Going Long Podcast_SOLO Episode 463_Billy Keels

Mon, Oct 14, 2024 10:28AM • 11:55

SPEAKERS

Billy Keels

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Billy Keels  00:00

The truth about how reducing inputs actually increases your results. Today's conversation is sponsored by the Billy keels advisory program. If you want to learn more about how to make your nine to five optional, just go to Billy keels.com forward slash advising. Once again, that's Billy keels.com forward slash advising. So today we're going to talk about the truth about how reducing inputs actually increases your results. And I'm going to share another story with you, because this is something that I realized over my career, my corporate career. I'm going to focus on the corporate career, because there was a couple of unique things that happened that were similar to me over my 26 year career. This was really in the last 16 years. Once the time I was, you know, over 40, had young kids, and the kids started getting older, and a lot of different dynamics started happening in place, but I was always that person who really wanted to get so much stuff done. I wanted to be, you know, and everyone talked about this in the most recent episode, 462, that, you know, I wanted to be able to get a lot of stuff done, and we realize that if you don't take consistent action, then it can be killing your momentum. But that's a whole different thing. Go check out episode 462, if you want to hear about that. But today, I really want to talk to you about the truth about how reducing the inputs actually increases your results. It's something that I talk to even with clients today. A lot of the different calls that I'm having on LinkedIn. There's this obsession, like literally obsession with how much stuff can you get done? By the way, if we're not connecting on LinkedIn, make sure we connect over there. Let me know. You listen to the podcast. We can connect on a couple different platforms, but let me come back. So as I'm early in my career, I was at a point where I had, I decided to take a lateral move, right, because I was managing an organization that was $100 million organization, like, in terms of the revenue we were supposed to produce for the company across Europe, Middle East and Africa. You know, I had a number of people that reported to me across all different different continents, different countries, of course. And the idea was, I still have this dream that I wanted to become the CEO of a region or even of the company, like 150 person company. But as I started getting more and more mature, my kids started getting older, I realized, you know, I really don't want to climb that corporate ladder than that in that way. Plus the early investment started to have some success and things that I've talked about before. But this whole point of taking a ladder or move, I started realizing that I built up a lot of the leadership skills because I managed large businesses, led more senior people, and started to get to a point where I realized like, Okay, this managing so many tasks and doing so many things, when I took on an individual contributor role, I wanted To show my worth. I want to demonstrate to everybody else that not only could I close the biggest deals and the most important deals, I could also include the volume of deals and know that I could demonstrate control to other people. Like these were all the different things that I had in my mind that I wanted to show to others, that I wanted to prove to myself and as I started going along the way, and this is going to be pretty sales intense in terms of the story that I want to share with you, but I think it makes the most sense, because when you want to get more stuff done, it's all about volume, like, volume, volume, volume. How can I do more stuff, and how can I attract more clients, and how can I make sure that I'm across, being everything to everybody, and like I said, even clients I talked to today like there's this obsession with doing more, because you think by doing more, you're going to get more results. This is super counterintuitive, but once you start to realize what I'm talking about, it's going to make a lot more sense. So let me come back to what I was talking about. So as I started, I went back to my individual contributor role, which means that I was reporting to somebody else. I didn't have anybody reporting to me directly, although I had these, what are called teams, that are indirect, teams that were on a matrix organization and all that stuff. You because You are in corporate sales or corporate exec, you understand exactly what I'm talking about. Working in a matrix environment is something that is very unique, but but the idea here was, as I started recognizing that there were as from the individual contributor role like I want, I knew what the kinds of questions that my boss was going to ask me, and I wanted to be ready and show that I had the most number of deals and I could actually contribute the most to the to the to the team. But the idea was, I was thinking about, how can I do more? How can I contribute more deals? Because the more deals, the bigger deals like that was going to be the thing that got me back on the fast track to getting to that CEO role. Remember, that's what I was going for. That's why I took the side step, to be able to take the side step to then jump up fast. So as I'm going through these forecast calls, or these forecast meetings, which basically is each individual salesperson comes in and they talk to the boss about what's going to happen and how they're going to move the opportunity and an opportunity as a sales transaction, we would move the opportunity forward to signature once the signature was once the client gave the signature, then the opportunity could be collected and recognized as revenue for our company. I won't. Way into the weeds, because there's whole thing called revenue recognition and all that. But if you're in software sales, you know exactly what I mean. But what I started realizing is that there was this dynamic that was happening because as I had more and more deals, just by, I guess, logic, or at least my logic was, the more deals I had, the less that I can control. But I was counting on the volume to be able to say I got more deals across, and I also brought in more money. Well, what I started really quickly realizing is that even though I took this role back and I was demonstrating everything, I started having less control, and so I was being perceived as well. I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what the next step was. I didn't know who the next person was that we needed, from a signature perspective, I didn't know the exact sign off process from the client. I didn't know who was going to be away for all of the deals, because I had so many. And by the way, I didn't have a really clear system, although I had a customer relationship management system, a CRM system, I wasn't using it like most salespeople, that's a secret, just between me and you, by the way. So the thing is, is I had so many different deals, I didn't have control over the volume, and so when I started recognizing was that there were a couple of colleagues that were more senior than me in the role, and every single time that the bosses called them, and they knew exactly where the opportunities were, and I started recognizing like they didn't have the same volume of opportunities as I was managing, but the very few that they had, they knew every single detail. They knew which opportunities were going to continue to move forward to the closing date, the signature. They could tell you what the exact process was. They could tell you the specific dates. They could tell you about any of the risk elements that happened because someone was going to be traveling, or they had a two day event somewhere else. And so they were calling all of these things out when the boss would ask them the questions. And so what I started realizing was, okay, these guys are actually guys and girls and men and women, they started realizing the boss that this person had much more control, and that control, when they were able to convey that to the boss, gave them much more confidence in what they were doing, the business that they were managing, the relationships that they were in charge of with the Client, the internal stakeholders. And it was absolutely like, I had to take a step back and be like, Wow, she really knows what she's doing. I gotta emulate this. And so as I started doing that, what I then realized is it was about me selecting not as many deals as possible, but selecting the primary deals, and really putting my focus, energy, time, effort to make sure that I knew every single thing about that. You know, the paretos law we talked about before is making sure that the those 20% of the deals were going to help me to bring in 80% of the revenue that I was wanting to do on a quarterly basis. And so as I started to put my plan together, it was about which deals met the criteria that were going to help me gain the most level of control were going to help me to get to the quota, because I knew by getting to my sales quota that that was going to make my boss happy, when I could demonstrate that I had control over each sales opportunity that was going to make my boss happy, that was going to instill much more confidence. And so that's what I started to focus on. And so over time, as I realized it wasn't about volume, at least for me, and the goals and the efforts that I had once again to get back to the seat of being the CEO, I had to start to demonstrate control. I had to start to demonstrate that what I said was going to happen, was going to happen, and whether that meant that we were going to continue to move forward to signature, which needed to happen more frequently than not, or I was able to predict why a particular opportunity was not going to sign that was what was going to make the difference. And don't get me wrong, over time, there was this serious like internal battle. Because once, when you go into a meeting and you only have two opportunities, and you were used to bringing in the beginning 15, there was this feeling of, oh my goodness, I'm not worthy. I'm not bringing in as much as somebody else. And so I was comparing myself to everybody else. To everybody else versus inverse is making it a me versus me. Because even though we talk about teams in sales, a no team in sales, because every single person has their own individual quota, maybe I'll do a whole episode on that. I really feel passionate about, but that, but that's a whole different thing, because at the end of the day, I didn't even do what I wanted to do, which was actually bring the most number of deals and the most number of the most number of opportunities closed, and the most number of opportunities in terms of value. I crashed. I failed. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. But you know why? The reason that I never accomplished that goal was because I started realizing and this was the internal growth for me. It was a completely different thing. It was by reducing the number of inputs, reducing the number of opportunities that I was managing, I greatly increased the number in terms of value and control that I could show, demonstrate internally to my boss, to my boss's boss. To having executive engagement. It put me on the path to success, to be able to show it was much more about re increasing the output, and the output was high value deals increased executive engagement and demonstrating control over the opportunities. So I had to flip it on its head. I didn't I couldn't do more by get by having more inputs, I had to reduce the number of inputs, meaning reduce the number of opportunities, to greatly increase my ability to demonstrate control, to bring in higher value opportunities and increase executive engagement. And so with that very simple example, I want to share with you, just like I share with others, and whether we're having a call on LinkedIn, or whether you're a client, or you're thinking about becoming a client, because this stuff starts to resonate with you. This is something that's real. You're you can get more, and you will get more by reducing inputs, increasing your focus. All right, so listen, I want to leave it there. I like to keep these episodes brief, like I said, if we're not connected on LinkedIn already, make sure you connect with me on LinkedIn. Let me know that you're listening to the podcast. I would really appreciate that. Also, if you haven't less than honest written review, you can do that as well. But most importantly, take today's episode. Share it with family. Share it with friends. Go from the theory to practice right? Make this stuff real, because that's how it's going to help you. All right? And while you're doing that, I'll be here preparing for the next episode. So until then, I want you to go out and make it a great day. And thank you very, very much. Today's conversation was sponsored by the Billy keels advisory program. If you're looking to make your nine to five optional and need some help, just go to Billy keels.com forward slash advising. Once again, that's Billy keels.com forward slash advising. Freedom.

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