“My opinion is that not everything needs to have an ROI for it to matter.” – Rachel Shi in today’s Tip 908
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Rachel Shi on LinkedIn
Rachel Shi on Sales Success Stories Interview
Vidyard Website
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Seriously my audio editor is taking some well-deserved time off and I’m recording a bunch of these at the peak of this head cold or allergy thing I’m dealing with, but that’s my problem and not yours and the show must go on. Today’s tip is an excerpt from my most recent Sales Success Stories podcast interview with Rachel Shi, Senior Manager of Partnerships at Vidyard. Check this out:
Rachel Shi: Everything you do needs to have a measurable ROI. Right? So I’m sure a lot of the people listening to this podcast, sales leaders listening to this podcast, subscribe to this, it’s something that I’ve encountered in my entire sales career. The question you get is, what CROI of posting on LinkedIn? What’s the CROI of you writing this article? What’s the CROI of this podcast even? I think you just drive yourself crazy thinking about that. And I also think that there are things in life that do not correlate to a direct, measurable ROI but have a measurable value nonetheless.
And it’s because it’s a long game. We could go into this for a very long time. It’s the long game. I think a lot of salespeople are short-sighted. They think month to months or they think quarter to quarter. And I think a lot of sales leaders, when they shouldn’t sales leaders should think further out. But they often enable this kind of myopic approach. And I think it ultimately comes at a detriment to everybody. So, my opinion is that not everything needs to have an ROI for it to matter.
Scott Ingram: So well said. And I’m going to double click on that and let you go a little bit longer on this idea, because I think you’re right. We’ve gotten into such short-term thinking. Right. We’re just looking at the numbers month to month, quarter to quarter, and we’re not thinking about that bigger picture. And I think there’s so many examples to where it has an exponential impact, if you will take a longer kind of multi-year type of you.
Rachel Shi: And so it’s something that’s bugged me my entire sales career for sure. Right. And even the idea of, Oh, you had a great quarter, but now it’s next quarter, you’re back to zero, you’re back to nothing. Even that sort of stuff set in just, I think has ongoing like harmful effects, to be honest, because that’s not how people work. People need to feel like that their efforts have meant something and efforts are the outcomes of your efforts are cumulative over time. They’re not something that is done months on month or quarter to quarter. A lot of the efforts that you put in, especially if you think of sort of enterprise sales or even partnerships like a lot of the seeds that you plant and a lot of the conversations that you build and sort of influence exerted at all different levels of organization. That is what ultimately culminates in your big deal at the very end of your big partnership that you’ve acquired. Right? Again, I think anyone who has their brain switch on can recognize this fact. And I think this kind of this shortsighted type of mentality burns people out. It leads people to think that they’re not good at their jobs because maybe they’ve not had quite a month or two, even if they had a really good quarter prior, because, again, it’s just not recognized. Right?
Revenue leaders, almost the celebration of the final product, is a celebration of the final plays deal. “Oh, congratulations, John close a six-figure deal.” But what went into that is not considered. It’s the inputs versus outputs thing. The output is celebrated when really it’s the inputs, it’s the things that you’ve done up until that point. That should be because that’s what’s going to get you that output. Right? And we all know of the sales reps who close big deals but didn’t really do anything for it. Right? You get a big inbound lead, someone who’s just ready to buy the trigger. They’ve got the budget, et cetera. Closing that deal, that type of deal shouldn’t be celebrated, in my opinion. Or it shouldn’t be like you shouldn’t pretend that some type of immense sales skill went into closing a deal like that.
So I think that’s kind of the bone that I have to pick with the sales profession, sort of the way that sales leaders look at the development of their sales reps, because, again, it leads to good people churning out of companies. It leads to burning out and not feeling like their efforts are rewarded because the wrong things are looked at ultimately.
Scott Ingram: For a link to this full episode and to connect with Rachel, just click over to DailySales.Tips/908 and we’ll have everything for you there.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!