How the Best Sales Leaders Approach Planning with TigerEye's Will Magnuson and Anna Randall

Sean Lane 0:06 Hey everyone, welcome to operations, the show where we look under the hood of companies in hyper growth. My name is Shawn Lane. It's funny how certain stereotypes can emerge about different roles in your organization, how people talk about operators or salespeople or marketers. They have these preconceived notions that spread from company to company. And those are only cemented further by the memes and snarky posts that you see on LinkedIn. But what if a brand new type of leader was pushing back on some of these stereotypes? On today's episode, we are talking to not one but two incredibly accomplished sales leaders who are doing just that. My guest today are will Magnuson and Anna Randall both sales leaders at Tiger AI the go to market planning platform will is the CRO and Anna is the VP of sales. And their partnership goes back years. In fact, they've been working together since 2015. And this is their third company together starting at plan grid than Autodesk. And now tigereye. I was excited to talk to Willow and Anna about the stereotypes. They're challenging with how sales leaders are participating in and ultimately taking ownership of the sales planning process. And these two are not only have years of experience of doing this together across three different companies, but they now have exposure to way more companies through their prospects and customers they talked to at tigereye. In our conversation, we talked about how sales leaders can be owners of and not just recipients of the sales planning process. We talked about how hard it is to balance the planning process while still hitting your numbers in q4. And how a sales leaders attitude about the plan will ultimately reflect how their team feels about it. To start, though, I recognize that will Anana didn't necessarily have all this knowledge and perspective when they first started in sales. So I want to understand how they think about sales planning now versus earlier in their careers. Here's Will Magnuson 2:12 Well, it's funny, I think, earlier in my career as a rep, especially even as a frontline manager, I thought that the number was made up of a magic black box that all of a sudden, you know, this, like huge number came out of the clouds. And we all have to deal with it as sales reps. And really that's not the case, the more you get exposed to the process, you realize how much care and how much work folks are putting into it from your finance team, your co founders group along with the board of directors, and then your entire leadership teams, everyone plays a stake in it. And so really seeing how that sausage is made and realizing how many opinions are made and how much collaboration there really is and can be showcases that it's not yes, these numbers are always hard to achieve. But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of care going into it. And so I think part of the understanding is really really understanding how it's made so that you can help the team understand how it's coming to made. So they can you can humanize the plan a little bit more than what it is today. Sean Lane 3:10 And and I would imagine that flip from black box to knowing that there's actually a process behind the numbers that get pushed out like that's part one. But then once you know, hey, like there's this process happening behind the scenes somewhere, I kind of want to be a part of that. How do you make that jump from just realizing that there is a process to actually being an active participant in it and learning how to be an active participant in it? Anna Randall 3:34 Yeah, I think part of that is timing, realizing that planning isn't something that happens in a matter of weeks, maybe not even in a single month, but it's very continual. So trying to find ways to insert yourself into everything that adds up to planning, whether that's your biannual focal review, your individual one on ones, cross collaboration with different departments to understand where their pulse is on planning. Every department has a different peak for when things become heightened whether marketing and q3 for the q4 push or the sales process in q4 to get the year to finish out right timing is everything was all that. Will Magnuson 4:18 And one thing I could add, Shawn in there is that I think, with healthy organizations that plan, everyone's involved in planning, you might not feel part of that meeting. But as Anna mentioned, your one on ones you're having with the team, the frontline management team, making sure that they're bubbling up all the problems or all the successes that are happening, that all can happen behind closed doors. But every meeting that you have placed with your manager is really important to speak on what's stopping you from selling and what's helping you from selling at that point in time so that you can double down on what you're doing good at and then fix the problems that you have. So I think planning is I think the big notion is that planning is only for senior leadership. That's not the case at all planning. Everybody's involved in Sean Lane 4:58 planning is something that everyone is involved in. And let's not just be satisfied by having a plan. It's about planning Well, there are so many teams that need to contribute in order to produce a thoughtful, strategic and aligned plan for your organization. And from my experience, planning is not something you're good at right away. You need years of reps and sets at the planning process in order to get better. And will Anana have now gone through planning cycles together for years across multiple companies, not to mention all the prospects and customers they now talk to through their work at Tiger eye. So what have they learned about when planning goes well? And when it doesn't? Let's start with Well, yeah, Will Magnuson 5:44 I think it's like building up calluses in your hand, like doing yard work, like you know, you get the stronger you get just it's no different than exercising or anything else out there. You build a tolerance, and you understand quickly where to go. So I think doing more reps, you understand like, what's going to be the high value points of it all so that you can quickly get down to the solution, and being able to understand communication down to the rep level, and making sure that everyone is involved in it. But also understand what is the biggest needle mover? Is it gonna be hiring more people? Is it going to be segmenting your business, trying to figure out what your Northstar is, is really important early on in the planning process, because as soon as you get that Northstar, the planning is all made on that Northstar could be a revenue number could be number of net new logos you're going after, it could be that you want to segment your business in a different way. And so then everyone can play from that same sheet of music. And that allows you to have that communication style best appropriately to the frontline management that can help make those decisions with you. Anna Randall 6:42 The other thing that you learn over time is how to connect the past to the future. So if your team is constantly under resourced in one area, and that's what you're hearing from AES and BDS, and your CSM is all these people are complaining that there's something preventing them from being successful in this past sales cycle. It's kind of like how do you bring that forward and advocate for that. So that going going into the next year, that's something that can be resolved. And being able to connect the years year over year, there's a compound interest in that and solving those problems long term. And obviously businesses ebb and flow and they have to adjust to markets and unpredictable times and things like that. But it's one of those things that every year, you get a little bit better at solving one problem. And that flows into the next fiscal year. Will Magnuson 7:33 And the last thing I'll mention real quick is that I think, early on, when you're first doing this, you want to run away from the problems. And I think it's exact opposite, run towards the problems solve those problems, because you have a whole nother batch that's covered right after you can't run away from the issues, there always going to be issues. Sean Lane 7:49 I think the other thing that compounds in those situations is the institutional knowledge, right? The longer someone is at the company and the more planning cycles, they've been a part of, the more they can articulate to the rest of the group. The context that was true when those earlier decisions were made, because some of these decisions are multi year time horizon type decisions, right? So like if your company says, Okay, we want to get better at selling multi year deals instead of single year deals. Like that's not something that's going to happen in a quarter, right. And you have to know the context that that decision was made two years ago to know that actually, where we are right now is actually really good compared to where we were all those cycles ago, right. And so I think that institutional knowledge is really helpful. And the other thing that's awesome about having both of you here together is will you kind of took it from the top down approach of like, okay, these are the big bets for the company for the year that now a lot of the planning decisions have to be made from. And then Anna, you took it from the bottoms up perspective, which is like, we have to talk to everybody on the team and learn all of the different challenges they saw from last year's version of the plan. And I would imagine, Anna, when you're doing that bottoms up planning, a huge part of that has to be your partnership with UPS, right, especially if you're new to a business and you're trying to learn all the different components that make up that bottoms up plan, you just talk about kind of what you found to be ingredients for a successful partnership with ops teams, Anna Randall 9:14 it comes down to really two things. For me, it's consistency in the plan. So if you're constantly moving the goalposts, whether that's different incentives, or like you said, multi year deals or some sort of stiff on a product that you're trying to promote. It's trying to change rep behavior, all that you know, that comp plan changes, drive behavioral changes, and when you keep doing that, it's hard to get good at one particular thing. So making sure there's a limitation to whatever change might be coming down the pipeline, and then to its clean data, making sure that whatever they are pulling from and decisions they're making, whether it's the assignment of quota in a particular region, based on renewal volume is clear. are in clean and that you've got a good working relationship to review all that stuff ahead of time. Sometimes it gets set in motion and cannot get undone before it's really reviewed by both sides of the house. A Sean Lane 10:12 limited number of changes and clean data. These are important prerequisites to keep in mind as you and your company go through your next planning cycle. If you're trying to change six or seven different behaviors, or make nine different key assumptions in your plan, guess what, there's just no way you're going to be successful. For one people can't digest that much change. And second, you likely aren't going to be able to give each of those assumptions in the plan the attention that they deserve. So follow Anna's advice and get everyone to buy in on a small number of changes that are supported by clean data. Okay, let's assume you're starting to do all of this well, and a plan is taking shape. Before you can roll this thing out to the broader organization. Now's the moment when you have to get all of the cross functional leaders to put their hands in the middle and say, Yes, we're committing to this plan. This is not a step you can skip. Nor is it something that's easy to declare victory on. So I wanted to know from will and Anna's perspective as sales leaders, how they go about this, the best Will Magnuson 11:15 part about in sales, leadership, our job and sales, whether you've been a rep forever manager, what it may be is that your job is to help understand human intuition, emotional intelligence. So you understand how people communicate. So your finance director is going to communicate a little bit differently than your robots, or your marketing director. And so your job is to read the room and understand where you fit in, push back when there needs to be pushback, because healthy discourse is great, because it challenges certain aspects of it all. And everyone should always have healthy discourse that comes in. But then there comes to a point where the numbers a number at this point, we have to operationalize this. And you have to either agree and commit, disagree and commit, but you're all on the same team that comes down to it, because everyone plays a role with it, whether it be the marketing and number of leads you get or opportunities or awareness that's being driven, the Rev ops to help make things make the comp plan, correct the finance to make sure we're counting all the numbers correctly, and making sure people are getting paid on time. But also we're looking at the right net new business. And so I think just understanding each roles, pain points, and what they're trying to solve, can help bring the group together, and then allow you to go attack it as a team and really give the broader message. Those are the planning cycles that are most successful when everyone leaves the room saying like I get the other person's perspective, so that when a team member understands how this all happened, you can say, well, the finance team really cares about this. And here's why they care about it. You bring that how and why together, across departmental, you have a really good synergy and a good plan to move forward with. And Anna Randall 12:42 I think sometimes the hardest part is that there's a lot of time spent on the what the plan is going to be what the numbers are, what the metrics are, the number the math of it all, how do we how do we get to that next level as a company? And I think sometimes that eats up a lot of the planning cycle. And we spend less time focusing on how are we going to do that? It's great to say in theory, every rep is going to grow their quota by you know, 500k This next year, but how are they going to do that, in reality, how am I going to set them up for success. And you know, the sooner we can get to the what, as a team, and whether again, agree and commit, disagree and commit the what needs to be established so that you can spend more of the time as department leads talking about how you get there. And that cross collaboration is really priceless to make sure you're on the same page. Will Magnuson 13:32 And the last thing I'll mention real quick is that y'all have to remember that planning usually takes part during the busiest quarter of the year, which is q4. Now, most organizations have larger Q fours and they do q1 and q2. And so you're doing this all while doing your regular day job, which you could say planning as part of your regular day job. But Q fours are high stress environments, they're usually the ones you want to have the biggest forecast output, you want to help your reps get to their numbers, everyone's time crunched down to it. So it's really making sure you understand from the human side of things like how tapped people are because q4 is a busy time period for everybody. Sean Lane 14:08 Such a good point. And I do want to come back in into the how of all of this in a second. But I think it's something I heard from both of you, which I would not have thought this way before is the idea that yes, and to your point, this is such a data driven spreadsheet, heavy exercise. But what you both are saying is look sales leaders actually have just through their natural inclinations and the job that they do every day like they have a unique skill set that they can bring into this process that is not just based on what's in the spreadsheets, but it is that emotional intelligence that you were talking about. Well, and I'm just curious what you have learned both of you about what else sales leaders bring to the table that is unique to your role, and maybe I'll start with you on that just like I think it's because it is no So much not just about those spreadsheets that it's important to remember the unique perspectives that everybody can bring, and not just like, oh, this person's from marketing, this person's from sales, but like their actual skill sets. Anna Randall 15:13 I think from a sales side, you really build a muscle of empathy, and compromise. So coming together, and maybe taking a concession on how the comp plan works, because it's gonna overspend if people hit this particular accelerator, like making a concession in that sense, but also maybe getting a number lowered for your team. So something else is more attainable. So these trade offs that you make, lean into your natural sales tendency of how you negotiate an opportunity all together. And I think the empathy part comes in, because we're really good listeners, salespeople do, hopefully far more listening than they do talking. It allows you to sit in a room and really synthesize information quickly, and hear what all the stakeholders have to say. Sean Lane 15:56 And will you and I have chatted before and in some of those are like the natural sales, skill sets and the natural things that people I think would think of. But you've also told me that you you also need to challenge kind of some of those like sales leaders stereotypes and actually dig in and get in the weeds and get in the data. And the best sales leaders are the ones that can do that. Yeah, Will Magnuson 16:16 I think there's always a misconception in any sales environment, that sales team, I look at it like Scrooge McDuck, just sitting in a bunch of coins. And like, it's so easy. But I think what people don't realize is that that barrel is empty at the beginning of the year that comes in here. And so I think your role in sales leadership is to expose, I'll call it I call it backwards math, essentially. So you want me to get to X number. But how does that actually happen? Well, it takes place in that that means our average sales cycle is 90 days. And that takes five demos per cycle, and therefore we get our first one. And so really exposing to the broader team of how this is actually done and how you get your number, not just how many closed one opportunities, but how many meetings have to take place? How many technical evaluations, how long is your pilot period. And what it does it humanizes to the entire team who's making the plan, oh, there's only 40 hours in a workweek, they can only do X amount, there's only so much tam available here. And if we try to do a stretch this too many new logos, let's focus on renewals instead of new logos that comes in there. Your job in sales leadership is to expose the actual sales process that's not just 90 days and closed one. But what is behind that night is what activities take place from your team. If you're in the weeds, and you understand how many demos or how many technical evaluations they get exposed, then you can bring that to the team and they're going to take you more seriously than just lower my number. Because every sales leader wants a lower number that's inherent of what we want. But that's a stereotype to everybody else that says they just want a lower number because they want to make X amount more dollars. No, they want a lower number, or they want things that can actually be attainable, because the higher the number is, the more we achieve, the better the company does when it's publicly traded, or privately held. Okay, Sean Lane 17:57 there's so much to unpack there. First, we'll and Anna are pleading with sales leaders to both lean into their natural sales strengths, empathy, negotiation, and simultaneously challenge the typical hand waving generalities that people think of when they think of sales leaders. They want you to challenge these stereotypes by being detail oriented. And to do that, they think that sales leaders have to get in the weeds of how the nuances of the sales process will impact the funnel metrics. And the plan will says that you can't just say, hey, I want the number to be lower, you have to articulate the why and the how for when you arrive at that conclusion. And by going through this work, the outcomes that I would expect are twofold. First, you increase your operational command of your business through the exposure that comes with the planning process. And second, you'll emerge from this process, feeling like an owner of the plan and not a recipient, you know which numbers have to move in order for the plan to come true. And then it's your job to figure out the how. And Anna said that you have to be selective in how you'll pull that off. I think Anna Randall 19:05 it's all about prioritizing those KPIs in terms of actionable reality. So if you just tell a rep increase the sales price, that's not exactly just gonna come through by putting it out there verbally. So it's really involving your BD team, making sure you've got enough at bats bringing your CSMs into the conversation, you have an enablement team, making sure you're enabling them to sell to the strongest price point maybe the value propositions need to be dusted off and, you know, brought up to speed and where the product is today. There's all sorts of different things. But then it's going to be your job to go out and look at these other departments and see who else is going to be on your bench to be able to get to that goal because it's definitely not single threaded. No single sales leader can just wave a wand and make something change in the process. It takes a whole team doing it together and then the proof is in the accomplishment so making sure that the rep that gets there is rewarded or highlighted given an opportunity to talk about why and sharing that across the team. Sales doesn't stop. So while you're trying to coach somebody to do something different, they're mid cycle on half of these other things that are going on. So this flywheel of doing and learning and growing, while doing your job is complicated, and it's complex. But the more the more stakeholders you have that are bought in, in accomplishing those single top level goals, the better the team will be because at least imported from the sides. Sean Lane 20:34 If you look at your revenue teams, how do you think they're doing with pipeline management? A lot can go into this. And if you think there are areas where they can improve, you and your sales leaders may want to check out a sender. A sender is by the team at force management. It's an online subscription platform that offers courses, short form content, like videos and blogs, as well as a community where forces sales experts weigh in on rep questions and deal challenges. You can learn more by visiting a sender.co/ops. Okay, back to Anna and will before the break. And we'll we're taking us through how a sales leader can successfully participate in the planning process. We talked about the importance of clean data, we talked about how sales leaders can partner effectively with ops. And we covered the importance of challenging the sales stereotypes and being owners of the plan itself. Let's assume for a moment that all of this has gone well. Now there's this whole group of people who report to will and Anna, who are waiting to hear what the plan is. And to Will's point from earlier in our conversation, it can't just feel like this plan emerged out of the clouds with no forethought. So how should sales leaders translate all the complexity and nuance of the planning process into a tight, cohesive and compelling message that they can share with their teams? Short answer? It's hard. Yeah, Will Magnuson 21:57 it's tough. I think there's two philosophies here, less is more, and your attitude will reflect how the team feels about it. When it comes down to less is more, there's a couple of key KPIs or cornerstones of that plan, focus on those side of things with it. And really think it out on how each person, there's a broader team sense of how you roll it out. And then each manager should be meeting individually with each person to go through how they achieve that, because it all bubbles up with it. And so making sure you communicate that appropriately, lets you know and like explain a little bit of how it's all made, the meetings that took place, who was involved. And it wasn't just a black box number that was made that it was well thought out. But don't go into a crazy amount of detail, because then people will start maybe poking some certain holes in it, or more or less like you just you've lost them at that point. But the biggest thing you can do, as a leader is talk about how attainable that goal is because all goals are meant to be attained. There's a path to every number. And you have to really buy into that and be excited about it. It's no different than a sales rep who's really excited about selling their product to people, sales reps who are really just loving what they sell, they just they sell more, they're just they believe in that message. And the same thing goes for leadership. When it comes to the plan, it's always going to feel like Mount Everest, because it's the beginning of the sales year, it's your $0 or your 2 million or whatever it may be, it's always going to look really hard. But sales is a marathon, it's not a sprint, if you deal with it in Sprint's then you are going to get burnt out super quick. And you can have a great q1. Yeah, you have a great q1, but you might not perform q2, q3 and q4. So I think it's just simply explaining the key highlights and how it was made. And just know that expose a little bit of how it's done. And then your attitude towards it. You can't be a leader who goes and says this goal can't be happening. But good luck, guys. That's never the way to go with it. You can say it's aggressive, you can say it's gonna be hard to attain, we're have to have hard work towards it. But we're all in this together. And that really rallies a team around you, Anna Randall 23:51 and coordination of the day that you roll out your quotas or your plan is. It's interesting, right? There's a behind the scenes that goes on from top down to frontline managers. And the higher the transparency, and the higher the buy in prior to that day, the better. I've seen the outcome meeting you get the managers you let them vent about it, you have to let every level of the organization from top down, absorb an event in their own capacity of like, and then for to start to think like how am I going to break this down? How am I going to individualize this for the people that report to me? How am I going to get my buy into this company plan? Make sure they ask the right questions. They have room to ask the questions that they are anticipating are going to be asked of them, but also maybe have their own plan. You know, sometimes we forget that frontline managers carry their own quota. It's their own dollars on the line for their variable income. And same with second line VPS. Anybody that has a variable income knows that they need to ask good questions about how they get to that ote. So I think breaking it down and doing it And layers is super important. But on the day that it gets to those, to the A's to the ICS, to the to the frontline, it's really about having tactically put ourselves in their shoes, making sure we've broken down the plan. And whether it's in an individualized path, the plan or globalized for the team, hey, here's the key things that I think are going to be the how we get to the what number and thinking ahead about that kind of stuff. Also, in make sure like, this is where tied in with the Reb ops team, making sure if there were changes in the comp plan, whether it's changing how you get paid out all together, or or whether or not you've dropped a multi year variable or any of that kind of stuff, why that happened, and how that will impact them. Understanding the intention of it, and how that ties into the company initiatives is a really good way to get the buy in from the AEA. So if the company needs more cash on hand, and so you're going to be looking for people to pay up front. And you're going to be incentivized for that versus recurring quarterly billing or something like that. Explaining to them, this is the ultimate angle of the company. That's why we're going to implement this process. This is what we're going to be marching towards this year. Helping them get that company buy in even from an icy level can help steer everyone towards that Northstar cohesively. When you're working together, it's just a lot more fun if the whole team is, you know, attaining their goals, and they're doing the things that the company is asked of them. We've all had those years. And those years are great. The IRS read the questions that are left unanswered, there's discord through all of q1 sometimes through the whole first half. And that can really break a year all together. Will Magnuson 26:37 And you have to remember to this is usually happening during q1, which as managers, this is the hardest time period because everyone is embracing for change, whether you have a changing quota, maybe your accounts, maybe there's a promotion you're going for. It's a big HR cycle with performance reviews that are happening. So there's a lot of angst towards it. So my suggestion to anybody is during this time period, leave with empathy. Understand that people feel that there's a lot of change happening. And change promotes certain behaviors and angst and anxiety that happens there. And that's okay, everyone deals with it in different ways. And so approaching it with empathy and understanding that you realize that maybe you've been left in the dark a little bit, helps them understand a little bit more feel more connected to the company that they feel part of truly wanting. I Sean Lane 27:21 mean, I think the punchline here is just planning and launching these plans is so hard, right? There's so many layers to what you guys just described, you have to get the company wide, why in front of them. What's the thing, we're all marching towards that every single layer of leadership from CRO down to IC, you have to make sure you understand the why each one of those levels and their individual tears path to their particular goals. And you have to communicate it in a way that you know will to use your lessons more. I used to coach my teams on being transparent, but succinct, right, like, you can say it in 60 seconds, say and 30. Try it again, right, like keep getting it down and down and down. But then to your point, and you've got all this knowledge of the process so that when they do ask the follow up questions, that's when you can show off the details and the thought that went into this process itself. There are a couple of things I wanted to follow up with you on Anna on what you were saying. So you talked about kind of that partnership with with robots as you're rolling these things out? Everybody's different, right? But I'm curious, like, what's your preference there around both the prep and the actual communication to your team have this information, right? Some leaders want to own it. And they want to be the one that stands in front of their teams and delivers. Some folks want that ops person there either as a backup or for them to kind of lead the charge on the details, while the sales leader kind of gives that more of a high level, like, what's your approach there, because I feel like it can be very different. Anna Randall 28:45 I think in a healthy environment, you want both teams there, you want both sides of the fence, that partnership, those are the people that your team is reaching out to and they've got problems with their orders, they need approvals, they've got things that need to like jump through hoops, or maybe some data that they need to get up there their teammate. Right. So I think on some level, having them there shows that there's unity at the top level of the leadership. However, I also think there's a room to have one on one conversations and create that safe space for trust. I don't know if that's in skip level conversations or you know, kind of that all hands setting where you get maybe a q&a in there. I think you can get creative with these meetings. Maybe it's not just like a roll call of here's your number. But a true ask me anything from a relapse perspective after the team has had a chance to absorb and hopefully work through any emotions that they might have about it. But I think that there's that partnership is important to show off in front of the team that you are united and that you can't just pin things against one another. You know, it's like two parents. You can't just be like, one parent said this and then one parent said that you want to be united front to everybody. This Sean Lane 29:54 unified front between ops and sales is so important not just in these conversations, but throughout the entire year, too often ops adopts this weird policing responsibility and ops can become an easy scapegoat for sales leaders to point to when things are hard or when a plan didn't turn out, as reps had anticipated or hoped for. What Anna's saying is you have to be aligned with one another in these situations, and will correctly points out that your attitude as a leader will reflect how the team feels. What adds, of course, to the challenges of the rollout of your plan is, as we'll pointed out, you're working on all of this planning stuff during q4 When all anyone wants to spend time on is on queue for deals. The flip side of that is if you don't give planning the time it requires and deserves, you wake up in the third month still haggling over the details of that year's plan? And I promise you no one likes living in that type of sales purgatory, according to will, once that happens to you once you never want it to happen to you again. Yeah, Will Magnuson 30:58 that's the hard part. That's the most challenging part. And I think at the end of the day, like we talked earlier about do you get better at sales planning as it goes on. And I think you might go through a rough cycle where you say, I never want to do that, again, I never want to give my reps their comp plan on April 30. And key ones done. Because it does happen, things slip away, going through. So maybe you start the process earlier. Or maybe you put an objective in front and say we're gonna finish this all done. I think one of the hardest things is in planning today is that as you're closing out that big quarter big things happen deals, push deals happen. And so assumptions that you're making for the last six months, that change instantly, and you don't have time to go back to the drawing board. And so this is where I think planning has a chance to be modernized a lot more with real time information that allows you to change on the fly, versus having to sit there in your Excel spreadsheet and go, Oh, I'm already so far down this rabbit hole, I can't change it. And that's a problem because that spreadsheets over pivoted or has too much going on. And so I think the key thing is if you are stuck in a situation where you are two months into q1, you don't have your comp plans, you need to as a leader understand what that could be looking like help your team understand the priorities they should be going after and make it simple, don't overcomplicate it, and have two or three things, set your own targets because you know the baseline of the plan a little bit. So put it out there, don't scare anybody, but put it out there and then have them run towards it. So that they're not shell shocked April 10, or whatever it may be. Because that's the worst thing ever, that could happen because then you have high turnover. And so people want transparency to a point they can feel involved in it. And then that allows them to feel more connected. And you don't want you can't have these turnover that happens with reps. If you we assumed that person was going to stay, and then they leave your plans already off to a bad start, Sean Lane 32:43 which I would imagine is where you know, some sort of software tool might come in handy for those types of unexpected curveballs, right. And I would imagine you guys are customer number one have your own tool. And so when you two are thinking about that really tricky moment in time, but realistically, I think, to your point well about unexpected changes, like planning is not a one time thing, right? This is happening all year long. And so what have you found being customer number one has been advantageous for you specifically as sales leaders to have a different level of visibility into your business and what some of these unexpected changes might be in terms of the ripple effects. Yeah, I Will Magnuson 33:26 think in the day and age of 2024, with AI and everything happening real time information should be the standard that comes through. And so being able to update everything in real time, whether it be a hire a new deal happening, a deal pushing, and understanding how it simulates out quickly helps us make the right decisions. Because at the end of the day, you shouldn't have to stare at a bunch of Excel spreadsheets to understand your business, you should be able to take that busy work, take the busy work out of it, and focus in on the strategies of how you raise that average sales price, how you get that next new deal coming in. Because anybody can input numbers on a spreadsheet, that's not the problem, the problem is actually how you do it. And so you need time to be focused, you need buy in from all these folks that happen you need training to happen with your team that goes through. And so what's been really important for us is to like simulate out quickly in real time taking that what used to happen in months down to minutes, and then taking that where we're going to move forward and then putting the strategy and how we're actually going to do it. It makes our cycles much quicker than they existed previously. And I feel so much more productive and feel like I can change and pivot on the fly. Because I know the markets changing so fast. I don't have to wait for my over pivoted Excel sheet and say Too bad I can't actually do that. And that's what we're also hearing from other customers as well. Anna Randall 34:41 I think bringing talent into I mean, we didn't talk much about it, but a part of the strategic plan for a year is hiring, firing, promoting and right it's there's not only changes in accounts and changes to comp plans, or process all that change to people. So attracting talent being a company that is able to get these things out quickly that is able to make plans that whole get people to certain levels of attainment, not because the plan was easy, but because the company knows where they need to be, and sets people up for success intentionally working strategically toward something like that is attractive, and it retains talent, it helps talent want to move up in the organization and be more involved in that process. And then it brings in people that want to be a desirable place to work. So I think all those things really having good sales planning process, in general helps also the company grow from a people perspective, everyone's Sean Lane 35:39 sitting in those meetings that we were talking about at the beginning of the year, and in the back of their mind, what they're saying, as you're presenting your plan is, can I be successful here this year? Right. And if you to your point before about attitude, and competence and knowledge, like if your presentation and your articulation of that year's plan doesn't check all those boxes, then people are going to be sitting there questioning whether or not they can be successful in that place. Yeah, Will Magnuson 36:05 I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of folks, I think maybe a misconception is sales, as well as that we have 50 40% of the take home that is based on that plan that happens. And so sales in a way can be a lot of one year contracts that come through, they said they finish out their year. And they understand like, will I be able to hit that number? Because, you know, I always talk about like sales planning takes place during tax season as well. And you have your accountant that asks you, hey, how much how much money you're gonna make this year? And the answer really, from a sales perspective sometimes is I have no idea. It depends on what number I'm given. And if I feel like I can achieve that, and that causes stress and anxiety. And so I think it's super important that you have that transparency down to the bottom level, because you need to keep everybody in at that point in time. And the managers and leadership that can keep high level attainment, it's really important. And that creates a one another attractive place to work when you have people have tenure to three, four years and a place as an IC, versus, you know, you're turning out your whole team every year. And that's costly, it's very tiring to enable everybody at that point in time. So that can be a key part of the sales planning process. Sean Lane 37:12 I think that's so important for ops people who are listening to hear, right, I think, conceptually we all know, like, yeah, 5050 split between base and variable, like we get it. But like those types of questions of like, can I put a down payment on a house this year? Like, how is this going to impact somebody's livelihood? Like, you have to, I think, approach this entire process, respecting the fact that these decisions have huge ripple effects on people's lives. And so you have to treat them with that level of importance. It's I think it's awesome for folks to hear that Will Magnuson 37:45 perspective coming from you guys. Anna Randall 37:47 I think there's also a generational change in the new sellers that are coming in, or have a different attitude about transparency expectation, what they feel like a company should provide and the flexibility that needs to be involved in it. It's modernized, right? They have a different set of expectations. And maybe the ones I started in when I first started in sales, which was, here's your job, don't complain, do your job. And we'll keep you another year like it was this like, you're just told what to do and expel Sean Lane 38:20 as well saying that to you, right to be right. Anna Randall 38:24 Never, never build that well, but it was one of those. Like, when I started it's there was this level of expectation that was just kind of like do if you were told, and there was also a lack of transparency and how and who got promoted, like how you went to the next level, how you got those accounts, there was a insider feel and an outsider feel at organizations that was acceptable. I think both the change in leadership, different generational swings, you know, moving in us moving into leadership, things like that we do things differently based on our experiences, but also there's another generation of people coming into the workforce that demand different expectations in the workplace. And I think that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. I think it's evolving the sales profession. But it's not just people that didn't make it in some other field. And so they're relying on sales to fall back on because anyone can do it or anything like that. People go to school and get degrees in this and formally trained to be experts in this field. And I think just the level of like entry level has really gone up Sean Lane 39:38 before we go at the end of each show, we're going to ask each guest the same lightning round of questions. Ready. Here we go. We'll switch off so we'll start with you Anna. Best book you've read the last six months. You can pass to well if you want benefits of having two people here Anna Randall 39:54 I will say I reread recently the book Grit by Angela Jack Welch and from a business for perspective, it's just my tried and true. I love reading it. Sean Lane 40:02 Will I typically ask favorite part about working in ops. So I'll ask you favorite part about working with ops, the Will Magnuson 40:09 data driven mentality that has, I love backwards math. And so using that data driven side of things, and just the brilliance of putting numbers together, but then putting the plan behind it is really important. And, you know, that's where I found the best partnership with operations team. Sean Lane 40:27 And you get the fun, one least favorite part about working with ops, Anna Randall 40:30 they believe they're right all the time, all the time that their data is right, and that they are right. And a lot of times they are, but it takes a lot of convincing to overcome maybe some objections, they're Sean Lane 40:42 very good answer. Well, someone who helped you get into the job you have today, I'm gonna Will Magnuson 40:47 go with my current CEO, Tracy young, she got me involved early on at PlanGrid. And I got to see a company go from very small and revenue to over $100 million and into an acquisition and learned a ton during that process. She gave me a shot back in 2014. At plan grid, and I could be forever grateful. And I hope that I could do that for somebody or hope I have done that for a lot of people throughout their career. Sean Lane 41:14 That's awesome. All right, last one, I'm gonna ask both of you. We'll start with you, Anna, one piece of advice for people who want to have your job someday, Anna Randall 41:20 the saint I always go back to there are no shortcuts to any place worth going. So do the work, learn the lessons and you'll get there. Well, don't be Will Magnuson 41:29 a scoreboard watcher. I think the old school mentality of sales management is to just hit refresh in your Salesforce report, get your hands dirty talk to customers do the job that your reps are actually doing. And what you'll find is a lot of problems that you can help solve. But also you create a good team environment that says that person is willing to do everything that I have to do, and you're not beneath doing anything. So you should be hopping on calls. You should be making cold calls, you should be doing demos yourself, not 24/7. But don't just be someone who's counting up the numbers and the close one and saying why is it closed last do the job. Sean Lane 42:10 Thanks so much to Willow and Anna for joining me on this week's episode of operations. And thanks to Christina from the tigereye team for reaching out and setting up the interview in the first place. If you like what you heard today, make sure you're subscribe to our show. A new episode comes out in your feed every other Friday. Also for a video version of this we have a YouTube channel search for operations with Sean lane on YouTube and you can subscribe to our channel there. If you learn something today from Willer Anna or from any of our episodes, make sure you leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps people find the show six star reviews only. Alright, that's gonna do it for me. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.