Julie Huston on Leading High-Performance Remote Sales Teams in a Down Cycle

Debbie Goodman  00:00

Welcome to On Work and Revolution where we talk about what’s shaping up in the world of work and Edtech. I’m your host, Debbie Goodman, and I’m the CEO of Jack Hammer Global which is a global group of executive search and leadership coaching companies. I’m also an adviser to venture backed and tech companies. And my main mission with all of my work is to help companies and leaders to create amazing workplaces where people and ideas can flourish. So I’m really excited today to have Julie Huston as my guest. Julie is Chief Revenue Officer at Great Minds, an organization which creates curricula in math, english, art, science and more for K 12. Julie has helped steer Great Minds from a nonprofit to a public benefit corporation growing revenue from, listen to this, under 50 million annually to more than 300 million in six years, which is, that’s quite an achievement. Julie has a long history of success in education and Edtech. She’s worked with multiple private equity funded Edtech startups and early stage companies, including eSpark Learning, Motion Maths and Three Ring. And for those of you who have been around Edtech long enough, you may recall Study Island, which is one of the first SAS K 12 Edtech products. Julie spent a decade developing the sales team at Study Island from its early stage to its IPO. Back to Great Minds here, listen to this, 85% of Great Minds staff works remotely, 15% are hybrid. And despite or possibly because of this, they have a really, really strong workplace culture, they’ve recently earned a great place to work certification. And today, we are going to talk to Julie about creating great workplace culture remotely. And some manager hacks for driving growth and high performance with hybrid sales teams who work remotely. We’re going to look for some magic hacks from Julie. So welcome.

Julie Huston  02:14

Thank you, Debbie.

Debbie Goodman  02:17

Alright, so let’s get started. I’ve heard many people say that is absolutely impossible to build any culture, least of all a high performance culture remotely. And so what’s your take on this?

Julie Huston  02:29

Oh, I hope that’s not true. I don’t believe it’s true. I think it’s more accurate to say that many leaders outsource HR to HR. So what I mean by that is that you’re a practitioner, you’re in a vertical stack, like IT or legal or sales, right and HR, which doesn’t really exist at tiny companies, right, and then like, all of a sudden the company gets bigger, and you have HR and you know, HR is here, and I’m going to outsource performance management metrics, you know, what my reviews feel like whatever. And all of a sudden, you know, that’s not fair to HR, because HR, they have one brush, right? Not like all like, well, how do IT people, how do developers, even my team I have inside and outside salespeople, you need to think differently about all that. So leaders at every level, departmental level, supervisory level, they need to be driving performance managers and the culture in their own groups, and keeping the company’s mission and values front and center through that whole thing but in your own idiom. You know, in remote when you bring out elements to bear, I think we talk about this a lot right now. Because in-person work was, unfortunately a crutch for all of this, that we all just relied on. We’re here and we’re fun and we went to a happy hour and they call that culture. And I think that was actually all fraudulent. So I think we’re going to do better work now because we’ll be forced to. And so I think things are getting better. We can’t just like see people and think they’re productive. So that like I said, is gone. And let’s get real.

Debbie Goodman  04:12

Okay, so I’m hearing you say that actually, back in the day when we had this when we were all in person most of the time. It was easy to just point to the team gatherings, the happy hours and the the team get togethers as well, that’s culture building, that’s team building and therefore we have a healthy culture. Whereas now because we don’t really have that, we’ve got to be much more intentional. And we’ve got to be very much more focused in that one on one as well as group engagement. Is that what I’m hearing you say?

Julie Huston  04:44

I will say there’s something to remote work that all the employees who desperately want to work from home, they need to also be cognizant of. So this is on the employee, the employees who are trying to get better, they no longer are getting culture by osmosis, leadership by osmosis, seeing how I organize my day, let’s say as a department head and how I do it and what I look they’re, they’re missing that. They also, I heard one of my kids said this to me, he said, I love that when my boss is that our office because he works at multiple offices, and he said when the boss is in their office, he gets to see like, very visually, oh, he’s got a minute, I see that he’s got a minute, I’m gonna approach him with something, but when he’s in the New York office, he’s not there and so it’s like, I miss that. So I’m like, okay, that’s really good for me to understand. It made me think about maybe wanting to open some office hours to have like, just look at the, here’s 30 minutes if anybody wants to hop on or needs me, or knows I’m available. So it’s like, how do I do that? But also the employee. What’s your proxy for being able to see that my door is open or to see, you know, do you want to get on my calendar, talk to my assistant? How are you going to do that? So employees have to drive in some cases, their own mentorship, their own development, they’ve got to lean in a little too, and make that a two way street. But that was good.

Debbie Goodman  06:04

I mean, I actually love that. I think that there’s so much, you know, managers and leaders get so much of the burden. And the flak really, for when things aren’t working. And granted, that’s their role. It’s their responsibility, but it is a two way street. And if you have employees and team members who are being equally intentional about wanting to engage with their managers and their colleagues, both for formal setup meetings, as well as other dropins, that can really drive culture. I had an experience of this, I was doing my year end check ins, I don’t do formal performance reviews, because I you know, I like at the end of every project, we’ll do a proper debrief. And I’m like, okay, we’re good now. So at the end of the year, I do these, really, they just check ins. We talk about, you know what’s going on. And at the end of every single one of these check ins with me, I do one on one with everybody in my team all over the world. And we always say why don’t we do this more frequently? And the thing is that I’m the one who’s initiating the check in. I’m like, why don’t you let me know when you feel like checking in with me. And I think that trying to emphasize that, normalize that as a practice, is something that I certainly want to do as a note  to self. I need to do that. I need to do it more. But I also need to invite my team members to do that more for me, because I’ll make my time available.

Julie Huston  07:22

Oh, my gosh, this is so smart, Debbie and it’s so organic. So two things I would tell you. First, I want to call back to what I said about outsourcing HR to HR. So an HR protocol to get us, you and I, to be doing that is going to look like something like have a quarterly conversation, it’s going to be some role scripted thing. It’s not gonna feel organic and it’s like, what does it consist of, it becomes a project, you hate it, I hate it. It’s like I have to do my checklist checklists for these 7 people or these 25 people or whatever. So that’s why I say like, it’s and what you’ve done actually is highly supported by research in birth order. Now that’s out there. Okay, birth order feedback drives a lot of what a lot of my foundational understanding of how to motivate people, because birth order is one of the, not the only, but it’s one of the key factors that talks about, like how we, it has a huge impact on us. And when you look at firstborns, they’re so over indexed for leadership and high performance. I was like, what’s different like, about a baby being born, like they don’t know, they’re first borns, it must be something we culturally do and it’s teachers also go through a lot of training on, on what, how birth orders, how firstborns rather, are managed, and we treat them that makes them great. So you can do this with anyone. It’s just that we tend to do it firstborns. And it’s really three things. And I’ll save the third one for the thing that you were just doing. The first one is they’re given more responsibility as the oldest. They’re just like, you hold the ice cream, man money, go out to the street, hold your little brothers, right. They have incredibly high expectations around them, which is like always asking people to do more, but you’re like, you’re gonna be president. And then you get to your fourth child and you’re like, where’s Brendan, he’s my fourth child. And we’re always like, we just let him have fun in life. And we weren’t like putting all that stuff. He’s very, very successful today. But I mean, it’s just like, it was more fun for him to grow up as the youngest and our oldest we’re always like, you have to do this and all that. So it’s funny. But the third thing was process feedback, not just feedback, but how to do it and if you wait till the end of the year to give your people process feedback, as opposed to we just did a ride along this afternoon and I want to tell you what I thought was great and I want to now I want to also show you how you did better. That’s how you get immediate, so your feedback not being like some real esoteric thing. It’s constant and it’s not just that was good, that was bad. It’s like what you specifically did, here’s how to do it better. I remember a rep, she this poor gal on our team, I was seeing her all day present six different groups, let’s say on a state caravan, it was like they were going to rotate. So I actually approached her in between, let’s say session two and three, and said, can you change this? This is such a good AB sector. Can you change how you’re presenting blabbity Blah? And then I was like, Yeah, I don’t think my way was better. So go, try. I mean, it’s just funny when it’s like, that kind of feedback and interplay is the cradle of high performance. It really is.

Debbie Goodman  10:30

Yeah, I would just to go back to performance reviews, and I don’t want to get too too stuck there. But you’re right, everybody hates them, the manager hates them, the person who’s being reviewed hates them. And I don’t know how meaningful they actually are, because they’re so far in, like the actual performance is so far in the rearview mirror. So I definitely do prefer the on the, you know, after the project or in between, or like direct feedback right away. But let’s go on to continue on this question around accountability. So, you know, with one of the reasons why many managers like to have people in their site, is because they believe that if they, if you can see them, then you at least have some sense of what people are up to. And you can keep tabs on those who are lagging behind or not being quite as active. I remember my first workplace in recruiting, the mark of activity and engagement was how much time you spent on the phone. Because back in the day, like on the phone, we weren’t, we didn’t even have internet. I’m aging myself. So and my manager would come into the office and go, why aren’t you guys on the phones. And so that was the way in which managers back in the day would be able to measure performance and accountability. Things have transitioned so much. But still, I think it’s easier for some managers to at least have sight of who’s busy in an office environment, and it’s quite scary for some to not have sight of, of their people, which is why a lot of you know, why the return to Office quest for a company like yours, which has so many remote people and you’ve got like 250 people in your sales org? How do you make sure that everybody’s doing their thing?

Julie Huston  12:23

Yeah, well, accountability is interesting, because people often are in motion, like they’re busy. But it might not be running at the right thing, right, I have a saying I forget where I picked it up. So I forget, I don’t know who I should be crediting for this. But it’s like speed is only an asset when you’re running in the right direction. Otherwise, you’re running as far quickly away from success as you possibly can. So I say that all the time here. So motion and action are two different things. Motion to me is like I’m making calls, but they might be completely ineffective. So you want to have measures that no matter how you’re doing it, the measure is going to be a true, true measure of success. And for sales, that means building your goal from the ground up. Because all salespeople are ultimately measured against their goal. Activity is important. We’ll get to that. But again, like your goal needs to be really fair, and you need to have market fluctuations or like you have a state contract in one state, it’s a lot easier for that rep to do business than this other state where it’s a prospecting, you know, so your goal should equalize for everything. So managing people to goal is a way to say okay, now I know that all the actions you’ve taken, are really they’re like leading to success. Now, you can’t wait to the end of the year to find out if people are successful. So what do you do in between to know every day? So keeping it simple is really important. There are like you mentioned, we’re complex organization, we have four huge product lines, and every one of them has new sales objectives, upsell, cross, renew, you know, you’re doing this, you’re keeping people happy, you’re you know, you’re reacting. 80% Of your week maybe is reacting, so thriving in that 20, you’ve got to really good up. So for us, a key measure that just surfaces to the top, and I’ve asked my managers to make it part of every bi weekly one to one is new new, the new new. In fact, we have a report, we have a Salesforce report, what are the new new opportunities so new, common new, new squared, I don’t know what we call it, but the new new report is a relentless review of what new opportunities did you open in the last two weeks for new business? So it’s a new presence of new business, because our ultimate goal that when we look at how we will be successful is we say we’re going to be successful for talking to lots of people. And I know that’s like dumb, it sounds really vague, but I don’t care if it’s by phone, email, conference, whatever the idiom is, dropping off, there’s lots of ways you can do it. If one doesn’t work for you do it the other way. And if that stops working, do it another way. And if one person that’s a target, you have none of your favorite methods work, get out of your comfort box and try something else to get to your man, get to your girl, whatever. So for us talking to people is the goal. And the accountability around it is the new new report. It’s like I have engaged these new people in the last two weeks. And you’re probably thinking that must be constant. They’re salespeople, that’s what they’re supposed to be doing. Do you know, it can be, it can be a lot of two week periods in a rep’s year where they haven’t done any and that will set them, that’s fine. Finding religion is having to tell your manager in the last two weeks, you know, I haven’t opened one new anything with anyone. And that’s a brutal conversation. So that’s the kind of accountability that we all have, is that it’s got to be that.

Debbie Goodman  16:02

Right, so I would believe it because I still do a fair amount of business development myself. And there are times when it’s just so much easier to speak to people that you know, versus opening a new door. So being like, really clear and honest about what’s new and what’s an existing relationship is, is pretty hardcore to look at those numbers from time to time. But do you also take a look at whether the new conversations or even the existing conversations are the quality of that because activity can be quite misleading? We can go for the low hanging fruit, the easy new, versus the appropriate new that’s in the right target market for the product or the offering that we want to sell. So is there a measure of additional accountability there on the quality?

Julie Huston  16:49

Yes, like beyond time will tell, right? Where are these going anyway, ultimately, by now? So one of the hacks or one of the things I think that I’ve become increasingly good at over my sales career is that pipeline stages, a lot of times people love a simple like four or five pipeline stages, like pre engagement, engagement, you know, meeting close, whatever. And we at Great Minds, we have a lot more definition so that we can be on the same page and precise. So when we’re doing the pipeline review, we are talking about, you had to have had these qualitative definitions of an engagement to hit this, like the 5% bar or the 10% bar, the 20% bar. And I think that also helps us get real with whether that’s going somewhere or it’s an initial conversation, and we would separate out. Also, we forecast based on program year, so we could have new opportunities that started but we know those are 25, 26 reviews, that happens a lot in the course space where it’s like, yes, we’re up for math in 25. That’s, that’s been going on all through 2023, it should be if someone’s researching math, or researching any advanced option, they should be yours. And that’s what we’re doing our job best. So we don’t want to minimize those. That is a new new, I need those. But also I have to fill a pipeline that’s going to get me to a goal. So I also need to mix that in with business that’s like, going to be at the right level for this year. So it’s more urgent, and it’s going to hit different milestones. And because I’ve mentioned milestones, I will distract, I’ll take this in another way. Also, you can and again, it doesn’t really matter if you’re remote or in house, because I don’t care if you’re an inside sales rep, everybody wants to fluff their kitten, their fluff bear, or what I’m doing, right, whatever. So, my ladder is a nice way for a manager to and everybody to be on the same page about like, can we all agree here’s our sales process with our product, accounts have to go through these five things, or three things, whatever it is, like a core adoption is many. But ultimately, it results in a curriculum review. But it might be first, you know, like that we’re on their radar, or they do that. So knowing like I’ve met the decision maker, I’ve done this and without other metrics, like I got the PO in hand, you can really hold people to a milestone header to say, are you meeting the milestone ladder with X number of accounts? Like, again, sufficient to meet your pipeline to say, nobody, you haven’t taken anybody to this point yet? And it’s step one, we are going to have to like get people to step one for us, which is have them agree to a demo, or to take a free trial or, you know, so really building with your team and always getting their feedback along the way on these processes. But it’s like, these three things should happen before we’ve even got somebody who’s on the hook for real. And in startups and young companies, when they don’t know, I just had a mentor, become more of a friend really, but a woman that I mentor in the business and she said, how do you deal with a brand new territory, it’s like a cold territory, there’s nothing. And I’m gonna actually now that I thought of this, I’m gonna call her back and say, I thought of a way. I was like, well, don’t put someone in a totally cold territory until you’ve worked with inside was really my answer. But now I was like no, you know what, you can set up milestones that are like just meeting people, like I took eight people to coffee. I did that, like, there are things you can do that are milestones that will lead to achievement in most cases.

Debbie Goodman  20:41

Yeah. I mean, I think particularly with longer sales cycles, where the outcomes as the measure of success are, take longer, and are fewer. It’s a way to keep people accountable, but also a way to keep people motivated so that they still feel like they are achieving things that they are along the you call it the ladder or the pipeline of getting to where they need to be. It’s hard to motivate people, particularly in a market like this, where things can be slow and slower. The market’s increasingly competitive. You know, we’re starting to space a K 12 world where the funding is going to become, or the lack thereof, is going to become a real issue for many organizations. And so making sure that sales leaders, managers and their teams are staying motivated, but also on track with the right things feels like it’s going to be even more important. And if companies haven’t got these processes already embedded, they should really get going with them now, right?.

Julie Huston  21:48

Yes, absolutely. It’s really been an extraordinary period for funding for our customer. For the three years, I want to say in a row, Edtech or education as a whole has been, really, we have to remember in my lifetime, they’ve had more free cash flow as customers than they’ve ever had, ever. And it’s going to be somewhat restricted going forward. And it’s going to impact some businesses more than others by the nature of what they do. Some are more insulated, and I would say live by the sword die by the sword. You need to ask yourself as a CEO and sales leader did you vastly benefit from it, you’re going to, it’s going to impact you more. If your curve, you know, went sky high, you’re going to be impacted more because it was because they had that funding that they found you. Have you done enough to keep their business? Have you shown back evidence? I always say to other people, like you’ve got to sell their success with your product back to them at regular intervals and show them with implementation success. If you just take their money and back the truck away, you’re gonna be gone and forgotten. So I think that’s important. Also products that were just around the pandemic, many of us had to develop things just to support. And I expect those and I started to see the evidence of some of those products, not all, because some of them were just great ideas. But some of those products already are like, okay, we don’t need that aspect of that we just don’t need it anymore. And they’re not going to have the money to not make that hard decision. So it’s really funny, because every CEO that listens to your podcast is just saying, yeah, it’s those other people, not me, because we’ve done it. And so I’m here as a public service to all your sales leaders. It’s also you, you need to be careful about how much you’re putting on your sales team when the macro economic conditions are going to start to tighten up. The good news is, from everything we’re hearing 24 is going to hang in there with with some notable exceptions. There’s already been announcements about some budget cuts in key places and I think California has talked about belt tightening, New York City absolutely. So I think there’s going to be some places, but by and large, I think there’s a lot of stability around K 12. But I do expect 25 to 27 to be the leveling out period, and it’s going to be better than 19.

Debbie Goodman  24:16

Yeah, 2025 to 2027 is going to be…

Julie Huston  24:18

Going to be a period of return to more austerity and you know, like, how do we do more with less and some of the price increases that went in as costs went up, are costs coming down? We’re going to be expected to hand that back. So you can’t just keep the price high if the reason for it, isn’t there.

Debbie Goodman  24:38

Right, okay, so if we start looking at what 2024 is going to look like, your view is that it’s the year of hang in there. Some cuts somewhere, but it sounds like it’s the year to get your house in order, particularly with your sales and revenue teams and your marketing teams to make sure that all of these fundamentals are there, whether you’ve got in person teams or remote teams, just making sure that the rigor around the milestones, the activities, the quality control and the numbers, because ultimately the numbers really do matter. I, you know, anybody who says, well, it’s not a numbers game, I think they’re lying to themselves, quite frankly. Okay, so what additional advice do you have aside from these words of wisdom that have already been imparted? What advice do you have for managers and leaders of revenue teams for 2024, for the year ahead?

Julie Huston  25:39

Well, I think simplification is something I’m striving for. Simplifying, because there is the big impetus for so long was like, but it’s a pandemic. So do the best you can, just get it done. And there’ll be this excuse of like, well, it’s crazy, or things are different, or, you know, we’re working remotely or we don’t have… Take all of that away, write the note that should be no excuses. And performing in a way that we feel like is the best way. It’s not like my kids are home sitting on my lap, because we don’t have school or whatever. And I know, that seems like really far away. But we got into as a country, some bad habits during those years that we’re still peeling back, right? We’re still clawing our way back. Even the whole, you hear a lot of, you know, very important tech leaders talking about you’re not productive remotely, so I’m taking remote away. And I think it’s not so much you know, again, I feel like the productivity that they’re talking about was false measures anyway. And I think that it was like, well, I see you, that’s how I know that you’re productive. And we’re, you know, we’re doing things so employees, if they want to keep that remote work that they like, what are they doing to make sure it’s like, no, I’m in my good habits. I’m working 110%, I’m putting in more I’m back to my like, I’m really trying to be completely back to basics. So that’s more of just about like where this whole remote work is going. I think a lot of people said, but my employees are still remote. And I’m going to fix all my productivity issues by bringing it back in the office. I’m saying put it on the employees, put exactly what you need out of them on them and see if you can’t get it out of remote work, because it’s definitely easy to hire. You’re gonna have payroll benefits, other happiness factors, engagement factors around remote. So I’m saying stay the course with remote but make sure that they’re doing that. Okay, how do we do that? We simplify the job, okay. And by simplifying the job and making sure they understand what’s important, coerce your or conscript your team to identifying those things, because we can be blinded. It’s just like your manager who was like, make more calls, get on the phone, you know, it’s like, but Bob, we’re the ones doing it and all of our people tell us they prefer email, you know, and so that’s why we’re so quiet, we’re madly, like keeping up with all this correspondence, right? It’s like, sometimes you need to hear from the team. So give them a prompt, and a couple of Zooms, break up your team and say, this year, here’s your goal, we’re going to be successful if we do X. Now you got to be ready for that meeting and know what you think. But if you give that to your team, and you keep going around and around until you’ve named everything, then simplify it, then they’ll have three ways of saying the same thing. And for us, like it’s talk to more people, my theme for my summer sales meeting was make your own luck. And by doing that, I said, you make your own luck, because you are working around things. If you have a target district and you haven’t been able to get in with them, think tangentially. Who influences them and how and you go, you go there and influence. So it’s like making your own luck. But anyway, so okay, how do you make your own luck? It’s you talking to more people. How do you talk to more people? So you, you might hear people say it in five different ways. They’re saying I’m gonna we have to email more, I need to be on more lists, or I need to do this. So ultimately, it’s like talking to more people and then keep those very small few simple things top of mind in your recognition programs, in your one to ones, in dashboards, in everything. But just a few things. And if the few drivers that you come up with, you know, you’re constantly talking about throughout 24, you should be more successful. It’s what you who know your business best, said it would make you more successful. The problem often isn’t knowing it, it’s doing it right? And like my team will know it’s like we need to have more conversations, we need to get in front of more people or do this differently. It’s doing it. It’s making the time and doing it and not be distracted by the reality, which is the 80% of your week that’s like you’re reacting to what’s happening to you. And I’m saying you’ve got to carve out at least 20% of your week to drive, right? To do the things that you said is going to make you more successful.

Debbie Goodman  30:16

Okay, well, I love all of that, keeping it simple, back to basics, allocating the time and getting a collaborative approach to figuring out the success of a team, the people who are most, you know, closest to the customers often have the answers. So as a leader of revenue teams, you don’t have to come up with the answers yourself. So all of those are tremendous pearls of wisdom in the last couple of minutes. What are you most excited about for Great Minds in 2024?

Julie Huston  30:50

Thanks, well, so definitely, I’m just coming off a week too, with my leadership, my fellow C-suite, if you will, at our headquarters, it was great. We had our board meeting, and I just kept marveling at how in sync our team is. And I would attribute that to that we have incredibly concrete near term. Like we know our short term and short term is always concrete. And often people know where they want to go in 10 years, but it’s that little middle ground, especially we focus a lot on 25, 26, 27. We’re just like ahead of our folks. And I feel like we very concretely know what we’re achieving and what we’re setting out to achieve. And we’re on the same page. And that just is so engaging to me, because I’m not having to feel like I need to get people on my side of something or like that work I feel is behind me, which can be as a sales leader can be most of your work is explaining to the product people, that isn’t going to lead to sales or explaining to the legal team, that’s restrictive or whatever. Like I feel like all of that work is behind us. We’ve got this incredible synchronicity around we know what we have to do, and let’s just like drive it. And that’s a really good, that’s a really good place to be.

Debbie Goodman  32:07

That really does sound exciting. It’s not any things sort of wild and fabulous from an external point of view. It’s just all about having the right building blocks internally and being surrounded by amazing colleagues who are all on the same page. That sounds just like the right the right answer for ending off this year and starting 2024 Thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Julie Huston  32:32

Pleasure. I love the podcast. I’ve learned a lot from it. So thanks to all your future guests. And I’m really proud to be among them now.

Debbie Goodman  32:40

Wonderful. Thanks so much, Julie.