[Podcast] Sales and OKRs with Ramsey Al-Ramahi

In today's podcast, KJ welcomes Ramsey Al-Ramahi, Chief Revenue Officer of the Contrarian Academy and Strategic Advisor for RevSend. They discuss a variety of topics, including how to leverage OKRs, sales techniques, and their worst sales experiences.

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Podcast Transcript

KJ
I'm, I'm excited even you're mentioning I'm closing out everything so no bugs me. So I'm really excited even when you mentioned there some negotiation tactics. I mean, we could talk everything today. But, you know, it would be cool to even get a few helpful tips here. How to make some, some sales, you know, discuss some horror stories we've had. And certainly learn from, from your experiences, but I guess we need to also incorporate the idea of OKR is as well, you know, I guess if we have

Ramsey
oh, you know, whatever you were talking about, and nothing exists without any horror stories. So that's that. That's what makes stories good. So let's dive in Alex here.

KJ
What's your worst one? Like? Just think back in your career? Your worst sales experience?

Ramsey
Oh,

KJ
still still haunts yet Nice.

Ramsey
Geez, man, worst horror story. You know, I think it's always some that you look at yourself and what you did wrong, more than anything else, like you lose, you lose a lot of deals that just are lost, because you learned something new about like, maybe you didn't build a report, or you didn't set a good agenda, or you didn't have a great discovery or could have done better at that. But the ones that hurt most is earlier in your sales career where you like, bullshitted somebody, and ya know, you were bullshitting somebody, and you, you either get caught or get close to being caught, or you just know that it just didn't feel right, and you lose the deal. And you know, it was just your gut tells you was that and I think that's really early on your sales career. Like, you know, don't bullshit. It's it doesn't do anybody any good. And it's not like even like, I don't even think it was there's any, like, relations lies. Yeah, just like, just like, you know, you didn't answer your question directly, or you danced around something. Just like that, that stuff never works. And especially in today's world, right? Never works. Speaking of everything being recorded, you know, it's like, it's that we're in a very transparent world, more than it was 10 years ago, five years ago. So those are always the most painful ones, because you're like, I knew better, right? Like, my mom would twist my ear. If she heard that kind of, yeah, right.

KJ
I know, it's me. And probably it's probably come from I know, certainly, in my experience. For me, it was, it was more out of desperation than out of malicious sort of intense. It was like, Oh, God, I've I need this so badly. Please, you know, say whatever it takes, and then you say it and you feel Yeah, you feel dirty. Because you know, it was just, you know, the truth will set you free kind of thing, the truth, it usually comes out and then comes back to swing it or hit you in the face. Yeah.

Ramsey
Yeah. It's never I think the most most of the one of the most brutal ones I will let I will leave the name of this company out of the compensation. But I worked for a company for a short amount of time where it was, this is where my moment I'm like, Okay, I gotta leave this company. This is very long my career. So probably given a lot of things away, because then it'd be go look through like Dingo early on his career. Let's see. The founder and CEO of the company, with Lily hop on a call, and he would be the legal counsel for the finance guy, the the engineer, and he would legitimately like change his voice. And I did not know at the time because the company was big enough was like, hey, just pass it on to this name, this email, and I had no idea it was all the same person, and you would hop on a call one time I got in his office. It's like yeah, Hang on one second loop, presses a button puts puts the person on hold and hops back on the different voice and he's somebody else. And living a week after that when I quit. I was like, holy cow. I cannot do that. I can not be a part of that. Craziness. Yeah, so a lot of those stories. I know this is weird. It

KJ
sounds like moustache and just my name is

Ramsey
way before zoom way before that so and you know what even exists to this day that you don't look at some of these LinkedIn profiles you get messages from and you know, I don't see ever do like reverse search on Google Photos when you know it's a fake photo of somebody and you still exist a lot like a lot about the scam and phishing. It's still exist.

KJ
Oh yeah. It's relentless. It's crazy. The terrain of sales or anything or business has changed the big, like towards transparency yet still people will figure out loopholes does as long as they're human beings on this earth, there will be loopholes and, you know, yeah, fake, you know guys trying to catch you out and all that sort of stuff. It's crazy. It's like it makes

Ramsey
it, it makes me wonder though if they still do it. That means it has to work at least some sort of percent of the time, right? It's like the, the whole email scams I'm like, I'm the prince that you're the prince of Nigeria, or like, hey, buy me a gift card that's like these things. You still get them people still get them because like, it works for whatever it's like point 000 1% chance, or it's time or 5%. Like I'm curious what that is, but if people still do this cast, because they obviously still works for some sort of reason. So it's, it's bizarre, but I guess Yeah, you know, we're seeing how transparent is but still see these things these days? And I really wonder, is it worth it? That's

KJ
the route just flashback memories of like, really early days? Sort of what was it MSN or Bebo? Or you know, those, like way before Facebook, and you'd have those instant messengers and stuff? I remember getting a message Yes, like very much like hi, of Prince of Nigeria. What's your mother's maiden name? And then it was like Best regards Seamus onea. But you gotta admit it and Nigerian college Jameis like it's

Ramsey
just but you but remember, remember the first time you've ever got one of those emails saying you've been inherited? You know, for a split second as I did for a split second. I was like, wait a sec. What I did. Yeah, it's that easy to one. But to get inherit $30 million from somebody. I should give this guy a call. I'm like, hey, wait a sec. Your imagination? Everybody's imagination. The first time they got that email, even if they knew it was a scam ran wild. Like, what if?

KJ
That's probably why they get it because like, oh ladies or something, you know, like, just never get never get those. Yeah, and they probably just think it's a movie like think it's a Disney movie.

There was a market for it. There was a market for I guess

it was early days of the internet.

Great. McDonald is?

Yeah. So all right, let's get down to business. Well, I mean, I've been a huge fan of yours ever since I met you because you're just so candid with you know, your approach to sales. I think it's so modern and so new and and you're so easy to get along with. But I guess what intrigued me most is when we first met, I think to kick off, you know, the conversation you. You had this just sort of thing that you said was like yeah, I'm a huge fan of all Coronavirus, huge believer in it. And not for just to please executive types. But I'm a fan of it. Because, you know, it's the building blocks, it's cemented in the building blocks of a high performing business. And those building blocks are at rhythm and people. And so you've talked about how they're both sort of symbiotic. You can't have a sort of rhythm without having the people. And the people are just more than the results, right? They're the ones that even create the OKR as they build your business as it essentially people. So that always stuck with me. And I'd love to know more about the genesis of it. How you came to figure out those two things. And maybe we start there.

Ramsey
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, thank you for the kind words I write right back atcha. Honestly, I don't think we hit it off when we first initially talked and and if I had come across Krezzo, right. And like mind blown like, wow, this is not only a foundational in organizations, I think it was a while I was so excited and passionate what you're doing and was so intrigued. It's It's foundational, my personal and professional beliefs. Like this is really what you need. And I've seen it firsthand. I've been part of companies where people have applied a rhythm. And it's it's scaled immensely. And I've seen companies who have wanted to fly over them, but never did because like Oh, it's okay, we could skip this, oh, we don't need to do this and it failed miserably right. And it's still still struggling because they still have yet to apply a process. Rhythm. But yeah, I will preach till till the day I die is people in rhythm that's my biggest lesson in life so far my professional career, it really is this massive umbrella and a few everything under it is all the different processes. How you hire who you play in place, the daily rhythms weekly during the quarterly rhythms, annual rhythms, the three to five year plan rhythm, all of it really intertwines across different departments, internally externally. It really is that's come down to algorithm

KJ
in different ways. And clarify for us, Randy, what what do you mean by rhythm? Have you defined?

Ramsey
Yeah. So rhythms are like check ins, right rhythms are. It's a it's a it's a heartbeat of the company. And just similar to like, music, right, like, we both have guitars now background. And I don't know about you, but I haven't picked up my guitar as often as I used to. I guarantee you, it's out of tune. Right? It's definitely. If I picked it up 10 minutes ago, it's the tune. Yeah, haven't picked it up to 10 days. It's attitude.

KJ
Mine's in tune, but I still can play it very well. Better situation.

Ramsey
But see, but if you picked it up on a daily basis, you probably be able to play it pretty well. So everything goes hand in hand. Right. And I think that that rhythm is the heartbeat of of a company that might have mentioned to you or somebody recently, I want to allow about a few months back in Hawaii and and it was just that rhythm, right, that heartbeat when the luau, they're just dumping on their jet chest really hard. And the hitting the stage and they're in sync and on rhythm. Like, you feel it right. And that's just that's the heartbeat of the blowout, that's the heartbeat. Similarly, and music rhythms and the drums and the guitars and all the instruments coming together. That's the rhythm of a company, right? So I think that that needs to be created. Because what that you have, you have momentum with that you have transparency with that you're already able to work together on solutions, you're with that you're able to maintain connections. So you know, I like to say like, and a big part of it, like any company, I like to say kill all silos or silos will kill you. Right. And I think if you don't have that rhythm, it's really easy to be preoccupied and go with your own objectives and ignoring any departmental or company wide objectives, right? Because quite often, like too many objectives are driven by like too many department heads, but there's quite often is no syncing between all different departments. Right? So

KJ
yeah, I love that analogy of with the music and the drum beats or, you know, work and essentially, that you want everyone working to the same beasts. And you mentioned one thing is like, the repetition of the rhythm itself isn't clearly important, because it helps but like, and then the benefits of why you want to sort of really pay attention to the operation rhythm or your business, because it gives you momentum gives you more power as an organization, you're utilizing more of the people in your company to the greater capacity. Great. Okay, but then, let's talk about the how, like, let's get right into how you do this, how have you done it? Have you been a part of a company that, you know, is totally off beat? And you've managed to get them back to a rhythm? And how do you do it?

Ramsey
Yeah, yeah. You know, it, I think, first off, it's something that makes sure to keep in mind that it is very similar to learning how to play an instrument, the first time I've ever done OKRs it was a mess, right? Like, I just did not know what I was doing. I had no idea. And I remember, a CEO that time was just literally like, Ramsey this is, this is horrible, like, take another stab at doing an Excel and Lily had like four or five tabs agree and zoom one, Ramsey two and three times five, because I kept on getting ripped apart like, Hey, this is this is no you need to, you need your objective. You need to be able to track it, need to be able to have your experiments and that struggled. And it just seemed like an instrument, right? You just need practice. Just do it over and over again. And similarly with with a rhythm to like the first time you run. Even if I quit and join a company today, the first meeting of like a sales meeting or a company wide meeting, it's gonna be a little bit off, it's gonna feel a little awkward, right? You're not going to have a rhythm just constantly being able to do that. But Repetition Repetition is important. So I think that patience is important to keep in mind when you're building out your first set of OKRs. Because I think if people haven't done it before, or they've done on a smaller scale, they just don't know what to do, but they stopped doing it because they feel like oh, maybe it wasn't as successful but the One thing to keep in mind, I think that's very important. Keep doing it, just do it over and over again, if you don't know what you want to try it again, you don't get what you want. Maybe you know, I'm not pitching you hereby I am, maybe use a platform that actually has it laid out for you like so or I get some help. And there's a lot of help out there that you can get from tons of different companies, tons of folks are more than happy to be able to help guide you. And that's like, that's like investing in a personal trainer, right? Like, some of the best investment I ever made was in the personal trainer. And in the beginning, I was like, Wait, three $4,000 for a personal trainer sounds ridiculous, like go to a gym and look at YouTube videos. But no, there was never a successful right. So I think that that piece is really important to keep in mind like, practice it. Just like working out just like playing guitar and get help.

KJ
Because the question immediately comes to mind as well. That's another great. Yeah, analogy too. It's like playing guitar. Yeah, I was miserable, playing the guitar when I first did it. And like you said, it was horrible the first time you did OKRs. But you still came back to it. You didn't give up after the first time and it being horrible. So I guess some the perceived value of this must have exceeded your sort of failure and misery at the point of failure. You know, originally, you must have come back. Why did you keep coming back to?

Ramsey
Oh, because you see progress. I think that's for my OKR I just don't like the guitar.

KJ
We can talk about both.

Ramsey
I mean, they're both right. Because if that practice, you see progress, right? If I tried to play the same song, today, I'm going to mess it up right now, right. But if I practice it every day, for the next week, I'm going to see a little progress. If I practice it every day, for the next month, I'm gonna see even more progress. Similarly, with OKRs, right. Having a touch point, just having a simple like, it's something as simple as a touch point really like OKRs, or literally consistent touch points, being sure that transparency across the org and ensure everybody's progressing in the right direction. And if things change, which is I think one piece that is really important. Look, we know a specialist startups, any company, but especially startups, things change constantly. And the problem that we see when change happens quite often, it can be something that's like a product change, and the sales rep hops on the call to show the product, it's something changed, they have no knowledge of it, or like I think it caught off guard and then doing a demo a live demo. And they tripped over the words because they've never seen it change and try to figure it out. Or marketing does something new and sends a different message and sales sending different messages. And they don't correlate well with one another, right. So it's important to have that rhythm that ongoing, weekly syncs those checkpoints, because things are going to change, at least when they do change. Everyone knows what change and how it's changing. So they could continue moving forward in the same direction, right. But there are some foundations to array like you, you have to have the outcome metric, you have to have like a leading indicator, you have to have experiments that you test out, I'm big fan of AB testing constantly. But if you're not, you know, if you're not tracking it, then how do you know if it's working or not any collaborators who you're working with on it, when you're going to actually lay it out, like I can't work on everything, you can have a list of 100 objectives that you want to get done this quarter. But if you're not literally going into it, and organizing them, which is going to watch which one I'm going to work on first, which is top priority. That's like building a to do list right? But it's it's imagine you're reviewing your To Do lists on a weekly basis. Imagine you were setting actually personal goals, you can even do as a OKR. As for your own personal goals, if you want to save like you know, get to $100,000 by the end of the year, you can, you can really calculate or five years, whatever your goal is that you want to save up a certain amount of money, you can lower your break down how much you need to save per day. It's no different with OKR. If I can literally break down, I need to save $5 a day for the next five years to get to this amount for example, right? And so on a weekly basis, if you're tracking it, you'll be fine if you're tracking on a daily basis, even better, right.

KJ
It's interesting so you're definitely it can tell an advocate for the weekly check in you know, it has to be every week you have to discuss the progress discuss what you guys have learned and have some excitement and enthusiasm for the upcoming week. And but like there might be some people listening and going Yeah, well. He seems to be idolizing a weekly standup which too For a lot of people is misery like they absolutely couldn't think of anything worse than getting on a call a meeting to have a meeting about another meeting or a meeting about work that could be doing while they're on the meeting. So tell me how you how you, you know, it sounds like in your, you know, in work, in your experience, you haven't had that you've managed to create a different tone, let's say to the, to the weekly rhythm. So what is it that you've, you've done it to avoid the sort of this is just your regular weekly status update? You know, say your shit and move on to the next person?

Ramsey
Yeah, that's the that's the other side of the bar. Right? The people part. Look, what's funny is I used to hate these things as a rat, is that just like, is this like cringe every time I had a one on one, every time we do a company wide meeting, anytime a sales meeting, because you go over the same crap every time. And more often than not, I look back, I'm like, Why did I enjoy it? You know, now having been in leadership, I'm recording a lot of that was just because I had no idea what's going on. So that was my biggest pet peeve, I was just not as much transparency as I think there should be as a rep. But once I got to leadership, I realized it's actually hard to maintain transparency with the team, it was not intentional, right? Just leadership, you go up running a certain way, and sometimes like, the same direction, but you think that just because you're passing on information, or part of it, that people understand, for example, Hey, I need to hit a 20%, close rate. They don't understand all the intricacies as to why or what it's been built into, and how it matters for the rest of the company, right? And why the mindset of leadership's thinking that I think those things become a point. Like, I actually apply a lot of a lot of crap that I would have hated as a rep believe or not. But I've had a great success and every single rep applying it and enjoying it. I've been very fortunate. I've actually nuts to my own horn, but I don't know probably hired about 3035 people, I've only had to let go of two people and one was actually rehired. So I feel like I've had decent success. I've benefited a lot in life, but there might be a little something that's working there. I really I really focus a lot on the people.

KJ
On the call clear communication, like what you're saying is the onus is on the leader of the meeting, or the leadership team, whatever it might be, that person's responsibility is to provide the context, the why we're setting a goal of 20, whatever proposals, whatever it is, yeah, because it helps this part of the organization that it's important for this metric over here. You know, this is the strategy and the direction we're heading. And here's like, to me, you're providing a lot, it sounds like you're providing a lot more context to then just the normal. You've got to hit this number or else and, you know, that's all you can talk about in those meetings.

Ramsey
Yeah, I mean, then as a as a leader you're working for, for your reps, right? Even like I do, like SWOT analysis, I do okera As I want to ones that sales kickoffs, quarterly sales, kickoffs, we do mock demos, car reviews, op training review is right. sales process, very documented notes are very up to date, like ongoing trainings, I invest a lot in tech that makes like, Sales Team efficient, you know, hold leadership meetings, you know, one of my mentors, Matt curl, he applied, he helped me apply a rhythm called Padre, which stands for pipeline acquisition, deployment, retention, expansion. And then you run that with leadership, right. And that's part of the weekly rhythm, in addition to the OKR is that you review on a constant basis, and it goes hand in hand. But quite often, that's just reviewed by a leadership. And that's it. And then you go apply those things to your own department heads and department teams. And the the problem, though, is like most people don't share that information with their team. So that's one thing I would love to do is actually I'm like I showed them the slide deck that we went through with leadership and showed my team I don't have to spend an hour on it, but they have full transparency. So they know what's going on every single department. They don't have to sit here and wonder like, oh, what's going on in marketing, what's going on and customer support? They understand what everybody else is working on. So that transparency piece, I can't emphasize that enough. Even like reviews, like do 360 reviews, let them review, right?

KJ
Did you ever encounter any reluctance from leadership to say, No, we don't want to be that transparent and show these things to the reps for probably maybe fear of, you know, overloading them where they might get the wrong impression, or, you know, is that ever occurred?

Ramsey
Yeah, absolutely. And can we speak in that I think that company is still not doing too? Well. Right? I think that, you know, I, I've seen companies who have literally, I think it's this beautiful, hey, like they have a 2024 month runway, they have a 12 month one or whatever it may be like, share the big statement. So what you got? Right like what's what do you do your business, you're everybody's in it to win it right. And this is part of everybody's livelihood. So what everybody's doing so what? So what what's at stake, right? I think it's beautiful to be able to say, I mean, obviously, don't sue account number but you know, costs that up, but show the bank statement, you need to be fully transparent. I don't think everybody comes into work every day thinking how can I do a miserable job, right? If I just want, I'm here, I'm gonna show up. Obviously, like, there's a lot of characteristics that you want to hire for. But you hire the right person putting them in the right role. They're going to show up every day, they want to be successful, they want to succeed, they want to grow. You know, Anthony Robbins said at best that if you don't grow, you die. So I think people naturally want to grow. So if you're in any shape or form, like not given that transplants now, given that growth opportunity, I think that's when people just don't need to buy in, right? I think people just kind of like, take a step back and go, I want I'm not sure the company is not being honest with me. I'm not I don't see growth here. And that's what kills potential. But transparency really starts with a lot of it starts with transparency. People want to know what they're getting selves into. They want to believe in the mission. They want to believe the missions actually true, right? That they're not being fooled or not, no information is being hidden from them. It's like being a relationship, man. Yeah, that's

KJ
it. It's very similar. withholding information, like people are smart enough that they can sense that that you know, you think God it's a young 20 something year old in a sales role. He doesn't give a shit about the company strategy. He's he won't now if we hide stuff from him. But you'd be surprised. You know, these folks are folks are smart enough to tell and sniff things out from the top. You know,

Ramsey
it kind of brings it back to how we started this conversation. You asked me what is the horror story of sales and I had mentioned that the time I had boasted or danced around something had killed some of the biggest sales I've had right or didn't have didn't get its people to assume bullshit. And I think that even though you know, it's bullshit or not, people sense something. Oh, you know what, that person's bullshitting me just as a pill, right? And it's like, it's like a relationship. Imagine somebody was telling you, hey, I'm gonna go step out every night, when I go step out, and you're asking what they're doing. Where are you going? Yeah, I'm just gonna go step out, like, okay, is everything okay? Yeah, I'm just gonna go step out, right? Like, you can't, yeah, that's like, after we have a little bit can have it both

KJ
ways you can expect people to be bought in to the, to the objectives, the priorities, the direction where you're going. And also, you know, just hide things from them or not, not be that transparent. That's really interesting that it does affects, you know, setting setting objectives, you know, for your company every quarter of the year. If those objectives are hidden, or not shared, you know, to the full fullest degree, then it's, you know, like you said, people aren't gonna buy in?

Ramsey
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Read them and people. Yeah.

KJ
Now, listen, there's a specific use case, I really want to pick your brain on because the reason I do is because I haven't. I don't have the best answer on, like, I want to get a better answer to these to this scenario. And the scenario is, when you introduce when a company introduces OKRs, they, they sort of have the option of saying, Okay, this is an additional framework, let's say, in addition to our business as usual metrics. So the general consensus is this is addition onto your plate of what you usually do day to day. And it's really about going above and beyond. And then the other side of the spectrum is OKRs. are everything. Absolutely everything there is no nothing else matters except the OKRs that so they are very clear, if a lot of clarity in that this is it and nothing else. And the reason is, when when you're a sales rep and OKRs are implemented into your company, use executive sponsors, and they're saying we're going to do this we're going to BioCare software, we're going to have an OKR everyone's going to have an OKR blah, and they go but you also still have a comp plan with a variable comp and a target you have to hit but you also have an OKR and now the rep the end of Digital is left thinking, Well, do I do the thing that's in my contractual agreements? Which gets me my bonus? Or do I do the thing that my manager said is really important to the company, and it's in an OKR format, and blah, blah, blah, and you're almost leaving this decision up to the individual as to what they spend their focus on, which is ultimately negating the purpose of the OKR, you want them to have a very clear focus. So is, how have you? How have you encountered this? You know, how do you go about it? Because a lot of companies will introduce OKRs, and already have an existing comp plan in place for their sales reps. So how does that How do they have those two combined?

Ramsey
That's a great question. KJ, I think there's quite a few different components that are worth highlighting one. If a company doesn't have any sort of a OKR framework, definitely suggest starting with leadership first, and then doing it for probably a couple of quarters, before really starting to implement to get across, because you want to be able to, just like I said earlier, that practice, you're not going to get it right the first time. Just keep doing it, it's okay to not get it right. Every week, it's going to take time, it's a new habit you're building, right? It's like working out, it's like playing guitar, you just gotta get the foundations of it. So you can build some sort of rhythm with leadership, and it's easy to move more people. And then the same rhythm, right. The other piece, and I think that's really important to keep in mind, because it's like, I can't go into a company right now and just rip and replace everything. Everybody's gonna be mad at me, the whole system is going to break, it's not going to be a probably just like when you go into a company, you're trying to change some sales methodology or, or sales processes, you do a little bit of time, the foundational things, what's priority, keep doing what what's driving revenue, and slowly refine things that matter most and you kind of rebuild slowly, right? So it's no different. The other piece, I think, is really important. I was talking to someone about this yesterday, actually, because they go Hey, James, you have so many different processes, how to expect a rep to do all this. I agree. Like, the rep does not have time to do all this. So you got to make time for them. Right? If if they are spending, let's just say realistically between one on one Doc's weekly sales meetings, the Department of sales meetings, OKRs SWOT analysis once a once a quarter 360 reviews once a quarter, and then you're talking about managing the OKRs, building them once caught in the management on a weekly basis, and then updating Salesforce, prospecting, pitching like, what's like the days gone, like the day is gone before you can get to prospect in pitching. Right. So I absolutely agree with you. But the there's a lot of different ways I think people forget about and how you can take a lot of the heavy lifting off reds, back rubs backs, right? We're in a really beautiful part of the world right now beautiful time that will that should say where there's tons of automations, you can apply tons of tools and systems OKR frameworks, right, let's that's exactly why I love what you're doing here at Krezzo. Because you have a framework that makes things a little easier to manage, right, that takes a lot of time off your back. automations there's tons of things and platforms, obviously, you know, I'm going to to Apollo's horn, because you know, between what they do and have been a part of them. That makes one Salesforce there's a lot of automations you could you can literally apply tons of templates, tons of little triggers and dispositions based on what you're using. Orem, right, I'm a big fan of Oromo as well, you can dial you know, you can parallel dial and call five numbers at a time. And, or more if you want, right, but you're always gonna be talking to somebody why click, click to dial each number or do a power dial when you call one number at a time, like make reps lives easier. Because if they could produce what you want them to an eight hour day and have them do it in a four hour day, then they could spend more time doing this kind of stuff. Personally, even like just even automating the dually is a great tool. There's there's tons of different great tools that you can just make things easier to be inputted in Salesforce make things easier to be automatically plugged into the different data points. Don't don't make the reps do it themselves, right?

There's so much that you can take off the reps backs with automation and different tools. Because I'd rather have reps absolutely focus on prospecting closing deals. But I'd rather have reps spent four, six hours doing that, and two hours during the stuff we're talking about a day, rather than spending. Last thing I want to have him to spend eight hours a day doing sales and prospecting and then having no time for this stuff, right because this is foundational for that skill was foundational for growth. And quite often what you see happening, what I've seen happen is there's a comfortable space that people get and like to kind of bring it back into how companies like to apply this when a company is doing well. When they have tons of resources says this typically when I see people let go of these kind of processes, they go, Oh, we're doing well, we don't need this. And this is one of the biggest mistakes I see company doing, oh, we can just take a step back, we're doing perfectly fine. And that's when you see this happen, like this downfall, or this virus roller coaster of like, Oh, crap, we're down again, this next quarter, they don't see the ongoing scale. And then they wonder why it's because they let go of some of these processes, right. So it's like, it's foundational for that growth. And whatever you could do, even if it means this is going to be crazy to as a sales in your sales, even if it means your goals are slightly smaller. And you can carve out, if you give them an extra 30 minutes that day, to let's just say that, you know, 30 minutes is what 116 for the day, and your goals are 116 less, right? But they're completing everything that we're talking about managing OKR eyes, and you have a process and a system and a rhythm, you'll be much more successful in the long term, you have a much more scalable process and repeatable process. Right. That's what it comes down to. So. Okay, that's great.

KJ
I mean, that is fantastic. And like, Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of things, their patience, I mean, looking at the long term, but let's, let's talk the actual key results for for a sales department, you know, like a sales leader, as you know, five, six account executives, and they have a comp plan, which, you know, they get an extra 10 grand when they close or, you know, every deal with usually, you know, a couple of percentage of each deal as the commission. Do you? Do you as a sales leader, reflect that comp plan in your key results?

Ramsey
Di reflect the comp plan. And my key results.

KJ
Your AES commission structure is that reflected in the key results are yes, but since things have

Ramsey
an extra compliment, if I was, I've had refining Complan as part of my OKRs, I've been part of companies where it's constantly changing the product offering constantly change and going from like, enterprise motion to a product like growth motion where things have to change. And that's been part of my OKRs. But in different ways, it's also been part of my OKRs to make sure to like add bonuses, or add any incentives, like whether this trips or any prizes. But also indirectly and directly, obviously applies towards the ultimate revenue goal as well, right? Making sure track that there's like an analyst target an error or that I'm going after, or an ACV that I want to hit, or I want the team to hit that goal is ties ties back into goal, if we have an ACD of X, then you'll earn a bonus. Right, so applying different bonuses and different incentives for each quarter, for example, those have reflected in my OKRs. And refining or redoing a compliment has reflected my OKRs. And those always take priority by the way I comp and don't ever mess with the reps money. Like I'm a big fan of like don't if even like let's say check is delayed. So my reps right away, let me know. And just it's somebody's livelihood, it's really important. So always prioritize that. Should

KJ
you care? Yeah, exactly. Well, that's what I'm trying to kind of get on is like, especially with reps and the nature of it, it's not it's not to be in any way sort of, you know, condescending of the sales rep role, I value it hugely, but it is very much a monetary incentive than other roles in the company. So that's why I asked if there is a conflict of key result that isn't monetary reward, and then there's their comp plan, which does have a monetary incentive. Like you're you're now asking the rep to decide which one to do whether if they're sort of synonymous then then it's very easy for the rep to say okay, my focus is very clear. This is what get makes me money. So this is what I'm gonna do.

Ramsey
But isn't that that's the equation I work backwards based on what the rep wants to attain right. I know what you and I have had talks about this in the past, but personal development as well as professional love and it is really critical if somebody wants to make X amount of money or X amount of commission reversing engineering that reverse engineering that is important part for you to do as a leader for the rep or work with them to do this together. So if a rep you know when you're winning Senator commitments, individual and team as well and company that definitely you know goes into it right? You have quotas, you have goals as a company, but then you have goals as an individual, you know, a rep doesn't come in and go, I want to actually get below quota. You know, everybody wants to achieve, you got the right salesperson in place. Everyone wants achieve over quota have over goal, maybe this goal, right? That's perfectly fine. But you're responsive as a leader to be able to tie that back in and go, Hey, you want to buy that house, when you want to be able to take that trip, whatever it may be, but you just want to save money, finding out what drives them. And some people just want a good work life balance. Cool. So let's work that backwards. What is it going to take to get your to your goal, so you have a good work life balance and work out your schedule throughout the day, right? So you make maximize your day? And let's make sure that isn't okay. Okay. So you're not working? For example, people don't, I don't know what to look one to eight hours a day, perfectly fine. Let's hit your goal with those eight hours. Some people are going to take 10 hours to that's the deal could do in six hours, right? But there's, there's a way to be efficient that you can apply until a cure. So it's like, everything does tie back to a number. But it goes back to what we were just talking about, like how can you make the reps as efficient as possible? And how can you tie a goal to it?

KJ
Right? I like that I like that a lot more than like how to make the reps as efficient as possible, more than how do I make that extra 20 grand or that extra bit of commission or that extra team? You know, number? It's less? What you're what you're acknowledging what you're tipping your hat to, is to say, you know, yeah, financial goals are important, necessary part of any business, but the reps are the ones that get you there. So investing in professional development for the rep. Again, long term will produce higher financial results. So it's, you're very much prioritizing the reps and their efficiency and their, their livelihood, their, their whatever, their health. Oh, yeah, just the financial goal, which is set every year, every quarter.

Ramsey
Yeah, you have the liquidity, you have your for example, let's say touch points to meeting set as just one random example you grab anything, you're any law of averages, what you grab, as a data point data set, and you plan your OKR I was like off of that every quarter as a leader for the for the team. And you grab those metrics and go okay, for example, we are doing currently, I don't know 50 touch points a meeting set, we want to get to 40 touch points a meeting set, that means we need X amount of touch points for you to increase our calls or LinkedIn touches or emails, whatever may be, and you worked out equation backwards. But if a rep for example, you do this on a team basis all the time, but your numbers might be different than mine individually, right? Regardless, if we're in a team together, our averages is the average between you and I told them at the hovers on the team combined. But individually, your number of touch points might be 15 meanings to touch point, that's definitely the meaning of 1015 touch points to a meeting set. Mine might be might only be like 75, two touch points to a meeting set. Your OKRs Your goal should be different. And your goals perhaps are like, hey, you know, I want to work life balance. I have several kids, I want to just relax. I want to spend time with family. My goal might be like, Hey, I just wanna make as much money as possible. While I'm on my private jet, whatever it may be, right? Yeah, I have some completely different goals. But I'm gonna have to work a little harder to get those touch points, right? I don't mind them, you work a little bit longer in the day, I might have to be coached a little differently and go how can we make quality touchpoints those experiments in my OKR is gonna look different than yours. So why are we both? Why why would our leader be putting together a plan that for the team that is completely separate? I'm sorry, completely different than us individually. Right. So he has different goals. And

KJ
yeah, I think we're getting somewhere yeah, I really like that because it's acknowledging the the idiosyncrasies of each person and their, their goals. And you have you know, sales managers, product managers, whatever, they all have a team goal. But ultimately each representative of the team is their own unique person and has to be managed, I can tell you're clearly a great, great manager and leader for these sales reps that you've had along the way.

Ramsey
Only only strapped to be I don't know, if I you know, great is, is a very, very kind and strong word. I think he just continues strategy being better every day. And I'll say I think this is why I'm so excited to talk to you about this stuff because I think what you're doing and what Krezzo does and your beliefs and OKRs and building Now process is so critical in individual development and team development and company development. And it's it looks scalability in general across the company, right? It's scale, but it comes down to having repeatable process. This is this is building a repeatable process. This is literally like, hey, like, here's the foundation, follow this and you'll have a repeatable process, right? There's a lot that comes through it with it. But so it's things like this that help you get closer to great. So

KJ
that's Yeah, yeah, maybe a question to close on or to think about is like, Do you think there's a better time than others to introduce OKRs in the company? Oh,

Ramsey
my gut instinct right away says, Absolutely not. I think the sooner the better. There's no mean. If you're not doing it, there's no better time than now. If you're thinking about doing it, there's no better time than now, if you haven't done it, there's no better time than now. If you don't ever want to do it. There's no better time to now. I think there's always room for refinement. Even if you are doing it. I have seen this over and over again, I could probably pull up some old OKRs and share with you the call but there's some V ones I've looked back on. And they're just like, horrendous, like rendus but it took years of practice of like just getting the OKR as honed in and really making sure that even the goals are very crystal clear like gambling overly broad goals. Like you can't say make sales process great. Because a lot of specifics. And I think what I started is very broad, but it's you got to start you got to start doing just start just just like when people talk about hey, produce LinkedIn content doesn't matter what you're doing maybe the old Gary Vee thing right? Like just do it just produce some content just you'll get better every day. Just don't think about just do it. For those things don't get better. Just like an instrument. You'll get better just pick up that guitar. Get that personal trainer like do whatever it takes to start start start start so short answers now.

KJ
I think that's the way to wrap it up man that's couldn't have said it better myself you know? Absolutely get started everyone and thank you just so much for sharing your thoughts, ideas and experiences on this stuff. It means a lot to us. They've been such a big supporter for us, you know, and absolutely Is anyone out there listening you know? Is there anything you need me to plug before we stop the recording?

Ramsey
I mean, just plug Okay, guys, I will fill nothing. I mean, you do this naturally. I just excites me when people will pry a process. I can't emphasize enough there's nothing I need to plug in myself personally or any company. I just want people to focus on the people and rhythm honestly, that's that's all I could ask for. I will preach that tonight. I don't think about the people because once you get the job done and then the day take care of people build the process and the people will take care of you and they will follow the process.