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Connecting Strategy to On the Ground Sales Decisions w/Tim Ohai image

Connecting Strategy to On the Ground Sales Decisions w/Tim Ohai

CloseMode: The Enterprise Sales Show
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30 Plays5 months ago

In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talks to Tim Ohai, Founder and Principal of Coupa Solutions, about executing strategy in enterprise sales. They delve into the common pitfalls of strategy execution, the importance of clarity and prioritization, and how to empower sales teams to make better decisions. This episode is essential for sales leaders aiming to improve their strategic implementations and achieve targeted outcomes. Tune in for an insightful conversation that uncovers the nuances of strategic execution and provides actionable tips for thriving in the ever-changing sales environment, right here on CloseMode.

Timetamps:

06:04 Best practices for clarity and disruption.

07:26 Clarity on priorities ensures aligned goals.

10:59 Emphasis on clarity and leadership yield success.

15:26 Reflecting on personal growth and decision-making experiences.

17:39 Aligning goals and roles for effective teamwork.

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Transcript

Introduction to Close Mode

00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another edition of Close Mode, the enterprise sales show. I'm Brian Deetmeyer, the CEO of Close Strong.

Meet Tim Ohai: Growth Architect

00:00:10
Speaker
And today, I'm really fortunate to be here with Tim Ohai, who is the founder and principal of Kupu Solutions. And we'll talk a little bit about Tim's focus. He's a growth architect and a coach. And Tim, welcome to the show. Hey, Aloha. Thank you so much, Brian.

Cultural Roots and Hawaiian Influence

00:00:26
Speaker
And Aloha is legit because you are in Kona, Hawaii, which is where you live and where you grew up as well, right? Yeah, hometown. um Family has roots going back all the way back. um I like to say, don't let the white skin fool you. ah You know, trust me, I'm ah i'm a local boy. um So yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I am, as you know, I am married to a Hawaiian or a Hapa Hawaiian Filipina. And so I'm and she's she's a dancer. So you you and I have talked a lot about Hawaiian culture, both, both ah huge, huge fans. I've been watching my wife dance for 20 years, and I still cry like a baby every time. And you know, you know what it will do to your soul. Yeah, it's special.

Pitfalls in Strategy Execution

00:01:09
Speaker
So we were um we were chatting a couple weeks ago about executing strategy and typical downfalls. And um it it just really struck me because we're we're not that good at it. So let's zero in a little bit on executing strategy, especially as it relates to to enterprise sales. What do you think are the common mistakes people make when when they're executing or building strategy or thinking about strategy? i there's Actually, there's so many mistakes and we can go through the litany of them, but probably the biggest one is that everybody thinks strategy is a plan. yeah so When sales teams are given a plan and a number to hit, that that doesn't mean they're going to be successful at all. That's a hope, that's an intention. and The reality is strategy, and I'm ah i'm a big fan of Henry Mintzberg and his definition of emergent strategy, which basically says, strategy is a series of decisions you make to achieve a targeted outcome.
00:02:04
Speaker
no plans gonna survive reality so you have to set up an environment where you know people are are clear on what the decisions they need to make and they're empowered to do so and when you do those two things just those two things you dramatically see an improvement in performance yeah it it's it's funny because after our last call i was i was looking up a definition of strategy and tactics and this one's from the the nineteenth century tactics are the use of armed forces to win engagement This was interesting to me. Strategy is the use of engagement to achieve the purpose.
00:02:37
Speaker
so So what does that mean? right yeah yeah What did it mean to you? Because I mean, i we the word engagement is thrown out so much, but back then it meant something else different altogether. Yeah, but it's it's like, why why are we fighting this thing? like too what What is our strategy? Why do we have a strategy to what end? And then, OK, then let's go execute. so thats But there's there's a million definitions. you know It's ah Jim Dickey, who's an industry analyst and and one of the advisors to our company. he He told me a story about a year or so ago. We were chatting about the similar thing and he said, you know, think about companies, they they have this new strategy. there Who knows? They just acquired somebody, they're rolling out a new product and they announced it at SKO and then everybody goes back and and sells the old thing. and And I've heard this over and over again and I i would just love your reaction to that.

Challenges in Strategy Implementation

00:03:24
Speaker
Well, it reminds me of a story I just um on the podcast that I do, um i I just interviewed the guy who is essentially the CEO of Sub-Saharan Africa for Colgate-Palmolive. He's got everything south of the Sahara except South Africa, um but 39 countries, right? So when he's executing a strategy, he's got a ton of stuff to to manage. Um, and, and his whole premise was he learned through trial and big error, you can't force a strategy on your people. And I think what happens is people get forced into a strategy they don't believe in. They're not bought in on. They're going to go, I'm going to do business as usual because you didn't change the compensation to match the strategy. The compensation still says I get paid for X.
00:04:09
Speaker
So you may tell me that the strategy is about Z, I'm gonna go do X because that's what I get paid for and that keeps the lights on and everybody's happy and we all get paychecks and bonuses. So I don't i don't even think, and even go one step further, we don't even have consistency of leaders. you The average ah SVP has got 18 months now in role. What's it like to be a sales director? What's it like to be even just ah ah so a regional vice president and your boss or your boss's boss is rotating out every year and a half? You're always going to get a new strategy. And then of course you have folks like marketing coming in saying, hey, we got a strategy that we want to push you know into the organization and we think it's amazing. You're like, that'll never work. And so people are constantly being brought in to do something they don't buy into. And then on top of that,
00:04:56
Speaker
they're They're being forced into meetings to give reports on how well they're doing against that plan that says you're supposed to be doing X or Y or Z and looking at the numbers and they're going, I really need this time to go meet with prospects. I really need this time to go meet with key customers. I really need this time to go recruit because my team is at 45% of staff because I've had people leave to go somewhere else because they didn't like our strategy. Yeah. And and i I wonder, um I was speaking with a company last week and and they were talking about some some new tech tool. and And we're talking about adoption of tech tools, training, whatever it is you're rolling out. And and she was saying that oh our CEO came out and said to the sales team, and we we got to use this one. And she said, A players still refused to use it. and And what are we going to do? Fire them? And and at someone else was talking, you mentioned compensation a moment ago.
00:05:46
Speaker
and And I've had other folks on the podcast say, even comp doesn't change behavior. So I'm sort of like, this is, I mean, the, the goal of a strategy is to go do something different to some outcome, I think. And, and yeah, how, how the heck comp doesn't seem to do it. CEO saying, do it, doesn't do it. What, what does it?

Empowering Teams for Success

00:06:04
Speaker
So let let's go back to what I said at the beginning, right? So I've learned, and this is 20 plus years of either doing it, leading it, or working with leaders in a variety of companies and industries and countries all over. These are the best practices. And the first thing that has to happen is clarity. When I say clarity, I mean specifically, what's the scope
00:06:25
Speaker
of the execution that we're trying to manage. what is What are the priorities that everybody is now going to operate off of the same list, and then how do we make sure we have goal and role alignment? And and scope, let's peel that back a little bit because most of the time we say, hey, we're going to go do this and it's going to be awesome and great. And a lot of times you'll hear the word transform. The reality is transformation always, and I mean always comes with disruption. So I always ask the senior leaders who are saying this is our strategy, how much disruption are you inviting us to participate in and even generate this year? What's the mandate you're giving me to disrupt? Because if I need to go to customer success or I need to go to marketing and say this is broken and I want it fixed, do I have that freedom or is it business as usual?
00:07:12
Speaker
Because if a big chunk of the organization, especially the non-customer facing folks, are operating with zero disruption mindset and I'm trying to disrupt the market and disrupt customers and disrupt conversations and do things differently right from the very beginning, how we prioritize and how we align goals and roles will not be aligned. But if we can get that clarity on the scope, then we could say, what are our top priorities? What is customer 12345? What is that? what are What are those numbers? And it's amazing how many companies don't even know who their top five or top 10 customers actually are. So that when I call from the field and I'm like, hey, I need help with this invoice for customer number three, the person on the other end of the line or the other end of the screen is going to stop what they're doing and go fix it so they can go back to taking care of customer 234.
00:08:00
Speaker
And you don't get that a clarity. And because of that, goals and roles just completely go all over the place. And and and that right there, if i I don't care, I can talk about empowerment, I can talk about accountability, I can talk about employee engagement and culture and all these things. But if I take clarity away, I guarantee you, I'm wrecking your execution. And if I inject clarity in, execution suddenly, magically starts to get better. So you just mentioned empowering and and our previous conversation you said something that that intrigued me that good strategy empowers people to make better decisions and and i I kind of wanted to double click on that back then but we'll do it now. What do you mean by that? So the if if we think about it again as execution, if strategy is a decision making discipline, so is execution. I'd say decision
00:08:49
Speaker
ah Making becomes your your bellwether not your plan so what you want to do as a leader is make sure is your team making good decisions and here's the thing you can't do it all yourself. As a leader you have to be able to i say turn your back and go focus on other things and know that what's going on behind your back when you're not paying attention is fine. So how do you empower your people to make good decisions? And that's where clarity comes into play, because if they know, I understand what success looks like. I'm clear on the priorities. My goal and a role is aligned. The folks I work with, we're all aligned. We're all on the same page now. Power us, give us what we need to be able to get this work done. And if we are super clear on what success looks like and and you've empowered us to do it, trust us. We'll figure it out. Right.
00:09:35
Speaker
So I, and and you've kind of, you've spoken about so some of this, but this environment exists of poor execution. I mean, I see it, you see it. um All the time. what Yeah. what What would you lead to? Why does that environment exist? Because again, we're not getting done what we want

Leadership Gaps and Communication

00:09:52
Speaker
to get done. Why does it perpetuate? there's There's a couple things, and this is actually something I'm really trying to dig in now. I'm talking to senior leaders. I'm talking to the people who work with and for senior leaders, um plus my own observation. And I think, on one hand, probably the biggest culprit, leaders were never taught how to how to create an environment of decision making.
00:10:13
Speaker
As everybody worked their way up the corporate ladder, they were taught, you know, plan your work and work your plan. Everything's a plan. And I go, that's 1900s thinking. That's an industrial era, not an information age where you have so much stuff going on all at one time. It's not like we're going into the factory every morning and punching in the clock and going to our desk and checking our messages. It's just not how it works anymore. So because of that, you have leaders trying to use old ways of thinking and demand different results. But if you do what you've always done, you you can't expect a different result. And so I think there's a true gap in what senior leaders know. And then the second thing is they don't communicate well. They don't know how to do it. I mean, Steve Jobs, notorious jerk, notorious jerk, but he was really good at clarity.
00:10:59
Speaker
He was really good at clarity. He got down to the specifics of what the box sounded like when it opened. yeah He was really good at clarity. And then he was able to surround himself with leaders who could handle the human stuff. So he wasn't as reliant on his personal interactions because he wanted to be able to turn his back and go think about the next thing that Apple was creating. So that example, we have leaders who don't know how to be really good at clarity, but they think they're great at accountability or they think they're culture champions. And they put all this time and energy into, hey, we want this great culture and they'll talk about culture and they'll get in front of the employees and talk about our culture is magical and da da da da da.
00:11:43
Speaker
But then they'll go to the next meeting and they'll they'll mess up. They'll say one thing to one group and another thing to another group and their clarity just starts to fracture. And then they get upset when people aren't executing what needs to be done. Yeah, um Dan, who's the producer for the show, has heard me talk a lot about Bill Marriott. I was lucky enough to work for him and work for that organization. And and that's what I think about. there was There was such crystal clear clarity from him that allowed us to make decisions. yeah he he he told us once that every decision we make is a deposit into a withdrawal from brand equity so when we would be sitting around a table when mr. merit wasn't in the room you know we're trying to make the decision between brand and short-term cash flow it was crystal clear so that that helped with
00:12:28
Speaker
helped me to say, oh yeah, I've been there and and I know how that worked. I also feel like this discussion, this is more important um because we used to have annual plans, right? And and and now I've spoken to several leaders who say, Uh, we're having the equivalent of annual plans quarterly right because every, everything's changing so, so quickly that I feel like so strategy is happening faster. Right. We're changing faster. Like, yes, that was the strategy, but guess what? The world just blew up. COVID just came to supply chain into mass something. So this is, yeah I feel like even more important in this environment.
00:13:06
Speaker
Well, do you think like, um so it makes me ask a question when you talk about the strategy changing every quarter. are Is that because we have this, you know, pivot culture ever became super popular. We're all going to pivot. We're going to fail fast and all that stuff. That's, that's product innovation. And that's not necessarily how we go to market. Go to market takes time and you can't just crush something because the last you know test didn't work the way you thought it would. You have to, you have to go deeper with that, but also you're dealing with humans now, not widgets and humans want to respond. Or do you think it's also the, the strategy, the tactics are changing, but the strategy isn't. So in other words, the outcome is still the same, but how we're going to get there. When you say the strategy keeps changing in the conversations you're in, what do you see?
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, no, no. And in fact, you did. i'm glad I'm glad I asked you that because you just clarified it for me that that isn't Yeah, that's problematic. That's what that's what I'm hearing. Like this notion of changing strategy every quarter. It isn't but it might be changing tactics because competitor just did something customer needs shift. We rolled something out but we still we still have the true north yeah yeah that yeah that's that's ah so that to me and That's the idea of like, hey, if we need to make that decision, we make that decision. and you know you you get You can get you know goofball leaders, the hardest part of change. not the It's not change itself as bad, it's that we hate being changed.
00:14:25
Speaker
yeah And when you have a bunch of sales leaders who put all their, they've told their teams we're going to do X, we're all lined up to do X. We've got all of our customers, we're told them we're going to do X. And the leaders say, yeah, I wanted you i want you to do X plus. They can hyperventilate in reaction. Like, weidwin what plus where did plus come from? And if you tell me to go do Y, then they're just they're just throwing fits. And that's where that's where we as humans have to be neutral, right? We have to maintain what's going on in here and here because the number one reason we make bad decisions is what's going on in our heads and in our hearts.
00:14:58
Speaker
we overreact and we can undo a good decision. Cause I've worked with these senior leaders, they're good people. Most of them, some of them are true jerks, but most of them are good people. They may not be good at what they're doing, but they're not trying to screw with people. They're not trying to mess up home lives. They're not trying to screw up, you know, somebody's weekend that they had planned, you know, with the last minute request that has, that has to be produced on Monday. But they're, they're managing this and this just like every other human on the team. It's, it's, I, I just went through this a few weeks ago. I got,

Improving Decision-Making

00:15:30
Speaker
I got, and I love talking about the human aspect of, of, of business on, on the show and with guests and several weeks ago, I had a bunch of stuff happen that like, you know, clocked me and, and I happened to be reading some philosophy that said, you know, if you can, you were talking about here and here, that if, if we can move from, oh, this is good or bad to this is just what's happening.
00:15:53
Speaker
and And then how how how can i make how can I make a better decision? that's what That's what clicked it for me when you were talking about that. If you say exactly yeah you take that emoting out and say, no, this is just what's happening. And then how what's the most rational way for me to respond? That's so good, Brian. That's so good. But yeah, I didn't write it. I just read it and and I, and I, and I use it. I use it every day. So as we wind down the show, I want to have some specific

Launching a Strategy Effectively

00:16:22
Speaker
takeaways. I was thinking for our listeners also, for myself. So what, what two to three things should we be asking ourselves to determine if, if our strategy is ready to launch?
00:16:32
Speaker
I go right back to what I've already said. Start with the clarity. Get get that scope locked in place. And and the answer i or the question I ask specifically is how much disruption am I mandated to to generate? And get a percentage, 20%, 50%, because the reality is we're going to have to keep the lights on. There's a certain part of the business that has to do what it needs to do to keep the lights on and everything running. But if I'm, if I'm doing say 50 50 50% normal and 50% disruption, I need to make sure everybody else knows that as well, that we're all on the same page. Because if I make a request to finance or I make a request to legal, and they don't have that same definition of scope, we're already going to be at loggerheads. Second thing, lock in on what the priorities are, what are one, two and three.
00:17:18
Speaker
What's priority one? What's priority two? What's priority three? Because if I'm working on priority one and I'm not getting the help I need to get priority one done, I need to be able to talk about that. And then number three, goal and role alignment. Get the people that are part of that entire customer experience. So it's not always just sales. It's sales. It's marketing its customer success or support. It's even the billing people. It can be a supply chain. People can be a variety of folks. Get everybody together and say, we're all operating these priorities, right?
00:17:49
Speaker
OK, what are our goals? And let's get those roles aligned to make sure we're all doing we're all paddling in the same direction. You know, we talk about Hawaii. When you get in the boat, there's there's six people in that canoe and you have got to work in coordination because if you're not not only are you falling behind, you're actually getting mad up mad at each other and and all the other stuff. So I mean, just start forget the forget the ocean at that point. The energy is completely lost. Yeah. So if you can get that goal and roll alignment based on priorities that everybody's on the same page and agreed to based on the definition of scope, you will automatically see a lift automatically. Yeah, i I'm going to sneak in one more question that you just prompted in my brain. if If we're having a strategy change that we're behavior at the enterprise sales level, the reps have got to change behaviors.

Enablement and Training in Sales

00:18:40
Speaker
And i i'm I'm wondering if there isn't a piece in there, I'm i'm i'm looking at your your three pillars, but I wonder if there isn't a piece in there of kind of ah an enablement or practice or or something when we're asking reps to make change, how you feel about that?
00:18:55
Speaker
I absolutely agree. I just put that next. Okay. So I, I put that under the empowerment space and empowerment part of empowerment is, is the energy, the training, the confidence that you want people to walk out the door with, but I can't do that without clarity first. Yeah. If I don't have everybody aligned on the clarity piece and I go a lot of people go, we're going to train everybody. We're going to do all this other stuff. We're going to give them a budget and everything, but there's no clarity to back it up. That budget is wasted. that training is a waste of time and even well-intentioned people will be all in. They'll do the training, they'll go back to their day job, and they're still not getting that support from that group they're supposed to be getting support from.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's um this is fun for me to talk about because, you know, strategy is kind of such a such a high level kind of hardy

Conclusion and Human Elements

00:19:41
Speaker
topic. ah But but there's there's so much human stuff in here. there' There's so much stuff. Yeah, there's so much human stuff. And I think that's that's the big takeaway for me. So yeah, I appreciate ah you've been super generous with your time. and and your ideas, and I rescheduled this a couple times on you, so thank you. Again, I know it's an early wake-up call in Hawaii, so thank you thank you so much for being here. Oh, hemea iki, it's a small thing.