How to BUILD a High-Performing Team in 2025 l

0:00Zac Thompson:Zach Thompson, we are back, bro. We're back. People want it. We're here. We're back and we're ready to smack. This week on Trench Tips, we are going to be talking about how to have a high performing sales team. We both belonged to sales teams. We've ran sales teams and we are still... Not all of them high performing though. not all of them high-performing. Let's get into the stories later. But we're going to talk about high-performing leadership, maybe, but how to get the most out of your sales team. It's going to be practical. Zach Thompson doesn't know what's coming, but I prepared a few bits that I'm going to throw your way.

0:49Zac Thompson:So I've asked for some controversial opinions when it comes to a sales team and building a high-performing sales team. So I'm just going to give you some stuff and then I thought we could bat it back and forth, have some conversations, maybe share some stories and maybe share some tips and tricks. Here we are. It's Jack Frimston. It's Zach Thomas. It's Trench Tips. Let's go. Okay. First one, opinion, controversial but discussion worthy. Thank you, Jack GPT. A sales team isn't a family. It's a professional sports team. Bench those who can't play at the level required. oh you don't like sports so where are you gonna take this fucker mate i'm a blue belt how can i

1:35Jack Frimston:not like sports it's not a real sport is it fine i'll see this weekend if it's a real sport fucking drowning you in that lake um right so bench them it's not it's a professional sport bench them if they're not performing right that's the the thought process i'm with you on this i'm I'm not against it at all. I think when I started off, it was very, it's a family. I want to be the employer I always wanted to have. I want to have people here who like where they were. And all those things are true, but I think I got where the boundary is wrong. There is the fine line of we're here to do a job. And what's he called?

2:23Jack Frimston:Rick Lewis, really good podcast and high performance teams. he's got this quote where he says unlimited love, limited time so he's like I'm here to support you 100 % I'll do absolutely everything I can for you but there's a job to do and there's a limited time to do it so anything I can do to help you get there I'm here but there's a job to do and I think that is a big one and at this point in the business we kind of know when people haven't got it and after trying everything we pull them out what's been our operations directors

3:01Zac Thompson:line the question is can we if we ask ourselves have we done absolutely everything possible that we're responsible for to get them to that point if we have and we're still not there then that's fair enough i one of my team asked me the other day and it's and it's uh it's an interesting just this is what came to me top of the dome the response was do you have favorites my answer was yes those that are doing the job wow and that and that is like that's simple isn't it it is very from a leadership standpoint i think there are employees that are probably wanting to be the favorite and sometimes they might fall into the game of lip service i think that if if this could be a bit of a two-pronged episode but like if you're the employee all your employer is looking for is probably you to do the job get on with the job not complain about the job and probably take some autonomy to complete the job that that is like high performance just this is what's expected of me i'm going to do what's expected of me and i'm probably going to go above and beyond i'm maybe not going to go too far above and beyond where i end up drowning and i'm not by the bouncy castle anymore and i'm 30 minutes away and someone's got to come and save me but it's okay to play in the shallow end if you know what i mean i know what you mean boundaries i think that's a really really good one we've both got many stories that we can talk about of late night calls from employees they do not longer happen um no boundaries with strangers on linkedin i've got some boundaries with strangers but other strangers have less boundaries one of your mates on linkedin

4:40Jack Frimston:actually messaging people saying could we progress this to whatsapp and we have wow who's what who's my mate uh you don't know ben next question ben uh so they're not actually questions i don't know

4:53Zac Thompson:if you were listening at the beginning i said their opinions controversial but yeah yeah yeah

4:57Jack Frimston:so you said next question but it's all right hey look i made a mistake i'm not a rag doll

5:03Zac Thompson:right uh right if your reps are making less than 100 a day they're not sales people they're

5:10Jack Frimston:professional email checkers contextual isn't it this one of course if you're doing a volume-based approach where you're looking for what's the most effective route to market possible too little, activity is too low. Plan on connection rates, you're probably looking north of 150, maybe more towards 300 dials a day to have the conversation amount you need to have. So that's kind of one angle. Now, if you were looking at being very strategic, so if you said to me now, get me a meeting in as quick a time as you can or I'm going to burn your house down, yeah i might go sales nav new to roll pick the the job role out i might do a little search on clay there might be some things that i do in the background that take away from that dial time so i can make that call really effective i think it's nuanced but i would say you can probably do all that work before you get there in the first place anyway um 100 dials is far more than most teams are doing anyway no i speak to that as a sales team and then they have a problem when they come to us it's that spot and it's like 30 to 60 dials a day and you look at them like oh what do you think your problem is then i can stop there like no i don't know that's why i'm here so 30 to 60 dials a day and you're not seeing the results what do you think the problem is and they look absolutely blagged like no i don't know it's activity i i think as well like i think

6:53Zac Thompson:like you say it's contextual the question to ask is the activity not there for a good reason okay and so if there is a good reason i i don't agree that 100 dials 200 dials is always the prescription maybe not but that's the what what's what's the reason whereas a lot of the time the reason will be i'm chasing stuff up i'm researching i'm doing this but actually the question to ask is do you have a good reason to not put the input in or is the reason a variation of procrastination it is a variation of procrastination then that's when you've got a problem as a sales leader you need to work out the difference between are my sales team being proactive or procrastinating

7:39Jack Frimston:you can drag everything back to these three points you can go we're talking to the wrong people all the time that's a data problem we're talking to the right people we're not having the desired outcome that's a skill piece or we're talking to the right people we're having some good outcomes but we're not having enough of them that's an input piece so between those three you can probably solve most sales team problems just for asking us but we look at i mean i did a post before saying it gets to a point where the answer is quite obvious but what ends up being the prescription is marketing have just told us to put this offer in or change the word in or do like this it's just mad things that more often than not what i'm spotting is just do a bit more do a bit more go above and beyond not even a mad amount it's like do a little bit more you're two meetings short do two meetings worth

8:33Zac Thompson:of activity then it's ridiculous i i think this next one you're really gonna like most sales managers aren't leaders they're glorified scorekeepers oh so i've i've had i told you you

8:49Jack Frimston:like it admit it you like it i like it man i like it what makes you sure uh rafloran

8:57Zac Thompson:wow man i bought it from a thrift stop before you start in the fucking comments i was gonna say someone's doing well. You should see his kitchen as well.

9:07Jack Frimston:So, I've had a variety of different sales leaders. The ones that always used to fucking peck my head are the ones that are just locked into a spreadsheet all the time. It's like, yeah, I've got to get this spreadsheet over for the shareholders. It's just all fluffy numbers. Like, what have we got in pipeline? What would you bank on next month? I just think, what the fuck are you on about? What would I bank on next month? I don't know. What if all these people dropped completely dropped dead. That's not how it works. Yeah? At all. That's just not how it works. Like, keeping score on fucking what?

9:43Jack Frimston:But, I mean, maybe we'll get into this in some of the later points. The best boss I've ever had used to do this thing where he'd be like, what's a deal? We could get over the line, but actually someone's stopping it. And everyone would have the thing, they'd be like, oh, there's this one I've been pushing through monthly to try and make something happen. He'd be like, right, give me the name and the number write it down get one from everyone and he'd be like right you lot all focus on whatever they needed to focus on net now i'll bang through these and you could hear him negotiate with people banging through the calls close that for you closed on the board in their name and it's multi-pronged that as as a leader i was talking about this yesterday with uh with some of my team the laws of influence that reciprocity thing that we think of as like a sales tool getting influence from your team being the one that's willing to get in the trenches and and do the job and do the callback and help you out with the deal is much better than fucking pissing him out of the spreadsheet like what do you think is going to get over the line or what can i help you get over the line right now that would make you hit your target this month that one has a really positive outcome that makes the rep look good makes you look good in the long to him and one is just fucking pointless and everyone knows it i even i even think like the

10:59Zac Thompson:reciprocity thing of like if you can do something for somebody where it's like an act of service that is so much more powerful than throwing another fucking incentive at it you know what i mean 100 so i knew you didn't know that one no i i love uh the incentive of life i think that's a great incentive that one day you'll be dead remember you will die um high performance doesn't come from motivation m dash it comes from systems and standards are you supposed to say the m dash

11:30Jack Frimston:oh do you not say that i can't remember anymore m dash that's how you expose yourself isn't it and take your trousers off um the yeah i think you could probably say it simpler couldn't you motivation is temporary and it's fleeting and you should certainly to Naval Ravikant's point, act when inspired and motivated because it's finite, recognize that it's finite. But if we were all waiting to be motivated, well Monday's a write-off, Friday's a write-off no point working them we'll change the working day then so my day starts on Tuesday now instead, nah, actually because that's a write-off now as well there's a hump day in there as well before you know it you can talk yourself out of your whole week i've not slept very well the circumstances weren't perfect so relying on motivation is like saying i really hope it doesn't rain today when you're in england but you've just got no guarantee but what you can do is pack a brolly can't you exactly so i would say why did you do that then i didn't know you were done continue sorry so i would say what's more reliable is habits yes but then so let's and then what was that

12:49Zac Thompson:but let's twist that then from leadership so systems and procedures i think so often leadership gives autonomy but then it's a case of like here there's nothing to follow within our agency we train the team on the same methodology you know the methodology follow this this is the input that's required this is the job to do duh but we know i my last job before before coming on with you was basically get on the phones and just work it out here's here's your training is your system training there is no sales system no sales procedure like if you get all of your sales team and say right okay let's talk about what our sales procedure is would they all say the same thing if they don't actually made such a good point thanks man please so when we were

13:40Jack Frimston:the reason for my very good so we were writing the book sales is therapy available everywhere but actually only on amazon um when we were writing that i was looking at the differentiators of the book because there's a lot of sales books a lot of sales methodologies but the common theme is most sales methodologies focus on product first, so like product-led selling, which would be, can I get you in the car showroom and show you the car? And then in hopes that if I show you the car and tell you how great it is and look like a product expert, you'll buy. Yeah? Whereas if the system is focused around the buyer and the buyer's decision-making behaviors, motivation, and it's much more of a psychological exploration, you'll find that it's kind of much more sticky when you teach it to people than going through systems then because if you've worked at one you're listening to this a business like this or you've dealt with maybe businesses like this the teams that have the product style sell have moments where suddenly they're worried about discounts and suddenly they're playing games oh we don't have this feature and it becomes you get kind of stuck in the mud on on like discount cycles and stuff like that when actually it doesn't matter.

14:54Jack Frimston:And I was saying to a team that we do some training with earlier in the week, if you're in a saturated market where five, ten different companies can all claim to offer exactly what you do, your unique selling point becomes literally how you sell. So everyone else is trying to do a ban, budget authority need time, but you're going, well, why do you need to do anything anyway? What's driving you to do something now? you're the one who's going deeper and getting a deeper understanding who do you think is going to stand out more? all the people that are trying to get to budget or the people that are trying to get to true understanding

15:30Zac Thompson:it's all about them don't ask questions for you ask questions for them lovely I'll give you one more because this one's an interesting one it's not a question I've said this before 33 people don't think it what should whoop say though? nothing yet we're actually not that yet

15:51Jack Frimston:it says knackered yeah

15:54Zac Thompson:if you celebrate 30 % success rate in sales imagine a surgeon celebrating saving 3 out of 10 patients

16:04Jack Frimston:say that to me one more time because I was looking at my whoops go

16:08Zac Thompson:at least you're honest if you celebrate 30 % success rate in sales imagine a surgeon celebrating saving 3 out of 10 patients you know the equivalent is right i don't know what the point is that's trying to make no i don't because obviously a surgeon should save 10 out of 10 and what if it's saying you should hit um 10 out of 10 deals that come through that's also not true because that's not sales but what i've what what what it made me think of is when i hear people talking and celebrating about how they might be one-off commission yeah i've actually got another way

16:44Jack Frimston:you can look at this as well if you thought of the sales job as a yes or a no getting to a yes or a no as that that was the outcome that was the doctor saving the life outcome how many people are getting to a concrete yes or no and i think of it more and i was chatting to other guys in my team this morning about like oh well that's not a no is it what you've just said isn't isn't a no and then coach him through a few different things to change i was like actually just ring them back and just go through that again went for it again on meeting on the board so it's like oh i think if I try to get the no, and actually I might end up with a, no, no, I wouldn't say that.

17:20Jack Frimston:Or yeah, I'd change a few that you might end up at a yes. But even still, if you end up at, yeah, yeah, it's a concrete no, we could never work together. We can never do anything about it. You go in your mind, good, I've done the job. Where you haven't done the job as a salesperson, if you end up on a, well, I'm not sure, don't quite know what they meant by that. Maybe if you don't know, you need to get better. You've missed something. Or they're going to come back to me when at some point they said they would. and what was your bit okay yours was different was my bit my bit was like celebrating the nearly

17:49Zac Thompson:wind and i've heard people and i and it's not to say don't smell the roses but in the past people that probably aren't here anymore i definitely are oh well i was one off commission oh well i nearly here oh i did well this month but i nearly did it it's like do you know i mean i nearly saved his life is isn't really something to shout about i've got good news he isn't he's dead but i didn't nearly save his life yeah exactly um loads of value mate we're really big on giving up front value these days where it's our new sales methodology give value give value give value that was an episode that was giving you value as the audience um just some of our tips and tricks and stories about building a high performance i'm gonna do something that you might shout me for but we get a lot of lovely feedback on the podcast a lot of lovely comments but we're always driving that five star review can you comment can you like it can you subscribe do all of that fun and games and if you subscribe on whatever platform and you leave us a review or you leave us a review on the book whatever you do screenshot it me send it to me or zach and it is going to be low ticket but everybody that does a review is going to get a 30 pound gift card.

19:08Zac Thompson:Review the book, review the podcast, 30 pounds. I've got enough budget for the first 20. Jack Frimston on all handles. Send it me. Let's get you 30 pounds. Anything from you, Tom?

19:22Jack Frimston:My task is slightly different. Steal a car and break into a bank. Thanks for listening.

19:30Zac Thompson:Take care, guys. good to see you yes it is take care