Why the ExecVision Mobile App is a Need to Have (vs. a nice to have)
On the morning of July 14, 2016 I woke up and left my Arlington, VA home for my usual 3.5 mile morning run. I grabbed my cell phone and pulled up the ExecVision mobile app to listen to the previous day’s call recordings from our sales development reps (SDRs). I expected to hear typical sounding SDR calls doing outbound prospecting and inbound lead qualification. But what I heard was NOT typical.
To give you more context, the ExecVision mobile app was developed to give people the ability to listen to and leave feedback on call recordings that were originally captured from any source: company phone systems, screen sharing meetings, conference bridges, dialers, and any device. ExecVision automatically pulls in the call recordings through integrations.
My original hypothesis (with help from Henry Schuck of DiscoverOrg) was that a lot of sales leaders out there are like me, too busy to listen to sales call recordings and provide feedback to reps when we are in the office or in front of a computer. Hence we never hear or coach recorded calls – the ‘game tape’ of our sales teams. This is a shame because the best person to coach the sales calls of the front line reps in my company is me (or you in your company Mr. or Ms. Sales Leader). How do we get all of the knowledge out of your head and into the heads of your sales reps? If you give crazy busy business leaders the ability to listen to call recordings and give verbal feedback from their cell phones, it changes the game. As a sales leader when do you have down time? The answer for you might be during your morning commute, when walking the dog, on airplanes, or at the gym. Why not pop up the mobile app to coach some calls during this otherwise unproductive time? Listen to calls on the elliptical. Provide some feedback to your sales reps when you’re stuck in traffic. Kill two birds with one stone.
Here’s a little peak into how easy it is to review calls on the ExecVision mobile app:
Let’s return to the story.
On the running path I heard two of Tommy’s calls, one of our SDRs, back to back.
The first one was with a guy with the title SVP of Sales. Tommy sounded great. He opened the call correctly, then started asking qualification questions which revealed that this prospect only has three sales reps in the company. I thought, “Bummer that they are too small because this prospect gets it.” Rather than walking away politely from this disqualified lead, Tommy scheduled the call for one hour with one of our well compensated sales executives, Tad. Huh? I hit the ‘Feedback’ button on the mobile app and left a voice note that was essentially, “Tommy if you want to take this sales call for yourself as practice, go for it. But don’t waste Tad’s time. He should only be talking with qualified buyers with more than eight sales reps. There is no chance this guy is ever going to buy our entry level package. They are just too small.” [As an aside the mobile app emails a notification of the verbal feedback to the sales rep.]
Tommy knew this. He was trained. He’s a smart guy. Training is teaching people what they should do and how to do it. Coaching is seeing that the person is actually doing it and mastering the skill. This was a slam dunk coachable moment for Tommy.
Still out on my morning run, I clicked on Tommy’s next call. This was with a prospect and her direct report that was already on Tad’s calendar for that day. Hmm, odd, I thought. Why call a prospect that we’re set to meet with today? As opposed to the last prospect that was disqualified, this prospect was fully qualified:
- A sales team of 15 reps
- They wanted to record calls but couldn’t because of previous legal and technical challenges (that ExecVision can easily solve for them)
- The call was with two sales leaders – a second level person and her direct report who managed the reps; multi-threaded opportunities are always more likely to close
- So in other words PERFECT for our ICP.
I heard Tommy say, “Marilyn, I hate to do this, but our sales exec, Tad, can’t make the call today. Can we reschedule with you and Linda?” They pulled up the calendars and looked for a full five minutes for another time that worked for Tad, Linda, and Marilyn. Because of some misaligned vacation weeks, the call pushed into mid-August!
After the time was set, Marilyn started asking all sorts of buying questions like, “How does ExecVision work with our phone system? Can it do XYZ?” and “What does it cost?” The call went on for another 15 minutes like this. For an SDR, Tommy’s answers were fine, but that’s a conversation our sales executives are more equipped to handle.
As the owner of a growth company I was thinking, “What the heck?” Why would Tommy schedule a call with an unqualified buyer for Tad then on the very next call push out a qualified buyer by one month? It makes no sense.
Instead of rescheduling, Tommy should have kept the call scheduled for that day and gotten me or our other sales exec, Molly, to talk with Marilyn and Linda. Why would you wait a month when you can start the opportunity now? The sooner the buying journey starts, the sooner the revenue goes in the bank.
Leadership science dictates that you don’t attack the person, you attack the problem. And to be fair inbound lead qualification is new to him after spending two years at Vorsight doing pure outbound.
Tommy and I had a little chat that morning. I didn’t even have to say anything. We sat down and listened to the ‘game tape.’ As they say in sports, “The tape don’t lie.” Tommy knew exactly what went wrong and how to do his job better next time. I shared with Tommy, “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t improving. But if you make the same mistake twice, we’ll have a problem.”
So what’s the point of this story? You can study all the metrics you want, but there’s no way you’re going to know if something like this is happening unless you have visibility inside of the actual conversations. Insights on coachable moments don’t show up on reports and dashboards. Visibility gives you the ability to fix the problem (thank you Peter Weyman).
Without the ExecVision mobile app, Tommy would likely repeat that mistake again.
- What would that cost my business in terms of direct costs of salaries, overhead, etc.?
- How many more buying signals would be missed?
- How much revenue would get pushed out or potentially lost?
- How many more deals will we close simply because I heard two call recordings on my morning run that I NEVER would have heard otherwise?
And then there’s an X-factor.
- What does it mean to Tommy that I, personally, cared about his development?
- How much better will he become in his sales career?
- How much more engaged will he be so that he stays with ExecVision longer instead of jumping ship to another company?
Did you know that Mark Roberge, the legendary sales leader who took HubSpot from $0 to $100m recurring revenue, used to leave a laptop on the passenger seat of his car to listen to sales call recordings during his one hour, one-way commute to Boston? I asked him why and his response was, “I only had time in the car. I learned a ton from those calls that I could take action on as soon as I arrived at the office.”
Mark continued to do this even when he had two layers of managers below him. He is the type of guy who works ‘in the business’ as well as ‘on the business’ getting his hands dirty in the trenches alongside his reps.
There are two types of sales leaders:
- Those who would use the ExecVision mobile app
- Those that would not use the mobile app.
Which one are you?
If you are the former, comment below as a pledge on your commitment to helping your reps get better.
