Turning Sales Managers into Coaches & Leaders w/ Duane Dufault

Outbound Sales Lift

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Gaps in Sales Coaching (0:22)

Duane spent the last decade in sales, half specifically in SaaS, and has helped companies grow. He took that and turned it into a consultancy, working with SAS founders and sales managers.

One gap we still run into is the stereotypical way we promote into sales leadership by picking top sales reps where they end up not getting education.

The biggest gap in sales coaching is that there's no one there leading the charge to help these managers understand all the different aspects of being a leader.

You've got a challenger mindset even in sales, and you do commercial teaching. But, that's still different than an ongoing relationship with your team and holding them accountable.

It's a completely different skillset from putting in the activity close and fine-tuning your sales process to being okay with resting your commission and checking on someone else's efforts.

Finding Good Sales Leaders (5:52)

One of the reasons previously successful sales reps can become truly great sales managers is because they can tap into their experience of when they were going through that phase and then channel that through a leadership strategy. So they can speak from a position of experience.

Many reps don't get exposed to understanding what it takes, levers to pull, and what to pay attention to as a leader. As a result, they don't have a good leader they're following, or they just never thought of reading leadership books to get better at their job.

If they're coming from a larger organization, they may have been so specialized and in their lane that they don't have that ability to see the forest for the trees.

Generalized vs. Specialized Reps (10:42)

You can't just be specialized in one thing; you have to know enough about everything to be successful these days,

It's becoming a much more desired trait in well-rounded salespeople to be a deep generalist because you need to be agile.

You need to be able to pivot, and you need to be able to act on your feet while on the call instead of needing to grab your sales engineer.

A lot of sales reps tend to just keep on talking. But when they speak less initially, they end up talking a lot more at the end because they're gathering information.

One-On-Ones vs. Coaching Calls (15:02)

One-on-one is for the sales rep and is about 30 to 45 minutes. Don't bring an agenda. It's for them. It's their opportunity to ask you questions about the organization.

If they want to talk about career development, this is their time where they're not being coached.

It's a time for them to be heard and express things that are going on.

A lot of times, you learn so much more about the team. In addition, you have the privilege to lead from those meetings than you do on tactical coaching calls.

Duane always likes to check-in to see how they're doing in their role in their career, focus on scheduling their next PTL, and set goals and competitions around vacations.

The one-on-one stuff is interesting, and it's something that needs to be more intentional on every sales team.

For coaching, choose one thing instead of three to five things for them to work on. What is the one thing that they could have done better? So that if they try to focus on one thing, it's less overwhelming.

Duane's Bio:

My name is Duane Dufault. I'm a college dropout construction worker who made a complete shift in my life over a decade ago so I could be home for my kids. I've sold just about everything from newspapers, toilets and flooring, to printers door to door, SMB Saas, Mid-market, and all the way up to fortune 100 Enterprise Software. You name it, and I've sold it, sold into it, or helped someone sell it. If not, chances are, it won't take me long to help you figure it out

AND - Ive taken startups from 17 employees to over 60, from 2mill in ARR to over 11mill in ARR while bring bootstrapped, AND having an acquisition under my belt of over $320Million...

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