Why Sales and HR Must Work Together with David Apicella

Welcome back to the podcast this week and it's great to do, always the pleasure for me to do interviews, especially with people I know very well, good friends.

And the man I've got on with me today is a HR expert.

He's a man that's had 25 years, if not more, if not longer, maybe a bit longer, of working at a senior, senior level with some very large organizations, working around the elements around people, organization development, you know, human resources, personnel.

And what we're going to talk about today is all the elements around how all that interface and how you can use, you know, key things to lead a sales team from a HR and OD organization development perspective and all the other things that entails in that.

So welcome to the podcast.

David Apicella, how are you?

Great, thanks, Jim.

Pleasure.

I'm very well, thank you.

Very well.

Good.

Yeah, I gave, I gave a bit of an overview to sort of, you know, who you were.

And we're going to talk a lot about, you know, sales and sort of talk about some elements around sales and people, you know, today, around compensation, around leadership, around culture, around a number of those areas.

But give, give everyone a bit of a background if they don't know who you are because I know your history and your track record and who you've worked for.

Give everyone a bit of a background.

Yep.

So yes, I'm David Appeller.

As Jim said, I've been it.

When you said 25 years, it does sound a long time.

I.

It's actually a little bit longer, but I don't like saying more than 25 years because it starts to make me feel very old.

Yeah, no, listen, I've kind of educated in hr, human resources background and then went into industry, worked for various main large style corporate organizations in an international basis.

I worked my way up through those organizations.

You know, 25 years later I'm running my own company.

Really helping, I use the broad term transformation.

You know, I help organizations transform and go through whatever change it is that they're working through.

And ultimately everything comes through people.

So it's about providing, you know, solutions through people.

And I'll keep it as broad as that because it touches so many elements when you start talking about people.

But yeah, I'd love to talk about more, more about that.

It's a great point you mentioned about solutions through people.

And I think that's also a reason why I wanted to get you on the podcast because you've got so much knowledge and expertise around this area.

It's funny, isn't it?

How have you, how much have you seen the workforce change over that 25, 30 year career, career you've had?

Because it's big, isn't it?

I guess what the way.

And we're talking maybe at the end around where AI and a lot of things are going.

But talk to me a bit about that change from when you first changed.

I mean, in your introduction you used the word personnel, which, which takes me back donkey's years to when human resources used to be called the personnel department.

I think what's changed, organizations have changed with the global landscape and with the competitive nature that we see in industry.

Technology obviously changed massively and organizations have to adapt and go with that.

But I think there's a common theme in there.

You know, you, there's always an element, there's always been change, you know, going through different stages of the, you know, life cycle that I've seen, whether it's a product life cycle or organizational life cycle.

So I think the constant is change.

What organizations need to do, I think more than ever is manage that change more effectively.

And probably the biggest difference is manage that change more rapidly.

I think change is happening probably much more rapidly than it ever used to in the past.

And I come back to people again to, to, you need, you need great leadership, you need great managers to, to manage that as effectively as possible.

And that's the challenge though, isn't it?

Because the things we don't like as human beings is change.

Right.

The things that we don't like.

Most people don't like the thought of being, you know, if you take for example, they've had a role that they've been doing for a period of six months or seven or a year or whatever, or even ten years longer cases.

And suddenly someone comes in and says, oh, you've got to do, do it in this way now.

And it's, it's a challeng it to move in that direction and get people.

To even think that way.

Exactly.

I think any, anything that puts people in that space of uncomfortableness makes it challenging and change can be one of those.

And that's why I think you kind of, you can, you can manage change or manage, I use the word transformation a lot.

Manage, manage transformation into that change effectively.

You know, I've seen it done great and I've seen it done terribly.

There are, yeah, absolutely.

You know, and there are, there are, there's a process that you can apply to it which helps organizations and people step through it.

But really it comes down to keep, it comes down to Leadership.

And it comes down to great communication.

When you talk about change, it's really, you know, start from the basics, what's changing guys?

You know, what is actually changing?

And really, and that sounds like an easy question, but you really have to identify where are we now?

And what's changing?

And then, then you can start to manage and put processes and everything in place to kind of walk people through that.

I guess you said, you said some good examples and some bad examples.

I guess you've probably seen some people because when you're working at a senior level like you have, you probably got, I mean, I know, as you know, I worked at a director level in a European country and there was, I'm not going to say the names of these people.

There was a couple of guys I worked with in Italy who were quite, you know, just get it done, just do it.

This is a big, this is the big thing, thing we got to do here.

I don't care.

Just make it happen.

And it was like, this isn't the right in the playbook for it.

I guess you've seen quite a few of them as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, and you learn from them, don't you?

You know, you kind of, you know, I don't want to pick out, you know, certain companies or, or situations actually, because you can be in the same company and changes manage differently within those different areas or different sectors.

You know, the common denominators probably down to leadership.

Again, great leaders will manage change effectively.

And, you know, don't be surprised if you're poorer leaders or people that don't, don't manage it effectively.

And, and there's a, there's patterns.

Just out of interest, when you say good, great leaders and you're, you know, in, again, in your experience working with people, what have been some of the great traits or examples of, you know, some of the best leaders you've worked with, what have they done differently or what have they showed in their work that makes them so.

So I'll talk about from a personal perspective, some experience, you know, direct on that.

I've had some, some greatly.

So first of all, trust, trust has got to be embedded in that, in that relationship.

Relationship is another one.

You know, I feel that with great leaders, I've had a connection and built relationships with some of the traits I've seen from individuals.

I always remember one, one individual, and I won't mention her name because I don't embarrass her, but she was one of the busiest people in the organization, very senior in the organization.

But whenever we had time together, it was always, she was always in the moment and she always had time for me.

She would listen attentively, she, she would show empathy, she would understand situation, and she would coach me, you know, she would coach me to provide the solutions which helped me grow.

And I suppose all of those elements are what we want to see in our, in ourselves and other people.

Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it, as well, sometimes when you leave it because you've been in leadership roles and we're all, you know, we all grow and get older and become more wiser and mature as we, as we.

And we learn and, you know, I know some of the decisions that I've made when I was a lot younger and I wouldn't be making them now because, you know, experience teaches you a lot of those things, doesn't it, really?

I guess so.

I guess what you're also looking for in leadership is someone that can, can understand that.

And, and, and just on that point as well, just before we move in some of the stuff around sales, how do you, how do you spot, you know, in your, you know, again, you, you've met.

Yeah.

Especially in the, in the people element of the world.

Thousands of people.

What are the sort of core characteristics you look for in not just good leaders, but good people?

Is there, are there any sort of things that have been where you go back and go, yeah, actually, I was right.

Those are the things that I see consistently.

Get it.

We think this is a good customer.

I think communication is, is a strong one.

Great leaders, I think great at communicating.

I think great leaders have strong understanding of the vision and clarity of where they want to go, and they use that great communication skills to repaint a clear vision for the future.

Great leaders, for me, connect with people at all levels and they've got that ability to do that, whether it's at the board level or, you know, to people working, you know, at the operation level, at the, on the Gemba, on the, on the shop floor, wherever it might be.

Yep.

They can connect with people and they've got that skill to ask the right questions, build a connection and start to build a relationship.

And I've seen great leaders, all great leaders have been able to build those relationships, connect, provide vision, provide clarity.

Great leaders also need to be.

Have the ability to make the right decisions, actually the right decision.

They need to have the ability to make the decisions.

You know, sometimes they're not always the right decisions.

Sometimes in only hindsight will give us that, that wisdom.

But have the ability to make decisions at a time when decisions need to be made.

And that doesn't need to say, doesn't mean to say it needs to be a quick decision, needs to be a timely decision.

It's really interesting you say that actually, because Jeff Bezos always talks about it doesn't he talks about.

He makes, tries to make.

I read somewhere that he makes, tries to make three key decisions per day or per morning.

And he always uses it in conversation around a decision being what is a door decision?

Is it a door that you go in and you can come back?

Is it a door that shuts afterwards?

Or is it a door that, you know, it's not, you know, you know, once you've made the decision, it's made.

And.

But I think it's really interesting you mentioned there about being able to make decisions because that is the, the skill of leaders, business skill of running a business.

Right.

It's.

It's been able to take all the facts, weigh them up and go actually based upon this.

And how do you, just out of interest, how do you juggle that with that element of building connection and people, you know, people liking people and being this sort of great leader people look up to and then having to make a tough decision which might be to let team go or to let a department go.

And how do, how have people.

You know, I think we're all wired different.

You know, we're all different, aren't we?

We're all different.

And I think we'd all have our, our strengths and areas that we, we know we need to work more on.

So I think some leaders are very natural at that and some leaders are very natural and quite comfortable about approaching maybe a stranger in the organization or, or somebody that don't really have a relationship and, and starting that conversation.

Other leaders, it's going to be a trained skill that they have and they become good at it.

That might not naturally be their strength, but the person they're talking to doesn't realize that because they've learned this skill and they've learned how to do this.

So, you know, I'm trying not to put everybody in the same box.

So the secret to that is really, you know, understand yourself what is, what are, what am I great at?

What am I not great at?

And build.

This is where process and plans can come into play.

Yeah.

If, if you believe that the people are the success of your organization, then you need to spend time with your people.

You need to get that balance right between, you know, whether it's the board Meetings or you know, you know, setting budgets, whatever else it might be to, to getting onto the ground and being with your people.

So you can, you can do that.

You know, you can say, okay, you know, I'm gonna make sure that 20 of my week, or 30 or 10%, whatever number you depict, I'm gonna make sure that I'm gonna spend time doing this.

So sorry to interrupt the podcast, but if you've got a sales issue at.

The moment that's really hacking you off.

Challenge me, I'll help you solve it.

Reach out to me.

Drop an email at hello Amesworth Business and I will help you solve your sales challenge.

There's not one I don't think I can't handle.

There's no sales issue that I can't resolve.

I've seen them all over my career.

I want to help you solve yours.

So reach out to me.

Let's make sure we handle your sales challenges and fix them so you can get back to smiling again.

Now back to the podcast.

I think it's so important actually I wrote a blog about it yesterday around actually getting on the front lines.

I talked about how in sales, you know, and we'll talk about some sales stuff in a moment.

You know, great leaders get on the front lines.

You know, they get amongst their, their prospects, they get amongst their customers, they get, they have convers with, with the people that are paying the money because, so that they can really get their ear to the ground and find out what's going on in the industry and what's happening and also lead from the front and.

Absolutely, absolutely.

You know, I'm working with an organization at the moment and we're helping them go through a large transformation.

And, and there's a, we, we're working, we're using the process which is a, a well known kind of industry standard.

It's called IWS Integrated Work Systems and we've adapted it for us.

But one of the core principles is around what we call servant leadership.

And servant leadership really is the role of the leader.

First we need to provide vision, clarity, etc.

But the role of leader is to serve the individuals that are making the product.

In this case, you know, their role, their sole role is to serve them.

So serve them.

You need to understand their pain points, you need to be able to coach them, you need to be able to develop them, you need to be able to connect with them.

So it's an interesting, you know, it becomes that inverted pyramid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Becomes this way.

And actually so in that sense you've got to be thinking about the majority of my time.

I need to be, I need to be connecting with my people.

I need to be under what are their problems?

How can I remove those barriers?

Because I'm in a position to be able to do that.

And then that becomes, that then starts to reflect in the behaviors that you're looking to enforce into your organization and creates the culture that you're trying to create.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's an interesting model.

I don't know that more specifically well, but I think it's so important, like you say, to make great.

There is this premonition, there's this thought process that leaders are all sitting in their ivory tower and sitting in their big office and never get dancing and make seagull management, for want of a better phrase, you know and unfortunately a lot of leaders will do that.

But I always talk to people a lot about.

I'm interested to get your view on this around EQ and IQ because you have some very bright, talented, incredible people have got brains the size of buses, you know, that can do incredible things but then can't connect with their audience and can't connect with their team and can't shake them in, you know, shape them in an army.

And I remember reading once that Sundar Pshai who's Google's CEO was appointed not because he had the best iq, you know, in a very bright company like Google is because he had the best emotional like you know, emotional quote or his iq.

His intelligent, his emotional intelligence was just incredibly high.

And I guess, I guess you've seen that as, as another thing that's really key for, for people.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, and you know, it's like you need that balance, don't you?

Ideally you've got the two, the, the two don't often fit hand in hand very nicely.

And yeah I've seen, I've seen that in, in individuals.

But what the other trait that great leaders do, they surround themselves with great people.

Yeah.

Surround south were great teams and they supplement those areas that perhaps not so much that might not be their play to their strengths but their team can deliver.

But the strength of the leader can actually get.

Well first of all recognize what team to surround yourself with and then how to get the best out of that team which then you know, listen, my goal surround myself with as much people that are much better than me as possible.

Which is not easy but you know, you know, I think you bang rightly bang on that.

As you know, I surrounded myself at university with the best people in the Next living university in university tests.

That's what you have to do sometimes.

Right?

But.

No, but it all checks aside.

I mean, and for those that are watching, me and Dave go back a long way.

We've, we spent some time, a lot of time at university together.

But, but, but I think that that actually that whole element of this is also around, like you say, being able to spot where your weaknesses are.

And I think that's one of the other good things.

And we're going to move on some of the elements around sales in a moment.

But actually, the thing I talk to people a lot about is know where you're weak, know where you've got challenges, know where, you know, for me, I know I'm, I'm good at, you know, the sales, engagement, people, communicational side of things, but I'm not the best at what I would call more of the analytical data, you know, detail around, be able to make sure that plans are put in place.

So I have to build a team of people that can help me in those areas.

And that's so important, isn't it, to know, you know, whether it's through DISC or through Myers Briggs or any of these other different methods, to know your own situation and where and what you need to build a team that can then, you know, cover all bases.

Yeah, no, I think 100.

Right.

I think there are some wonderful tools out there that we can, we can use, you know, discovery insights.

I know it's a favorite of yours as well.

One of mine as well.

Hogan's another nice one.

But all these tools are great and they supplement quite often most things that we know.

Most things that we know.

And I, you, you know, I could have probably said, but we could have had a chat and we'd have, you know, with a little bit of conversation, we'd kind of got down to that point that you maybe not be great at, you know, the analytical side of stuff.

You don't need a tool necessarily, but the tools help.

And I always say the tools give you a ticket to the game.

They give you that opportunity to have the conversation, that coaching conversation, that developing conversation with the individuals that you're talking about.

And it adds some validity to perhaps what we already knew.

The good, the good thing is that the, the thing is there's also these blind spots.

Yeah.

So these kind of like.

Well, we're not, we, we're not aware of what we're not aware of.

Aware of.

Yeah.

So they can help with that.

And we've all got, you know, blind spots, unconscious bias, and all this sort of stuff.

Yeah, I remember, I remember going through one of these discovery insight, probably like, I don't know, would have been 20 odd years ago.

And I read my report and I looked at my blind spots and I was like, read it.

And it said, oh, sometimes you can be a little bit over controlling.

And I read it and I thought, really, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't see it.

And the coach we were working with said, listen, if you don't see and you don't recognize it, chat to somebody that you know, somebody that knows you really well, that you trust.

You know, maybe it's your partner or a long term friend or whatever it might be.

So I got home and I spoke to my wife and I said, jody, I said, it says here that I can be at times I can be over controlled.

And she's like, oh my God, that is so you.

She's like, that is so you.

I was like, and you know what?

And so what that does for me, it creates a greater self awareness because nobody wants to be that.

Yeah.

And what it is with all of us, all of our strengths.

So on the flip side of that, you know, I'm organized, I'll get things done, I'm timely, you know, things I'll execute, things happen, you know, but when our, when our strengths outweigh, when we use our strengths wrongly and they kind of just tilt over to the negative side, that for me could show us, you know, over controlling.

So I need to be very conscious of that, that I stay in the good zone and don't flip it over.

And, and we've all got these whatever it might be because you know, none of us are perfect.

But it's the self awareness is the key.

No, you're right.

It's so important actually.

And like you say, the elements around this.

So look, we're going to talk about some sales stuff.

Really.

This is a sales related podcast where leadership and what you've talked, what we've talked about so far is so important.

I mean just, just talk about some of the, you know, and I want to just talk about this because one of the key conversations that I get with a lot of leaders and people that talk about is sales incentive plans and you know, how to put them in place.

And there's a whole lot of questions around it.

And especially in large sales teams and the organizations you had would have had some incredibly large sales teams.

Sales incentive plans are always the bit of the topic of conversation that comes to someone, you know, in a, in a People, environment, and especially you and your global HR director going to have lots of people, whether it's at the incentive plan for the executives or the sale.

You know, talk to me a little bit about some of the plans you've input in in the past that have worked really, really well.

Sure.

So I've experienced lots over the past, you know, whether, whether they're, they're, they're, they're simple ones and local plans or whether we start kind of like scaling across continents, different countries, different, different sectors of, of sales, business, et cetera.

I think there's a pattern to what works.

Well, first of all, you got to.

What you're creating, will start to create the behaviors that you want to mirror.

So I think you don't start with your sales plan.

You start with what are the behaviors and skills that I'm trying to incorporate in the organization.

And then you design your sales plan around that.

There are short term plans, long term plans, individual sales plans, team based plans, and you can have a combination of all these.

They need to be transparent, they need to be the good ones, I'd say need to have clarity.

They need to be transparent, they need to be fair as well.

And the other one I would add is once you've defined kind of what behaviors or what traits you want to be setting.

And as an example, if you want to drive price, that's the behavior you want to, that's your strategy is to drive price.

Now driving price is going to create a certain type of behavior.

So before you start putting that into your incentive plan, think about the types of behaviors that driving price is going to create because that's what will happen, you know, so, and you know, you need to.

And the consequences of that.

So you need to be able to make sure that your individuals that are tasked with, in this case driving price have got, they fully understand it, they've got the right skill set to do that.

They've got a good leader around them that can coach them and guide them in those moments because well, a sales plan might be quite simple, but the ambiguity around the customer and around driving price is massive.

So you need to be, you need to be very want to say, just be mindful of what it is you're trying to drive with what whatever plan it is that you're setting up.

I think it's so important you say that about the behaviors as well because I've a number of organizations where I've.

Yeah.

And about that strategic goal as well.

When I've had conversations with them and I've Said, okay, so what are you.

What's your.

What are you trying to achieve here?

What's your, you know, what's your core goal as an organization?

And that's all I'll say.

We want to increase our margin.

Okay, so talk about price.

You want to meet me.

We want to sell at a higher price because our margins are low and we want to get okay.

And I like it.

And I say, okay, so talk to me about how you did.

I was just implemented, told the sales people to focus on higher margin.

I'm like, okay, but yeah, we, the salespeople are.

I will say salespeople are the spear of the arrow.

Okay?

They're the end point to go engage with the customer.

They're not necessarily the people that are going to be the arrow, the body of the arrow.

That's the job of the organization to be, you know, but.

But yet you'll find sometimes that they'll, you know, someone say, I want to focus on margin or I want to focus on this new product area, this new solution area.

We're going to go and sell that.

And I go, great.

So how are the sales people compensated for that?

Well, the same as normal.

I'm like, right, but we want to move in that direction, Right?

So you want to move.

So if you give people the same as they do for doing what they do right now versus this new era that you want to move and be, you know, the leader in, in the next two years, how are you going to change, in your words, change behavior to get them to focus on that?

Oh, we haven't thought of that.

And I'm like, okay, well, part of the challenge, right, if you want to.

If you want to be this.

Transform this company to be something different in a new product era because the old market is dying away, you've got to then incentivize people to do more of that work or.

And that might mean that you have to eat up a bit of, you know, give a bit more commission away initially to get people going.

But you need to accept that.

And it's funny how organizations sometimes don't do that, isn't it?

Yeah, I think you're right.

And it comes down to two things that spread to mind there.

First of all, when you talk about margin, when you start putting margin in a plan, one of the things that I always hear back from salespeople is, well, I can.

Yeah, but I don't control the costs.

I don't control all the costs.

So how can I.

How can you.

Now you're going to Incentivize me on margin.

You know, I.

But I don't control all the costs that are sitting in a different area that we've got no control over.

So, you know, that's a.

That's a little.

Watch out.

Yeah, that's a very good point.

You know, so that's why, I mean, price would be a.

A different animal than margin.

It's just.

Just one to think about.

I'd lost my thought.

I thought there.

But the.

You're right.

You got to think about, where are you?

You need to be competitive in the marketplace.

You need to be fair in the marketplace.

Sales individuals and sales leaders will.

Will get a good feel of what fairness looks like.

Yeah.

But they've got a massive feel of what unfairness looks like.

So that's.

That's.

That's your.

Watch out.

You can be, you know, you've got to be.

It's hard to be everything to all people.

But if you're generally trying to be fair, people will understand you're being fair.

If it's unreasonable, then it will stick out like a sore thumb and you'll never get the right behaviors or results that you're looking to achieve.

So they will spot unfairness.

And just on that point, because one of the challenges that sometimes companies face isn't it is to juggle this sort of the sales incentive.

Because one of the things that a lot of people in the rest of organizations, I'm sure you've seen this a lot of times moan at salespeople about is, oh, they're out and about having nice lunches and traveling around.

They're doing this and doing this, and then they get paid money to, you know, they.

They get.

They get paid money to.

To do this.

And the perception of sales people in organizations can be a little bit.

You've met thousands of people that.

It can be, you know, challenging sometimes.

What, what causes that?

And is there anything salespeople can do to try and sort of.

Because by the end of the day, as I always say, they're the strikers in the team that score the goals.

Right?

Yeah.

I think first, you know, as long as history has been, you know, around, you know, there's always a conflict between sales and ops.

This.

As long as it's a healthy one, then that's fine.

I think it's really about.

It's like, mostly it's about understanding and there's about building trust as well.

You know, like, there needs to be.

If, honestly, if.

If somebody's starts criticizing a salesperson for taking a customer out for lunch.

They don't understand the business well enough.

They don't understand the reasons why you're doing that.

So then it comes back down to education, if that, if that flares up at any point in time and we'll have our own ways of kind of, you know, getting our points across there.

But yeah, it's generally, it's not.

It's.

It's about education and understanding.

Sometimes it's naivety, sometimes it's lack of information.

Yeah, I, I always say to people, you know, let sales people are.

Can be a little bit, you know, sometimes you go like.

But ultimately I said in most organizations, you're not.

You, you know, your job's on the line in sales, right?

In sales, your job, if you don't hit the results and get results, ultimately you don't stay in the.

In.

In the job, whereas most people ops will.

It takes a bit longer to get, you know, you've got to do your job.

But, you know, you, if you don't achieve results in sales, it's, it's.

It's a, you know, you're gone route.

Route, which is difficult.

But just on, but on that point around, how have you seen organizations in the past juggling the sort of compensation element?

Because again, the compensation is a key thing for salespeople.

They want to earn commission.

They want to earn, you know, incentive plans that are over and above what they earn.

But ob.

There's sometimes commercial realities between, you know, what people can afford and doing that.

How, how have you, you know, juggle that challenge when organizations you work with.

It'S complex, if I'm honest.

You know, you start playing around with, with what people can.

Can earn and bring home.

It brings complexity.

So you've got to be, I'd say once again, you have to be fair on that.

You need to understand really, what is a competitive.

What is a competitive package?

When we get down to the detail, we end up talking about total cash.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Total cash is everything that you earn as a package in your employment with that organization.

So when you're talking about total cash, then there might be a, A base element of it that.

And, and you can decide as an organization.

Once again, I keep coming down behaviors, but what, what kind of, what kind of culture are you trying to drive?

You do want a low base with a really high variable.

And then we look at the total cash of that and then we can say, well, actually, is the total cash when we start thinking about that competitive in the marketplace and there's loads of data out there that we can compare, you know, you can go complete opposite, you know, commission plans, commission plans only, you know, which I've seen more common in the US to be honest.

We've got their strengths and weaknesses, you know, like I've seen like drives really can really drive performance if you've got those right numbers that the sales people first of all believe in and trust and can be achievable.

Second, you've got to always have your company hat on and not give away everything.

You're not give your margins away in your commission that you might pay into the individuals.

And I've seen that happen.

It's a challenging thing I've seen.

I've been with MDs where they've literally said, oh, I'm giving someone.

I remember, you know, it was an insurance company and I worked with about three years ago and they said yeah, we give someone every time they bring a deal in, then we give them ten pounds.

I remember talking to my member thinking.

Okay, that is insurance.

I was like, what's the value of the deal?

The value of the deal was like range from 800 to like 3,000 quid.

And I was like okay, and out of that what's your margins and it or should bring a profit?

Oh well, we work on very good margins, you know, here and you know, you know, you know, 60 plus and, and more and because if not higher.

And I was like and how long do you expect to keep these people?

Well we expect to keep them for four or five years.

So I was like, I was going through the numbers, I was going, okay, so you're going to earn this amount of money for this period of time and you're giving yourselves guys, people a 10 out.

I'm like, I said interesting because it wouldn't interest me exactly.

Trust, you know, fairness.

Exactly.

They think.

But it's those elements, isn't it?

And it's working.

They sell them.

And one of the things I think a lot of companies Don do well enough is they don't look at average customer lifetime and average customer value and they don't go actually and say, well actually we might have this customer for the next five years or four years and they're going to do £50,000 of us for a year of which we're going to make X money profit on that.

Well hold up a second.

If that salesperson brings in a customer that could generate as 100,000 pound in profit, what's fair to pay them and people don't want it.

People don't like the thought of giving someone 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 up front.

But actually that's more fair realistically, especially if that salesperson has done the work to bring that deal in.

Yeah, I think I wrote it down earlier.

I meant to say it.

But one thing, you know what's a good, when you're thinking about designing, you know, plans, what, what's really good about it?

One thing is it needs to be customer centric.

So it needs to be customer based, customer centric.

Listen to you talk about the different customers there and margins, et cetera.

The other thing you really need, you need to really understand your customer.

You need to understand what type of customer they might be.

And customers might fall into different buckets.

We've certainly, I've worked a lot in the past with customer segmentation that might determine how.

Perhaps you might want to start thinking about structuring.

Well, I'll talk about, you know, I say incentives plan, but how you might want to start structuring the behaviors that you want to create within those customers.

You know, you might have as very large corporate, global customers that you're keeping long term and there's a very strategic play with that.

Or there could be very short transactional customers or the behaviors with these two could be very different.

So you can just, you need to, you need to understand it and think about it.

But it's, that's your strategy that drives that.

That.

Yeah, it's such a good point.

Like you say, it's, it's what, what are you, what are you doing?

And ultimately then, and I think to coin it, if there's one thing I think we'll take from today's conversation that you're driving towards is what behaviors you want to create in the sales team and the people that work in your business.

And ultimately your business strategy determines those behaviors and how you then implement that through 100.

Honestly, Jim, the easy part is correcting incentive blood.

That's the easy part.

Yeah, that's, you know, that's.

We can, we can, that.

That's the easy part.

The hard part is, first of all, have a strategy that you've set in the organization and think about the culture and behaviors that you want to drive.

And the sales plan will help nudge towards that.

Listen, it's, it's a small part of it, you know, how you lead your people, how you coach your people, how you develop your people and everything else that builds the culture will create that.

But yeah, sales plan, you know, there's an old coin, an old term.

They say, show me what you measure and what you value and I'll show you the behaviors that you're going to be seeing in your, your organization.

Nice.

Nice.

I like it.

Yeah.

In other words, if you don't want people to, to, to.

To do.

To go off into different tangents, different directions, give them a, give them a pathway to follow that is in line with what the organization wants.

And that's again, maybe it comes back down to a lot of the work you do, which is a lot of organizations unfortunately lose track of that a little bit, don't they?

They, they, they, they have a plan or a goal or a vision of where they're trying to get to and then, and then, you know, market conditions or market performance or the numbers start, you know, being a bit different.

And that's where I get, I guess where you get really.

You need to go back to that.

These things you mentioned about leadership, that's where you need leaders again.

No, no, no.

We're sticking down this path.

We're not changing.

We're not going out.

I know this is the right path to take and we're going to do this and we're going to weather this storm and we're going to get through this and we're going to carry on.

Whereas a lot of leaders will think about politics now and some bad leaders, as we both know in, in.

Especially in the UK in recent years, where they've just chopped and changed depending on what they, what they feel is.

Right.

Right.

Rather than actually saying, no, I'm going to go down this path and believe in it.

Yeah.

No, 100% that.

I, I was thinking this morning actually you could have two.

Two.

You'd have two.

Two sales leaders, you know, with the same resources, same customers, similar accounts, but you can have very different results.

Yeah.

Why?

What drives those results?

And it will come down probably to the leader in that organization, you know, coaching, driving the right behaviors, reinforcing the skills or behaviors or the values that you're looking to embed in that team.

A great example at the moment is Manchester United, just to use a football analogy, because it sits with us both.

Apologies for those people that don't like football.

The, the recent change of manager in Manchester United side, you know, with Carrick coming in, it's more or less had the same team.

Yeah.

What has changed?

The fortune of their results.

You know, three big wins against top sides in the organization with the same people.

Yep.

You know, and you can apply the same kind of principle and we can start analyzing what it is that's changed that.

But you Know, there are many examples in life where we can see that happens.

A big thing about the behaviors I jotted down earlier I wanted to mention, we talk about, you know, what does it drive.

One area to kind of watch out is you need to think about the individualistic type approach that you might create by setting up a certain type of sales plan versus a team approach.

So generally collaboration and working as a team is probably what you would like to achieve in your organization.

We can't do everything on our own.

So you might want to start thinking about how do you structure that to create those right behaviors.

Yeah, yeah, no, you're right.

And I think it's like you say, and it's one of the chat leads on to one of my next questions actually.

Because one of the challenges a lot around some salespeople is that they can become incredibly successful at what they do, but yet they are, they don't want to fit into the organization's culture or they don't want to, you know, they're the very much the lone wolfs or what you might call them.

They're very good at what they do, but they don't want to abide by the rules and the structure of the organization.

They don't want to do what everyone else is doing.

How do you, what advice do you give for anyone listening to this that's maybe got a sales team that's got someone that's performing well, they get the numbers in, they don't want to lose them from their team, but then they just don't want to buy into anything else.

So.

Good question.

Seen it as well.

So first of all, irrelevant of what role you're in.

Whether it's a sales role or a senior leadership role.

No individual is ever bigger than the organization.

So but coming back to your example with, with sales, you know, this, this sales individual, you have to weigh up short term games versus the long term impact.

So if the short term, you know, and generally it's a long term impact you need to be thinking about with your organization, you know, because they're, I use this analogy so quite often actually, you know, you can have a salesperson that hits, hits all the results, smashing their sales targets.

Nobody ever wants to work with this guy ever again though, because they're so obnoxious.

They're just, you know, they're going against all the values and ethics that you, you're trying to instill in that organization.

And it's creating this longer term undercurrent.

And if you as a leader or you know, the owner of that company are seen to be supporting it, supporting that or even encouraging that.

You know, you have to, to look hard in the mirror.

So you really have to really think about you're going to have to maybe in this case sacrifice short term gains for longer term growth and success.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Because that probably leads me on to another question I have around, around the culture because obviously you've done a huge amount of work in culture and behaviors and building those.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Because I look at.

There's a lot, especially in the wider world I know of a, a CEO actually I probably not going to know, but he might watch this podcast, a guy called Bernard Looney who was the CEO at bp and I remember reading and seeing some stuff around.

You know, he'd taken the company through huge period of growth, you know, massive for a bp, a big, you know, multinational worldwide organization.

Huge period of growth.

But he'd had some, you know, let's call it.

I'm not quite sure there was a few conversations around whether how he'd interacted with other maybe female members of the team.

I don't know quite.

Yeah, won't go into too much detail because I want to be sued but, but you get the gist of it and, and the business made the decision to let him go, right.

Obviously he left that organization.

And I was thinking about that, I was thinking, wow, you know, that's, that's, that's, you know, some people criticize them at the time, but then you also look at it and go, that's actually an example of, of, of maybe making a, a just a tough decision on someone that was doing incredibly well, but for the right, for the good of that organization long term or for the values or the culture they wanted to create.

And, and trying to do that is a challenge, isn't it?

Real challenge.

And they're really hard decisions, you know, and I've seen organizations battle through these decisions.

You know, normally it's linked to the, you know, there's a perception this individual is, you know, the customer.

We've only got this customer because of this one individual.

If you've only got this customer to one individual, then I think you need to take a step back and start thinking about the value that you're offering that, that customer for a start.

Because if that's the case, you're on a, you're on a very fragile problem.

So.

Yeah, it's a challenge making those tough calls, isn't it?

It's, it's A big thing to do.

But like you say, so in your view would be if someone's listening to this and they've got maybe the team that's challenging, but it's not achieving what they want to and is just being that difficult person.

That's not, you know, because again, the other thing I always think is that, that go back to your thing about fairness.

I've seen sales teams where you've had one person that's really successful not update the CRM and not update and not, you know, not bother to turn into, into team meetings and don't do a few things but yet get the results.

And then what that happens is that everyone else then in the team is going, well, so and so doesn't do it.

So I need.

Do I need, do I need to do it?

And before you know it, you've then got anarchy in a, in a, you know, team of 15, 20 people.

Healthy culture.

Exactly.

And everyone's going, oh, well, stuff you because of this reason.

And it's a challenge, isn't it, to, to do that.

But your advice would be, you know, deal with it rather than let it fly.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, I'm not saying exit that person immediately.

That's, that's the, normally that's the last resort.

Hopefully, you know, it becomes through that coaching, discussions, self awareness, understanding.

Do you realize that this behavior is creating X, y and Z, etc.

And he tried to develop that individual and develop them to be.

Because in an ideal world, listen, if you can harness these wonderful skills that this individual has in a more positive way.

Yeah, well, keep them, you know, kind of.

We want, we want more of you, you know, so that's the, that's the, that's the trick.

It's a great point.

And it's not just a tip that I've done with people.

I've had a couple of people in these situations.

Well, what I've actually done is I've spent time with them.

So what I've actually said to them is, look, I'm going to take you out for lunch, okay.

I'm going to take you out for a bit for dinner or for a coffee or a beer or whatever.

And I'm going to tell you, and I, and I spend my time getting to know them and I spend my time really trying to actually understand.

Tell me about you, tell me about your career, what's driven you, what's got you to this place, what's, what's achieved your success.

And I've actually spent time trying to understand them as an individual.

And what that's taught me is you then find out.

When you probe, it's like with any sales and business situation, you find out really what's going on beneath the surface.

And ultimately it's because something happened or whatever else.

And then you go, ah, now I know why.

Because I've understood that person what's going on and now they feel a bit more listened to, they're a bit more warm.

Warm to move to the other side.

Right.

And it's like anything, it's about time and having the ability to understand people.

On a, on a, on a journey.

If you could 100 Jim, if you can understand that, then you're also in a place to kind of, maybe kind of change or remove whatever barriers or perceptions that might have been in place to create a more effective individual.

So it's just a conscious of time saying, you know, you've got lots on, you know, you, you kindly, because you're based in, in Switzerland, because you've been there for a number of years, you're an hour ahead of me in your days.

We won't be carrying on for, for over the day.

But this is a really interesting talk about it a lot.

Just, you know, in terms of any final things around sales compensation plans.

You mentioned about behaviors, but any other final things around that you want to just put in there for people to, that are listening to this going what should I do?

Or how should it.

And maybe they should again talk to me or talk to you or have a conversation with us as to how these things can be put together.

But anything else you wanted to just mention around, what are the key things that.

Yeah, I mean we recap.

I'd say creating the sales plan is the easy part.

Think about the behaviors that you're looking to embed in your organization.

But when you do get to create it, I'd say first of all, do it in collaboration.

One thing I didn't mention it, never call it an HR sales plan.

Oh, that's the worst thing you could ever do.

This is a, this is a commercial business sales plan.

If you start putting HR in the words, you're on a.

You're on a hiding to nothing.

Yeah.

And where I've been successful as well is to create them in collaboration with the leaders and the people that are, you know, leading that business.

So I'd say do it in collaboration.

Keep it simple, keep it transparent, keep it fair.

Make sure people understand the realities of what I've done.

Completely customer focused.

Yeah.

Like, I love it.

I love It.

Okay, a couple of things before we go.

Max, I know you, you know.

You know.

You know, the other thing people listen to this is they'll have difficult people that they've had to, you know, can you remember, you know, you've had quite a few difficult scenarios and situations in your, in your, you know, in your working past where you've had someone you thought, my God, I, you know, challenging were they or more, you know, difficult where it's, you know, can you make any.

I always say, obviously names.

Yeah.

How did you manage to handle them and get them on side?

Do you know what?

It's funny.

And I can reflect, you know, there are many, many occasions where sometimes people you know have been difficult to work with.

And in some cases, you know, I've worked with.

I've worked with, you know, people that have been bullies before.

You know, I think over my career, if I look back from when I was junior to perhaps now when I'm more senior, I handle them slightly different.

So I've learned over the years to kind of handle these situations differently initially, you know, I've gone through those, I say very early micro initially, I've kind of run away.

You know, I've been, I've been reluctant to address maybe behaviors at the time which would have been, you know, inappropriate.

And I've run away.

And I probably, like many people in the past, I've left companies because of that.

Yeah.

You know, but that's a fairly extreme, you know, in other cases.

Yeah, you work with difficult people, you need to work together.

It's almost very similar to what you said earlier.

You know, try to understand their point of view.

Yeah, there's never personal, you know, it's never personal.

If they're like that with you, they probably like it with other people.

So it's really trying to really understand it from their perspective.

Understand really what is it that they're trying to achieve.

Trying to build credibility.

Building.

Building trust and credibility and underpin a huge part of that.

And I believe success is driven around it is about just building great relationships.

Yeah, you got to build a great relationship to understand and to have a difficult conversation to.

For when things are not going great.

And with a great relationship, you can do that, you know, and you can then the next day you can still carry on working successfully.

And that's what he was.

This story before I remember I took out a new role.

I was a new HR director, European HR director, sitting on the board.

My first role, they were having the first board meeting.

Previous successor would kind of like one of handover.

And I was then, now working with the md.

The MD was holding an important meeting, their first board meeting, and I noticed it was going on and I said, oh, I didn't get an invite to that meeting next, next week.

And the response was that there's not enough chairs, Dave.

There's not enough chairs in the meeting room for you.

And obviously you're like, okay, well, I, I now get a gauge of my importance and where I sit on this, on this table.

So anyway, I was like, okay, okay, what are you discussing?

And they were discussing some very strategic topics that ended up.

You can't have these discussions without a kind of a view from a human people perspective.

So anyway, I, I turned up at the meeting and I actually brought my own chair.

I brought my own chair and squeezed it into the meeting room.

And I have a great relationship with this individual now and I'm not going to mention them.

But yeah, you know, you can't, you need to be, you can't just do that.

Of course, you need to have been able to build some sort of collaboration in the past.

But that's an example of also then standing your ground a little bit.

And if you think you've got a role to play and importance to add to that, it's about saying, no, I can, can, you know, I can, I can stand up and be accounted for who you are and what you've done, right?

And, and sometimes goes back to these elements around.

I look at the stars of people.

If you, if you're dealing with people that, that, you know, are a bit, you know, driven in that way, then, you know, go to the level, you know, talk to them and engage them.

You have to ask the questions and, and say to me, hey, how will that affect this?

Or what will that do to this and make them see?

Sometimes, sometimes it's like you say people just got blind spots which they, they, they, they don't see well, they can't see themselves.

But look, before we finish a couple of things before we finish.

We've been going for a little while and it's great.

Obviously, the future of people in the world is, you know, a lot of people talk about how, you know, AI and robotics are coming on and taking, and you've worked with a lot of organizations, have had big factories where already this sort of stuff has been put in place.

But where do you see the future of, I call it HR people.

Organizational development in a world which is going into a sort of AI space.

What's your, what's Your perspective on this and how people can start to bring the two together.

So first of all, you can't stop it.

It's happening.

Yeah.

So I think we need to embrace it.

I think it can play wonderfully to what we've been trying to achieve over many years in that human resources space.

You know, we've often said we're spending too much time on the transactional things, and actually we need to be spending time on the more human things, working with our leaders.

So AI will massively help with that.

I think it will help help us understand data more effectively to make more informed decisions.

So, you know our role.

I think we, you know, AI will help us to become more human.

And we.

There's an even more need for us to become more human.

So, yeah, please give us the data.

You know, whatever you want to call your AI bot, give us the data, give us the information.

Use it as your part.

It's the best ever partner you've ever had in your life.

You know, I want them in my team.

Yeah, yeah.

Use them.

And with that data, then you've kind of like, okay, what sort of trends are you might be seeing?

You know, whether it's people, analytics, engagement surveys, and how's that going to help shape the future of what I might see in the future?

And then us as, you know, humans, the people side of things.

Well, we can now start to start thinking about, okay, strategically now, we can start making some.

We can make better decision making, we can be more forward thinking, we could be more predictable.

And so, yeah, embrace it, use it, understand it.

But it will also help us to become more effective.

And I think you could use it as your number one partner in the world going forward.

I love that idea.

I love that concept around it.

And it sort of plays that I've always said, which is that humans are, we're going to need to be more human.

It's going to be where I describe it to people.

It's a bit like a sous chef.

Right.

It's a.

If you're in a restaurant in Europe, you know, you're the head chef or head chef, chef, chef, head chefs, whatever the modern world person that cuts anyway, the person that puts the nose out.

And if you're that person, you don't want to be cutting all the ingredients, you don't want to be cutting all the.

All the veg in a certain way or whatever else.

You want that to be done for you so that you can then craft this incredible meal that puts out on the plate.

And, and I think that's as wisdom as what you said.

It's you to use it as a partner to get all those things done and make that.

To spend more time on the bits that are going to have an.

And that also, to me, also talks about the, the softer human personal skill stuff that I think is.

The bit that I've said for a long time is going to be the, the bit we're going to need to work on more.

How do we engage with other people?

How do we build relationships with them?

How do we get them on our side to do things rather than anything else?

Exactly that.

All those things we've just been talking about for the last 45 minutes, whatever the time is about building relationships, understanding, having empathy, making sure you're following your values, your ethics.

You can't send an AO bot to do this.

You can't send your bot to your customer to do all this stuff or to set that for your people and your employees and your leaders.

So there's more of a need for us to be really consciously thinking about these more human behaviors that will make a massive difference.

Yeah, I love it.

All right, look, it's been great to chat to you about this final thing.

Where can people reach you?

Obviously, if they've, if they reach, if they want to, you know, obviously you, you've, you know.

Yes, I've got a website, Apachela Human Resources.

Contact me through that LinkedIn.

You know, you can look me up on LinkedIn.

Yeah, we'll put some.

LinkedIn, we'll put some links in below, so you've got those as well.

And you know, send me probably most direct.

Send me a message on LinkedIn.

Yeah, do that way and I'll.

And I'll make contact with you.

Fantastic.

Great.

Well, look, it's really great to, you know, there's lots of stuff we could have talked about around this subject for, talked about for a couple of hours because we've, we've both seen, you know, what the good and the bad and the stuff that work that goes on in this place.

But, but I think you're right.

Just summarize where you're at.

It's.

It's about, you know, and I've always.

There's a great quote from Peter Drucker which is, you know, culture, eat strategy for breakfast.

And I think it's about having that, like, building that culture of people that you want to go in a pathway and down a path.

And the great, the great businesses have harnessed the power of their people, haven't they?

And they've they've used them in the right way.

And I guess what you're, you're saying is even salespeople, it's doing that work with them.

Exactly, yeah.

Amazing.

Well, mate, great to have you on the podcast.

Thank you so much for being here.

So.

So that was David Apachelo.

He's a.

As I say, go.

And we'll put a links into David's links into his website and his LinkedIn profile below.

But all things around people culture, how to understand people more effectively and how to make it work in a sales environment.

That's it for this week's podcast episodes.

If you enjoyed it, please do give us a like and subscribe to the podcast and give us a rating.

Always appreciate that.

But until next week, stay safe, happy selling and I'll see you then.

Take care.

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