This week marks a first for SalesTV.live. This is our first SalesTV Spotlight Week, and the topic for this spotlight is Women in Sales. We have programming and guest hosts lined up each day this week to celebrate.

Taking on SalesTV.live guest hosting duties on Wednesday, March 6 is Carole Mahoney, Author of Buyer First: Grow Your Business with Collaborative Selling. Joining her is Lyndsay Dowd, Author of Top Down Culture: Revolutionizing Leadership to Drive Results.

Enough talk about soft skills! Let's talk about power skills. The ones that make things happen, not by luck- but on purpose. Carole and Lyndsay share how both leaders and individual contributors can make powerful and positive impacts in sales and on their teams.

Things we’ll chat about include -

* Transforming Sales Mindsets

* The Science of Selling

* Collaborative Selling Techniques

* Building a Buyer-Centric Sales Culture

Carole brings nearly two decades of experience and a wealth of knowledge in changing the sales game using research, behavioral science, and data. Lyndsay leverages over 25 years of leadership in sales and management, combining gut-wrenching stories with humor to teach companies how to build irresistible cultures that drive results. Discover the power skills that redefine what it means to be successful in sales today.

Join us for a fun, inspiring, and insightful episode.

Facts, the latest thinking, chat, and banter about the world of sales.

Today we were joined by our Guest Host -

• Carole Mahoney, author, speaker and Founder of Unbound Growth

Joining our Guest Host was -

• Lyndsay Dowd, sales leader, podcast host, and author of "Top Down Culture: Revolutionizing Leadership to Drive Results"

Transcript of SalesTV.live Spotlight Week - Women in Sales 2024-03-06

Carole Mahoney [00:00:00]:

Hello, everyone. I am so thrilled that you're joining us here today because we're gonna be talking about something that, well, we've already been told is a bit of a bad ass topic. And I am joined before we

Carole Mahoney [00:00:11]:

we talk about what we're gonna

Carole Mahoney [00:00:12]:

be talking about, I have to introduce my cohort, my soon to be partner in crime, I think, Lindsey Dowd, who is a badass speaker herself, founder, author, coach, podcast host, and just a general disruptor, which is why this is gonna be the kind of conversation it's gonna be. She was recognized as recipient of the 2020 also named business coach of the year. I mean, not only she's the an accomplished leader, a decorated seller, and has successfully managed both large diverse and high performing sales teams over the last 25 years. 23 of those were spent climbing the ranks at IBM. Now that in itself is a feat. She created her own company, heartbeat for hire, and she's devoted her career to transforming leadership through building irresistible culture, which is what I'm so excited to dive into today, and modern leadership practices to get best results from their teams. She's a thriving coach focused on sales, leadership, career, and culture. She's been featured in Fortune Magazine, HR.com, Authority Magazine, Business Management Daily, Valiant CEO, and I'm sure there's tons more of publications that you would recognize.

Carole Mahoney [00:01:25]:

Now I didn't know this, Abbott, Lindsay, you also host the top 5% globally Gray podcast, heartbeat for hire. And you're also on tons of podcasts like today. So thank you so much for joining me to talk about why soft skills are so yesterday.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:01:41]:

Yes. I love this topic, and I'm so happy to be sharing the floor with you today, Carol. Yeah. So if you are within earshot of this show, we are retiring the phrase soft skills, and we are replacing it with power skills. Power skills are what we need to be focused on, and soft skills really diminishes how important they are, and modern leaders have power skills in spades. So it's not such a different concept to what soft skills are, but we need to rebrand it because they are critical Durant to modern leadership.

Carole Mahoney [00:02:18]:

Yeah. And, you know, the thing that's interesting about this, when we were talking about this last week and you were describing this to me, we were just kind of, like, going back and forth about it. One of the things that came to mind was when I remember doing an analysis of objective management group data, and they had analyzed a 1000000 sellers and showed that, you know, the thing about all of this is in our leadership teams is that the skill sets that top performers have, it's not both skill sets. It's about mindsets. Right? And the thing of this is is that only 28% of sales professionals have the types of mindsets that are gonna be successful. But here's the thing that is the kicker for leaders is that your mindsets and your beliefs towards certain things, your culture, this is the data showing that when you have certain non supportive beliefs or mindsets Andy that impacts your culture at a rate of 355%. And while that's bad, the good news is that those leadership qualities that promoted supportive beliefs and mindsets, they had a rate of a 1000% more likely that their team was going to have those. So those those supportive beliefs, those supportive mindsets have such a huge impact, but it's just so easy for us to slip back into those negative ones.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:03:32]:

Well, that that's yeah. I'm so glad you brought up all of those statistics. And, you know, one fatal mistake that I see in sales over and over again, and this is where I came from. I spent 25 years in sales, so this isn't like first time go around, but the biggest mistake I see over and over again is leaders promote the top performers to management positions. Mhmm. And why that's dangerous is because the top performers in sales are typically motivated by their own wallet, and they don't generally care about others. Now this is a generalization. There are certainly exceptions to the rule.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:04:10]:

However, when you're doing that Andy you're saying, okay, this person's crushed their number quarter after quarter, year over year, let's make them a manager. Are you asking the question, why do you want to be a leader? Because if the person is using that role to get ahead, to climb the ladder, that's not the best answer. If they're if they actually say, I really love seeing people win, or I believe I can take the skills that I have and teach them to other people and coach and remove obstacles. And when, when they win, I win you're in the right lane. But so often when we promote these people that don't care about anybody but themselves, we are going to create a toxic workplace because that leader won't understand why their team can't do exactly what they did. They might have a challenging time communicating it, and the people are gonna get very frustrated. They won't feel seen, they will not build trust. There will be no psychological safety.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:05:08]:

And what ends up happening down the road is your top performers will leave and you are breeding a culture of mediocrity. So if you want to keep breeding that mediocre culture, keep promoting the wrong people because that's exactly what will happen.

Carole Mahoney [00:05:23]:

And then, and that's just one piece of it, right? Because I often say this phrase that companies a lot of times are creating the sales problems that they're trying to solve for. And culture has so much to do with that. And to your point, when top performers get promoted to managers, there's the mindsets that are there Andy that same statistics of how the leadership mindset's gonna impact the team Andy they're creating these problems. And so you'll see sales managers taking over the deals for their sales people because they have a belief that we need to get this over the line. They're so emotionally attached to the outcome. They forget that there's a learning lesson here for the salesperson, but they have to make their number. And so it's that me focus thing again. I should have worn my t shirt.

Carole Mahoney [00:06:02]:

I have the t shirt, but not about me t shirt to wear upside down. Andy it applies for managers and leadership as well. Like that's something in in the culture that you just can't you can't just put it on a board and Gray, this is our culture. This is something that happens in your everyday interactions with your team Andy you don't even realize

Lyndsay Dowd [00:06:19]:

it. No, you're so spot on Andy culture is a feeling. And this is why some, some senior leaders are like, it's Hough. It's rainbows and sunshine. I don't have time for that. We've got pressure. We've got quotas, but here's the deal. Micromanagement never inspired anyone.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:06:36]:

And when you sit there and tell your people, like, I need to manage the deal for you. You're saying, I don't trust you. When you give your team and your people the space to do the jobs they were hired for. And When you allow for failure, because we all fail, you always learn more from failure than you do from success. Abbott when you allow those moments, oh my gosh. The magic will happen. And when you say, how do you wanna run your territory? Or how do you wanna lead this team? Because I had leaders do that for me, and I was like, me, you want to know? Oh my gosh. I would have done anything for those leaders.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:07:16]:

I was thinking differently. I was innovating. I was people around me because I had this opportunity to do things differently, to think differently, to challenge myself and challenge everyone around me. And one more thing, leadership is not just for people with HR direct reports. Leadership can be from anybody. And I know when I was an individual contributor, I had to invite reps to want to work with me and want to work on my accounts. They had choices. They didn't have to work on my accounts, whether I was a client exec or a brand rep.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:07:50]:

I had to make my environment the most fun, the most lucrative, the most attractive for them. And when I did that, people loved working with me. And as a result, we crushed our number over and over again. But it was because someone believed in me Andy I believed in them. So they all does start at the top and trickle down, which I know we're going to talk about.

Carole Mahoney [00:08:13]:

I know. I know. Well, and it's not just that it starts at the top too, but then you think about it is also this, a little bit of the telephone game is sometimes the translation from the top all the way through doesn't always match up. Mhmm. But I wanna go back to one of the things that you said where, you know, a leader who says to their team member, at any level, at any point, how do you what do you think? How do you want to run this? It's so valuable. But here's the thing that I often find happens is that they'll give word to that. They'll say, tell me what you wanna do or what you think. And then they do exactly what they wanted to do anyway.

Carole Mahoney [00:08:46]:

And they ignored everything that they said. They both they don't close the feedback loop. And it makes that individual feel like, okay. So, everything that you just said is complete BS because I told you what I thought and what I felt. Abbott, obviously, you still don't care Rob because you didn't give me any feedback on that. You didn't say, you know, that's a great idea. Here's how we might incorporate that. Here's how what some obstacles might be.

Carole Mahoney [00:09:09]:

You know, how what do you think we might be able to work through that? Right. And and it kicks me. It kills me every time because, you know, not only have you just demolished any trust that you just built with them, you've also lost the opportunity to be innovative, to come up with new the power skills, Abbott? But it is also the revenue skills people. I mean,

Lyndsay Dowd [00:09:37]:

oh gosh, Andy tell a story that illustrates what you're talking about? So, I was a client exec. I had a very, very large account with $150,000,000 quota. So like seriously huge account with tons of strings attached. We were each other's partners. We were each other's clients, and we were competitors. So everything that we did had a ripple effect in every direction. So lots of pressure. And I had a new boss, and I knew her for years, and I was excited that she was my boss, and I was presenting my strategy, what I wanted to do, my plan for how I was gonna go after this Durant.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:10:11]:

And we're partway through Andy she just stops me and she says, girl, I've got your back. I'll fly. And it took my breath away Andy I was like, oh my gosh. If I screw up, she's got my back. So okay. I can think differently now. So I had a team of 55 people. I had to basically say, you guys, we have an opportunity.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:10:34]:

We can try things we've never tried before. Who haven't we talked to? What haven't we done? And I basically said, show me what you want to do. Show me how you want to approach the client. And if I agree with it, you've got full entree. I will make any intro you need. Well, you know what happened? We closed a $23,000,000 deal. That was the largest deal any of us had ever seen for this client. We all crushed our numbers.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:11:01]:

We made a crap ton of money and we changed the relationship with this client, both up and down. So at the senior levels, they liked what we were doing and well, way down below. Everybody's like, Hey, I think I can help here. I think I can add value. And it just completely changed the dynamic of how we worked. And it stemmed from that one moment of I've got your back now fly. So anybody that thinks that these little things are not heard, they are, They totally totally are. And when you give people that kind of confidence, so much magic can happen.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:11:34]:

Yeah. So I'm gonna add

Carole Mahoney [00:11:35]:

a little bit of stats to that. Gray. This is what you said absolutely plays out Andy it plays out at at every level, whether it's a multimillion dollar deal or, you know, a a $2,000 monthly recurring subscription, whatever it might be. But what happens instead is we often like, you know, right now, we're in March. We're in the last month of Q1, and everyone had these grandiose plans and ideas of

Lyndsay Dowd [00:11:58]:

what was gonna happen in

Carole Mahoney [00:11:59]:

the Q1 to set them up for the rest of the year. Maybe numbers are behind or they're flat or they're like, Gray. If we're we don't get ahead of this minutes and the pressure is starting to build. Right? Mhmm. The end of month, the end of quarter, it's only gonna get worse throughout the year. And what happens is leadership starts to feel the pressure, that pressure that gets transferred to the middle managers. Middle managers then roll that stuff downhill to their team with and you gotta meet your numbers. Every meeting that we have is a pipeline review of this particular opportunity.

Carole Mahoney [00:12:26]:

Instead of what you just shared of being able to say, look, I've got your back, you've got this. Yeah. And what that does is it takes away the attachment to the outcome. It takes away the emotional involvement that is then again, then gonna cause your people, your salespeople, your customer success people, your account managers, when they get face to face with their buyers, they're under the pressure. And that's when you start seeing the pitches, the discounts, the the key attempts to create The operation. The Yep. Andy then then you turning your buyers off. And you, as a leader, have just created this scenario that you don't even see happening.

Carole Mahoney [00:13:01]:

What you see happening is all of the numbers are starting to continue to go downhill. So you continue to apply more pressure, making the situation worse.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:13:09]:

I love that you said that Andy you're spot on. And the one thing that I think sales leaders always need to remind themselves of is you need to have 1 on one time with your teams beyond your forecast calls. And when you have that time, that time should be spent asking a few key questions. And these are questions that I come back to over and over again. There were questions I used when I was leading big teams and they made a massive difference. So one is how can I be the best leader for you? When you ask that question, you are going to get wildly different answers from everyone you ask. And that's based on age, tenure, experience, goals, all of those things. Some people are gonna say, I just need you to remove, you know, obstacles.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:13:52]:

Stay the hell out of my way. I'll call you when I need you. Some people are going to say, I need to role play. Can you help me? Cause I don't really, I don't really think I'm doing this right. And that's only if there's trust by the way. And then some other people might be like, I don't get my job. I don't get what I'm doing. I was transferred in from another team.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:14:08]:

Like, what am I doing here? Because I've had all of these answers. But the other questions you need to ask are, what do you think you're really good at Andy where do you want to improve? And when you know the answers to those questions, you can not only advocate for those people, you can delegate to them, and delegation is a power skill. When you give somebody something to do Andy you say, I got your back. This is on me. So if you mess up in some way, I'm taking the heat, but I wanna give you an opportunity to shine. When I did this, Carol, my team would have done anything for me because I gave them the spotlight. I let them have a moment to to feel success, to be exposed to senior leaders, to to really, really show they had chops. And when I did this, I was perceived as a generous leader.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:15:00]:

It didn't matter that it wasn't my idea or my presentation. They were a direct reflection on me, but you're giving people the space to do the jobs they were hired for. And when you do that, all kinds of beautiful things happen.

Carole Mahoney [00:15:15]:

Yeah. You know, when we were talking Abbott now everyone who's listening in, believe it or not, I think this is only our second actual conversation, Lindsay. Tim, imagine what's gonna happen months from now after Andy more conversations, it's gonna be like a a a Yoda mind melders. Abbott one of the things that I find that's really interesting too is even though we have so much in common, you know, dogs in common, for example, both from Boston, You the accents are are gonna start coming flying out Andy second now, people. But the other thing is is, you know, we have a similar Tim similar perspective Andy view of things, but we come at it from different angles. Like, I'm coming at it from, you know, all of you leaders who who I'm speaking to right now, I'm coming at this from the angle of I'm hearing what your salespeople are coming to me for with help because their managers aren't able to do this. And not all of it is manager's fault too. Like, you know, it rolls uphill, so to speak.

Carole Mahoney [00:16:04]:

But you're coming at it from the perspective of the top down. But Yes. Like, we're meeting in the middle and dancing a little dance here.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:16:10]:

Oh, god. I love that you said that.

Carole Mahoney [00:16:12]:

I know. We have to go dancing. Yeah. One of the things that I often will share with managers and have individual salespeople do is a very simple exercise in personal goal setting. And it's just always so surprising to me every time I tell salespeople and sales leaders about this, how how they're like, it's such a simple thing to do, but it has such deep impact to what you were just saying too about asking those questions. And what I find is that when people go through this simple 5 step process, the data actually shows that those that do this and do it consistently and reiterate it are Hough% more likely to be top salespeople in their organization. Mhmm. Because they also have 32% more skills.

Carole Mahoney [00:16:52]:

So it drives them to learn more. So this process actually bridges the gap between the knowing and the doing and makes management easier. So first is like you were saying, you know, have that conversation with your people and ask them these questions. Get them to start envisioning and daydreaming about something that's motivating outside of meeting their quota. Like you were saying before, like, you know, meeting your quota is about as motivating as getting up in the morning excited to put your feet on the floor to pay your taxes. Like, no one ever. Abbott, like, what do you wanna design your life like? What's important to you? Why is that important to you? And really, Hughes you're digging into, like, you know, how they grew up and what was important in that, And then writing those things down is the second part of it, which is where most people stop. What do you mean write it down? It never happens the way we planned.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:17:34]:

And the, and the bonus version, put it in your phone. Andy you have their partner's name, their children's name, their dog's name or cat's name. Yep. Right there because there's nothing worse than telling them that you're really listening, asking these questions and you call their partner Fred and their partner's name is Sally. Like, don't embarrass yourself. Yeah. Make notes people.

Carole Mahoney [00:17:57]:

Make notes. Good point. Andy so yes, write it down, but have your people also write down their goals. Okay? And then I the 3rd step is to share it with someone. Now I don't say managers, you absolutely have to have your salespeople share their personal goals with you, but encourage it. You know, basically, share it with anyone, but ask them to share it with someone who's gonna be in their support network because that person's gonna become the person that they then report to. You know, also when that step is creating, like you were saying, where do you think you have strengths? Where do you think you have weaknesses? Yeah. But really assigning what you wanna work on based on what goals you need to reach and the obstacles that are in your Gray.

Carole Mahoney [00:18:32]:

And having it written down

Lyndsay Dowd [00:18:33]:

Yeah.

Carole Mahoney [00:18:34]:

And shared and then using that. And for salespeople, sharing that with your manager, that then becomes your learning path and action plan with your manager. So now you're being proactive with your manager and how you want this engagement to go. And for leaders, shout out to Claire here. Claire, if you're listening, this is thank you for this idea. But when she went through this exercise with her team and it came time to do like recognition and rewards, Instead of the, oh, I'm gonna give them, like, a $100, you know, restaurant gift card. Like, she learned, like, this person wants to build a, an addition on their house. I'm gonna get them a Home Depot card.

Carole Mahoney [00:19:07]:

You know, this person wants to travel, so I'm gonna give them this type of a recognition. So it's so unique to each person to build that kind of collaborate. It's it's really about building collaboration with your team because you want that to do that with their buyers. I I love that

Lyndsay Dowd [00:19:20]:

you said that. And I I really do believe whether you are a leader or a seller, and especially for your clients, one of the things that, one of the greatest lessons I ever learned, I had a leader once and she asked me, we were meeting for the first Tim, and we had just done conference calls, and we didn't even have Zoom then. So this this is a while ago, but we finally met in person. And so we sat down, and she says, so tell me your story. And I was like, what? What? Really? And I'm like, how much do you wanna know? And but it was the start of me understanding she wanted to know me. She wanted to listen, and she wanted to know what made what made me tick. And I took that note. And if you listen to my show, that is the first question I ask every single one of my guests.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:20:04]:

Whenever I meet somebody, I always Gray, tell me your story because I'm gonna better understand what motivates them, what makes them who they are. And when you understand those things, you can advocate better, you can support them better, and you know, things that you wouldn't necessarily hear if you just say, so what do you do? And when you're a sales rep and you're working with a client, ask that question. You will differentiate yourself. And if you know that they love sushi, send them a gift card to a sushi place or say, Hey, I made us a reservation. We're gonna go for sushi Andy find the way to connect and relate. You are setting yourself apart from every other rep that calls them. Listen. Write it down.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:20:48]:

It it makes such an impact because you're no longer just that rep. You're the rep that remembered they loved spicy generals or whatever it was.

Carole Mahoney [00:20:57]:

Yeah. It it really does come down to not making it about you. And it Alex happens with the buyer is because of the culture that you've set here. Mhmm. So all the way from the top, all the way down to the interaction that happens with the buyer is because of the culture that you've set here. Right. And I know that we only have 5 minutes to go. So if anyone who if you're listening and you have a question, we have a couple of minutes.

Carole Mahoney [00:21:20]:

Please type that into wherever you're listening from. Or if you're listening in later on, definitely reach out to Lindsay and I. Ask the question, connect with us, say, hey. We saw you on sales TV. Loved what you had to say about x. We'd love to learn more about y. Mhmm. Abbott closing thoughts.

Carole Mahoney [00:21:36]:

We have 5 minutes. Like, what was the, like, one thing that you'd love to leave people with if anything else, Lindsay?

Lyndsay Dowd [00:21:41]:

So I definitely want everyone to stop using soft skills, and we are going to continue to refer to them as skills. Power skills will, will serve you for all of your days when you lead with your heart. And I use the word lead loosely, whether you're an individual contributor or you're managing people, when you lead with heart, it will always serve you well. It will help you define your why. And when you understand your why and you understand your purpose, you will always be more successful. Whenever I could put passion into what I was doing, whatever I was selling, every time I could come up with the reason and the the how this is gonna impact others, I always did better. I always did more. And whenever you can define that for yourself and put it out there, people will remember you Andy you wanna be remembered.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:22:33]:

In this game, you have to be remembered.

Carole Mahoney [00:22:35]:

So this this after we had talked about this, Lindsay, I saw the post about Bob Moore, who's the founder of Bob's Red Mill. Oh, yeah. He passed away in 94, and instead of selling his company, he he actually gave it to his employees over a period of time. I mean, I talk about the new golden rule in relation to buyers, and Bob really lived the golden rule. You know, the new golden rule is those who have the golden make the rules. That that Rob lived by the rule of he really lived it in his culture. So when we talked about setting goals earlier and when I work with teams, that's, like, one of the exercise we go through because it aligns with purpose, like you said, to create that legacy. And that was Abbott what Bob was quoted as saying, I wanna leave everybody with this, which was my life's purpose, he said, was the build up company and maintain it so that it would create healthy foods for people around the world and offer financial security for my employees.

Carole Mahoney [00:23:26]:

Those are the kinds of companies that people are gonna flock to and wanna work with, that I would wanna work with, that I would want my children to work with, and would buy from every chance I get. I'm a huge fan of red mail products, so that makes me love them even more. So soft skills are yesterday. These are power skills. These are revenue skills. Thank you so much for joining me, Lindsay. This was so fun. We have to definitely do this again.

Carole Mahoney [00:23:46]:

That is totally not fun.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:23:47]:

How can people get in touch with you? What's the easiest way? Yeah. So, my website is heartbeatforhire.com. Super easy, but but I am super active on LinkedIn. I'm also on Insta, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. My podcast is on YouTube, so you can go to my website or you can find me anywhere at Lindsey Dowd, H4H. Awesome. And I'm Carol Mahoney. I am

Carole Mahoney [00:24:07]:

the founder of Unbound Growth, the author of Buy Your First, Grow Your Business with Collaborative Selling. And likewise, I typically am on LinkedIn a couple of times a day. You can also find me on my website carolmahoneydot com. Don't forget the e at the end of Carol. And thank you all so much for having us and letting us take over the studio, Rob, and sales TV. Make sure you follow us. Reach out if you have any questions. Until next time, have fun.

Carole Mahoney [00:24:32]:

Keep learning. Keep sharing out there.

Lyndsay Dowd [00:24:34]:

Thanks, Carole.

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