00:22 Hey, welcome back to the show. Today we are so lucky because we've got Mandy here and if you haven't met Mandy, you're gonna find out why you're so lucky here in just a second. So Mandy, tell us who you are and what do you do?

00:33 Oh, good question. Uh, so a lot of service based businesses, a lot of coaches, a lot of call consultants, um, and sales teams actually struggle getting new clients without feeling pushy. Um, and when they do get clients, they're worried because either they can't repeat the process or they, they don't have one. So I am a sales coach. I run Girl Sweats, training company, sales training company. So, I offer athletic minded sales training for entrepreneurs and businesses so they can master the fundamentals and start winning clients consistently. Um, because every business owner deserves to have the power and the confidence to lead and to do that with a solid sales team.

01:14 Love it. Athletic Base Sales Training. Do dive in. Tell us what that means. See you.

01:20 Okay. So I, when I was younger, athletics was a huge part of my, my makeup, my character building, everything that I learned. And from that, I learned that the sports skills, the skills you learned in sports, um, whether it was teamwork, soft skills, or, or even technical skills, cause you have to learn a skill and you have to progress and grow and build upon it and have patience with yourself. So all of that is I packaged that up because that is really important and valuable in the business world, especially within sales, because you to be aggressive, you have to be on offense, you've got to learn the skills and refine them and keep trying to master them over time. So that is essentially the basis of Girl Sweat Training.

02:02 Love it, and what was your sport?

02:04 I played basketball hardcore since I was 12 on a good D1 path. Uh, there was volleyball and what else was there? Half marathons I ran after college. Did rugby in college, did softball. Yeah. Did CrossFit. It was really fun. I mean, I love moving around. I love being active. It keeps me like, you know, balanced mentally, emotionally, like mind, body, all of it. Yeah.

02:30 Totally. Totally, I love it, I love it. Okay, cool. So you have played aggressive sports at an aggressive level and you are a winner. You like to win, I'm guessing, and you like to take other winners and shape them into awesome salespeople. How does that translate? How do you make that work? Because it makes sense, but I'm curious how you do it.

02:53  So typically I do one-on-one and group training. So if I'm working with someone and they're a business owner and they just, they don't like to sell or the word sales. So we figure out what that is that's holding them back because we want to chase the fear. We don't want to run away from it. So we excavate all of that. And then we get them into a 12 week training program. It's either six or 12 weeks so that I can work one-on-one with them and guide them. And we do role plays and practices as we go about it and then we get them the results that we set aside in the beginning so that they're seeing profitable results. And for teams, if like sales teams are struggling, depending on if they're just starting out or if they're just, you know, plateaued or maybe they just need a little bit finesse, more refinement in their sophisticated sales role, then I work with them to work on whatever kind of challenges that they're working with. So if the business has like, wow, we don't know how to negotiate. We don't know how to close deals, right? We don't know how to handle objections. We work with them. And that way I can understand what their needs are and then I can help tailor my coaching to that business.

03:57 Love it, love it. Is there, you know, a lot of people, I was telling you offline here, I've got a guy who runs a sales team and literally only hires D1 athletes, men and women, and they're super, super effective because they have like built into them, ingrained into them goals, objectives, I can do this, I'm gonna work with my team, we're gonna beat this thing up, you know what I mean? Like, how do you say? How do you see those skills translated to someone who's not an athletic person or hasn't played team sports? And who are you really looking for your perfect client?

04:40 I mean, my ideal client kind of has both. They have both sides, the softer side of sales, as well as that drive. So a lot of people I work with are females who have that underlying, like innate drive to go and to move and to take action. And they're really good community builders. So they don't know how good they really are. So that's the first part of some of the training with some of those business owners out there is helping them realize what personal power that they do have and how it translates into sales power.

05:11 Right, right, right. Well, I definitely buy into that. I think there's huge value in what you're talking about. And that's one of the biggest reasons I wanted you on the show. For those of you listening, there is so much to know about running your business and so much to know about growth and scaling. And there is no growth and scaling without an awesome sales team. And so when you meet someone like Mandy, who is here as a coach doing both one-to-many and one-on-one coaching, you really gotta pay attention to this because you may have a great person in your sales department or three or four great people in your sales department, but do they really know how to leverage their innate skill sets to drive them down the field? Is that accurate?

05:55  Yeah, absolutely. And everybody's got a different personality. So like they can't be two point guards at the same time. There's got to be a point guard, a shooting guard, another shooting guard. We know that. So we might have like a hierarchy in the team or a flat, you know, team, but everybody knows their roles and responsibilities and what they're really good at and they can pass the ball when they don't or get guidance from their teammate. And so that's how I build up sales teams.

06:22 Love it, love it. Okay, so what does an engagement look like? I mean, when you walk into a business that's got, you know, a sales team with no real director, no real coach or captain, I guess you could say, what do you, how do you, first of all, how do you recognize that? And second of all, how do you get the team to acknowledge that they need one? 

06:43 Yeah, so first I look at the results. Obviously we look at where they are, what's the baseline? What are they achieving now? Like what sales are you driving in? What's the revenue? And then I would look at how long it's taking them to close a deal. Like is it taking 10 months instead of one month? Like what is the problem here? So we kind of do an assessment, like an audit of their sales process to see if they actually have a sales process how it's tied to marketing. Are they leveraging marketing to the full extent? Cause marketing and sales and companies don't really like to talk to each other I found., Right? Same team. 

07:15 Sometimes they don't, it's scary. Yeah, same team. Totally.

07:22 It's the same exact team though. Same team. And that's what I, yeah. And I don't play that way. I mean, I play with, you know, that's part of our team. So we want to make sure that they're speaking and communicating well with one another. Any gaps in that process, we get to fill those gaps. And we learn the styles of each person on the team with personality tests and with interviews. So we get that feedback. And then I go in and I'm like, okay, we understand. Now what do the managers think if there is a manager? What do they see in the data? And then we focus on those with those objectives, those key economic objectives. And then I tailor the training to that to help them. Yeah, so they can go.

07:58 Awesome. 

07:59 captainscouncil.com

09:28  No, you're so right. I mean, it is sad when I see, because I come from the marketing side, and when I see a revenue organization, we'll just call it a revenue organization with a company so dysfunctional that the sales team feels like they've gotta generate leads out of nothing, and the marketing team's like, well, what do you mean? We're generating 100 leads a day. Why aren't you converting these? There's like this total dysfunction going on. How do you see that and how do you help adapt those two teams to align together?

10:02 Yeah. So I had a lot of training back in college and corporate communications. And that was also because I had recovered from a lot of different things when I was younger. So there was a lot of like self discovery that went on and self-developed self-awareness. Personal development is huge, by the way, if you are in sales, personal development is number one, you got to manage your own emotions and your own mental state. So when I go in there, I don't look at it as dysfunction. It is dysfunction. It's not functioning properly, but I look at it as a disconnect in communication breakdown. So the breakdown of the communication between one team and another, if we don't know exactly the process from when that lead is a lead and what the word lead means to each team, we're gonna have a hard go because marketing is always gonna be like, we're giving you leads. They're like, they're not good enough. We don't even know what they are. Those aren't, where are they from? What are they doing? So we get clear. Clarity is the best.

10:52 Clarity is the best. You know, just imagine if you were on a basketball team and you, ball gets thrown in bounds and you forget which way you're supposed to be going. 

11:05 I've done it. Totally done it.

11:08 Awesome! Alright. Clarity on which direction your goin. I mean, you got, you can,  the CEO or the director of sales or whoever is in charge of that operation, they tend to come in and say, all right, we're competing, everyone's gonna, the winner gets this and the winner gets that. How do you, like I know that that's important, but how do you get them to align to an objective or a goal or a mission?

11:42 Well, first you bring the whole team together. I mean, you gotta work on those economic objectives as a unit, because otherwise they're just doing and not thinking. We also need leaders. We need people who think strategically, critically. So having them as a part of that process of building the three economic objectives, like, hey, we wanna bring in 100 new business leads and we wanna close at a 89% ratio or whatever the numbers are. At least you've got the team who is discussing that and they can understand the numbers because a lot of people don't understand the numbers. That's number one. They don't know what their activity is doing to impact the numbers and where their importance lies and their value lies. So, getting them all on the same page when they're in the room together and building that out within like a day, that is going to help. And then every morning, they should be saying the same economic objectives. Here are an economic objectives. What's our week's goal? Here are economic objectives. What's the next week's goal? And keep it consistent. It's like your coach is never gonna tell you, we're gonna do these plays this quarter, but then we have a whole new set of plays that you've never heard of that we're gonna bring in. It's like way to confuse the team. Nah. No, cause the goal has to go down all the way to the bottom, all the way to the people talking feet on the street communication.

13:05 Totally. Totally, no, it totally does. And even into the other arms of the business, right? Like, believe it or not, when a sales team is aligned, and then they align themselves with the marketing team, and then lo and behold, they even get the product development team to be like, oh, wait, the sales guys are saying that people want this? Right, like.

13:26 It's so fun. It's so freaking fun. I can't tell you. I will not. Yeah. It's so fun when that happens.

13:37 And now it really is. And you know, I've got an engagement coming up with a, with a new client that uh, I already know, uh, going out there next week, I already know that this is going to be the biggest problem is this alignment between the marketing messaging leads coming in and the sales team not knowing what to do or where they're from and then, and then that bouncing into a product with every resource, like they just don't align very often. And if you're listening and you feel like you're out of alignment, it takes someone really smart like a Mandy to come in and say, guess what? You don't have a sales problem. You've got a, you've got a whole revenue problem here. Like you've got, you got dysfunctional stuff going on. And while I can work with your, your people to close deals, you know, let's fix the whole system, right?

14:24 Yeah, yeah, let's fix that bucket that's got holes in it so that we can carry a full bucket of water all the way up. That's not a sports analogy. That's just a bucket analogy. You know, Jack and Jill. Yeah, there you go.

14:36 Yeah, you know, there's a lot of buckets in basketball. So, yeah, you got it, you got it. All right, so Mandy, help us understand. You've talked about one-on-one training. You've talked about one-to-many training. A lot of our listening audience are people that are kind of, they're in that growth mode of, you know, say 10 to 20 to 50 million in revenue, and they're kind of thinking, okay, I've got my sales team. I've got my marketing team, but they're just not clicking. What other problems should they be looking out for? When does somebody call you and how does that work?

15:15  So if there's consistent, if there's consistent non-progress, I guess I'm trying to think of the word. If they're not making progress quarter over quarter, or at least, you know, the percentages don't match up that they're showing like growth, you know, like investment. You don't see growth. 

15:32 So they're stagnant.

15:33 Yeah, they're stagnant, they plateaued. They've hit a ceiling. They're not sure why they don't know if it's a cultural issue. Like the, the team culture has kind of broken down. They don't know if it's communication, they don't know if it's a process issue. It could be a lot of things and pinpointing that off the bat is number one. So if they don't know what they don't know, then yeah, call me in and we'll talk about it and we'll figure it out.

16:00 Now help me out here because I'm trying to think back. Who is that guy? 23 Chicago, Michael Jordan. Did he have a coach? Was there someone who like analyzed his shots periodically and kind of helped him through that?

16:14 Uh, yeah, uh, I'm trying to think who his personal coach was. I don't know if he had like someone on the, um, you know, like that hidden gem guy who's in the back, he's like, I don't want anybody to know my name, but I'm really good at what I do.

16:26 Right, right, right. I swear that Tiger Woods also has someone that looks at a swing periodically. You know, it doesn't matter how awesome your sales team is, if you aren't periodically coming in and bringing someone in for training and coaching, I think you're missing a huge, huge advantage to how to capitalize and maximize your sales team's effectiveness, right?

16:49 Absolutely, and it doesn't take you know hiring somebody to come on board full-time It might just be you're doing some spot checks and you got to get those spot checks done quick And you got to put in some really good systems in order to get them to the next level and achieving So that they're not feeling depressed and sad that they're not getting it or they're feeling like more competitive against one another and themselves And they just haven't gotten through that ceiling of personal development yet. Like you got to bring somebody in to just take it it's like a that perspective, like I can see it from my vantage point, but you guys are seeing it from yours and you're used to that vantage point. Whereas the new ideas, like you hire new people when you need new ideas, but you can do it with consultants too and training coaches.

17:33 Now, Mandy, girl sweat, okay? I love it, I think it sounds awesome. It sounds, you know, wet and cool and stuff like that. Now, obviously sales training works for guys and girls, but there's probably some specific things that you feel like a lot of the girls on the team need different than the guys. Do you see different needs depending on the gender? I just wanna know. I wanna know why the focus on the females. And how does that all work?

18:04 Well, uh, yeah, focus on the females. Uh, one females have a higher percentage of close rate than males do just in general, like that is, I think it's 11% more. Um, and, uh, there's been some underrating, I think, you know, when you're underrated as a person in a sales job, or if you're even a business owner, um, that, that underdog kind of vibe is, is my vibe. I like it a lot, but it's not saying that everybody's an underdog. It's just saying that those skills that are unique to women particularly empathy, community building, there are nurturing. Yep, so all of the things that make a good salesperson also come from a natural, you know, feminine perspective, I guess you could say. This is nurturing.

18:54  That's what I'm saying. I mean, I throw the question out there as a joke, but like in all seriousness, Mandy, whenever I see a girl on the sales team, I already know she's probably one of the top three producers. Like I just know that because A, they just naturally have a lot of the skills that a good salesperson needs. They naturally want to help people. They're there to like, hey, you know what? You can do this. It's gonna make your life better. Like, why is this such a big deal? Why are there so many women lacking? In sales industry. I wish there were more.

19:20  Well, I think from my perspective, it's this is in my opinion, by the way, um, we get into those roles and they can be really competitive and alpha and women for me. Anyways, I like to sit back in my feminine and really understand, okay. I'm relationship building. I see the connection and communication piece because we communicate. We're like field, we're field reporters. We'll tell you every step from A to Z. Whereas I think with a lot of guys that I've seen, even colleagues of mine, they're like, okay, here's A, here's Z, boom. And that's it, and they go on. Then A and Z again, boom. And they don't like, we bring the elevator back down to a lot of women because we want to teach. We're like those berry hunters, right? Like way back when we were hunting berries, if you ate the wrong berry, you were gonna die. If you didn't know the way to get back to the berries, and we don't tell the community back at the camp. Where the berries are, we're going to have a hard time eating. So that's, that's how I look at it. And I also see a lot of really successful, uh, former colleagues of mine that are, that are female, nothing against male colleagues, cause they're awesome too. Different style.

20:31 No, no, listen, I'm not trying to start a gender war here because I truly, like, listen, that's very good advice to what you just talked about and I would say most guys that are out there hunting and killing, they just love to just go from a mile out and just have spear out ready and just go, but the women are much better at a long sail, in my opinion, than most men. And so, you know, there's different types of sales, there's different types of products, and I think that when it comes to a nurture sale, guarantee you, I will hire almost 100% women. But when it's a quick hunt and kill, you know the men just have, I got my spear out, I got my knife out, I'm gonna kill that thing, you know what I mean? So do you see those differences when you're trying to do group coaching? Like do you take a different approach with the women than you do with the males? Or what's kind of the sales psyche there?

21:24 Well, I take a different approach with every person because some women really are, they're like hunt, kill, hunt, kill. That's how they're wired. And what I do see is that communication between different groups and different departments is much cleaner usually with a woman and sometimes, right? So like, again, my opinion, based on my roles back, former roles.

21:48 Hey, you know it better than I do, but yeah, yeah.

21:52 So if something's going wonky with my tech or like, I don't know where the notes are. I'm going to go and figure out why or ask someone on the other department site. Whereas a guy would, I don't know, former colleagues would be like, ah, it's not working. I'm not really sure, but now people are learning that communication is such a key in success for everybody that that's what I want to bring up no matter what gender. It doesn't matter. Gender really doesn't matter. It's Hey, do you know the process? Hey, are you using your strengths? Hey, you know, can you use your strengths and do it differently than that person over there? Yeah, you can. And you can still both win. So I think it's rising tides, radio ships. It's a whole team environment. It's important to have everybody on all sides. As long as they're doing what they love to do, you're going to have successful people, if they hate it, then you're probably going to lose them. And that's okay too.

22:42 You know, I really love that you said that. Yeah, no, it is okay to lose them. And you know what, it is, I think it's great though what you're saying because a lot of people come in and they try to build a sales organization and the organization means you got to follow this exact process to get the close. When what you're saying is, hey, you know what? You nurture different than this person and so why don't you just get to the same end goal? We need to meet. How do you want to do it? What is your best way of doing that? And is it as effective as that person? Right? I like that.

23:17 Yeah. I mean, if you don't try it, you're probably always going to wonder, so why not try it? And what's the worst case scenario? You don't win one sale. Well, I bet you any money, you're going to win five more. If you just figure this out and then we go on to the next process or system.

23:28 Mandy, I love it, I love it. This is actually a very, very helpful, useful conversation for all of our audience because I know that most of us out there trying to grow and scale our businesses, yeah, I'm in the boat right now of hiring a new sales team and it is a pain in the butt, like not gonna lie, it is really hard to find the right people, get them dialed in the right way and to build that organization. How do you, what is the best time to engage someone like you? Is it during hiring, is it right after hire, is it? a year in and you're kind of figuring out what's working and what's not working, what's a good place for people to connect with you at?

24:04 Oh man, I would say right away. I would say right away is, is best because then you can set it up. Like once they, if they've got a few hires that they like, then I would get it right at that beginning stages. Yeah. Get everybody on the team, you know, understanding the process, understanding the system and everybody focused in the same direction. Yeah.

24:23 Love it. Love it, love it. Fantastic. Well, listen, Mandy, before I let you go, because I really wanna, I just love, I'm digesting what we just talked about because I really am, like this is top of mind for me right now. And so I have a feeling a lot of our listeners are in the same boat. This is top of mind. Sales teams, sales training, cleaning things up, how do I pull myself out? Like all those things are on top of my, a lot of people's minds right now. How do you, is there someone that has mentored you? Do you wanna give a shout out to someone who has like, kinda got you to see the world of sales the way you see it now, from this athletic background you come from?

25:04 Uh, yeah, Pat Summitt. I'm not going to lie. Pat summit was a coach, uh, that I learned from just by reading her books. I wanted to play for when I was a kid, right? Like those are the dreams. But the reason I say that is because she not only developed. Kick arse teams, but she also developed amazing women away. Amazing humans, amazing humans. Like they are leaders in the community wherever they go after they're done, you know, doing the basketball thing. That's what, that's what I saw before she passed, obviously. Yeah.

25:41 Love it, love it. That's a great shout out. And I love, I would challenge anyone to look her up. Check it out, if you don't know who she is, you'll find out pretty quickly. And amazing inspiration, love it.

25:53 Well, thanks for having me. I'm really grateful.