Top Tech Sales VP Shares How to Blow Out Sales Targets

getting sales reps to hit quarter is one thing but building a high performing magc driven sales org that consistently crushes targets is another hey I'm Marcus Shan former number one sales director of sentos Corporation where I let a 110 person sales force to profitly deliver over9 million tcv each year and now I'm a sales training coach of the fastest growing companies and Reps in the world today I had the chance to S out with Shawn Bartlett a Powerhouse sales leader who has mastered the art of coaching and developing Elite sales team now Sean doesn't just

manage numbers he builds cultures where success is inevitable with a deep understanding of AI datadriven strategies and psychology High performers he's turned underperforming teams into Revenue driving machines in this episode we're diving deep into the underrated coaching tactics that separates good leaders from great ones how to identify and develop future Rockstar reps why emotional intelligence and personal go line are game changers in sales leadership and the mindset shifts that top SAS sales leaders Embrace if you're leading a sales team more aspiring to it this conversation packed with actual insights you can literally Implement right after

watching it let's get into it all right Sean I'm pumped to have you on here my man you're a highly accomplished sales leader before we dive into just your track record and how amazing you are can you take us back to the beginning what inspired you to even get into sales or sales leadership yeah it's great question Marcus and oddly enough like the way I describe this is I've been selling since the beginning that includes from trying to convince my parents to do things that they normally would say no to to owning my first paper

roote and having to cultivate my own customers so naturally I've always been this person that drives convincing a large group of people to do things whether it's my friends my family so it's sort of something that's always come natural to me and studying Finance and Accounting in college I thought that was the track record I was going to go down and then I got introduced to the world of internet and sales and sort of everything took off from there but even in the beginning when it came to coaching and learning like if I figured out

something and how to do something faster I was always telling my peers and saying like hey check this out this will help you move faster this will help you do things faster so it's something that's always been ingrained in me to be a coach and to be a leader but the sales aspect it's just fun being able to set a goal and drive towards it or drive ahead of it is something that I've always been passionate about you I love that it was interesting I supposed to be an architect so I did not become an

architect yeah you know it's kind of funny how that works right it's interesting because you so you finance and business what decided to go into sales was the job description with may see what got you like all I'm going to totally pivot now Mom and Dad let me see what happens yeah I think it was all about my personality and my friends saying like this is something you need to go and do my friends my wife they always refer to me as the mayor somebody that's commands an audience and that just gives me the opportunity

to do that but also to convince somebody to do something that's going to have impact and value on them is what makes it so passionate for me being able to do that being able to convince somebody being able to talk to them and solve their problems is something that just excites me Marcus it's something that I I love to do to know that I could help somebody solve a problem or help them improve something that they're doing from a process or business perspective it's a big win makes you feel good it's so true right I

found the best sales people that way where it's not about just trying to like get them to buy but you're actually going to help them sell a problem make their lives or business organization far better now as you go back in time right what that career trajectory kind of look like you know you graduate college you go first role what that role looked like and how was kind of your career from that standpoint yeah it's a great question so I went into Telecom sales out of college you know pounding the pavement actually walking through buildings

I know that that doesn't exist now but like walking through buildings meeting and asking individuals getting through Gatekeepers live like that helped sort of build the foundation of how to handle no really often in sales and like why it was so important to get to that not so that's sort of the path that I started so I spent some time in the T industry from there I went to the business development business intelligence industry with Thompson which was fantastic and that's what opened my world to leadership I did very well there got to spin up

an inside sales team as a young professional at 26 years old and it was awesome and then from there I moved to Forester which is like such an unbelievable brand and that's really where leadership and sales took offer me I think when you have a great brand like Forester research behind you and you're able to solve business problems and consult businesses on a day-to-day from a marketing and an IT standpoint it just was fantastic like that's the core of where things happen whether it's on the tech side or the customer phasing side of a business

that sort of opened my world to B2B and prise sales and you know before long I needed a change in my career you know I wanted to do something different and forced or stepped up to the plate allowed me to lead a business development team along with a group of customer success managers and I always had this passion for new business I've been into new business as a part of my sales career my entire life my entire career so when it comes to executing and a new business strategy I always say that it takes a

certain level of crazy to only want to do new business sales because it's just the toughest part you're cultivating relationships from nothing I still had that passion for it and a BP of sales there said hey Sean we want you back in new business sales and I immediately took over a group of peers which was a challenge the biggest challenge that you face as a sales leaders all of a sudden you're managing people that were your peers like two days ago and a lot of lessons are learned there right and I think the big one

that I learned is the moment that you put the same expectations that you had on yourself on another individual they'll fail like a thousand per of the time so I had to learn that I had to meet people where they're at and that's what opened up that opportunity and that started my path down to sales leadership back in 2010 and that's what I've been doing ever since you know I think first off mad respect right because you came from the Telecom industry it's straight knocking on doors pounding P wearing through your dress shoes I came

very similar industry where it was all in the field like you're on the you're really walking businesses you're getting the business card you're calling them later like like you got to know how to grind if you will right y what's interesting is actually that same IND they still do that to this day you know like it works to a certain extent right you find those leads and get in front of them I'm curious right because I'm sure you've seen it over time I've seen it over time like every great sales professional eventually gets to the

point where they get Ta on their shoulder and say hey Sean would you like to maybe lead a team would you be interested in becoming the manager like for you how did you know that was a move because I think for a lot of people they're like wow I'm making a lot of money do I want to do that like I might get paid less like what made you decide I'm to becoming a leader I had been spending a lot of time being a team lead and coach for reps around me so people are always

coming to me for advice and it was like free at the time and helping people out helping them Clos deals and all of a sudden I was like hey man I could do this at scale like if people are coming to me and like not going to their leader and asking me for help there's a window and opportunity and a problem to solve and yes like it is less money Marcus like when you go into leadership you know you're going to take a hit but the ability to impact an individual and help them bring the

most out of themsel there's nothing more rewarding it's selfless to me I love taking the mistakes that I made and taking an individual and seeing if they're going to have a similar experience and helping them get past that mistake faster or to take the lessons that I've learned to help them improve themselves it's a a very rewarding career and a very rewarding path yep there's tough decisions that need to be made yes there are tough situations and that's where experience and my ability to help make those quick decisions and those situations will allow for a

better environment for the sales professional you know I love that it's funny right like over the years as a coach people I was a leader for a long time as well and I would have these reps say Hey listen I'm maybe looking to leadership or want to go into the next level mid Market Enterprise Etc whatever and but they weren't sure they were kind of at a a fork and I always ask him this one question I would say Hey listen what gets you more excited number one you closing a deal or number two you

help show someone how to close a deal and they close a deal yeah and it's so amazing because I realized that early on from a mentor asked me that same question I'm like I love help people close deals that level of fulfillment you mentioned it's so deep it's more exciting than any big check you get in the bank when their lives change cuz you're coaching and obviously you had that that's pretty cool so and we kind of touch on this a little bit right because even though you are impacting a lot of Liv it's not

all sunshine or rainbows and unicorns you know yeah what was maybe the biggest challenge you faced as a sales leader and how did you overcome it where do I start every day is a different challenge but I think sometimes the biggest challenge is being upfront with the person when they're just not going to get it you have to be able to deliver that message I mean most sales leaders they'll bat 50/50 when it comes to hiring a professional so like you have to be able to fail fast in that environment if you make a mistake

you have to be willing to own up that you made a mistake and I've made a few bad hires we all have it happens yeah you know maybe a few is an understatement but it happens yeah but I think the ability to admit failure in that situation and to move on is difficult because you're impacting a person right you brought them in board thinking they could do the job and then they can't and that's happened at every company that I've been at where sometimes you move too fast and make an uneducated higher or not a

fully thought out higher because you're moving so fast and you have to be able to move past that regret really really quickly so I think the biggest lesson learned is you have to be able to move past regret and as much as I tell reps to fail forward for sales leaders like you can't well in the past you got to keep marching on yeah such a powerful lesson you shared there especially in a hiring perspective as you know it's like you get so many applicants you do so many screenings the whole by the time you

get to an offer you're like thank goodness you know and obviously like still it could be hate or Miss regardless some people just nail every part of the interview they get on the team you're like what happened was there anything in particular in your own interview and hiring process you start implementing that maybe help increase the likelihood there's there's never 100% but increase your likelihood of hiring maybe a potential future rockar yeah I lead my interviews by saying hey Marcus it's been great to catch up with you I'm excited to hear more what questions do

you have prepared for me and I want to see what homework they did I want to know that they came prepared to the interview and then I'll start to dig deep into like what's going on in their world I'll ask them if I were to call your last leader what would they say about you because I'll do that right like I'll call past leaders to see you know what they say about individuals because I'm trying to find their go factor a lot of leaders will say what motivates you I don't ask that question I'm like

what goals you trying to Aspire to this year and like what do you want it to look like five years from now like I'm trying to see what their aspirations are and then I also really focus on regret I know I talked a little bit about that a few moments ago but one of the questions I typically lead with is Marcus if you had the opportunity to go back in time and give yourself advice how would that person be and what would you say it helps me scale somebody's regret and like if they go way

back and like oh man this person holds on to stuff pretty bad hasn't learned a lesson so it helps me determine a person's forget factor and how they move forward and whether or not they have an open mindset like the further back you the more closed mindset that you have and your ability to move forward and grow well what's really cool about that question is it gets them to really see how self-aware they really are how they really internalize past mistakes maybe they made or things they they've done but on top of that it's like

wow did you learn the right lesson from that situation because some Sometimes some people we find learn the wrong lesson they keep repeating that same mistake you know now we talk about hiring a little bit right and there's time I'm sure it's happened to you you mention taking over teams right like we all wish every team we took over was just a rockar team we kind of sit back and they just crush it that's not usually the case has there ever been a time where maybe you took over a team that was for like maybe

bit of a dumpster fire they're not performing and then what happened if that was the case yeah so that happened twice to me at Forester I was just known of taking over a team and taking a failing situation and bringing it up whether it was covering them M Atlantic or the Midwest and it what's really weird Marcus it just came down to process and kpi measurements yeah right you can set certain number of kpis calls emails meetings but every individual operates differently so some person may require less meetings to get the number of opportunities some

people may need more and it's taking a look at that landscape to understand the body of work for that individual person to see where we need to tweak and move things so it's like you create like a A baseball batting average there's a good analogy like how many app bats do you need to get a hit and then how many app BS you need to get a home run or and so on and so forth how many times are you looking at a ball or a strike before you actually get a meeting set how are

you looking at the piture how are you evaluating those individuals there's so much to that evaluating the talent to make sure that you understand each individual's success and sometimes you have to move quickly on somebody that's just not a part of the team are not a part of the group so I I definitely want to identify the individual that is going to cause or has caused the most trouble to see how we can move past or move on or anybody that's been a naysay how to move past or move on because you want to create

an environment where everybody body sharing and and working together so the one things that I try to do running a a Friday meeting where we talk about successes and failures of the week it's important for everybody to hear those things and making sure that everybody contributes and comes prepared for those discussions and helps me evaluate the talent as well I love that now the first 30 days is so critical you take care of that team right you're identifying who are your superstars who are the best of the best who are your rising stars and which

are your falling stars the people that are just like oh we don't know what's going to happen with them you know maybe they're the naysayers whatever what are maybe some things you look for to identify by maybe the Nay the people that potentially are just not going to make it cuz that's usually a big part right you kind of like you remove the bad stuff suddenly weirdly the team start performing better yeah so when I first meet with individuals in my team they have to run to criticism Yeah question everything challenge authority right and those

that don't come to me I know that's going to be a problem if you're not willing to reach out and introduce yourself and come to me like that's a bit of a problem like I can meet people halfway you have to be open to taking that first step and that shows me that um you have the initiative to come in and introduce yourself to put time on my calendar to talk to me about yourself and what you have as goals so I think it's like those that take initiative are those that I look for like

one of my best reps at Zoom info every day Markus she call me and say can you listen to this call can you take a look at what's going on can you help me to see where I can improve those are a players a players are ones that invest in themselves so I want to see somebody that's going to take the initiative you know I love that so much you know it's like do they have that inner drive because either you got it or you don't see I can't make you want it right you can't

coach to drive you can't right what I've also found is most teams most reps generally speaking across the board not just at Zoom really anywhere most get very little or zero coaching they don't get any help their manager is just too busy running around with their hair on fire can you walk me through maybe your coaching philosophy what's maybe an example of somebody that was not performing the level you want to and what how did you turn them around yeah so sometimes when you're so in it and you're not performing well as a rep you

don't recognize what you're doing wrong and you could say like I don't know I don't know what happened I've been doing it the same way and I think like the beautiful thing about where we are today where you have great conversational intelligence software out there and you can go back and listen to calls and understand like what's going on in Discovery like one of the most challenging things to do is to listen to yourself that's right on an AI call and like one of my big pieces of advice for a lot of my reps a

lot of my senior reps has been go listen to a call take notes coach yourself and then we'll come in and discuss and we'll see where things are missing and they will find something out so it's like the willingness to go and invest in yourself to improve is such a big aspect to doing better as a sales rep or coaching like I said earlier run to criticism if somebody's like take a listen to this call did I say this right or the ones that are willing to take a risk on trying something different but really

A lot of my coaching Marcus starts with Discovery because deals are for me are one and loss there if you don't get to the why if you're not getting to the business challenge that they're trying to solve for if you're not understanding the financial imp that that's going to have in a business when you have to talk about your product there's no fit right you have nothing to align it to so think about it it's Discovery educate align right and then find that path down to Next Step or close that deal and I think a

lot of times reps spend too much time thinking about I have to talk about myself and my product before really focusing on where Discovery is so like I find that most reps abandon what's going on in Discovery and get into a show and tell so that's a lot of places where deals get won and lost 100% so what I think a lot about to as a leader and I think a good leader is very good at coaching the very logical parts of the process which is like let me coach you now how to run a

better Discovery cuz you're do there basically like vomiting on let me coach you now on how to do a proper demo very logical right that's like the Mind piece but the most elite leaders I find and obviously you're one of them which is they not only know how to win the minds of their people but their hearts too and they're do in so many different ways so for you what are maybe some ways you've done the past to really make sure you're winning them Beyond just their M but also their hearts as well yeah so

you have to get to know your reps you have to know it's not about what motivates them it's like what's your personal goals for this year you know I posted on LinkedIn the other day have you defined your smart goals for the year what are your short-term and long-term goals what's your professional and personal goals as a sales leader you need to invest in them so they'll run through walls for you it's like building a family right but you're choosing the people that are going to be in your family here your reps and those individuals

you have to be vly passionate about their success because they'll do more for you if you're invested in them it's not just about the deal it's not about them selling you have to enrich them offer suggestions for books or a class to take or a video to take a look at like just being an open leader and individualizing that coaching is so important especially when you're leading sales leaders like helping them understand how to really connect with their reps so you can get the most out of them starts with the foundation have you invested into

understanding what's going on with them personally how much do you understand them it doesn't always have to be about business doesn't always have to be about the deal has to do with getting to know them and they'll fight for you like I have a very good record of keeping Reps for a long time both sales leaders and Reps that want to stay with me or go with me to new places because I invest in them therefore that they want to give their time to me they trust me and building that trust comes from getting to

know them I love that now what's interesting too is you mentioned obviously winning the hearts and minds of not just the Reps but also when you man another layer man sales leaders right cuz that's a different game now right managing the the I who are out there in the field running calls closing deals then you managing managers who are managing the Reps it's a different game so what are maybe some words of wisdom of leading leaders that maybe you wish you had you know when you got started leading leaders man it's all about how to

help them hire train and ramp reps as quickly as possible right and again it's the same lesson I had a certain expectation on myself as a leader I can't put that same expectation on the leaders that I'm leading I have to understand how they're trying to get there how connecting with their reps but the time that you need to invest in a rep is what's going to drive your success but like what also I have found is that I want my leaders focusing on the Reps that are going to drive the most productivity for them

and then anybody that's challenging for them those few that aren't hitting their number let me handle that I'll take that on for you so you can focus on your closers and I can work on helping the coach and train and develop so one of the things that I think is super important to do is that you have a coaching plan every month it does not change it does not deviate here's the topics that we're going to focus on as a leadership team to ensure that our group is executing and that they're doing what they need

to do so one time it could be on closing the other one could be asking Discovery questions the other one could be on negotiating or finding the know in a deal like you can pick any of those aspects but there are different layers in the sales cycle that you can work with your leaders on to coach and it's got to be a collaborative environment you have to be looked to as the leader of leaders to help make difficult ult decisions but collaboration is so super important when it comes to working with your team I I

love that you know it's one of those things where it's like you're you're arming them with the tools the resources the structure the vision to help them be successful in that leadership role to help lead their specific sales work right now I'm sure you probably have promoted maybe a rep who's performing really well into a sales leadership role that's always a hard transition for a lot of reps right to make that first initial move it was hard for you it was hard for me it's hard for probably every rep who made that move to to

leadership was there anything that you've done in the past you found to be effective and really helping prepare them for that role whether it's beforehand or once they're in the RO help make sure that they can just make that transition as smooth as possible yeah so I highly recommend have them be a team lead ahead of time so what that means is like they's still an individual contributor you pick two or three reps on your team for them to coach and work with and sort of get them in that aspect helping them solve a problem

or helping them close a deal that a rep's working through and see if it's something that they're comfortable with and then also sitting in the background of a coaching conversation to see how they can deliver feedback and tell somebody that they may need to change how they're doing something uh is important because those are the difficult conversations so you want to help put them in environments to see how they'll respond to a difficult conversation or to see what it's like to lead individuals to set goals for them so I think it's important to sort of

allow them to test the waters for six months at a minimum before you decide to move forward in a full leadership Ro I love that just getting to warm up ease into that role right you don't be fully into that so I was dropped into it nobody was like here's how to be a leader Sean like this is how you do it right there's a lot of learning on the job like 100% there's a lot of learning on the job you're you're spot on I think every leader has probably felt that where it's like good

luck you were great as a rep so hopefully we can do the same thing as a leader yeah go make more of you right like go make more of you just duplicate yourself somehow got it yeah no idea how to do that really easy that's so easy right it's like oh very different skills I actually have to learn now so now we're going to Pivot a little bit right because I think a lot of teams these days over the last couple years they were so used to the inbound lead flow and pivoting to cold outbound

getting new logos is the whole thing you came from World it was all new logos I came from literally all new logos I've only Rand new logo teams my entire career and I'm used to that right I ran 100 plus employee organizations literally we did all new logo that's all we did right I freaking love it but yeah not a lot of people are wired like you and I Sean they love the new logo hunt can you share strategy for getting new logos let's just say for example you're taking over a team they've never done

new logos before and that's really a big Focus ini issue for the upcoming year what will be the strategy of getting them all on board to be able to basically transition into a new logo team yeah so at the start you have to compensate so you have to make the value of a new business logo far greater than doing an upsell or renewal the value if you make that value of a new logo more important to them they'll go after it and they'll go get that goal so a lot of it is incentive based so

like the first person to get the 10 new logos will give them a $5,000 kicker you have to incentivize those individuals to go out and get it but you also have to look at who your clients are today to identify the easy targets for you to go after so if you're specialized and you do well say in the retail space like hey you're doing great here but you also have stories to tell about how you've helped customers like how you've helped them so it gives you an opportunity to go after those new logos with education

and with understanding of what's going on in that space so it's taking a look at your existing customer base identifying areas of success and then identifying that Target Market that you want to go after and go after it you know I I love that and how about from a hiring perspective which because reality is as you and I both know sometimes that team you took over who's only used to inbound leads that's what they were promising that got higher hey you're going to have x a number of leads each week on your calendar you just

and now they're like I have to go do what I got I got write sequences I got to do outbound it's a harder sales process it's harder sales cycle by deal size I mean they have all these worries and they may not be able to cut it if that new leader was kind of stepping that place and they had to go hire potentially some backfills to the people that are going to make it right or complete replacement for the team what advice would you give them in terms of how they might want to change their

hiring process because it's obviously a different profile now yeah 100% any true Hunter will Prospect yeah and some of my best reps at Zoom info I know that you get a ton of leads put on your calendar every day at Zoom info some of my best reps still coold calleded on their own every day love it and I think it's about identifying individuals that like creating their own success so in the interview process you really have to dig deep on how are you cultivating your deals are they handed to you or are you finding them

on your own the thing that I found out Marcus over time like when it comes to coaching reps and them identifying deals on the own those deals end up being their larger deals their larger ACB or ARR deals like those are the ones that you can hang 100K deal 200k deal or 500k deal on because you cultivated that on your own you built the relationships on your own you identified the problem and you went out and and got it I just find that to be so rewarding and I would tell a story from my background

you know still to this day to book a cold meeting is more difficult than it is to close a deal that's right oh yeah to be able to show the value of being able to book a cold meeting and what that means to you and how that's going to help build your success you're writing your own path you're not waiting for somebody to do a for you or to put a meeting on your calendar like you want to catch that person before they inbound right so like that's to me more valuable so find those reps

and individuals that find Value in their work and not just are again are a professional person that runs demos oh yeah that's exactly it now I I love your overall coaching philosophy your leadership philosophy was there any particular maybe book or research course you read over the years that's really has kind of had the most impact on you as a leader or is it a maybe a book you recommend for anyone who wants to improve their leadership skill an existing leader or they're about to step into leadership yeah so there's a great book called The

mindset by Carol DW oh yeah growth in professional growth is so much about your mindset and like when you read that book and understand what a fixed mindset and what a growth mindset means it helps you evaluate your team and like what's going on there the second book and I can't remember the author was the five dysfunctions of a team Patrick Le Ley or something like that L yeah I think I think you're right Patrick Le and like when you look at the five dysfunctions of a team and like how accountability and building trust is

so important that as a sales leader the first one is the growth mindset how do you look at yourself and how do you view yourself and how can you get out of the fixed mindset if you're there and put yourself in a growth mindset where you're constantly learning doing things like this right like where you and I are chatting like how are we growing ourselves and putting ourselves out there and then looking at the five functions of a team and how you evaluate the people around you as a leadership group and how you go to

war together so I think those are the two best books to recommend the first one is a reflection of yourself the second one is a reflection of how you lead and how you evaluate your teams I love it I've read both those books both of are fantastic books I mean even with with grit that applies to literally reps leader really anybody right yeah you want to grow right man our time has flown by before we wrap up last question is if you were to give one piece of advice to other sales leaders that are looking

to improve their team's performance what would it be so many things to say here I think the one piece of advice I would give to individuals and I said this earlier get to know their goals and drive with them towards their goals and you also need to educate them on what your goals are as well and have it be a shared environment like you cannot succeed together in separate situations like you all have to have a common personal go it's not just a quota right like it's not about hitting goal our goal is to get

to 120% this year and like no my goal is to buy like a $250,000 Porsche that's what I want to do and like I want people around me that want those same things and let's go get it what's your goal like what do you want to see so like it's that sharing and getting to know everybody's goals for that year and what they're looking to get to and go and fight to get there and the story I can say is in 2021 I set a goal to buy a beach house and I shared that with

the team and we finished first and I was able to go do that and they were all able to go through things as well whether it was getting a new home or getting a car or getting engaged like to know those things and to share those stories with individuals as a team and to execute on them and talk about them often in a team environment it shows support and it shows that you're all in it together I love that so much Sean it's funny I think you and were cut from the same cloth if you

will from the door Todo days of B2B if you will even that phosy because I've always been a fir believer I'm like I don't I don't even talk about quot with my team all we talk about is their personal goals which you and I both know they're far past qua like whatever the personal goal is whether it's to perform at high level have more free time with their family to give back to their church and donate money to be able to go on an incredible vacation or whatever I'm like if I help them achieve their

goals Man hitting quota is a byproduct hidden pred Club is a by it's going to happen anyways because what they want out of themselves is far greater than what the company actually wants yeah you have a happy rep uh fulfilled rep they'll do anything for you like I said they'll run through walls for you I love that I love that well I love the conversation where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and you how can they get a hold of you yeah so I'm on LinkedIn do want me to

give my personal email I could do that too whatever you feel comfortable it could be yeah so I'm on LinkedIn you can find me there my personal emails seanor Bartlet yahoo.com my personal C 781 60356 71 you know I'm here to help people here to find also my next opportunity so it's been great for me Marcus it's certainly been pleasure and a great conversation every time I this I find and learn more about myself so thank you well you're an amazing guy Sean I'm not surprised why you have developed so many top performing reps teams

and leaders from your philosophy of how you think about sales to coaching everything else my man you're a rockstar thank you so much for being on thanks Marcus I appreciate it