Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Fostering Confidence In Your Sales Team To Achieve the Impossible w/Stephen Oommen
69 Plays4 months ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks to Stephen Oommen, VP of Global Strategic and Enterprise Sales at Outreach, about the crucial role of confidence in selling. They delve into why confidence is often overlooked in sales discussions and explore its impact on both individual performance and team dynamics. This episode is a must-listen for sales professionals seeking to boost their confidence and enhance their effectiveness. Get ready for an insightful conversation that sheds light on the intersection of confidence, team synergy, and sales success, right here on CloseMode.
Timestamps:
03:42 Sales and sports have similar spirit of competition.
07:56 Success came when not driven by money.
09:48 Fortune 50 leadership experience, fear-based decisions.
14:12 Seller's confidence in ability to improve.
18:34 Reflecting on events with balanced perspective and response.
22:15 Confidence crucial in matching skills to job.
24:59 Vulnerability in communication and leadership for success.
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to another edition of Close Mode, the enterprise sales podcast. I'm Brian D. Meyer, CEO of Close Strong. And today I'm really lucky and excited to be here with Steven Uman, who's a VP global strategic and enterprise at Outreach. And for those of you who aren't familiar with Outreach, I can't imagine, um it's a single sales execution platform that unlocks seller productivity to create and close more pipeline. Steven, welcome to the show. I'm just happy to be here, Brian. Thank you for having me. And and i got I got to know who you're representing today. What team are we sporting? um You know, the the best team of of them all. and Nice. Nice. And yeah, for for anybody listening watching, Steven said, should I pull a put a collar chair down? We said, hell no. so
00:00:53
Speaker
You know, you you you and I were chatting a week ago and ah i I said to you, like, we don't talk enough ah as sales leaders, especially about kind of the soft stuff. And you and I started talking about confidence and I was just like, man, it's such a, it's such a needed topic. um and and I feel like we don't talk about it enough and we all go through a period where it waxes and wanes, but we act like you know ah tough men and women and pretend it's not there. so It's such a huge part of selling and sales leadership. so ah ah what Why do you think it's something that that we don't talk about so much? ooh that That is such a good question.
00:01:33
Speaker
I think confidence in anything you do goes a long way. There's a lot of old adages, you know statements people say where attitude is 80% of the battle and you know all these types of things. Confidence ranks up there with every cliche you can think of, yeah but I think as we've kind of progressed in society into this technological age. Everything's AI. Right before that, everything was data. Everything was around this new technology, right? And wow I'm not saying that's bad, but yeah while that's great, what happens is everyone looks at the data. They look at trends and it is much needed.
00:02:15
Speaker
But if you remember the movie Moneyball, it kind of reminds me of that where it was such a phenomenal idea and it changed and transformed the way people looked at sports. They looked at baseball, but at the same time, it should never diminish That it factor the those athletes those people those sellers that just somehow some way they just get it done right right a lot of that has to do with confidence and a lot of it has to do with process there's things that build your confidence but honestly i think that. In my personal opinion part of the reason we don't talk about it as much as because we're so focused on data these days. Yeah, I think it's true. And there is a there's a lot of like motivational stuff around selling, but but when when you and I, like I said, it really sparked me because I would be.
00:03:10
Speaker
Uh, probably very slow to go to any of my partners and go, Hey, you know what? My confidence is getting whacked right now. I mean, it's just sort of verboten. You know, like we, we don't, we don't say it. I suppose I might have other people, but even with my closest advisors, personal advisors, I don't know that I go and talk about this. So that's, as I say, it's, it's, it's so cool. You, you also talked about, um, Confidence being tied to the team around you which i'd like to hear more about like maybe you feed off it or or get pulled down from it.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's such a fascinating thing and I relate a lot of what I do to sports mainly because if you think about the parallels between any athletic game and sales, very similar in terms of the spirit of competition. So I'm going to use something specifically around the game of basketball and then I'll relate it back to selling. Have you ever noticed when one person catches fire and they shoot and then all of a sudden the rest of the team has this confidence and everyone's draining a three from who knows where and the most unlikely person, the 12th man on the bench is draining half court shots and you're like, what is going on?
00:04:24
Speaker
And that's what I mean by team confidence because winning spurs more winning, right? And when you think about that in sales, it's almost like the four minute mile. Like when somebody does something that seems unachievable or they're consistently winning and winning and winning, they're basically proving that it can be done. yeah so Literally everybody else on the team is like, if he can do it, and he's proving it, then yeah, everyone can do it, right? So there's a lot of confidence that comes when you have the right people that can get it done. um And it just permeates throughout the entire team for sure.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And i'm I'm thinking of that firsthand, like when stuff's happened in our business and it's like, okay, you know, boom now. and and And it is, I think there's a correlation as we talk about this more between sort of motivation and confidence, but confidence is is is is totally different, but i but i think I think you are right. um You said something about getting salespeople to the point where they they don't need money. and And as I was looking back through those notes, um I know we had ah we had a correlation to confidence, but yeah, talk about that.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah, this is just an opinion of one. Maybe a lot of people who are listening share what I'm about to to to say. But I remember back when I first started in sales, this is my 25th year in sales, believe it or not. I was joking because I have more grays in my beard. I was joking with Brian earlier. I said, hey, you know, it's a video podcast. let me I actually died. Let me touch it up a little bit. Yeah. Let me touch it up. Right. But yes, it's my 25th year in sales. and i Remember when I first started, there was someone that I i heard a sales leader once say, man, I want all of my people to be in debt because then they'll sell even more to pay down their debt. And it was more facetiously said, maybe comically said, but there was a little hint of truth. Yeah. And here's my personal experience. When I was in my twenties,
00:06:32
Speaker
I had a mentor that said, if you want to sell more, stop worrying about the money. And this was when I was building a couple of companies in my twenties and worry about the purpose, worry about the customer, worry about the prospect, like what matters to them. And all these things are normal in today's selling motion where we talk about customer obsession and we talk about what does the customer want business acumen and all these things. Well, the reason this is important from a personal standpoint is when you are fundamentally secure in your personal needs.
00:07:09
Speaker
Right? If we make the right decisions early on and we're not worried about the money, it frees psychologically our mind up where we actually don't need and don't really care. Well, we should still care about the condition. We don't need it. yeah So there's not a bias toward, I need this deal from a customer or a prospect. Because if you ever been a buyer, we've we've all seen this, right? I'm i'm assuming most of the ya audience are sellers, but we're all buyers as well. And you can sniff desperation, right? And I actually didn't really learn this lesson until my early thirties. I thought I was all about the customer. I thought I was all about the other person until I lost everything. It was late twenties, early thirties. And I realized you can lose everything in an instant. Yeah. And when I came back the second time and I started building another company the right way,
00:08:01
Speaker
all of a sudden I just saw prosperity. I saw you know the profits start to roll in and I started to sell more because I didn't actually care about the money. Now, when it really started to work for me is once I got to a place of financial security where I didn't need the commission, I remember one time I was talking to a CFO and this was when I was at Microsoft and you know we were at the end of a our fiscal year And I remember that there was a small deal. Was it this massive deal, right? It was only like a $50,000 deal. It didn't move the needle on their P and&L that much. He could have signed it and done it.
00:08:45
Speaker
But at the end of the day, there was something he needed and it was a political ask and I knew it would not actually come to fruition. So I told him, I said, listen, I'll be honest with you. This deal makes a difference for the seller. We went to the seller and we had an open, that open and transparent of a conversation. But because neither of us needed the deal, we didn't force him to make the decision because we said, hey, this would be helpful. But the truth of the matter is because of that, it built so much trust that the next year they spent, we'll just say significantly more, right? Because they knew we were looking out for their best interest. But I'll be honest with you, I'm hard pressed to believe that a lot of sellers, if they're in a position where
00:09:34
Speaker
They are stressed. They need that deal for personal gain or for, for their own quota sake. I mean, it's, it's, they, they would probably for someone to try to yeah and do some you know unpleasant behavior to say the least. Yeah. It's what what comes to mind is, you know, I had a fortune 50 leadership experience and on my exit interview on the way out to, to start my own business. I remember saying to the president of the company that like, We should give the executives enough money that that they have the confidence to make the right decisions. I watched i was surprised as as I moved up the chain and watched people making fear-based decisions.
00:10:14
Speaker
based on all their payments for private schools and fancy cars and fancy houses. So yeah, it's it's what comes to mind when you talk about that. So I wonder um with with with reps, how because again, so very few of us raise our hand and go, oh, my confidence is crushed. like ah what What's the indicators for you that that someone's getting clocked on your team? Yeah, I think this could be more of an art than a science. And it's something I talk at length about with my organizations in the past, current is
00:10:46
Speaker
Again, we'll we'll talk about it as the it factor if if that makes more sense to people, but you know just noticing someone's tone, noting noticing shifts in behavior. You can also use the data. You can see activity levels. You can see results. There's a lot of things that that happen, right? And just like in in sports, again, you go through sometimes a dry spell and people have to pick it back up and and regain their confidence. A lot of times it's it's honestly just noticing. And this is why having the people aspect of sales is so important because if you don't genuinely love your people, you're probably not going to notice a lot of those people oriented things. yeah um And that's why people always say, hey, we quit, we don't quit companies, we quit leaders. And at the end of the day, like that's a whole principle in and of itself is does a leader instill confidence?
00:11:41
Speaker
I failed miserably in my career at instilling confidence. I've succeeded phenomenally in instilling confidence. Sometimes, right? Like we win some, we we lose some, but I mean, we all go through it. like And i the other side of confidence is could be insecurity. I don't care. good point we We all struggle with it. I struggle with it every single day. it's I think Brene Brown talks about it from the perspective of um the story we tell ourselves. And it's just the truth of the matter is we all go through it. Yeah. Usually the highest achievers go through it more than anyone else. Yeah. Well, it's, it's the dreaded imposter complex, imposter syndrome, whatever. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's, uh, I, I've been there, uh, especially as someone who sort of doesn't come from a lot. So I've been in situations where, where it's like, I don't belong here. Everybody in the room knows I don't belong here. And that's, yeah, I think that that's a really important point. And so what?
00:12:37
Speaker
Yeah. If you see someone who whose confidence is down, what what are your sort of tips and tricks? Like how how do you, how do you lift them up? Yeah, I love that. Um, there's the tactical and then there's sort of like the motivational because I am a big believer that a lot of it's internal intrinsic. Um, I'm going to give a story of something that i I'll give an example of one time that I was talking to a seller. ah
00:13:09
Speaker
We had to have a tough conversation. They weren't getting the results that they really wanted, but the response when I had this conversation blew me away and it taught me a lot about confidence. What was happening is the seller was not getting the results, but if you look at the activities, right, when you look at any any sales leader, it's the same three to four basic things. are you get Are you bringing in the revenue? No, let's look at pipeline. No, let's look at, are you meeting with your prospects and customers? No, then are you doing the activities, right? You just go down the spectrum, right? Very simple. This seller was putting in more dials, more emails, more activity, more reach outs than anyone else
00:13:52
Speaker
in the entire organization. So this didn't, this seemed odd, but this was what was interesting in the response. This seller goes, I know I can do better. Like literally it did not phase this person at all. yeah Literally at all. yeah And literally the response when I asked like, Hey, this is awesome. I love this response. How are you able to have this response? It was based in the fact that the seller knew that he was doing all the work, all the activities. yes So what what was really amazing about what the seller was telling me is that the confidence was in the fact that if the work ethic was there,
00:14:32
Speaker
You can just tweak some of the messaging, some of the how, because it wasn't a work ethic issue. So the confidence was like, I'm doing all the things necessary in the time that I have. I just need a little bit of coaching. yeah Maybe it's a little skill coaching. Maybe it's just something, a small tweak. That's a great place to be. So to answer the question directly is, do the work. They do say the old adage was practice makes perfect, but the truth of the matter is perfect practice makes perfect. But you have to start with the practice yeah and then you tweak it and you tweak it and you tweak it.
00:15:06
Speaker
But if you're not even willing to get in and do the work and do the grind, the fastest way to to get out of a, I'll use a shooting dry spell in basketball, shoot more. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's so funny you say that because that, that was going to be a question I was just going to ask you because I, I was forced to think, not forced to, I kind of enjoyed thinking through like my own confidence spells. It's one thing to talk about somebody else's. but you and i started talking about like ours and that's that's that's the personal part and and that's exactly i started thinking about how how do i work through this and i was gonna ask you about action how you felt about action and and that's that works for me as well to say okay but it's also
00:15:48
Speaker
good action if your confidence is down and you're just sort of throwing slop you know but but yeah i find that helps me a lot like i go to a checklist right away okay what what are the leading indicators what what are the ten things i have to do and start checking those off yeah it it it feels good so i'm glad to hear you say that because it definitely works for me. I'll I'll share one other one that tends to work. You know, when I was younger, again, I've dealt with I think we all do, but I'll tell you mine is I deal a lot with insecurity from a lot of different things. And when I talked to mentors, coaches, counselors growing up in my 20s, there was a question. Most of us have a question that drives our life. The one that drives me that we found is I'm always subconsciously asking myself is am I good enough? Yeah. Am I good enough?
00:16:36
Speaker
And so every day, naturally my body and my mind and everything would wake up and I'd strive to prove to myself that I'm good enough. Right. And so how this relates to gaining confidence back is over the last 25 years, there's ups and downs. We all have it, right? But I had to remember that if I look back, I've been massively successful in a lot of endeavors. Yeah. All of us have. And when you remember and go back to what worked for you in the past, It's, it's somewhat of an indicator of what can work in the future. Some of it may not be the tactics, but I mean, hard work, having a great attitude, all the the cliches that we talk about, but then sometimes there are things that uniquely are, you're gifted in, right? And you go to those and that's where you can increase your strengths, right? So just knowing that you can look back and say, I've been successful,
00:17:33
Speaker
The other um one that I've been thinking about a lot lately as I've been coaching and helping people is the whole seed and soil, um I guess parable, if you will. like I don't think any human being is inherently a bad seed, but you don't plant a cactus in the jungle. You don't plant an oak tree in the desert, right? like and It's the Einstein quote that says, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it's gonna spend its whole life thinking it's stupid. and yeah We don't actually have stupid people. Sometimes the giftings that we each have need to be utilized in the right way. So confidence a lot of times is, you know, we talk about external versus internal. We have to be aware enough. What are we really good at? I'm probably only good at about two, maybe three things. Yeah. I'm really not that great at a lot of things, right? So just knowing that about yourself and putting yourself in situations where you're
00:18:31
Speaker
you can utilize that world for your confidence. Well, and you you just said something too about like external stuff. And again, processing through this topic because it was so interesting to me. Um, I started thinking about like what, what wax my confidence and and it's usually some kind of an external event, right? Something doesn't go well. And, and I think you and I spoke about this a week or so ago that, um, I read something about looking at events and and not classifying them as good or bad. which which is which like change change it and but By the way, I went back to that that same sort of ah reading over and over again every evening um to to go back and and jack it into my brain. and i' found
00:19:17
Speaker
that that's if and and even even good sometimes I try to have the same reaction to really good stuff or really bad stuff and and the thought process is this is neither good nor bad this is just what happened and and then it goes to what you were saying before then you you can make better decisions this is neither good nor bad I'm gonna take all that mess out of there and say this is a thing that happened Now, what do I need to do? What are the proper next steps? What decisions do I need to make? And that filter helps me an awful lot to to keep from getting clocked by whatever this thing is that happened that was maybe perceived as bad.
00:19:55
Speaker
Oh, that is so good. I love that. There was a workshop I went to probably yeah in my early 20s and they said something similar. And at that point, the way they stated it is they go, life is empty and meaningless. And they do it to create a reaction, obviously. And it was so hard for me to fathom until I started to get older and experienced, and it was that we were ah we get to attach a meaning to anything that happened. If we stub our toe, some people are like, well, that's a sign, and blah, blah, blah. Like, yeah what? If it's raining, right? Like, there's songs, like, it's like rain on your wedding day. And, you know, like, what could that mean? and
00:20:37
Speaker
we get to attach the meaning, and i I actually find that very much a place that, man, that gives me a lot of empowerment. ah Based on a lot of our belief system, that's okay, right? I have a certain belief system, so I attach a meaning, and I believe that that meaning serves me well, right? so That is so good because especially in sales, like how do you quickly like athletes do forget the last play and move forward to the next one? Forget the last loss. um You have to have that sort of mentality because ah I mean, what are some of the highest close ratios that or even average close ratios people have? It's almost like baseball stats, right? Like yeah we say that there's 25 to 30 percent close ratio. That means you're actually
00:21:25
Speaker
Most companies are losing more than they're winning. You gotta have a short memory. yeah that yeah that You can't attach meaning to that, right? well So speaking of attaching meaning, there there is um a kind of a a Zen parable about the second arrow, right? And I don't know if you ever heard this, but the first arrow is real. It's in your shoulder and there is pain from that arrow. So that one's legit. The second arrow is when you start whining. Oh, why me? Why did I get shot with this arrow? And and it's it's funny too, because a buddy of mine's a veterinarian and he was talking about animals. He's like, animals don't have that.
00:21:59
Speaker
but They have the pain and they do what they need to do to address the pain, but as best he said, as best we can tell, they're not whining about, oh, why me, why me? And I think that's part of that. This is neither good nor bad. This just this just happened. um Yeah. You know, one of the things that I was thinking about when I thought about this topic, this has been super top of mind as we see the world sort of consolidating, if you will, right? this idea of confidence and relating it to being aware of where your skills are, I think sometimes people lack confidence because again, going back to seed and soil, they're not in the right place or they're not being self-aware enough to know that their skills don't translate, right? So yeah what do what do I mean by that? To put it very directly,
00:22:56
Speaker
If you were to look at the entire profession of sales, how many sellers got into sales as a choice? yeah Most people get into sales and they fall into it. But I was talking to somebody the other day about this, that if you took all the sellers in the world, how many of them, what percentage of them should really be in sales? And we settled on like between 25 and 40%. And part of it, when it comes to confidence, cause I was helping someone the other day on this and, um, it was, it was interrelated, but the question that I asked, I go, if you could spend hours talking about anything, what would it be? And the response was, um, family cooking, gardening, flowers. Great. Those are things that they're very passionate about.
00:23:49
Speaker
I go ask me that and in in reverse. Stephen, what would you talk about for hours about like nonstop? You know you want to know my response? Sales, sports, and a third one was actually religion, but yeah a point is like, Your confidence also comes from what you either love more than, you know, anything else. And for me personally, it's, I love this profession. Love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. I could talk about it for hours on end. yeah And how many sellers
00:24:25
Speaker
look at it as a job versus their profession and confidence has a lot to do with that. Cause if you give me a golf club, ain't no, I feel like I'm an athlete semi. Yeah. Can't play golf. Can't play tennis. Like I'm good at like about four sports, football, volleyball, basketball, soccer. That's it. ah Any other sport? No, terrible. Have no confidence whatsoever. So I think that self-awareness of knowing whether it's a professional job, especially in sales, sales confidence is, in my opinion, a very real thing. ah that this This is so cool. Like that that this whole discussion is um it's kind of, you know, there's a thing about communication. You have to be super vulnerable to to really communicate. and And I think, like, Even for both of us, as we teed up this topic, it's like there's a certain vulnerability to going, we are talking about confidence as leaders, you know? And it's, and yeah, i I commend you for bringing it up and and going there with me on the podcast. You're super generous with your time, your ideas, your energy. And and I will look forward to, um once we post this, like I'm going to be really interested to see if somebody watches this to like throw in the comments, like,
00:25:39
Speaker
What do you do? what What's your trick? Because I think we need to build ah a little database in this community of us that do this kind of work. So yeah, I really, really, really appreciate it. And yeah, I feel i feel like we could triple the time on this subject. maybe We'll come back and hit it again. I appreciate it. Oh, yeah. The whole personal side of what's happening in your life, impacting your work. I think people forget about that. And they we try to bifurcate. That's a whole topic around confidence for another day. is yes just making sure that you're happy in life. It impacts your job so much. Great, especially in sales. Great point is earlier we talked about it it being systemic with your team. And now if we if we brought in that team to outside that that yeah, that is definitely like ah another whole sort of branch of this to talk about that that I hadn't even anticipated. So maybe that will be the next one time tying it together. But again, thank you so much, man. It's been really fun. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.