THE SALES DEVELOPMENT PODCAST

Episode 109: Michael Tuso

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Episode 109: Michael Tuso

Winner of the 2019 BEAST Award for Best Sales Development Leader, Michael Tuso is a rising star in the Sales Development world.

How does he create these award winning programs?

“Tenbound’s recognition of Michael as the top sales development leader in the industry is well-deserved,” said Nicolas Vandenberghe, CEO and Co-Founder of Chili Piper. “He is committed to creating world-class training and sales development programs at Chili Piper which lead to both personal growth as sales practitioners for our SDRs and also stellar conversion.”

Listen in this week, as Michael breaks down how he thinks about Sales Development strategy, tactics, training and program design. This on is power packed with actionable tips.

Give a listen and leave a comment below!

Big thanks to @Darryl Praill of @VanillaSoft for support of the podcast! Check out their new Sales Engagement solutions here… https://www.vanillasoft.com/solutions/business-function/sales-engagement-platform/

Notable Quotes:

“If you make coaching the number one thing that you do as a manager, your team will absolutely get better, and you’ll be a better leader, and they’ll trust you more as a result. And you’ll be able to go much further than someone who doesn’t think about it that way.”
– Michael Tuso

“It’s when expectations aren’t met, but they are delivered with no one trying to challenge it at all… That’s when people get in trouble.”
– Michael Tuso

“We always hear the top 20% always bring in like 80% of the revenue, which is by and large, true, so we’d rather just like bring in those types of people—even if it takes a little bit longer of time—than hire a bunch of people and put them on performance plans. So it becomes a much more sustainable way to think about hiring.”
– Michael Tuso

Brief Summary

There’s always been a certain standard, certain way of doing things in the sales and sales development spaces. And that’s just how we got used to running things. But every now and then, it’s always good to have a fresh set of eyes with a fresh perspective on things to improve our processes.

That’s what our guest today, Michael Tuso of Chili Piper, is going to talk about in this episode of The Sales Development Podcast: how to make our processes stable and sustainable.

Today’s Guest: Michael Tuso

Michale Tuso’s first job was a karate instructor, and that’s where he first had his first take on coaching, which is how he landed where he is today. Having previously worked on a political campaign, he discovered he had a knack for sales, which brought him to a lot of different start ups where he created and built out robust sales development teams.

The episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

David introduces the episode’s guest, Michael Tuso (00:58)
Michael Tuso, sales, sales development, and Chili Piper (01:28)
Building a sales development team from a recruiting perspective (02:58)
- An empirical interview process (03:40)
What behavioral interviewing is (05:05)
Roleplay-coaching-roleplay in the interviews (06:40)
- Scoring performance in interviews (08:20)
Finding the balance between the stringent process and the speed of hiring (09:07)
- Prioritizing acquiring the top performer (10:24)
- No issue with quantity (11:42)
Chili Piper’s brand is so strong it attracts top performers to their recruiting funnel (13:00)
- Focusing on the buyer and buyer enablement (14:00)
Buyer enablement and how Michael and Chili Piper go about it (16:30)
- Training your inside sales team whether it’s inbound or outbound (17:50)
A more frictionless process and speaking up (19:38)
No one-size-fits-all, no silver bullets (23:17)
Becoming a value-add person (26:14)
Where to start if the process isn’t working? (27:40)
Onboarding and getting up to speed in 100 days (31:18)
- Polishing the basics over and over again (34:00)
Leveraging time to spend on training (35:00)
- The number one thing Michael cares about: coaching and training (36:08)
Breaking down time, prioritizing, and calendaring (37:50)
You still prospect as an AE (41:55)
What’s coming up for Michael Tuso and Chili Piper (44:05)