In this exclusive interview with Scott Leese, Founder & CEO of Scott Leese Consulting, he shares tips on the best way to get referrals, an unconventional way to motivate your sales team, how to achieve sales and marketing alignment, the biggest mistake he's made in his career (and what he learned from it), an easy way for leaders to boost team productivity, and a habit that motivates him during his work day.
Interview highlights & key takeaways
Best way to get referrals in sales
Just ask for it.
At the point of sale, you can say:
- "This [product/service] worked for you and you're excited about it. Do you have any friends/family/former colleagues in a similar boat that you think this might be able to help?"
Later on (once they've been a customer for X months/years, you can say:
- "[Metric] has changed and evolved since adoption. You and your team are super happy using [product/service]. Who else might be able to benefit from that?
You can also incentivize (e.g. $$ commission) someone who has a relationship with you/your product/service to spread the word about your product/service to other people who can benefit from it. For example, they would say:
- "Hey, have you ever heard of [product/service]? Have you checked it out before? I'm happy to broker an intro if you want to take a demo."
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An unconventional way to motivate your sales team
Tap into what drives each individual person. If you're a good sales leader, you find a way to have deep, beyond-the-surface conversations with your team to get to know everyone. Once you build those relationships, you can help each person devise a plan that would help them fund/reach their personal goals.
This is an essential step in improving sales team performance.
For example, if a rep wants to save up money to buy their first home, you can dig into that and find a way to calculate with them what they need to sell every month to earn XX amount in commission to sock away to put a down payment on a house by X day.
"I don't really believe anybody cares that much about their job or hitting quota," says Scott. "They care about what those things can do for them or their family or their loved ones."
Sales and marketing alignment
You give sales & marketing ONE revenue number, and it's the same one for both teams. Forget about MQLs, SQLs, etc. Forget about where the pipeline came from.
Just align on one single, common metric.
For example, both the VP of Marketing and the VP of sales have a $1M target.
That's it.
Learning from your mistakes as a sales leader
As a sales leader, you should vet the product and the founding team before you join the company to make sure you're a good fit and that your ideals align well. Don't think that you can sell—and teach how to sell—anything to anyone.
In other words, don't be arrogant.
Easy way for leaders to boost team productivity
Stop asking your team to go into so many meetings and report on meaningless KPIs and on every little thing that is going on in the pipeline.
Essentially, stop micromanaging.
Instead, ask your team what blockers they have and what's holding them back from doing twice as good a job.
Once you figure that out, focus on trying to remove those blockers and obstacles for them. That makes people feel supported and listened to, which in turn boosts productivity.
A habit that's motivational throughout the workday
1. Listening to music all day long.
2. Obsessively staring at one's goals all day long to be reminded of what's important and what the priorities are.
