Data Over Drama: Leading Sales with Clarity, Not Chaos

Meetings stall when smart people disagree. We brought on Neil Kinnear, VP of Sales at QAD, to show how data-led discovery replaces opinion with proof, turning tense buying rooms into aligned action. Instead of pitching software, Neil walks through a practical playbook for quantifying problems with the customer’s own data, modeling scenarios live, and anchoring decisions to time-to-value and ROI that matter to executives.

Join us weekly as we dig into the real stories behind work culture transformation.

Not theory. Not fluff. Just honest conversations with leaders and innovators who've been in the trenches.

Transcript

Data Silences Opinions

Speaker 0:00

And the only way to take out the emotion is to use pure data because if you're a CEO, you've got all these important people, very knowledgeable, experienced people, all saying different things that contradict the other person. And if you can get something that's purely data-led, there's no more kind of nuance attached to it at all. This is data, this is your data. We're not saying on average or anything like that. This is your data and what it's telling us. And that's where that's the kind of uh benchmark you start from and then go from there. And suddenly you'll see some people go a little bit quiet because they they know where the bodies are buried and they don't want you to find them. And the others say, let's let's clean the house. Come on, let's go.

Speaker 4 0:36

At Elements of Culture, we sit down with experts in leadership and team building to explore the DNA that drives a thriving organization.

Speaker 5 0:43

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Elements of Culture. My name's Taryn, and I'm joined with my co-host Julie. And today we have the pleasure of speaking with Neil Kaneer. He's the VP of sales at QAD, a supply chain uh software service company. And I'm just really excited to chat with you, Neil. He's joining us all the way from Liverpool. And uh welcome to the show.

Speaker 1:06

Thank you both. Looking forward to it.

Speaker 5 1:08

Yes, thank you so much. And we're looking forward to it. Neil, we've talked a little bit already just about some of the hot topics that I know you're passionate about. And we're gonna dig into that specifically as it relates to leading a team, coaching a team in these times where we're seeing so many transitions, cuts, including budgets. How do you keep a team on focus and continuing down that path to drive revenue? But before we get into the full conversation there, give us a little bit about your personal background, what's brought you to QAD and where you're at now in life?

Speaker 1:42

Thanks, Darren. Uh great question. So nearly 30 years in the industry. Um I started out in logistics and supply chain in commercial roles, operational roles, and companies like DHL, uh FedEx, to name a few. Um, I moved into the the SaaS face by chance, really. One of my old um colleagues uh suggested I joined a company called Peak AI, which is an AI scale-up uh organization. So I thought, give it a whirl, give it a spin. And uh from there, I started to really get interested in the sector uh supply chain software, at which point uh QED contacted me and I've not looked back. So I've been here now for just over two and a half years, I think, so far, and counting.

From Logistics To SaaS Leadership

Speaker 5 2:25

Love that. So you're bringing quite the experience to our conversation today. You're no stranger to sales and um even the path and how the corporate space and sales and logistics have all changed. I'd love to talk with you a little bit about that. Um, you know, with 30 plus years of experience, what has what have you seen that where there's been the like significant changes in in culture, but also just in the day-to-day life as a sales leader?

How Sales Has Evolved

Speaker 2:54

Yeah, I think in in the last uh 10, 15 years, it's changed massively from what I originally set out on as a as a graduate and moving through. I think the the focus on sales methodologies, stuff like medpic, um, as an example, there's a lot more structure around uh more deals. I wish I was in touch with that sort of stuff when I was just starting out. Um so I think sales cycles are a lot better managed. Um, there's a lot more structure around deals, there's a lot more focus on top of foot activities all the way through to execution. I think in the last 18 months, two years, especially, there's been a move away from kind of the old selling software approach. Um, there's a lot more emphasis today on the pre-sale and the post-sale. Uh, buying teams, buying groups are getting larger and larger. There are more stakeholders involved. I think it's up to about 10 or 12 different people now. And a lot of that is down to the risk involved in purchasing new solutions and the potential disruption. But the risk predominantly is around tidy resource on the customer side to help deploy deploy software, but also the the risk around time to value and the speed to realize ROI, but also the the lack in in some certain sales cycles that I've seen in the past to really use customer data to um really calculate and measure the potential ROIs in what parts of the business, because that then ties into how solutions are coached. It's not just the deployment anymore, it's a success plan all the way through to coaching to help these teams de-risk the purchase by making people feel comfortable that their teams, there's going to be efficacy of the solution, people are going to be using it, and there's a shared goal towards two or three key objectives or outcomes that you've worked on with the customer's data. So it's not just software for software's sake, it's something answering your question. And I think that's really changed in the last 18 months, more and more, um, for a range of different reasons that I'm sure we'll talk about today.

AI Hype Versus Real Outcomes

Speaker 2 4:53

Yeah, Neil, I love how you said, you know, we're providing solutions. And I think I think that's what companies need. So what we're seeing here is the economy's changed. Um, we are seeing budget cuts, we're seeing layoffs, we are seeing um, but we're also seeing the boom of um AI and software. And um I think um what we would consider like we want to streamline something, we want to simplify something. And so I think companies are in a space where they're like, you know, we're we're doing budget cuts, but where do we cut budgets and what does that look like? Do we just stay status quo? Talk to me a little bit about um how you're coaching your team through that and how sales has changed in this, I would say, in the last year or two, in what's happening to the economy. And how do you sell that solution? How do you coach your team to sell that solution?

Using Data To Predict And Prevent

Speaker 5:43

Yeah, it's um the amount of events in the last 12 months I've been at where you get experienced people walk over and just they complain about the fact that everybody's saying agentic AI, AI this, AI that. Um, I was in another session a while back where somebody said we need AI. It's like for what? For what exactly? It's like saying I love sport. What does that mean? It's really vanilla. Um it's for me, it's all about outcomes. You can demonstrate the the the AI in machine learning and how things help arrive at outcomes. I think talking about the level of data in an organization, I think that I read something a while ago where I think manufacturing organizations you use only about 6% of the data available to them to make major commercial decisions. So that's where AI can really step in to accelerate um faster decisions, um, faster scenario planning. You look at sales of operations planning or IBP and that kind of environment to leverage that level of data with recommendations and predictive AI to talk about potential uh stoppages in the supply chain or certain supplier challenges or restricted parties or whatever in a more and more complex market and less experience on the ground in organizations as well. Uh, because I think there is, on average, an aging workforce and certain elements where there's a lot of knowledge that's contained or it's really tribal knowledge to have that kind of knowledge transferred into an AI-led solution that's going to flag issues, um, even down to stuff like product classification, when the tariffs are changing and so on. That's the kind of stuff where yes, AI is in the background helping you arrive at these kind of outcomes and make sure your business runs day to day without risk. It just happens to be AI supported, but let's focus on the outcomes. Um otherwise, you're just talking about something that just happens to be there and it's kind of expected in most things today. Um, so I think, yeah, talking towards the outcomes, and yes, we've got AI. So whoever in the business ticks the AI box to keep the shareholders happen. But let's focus on what really matters to you and your business.

Speaker 5 7:47

Yeah, that that's so good, Neil. One of the things, and Julie and I have had recent conversations about generations in the workplace. And what we've seen is that those that, you know, are maybe kind of hanging on to the way that we've always done things and they're not embracing the changes, they're not embracing the tech, it's really hindering them as an organization to be able to scale. Are you seeing the same thing just in your space, Neil?

Building Trust Across Generations

Speaker 8:14

Yes. Um, as in a I'm I won't give away any kind of uh locations, but I was in a very large automotive uh manufacturing site in the last uh 12 months, and that was one of their biggest challenges. So people on the on the production lines were uh circumventing um the the solution that was in place. As a result, they were getting a ton of overstocks at different locations because these folks circumventing the process weren't going back in to reset the additional orders that they'd added in there, so the system continuously repeated the same order over and over. So they had a huge overstock problem within the business. Um and and again, there's a lot of tribal knowledge, they'll know those folks will know certain behaviours of different suppliers, they'll know certain logistical problems that some of those suppliers give, or they've been better in the past. The opportunity there where we've kind of convinced those types of people to trust us, there's a solution we've got um process intelligence, which is AI. Um, and that just you can take a ton of data, um, ingest it into the platform, it'll automatically tell you what your processes are, but also where processes haven't been adhered to for the life of an order or a shipment. Um, and it'll show where processes have been deviated, the root cause of why a process has deviated, the impact on an order fulfillment or lost stock or whatever. Um, so it's purely data. So you can actually look backwards and show from certain behaviours where that person maybe has circumvented the process, this is the actual wider impact on other customers not having an order fulfilled or a line stoppage or whatever else. And then that's where they start to realize that the opportunity and they get bought into what they're doing and say, Well, just trust the system because we can actually predict certain things for you, because this becomes then a predictive solution, and it's constantly looking down the road towards potential failures across the supply chain, and then they can educate those people, and then they don't need to panic at night or whatever, or at the daytime, and you think something's going to go wrong, they kind of got a bit of a crystal ball to the future, which is process intelligence and AI led as well. So I think that's where if you paint the picture, you tell the story, because people often just talk about the technology and they throw up a load of uh demos on somebody and they expect people to go on the journey. You've got to talk about um understanding the right kind of questions for people in the day-to-day, what the kind of core objectives are for them. And that's bottom up and top down. If you're talking to a demand planet, they've got different expectations as a CFO, for example.

Speaker 1 10:49

Sure.

Speaker 10:49

But they're all kind of involved in that decision process. So you need to make sure that everybody's engaged on what matters to them most while trying to achieve the two or three core outcomes that the business is going to say, yes, let's sign on a contract and get moving. So it I think it's humans. That's one thing that's not changed at all. People buy off people. And if they don't trust you, they're not going to go on the journey with you.

Speaker 5 11:10

Yeah, but you touched on something that's so good is telling this story, and you're using data to help paint that picture. Because at the end of the day, those that are in that are in that decision-making process, they have to understand how that's impacting the bottom line. We had a conversation with some folks yesterday, and it's like if they can visually see how the data is impacting the bottom line and revenue, because there's been, especially with AI, it's like there's this fear almost because they don't see the numbers. They're hearing things, they're hearing how you know these tools and solutions can help them uh have create more of those efficiencies, but they're not really connecting the dots. So I love what you're saying. You're helping connect the dots and tell the story because what's happening is when that's lacking, you see leaders that are still struggling to make them to take those healthy risks forward.

Process Intelligence In Action

Speaker 12:02

Yes, absolutely. It's uh more than ever. I think also one this is this is quite uh fresh, actually. So in the last few months, I've really uh driven like towards our new go-to-market, a lot of change around how we kind of run our discovery sessions, our workshops. So we've had a lot more structure behind the questions we should be asking for certain verticals, certain solutions. Because I've got this kind of uh germ of a thought where I'm convinced there are projects that'll be that haven't been set up for the next five years to even occur. But if you're asking the right kind of questions, you're actually establishing problems or challenges or kind of revenue leakage or whatever in an organization. If you ask the right questions and get the right kind of data, we're starting to actually calculate outcomes at the back end of these documents live in front of a company and say, you think you need to buy this or you need to focus on that. Our data's telling us that you need to look in this direction, not that direction. And it's it's the outcomes are profound. It's like there's there's one company that it was about to purchase a brand new site next door, and I won't say where, uh, because of the inefficiency of some of the stuff that they were doing on uh transport execution. Um we said, what would happen if we could actually prevent you needing to buy that site next door? What would that mean to your business if we could look at efficiency on what you have today and maximise what you have with this existing site? And we ran them through the data, and suddenly a project just appeared and a checkbook appeared out of nowhere. And it's like, let's look at that now because the cost to set up a brand new site, you need to kit it out, you need to pay all the bills, you need to get the leases, you need to get the staff, get the staff trained up, all those things. That's a massive uh business impact. Or you can actually look at data and look at uh different scenarios whereby you don't need to go on that journey. Um, so it's that sort of stuff. So that that's a situation where we worked with the customer to create a brand new project and they found the budget because the budget they needed it was a lot less than buying a site next door.

Speaker 2 14:05

So, Neil, I love what you're saying about uh using the data to tell the story because one of the things I know for a fact is I and I have some friends, they're you know, board of directors, advisory boards, and they said, Um, you know, Julie, they'll throw some stats at me, but I'm not really sure what that means. Like, I don't know what that means. And so, like, what happens is when you're throwing numbers at these people, all they know is this is the problem. And so, like, they need a solution. So, I think using data to tell the story helps them understand and connect the dots in that solution area because I think most people that aren't aboard they don't know the details of how to solve the problem, right? They're just looking for a one-part solution. So I think that could definitely, especially in this market where you can help connect the dots, I think would be so beneficial. And I think a lot of sales teams um when going to market miss that. Um, they're pushing the product, they're pushing what they have, but they're not pushing the solution. And so I think when it individualizes something to a specific, like to a specific company to solve a problem and to be like, hey, what is the problem? We can not this is what my product does. And so um, I'm seeing that shift slowly. I see people not making that shift. Um, but I think um, and we and me Taryn and I see it, we're like, this is an old way of doing business because people, if I can say easily, hey, I don't need that. I can say that to you to your face if you tell me what my product does. But if you say I can solve your problem, then we're gonna have a conversation.

Aligning Stakeholders With Hard Data

Speaker 15:36

Yeah, absolutely. Uh the the added nuance to that is those imagine like your your monthly board meeting or an S SNOP session. You've got a range of different stakeholders responsible for different parts of the business. Each one of them's got a different and quite often conflicting set of OKRs. So you've got the manufacturing team smashing out the park, but the the other side of the business is failing. Uh, they've got too much stock on. You could have like five years worth of stockholding. So the the people manufacturing, they just keep manufacturing whatever they want and they keep on hitting the metrics, but the sales teams, they're not fulfilling orders. As an example, so if you think about all those different stakeholders in a buying committee, it's sometimes not always, but sometimes it's like uh being dropped into a snake pit because they've all got conflicting views and opinions. And the only way to take out the emotion is to use pure data because if you're a CEO, you've got all these important people, very knowledgeable, experienced people, all saying different things that contradict the other person. And if you can get something that's purely data-led, there's no more kind of nuance attached to it at all. This is data, this is your data. We're not saying on average or anything like that. This is your data and what it's telling us. And that's where that's the kind of uh benchmark you start from and then go from there. And suddenly you'll see some people go a little bit quiet because they they know where the bodies are buried and they don't want you to find them. And the others say, let's let's clean the house. Come on, let's go.

Selling Through Budget Cuts

Speaker 5 17:02

Yeah, they know where the bodies are buried. It's funny. Um, let let's take this conversation, Neil. Let's let's direct it a bit more towards sales. I know in your role, you're the VP of sales, so you are involved in all things driving revenue for you and your team. And as we were talking about the landscape of things changing, some of that does have to do with with budgets. And there there have been cuts. We're seeing um across many industries where there's cuts. You know, companies are in this place where they're still trying to navigate what the changes look like. Um, and I know when there's cuts and things like that, it certainly creates concern, some maybe some anxiety for the teams. What does that look like for you, Neil, whether it's your team directly or just what you're seeing across your network in the industry? How do as a leader, how do you stay effective in leading your team to keep everyone on track in a in an environment that could be really driven with anxiety?

Speaker 1 18:00

Yeah, it has changed a lot. I think I think keeping sales teams sane is the opportunity.

Pivoting Under Pressure

Reinventing Discovery And GTM

Speaker 18:09

Um and what I mean by that is if if you're running a sales cycle correctly, um, so you've got various tools like a sequence of events for for the for the prospect, um, they want to go live by certain dates. There's a clear understanding of the the main outcomes that you're selling with ROIs attached. If you're if you're doing all the right kind of stakeholder engagement, managing through the sales cycle, and you've done everything you could possibly do, and then something that's completely outside of your control, like uh like emergency tariffs in the US or whatever, if something like that happens, then there's not a great deal more that you can do. Um, you can try and multi-thread the relationship, you can do various things to get the deal back on track. But there are occasions where it's completely outside of your control. And I've seen that quite a bit with with customers of ours, stuff that where they they've had their hands tied behind the back, stuff that's high priority that's been deprioritized as a result of budgets and the focus switches towards a company wanting to maintain a certain level of cash flow instead of looking five years down the road, which is understandable. I think salespeople will become overly stressed and overly anxious if they're not running those cycles and they're just kind of hoping that the deal will be signed because the person who's not the economic buyer or whatever said you guys are in great shape, and in actual fact, you're nowhere near, um, the person signed the checks doesn't even know. So I think that's the first bit. Um, and that's where if you're running the deals, the sales cycles correctly, then the team's got my full support um entirely. And if they can feel that and they're doing the right kind of stuff, then the look will change and the markets will change, and things will start to look up the they always do. I'm touching wood whilst I say that. Um so yeah, they're the main bits. I think secondly, supporting the team by feeding back into internally within the business, just to make people fully aware of some. Of the challenges that we are up against. Um, some of the moves from certain competitors or the challenges in certain markets, like in the automotive space, there's been a range of uh problems there, which you know, imagine you're a vertical salesperson focused on automotive and you're trying to build pipeline and close deals in a market where you're seeing some big names go under or cut staff by you know 30% or whatever else. You know, that's that's a challenge. Um however, at the same time, you can either, as a salesperson, moan about it, or you can do something, you can pivot. Um I read a a while back a book called Uh Rebel Talent, um, which talks all about people pivoting and embracing change, being creative. Um, you know, don't just accept the status quo, try and pivot and do different things or look into different markets or challenge the status quo and how we're selling or the go-to market or whatever. Um, so it's creating that kind of safe environment for a salesperson to say, listen, this is what I'm seeing. What do you think is something we could do as a business, whether it's a commercial proposition or something in how we coach um deals, how we deploy, or whatever else. Um, you've got to respond. The people who sit back and just complain about it are the ones that end up uh they sink, they don't swim. You just got to keep moving. And that and that I think gives people if they feel they've got that support and that autonomy to be creative and challenge the status quo, that stops them from being overly anxious and stressed because they know they're being listened to and they've got an opinion because they're the closest people on the market than anybody else in the business.

Speaker 2 21:34

Yeah, Neil, I I love pivoting. I know all about pivoting. Um, and so I think it leads to the success. How do you coach your team to take those healthy risks in that area? Because is your and not only healthy risks, but is your go-to-market strategy changing with what's happening currently? And what does that look like? And how do you coach your team for that? Because I think what we thought we needed before is not what companies are needing now. I think the needs are changing. And so is your go-to-market changing? Are you coaching your team differently in how we approach that?

Fixed-Fee Deployments Reduce Risk

Speaker 22:07

Yes, uh, yes, to all of the above. There's there's two or three key drivers behind it. There's the way we do um discovery, data-led discovery sessions, and we ask them all of the questions um in an almost formulaic manner, and we introduce different departments into those sessions to gather that data. So that that's one factor. Um, and then that gets tied into our proposition and what we deploy against. I think the the other elements to consider there um in the market that's changing all the time. We're we're doing a lot more work around trying to do fixed fee deployment. A lot of the feedback on the market over the last couple of years is um services deployment uh projects have gone miles over. And we know some certain organizations uh thrive on that, uh getting additional days in because that's their bread and butter day to day on how they make revenue. But if you're um if you're a buyer, you're or you're an organization, a project's going later and later and later. The the challenge you've got then is is the trust still there? When does this project get fully deployed? When do we get the the benefits of this new solution? As opposed to a new driver where we're looking to do more and more fixed fee within a time-bound fashion, where the fixed fee, so anything that goes over, that's on us. We we've given you the days, we've given you the scope, we've worked on it with you. If we run over, that's at our cost. So suddenly there's an incentive for us to deploy on time uh and within scope. That tends to reduce a lot of the uh the kind of uh friction on a sales cycle. If you can do that, suddenly the trust is um accelerated uh a lot more. So I think it's all about a lot of it's about risk um today.

Speaker 5 23:45

Yeah, you know, you mentioned how the sales cycle has changed with the discovery. That's you know a topic that we're seeing because I think that the way that we sell has changed. We're not in this transactional type of sale environment. And like Julie said, the needs have changed. So the discovery has to really be on point. And I think that that really has to continue to evolve um, you know, within each organization. One thing I want to touch on, Neil, when we were chatting um before hitting record today on the session, we were talking about how um some topics that you have been seeing where people tend to stay in what you call their own swim lanes. And what we're needing to do as organizations looks different. We can no longer stay in our own swim lane and just be responsible for our own lanes. Talk to me a little bit about what your thoughts are with that. What are companies needing to um shift in their mindset within that, within that space?

Beyond Swim Lanes: Modern Sales

Speaker 24:44

Yeah, I think um if I look at the sales role, the the traditional sales role versus what's expected today, uh, you got companies who have had to reduce the the resource, the number of employees, the different functions and whatnot. Um at the same time, rate salespeople have always been successful by understanding the role of a business consultant and understand understanding the role of a project manager, um, a CSM, um, all those kind of roles combined. If they can understand that and ask those kind of questions and talk to different functions and different levels in an organization, they've got far more far more chance of developing sales through to a win and gaining credibility at an early stage. I think because there's so many people out there trying to tap up new business opportunities, new prospects, the first um, you know, is it worth my time speaking to you now? Um or you know, don't don't bother me. Um sorry, somebody just called me when we're talking. Um so yeah, you need to build gravitas credibility in the early stages um when you're talking to these people. And with that, if you're gonna have gravitas and credibility, you need to be able to understand different parts of the business on their side, but also on yours. How do you deploy this? How do you run QBRs? Um, how do you make sure that you actually deliver against what you promised? What's the relationship like? Can we trust you? Can we lean on you when we need market knowledge or whatever else? That's so important. That's how the role I think has changed. Um, people win if they can do that, and allowing an environment for that salesperson and other functions to get involved in other functions as well. Embracing that is only going to do you one thing. It's gonna do you good, it's gonna allow you to learn more, be a better salesperson or a better employee, but also uh give you more satisfaction because you're going into the roles changed a lot, um, but that's your opportunity.

Recruiting Curiosity And Credibility

Speaker 5 26:46

Yeah. You know, as you're talking about that, you know, people staying in their swim lanes, it seems like the old way of doing business, the old kind of mindset, salespeople were supposed to stay in their lanes and just sell. Just sell, okay? Quit asking all the questions. But the reality is that as you not only inform people, but you give sales teams the ability and the opportunity to connect with different areas of the business, you're actually equipping them to go out and and build those relationships and sell more efficiently than staying in their own lane. Because here's what happens when you can do that for those that are in the sales roles, it brings this level of buy-in from them where they're bought into the process, the whole picture of the business. But that also creates a sense of stability for them, that they understand all the areas of business. So when they do sell, they know that this area of business and this department is going to support them and that relationship that they're having. And I feel like what I've seen, Neil, in the past with old those old mindsets is that when you just tell people salespeople to stay in their lane and just go sell, you just go focus on the revenue. There's not this cohesive team. And so you're not all kind of going the same direction together. And it really does hinder the performance of the team when you do that.

Speaker 28:10

Yeah, and also respect of the of the team for that uh that salesperson. Um it's such a massive thing. It really is. Um, yeah. I see, I see, I've seen it in the past when I've seen like people just like the old traditional salesperson will set up a meeting and sit in the back of the room for four hours and not really get involved. And then you gotta think if I'm the person, if I'm gonna buy off you, am I willing to put you in front of my bosses and my peers? Am I have you got that kind of credibility and gravitas or not? Because if you haven't, I'm not gonna create a situation for myself if this person doesn't really add any value. Sure.

Speaker 2 28:46

Neil, are you when you're coaching your team to do that? So when you tell your sales reps, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna swim in multiple lanes, how is that received? Are they excited about that? Do they push back on that? Um, how do you coach them into saying, hey, this is gonna make you better at what you do?

Culture Change And Retention

Speaker 29:03

Yeah, I think, well, that I'd go I'd go a step further back and I'd start at recruiting um those types of people. Because if you have the people that want to do that and they want to challenge and they're they really want to learn um all the time, but also they really embrace feedback on their own performance and what they're doing. They're the kind of folks that you want on board. Um they got that curiosity, um, which is which is healthy. It's the folks that push back on that kind of outlook are the ones uh to look out for because they're never gonna do the right things when you're not in the room with them as such. Um, so I think one and so the only kind of pushback I've I've seen in the past is whereby I've gone into organizations where there's a big focus on some lanes and structure, and they'll say, Oh, the company won't accept that because that's the way we've we've always done it. And if it's been performing, the business has been performing really well, then that's hard to argue against. But if it hasn't, you've got to go back. But you don't just go back and give carte blanche to the sales team to go and do whatever they want. You've got to take other functions on that journey as well and help them to understand why we're doing it and what we're doing is actually gonna make your job better in a range of different ways. You do that. What you're doing is making the salesperson become more efficient at selling, but also get a lot more support from the other functions because they can see the salesperson's doing their own due diligence and considering other functions in the business before they go and ask a question. Um, so it's actually going to accelerate sales cycles as well. So all those kind of things can bind. You can see the opportunity to get one team selling together across the business rather than just sales getting a ton of pushback from different departments because they haven't answered various questions that should have been um answered in the first place.

Practical Steps For Stuck Leaders

Speaker 5 30:38

Yeah, I think what we're seeing too is cultures of companies is, you know, just because things are currently going well doesn't mean that they will continue to go well with that old mindset. Because what's happening is the talent's not going to stay. The, you know, the sales team, the employees are not going to stay when there's leadership that are stuck in those old ways of thinking. Because as we've talked about, things continue to change, the workspace continues continues to change, technology systems continue to change. And so your culture has to change along with that in order for the growth to be there. So as we wrap up, Neil, um, I just want to ask you, you know, your thought, your perspective on leaders who are currently maybe in that position where they're like, gosh, it's it's always been fine. Like, why do I need to change anything right now? What would you tell, like maybe a couple different um maybe nuggets of things that you've learned from your career on how they could begin making that change? Or maybe they're a leader that's currently in that kind of culture where they can't take those concerns to their CEO or the founder. How do they, as an individual, begin maybe working towards that direction?

Speaker 31:53

Yeah, it's a that's a good question because you know, you you build your experience up, or I certainly built my experience up by um learning from a lot of my mistakes, right? Um otherwise you're learning from a textbook. So I think the most healthy thing to do, and it I did this only about seven or eight months ago, I requested a full 360 extended um on myself, not just to salespeople, but to different functions across your organization. Um because it's the most honest, candid feedback you can get. Um, and it's healthy to do because there's gonna be stuff where, you know, when I was younger, I sort I guess I probably thought I knew everything, and I probably knew about 1% of what I should know. Um, and you never know enough. So I think getting that kind of feedback, I would recommend doing first and foremost, because it's gonna be if it's from the right kind of uh right kind of place, it'll help you to really learn. Um, and it'll also break down barriers with your peers and people in leadership to show that you're actually keen to learn, you're open to feedback, constructive feedback, and go from there. So when you then when you take that kind of approach and then you go in towards a a CEO who's very much structured with the old swimlays and so on, and you come back with some ideas. I've done a survey on what I'm doing, the 360 report, here the kind of findings that the different departments are saying, but also here are two or three opportunities I think opportunities I think we have to improve these kind of objectives that you're working towards. Um if you do it that way, so there's something in it for them and there's a clear pathway towards it, um, with a bit of logic, you've got more chance. I think in in the old days of going to the boss and just saying, I think we need to do this differently, the you could you get you come back with five whys and you can't answer the question. You've got to do your own, you know, market analysis, speak to some customers as well. People often forget that. Speak to customers about roadmaps and you know what you position in the markets, all that sorts of stuff combined collectively. If you think about across the whole life of a sale, you've got a lot of different folks internally and externally, um, not just your own individual performance as well. So look outward, look inward, and get objective feedback and then go from there. But um, take that, take the feedback as much as you can do and learn from it, act on it. If you ignore it, you'll never change, you'll never develop. And it's the old adapt or die. Going back to the old sales cycles where people, I think, have left money on the table, they've left opportunity on the table, and they haven't developed themselves either. So yeah, be open, be transparent.

Closing Thanks

Speaker 5 34:22

That's so good. I think that's incredible advice. You know, be vulnerable, be open to receive feedback, doing that full 360. And like you said, people do forget the customers. I think that that's really valuable because they're they're the best kind of feedback that you can get. Well, Neil, thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. Uh, the things that you've learned along your journey um in leading a team and navigating the spaces of change um and learning how to adapt and thrive with your team. So thank you so much for your conversation today. We've really appreciated it.

Speaker 34:54

No, thanks, Taryn. Thanks, Julie. Really enjoyed it.