that's where we used to connect and say hey to each other and just kind of keep that going. And I definitely, I was a little burnt out on conferences before COVID hit because I was like, oh, I'm seeing the same people.

But now I definitely miss just seeing people in person. So that's the part I'm kind of looking forward to go back to. But for me, going in every single week, man, I have zero desire to do that anymore. It became repetitive. I'll agree with you there, man. I miss it. I'm looking forward to, I think there's going to be some stuff again in September this year. But it's fun to see people in the bar after the conference, right? That's what we all actually like. Exactly. We don't actually like being at the booth or doing the showroom. We like going to the, you know, after the after party, which is where real, the deals actually get done. Well, the relationships get built. Not only the deals get done, but that's where the real relation, because that's when you could tell whether somebody's full of shit or not, as far as I was concerned.

You know what I mean? Like at the booth, you have no idea. They're putting on the show in front of their boss or whatever it is. And up on stage, they're putting on their show. But at the bar, you get a few drinks in you before everybody gets hammered, hammered drunk. You know, and that kind of zone of the, I'm now more comfortable and I'm going to speak freely here. That's when you started to see people's real colors. And that's where I started to figure out who I really liked and didn't like in this world. Yeah, man, I agree. And you see a couple of people at a couple of different conferences in a row, like we would have that circuit. It's like, okay, well now I know who I'm going to make sure I hang out with and have a drink with versus the people I'm like, I don't even want to see them during the day.

I'm going to try to avoid wherever their booth is. I know exactly the feeling we can go down a rabbit hole on that one too, my friend, but let's not do that. Brian, tell us, tell us a little bit about where you're coming from here. Cause you, you have been a co-founder of multiple companies coming up to this one, right? So give us a little bit of your background and then tell us a little bit about what ambition is all about so that we can dive into today's conversation, which I think is going to be a real interesting one here. Yeah, for sure. So, so John, I mean, we've known each other for a number of years in the ambition world before that. I think this probably helped me identify with, and I think I come from the background.

A lot of the people listening to your show, like I was a seller, uh, that was my first job. I sold, uh, enterprise software and networking services. I got into logistics sales and, uh, you know, a few years into that myself and my two co-founders now at ambition, we started our first company, which I think you're going to, you're going to circle back to your feelings on this, but it was really a gamification company for, for learning and reading. It was all about how to get more diverse perspectives in the news articles and subjects you're reading about. That was cool in concept. Uh, I think it's actually still really useful, but it's really shitty business. It was hard to make a good company out of.

Uh, so we spent a ton of time thinking about how to, you know, incentivize and motivate people to, you know, read different things, take action in some way. And then, um, almost eight years ago, we, we had a really special conversation with, uh, what ended up being our first customer. And they were like, you all are doing this cool stuff for, for reading and knowledge and news. Like, what if you did it for, for sales? Like what if you helped us get our, at the time they're brokers to do this kind of formulaic sales process. And we were like, that's stupid. That's a terrible idea. Um, and we ended up doing it, uh, and it was actually really effective. And it was, it was kind of a turning point light bulb moment in my career and in our lives.

And, you know, here we are seven years, eight years later, still, uh, working on that. So, you know, I've done everything from, you know, making a hundred cold calls a day to, uh, you know, onboarding customers to going like you used to do fly on a plane and go train people on how to utilize ambition or how to, uh, utilize ambition to make their people more effective. Um, and, you know, here we are today doing it on zoom and doing it on, on webinars. So it's been a fun journey, a high, high level ambition is a, a sales coaching and gamification platform. We think it's, uh, kind of the future of sales performance management. Uh, it's a more actionable way to change behavior, to get people aligned, motivated, uh, inspired to do work that, that they care about.

And, uh, yeah, it's, it's a ton of fun. I love it, man. And you guys have been doing fantastic. We were talking before about how COVID's really kind of, there's, there's some companies that really got crushed, obviously for very, for obvious reasons, but then there were some companies almost right place, right time and right need, right. All of a sudden everybody went home and the coaching became less of a armchair quarterback type. Let me pop by and listen in to, oh my God, I'm now sitting at my office or I'm sitting in my house and I got 20 reps now, how the hell do I coach them and keep them motivated? I mean, the thing that was really interesting for me was our value proposition shifted pretty drastically when everybody went remote.

We're always about KPIs and, you know, and, you know, all that stuff and increasing conversion ratios, blah, blah, blah. But I got so many conversations with executives being like, I just need somebody to come in for, with a different voice and give my team a little bit of hope, a little bit of motivation so that they can keep going through this because they're drowning right now. And I always joke around about, you know, sales is brutal. It used to be, you know, the way that we dealt with that was being in a, you know, being in a, you know, bullpen with a whole bunch of other reps getting our asses handed to us, but we could at least commiserate with them and go grab drinks with them. Right now we're sitting by ourselves.

So if you get your ass handed to you by yourself at your house and you either got your roommates who have no idea what you do or your cat sitting behind you, like it's just this kind of spiral downwards that is hard to get out of. Right. Oh, absolutely. I appreciate you saying that about people being at their house and, you know, dealing with rejection or, or just the grind. Like, even if you're, even if you're fucking great, you're still going to get a lot of no's and rejection and calls that go sideways. And, you know, what we found and people think this is just like young reps. It's not like if you're at your house and you're doing calls or you're following up with some prospect who's just dragging their feet and you could play Xbox or watch Netflix or go walk your dog or anything other than like, you know, take the next step, take the next action.

I don't know about you, but it got really easy to do that for a lot of people. And it's really hard, I think, for folks to, you know, hold themselves accountable over time, but also get the energy you mentioned. I mean, all of the rituals around managing salespeople, motivating teams, it was, it was largely built for an in-person in the office world. Like you said, in the bullpen, that's how I grew up in sales. And like, that all just went away like that. And the people have been, I think, really trying to grapple to figure out how to, how to move forward and recreate some semblance of that. Yeah. And I'm, I'm glad you brought up the, you know, the, not just for the younger kids anymore. Right.

Because, and I, and, and this is where I'm coming from this. When gamification first really started hitting right now, again, I'm a 45 year old man. Gen X are here. Like I was like, here's your, like my whole mentality in sales growing up was give me my territory, give me my quota and get the fuck out of my way. You know what I mean? Like, I don't need a fucking attaboy. Like, I don't need like somebody to tell me, great. I'm on the leaderboard. I know my number is, and either I hit that sucker or I don't, and please leave me alone. That was kind of more of the mentality when I was growing up. So when really gamification first started hitting, I, to me personally, it was an eye roll because I'm like, oh, you know, every kid gets a badge and everybody needs a fucking trophy.

Like literally that's where my mentality was, but I kind of evolved to, okay, I get it. Different people are motivated for different reasons. So I can't just be a total asshole here. But then, and I'm going to couple this with something you've talked about a lot, which is Peloton. So Peloton, when Peloton first came out, the same reaction I had, and it wasn't because I was rolling my eyes at exercise. It was because they had built such an insane following. It was almost cult-like, right? And the first adopters of Peloton were like so overboard. And I got this one buddy and I love him to death. He's lost a ton of weight. And I give him all the credit in the world. But when he first was into Peloton, man, that's all he could talk about.

Oh, Peloton this and Peloton that and this and this and this. And it turned me off. I was like, geez, give me a fucking break, dude. Like, you need somebody there screaming at you, whatever. Fast forward, COVID hits. We're all home. I'm out of shape now, right? My blood pressure's on the rise, all this stuff. Because now I'm not running around doing my thing. I'm sitting in my, right here, doing these trainings, right? So my wife gets me the Peloton for Christmas, right? Basically saying you're a fat ass. You start working out. And I'm like, really? Okay, whatever. But then I get on the Peloton and there's that big screen in front of me. And I choose an instructor and I choose my, you know, and I choose the music that I like.

And I choose the length. And I'm like, all right, you know, I'm a beginner. So let me choose that. And I get somebody in front of me motivating me, telling me what to do. And I'm not a gym guy. Like, I hate going to the gym. I definitely need somebody like a personal trainer to kind of say, all right, John, do this, do this, do this. I'll do it and I'll go to the boards with it. But I need somebody else. So with that, all of a sudden, then the leaderboard came out and I found myself pumping a little bit harder because I didn't want Sally 654 coming up on me, right? And that type of thing. And I started realizing, all right, I get it. I get this. It's a community. There's a lead. And then I started thinking about gamification and putting it in a different light in general with this at home stuff and how it's almost like if I were to really peel it back, I gamify a lot of stuff without technology, but I do it my own myself.

You know what I mean? Hey, if I do this today, I'll get to do that. You know what I mean? If, if I make these 10 calls, if I do this type of thing, then I'll take a walk for 30 minutes and I'll reward myself. Right? So I realized I kind of started peeling it back that my perception of the eye roll of gamification was, was really a perception as long as you're doing it right. So talk to me about kind of how gamification has evolved and, and, and what are some more of the effective ways right now to implement it as opposed to the, just the core leader board of, Hey, you're number one on the revenue list or the meeting list. Yeah. Well, I think that's an amazing, uh, you know, maybe transformation or evolution, Don, because I remember the eye rolls back in the day.

I get it. And like, and, and, you know, I know that most of the audience here is going to be reps. And I think a lot of reps are still like, you know, dude, let me do my thing. Like, I don't, that's, that's fine. I think, uh, what we're seeing in sales though, is that, you know, we, we've certainly moved and you've been a process guy and kind of a, um, you know, kind of a plan, a plan-based guy, plan-based seller consistency. Um, and, you know, we've moved from a world where it's like, Hey, I'm just going to hit my, hit my quota. And however I do it, like mind your own business to a lot of organizations now are like, we know what works. So we're going to give you a good path. You don't, if you don't want to do the path, better hit fucking quota.

If you, if, if you do the path and it doesn't work, maybe we're going to be a more lenient, or maybe we're going to figure out the areas where you're, you're weak or, or you can improve. And we're going to like lean into those areas. And so, you know, as a rep, I would, I would come at it from, you know, if I want the highest, um, if I want the highest likelihood of success, because, you know, if I'm, you know, my first version of me coming out of college, you know, making 30 grand a year base, like for three months. And then I got to like flip it into all commission mode. I want the highest likelihood that I'm going to hit commission, right? Like to tell me the formula, I'm going to follow it.

And so I think that's where we see a lot of people, uh, have success early on with it. It's like, um, it's like, if you've got an Apple watch or a Fitbit, that's just like, you know, to get 10,000 steps a day or whatever it is, you've got to be walking regularly. And if you're not, it starts bumping you. And it's like, Hey, you haven't walked in a while. Stand up. Hey, you're, uh, you're a brisk eight minute walk away from hitting your goal. Whatever those things are, it's just kind of nudging you. And, um, you know, when you're talking about gamification and like people leveling up or people like, like a video game, I think there was this movement. And I say, I think, because I've seen some of these companies and I've seen some of the experiences people have had in the market where they truly wanted to take game mechanics and just like drop it onto work.

And they're like, we're just going to make work like Mario. And that's going to be fun. And it's just not that like, we're, we're professionals. We're here for a reason. Um, you know, we want to make an impact. We want to make, uh, you know, we want to support our families. We want to do whatever it is. And like, that's not, in my opinion, like going out and getting a one up and like getting some lives. It's like, what's the highest likelihood that I'm going to be successful. And, uh, part two of that is like, I want to do it in the aligned framework of whatever my team and organization and groups doing. So I want to contribute to what we're doing and I want to be successful myself. So you, you mentioned, or you asked about like, what are the ways people are doing this really successfully?

You know, a few things that we see all the time and we dog food our product. We're, we're fully remote right now. We've got, we're hiring people all over the continent. Um, like we're trying to do as much as we can that, that has very clear metric driven goals. So like whatever, whatever role you're in on the revenue team, you know, uh, what your individual targets are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and you know how they impact your team-based targets. And so everyone's always on this progression. Um, and I think about that, like, you know, if you're thinking about Peloton, you got, got instructors out there who are like focused on the output, like how much output. Are you going to drive this class or like how you get to this level, similar type thing.

Like if you want to impact our sales development team, this is what we need to produce every single month. And, you know, here's the best way we've seen people get there is by doing this many calls, setting this many meetings, having this many conversations. Ultimately, if you set, you know, 25 opportunities, you can make no calls. I think it's the best way is this way. And then, you know, we're continually doing team-based incentives around that. So like, it's all trying to get the, the team ultimately to collaborate and be on the same page. Like, Hey, if you and I are working together and we're both seeing each other's performance, it not only incentivizes us to share more and like say, Hey man, this is what's working for me.

But if you're, you know, if you see me behind, you're going to be like, Hey dude, pick it up. Like we've got some, we've got some incentives over here if we go hit this number. Yeah. And that's, I mean, I, and I think the, the missing link that I had originally with gamification was tying it to coaching. Right. I cut my eye roll came from, do you really need a fucking badge to make 10 cold calls this hour? Like really kid, you know what I mean? But, but to your, but the biggest challenge that I see as a leader and insights, right? Like CRM, CRM's almost always a carrot. There's, I'm sorry, almost always a stick. There's almost never a carrot. Right. And people wonder why, why are my reps not using CRM?

Well, the reason they're not using CRM is because you're asking them to input a whole bunch of data, which is admin time and all this other stuff. And you're showing no benefit other than yelling at them about their numbers, not being accurate. But if you were to take the information from the reps, analyze it, and then come back to them with coaching plans to say, Hey, by the way, if you track all these things, I'm now going to come back to you in two months, three months, four months to show you where you're good, where you're bad, where you need coaching. And then I'm going to give you coaching for that specific thing. So you can level up. That's what most companies missed with the CRM. And that's what I think we can do, right?

Obviously with ambition, but also with gamification, we're not just gamifying, make 50 calls today. We're not just gamifying, did you hit your quota? But we're gamifying, Hey, did you update your CRM? Did you, you know, get a referral today? Did you, you know, whatever those things, whatever the things that we want to motivate people to do that give us data as an organization that we can then analyze and create individual coaching plans. That's how it all comes together. Totally. I think that's been one of the most rewarding parts about the, the ambition journey. And like, I'll admit, like when we got into the business and we're doing it first level, it was just about like, how do we make competitions suck less?

How do we make like this whole, um, cause like every organization I've ever been a part of or talk to does some type of spiff or contest or incentives. And like, if you're not like a really, really bad-ass rep, like a lot of people roll their eyes. Cause they're like, I'm not going to win. Like, I don't care. So, so the first thing was like, how do we make it so that the majority of people at least are like care about this? Because the organizations are always putting a ton of money into spiffs, presence, club, reward, whatever. And it's going to like the same eight people who are like laughing, laughing about it. And like, you've got to normalize the playing field a little bit because if you get the, the middle 70% to actually like buy in and level up 10% or do a little bit more than they would normally, it has a big impact.

But yeah, the last few years, I mean, we've, we've been listening to the, to the customer. We've been spending a lot of time, especially with large enterprise organizations. And, you know, we've, we've kind of been really focused on this whole metric driven sales management. Like how do you get this kind of feedback loop to be very rapid where not only does a manager have the insights that are coming from CRM or from ambition about who could be better or where there's people are off track and then they can go proactively manage and coach to that, but also letting the reps know, because I think. I think it's, um, I think it's almost like a, uh, an insult to reps to sometimes we're just like, they don't know, they don't want to know.

Like the people, especially, you know, I think in your generation, my generation, like I want to look at that stuff. I want to know if I'm off track. I want to know if my peers are doing something. Uh, they're taking a different approach than I am that I could replicate, or I could at least like, you know, kind of, uh, you know, dropped off of to be better and to, to be more effective and, uh, ultimately make more money or be more successful. So how do we get that feedback cycle with the data and the insight spread across the organization, both as coaches and managers utilizing, but also just get it into the hands of the reps. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things I'm curious about, cause competition, you know, I think, I think sales obviously is competitive.

If you're not competitive, I wonder how successful you can be in sales. And I don't mean you don't have to come from a sports background or any of that stuff. Like, I think that's a little bit cliche at this point. Um, but I do wonder, and I'm curious from your perspective, cause I know you've seen the data, uh, based on your end, you know, the kind of that bro culture factor, right. Of like the competition and this, and, and it, and it really ostracizes a lot of women who are just like, that's not, that doesn't motivate me. So where have you seen kind of, you know, success and failure when dealing with multiple generations, multiple genders, that type of thing. And how, and, and really trying to avoid the bro competition factor of sales that most sales unfortunately is known as so that we can make this more inclusive.

What are some of the, if we can maybe talk to the audience about some do's and don'ts as far as competition, I think that'd be great. Yeah. I mean, I will admit you hear us talking about it right now to you guys, and we're probably more similar than, than different in these ways. And like, you can hear us kind of like leaning into that. I think the reality is that when we see really successful, um, when we're talking to a really successful customer, it's not because they're like, you know, Hey, who can make the most, who's going to make the most calls by, by 5. PM today. Cause like, you know, we're, we're ringing the bell and we're all beating our chest. Like that's not, that's not the thing.

I think the organizations that are great and the leaders who execute really well with, with our tool and gamification and using metrics like this, they try to be really clear. And we, we advocate and try to train people around us all the time. Like, let's talk about why we're doing, why, why these metrics are the ones you're focusing on and why have you set the targets or the, or the, uh, expectations the way you have. Cause everything shouldn't just be like an activity. It can't all be like how many calls or how many emails there has to be activity that leads to objectives. Ultimately that's going to lead to outcome, it leads to outcomes. And so thinking about it kind of linearly like that in typical sales process.

Um, and you should be able to have a through line from, if you're doing this set of activities, prospecting, reaching out to people, setting meetings, whatever, creating opportunities, it's going to lead to pipeline, you know, healthy, uh, opportunities that are further along in the cycle. And then ideally if you're effective, it's going to lead to quota attainment deals, close one, whatever. Um, and people have to communicate that can't just be continually beating the drum on like activity, activity, activity, just for the sake of it, because people will tune out. And I think that's not sophisticated approach. Um, the other thing you said, like, I actually think it's the, the type of rep who we see continually be successful is people who are, who are very good at, uh, uh, process.

So a lot of them, a lot of great reps today come from really strong SDR environments. And so we see this happening with AEs and then up into enterprise AEs. It isn't the, the dude who was like great at presentations. It's the person who just knows how to manage all the stages and be really meticulous about, okay, I know that John is not actually a, an advocate or a champion until I see, until I hear these phrases, I know that it's not ready to be a, um, you know, whatever, whatever you're using until I hear it. Yeah. Whatever like methodology people are using right now, like until they say like, we have the budget, you're the vendor of joy, whatever it is, like, you know, that's all, that's all changing.

And it's becoming very scientific. It's becoming very, uh, like I said, meticulous. And so when people align those, whatever methodology they're using, um, to the metrics that they're tracking and the metrics that matter, the, the type of rep or the personality of reps matters so much less. And now you're really giving the keys to, to the per, to the individual seller or sales development person or account manager or whatever. And I think about it a lot more. Like I think about Peloton or new, which is a weight loss product, or, you know, you're talking about, uh, you're not, you know, like my Delta skyline, like my sky points, like I'm obsessed with that shit. And I was before the pandemic, I still am like, that's just creating a system that now I know how to maximize and it's reinforcing and it gets me to the outcome I want.

And so that's what you have to communicate. All right, y'all, the Peloton story might've had you laughing, but that leaderboard makes a lot of sense. Creating a competitive culture can be a real challenge. Coaching to the individual based on the data that we collect makes me think a lot about those one-on-one meetings that I used to have with leaders that never really provided any actual value in any way. So the conversation is actually quite insightful for me thus far. And I hope you're getting a lot out of it too. Send me your sales wins. I want to get them at james at jbarrows.com so that you can be highlighted in next week's episode. This week, we're shouting out Lucidworks. My friend, Lindsay Boggs is scaling her sales team and signed all of them up for JBSales on demand.

With her team already starting to get certified in JBSales trainings, they are quickly on their way to seeing huge results. Welcome to the family Lucidworks. You're now one of us. We got your back. Sign up for world-class training leveraged by all types of companies. Slack, Salesforce, Amazon, and thousands more have all taken advantage of this incredible opportunity to learn world-class sales techniques and strategies. It's a click away for you today at on-demand.jbarrows.com. Let's throw it back to Brian and John to keep this conversation rolling. I wish more companies would take an approach to building out teams like Sabermetrics, right? Like in baseball. It's like, look at the artist versus the scientist.

I'll take scientists all day long. I can teach them how to be an artist. You know what I mean? I can teach them. I actually find that you said it earlier as far as if you don't follow the process, you better hit your goddamn target. I say that all the time to reps. I go, look, follow the process or do whatever the hell you want to do, okay? Feel free and hit your number. And by the way, if you hit your number 100% of the time, I don't know. I don't care if I ever see you again. You know what I mean? Like literally go make a shitload of money, never come into the office. I could care less. But unfortunately, the one month or the one quarter that you miss your quota, you're fired because my problem is with that.

I have no idea where to help you. You know what I mean? And if I have no idea where to help you, then my answer is, sorry, you're fired. See you later. I'm going to plug in somebody else. Whereas if somebody else follows the process and I can analyze and pick it and say, oh, they did all the activities, but those activities aren't flushed out based on the way that we think the conversion ratio. Now I can nitpick and say, okay, I'm going to let's work on your discovery call. Let's work on your presentation skills. Let's work on this, right? Yeah. Two things on that real quick though. To me, and this is where I think, you know, I really believe that we're helping and I hope that you've got people who are listening who we help in the world out there.

Like the nitpicking is unlocking potential of these reps, right? Like if we're able to, if you're a manager or you're a manager and you've got reps and you're able to look at the data in real time and see trends and say, I can tell that John on my team is, he's converting his conversations less than his peers. And it doesn't take me two weeks of like two weeks after the fact, I can do it in real time. That is a coachable moment. And that's an area where, you know, we could come up with 10 different reasons that might be at the wrong contact. When do you call it? Anything bad, bad at the first two minutes, like anything that you can be coached on one, that's going to have your team more successful.

And that's huge. The second part, and this is for the reps out there who are, you know, they're listening to this like, God, now I'm going to have this in my office. It's going to suck. Like I got people, you got their thumb on me. The reason that's the case is, and this is from my point of view of like, you know, leading a company, the forecast matters. Like it's like ultimately what these organizations that you're a rep in, it's a giant math problem. And they're trying to figure out how to put the right resources in the right place and how to respond to how many opportunities and the demand that's being created, all of this stuff. And that's why it's got to get into the CRM. It's not because someone like, is like, damn it, Brian, if you only put this stuff in, it's because there's a thousand Brian's at the company and if they don't do it, if they're not doing it, no one has any idea what's happening and if it's working or not.

Well, and also if you don't want to be coached, go find another job, go get a nine to five job and just check the boxes, whatever, like the best reps on the planet. I don't care how experienced, and I always bring Tom Brady up. Everybody hates me for bringing Tom Brady up, but now he's a Tampa Bay. So he doesn't have to be, everybody doesn't have to be fuck you, New England. So, but, but Tom Brady, literally, I think the hardest job in the NFL is Tom Brady's offensive coordinator because he forces them to coach him. And if they don't coach him, if they don't help him level up, he shreds them and goes and gets another one. Like, I don't think, you know, Josh McDaniels, he's, he was the offensive coach up in here in New England.

I don't think he's going to be a great head coach. I don't think, you know, whatever, but he was an insanely good offensive coordinator for Tom Brady because he was able to help Tom Brady level up. Even though Tom Brady watched every single game you could possibly imagine, he would, as soon as the game was over, he'd be in the film room dissecting it, but he was begging for coaching. And the challenge there is if I'm a top rep and I'm begging for coaching, but you give me shitty coaching on stuff. I don't feel like I need coaching on, or there's no data to support why you're coaching me on something. Now I'm going to get ornery and I'm going to think coaching is a waste of you coaching me as a waste of my time.

So it's a best case scenario for me to input the data. You analyze it, come back to me and say, John, this is where you're struggling and this is where I want to coach you. And I'm telling you right now, if you're listening to this right now as a rep, if you are not begging for coaching from your management, then you might want to consider a different career because you won't get any better. You said it, it's got to be data driven. And I think, you know, this is going to be one of those silver linings, which COVID has been terrible, pandemic's been terrible, but like a silver lining is that when, when we were doing this in here, there's no one in our office today, everyone's remote. Like the way that a lot of people coach is they walk by your desk as a manager, I've done this too.

And I'm like, Hey John, how's it going? Everything good. And you're like, get the fuck out of here. You're like, yeah, it's great. It's great. Cool. I'm cool. Like, yeah, we don't need to do one-on-one this week. I'm good to go. That thing I forecast, it's cool. And it just doesn't happen. Right. And now it's like end of quarter and it's like, Hey, you know, numbers were all right. And you're like, yeah, it's going to be better next time. Like you just bump it. It was so easy. It's all like, it's all offline. The whole thing was what we call drive-by coaching. It's like, you're walking to get coffee in the office and just, and if it's what you have to have a systematic approach. And I think silver lining is that companies are realizing now that people are distributed and may never come back.

And in many cases, aren't going to come back for the company. Like you've got to have a, uh, a data driven, consistent, repeatable process that one, you can hold folks accountable to and make sure that the managers buying in the reps buying in, but then you can continually cycle the performance. You can, you can see, you should be able to see, does this manager, does he have a positive impact on his people? And that person is going to keep moving up. And if they're not find someone else, like there's, we can do this. Like, and a lot of organizations I think are, are going to be massively, uh, I think positively impacted from that because they're not going to have people, you know, doing a shitty job managing their, their folks.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more, man. Let's talk about some, some things. Like, first of all, I got a direct question, but then I want to see, you know, I want to put ourselves in a position to be in a rep and like, I'm not getting, I don't have ambition. I don't have a manager that cares. Like, I want to talk about how I can gamify myself. Like, what are some unique ways to gamify myself here by myself? But I do have a question on your, what you've seen, what, what is the most unique thing that you've seen somebody gamify for positive results? Like out of all the clients you've worked with and, you know, all the basic stuff, whatever, but like, what are some of the more unique things that people gamify that you've been like, Oh shit, that made a real difference.

And I didn't even know, I didn't even think of that or something like that. Man, that's a great question. I think, um, well, one is we've seen roles, a lot more roles. We used to think about, you know, who's the most metric driven when you start with sales development to managing, and then, and then it was typically inside sales. Well, now everyone kind of looks like inside sales. Everyone has a process, whether you're a CSM or an account manager or a high dollar enterprise rep, like it's all really the same now. And so we're seeing, you know, we've seen really large customer success groups start to do that. And I think that's a, what they're, what they're focused on, the metric they're focused on is the ROI impacts for the customer.

So it was hyper driven to the customer value story there, which is, which is exciting. And I think is highly impactful for their organization. Um, man, I'll tell you, like we've had, and we've, we've done a better job of saying no over the, over the last few years, but we've had accountants come through law offices, like you, you name it, um, airline, uh, employees, like, and we're like, not set up for that. We're like, cool. Thank you, but no, thank you nurses, like all kinds of stuff. Um, and we're focused on kind of a certain segment of the market, but, uh, you know, I think, I think the concept is here to stay. And, and, uh, once again, I would say the, the more tightly people can align the, the things that they're tracking and that they're focusing attention on to ultimately the success of that group of people.

Um, that, that's what makes it impactful. So CSMs is probably my favorite one recently. We're seeing it all over the place. Very cool. Yeah. And it's funny because I'm seeing, I'm seeing the CSM, I'm seeing more, we actually created a whole new program around customer success because I was seeing so many customer success reps come into my trainings because they got to cross sell, upsell all that stuff and, and, and kind of getting them in the sales mindset without them being salesy, right? Cause they're deathly afraid of being salesy, but they know they have to quote unquote sell. So getting them in. And so, I mean the, that, to me, I think customer success, I'm seeing some trends right now that make me a little bit nervous for kind of the SDR BDR world.

And I'm seeing CS move further into sales. I'm seeing product led, you know, money V from BC is going into product led, um, marketing and stuff like that. So getting it in the hands of the users, educating them on how to use it, and then basically seeing where it goes from there. So it's more of a education process as opposed to a sell, you know, I'm trying to convince you of anything. So it's, there's some interesting trends that are happening right now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's absolutely true. Let me talk to you about, uh, so let's put ourselves in the position of I'm a rep. I'm sitting here by myself. Uh, I don't have a manager that really gives a shit, you know, I'm trying to do my best not to go batshit crazy, but I'm having a real hard time staying motivated here.

Right. So what are some, I, Leslie on my team does a great job with this where, um, you know, she, she has games with herself all day long. Like, Hey, if I do this, then this, and she brought up an example, uh, cause we were talking about motivation a couple of weeks ago on a webinar that we did. And she was like, you know, some kid that I worked with had a really fun thing. Like he loves Skittles. Right. So when she was managing, he loves Skittles. And what he would do is he would have, you know, 20 Skittles on his desk. And every time he made a cold call or got a meeting, he would move one Skittle over and, you know, and then he would be able to eat all his Skittles. And so it was just like some mind games that he was playing with himself type of thing.

What are some things without ambition, without a great manager, what are some things that I could do as a rep to gamify my day to make it more interesting for me? Well, I think you're, I think you alluded to it before. I think if you don't have a great manager and I've been there and I remember, um, you know, doing this, uh, back at, back at my first job, like no one was tracking us in real time. Like I had no insight to that stuff. So it wasn't like I could just pull up the Apple watch and see how I was doing. Um, but you know, we would do the, we would do the simple thing, which was like, we would be, you know, ticking it off on the notepad next to us. And it's like, I knew that I could get, you know, six or seven meetings a day.

Like that was not, the problem was just making, you know, swinging the bat enough times to get them right. Like in that role and back in the back in my role. And I think that's still the case. We see that all the time. Um, so, so that's one thing. If you're in a group, here's a, here's the thing that's pretty cool. We're doing and reps could do this today. We have, uh, our internal folks at ambition. They do something called a streak pot. So it's pretty big to set for, uh, high quality meetings in a day here. Uh, and so the longer you can go with the streak of leading the meetings every day or every week, excuse me, money goes in and whoever wins the, it's just like, it's just gambling. Like, and these guys, you know, they made it awesome.

Um, and the whole company, we've got 60 people around the country watching this happen on Slack. And it's like, can they keep it going? Can they hold the streak? Um, or, or Andy or whomever. And it's awesome because one, the whole company is like vividly excited about it. And two, you know, you can do it with ambition. You could do it by trusting one another. You don't have to have any special system to do it. But I think what you have to figure out as a rep, and I think you're kind of talking about this, holding yourself accountable to it before, what are the, what are those kind of key metrics that actually affect you having the outcome you want? Because it's probably, calls are great. Calls are like, uh, that's the movement.

That's the momentum to get you moving. Um, but it's really probably more like, did I, did I convert my conversation? Do I get what I really wanted out of that? And if I'm not, I need to look at, if no one's helping me out, I'm going to look internally and figure out like, why am I having conversations that aren't, uh, having the disposition I want? Or why did that demo? And so wishy-washy where there wasn't a clear next step. And so I would try to find maybe something that I know I can win every day. Like, I know I can do that. That's going to feel great. It's kind of like your Peloton. But then on a weekly basis or monthly basis, like, can I tell if I'm getting better? Can I tell if I'm really setting myself up for success?

And it doesn't have to be super hard. Like we're probably not dealing with crazy big numbers. It's like, yeah, of the, of the 10 opportunities that you created this week, you know, did you move on the stage forward or not? Like some simple stuff. And I think that kind of falls in line with what I'm trying to, you know, talk to reps about, about staying motivated, which is, you know, I, you hear me all the time, science, art and split test everything. And I, and I think now it's more important than ever to be a scientist and, and to pick a, a thing, right? So outline your set, whatever your role is, outline the sales. What are all the different stages? And I don't mean stage one, stage two. I mean, cold call to gatekeeper, gatekeeper to somebody other than gatekeeper, you know, that to a meeting, uh, uh, how you introduce yourself over the, like, let's dissect the cold call here for a second, literally how you introduce yourself, right?

And whether it gets you into a conversation or an objection that you're faced with, like you're getting killed on this objection, come up with two different approaches to that, whatever that is. And the next 10 times it comes up, deal with it this way. And the next 10 times deal with it that way and just see which one get, got you through better. Right. And I used to do, I used to do this with my team and I still, you know, I still recommend it where we, same thing. We have a notepad here. We write down once a week, we'll write down something that we all want to kind of focus on, right? Whether it's getting through gatekeepers, dealing with a certain objection, whatever that might be, we'll go figure out an approach, whatever we think might be legit.

We'll write the, the challenge equals whatever, then, you know, approach equals whatever that is, whatever you're going to say. And then a T bar plus minus. And for that week, no matter what happens, everything else do your thing. But every time that thing happens or every time that objection comes up, you have to use that approach. And then you just write plus minus, did it work? Did it not work? Did it work? Did it not work? Did it work? Did it not work? In this way, you just eventually, you know, as a team, you can add up all the numbers pretty quick. But even as an individual, you can then start, start having sheets of stuff to play with and be like, Hey, here's another approaches. I'm calling CIOs in healthcare this week or today.

I'm going to call CIOs in healthcare and I'm going to use this approach, right? One certain talk track tomorrow. I'm going to use a different approach to the same persona in the same industry. And I'm going to see how many times did I get through, right? Which one? Okay, cool. I did better on this one. I'm going to lean in on that one more. Now let me try another one that way, because I say to people, look, if you make 50 dials in a day and you get no meetings, that's a, that's a terrible day. It's a very demoralizing day and yeah, and you, you don't want to get up in the morning to do that again. But if you make 50 dials and you do $25 with this approach and $25 with this approach and you still get no meetings, that's actually not that bad because you just figured out two approaches that don't work tomorrow.

You can find a couple of new ones and eventually you're going to find ones that do. Yeah, it's key. I mean, that's just being strategic, right? I think that, uh, I think that's the, the whole point of measuring these things. And we, we used to talk about it all the time, measuring what matters. And you see this in, you know, you mentioned like stable metrics and like how many times you're getting on base, right? Like you're just trying to, it's on base percentage, right? Like it doesn't matter if you're crushing all the time, like you just need to get on base. Like, and, and, uh, as if you're new in sales, if you're in a high volume role, we're making a ton of calls. Like then you, what's kind of special about that is that you have actually a great opportunity to test a lot because you just get a ton of swing.

If you're further along in your enterprise seller, well, then you've got to be really smart. You may want to, you may want to workshop it a little bit before you go, you know, throw some new curve ball out at a, you know, senior VP who you're giving a presentation to, but net net, you can still measure what matters. It just may be measured over a longer period of time. Yeah. And, and, and I think that's where you can also, I mean, the, the, sometimes the gamification when it's pushed down and you're kind of like, oh, do I got to do this thing? I get it. I understand it, but I don't want to do it. But if you kind of have that gamification mentality on your own, then you can pick shit that you want to figure out.

You want to learn. You want, so it's now it's a little bit more motivating to you. You know what I mean? Like, all right, I'm going to work. I'm going to work on this skill. Cause I know I'm challenged. Like here's, you know, uh, define next step. You brought it up earlier, like say you have meetings and they're good meetings, but then you constantly get ghosted. Well then for an entire week practice, scheduling five minutes at the end of every call to define next steps with the client and do not let them get off the phone without scheduling it on the calendar and having them accept it when you're there with them. Right? So if you just focus on that alone, you come up with different strategies around that.

You can figure out, all right, I did. I got no defined next steps last week. I'm just trying to get like two this week. Right. And that little win is, we got to track those little wins these days. Right. I love that. You call it a win, man. That's what, that's what it's about. Like that is a competition with yourself. And we, we've been talking about this for four years and for the last, for three of the last four years, it didn't really matter. We call it employee experience. And we think that the sales reps who are listening to this, you're talking about like, if you got a crummy manager, if you've got someone who doesn't care, if you're not talking about looking at the data, what's going to happen, I believe strongly is those people are going to gravitate to the organizations that one recognize their work, try to be strategic and measure what matters and, and continually reorient to figure out if they can improve their performance and develop them.

And so I think the thing that, uh, you know, this whole employee experience movement is going to be around how do you get the, the highest level of potential unlock of your individual people and the organizations that don't do it, you know, if there are managers and leaders on here, the talent's going to go elsewhere because the talent's going to feel that, uh, pretty quickly, I think. Well, you just tapped into something that I absolutely seeing a trend on, which is it went from a buyer's market to a seller's market. Like when COVID hit and everybody got laid off, it was a buyer's market. I could go pick and choose top talent wherever I could find. Cause everybody was panicked. Right. But now year and a half later, nobody's gone back to the office.

I've now gotten real ass comfortable at my house. And my loyalty to the company is way less because my loyalty used to be if I didn't really like what I was doing, but I had a really good crew with me or a really good manager or a really good bullpen. I tolerated the bullshit. Right. But now that you and I can't grab a drink anymore, Brian, my boss, I can turn off with a click because I don't want to fucking hear him or I can tell him, I'm sorry. My zoom is acting up right now. Like my loyalty to the business is very limited. And so now if you are good at what you do, you can go and find whatever job you want because people are looking for the top performers right now. And you can go pretty much choose where you want to go at this point.

And so for those companies that are not moving in this direction or not taking that type of stuff seriously, they're going to, they're going to bleed. I mean, I don't know if you saw it. It was like a month ago where the highest rated, the highest number of people who quit their job and like the history of tracking that shit, because all these companies like, all right, you're coming back to work and people like, uh, go fuck yourself. I'm not coming back to work. Like, why the hell would I come back to work? I was super productive. I made the company money and we were more profitable and I wasn't sitting in traffic for two hours each way. Like, why would you want me to come back to the office?

And people like, all right, peace. Right. And it's only going to, I think that we saw like the first like rapid knee jerk reaction because a lot of places, you know, for whatever reason, they're like, yeah, you're coming back or whatever. We're going, we're going four days a week in office and we're seeing like the first reaction of people who are like, I've built my whole life over the last 16 months like this. I'm not changing. Now I think we're going to see this long tail where it's like, if I don't have an environment, if I don't have that employee experience, if I don't feel connected to what we're doing, if I'm not, uh, you know, aligned to the goals participating, I don't feel recognized.

I don't feel developed. I don't think I'm going to grow at this, you know, in this role or in this company, those people are going to start moving quick because you're right. It's a seller's market and organizations are investing a ton in that. They're trying to figure out, okay, John's not coming back to the office. He has this path. It's gotta, it's gotta be tracked somewhere. We can't do this drive-by coaching anymore. We're not managing by saying, what's up? How are you doing? High five. It's gotta be more. And I think that, um, organizations are going to set themselves apart by figuring it out or by not. And it's going to be the, you know, bad result for them. Yep. Yeah. And there's, there's, again, there's company, I think the companies that struggled through COVID really like, you know, again, you and me, we were the benefactors of people went home and they needed what we do.

And so it kind of popped for us and it was, it was good, but there's a lot of companies that are like, I mean, I even think about, yeah, I mean, you brought up all the different, uh, industries, right? I mean, restaurants and all those other things. Like it is blatantly obvious to me that like, I think again, silver lining, horrible stuff in general, but this kind of forced a lot of industries to relook at their whole business model and say, wait a minute, we're paying people unlivable wages here. They're not coming back to work because literally they're getting more money off of unemployment than they would coming back to work. Like maybe, just maybe we should pay our people a little bit more.

Maybe, just maybe we should actually come up with something that is actually a package for people to attract that. And I think a lot of that, like a lot of those obscure industries are going to have to get super creative on not just raising wages, but making it more inclusive, making it more enjoyable to show up at work every day in a certain, even if it is on site, otherwise they're going to get smoked. Yeah, well, I totally agree. I think that we're going to see, I think that employee experience will be a trend for the next decade and you're exactly right. It's not going to be just in, you know, we're, we're living the dream. Like we're in, I'm on a computer, I can do this job anywhere, but there's people who are working their ass off and like, they're going to, their plate, their employers and those companies are going to have to think long and hard about how do I maximize this person's potential?

How do they feel like they're being maximized and that they're growing and developing and getting what they want? Because it's a two way street, right? It's not just like show up and do work for me. It's like, why you, why choose, you know, ambition or, or any other company. That's the tough part though. It's like, I, I get both sides of the argument here as far as investing in employees versus the employees wanting to be invested in because investing in your employees, I mean, I think the average tenure of your, you know, of a worker these days is like 18 months. So it's like, why should I spend all this money training, developing when they're probably going to bounce for another job as soon as it comes up.

But on the flip side of that, if I don't do any of that stuff, they're going to flip in 18 months guaranteed. Self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Yeah, it really is. So that's why I think what you're doing is really interesting because with gamification, it's not just about the employee, you know, it is about the employee experience. There's no question about it. It is about coaching. It is about mentoring. But as a CEO here, it's also about data collection and insights. So even if Brian, you're not, even if you bounce on me in 18 months, I have 18 months worth of data from you that tell me, okay, here's what I need to make adjustments. Here's how I need to change my hiring schedule.

Here's how I need to change this. So at least if I'm not getting you for three, four, five years, I'm getting the data from you that helps me make better decisions as a leader. I love that you brought that up. And I think the other part that I'd add to it is like, I believe the more transparent we can be with this data, the better we can, we can create the visibility into the metrics and educate people on why we're tracking them on that. So why we expect them to do this and why we're holding them accountable to it. To me, that's like a better, it's like a better handshake. Once again, it's like, how do I give you the playbook and the visibility? Because the last thing you want is me like to come in and like, just drag you around all this stuff.

It's like, let me just hand it to you. I'm going to try to help you every, we're on the same page now. Like you see what I see, you know, if you're not doing well, it's not like I'm hiding in the corner being like, hopefully they don't see that I'm not good at converting my calls. It's like, somebody help me. This number is not good. Like I want to be successful. Well, that transparency, I think across the board, I think companies need to be more transparent across the board about anything, about the metrics, about the numbers, about their, where they stand and all this stuff. It's, it's kind of like any performance review, right? If you're a manager out there and I'm giving you a performance, say you're a rep and I'm giving you a performance.

If anything performance review, if anything in my performance review is a shock to you, then I'm an asshole manager. I am an asshole manager. Like you should be walking in being like, oh man, I know John's going to fucking drill me for it. Not making enough calls. And I, I know my conversion, my demos is pretty rough and I've been having a little rough time. And that should be an open conversation. You should know all of that walking into the door. So I can, so it's like, yeah, Brian, we talked about this stuff. Like, you know, where you stand on this stuff. So now what do we need to do to get better here? Right. That's built into, I mean, yeah, that's, that's core part of ambition. We saw that having the answers to the test before we take it.

Like if there's ever a coaching one-on-one or any type of review, all the data should be, both parties should see it before we start. And so that means instead of having 45 minute conversation, that 15 minutes, like cat and mouse BS, it's like, Hey man, let's, let's spend 40 minutes talking about this thing that is a pain in the ass for me right now, or that I'm, I could be better at, and that we're actually getting beat out of it. We're going to get, you know, uh, true value from it versus, you know, you know, you trying to hide from it or, or digging through the spreadsheet to figure out where the gap is. Awesome. Well, man, well, look, uh, we're about up on time here. Uh, you guys have had some really cool shit going on these days.

Your number one sales gamification, you got what? 300 managers or something like that. You just released, uh, some metric snapshots. Yeah. Yeah. Sales. I mean, you guys are doing some crazy shit. So talk to us a little bit about what's going on right now and where people can find out more information about you, about the company, about everything else. Yeah. Well, please come find us at ambition.com. Um, you know, we, we love to, we put out a ton of stuff that's, that's valuable to rep. Certainly a lot of assets and templates and stuff for managers. So like, please come to the site. We're always trying to answer questions for especially you great reps who are out there who are going to turn into a manager one day and be like, how the hell am I supposed to manage a team?

That's the thing that organizations really suck at. Um, we have a ton of guides and a ton of stuff that is helpful for you. Follow us on Twitter, ambition sales, uh, at ambition sales on LinkedIn. Um, but most of all, ambition.com. Perfect. And Brian, uh, pronounce your last name for me. So for everybody listening. Troutshould. All right. And for everybody listening, yeah, it's Brian T R A U T S C H O L D. So go look them up on LinkedIn, uh, follow them there, connect with them there, check them out on ambition. I totally love what you guys are doing. And like I said, I've, I've changed my opinion on gamification and I, well, I've evolved my opinion on gamification. And I think now it is more, uh, more important than ever if done right.

Right. I still think it's bullshit if people are just tracking stupid stuff and giving badges just to give badges. But I think when tied to coaching analytics and you know, that type of stuff, that's where I think this is absolutely necessary moving forward here. Whether you're young, old doesn't matter. This is the type of stuff that if you want to succeed, if you want to get better, you got to start doing this shit. And if you can't do it as an organization, do it as an individual gamify your day, stay motivated out there. So Brian, thanks so much for coming on, man. I appreciate it. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. This is great. Absolutely. All right, everybody. Thank you very much. Hopefully this got you to think a little bit, gave you some ideas on what you can do to get better.

And like I always say at the end of all my podcasts here, no matter how bad your day is going, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day in the world needs a lot more of that. So thank you all for listening and make it happen. And I will see you on the flip side. Cheers. All right, y'all. Brian and JB hit some high notes there when they were talking about what drives sales reps to find the success they need and work hard to earn it. We've all grown a little bit after tuning into this episode and gaining these insights, but find the sales success on your own. The guidance, the structure, and the know-how all await you at your membership with JB sales.

You could be at the top of your leaderboard in less than a month. Call us your secret weapon. Call us your team's coach or trainers, but don't call it quits on your growth and development. Visit us to learn more at on-demand.jbarrows.com to perfect your sales strategies today. And be sure and follow us at JB sales training, all one word on Instagram to get daily sales tips, techniques, and strategies. We're delivering there every day consistently. We'll see you next week when we bring you another stellar guest to help you sell better. Make it happen, everybody.