That’s how Ray Green, founder of MSP Sales Partners and expert in residence for Producers Club for sales leadership, started our conversation last week.
I laughed and said, “Used to? As in past tense? What makes you think I’m just a delightful little Skittle now?”
He explained…
“When you were managing your sales reps, I saw you go off multiple times in a meeting because a rep wasn’t following the process, even if they were getting pretty good results. Now that we’re managing over 75 MSP salespeople, I get it. If I can get a salesperson to follow the process we give them, we can get them closing north of 70% of the opportunities they get in front of, up from the normal 20% to 30% they close—that’s MILLIONS of ARR for the business and hundreds of thousands in commission for them. But ONLY if they follow the process we give them. What’s even more frustrating is that we have reps who we’ve been coaching for almost a year now who SHOULD know better, yet STILL skip steps, fail to prepare, and just ignore everything we’ve taught them that they KNOW works. They lose deals they should have won. It’s infuriating!”
Almost feels like a Nick Saban rant, huh?
Welcome to the club, brother. Pull up a chair. The coffee’s strong and the frustration is chronic. Your personal stash of Tums is over in the corner.
Most business owners think their biggest financial leak is marketing not working, churning clients, or a bad hire. Wrong. The most expensive thing in your business is a salesperson, or any employee who knows the right way to do something but chooses NOT to do it.
Not because they don’t know. Not because they weren’t trained. Not because they found a better way. It’s simply because they’re lazier than my 12-year-old on a Sunday morning when it’s time to go to church and they refuse to get with the program.
When I built the sales process for my team, it wasn’t invented on a whiteboard in an afternoon (much less in 5 seconds with an AI prompt).
It was developed the hard way—listening to calls, watching deals go sideways, figuring out exactly where they fell apart, testing different languages, different sequences, different objection-handling strategies, different offers, etc., etc., etc. It was based on 20+ years of selling face-to-face and tens of thousands of sales meetings.
So, when a rep decided they “knew better” than me and decided they didn’t need to follow our process, especially those who were hired 5 minutes ago, it tended to push my buttons a bit.
Lemme break this down…
Crafting a well-honed sales process is infinitely more valuable than finding a great salesperson, because a strategically crafted sales process makes GOOD salespeople GREAT. Once you’ve got it right, you can replicate it. You don’t need to find and recruit superheroes who cost 10X what everyone else costs to come work for you. You can hire coachable, high-integrity people who are hungry, humble, and smart… and give them a success framework to operate in.
Franchises have figured this out. That’s why the average franchise is twice as likely to succeed than your average business owner because they have a system for success. When you have a SYSTEM, you can get predictable results, not a Space Mountain roller-coaster ride in the dark where you don’t know what’s coming up next.
So, what do you do if you have employees skipping steps and refusing to follow the process you’ve given them?
First, and most important, stop tolerating noncompliance
If you have someone on your team who is consistently NOT following the process you’ve given them, they are telling you boldly, while flipping you the bird, that their comfort is more important than YOUR results.That’s it. Full stop. No nuance required.
It’s YOUR responsibility to either enforce compliance OR fire them. You owe it to your clients and employees to ensure your team is following protocol.
How would you feel if a hospital was lax about enforcing checklists and steps to prevent infection and cross contamination? Would you be okay if they said, “Yeah… Mary never washes her hands, but it’s REALLY hard to find good people. She’s been here for a couple of years, works hard, and has a family… so we just keep reminding her and kinda look the other way, hoping she’ll comply.”
You’d lose your mind!
Your process is not a framework to “draw inspiration from” or a suggestion.
It’s the thing that works. A recipe that should be followed to the letter.
Our sales process was built on years of testing what didn’t work until we found what did. So, when a rep skipped it, changed it or refused to follow it, they weren’t just skipping a step. They were disrespecting all the people, effort, and money that went into developing it so it wouldn’t fail.
My colleague used the right word: “infuriating.” Because it IS. And “infuriating” should be a signal to act, not to sigh and carry on.
Second, inspect what you expect
If you are not regularly listening to sales calls, recorded or live, you will have no idea what’s actually happening. You think you’re running a scripted sales process. You’re probably running five different sales processes that happen to share a common logo. Free-range chicken. DON’T GUESS: get on those calls or have them recorded. Even the in-person meetings can (and should, with the prospects’ permission) be recorded. Know what’s being said and done by spot-checking.
Finally, get rid of those who won’t, or can’t comply
A “coachable” sales rep is not merely someone who can take feedback like a mature adult, remain positive, nod and say, “Got it.” They have to actually DO it.
If they turn around and do the exact same thing the next week, you shouldn’t be having a coaching conversation. That’s a warning conversation about terminating them. And the longer you delay it, the more it costs you in revenue, in team morale, and in your own sanity.
If you don’t fix it, it will keep you poor and your company mediocre. If you DO fix it, it will make ya mean… but so rich you don’t care.
Related: The Secret to MSP Success: Shift To A Sales Mindset
