How to Feed a Sales Force’s Behavioral Quotient, Crush Quotas, and Drive Up ROI

Oct 31, 2019

Mary Grothe is the CEO of Sales BQ, a a relatively “young” organization that works with companies to rebuild, scale, and empower their underperforming sales departments. A typical client might have 5 to 7 salespeople reporting directly to the CEO. Last year, Sales BQ rebuilt the sales departments for 42 companies. Mary, an experienced sales dynamo, known for exponentially exceeding quotas, says BQ, behavioral intelligence, or behavioral quotient, is about making the decision every single day to show up and give it everything that it takes to perform at one’s highest ability.

Under a 6-month contract, Sales BQ functions as a company’s “VP of Sales” and rebuilds the sales department in 3 phases. 

1. Evaluate and transform the infrastructure. Analyze the established set up, systems, processes, the types of roles, compensation modeling, territories, and CRM. Build a playbook. 
2. Assess the talent. Provide field sales coaching and training to enable the team to execute to their highest ability. Recruit new talent to grow the team or replace “pruned” personnel.
3. Appraise and correct environmental problems. Mary does not believe that sales professionals need to be told what they need to do to do better so much as management  should treat its salespeople the way they need to be treated in order to excel.

Does the process work? 

Eighty-five percent of their clients renew the 6-month contract and continue working with Sales BQ for a full year. The ones that don’t.? Mary says they are “crushing it” and don’t need Sales BQ anymore.

Mary classifies sales reps into three personas, based on their motivational drivers:

1. 87% of top performing sales reps are intrinsically motivated, people who are “fed” by recognition, feelings of self-worth, and self-competition.
2. Extrinsically motivated sales reps are focused on money and love to strive for targeted goals.
3. Altruistic sales reps care more about their clients than they do about recognition or making money. These individuals would be better placed in an account management or customer service role.

In this interview, Mary offers tips on effective sales techniques and the effective uses of LinkedIn. She can be found on LinkedIn and on her company’s website salesbq.com, where her company’s blog and Quota Crusher Podcast reside. The Quota Crusher Podcast is also on YouTube.