Enhance Your Sales with Effective Strategies in NDAs

How to create outlook signature

welcome everyone my name is Greg Alexander and I'm the CEO SBI a sales and marketing consulting firm committed to helping you make your number You are watching SBI TV this is a monthly web TV show featuring guests just like you executive try to grow their revenues by tuning in each month you can peek behind the scenes and watch your peers discuss their strategies for how they make their numbers. On today's show we have a fantastic guest John Gleason is the Senior Vice President for Global Sales for Ryder Fleet Management Systems leading a sales team approximately 700 sales reps and sales managers Ryder Fleet management systems provides leasing rental and maintenance of trucks and trailers to commercial customers the company has 17,000 customers does six billion in annual sales is listed on the Fortune 500 and its stock is a member of the S&P 500 index Ryder was founded in 1933 and is one of our country's great companies Prior to joining Ryder in 2009, John spent 25 years at ADP which at 600,000 customers in 9 billion in annual sales with 6,000 sales reps is arguably the world's most productive b2b sales team at ADP, John rose to be head of sales for both the Dealer Services Group and the Employer Services Group the company's most successful business units the reason i asked John be our guest today is he is the only executive in the last fifteen years to lead 3 separate sales transformations inside of the fortune 500 the only one I feel this qualifies John as an expert on today's topic which is creating best in class sales performance inside of an enterprise-scale business so it's welcome John to the show. John come on up Thanks for being here alright so in preparation for our time together I have to say I'm I am blown away by your numbers. When you joined Ryder in 2009 the stock was about thirty-eight dollars today it's ninety and change call at 93 95 depending on when this airs yeah that's a two-and-a-half fold increase and at that time the S&P 500 which is what you're measured against since you're a member, did well but only one up 1.3 times so basically you doubled the return on the broader market I'm psyched that you're here and I use the word psyched because I really am pysched because our relationship started right when you joined Ryder and I feel as if I've had a ringside seat to this and I've been able that witness what it is that you did and I have a theory but I want to get your reaction to this and hear your commentary and my theory is that the reason this incredible stockholder run stock run has had is you've grown new business 30 percent year-over-year inside of an eighty-plus year company inside an industry that not many people would categorize as a growth industry so the new business growth is the same thing that is really impressed me the most it's hard to get new business in your space So how did you get this type growth? John: First of all, I appreciate the kind words. We started with having to define success at Ryder so in order to create change in sales transformation the first thing is making sure that the team understands perhaps where a previous lack of success occurred there has to be a realization that in order to move forward we weren't as successful as perhaps we would have liked so the first thing is kinda setting the ground rules of things haven't gone as well what we need to do differently and can we embrace the change that we're about to embark on sure the first thing is is defining success. Greg: Just at Ryder at Employer Services and Dealer Services John: It's really in all three examples to your question and interestingly enough the good or the bad fortune was while they are great companies they had not enjoyed a period up success within the sales organization when I started with Dealer Services basically we were given a time frame of 18 months to turn around the organization or we were going to spin off the division that gives you a lot of reason Greg: That's a burning platform. John: That is a burning Platform. which candidly helps because one of the impediments to progress and change is status quo so when you have the burning platform that that creates an environment where changes not only welcome but a necessity As far as how we went about it and you had a great run ringside seat in part of the process it clearly started with people process and tools so assessment of the team, assessment of the processes, the market, the customers, and then putting action plans in place to go about and make the changes where it was increasingly obvious that we needed to do so Greg: So during that time period so let's talk about people, process and tools okay another dimension the story which is remarkable is just think about the time period- 2009. Let's think about the industry you're in, fleet management to use your term side you're selling iPads and the economy was terrible the market segments you guys serve were not doing well and you got this growth in that environment so I would call that was kinda wind in your face instead of wind at your back so did that change things or did you do you did ADP at Ryder or did that change anything. John: I think one of the biggest a obstacles to making forward progress is getting people to the burning platform to understand why you need to change 82-year-old company has a lot of organizational inertia tremendous tenure lots a very talented people but fairly comfortable in doing things in a certain fashion. So in order to get the expedited inertia having to change and I think that was similar in both the previous sales transformation both Dealer Services which I mentioned they were looking to change and Employer Services which had no sales growth for four consecutive years prior to the sales transformation that then began '05. So that was a key ingredient is the necessity for change Greg: Let's talk about culture. Ryder, 82-year-old company, one of America's great success stories you know founded in I think it was 1933 It's just you know it's It's the vision of American business right ADP I mean unbelievable success story dominate in the markets it competes in so the cultures in those two companies are very very thick, and my experience has been but you're an exception here my experience has been when cultures are that thick promoting from within is usually the right move hiring an executive like yourself from outside and bringing them in sometimes doesn't work the reason why doesn't work is because these long tenured employees with which is both a positive and a negative they tend to reject quote "a foreigner" so this makes your internal sale sometimes harder than your external sale so how did you not just break a bunch of glass and get rejected by everybody John: You know, that is a great question and Oftentimes I see the obvious too many moving pieces and in changing up people too quickly and the one constant that I always talk about with with our team is evolution versus revolution both companies long tenured really would not accept a revolutionary approach meaning massive change massive disruption and the organizations are are large so making sure that the team understands first the need to change and then we did a lot of team building to make sure that we had the support of the entire team as we went through the process one of the things that we worked very well and hard on was every time we made a change we had a session called train-the-trainer so first we would go to the team and say whether we are approaching sales process sales compensation or structure getting input from the field to getting the buy-in and then as opposed to saying okay we're going to have somebody from corporate train, working with an outside firm we institute a practice- the leaders first were trained and then they trained their teams so having that buy-in was was critical to getting a large group moving same direction Greg: So people were so important. You said something there that I wanna spend some time on which is evolution over revolution and that inside the Fortune 500 where you've done this three times now which I honestly believe you're a unicorn I don't know anybody else that's done that John: I've been called a lot of names, that's probably one of the nicer ones. Greg: How did you know? You leave ADP, go to Ryder, how did you know that they couldn't handle a revolution? John: Well, it's interesting and probably gained benefit from previous experience in my for sales transformation I remember during the interview process when I told The CEO I felt pretty good about making the change and I was reasonably comfortable by the time I got to the third sales transformation I really kinda understood what could be accepted in what pace it could be accepted so probably having learned from experience how fast you can actually go when you're talking about an organization that's that large and the cultures that thick Greg: So a follow up to that- so you're hired by the CEO based on who you are your big hire. Board has to approve it you know there's big expectations that come with this right which means you have pressure to deliver quickly so those two things are in opposition one another if you go too fast you're gonna lose the team and that would be devastating in this environment. If you go too slow you're gonna you lose executive support and there you are the poor guy in the middle those two things How did you keep the CEO the board all of the various stakeholders patient while you did this the... really the first portion was an assessment of where the big hits work and then prioritizing what you could accomplish and affect relatively quickly and not try to do too much so flawless execution on a few big ideas having the support of the team and also candidly during the interview process making sure that there was executive support to say things are gonna change and and if that's not what you what, you probably need to find another candidate because given the results it looks like this we need here in making sure he had the the support of the leadership team which I did Greg: Before you even took the job? John: Before I even took the job Greg: So the expectations started before you even showed up? So you didn't talk yourself into the job then try to conduct negotiate around that. John: it's important Greg: Interesting. We need to take a short break, but stick around because when we come back I'm going to ask John to reveal his step-by-step approach to leading a sales transformation he's completed 3 of them and I don't know anybody else done that inside the Fortune 500 so if you're somebody in a fortune 500 and you want to execute a sales transformation stick around you not gonna wanna miss this This is not a table, it is a stage where your performance is measured in numbers if you reach them you get an encore, if you don't it could be curtains that's why you need the well-rehearsed proven sales and marketing strategies Of SBI Welcome back from the break, my name is Greg Alexander I am the CEO of SBI and you are watching SBI TV I'm joined today by John Gleeson the senior vice president of global sales at Ryder Fleet Management Systems before the break John I were discussing the specifics of the remarkable sale success Ryder has experienced over the last five years during this segment I would like to turn our attention to John's step-by-step approach to a sales transformation so John let's dive into it So in these three scenarios two at ADP one at Ryder, you get hired to execute a sales transformation probably lots of dialogue leading up to that decision you deciding whether not you want to do it and was it doable and whoever hired you typically the CEO was deciding if you were the guy for the job You join, everybody's in love with everybody bright so there's the honeymoon period in your experience how long is the honeymoon period John: The longest I would say is a is year and I think in large organizations you have the executive support of some but probably not all so there's probably a rocky honeymoon period in any large organization but probably a year is the longest its its gonna last Greg: okay. And when you come in do you know you know who may be the rocky road might be with or do you not know, do you find out after you start what are your thoughts on that John: In my particular case I was aware as they made the decision to have a chief sales officer at ADP Employer Services for the very first time the division presidents were not enamored with that particular organizational decision and in the case of Ryder I had the leadership support of some of the key members but not the entire team coming in so that was that was fairly obvious in terms of coming into the organization Greg: which is probably fairly typical because inside of these big companies John: You're always going to have people who are supportive and those that may not be fully supportive . Greg: So if I'm somebody watching the show and I'm fortunate after get a job like the ones you've gotten and I'm coming in and I know that I got about a year long honeymoon period some people in my camp some people not in my camp, and my very presence because I'm from outside the organization might be controversial so what can I do not to blow the honeymoon period John: That's a great question. The thing that I've found is potentially the most critical step is the assessment period which needs to start almost immediately- as a matter fact at Ryder, I was there for a week and traveled for the next seven some people thought I had already left their employ but at any rate assessing what the opportunities are, what you'd like to change and I'd say secondarily- get support get help so if you could enlist others who provide expertise during that process that can go a long way- to give you more arms and legs with talented people to help you with that critical process so assessment is first and then I like to bucket things into: people, process, and tools figuring out which are the biggest hits to drive the sales productivity Greg: So this "people process tools concept"- Let's talk about that. what I'm trying to get a feel for is the weighting of these things and I'm going to bucket these into two buckets - one bucket is the people bucket the other bucket is what I call performance conditions which is processes and tools so you can take Michael Jordan and ask him to play right guard for the New England Patriots and he's probably not gonna be successful. And just the opposite- you know if you try to take a 350 pound NFL linemen and ask him to play the shooting guard in Chicago Bulls it's not gonna workright so in your view, especially during this transformational period, this one year where the assessment is everything what's the split there between people and performance conditions John: I think it's about fifty-fiifty. And you need both to be successful and to your point I think frequently sales leaders often are very good on the people side but not necessarily as focused or skilled on the process and the tools or the performance measurement standards as you've had so I think it's a balance both and you can't succeed without doing both equally well Greg: So I would agree with your a answer there and I know when I was a sales leader I gravitated towards the people side of it because it's within my control I don't know and i have to ask anybody for funding you know it's- do I think this person can do the job based on some criteria that's important to me and it's within my control completely now the performance conditions which is processes and tools these are infrastructure investments right you gotta make a business case you have to convince the leadership team to get behind this sometimes for example if its CRM here you need to help of IT it's much harder now because we were involved with you at that time period I watched you make several infrastructure investments- two in particular one was a rollout of sales methodology and the other was the implementation of CRM tool why did you decide to do those two and how did you sell that internally John: Well, it's interesting and as part of my assessment I asked the sales leaders that reported directly to me a question- and I said "do we have a sales process?" and everybody raised their hand and said "we did". I then asked to go around the room and asked them to define that and I had nine different answers Greg: So you had nine different sales process John: So by definition we don't have a sales process. But certainly at that point if you're not on the common language, if you don't have a focus on the buyer which we did not, and understand how the buyer wants to buy thereby creating a process that puts you in a position to consistently and methodically go after their needs in a way that you can talk about within the entire organization that became critically important and we did not have a sales processes as you know and we really didn't have a tool so we've fortunately spent a lot of time implementing both simultaneously and that took quite a bit and has stayed a focus for for the team subsequent to that and I think a lot of people would attribute a good bit at the the initial success to the implementation of that. Greg: What I found interesting about it was you did it almost immediately. You didn't spend a lot of time pontificating about your assessment was surgical and you said okay so these are fundamental building blocks that don't exist here doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we have to have this and you went ahead and you did them and you did them correctly. When you rolled them out to the team so they're seeing this for the first time so you had nine people say we have a sales process, and you say no you don't this is what a real one looks like it's driven by the buyer everyone's probably back on their heels back to this 82-year-old culture saying oh my gosh what is this? Then you ask them to use modern technology cloud applications, CRM and they're probably also saying "uh oh". how did you get everybody on board? John: You know, fortunately, we did have good buy-in and it started with, in both cases, going to the field for input. show it's interesting there and candidly there was not a lot of knowledge gained in terms of what would you like out of a sales automation tool But there was knowldge gained in terms of how buyers buy, but having that input got people engaged in the process it filtered up from the bottom so it was delivered back- everyone could say My hand is part of this ingredient and finally, with some with some terrific outside help when we delivered the training the training was first delivered to the leaders, not trainers- leaders so the directors of sales the vice president of sales and then provided the training to their team so wasn't "I'm gonna sit back and see what somebody else No I'm now standing in front of the class talking about the new tool the new selling process" and most salespeople and leaders are prideful so they want to do a good job so that transformed the action from listening and watching to leading and in that helped quite a bit. Greg: Your your uniqueness is you know what to do but the secret sauce is change management and what you just described right there right so if I'm a a line sales manager and it's my job to train my sales team on the sales process as an example I'm gonna learn it. Because if I'm gonna stand up there and have to teach it I'm gonna learn it means is I'm going to internalize it and then I'm gonna you know have expectations as to how my teams using it Greg: So you said something interesting there is that you asked for everybody's input maybe the input wasn't super insightful but that wasn't the point The point was to give everybody a chance to offer their input and you took it into council change management so important John: It's critical in large organizations Greg: Okay we're gonna take a short break but you're gonna want to come back for the last segment with John I'm gonna ask him to turn this advice into an action plan just for you if you want to lead a sales transformation you are not going to want to miss this to come back after the break Your finish line is your number and the only way to reach it is to make certain everyone is pulling their weight and headed in the same direction that's why SBI uses proven techniques to bring everyone on your team on board board with successful standardized sales programs enabling victory at the turn over every quarter Welcome back everyone I'm Greg Alexander CEO of SBI and you are watching SBI TV. Today my guest is John Gleason Senior Vice President Global Sales for Ryder Fleet Management Systems before the break I made you a promise and that promise was to have John give you an action plan for sales transformation so what's an action plan in the context to the show it is the one to three things to do immediately after watching this show to make your number so let's jump into it. So John, I wanna play a little fantasy role-playing, okay so let's say the phone rings and it's an executive recruiter the executive recruiter opens up and says "John do you have another one in you" and what he's referring to is that you've done three of these fortune 500 sales transformations and he's been hired to go find a sales leader who can do another one and you say I'm happy where I am we're doing really well stock is going up and he offers you a king's ransom to even open up your ears and let's just hypothetically say you open up your ears, it looks like it's ADP and Ryder again and you get excited about it you take the job. You hit the ground - what's the first thing you do? John: You know we've talked about assessment and that's really the first step. I think too often we come in with a preconceived notion "I'm gonna fix this I'm gonna fix that and I'm gonna fix the other" it's just like going to the doctor what is the first thing a doctor does is diagnosis a problem you don't solve something before you understand what it is. So it is the assessment the market, the people, the customers, and the processes. What is working well what's not working well but that's step one diagnosing what you can do to optimize the opportunity Greg: So let me ask you a followup question on that sometime sales transformations inside the Fortune 500 doesn't work one of the reasons why is that the sales leader comes in with a predefined playbook you would be vulnerable to that because you've done this three times but you just said something interesting which is don't do that come in with an open mind start fresh with an assessment so how do you resist that urge to say I've done this before this is the play were gonna run let's go. John: It's critical to just understand every organization's different. and the opportunities are different and there is no what what might have worked well somewhere else, is not at all an opportunity here 'cause ultimately through the assessment it's not only what needs to be fixed What's gonna have the biggest impact you're only gonna be able to start with one or two things. They need to be the right one or two things not something that's going pretty well your incremental improvement is small it's something that's not going well at all and your incremental improvement is enormous. Greg: So what's really great about that, as I think about your history you went from selling payroll services to fleet management. Those things couldn't be further different from each other John: There is one thing in common - outsource sales so a big portion of in both cases is outsourcing expertise, much like your business where people think they can do it on their own when perhaps they should hire an expert. Greg: Alright so that's kinda what you do in the first nine days start with the assessment right so now the assessments over let's say it's month 4 through 12 what happens then? John: The categories I use- people, process, tools, what is the biggest opportunity in all of those areas and making sure that you fix those things first that will have the biggest measurement and some of those- a good sales process, a buyer driven sales process A CRM implementation could take an entire year. Building an inside sales organization could take multiple years. You need to get started. Changing the enterprise structure could take a period of time so figuring out the people, process, tools after the assessment which areas to focus on that will have the biggest impact. Greg: Okay, so 4 through 12 is going after the big rocks that were identified in the first quarter on a job during the assessment. Okay very good. Alright, so continuing on our our hypothetical case here to try to give the audience an action plan so let's say you come out of year one and you've had some success your appointment to the position has been validated you went after some big rocks you accomplish them and you have some momentum so how is year 2 different than year one? Greg: Year 2, first of all, has to be a continuation of year one with some layer down but leaders can make mistakes by saying "okay we we went left, now we're going right" and you don't focus on the sales process for example that you spend so much time implementing in year 1 and people think "okay well thats the flavor the month I don't need to pay attention to that now, we're over here." No. So whatever you've implemented in year one you need consistent focused application in year 2 plus layered on and typically in year two for me is more organizational things that take longer and I mention inside sales that could take a couple years to really build out and enterprise sales team, a Solutions team that's not likely to happen overnight so the bigger organizational things on top of, and consistent with what you built in year one but not neglecting The focus that you've achieved in year one. Greg: Okay so Year 2 is doubling down on what happen in year 1 and not falling victim to the next shiny object right having discipline to stick with your plan and then it morphs into some is longer term horizons things that might take longer than what you could have gotten done in the first year inside sales key account, etcetera. organizational stuff, so that's helpful. Alright, so the action plan right now the outline of it is this- start with an assessment, once the assessment is done go after the big rocks that came out of the assessment, when you transition from year 1 to year 2 double down on those big rocks and prove to the organization that these things are here to stay and then move into the more longer-term initiatives. What do you avoid all costs when trying to transform fortune 500 Sales force John:I'd say the biggest thing you need to avoid is leading without support when I say leading without support is if you haven't taken the time to get organizational buy-in, you don't want to be marching up the hill and look behind and no one is following. you have to make sure that while it takes longer to get the organizational buy-in, it's an absolute must because that makes it sustainable when everybody is moving in the same direction and one of the critical things we've achieved here is we have a common scorecard. So that goes across all functions- focused first at the customer experience so when you get the entire organization not just the sales organization but operations, finance, the support teams, all moving in a common direction focused on the common goals you have a powerful sustainable transformation. Greg: Okay so the thing to avoid at all costs is don't charge up the hill with no one behind you. That can be pretty lonely John: Been there, done that before Greg: That's great. Greg: Well listen to have you on the show is a real privilege you've done this three times and like I said I don't know anybody else who has the Fortune 500 sometimes it's harder to grow because the company's big and it's mature you know everybody wants to talk about the hot new tech startup or sometimes it's easy because there's real innovation there and the wisdom you shared with the audience here on Change Management was Greg: Fantastic so on behalf of all the viewers and everyone at SBI thanks a bunch for being on the show John: Well I really appreciate it and I appreciate all your help. Greg: Great thank you. I'd also like to thank you, our viewers for tuning in if you enjoyed the show, which I don't know how you couldn't, I suggest you subscribe SBI TV at salesbenchmarkindex.com/TV or, if it's easier for you, go to youtube and search for the SBI channel. We have some outstanding guests like John already confirmed for future episodes that you will not want to miss. But until then I wish you the best of luck as you try and make your number.