Sales is tough, and yet year after year salespeople are expected to hit quota. In this episode of SalesTV.live, we'll be discussing how facing these challenges head-on can change your entire sales approach. Joining us is Tania Doub, CEO & Founder of Mindful Quadrant and best-selling author of Zero to Quota in 90 Days, who helps sellers exceed sales targets by embracing their toughest obstacles.

In this episode, we'll ask:

* How can sales professionals reframe the difficulty of hitting quota into a source of motivation?

* What are the common mental barriers that prevent most sellers from achieving their targets?

* How can a structured mindset shift lead to better quarterly performance?

* What role does personal accountability play in sales success?

Tania has spent over 20 years in sales, navigating some of the largest tech companies, managing aggressive sales targets, and breaking down stereotypes in a male-dominated industry. Her unique approach to motivation has led to breakthroughs for many sales professionals who were stuck in a rut. This is an episode you won’t want to miss if you're looking for strategies to transform your sales mindset.

This week's Guest was -

• Tania Doub, CEO of Mindful Quadrant

This week's Host was -

• Rob Durant, Founder of Flywheel Results

Transcript of SalesTV.live Mid-Day Edition 2024-09-25

Rob Durant [00:00:00]:

Good morning, good afternoon, and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of Sales TV Live. Today, we're learning to embrace the hard for sales success. We're joined by Tanya Du. She is the CEO and founder of Mindful Quadrant and best selling author of 0 to Quota in 90 Days. She has spent over 20 years in sales, navigating some of the largest tech companies, managing aggressive sales targets, and breaking down stereotypes in a male dominated industry. Now she helps sellers exceed their sales targets by embracing their toughest obstacles. Tanya, welcome.

Tania Doub [00:00:48]:

Rob, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

Rob Durant [00:00:52]:

It's always fun having a conversation with you. This time, we're just gonna let others in on it. Perfect. Tanya, let's start by having you tell us a little more about you, your background, and what led you to where you are today.

Tania Doub [00:01:07]:

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. So I think you nailed it. I actually My background, my passion, my life's work has been all about sales. I actually stumbled into sales early on in my career. It was an accident and I know it's a frequent story for a lot of people, but very quickly I realized this is an incredible way to not only earn a living for myself and my family, but also to be a part of digital transformations for some of the largest brands on the planet. So with that, I have actually spent 20 years working for some of the top companies software companies in the world, everything from, you know, Silicon Valley startups all the way up to global powerhouses like Salesforce. And, you know, that's that's 20 years of aggressive sales quotas.

Tania Doub [00:01:54]:

That's, you know, give or take, 60 to 80 QBRs. It's a whole lot of territories, managers, coworkers, sales engineers. Right? The whole thing. And at the end of the day, I can tell you no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, there's always gonna be the hard. And I've actually started realizing that when you start to embrace the hard, where you, you know, started started the intro, that's really when you can start to find more of the fuel to propel you into finding the motivation to do what you need to do next. And so this next chapter for me has been founding mindful quadrant, which which is really all about enablement for the seller. Right? So having been in the seat for 20 years, now I'm saying, okay, guys. I understand that this is hard.

Tania Doub [00:02:39]:

We're in a really difficult place sometimes. But rather than waste cycles worrying about it, how do we empower ourselves to do something about it? And that is the fundamental, mission for mindful quadrant.

Rob Durant [00:02:55]:

Excellent. Thank you for that.

Tania Doub [00:02:56]:

Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:02:57]:

So let's jump right into it. How can sales professionals reframe the difficulty of hitting quota into a source of motivation?

Tania Doub [00:03:07]:

Yeah. I think that the the number one thing is that you really have to understand where the pain point is coming from. So a lot of times, I think the default for sellers is to be in a situation where they accept a job. You know, emotions are high. They're really excited about where they're going. Potentially, they got referred in. And the biggest question is, what's my territory? What's my pipeline? How are others performing? Right? Because what you try to do is you create an environment for yourself where you say, okay. I'm walking into a situation where I'm gonna be set up to win, and what does that look like? And I think when they go through enablement and they get through the 1st few months of ramp, what they start to realize is the reality hits, and maybe things are not as bright as the way that they were described to you.

Tania Doub [00:03:52]:

Right? And so all of a sudden, as a seller, what you end up feeling is a little bit of remorse or a little bit of panic while you try to figure out how do I right size the situation that I'm in. And I think that a lot of times we lose cycles in that because, typically, as a seller, what you do and and this is not everybody. Right? But this is really when things start to get hard, and I can only speak from my own experience, is you play the blame game a little bit. Right? Like, you said I was gonna have a better territory. You said I was gonna have a better pipeline. I thought that we were in a better position where the company knew what the value prop was, and we were figured out from a pricing standpoint. Right? But all of that is is messy sometimes. And I think what we tend to do is we tend to blame the easiest thing that we can put our hands on.

Tania Doub [00:04:40]:

And right? And that's usually, I don't like my manager or I didn't get a good territory or I can't believe the product is not as evolved as what I was hoping for. And so we sort of sit there and we disengage from the process and we blame everything around us. And the process of actually trying to figure out how to get to a place of productivity is really pinpointing where the pain is coming from. So where am I actually challenged? What is actually going on? And a lot of times, that's that's hard to do. Right? Because that's a real conversation you have to have with me, myself, and I. Look in the mirror and say, what is the thing that is a challenge for me right now in my job? And that's hard for sellers to do sometimes.

Rob Durant [00:05:28]:

Oh, absolutely. So what are the common mental barriers that prevent most sellers from achieving their targets?

Tania Doub [00:05:37]:

You don't know what problem you're solving. Right? So a lot of times, and this is a, an example that I have lived, is I was potentially having an issue at a a company where I was having a hard time generating pipeline. And it was really easy for me to say, well, pipeline is the is the challenge here, and I can't get a meeting. And so then that, you know, gets into okay. Now I'm going into 1 on ones with my manager, and I'm presenting the same, you know, crappy pipeline day in and day out. And manager says, you know, what's the update? And you say, well, I've tried everything. I've emailed. I've called.

Tania Doub [00:06:13]:

I've run the scripts. I've done all the things, and I'm getting nothing that is a different result than what I did yesterday or the day before or the day prior. And, really, when I took a a minute to understand and take inventory of what was going on in that particular situation, it was because I didn't quite understand the, value prop for the product that I was pitching. Right? And so all of a sudden, it becomes, okay. If I can't understand the value prop, then that translates into a poor email script, or it translates into less confidence when I pick up the phone to call my prospects. And so part of the process that I take my sellers and and sales teams through is really identifying where the actual problem is coming from. Because if you can understand that, then all of a sudden, rather than waste cycles doing the same thing over and over again and coming up with excuses for how am I gonna crawl out of this deep, dark hole I'm in, you actually spend an hour a day saying, okay. How do I understand some of the customer case studies? How do I figure out how I wrap my brain around how I would continue, to communicate this value prop? And maybe tomorrow, I pick a partner, and I pitch the value prop.

Tania Doub [00:07:25]:

And maybe the next day, I listen to an hour of Gong calls. Right? But there are actions that you can take on a really disciplined basis when you start to figure out where the pain point and the problem is coming from.

Rob Durant [00:07:38]:

I wanna pick up on those actions. But before I do, I want to, pick up on what you said regarding, in this particular case, not understanding the value prop. Mhmm. Going back to what you were saying earlier about the blame game, blaming everything else and everyone else, what most people would would blame training and onboarding for you not understanding that. Yeah. What role does personal accountability play in that instance and more generally in sales success?

Tania Doub [00:08:10]:

Yeah. I think so this is such a interesting question or or concept that you propose. Right? Because sales enablement is so helpful in organizations. It really is. And I know that they work really hard, those teams, to put together programming and agendas and resources and tools to really enable the sellers. Right? But the thing about sales enablement that I think people sort of need to understand from the the selling perspective is, to me, it feels like a gym membership. Right? So I can give you all of the tools. I can give you the fancy Peloton.

Tania Doub [00:08:44]:

I can give you the treadmill. I can give you the barbell. I can give you everything. But if you're not motivated to get up and go to the gym every day, then that sales enablement gym, right, it's going to fall on deaf ears. And so, to me, it's a really powerful analogy because it just means that, of course, everything sales enablement doing is doing is mission critical. But I think sometimes, and I hate to say this out loud because I've done it myself and I know some people do it sometimes, Enablement comes at you so fast and furious that it's sort of easy to hide in sales enablement. Right? You can kind of say, okay. I'm at SCO.

Tania Doub [00:09:22]:

I had a let's let's take this scenario. I had a bad year last year. Right? I didn't quite make president's club. I'm at 60 or 70% of my number. I have, really built a goodwill with my organization. They know I'm doing all the activities, so I'm actually in a decent place. Not ideal, but decent. So I go into next year, and I think, okay.

Tania Doub [00:09:42]:

I'm really gonna need to get it together. Right? So I go to SCO, and SCO is already 2, 3, 4, maybe 5 weeks into the new year. So we've already wasted some cycles just waiting for sales enablement. Right? Because we just

Rob Durant [00:09:54]:

SKO, sales kickoff?

Tania Doub [00:09:56]:

Sales kickoff. Yes. Thank you. I take for granted sometimes the acronyms, but yes. So now you're in this cycle where you're waiting for the new positioning, and you're waiting for the new training, and you're waiting for the new selling framework, and you get all of it coming at you, and you say, this is my year. I'm gonna do it this year. Right? And then you waste a couple of other weeks of cycles because now we're getting the resources pulled together, and you're waiting for the email, and the territories are being reassigned. And so there's this lag where you're kind of hiding.

Tania Doub [00:10:31]:

Right? And and sales teams and leadership and enablement is saying to you, of course, it's all coming at you guys. Don't worry about it. We're not expecting a ton from you, but we just wanna make sure that you're getting the resources that you need. And so you can, frankly, buy yourself 4 or 5, maybe, you know, half the year, months of really just trying to say, well, you know, I'm trying to figure out what resources I need to do, what I need to do, etcetera. Now pause and think about what it could actually look like if you took a driver's seat in some of your enablement and partnered with your sales enablement team to say to answer specifically, Rob, your question, what does your own personal accountability and motivation have to do with sales enablement? It's it it goes like this. Now it says, okay. I'm looking at my pipeline. I understand where my deals are.

Tania Doub [00:11:23]:

I understand what I have in discovery. I understand how why I can't get discovery. I understand my deals that are in cycle, the deals that are at demo, the deals that are at proposal, and the deals that are at closed won. And I know for myself, Tanya, when I look at my CRM, what my real deals look like. Based on that, can I see themes across my prospects? Can I see what problems I'm solving for those customers and what type of enablement I personally need? Because I don't need the whole menu. And maybe it would be great for me to know the whole menu, but, really, if I was to double click on 2 to 3 resources that enablement rolled out rather than the 30 or 40 resources that are available to me, it gives me the focus that I need to actually create a better correlation between the sales enablement work that the teams are doing to to deploy and the work that I need to do personally to show a result in my pipeline. And that's the biggest mindset shift that sellers need to make.

Rob Durant [00:12:30]:

I agree with all of that. I like that, but I am gonna push back a little bit as well. So you talk about, looking at the various deal stages and where things are and looking for themes. And isn't that the manager's responsibility? So going back to the personal responsibility piece

Tania Doub [00:12:52]:

Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:12:52]:

How do I then approach my manager for help with that visualization?

Tania Doub [00:12:59]:

Yeah. So such a good question because, well, first of all, managers are exactly that. Right? They're your sounding board for all the things to make sure that you're progressing deals the way that a company is expecting you to progress those deals. But I almost wanna challenge you one one step further to say, okay. If this is the typical cycle, the seller has one other level of responsibility that is, again, a moment of truth, the me, myself, and I conversation, that is I challenge a seller to actually take a piece of paper and a pen and just write down the deals that they have and the deals that they are forecasting for the next 30, 60, 90 days. And I wonder, truly, how different that might be than the deals that are in your CRM. Okay? And the reason the reason that I say that is because there is this idea that we have the work that we need to do to achieve the goal or the result that we need, and then there is the work that we need to do to maintain our brand and our optics to make sure that when I go into my one on one with my manager, I have made all the right phone calls, and I have hit all of my activity metrics, and I look good on the dashboard. And when I look good on the dashboard, I have a moment.

Tania Doub [00:14:25]:

I've bought myself a couple of weeks, right, where my manager isn't necessarily hounding me. So what we're doing now is we're we're sort of playing we're playing fairy tale. Right? We're going through the CRM, and he's he or she is asking me, well, what's the status with this deal? And I'm giving the best update that I can. And we sort of progress, and he, you know, he or she is helping me move that deal along based on what I have said. But has what I have said, has what I have recorded, has what I have put in my CRM, is is that really the truth? I don't know. I don't know. Right? Right. I don't know.

Tania Doub [00:15:01]:

So I do think so so so to circle it back and and come back to your point of, personal accountability, listen. I I believe wholeheartedly that selling is a team sport. You cannot do this job alone. You need your manager. You need your cross functional teams. You you need your solution solution engineer. You need marketing. You need sales in it.

Tania Doub [00:15:22]:

You need it all, but you cannot rely on those people exclusively to get you to where you need to be and and actually deliver on the thing that you say that you're gonna do. Because it starts with you. You decide. You decide. Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:15:42]:

So in terms of embracing the heart, the theme for today, we admit that it's not unheard of that the CRM and that piece of paper are not identical. But for me to make them, consistent

Tania Doub [00:16:04]:

Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:16:05]:

That's hard. How can sales leaders create an environment that allows me to really embrace the heart? How can sales leaders create an environment where the truth is more important than the optics?

Tania Doub [00:16:26]:

Yeah. I think it's a it's a tough one, and I know you and I personally have talked about this at great lengths, because it is a it's it's a tricky thing. I think that you want to as a sales leader and enablement leader, you wanna create this level of transparency. I think, to be honest with you, it starts by by exposing some of the things that we're too afraid to talk about. Okay? So from from my perspective, I think that it is important for sellers to actually cut recognize that when they take a job you know, my my analogy is it's like the the slot machine at a casino. You're not guaranteed to win. You know? And I think that, you know, from a from a 20 year, career in selling, it's interesting to me, but the mind shift set mindset shift happened for me just a couple years ago because I sort of assumed every time I took a job, I was being set up in a a a territory that was set to win. And the manager that hired me wanted me to win.

Tania Doub [00:17:36]:

And so you would get bluebirds every now and then, and you would create get a territory that was set up to win, and you would have teams and enablement that helped you and supported you to win. But the reality and I did, by the way. I did win a lot. I was challenged a lot, and I I got a lot of hard, and I got a lot of, years where I I, you know, just barely missed president's club and some years where it was a stretch. Right? So I've seen it all. But I think the the thing that sellers need to understand and that sales leaders need to be more open with is that not everybody's gonna win because the reality of the data is that 37.8% of sellers will hit or exceed their sales targets across all SaaS companies and salespeople. So when I hear that statistic and I answer your question, I say sales leadership can help by saying, you know what? I'm not gonna paint you a rosy picture of what's going on here. You have a $1,500,000 number, and this is gonna be a bear.

Tania Doub [00:18:38]:

So let's just get real about what needs to happen. Right? And I think that what happens a lot of times is I have this visual a lot of times that I refer to that's called the the seller quota life cycle. And we just talk about the overachievers and the overperformers. We talk about the big wins, and we talk about the group of people who are actually running all of the right activity metrics and doing all the things that they need to do. But nobody talks about the people that are being cycled in by choice or cycled out by choice or by force. Nobody's talking about those people. And, I think, to shine a light on those people, it's important because it actually gives power to everybody else that's left behind. And it creates more of a conversation that says, I understand the hard that you're going through, and I wanna be real with you about what's going on here.

Tania Doub [00:19:33]:

You know? And and I think the most important thing is that we talk so much about these mutually beneficial agreements between the companies that we work for and the customers that we sell to. And I am advocating for a mutually beneficial relationship between the salesperson and the companies that we work for. And how do we do that so that we're being transparent with one another? I think that is the most important thing.

Rob Durant [00:19:56]:

Excellent. So you had made reference to action steps.

Tania Doub [00:20:02]:

Mhmm.

Rob Durant [00:20:03]:

And I said I wanted to come back to that. So

Tania Doub [00:20:05]:

Yeah.

Rob Durant [00:20:07]:

What are the action steps that an individual contributor should be following?

Tania Doub [00:20:16]:

Yeah. So we all know. We've all been through QBR's, quarterly business reviews where we get up in front of our sales team and our leadership, and some of the most organized sales reps that I have ever seen will get in front of a room and they'll put up a presentation that says, my number is 1,500,000. And in order to get to 1,500,000, I need to have this many conversations that will result in a conversion rate of this many proposals and conversion rate of this many demos and a conversion rate of this many, you know, conversations and contracts that then become closed won, and this is how I plan to get to my number. And it's all numerical based. And I commend those people that go through the process of doing that, but I can also tell you that I've sat in QBRs where I've been so impressed by mathematics like that that I have actually felt imposter syndrome to the nines. Right? Because I just sit there going, well, I don't really I I I don't see that path for myself. And and that spirals me or has spiraled me into a state of complete panic.

Tania Doub [00:21:17]:

And my message to sellers to say, how do you create that action, is let's flip that model. Rather than think about, again, the optics of what it looks like to have the right numbers, let's actually create a plan that says, what makes sense for us? What are some of the big targets that I wanna go after because they just make sense for my business? And and a lot of times, that takes collaboration with your team and your manager. But every job, Rob, that I've ever had, I take a look at my territory list. And in parallel to doing that exercise, what I will also do is I will tier my accounts, and then I go to my team. And I actually take a survey, and I say, hey, manager. What do you think I should be focused on? Where do you think we've seen wins? What do you think is a good value prop that I can position to a b c clients? And based on that, create my target list. And then I'll go to my sales engineer and my customer success executive and other thought leaders within the company, and I will do that leg work to understand where other people think that I should be focused. And that is then how I create my action plan.

Tania Doub [00:22:26]:

And and it manifests like this. Right? I remember one time I took a a job with a company, and my AVP actually said to me, here's your account list. And in that process, he said, oh, you've got a juicy one in there. I won't say the name of the company, but it was one of the large top 100, you know, fortune 100 companies. And he said, this is on your list, and and good luck because 3 reps before you have tried and no one has ever succeeded to close this brand. And so guess what my personal mission was in that job? It was to close a deal with this largest, you know, brand that Yeah. And he he told me in that case was an impossibility for 3 reps before me. So all of a sudden, it became, what is Tanya's brand at this company, and what do I wanna be known for? Well, heck.

Tania Doub [00:23:17]:

I wanna be known for closing the deal that 3 reps before me couldn't close. And that's how you create an action plan. Right? Because then it becomes, I can't get a a meeting with this customer becomes, how do I find a way to creatively get into a different part of this organization that nobody else has ever tried? And it becomes something I do every single day, Rob. Like, watch out when you're on my target list.

Rob Durant [00:23:46]:

Tanya, for better or worse, I think we're cut from a very similar cloth. You wanna get me to do something? Tell me I can't.

Tania Doub [00:23:52]:

That's right. That's right. It's the one way to do it. Right? And that's why I say embrace your heart. Right? I mean, find the thing that is the the challenge. Find the thing that is the hardest thing that you are encountering in that moment in time. You know? I I mean, I've I've used fuel like, I used to work for this one AVP who was particularly challenging, and I went through a cycle where I actually I made president's club that year, and I got congratulated. I was my clients were up on stage with us at sales kickoff.

Tania Doub [00:24:28]:

And 30, 45, 60 days into the new year, I was having a real hard time with pipeline. And I got a phone call from, you know, my AVP has said, oh, you know, what what do you have in pipe? And, you know, it's always, like, very casual conversation. Right? What are you working on next? And you're like, oh, I better have something really good and juicy that I'm working on. Right? So you always have your in pocket deals of the ones that you're gonna talk about. So, of course, I had that for my optics, but I didn't have much. I didn't have a a a solid pipeline. And talk about kicking you when you're down. He actually said to me, well, I wouldn't wanna call you a one hit wonder, so I can't wait to see what you're gonna do this year.

Tania Doub [00:25:08]:

And I thought, one hit wonder. Are you bleeping kidding me? Right? And this is, like, 15, 16 years into my consistent, career as a sales rep, but it happens. It happens to the best of us. And he was right. Like, my pipeline was garbage. And I went through a cycle where I did a pity party, and I was like, you know, I don't like you, and I don't like the product, and I don't like you know, and I did the whole thing. I did it. Of course, I did it.

Tania Doub [00:25:33]:

I love a good pity party, Rob. I love a party. But then I kind of did the, okay, let's let's turn the page and let's sit down and think about how I can use this as fuel to really ignite me and do the thing that I need to do, and I did. And, that year when I made it to president's club, same ABP called me on the phone, and he said to me, your deal helped get me to president's club and helped me make my number. And, you know, I said congratulations to you. I'm very happy for you. You know? And and and I knew at that point that that wasn't necessarily the place where I wanted to grow old, and so I decided, you know what? It's time for me to part ways. But I did what I set out to do, and I did it on my terms.

Tania Doub [00:26:10]:

And I used that opportunity as a way to create a mutually beneficial agreement between myself and the company that I work for because that is the the power that I want sellers to have.

Rob Durant [00:26:21]:

There you go. That's awesome. Tanya, this has been great. How can people learn more? Where can they get in touch with you?

Tania Doub [00:26:28]:

Yeah. So, I'm so accessible. I actually love conversations about selling. So I'm all over LinkedIn. So Tanya Daub on LinkedIn. I have, the company launch, Mindful Quadrant. We have a website, mindfulquadrant.com, where you can learn more and contact me. And I'm open to all kinds of 1 on 1 conversations.

Tania Doub [00:26:49]:

So I welcome the opportunity for people to reach out, join my email newsletter where you can stay in touch with everything that we're doing, and invite me for conversations like this because I'm passionate about seller enablement.

Rob Durant [00:27:03]:

That you are. We now have a newsletter. Don't miss an episode. Get show highlights, beyond the show insights, and reminders of upcoming episodes. You can scan the QR code on screen or visit us at salestv.liveforward/newsletter. This has been another edition of Sales TV Live. On behalf of the panelists and everyone at Sales TV Live, to our guests and to our audience, thank you for being an active part in today's conversation, and we'll see you next time.

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