Changing sales behaviors is often a challenge. Kate Philpot, Vice President of Global Sales Enablement at Getty Images, leads a diverse, multinational team and is responsible for innovative Sales and Service training, coaching, and enablement initiatives. She joins us to discuss why shifting seller approaches can be so difficult and what models can support successful transformation in sales.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

* What are the biggest concerns sales leaders express about sellers’ approach to revenue generation?

* What strategies do sales leaders commonly employ to drive change?

* How effective are these strategies in practice, and why?

* What alternative approaches could enhance the impact of change initiatives?

* What practical steps can help make these alternative routes more successful?

Kate brings over 20 years of experience in sales enablement, driving behavioral change, and coaching within global organizations. Her work has empowered sales teams to align more closely with revenue and customer satisfaction goals by equipping them with actionable resources and frameworks. Join us as she shares insights that have transformed sales cultures worldwide.

This week's Guest was -

• Kate Philpot, Global VP of Sales Enablement at Getty Images

This week's Host was -

• Andy Hough, Founder & Director of The Institute of Sales Professionals

Transcript of SalesTV.live Early Edition 2024-11-19

Andy Hough [00:00:01]:

Good morning. Welcome to sales TV. It's absolutely brilliant to be back here at the GT Studios at Cranfield University. It's a bit of a snowy day, so a bit of a trek to get here. We're we're here. And we are joined today, by a great person. I've had the opportunity to interview her twice. A lovely lady called Kate Philpott, who is a global vice president of sales enablement at Getty Images.

Andy Hough [00:00:29]:

Kate, welcome.

Kate Philpot [00:00:30]:

Hey. Good morning, Andy. Thank you for answering your call.

Andy Hough [00:00:33]:

Not a problem at all. Delighted to to go through, the a really interesting topic today. But before we start, Kate is flued up. So, if a cough sweet goes in or a clean x comes out, bear with. She's battling through this and doing this a real honor today by kind of coming in to do, the show. If it was me that would be man flu and then clearly I'd be doing it from a hospital bed somewhere. Kate, we're gonna talk about why it's so hard to get sellers to change their approach. But before we kind of delve into that, can you tell people a little bit about yourself and and the things that you do for Getty?

Kate Philpot [00:01:13]:

Yes. So I've been with Getty Images for actually coming up to 10 years at Skirmary. I lead the sales enablement auction. We are a relatively small team, that we've got. And somebody in Sydney who's responsible for the APAC region, a couple of people plus myself in EMEA, and then actually very recently 4 people in in our Americas region and we're responsible for everything from onboarding new hires, through skills training, manager training, coaching, and manager training, it's specific and specifically with references sales, coaching, and maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that in a in a few minutes. And then sometimes we also get involved in helping with recruiting, with performance managing, you know, I guess, I would say fingers in many pies.

Andy Hough [00:02:07]:

Uh-uh, yeah. Sounds like the the little Dutch person actually in fingers in many pies in Deutsch. So

Kate Philpot [00:02:13]:

Yeah. It feels like sometimes.

Andy Hough [00:02:15]:

We've talked about this, on stage and this is a wider audience we're bringing this to, but you know, what we wanna talk about today is is why is it so hard to get sellers to change their approach. So kind of the first question is, you know, what are the biggest issues you hear sales leaders complain about when it comes to sellers approach to revenue generation?

Kate Philpot [00:02:38]:

Yeah. And and I guess, you know, just to even to back up a step, I think it's probably right that we acknowledge that it's difficult to get people to change, period. And then you have learned on to that getting sellers to change. You know, all a lot of the same reasons, show up. But the things that I hear from sales leaders are, for example, that sometimes sellers are more reactive than proactive. So, you know, if there's inbound customer query, jump on it, crack on, turn it around in a super quick time, yes, absolutely, but the proactivity, isn't always there, and maybe the confidence to be proactive isn't there. Being therefore a bit more transactional than that is ideal, not having a sufficient level of curiosity, and that is all about equality, questioning, which again, maybe we'll get into, a bit more in a few minutes. And then not investing time on strategy, so really thinking about, you know, how do I navigate through this organization to develop relationship that I don't already have, you know, rather than leaning on the one person that you know.

Kate Philpot [00:03:52]:

And that's a function of maybe not being sufficiently methodical in the approach. And I think that the the one thing that I think is most challenging to really address is the absence of a growth mindset. So, you know, it's one thing to show up with some of those challenges. It's another thing to black out say, yeah, but I like the way that I do things right now. Or as I guess a lot of people watching this will have heard, yeah, but what I'll do works for me, As if that's then a flat reason not to at least interrogate, well, what else am I doing that might make me more successful?

Andy Hough [00:04:28]:

Yeah. I think there's 2 words that, or 3 words actually, but in 2 bits, you mentioned curiosity. I wonder if you think that people don't have enough time to be curious, and growth mindset again, does that is that grounded in people just don't have enough time to step back and and think about, well, where are they today? Where do they want to go as individuals in terms of their skills? You know, do you have the time to be curious? Those two things seem grounded in people probably being too busy to to clear the headspace to think about some of these things?

Kate Philpot [00:05:05]:

It I yes and no. I mean, I think we're all we're all really busy. And, you know, I can look at my Outlook calendar over the last couple of weeks, and it would be mostly meetings and not many spaces.

Andy Hough [00:05:18]:

Right.

Kate Philpot [00:05:20]:

But I also think it's a bit of a cutback, you know, if it's important enough, you prioritize it. And and I say that to myself often because, you know, the the what I thought we were talking about this just, a couple of days ago The context of something else. If you don't carve out the time to think, if you don't carve out the time so, you know, if you're going to be just if you're going to be curious, what do you need to do? You need to think about the kinds of questions that you're going to ask the customer. If those questions are not sufficiently practiced, that they are front of mind and roll up your tongue in every conversation, then you're probably going to need to prepare them. You know, there's this the balance or just shifting the balance of investing the time in preparing so that you can actually deliver a more efficient, effective call, which ultimately will save you time. That mindset shift is a challenge that I think some sellers struggle to wrap their heads around. But in order to do that, you need to first prioritize being better at generating business. And in order to do that, you need to carve out some time in your calendar.

Kate Philpot [00:06:24]:

So, for example, what I started doing, like, is having meetings with myself. And and I put into my calendar slots of at least an hour for that very reason because I think, as we would all acknowledge, 10 minutes between Zoom calls where you've probably got enough time to go to the loo and make a make a drink is not enough time to do thinking. You know? I was saying to this person the other day, you know, in thinking space, you need time to stare out the window and and and for nothing really to happen for a little while. You know? But it takes it takes time to think. If you don't dedicate that time, and I I'm not sure that I fully subscribe to the fact that people don't have the time. It's just that that kind of time is a bit confronting in and of itself. You know, it's it's rewarding to be busy. It's rewarding to check things off your to do list.

Kate Philpot [00:07:20]:

It's not as immediately rewarding to think. And, actually, I read, there's a really, good book. What's the title of it? Hold on. I'm just gonna Deep Work. That's it. Okay. By, which is exactly about this stuff that, you know, not to spend too much time on kind of, some of the theories, but that, you know, we have been conditioned over recent years not to spend time on deep work because we're so distracted by stuff the bells, the whistle, the pings on your phone, the alerts that are flying across the side of your screen, and all of that is actually stopping us from taking the time to do that high the really high quality work where proper value is to be found. And if you so what linking back to the conversation of a couple of days ago, turning off the alerts, switching off the bells and the whistles, and all the rest of it so that you can stare out the window for a few minutes and wait for an idea to come is quite confronting, but it's also really rewarding because that's where the, you know, that's where the values took him down.

Andy Hough [00:08:25]:

I think that's absolutely brilliant. And one of the things, Kate, that we're looking to do, right, with sales TV and the ISP is each episode have that one takeaway for a salesperson. And I think you've just, you know, I know we're gonna uncover more, but the one thing a sales person could do is absolutely do meetings with yourselves. And that's just a nugget for me. I never put time in that actually that's my time to have that reflection and think time either for my own research or or actually just in my own day. So there's that one takeaway for this episode. You heard it from Kate. Put meetings in with yourself.

Andy Hough [00:09:04]:

So we talked

Kate Philpot [00:09:04]:

about That's not your lunch.

Andy Hough [00:09:08]:

Okay.

Kate Philpot [00:09:08]:

I think that's the other thing. It's easy to go, oh, no. I'll do that over lunch. No. You won't. You'll be eating your lunch. So it's it's separate to that. And it's, you know, and it again, it's about what you prioritize.

Andy Hough [00:09:20]:

That's really, really good. So the next question we talked about, you know, we asked you what you hear about sales leaders complain about. Typically, how do you see sales managers trying to drive change?

Kate Philpot [00:09:34]:

Well, I think, again, people watching this will recognize a long list of KPIs. So, you know, obviously, there's the the obvious lagging indicator, which is hit the numbers or not and then we hit profit if that's a measure that's important to your business, and then there are the you know the leading indicators PRs which theoretically tell you whether the numbers are going to come and that list can get ever longer. So just bear with me It's giving me more actions, so more things that people are expected to to do, and some of those are completely legitimate. In fact, most of that completely legitimate. More focus on it being manager's responsibility to make those things happen. And then, you know, I guess there's the kind of stick as well as the carrot. Well, if you don't do it, then there'll be consequences. Of course, they will, but I'm not sure that I mean, I think across all the businesses that I've worked for over the years, I don't know that managing by fear or threats is ever very effective.

Andy Hough [00:10:42]:

No. I well, unfortunately, no one told me that, and I'm being very sick. No one told me that until it was too late. I'd already kind of got that that kind of because no one actually coached me. So, you know, you wear your heart on your sleeve, and if you're under pressure, you just naturally transfer that pressure and threat to somebody else. Transfer that pressure to somebody else. And and actually, if I look back being very, very transparent, then there were some times

Kate Philpot [00:11:00]:

when I

Andy Hough [00:11:00]:

put my head in my hands and go that was really, really poor behavior. That that, you know, so it's to the point that that person actually moved to Australia. You know

Kate Philpot [00:11:15]:

Well, it's interesting that you say that because, again, you know, it's a cliche, but it's a cliche because it's true that people tend not to leave the organization, they'll leave their manager. And, you know, sometimes, of course, as organizations, we want to encourage some churn, but there are ways of doing that in a, I think, in a in a thoughtful and compassionate way. And we'll get on to I would say, you know, what one of the key ways in which you bring that to, you know, to fruition. But I think a really important question for somebody who is maybe not successful in the role in the way that you want them to be is, what is it about this job that you like? What is it about this job that makes you happy? What is it about this job that makes you jump out of bed in the morning? Because if there aren't some pretty compelling answers to that question, chances are you're not in the right job in the first place.

Andy Hough [00:12:08]:

Yeah. And doesn't that lead us back to that? How many people fall into sales? Right. Still today, I suspect a lot of people do because it is a a job which there's lots of them by proportion compared to other jobs. There's relatively, little academic bar to get into them. Well I'm not gonna go talk into personal branding in this one, but you're right. I think from some of the statistics that we've seen in the in the Institute and Cranfield, about 25% of people are leaving the sales role within the 1st 18 months, which is not not a great statistic if we think we're going to improve attraction and retention and talent. You talked about KPIs. You talked about things that people would recognize that managers do do.

Andy Hough [00:13:01]:

How successful do you think they are in doing these things?

Kate Philpot [00:13:06]:

I mean, I I think they can be. But the you know, for example, you could talk about we would need to do x number of dials a day or you must do y number of meetings a month. You know, that's a quantitative KPI, and, yes, you know, there's probably some correlation between the number of times that you speak to a customer and the amount of revenue that will result. But what you don't get out of that is any kind of quantitative, assessment. So there's for me, the the value is in matching, you know, matching those two things up. 1, quantity, and 2, quality.

Andy Hough [00:13:44]:

Right.

Kate Philpot [00:13:44]:

And the quality comes through in your different ways of assessing.

Andy Hough [00:13:49]:

So you're starting to potentially signpost here, Kate, an alternative way that people could be doing things. So if there were alternatives that you could recommend to sales leaders and managers, what what would they be?

Kate Philpot [00:14:04]:

Well, for me, one of the most important, things that I think we've lost sight of over, well, I said recent times, certainly over the last 10 years or so, is coaching. And by that I mean really coaching, not giving feedback, not saying to a rep oh I know what that's doing, what we just did, but here's how I would have done it. That's not coaching, you know, Norris will do it like this, we should be more successful. That's not coaching either, you know, coaching is coming to a conversation with a rep and with a sense again with that word that I keep banging on about curiosity, asking the rep what happened in the call, what was your intention in the call, how did you prepare for the call, what did you define as successful outcome, what did you actually achieve, what do you think the reasons for that are, and unpacking their thought process in getting to where they arrived at. And then based on their reps assessment of that call, which, of course, is backing up a step means you have to be there or you have to watch a recording of it, You can then get to a coaching conversation which will go in 1 of 2 directions. If the rep thinks it was amazing and you don't, then there's a set of coaching questions which might be designed to bring awareness to the fact that there's a gap between their perception and your reality, but if they think it was not good and you agree, then you're going to have a slightly different coaching conversation. But the, you know, the I think the goal here is to create some independence of thought, you know. I remember years ago, I mean my first job when I started in sales was at Marl Confectionery, and it was an expectation that your manager would come out with you for a day of visiting Cornsharks, once a month, and they did.

Kate Philpot [00:15:49]:

And after every call, the expectation was that you will talk to your manager about what happened, what went well, what didn't go well, what are you gonna do differently next time? I mean, those are the kind of the fundamentals of of sales coaching, which I I mean, luckily, I had that foundation, and I've seen it's gone on and done, you know, a coaching qualification, but that's been the basis on which I have seen or saw my own sales skills develop. And I think we miss a trick if we don't invest time in helping our reps to understand that they may have, for example, fallen into repetitive behaviors. Just like driving a car. Somebody probably did teach you how to sell back in the day, but maybe you've decided over the years that you could cut some corners and and then you keep cutting those corners and you got you forget what the standard is that you want to be operating to. Or on the other hand, nobody ever taught you. They just gave you a bucket business and said, well, off you go. Sink or swim. And you're right.

Kate Philpot [00:16:47]:

I know a lot of, you know, entry level sellers for whom that is the reality. I mean, it's absolutely awful. So, you know, if you've been along and and it kinda works for you, well, yes, I can see why you would be nervous about changing, and that's where the coach comes in. You know? What is it about the way that you're working right now which is good? What might you wanna do differently? How efficient are you right now? Why would you like to save time? How much did you establish when you asked, the questions that you asked in this conversation? What else might you have found out? What were what kind of questions were you asking? I mean, that's all of the stuff which is the fundamentals of sales. But it, you know, it's so much more empowering to ask those questions, to oppose those questions to somebody and have them give you the answers rather than you just tell them, well, here's the 22 things that you didn't do right in that call. No. I think if anybody's not, it's good to see.

Andy Hough [00:17:43]:

I think you're absolutely spot on. I think we've got some great comments coming in here. So, from, doctor Dale Childs, nail on the head. Many managers don't know how to really manage and aren't trained on how to do so or how to coach. From my own experience at 1 or 2 conferences when people actually ask, how do I coach? Well, okay, are you aware about how many different coaching styles and and disciplines there are? And you as sales managers probably start off as, oh, I read the Alex Ferguson or the All Blacks Coaching book, and consequently I'm fully qualified. It's like, no, if you if you get into coaching, be prepared that you may well end up with the respondent going, you know what, I I really as you say, this is this is not for me. Nothing what nothing in this role gets me out of bed in the morning and off I go. And how are you gonna how are you actually gonna cope with that as a manager when someone turns around to you and says thank you.

Andy Hough [00:18:41]:

You've just effectively coached me out of the job because I think it sucks.

Kate Philpot [00:18:45]:

Well, now, you see this is we've been having this conversation, you know, within the the the revenue organization at at Getty Images. The this I personally, and I think a lot of my, colleagues would agree, there's nothing wrong with arriving at a conclusion that says this is not a job that makes me happy. I mean goodness knows you spend a lot of time at work and if you are not in a job that makes you bounce out of bed in the morning, at least some of the time, I mean let's not pretend that you know every day is a bag of roses because, of course, it isn't, but it's got to be more often than not something that makes you feel fulfilled. If you arrive at a point where the person that you're coaching says, you know what, this is actually this stuff doesn't make me happy, and the things that you need me to do I actually don't feel comfortable doing, then fine. Don't be happy doing something else. In parallel, though, sales leaders, and and this is a conversation we've just been having, need to invest a lot more time in proactively recruiting so that you've got those two strands. Yes. There might be people in my team who find, more fulfillment elsewhere, but in parallel, I'm going to be researching the market and identifying people who are, you know, vocal on LinkedIn or show up at events and and, you know, really demonstrate their chops.

Kate Philpot [00:20:10]:

I'm gonna be building relationships with those people in anticipation that at some point in the future, I might have an opening. And that could be, you know, 12, 18, 24 months down the line. But if you're not building those relationships, it makes it a lot harder when that person let's say that person does resign because then, of course, you're you're managing the vacancy and, you know, everybody knows that sales managers don't like vacancy because revenue. But, yeah, ideally, you've got people reasonably ready to slot in behind that person should they eventually decide that they, you know, that this is not the job for them.

Andy Hough [00:20:47]:

There's a a a great, friend of mine, Volker Weiss, who actually worked at UPS in about 15 years ago. He actually, to your point where you you join a company and leave a manager, they decided that they were actually gonna have a proper sales academy where actually a manager would not get their hands on a single person that was in that academy. And then they would nurture those people and to your point when somebody did decide to move on, it might have been a promotion, someone could seamlessly move into that role, which is great. Some wonderful comments keep me coming. Doctor Lee Williams, habit and accountability coaching. You know, how do you actually build that muscle memory up which is is absolutely great. And we have another great one here from, Wayne. Great interviews.

Andy Hough [00:21:32]:

So that's you, not me because you turned up and you're battling through it. I also feel that coaching should also be delivered on an individual basis using sales activity performance data to drive coaching conversations. What what are your

Kate Philpot [00:21:48]:

thoughts around that? Totally agree. And to come back to the cadence point go just bear with me.

Andy Hough [00:21:56]:

Keep going, Kate.

Kate Philpot [00:21:57]:

This is the cadence point. What we've done as a business over the last couple of years is number 1, we have actually run a program for our managers where we train them on what coaching is, and we covered the GROW model. We have a version of that for our managers that they now use and what we ask them to do So they have a KPI which is a minimum of 1 coaching session per rep and quarter, but the expectation is actually that they're doing it monthly and they're using the coaching methodology that they've been trained on and I now am very fortunate I hired a sales coach a couple of years ago, and off the back of her success, we've just hired another sales coach. So they are the 2 people who are now running a program with the managers to train them to be better at coaches. So part 1 is show me send me a recording of you coaching a rep, and their coaching is centered on sales calls. So we use, Zoom and Salesforce ECR. So Einstein Conversation Insights, other tools are available to interrogate the data. Then you get a sales call, you get insights attached to that sales call, and what that then allows you to do now it's interesting that Salesforce sell ECI as a coaching tool because you can add comments to what happens in the call.

Kate Philpot [00:23:19]:

And for me, categorically disagree, that is not coaching, that's feedback. The only thing that makes it coaching is if you take that call, you review the call, both of you, and then you sit down and you have a conversation about what happened, which is what we're doing with the the managers. So step 1 is record yourself delivering the coaching and my 2 coaches have a conversation with managers on a one to one basis, one to one basis, one to your point, and then over the course of 6, probably 8 sessions depending on the person, they will about involve their coaching and then the final stage is that they resubmit, a recording of themselves coaching, hopefully with improvement between, you know, point 1 and point 2. So we're trying to build that you know that coaching muscle to you know to the other point. It's not easy, not that you know and I would be lying if I said that you know every single manager has just thought, oh my god. This is amazing. What am I saying? Some have really got it. You know? The light bulb has gone on and they have gone, wow.

Kate Philpot [00:24:20]:

I get this. I see how this is gonna make me a more effective leader. And others, it's not that they don't believe that, but it's been harder for them to make it happen, and so they've needed a bit more support. But, you know, the the value is actually that the reps are starting to see you know, so many reps came to sessions with, coaching in the UK, and I do the a fair amount of it myself. The initial meeting was always, oh, that's not what I thought it was going to be. So oftentimes, reps in particular, perception of coaching is that it's been, in some way, punitive. You know, I'm only being sent here because I've done something wrong. And when they realized, based on the experience that they had, that that wasn't how we were going about it, they were a lot more open to the idea of being coached.

Kate Philpot [00:25:12]:

And when you're able to shine light on areas that they may not be seeing themselves because, you know, to our earlier point, very rarely do reps come out of a meeting with a customer and give themselves 10 minutes to analyze why the result that they had from that meeting is the result that they had. In other words, what specifically did I do to contribute to this outcome? If they're not taking that time to self analyse, then how are they ever going to improve? And so that's the, you know, that's the job of the coach and now we've got thousands of, recordings in our in our platform that the reps can go back and review. And, you know, you it's interesting because the way that we set it up when the coach when the call is coached, the record actually says, manager, I've had the coaching session, and the rep then asked their coaching commitments. With some reps, you can really see progress because, you know, that's happening monthly. With others, very, very consistently same coaching commitments, I need to ask better questions. I need to ask better questions. So at some point, as a coach, you'll be going, okay. So what's stopping you? And that's where you can start to, you know, hold feet a little bit more to the to the buyer.

Andy Hough [00:26:25]:

So I think what's what's fascinating about that, we talked about, you know, the first takeaway being, you know, put meetings in with yourself. The second takeaway if you're a sales rep is turn up to that with an open mindset because it's not coaching because something's gone wrong. This is absolutely coaching to help you develop. And if you don't develop, then you're gonna stay stagnant. You are not as a salesperson going to be at that same place for the next 10 years. I

Kate Philpot [00:26:50]:

mean, to go so just to add, to go back to that sporting analogy, which we have lent on heavily in in presenting coaching as a as a possible direction in the business. There, I can't think of, and I'm sure people watching today wouldn't be able to think of any sports person at the top of their game who doesn't invest in not just one coach, but several coaches or teams rather, several coaches to help them stay there. I mean, it's just unheard of. You know, the tennis stars will have a forehand coach, a backhand coach, a conditioning coach. They invest in people to help them to stay at the top. And and, you know, to your earlier point about sales being not as professionalized and as maybe as well regulated as it could or should be, these are the kind of things that make a difference. Investing in professional development, it's really important.

Andy Hough [00:27:45]:

I I I think you're absolutely right. I I keep saying that as if I've got some sick of but I we think a lot of the same, but just to kind of ground that in some research, there's some, not in sales, but it's a great, academic Lord Ericsson, Anders Ericsson, who looks at deliberate practice, exported that into deliberate learning. The point being that it was grounded with athletes, chess players, musicians, aviators, that these people actually take a view that I will do deliberate learning to that point. I will put time in my own diary to do that learning myself. And I will then practice what I have learned. In sales, what they found is they try and leap into deliberate performance, which is back to that point is what I'm saying is I don't have time to learn. Don't want to set aside time to learn, and I don't actually want to practice. I'm just going to do it on the job.

Andy Hough [00:28:43]:

Kate, we've got one minute to go. Closing thoughts for me. It does go quickly. Yeah? What what would be your closing thought for the audience in if they were in your position?

Kate Philpot [00:28:58]:

Oh gosh. I think there's a a couple of things. I I would say telling is not always the answer. You know, this is adult learning. It's professional adult professional development. Telling people what to do invariably won't will not give you the outcome that you are hoping for. So on the other hand, maybe you're booking that time with yourselves to consider how you might train your managers to do things differently, and having your managers consider coaching, through coaching, as, as a way of getting that shift of behaviour change that you're looking to cause, might be, a worthwhile thing to consider.

Andy Hough [00:29:40]:

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm glad we've got your thinking out in front of an audience of 1,000. I would like to say thank you to all of the audience for participating. One last comment from Dale, akin to personal development, all top athletes to your point are doing that psychological, physical, tactical development of themselves. But a great comment to end on. Thank you, Dale. With that viewpoint, thank you to everybody here at Cranfield, for Chris, for Robin, for David, for, you know, everybody here for making this live an event that's brilliant.

Andy Hough [00:30:16]:

Thank you for your engagement, and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow on the US edition and in the next week for another session of sales. Tv. Thank you again, Kate.

Kate Philpot [00:30:27]:

It's amazing. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, everyone.

Andy Hough [00:30:31]:

Bye now.

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