#218 – AI's role in the future of sales learning and coaching (Part 1) w/ Patrick Trümpi

Full episode transcript: 

​Please note that transcription is done by AI and may contain errors.

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George: Hi everyone. George here, the editor of the Sales Transformation Podcast. This week on the show, Phil sat down with Patrick Trümpi. Co-founder and CRO of Taskbase to discuss the importance of learning and coaching for salespeople and the role AI can play in those areas. The reason you're hearing from me is because Phil and Patrick had a lot to discuss, so we decided that once again, we're going to split this episode into two parts.

So make sure you keep watching the Sales Transformation podcast feed next week for part two. In the meantime though, please enjoy the first part of Phil's chat with Patrick Trümpi.​

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Phil: Hi. Well, I want to make a huge, uh, welcome to, Patrick Trümpi to join us on the sales transformation podcast . Um, I'll say just a few words about Patrick and why he sort of caught our eye, and then I'll ask Patrick to say a few words to introduce himself. I, I mean, we've seen the role that AI is beginning to have, um, a huge impact in sales.

We've seen that for some time. Um, and we also know that coaching is one of the things that has had, uh, sort of huge impact on many of our sort of developmental initiatives. And, uh, through our research in the marketplace, we came across Patrick and his company task base, uh, who is very much in, in this area.

So we've invited Patrick to come and join us. So say, Patrick, first of all, huge welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Patrick: Thanks a lot, uh, Phil for the invitation and very happy to be here. Talk about sales coaching and, uh, other topics,

Phil: another topics as well. I think normally what we do, Patrick, is um, I haven't really said anything to introduce you at this stage, but why don't you do it yourself.

Why don't you tell us a little about who you are, your background, and um, and then we can start sort of going into some detail about the whole sort of coaching and AI space.

Patrick: Yes. Happy to do that, Phil. Thanks a lot. Um, yeah, so I'm Swiss, uh, actually.

Phil: Fantastic. I think you're the first, you're the first person we've had on the podcast from Switzerland, so very nice to have you with us, Patrick.

Patrick: There are not too many, and I know why that is, Phil, because, uh, I would say, and that was actually the story I wanted to say, is, uh, you know, Switzerland is not very well known for a sales culture, let alone be. Like if you go to university in Switzerland, Swiss University, nobody would ever start the sales career.

Okay? There are these hidden sales careers like investment banker, which is probably like a sales career, but, uh, they wouldn't want to use these words or consultants sometimes as well. Anyway, but I, um, yeah, I, uh, was, uh, I mean when I started a political economy, I, I had to earn some money because my parents didn't have a lot and, uh, I wanted to study somewhere outside of where my parents live.

I think that's very common in the UK or in other countries, but in Switzerland, not necessarily you study closest to home usually, but, so I, um, yeah, I had to work, I applied at this company with a financial consultant, uh, which was again a disguised sales role, a hundred percent commissioned sales role, basically.

Uh, the, the hiring call was, the hiring talk was also quite strange for me because they didn't, they didn't ask me questions. They kind of sold their, uh, company to me, so that was a bit suspicious. I didn't, I didn't have any experience in the space. I was like, okay, well, might, let's, might as well start. I would never have wanted to start in a sales, um, position.

Started in this 100% commission based financial consulting role where the goal was to sell, uh, life insurance insurance in general, like consult people of insurance and, and selling bonds and ETFs and stuff like this. Um, so on the second day, uh, somebody said, okay, now write down every single name, you know, with the phone number and now we call them and book meetings.

And that was kind of how I got my first sales role. Not at all intended. That day was a very big surprise for me. It was like, whoa, what call, um, all these people I know for a financial concern, but I have no idea in this field. And that was quite, um, yeah, outside, definitely outside my com comfort zone. Um, but it was too far in to pull back.

I'm not a person who pulls back when I started something. So I kind of went through, um, uh, yeah, got an office. I actually rented an office, hired five, five people to work with me and worked with, uh, built a little business basically while I was studying. But that was B2C, which at some point got a bit boring.

I mean not, yeah, there wasn't enough complexity. So, and I got the opportunity to work at a first AI startup in Switzerland, which I joined. Um, worked there five and a half years from, uh, AE to VP of sales. Um, that was in the knowledge management area. And then, um, another three startups. One I sold with my best man as a co-founder for a few millions.

Um, another one, um, I built up to the Series A up 250 million is worth now a bit more probably because they keep growing and cost base. I joined to, I decided to join as CRO and co-founder two and a half years ago because the CEO is one of my best friends and I've worked with my best friends before and it worked and we're still best friends and it still works.

So it's, uh, it's been a great, great pleasure, although with a lot of change, and I say this to, to to finish it, so because like Toka is the interesting thing, Toka is coming not from sales, from learning like they were in learning. They built first AI tools for learning started 2017 when nobody talked about ai, but they were already in that learning space.

We still have learning experts in our company who know, like how learning and coaching, how that works pedagogically, And, uh, and that still helps us today to this day, to apply that into sales and ai sales coaching, which is a bit more than we, for us, coaching is not just improve people's skills, but now it's also, you know, like a boxer coach handles a towel or a bottle of water or motivates the person that's also coaching, like kind of support the rep, the sales reps, not just like they're giving structured feedback.

We'll get to that in detail, I guess, but also kind of help the reps get through the day. That's basically where we're at since like two and a half years. So yeah, that's the journey.

Phil: Yeah, I think in, in many ways we had a, an extremely similar background, um, in that, perhaps the difference, uh, in our background is I, I elected not to go to university.

Uh, when I, when I left home and I, um, went and lived with my parents who were happening to, to live in the Middle East at the time, then realised I needed to get a proper job. So I came back over to London and joined, uh, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. And I, I was lucky enough to get involved in their, their foreign staff training development programme, which was teaching me to eventually become a banker internationally.

But I, I hated the corporate world of banking. I just, and through the finance background, I then met a very entrepreneurial guy who'd been running a very in successful insurance broker. And I was beginning to, um, sort of get interested in what they were doing and working in the bank, but also selling insurance a bit like you in my early days, totally commission based.

And, um, over about a four year period, you know, we eventually built up really quite a large team and, um, but then decided probably a bit like you, that I did not enjoy the B2C kind of world. We were doing some B2B, but it was a mixture of both, but also I think some of the sales practises, um, was slightly unethical.

Um, I would say, um,

Patrick: but also so incentivized, right? That was the crazy thing. I mean, I also think, but like for instance, in Switzerland you earn, if you sell a life insurance, um, which is tax deductible, you earn, like if, if the customer invests 500, uh, a month for something, you earn like 7,000 for one contract.

If you do exactly the same and say, Hey, invest that money into a bank, you don't earn anything. So it's like the, the, the, the and, and obviously everybody sold the other part. I never did, but it's really difficult to kind of, okay. I mean, I earn money with that, with that I don't obviously. Yeah. So I guess that's it.

Was that the case as well in your, it,

Phil: it was, yeah, it was a bit the case. Um, but if one looked at the other side of the coin in terms of what, you know, from a learning point of view, it was incredible. I had, um, a mentor who, um. He taught me a lot about resilience and also, um, about potential, you know, recognising potential.

And he, he was just so good at, at sort of reaching into the psyche of what motivates people. And I think I wanted, you know, for me, I wanted independent life and I, I wanted to be my own boss at that time. And, uh, this gave me the route to do it. But then joined a, yeah, joined a consulting firm, and then that took me into the education space.

So I'd say that the beginnings of our, uh, the beginnings of our own careers were, were, were somewhat similar, but, um, of course I have a few more years, uh, a few more grey hairs than you do at this stage. So, uh, um, but I guess you could argue that we're both sort of fairly, uh, entrepreneurial in our own mindset.

Yeah. In the way that we've worked.

Yeah.

Patrick: no,

I wanted to ask, I mean, you, you, this guy you said, who dove into what motivates people. What was the main, um, what, what was the main, uh, message from this? What motivates people? Actually, it's an interesting topic. I.

Phil: Well, there were, you know, sort of, there were a few things that happened early on. I mean, I would say overall his just general intellect was, was off the planet. I mean, I, I, I, you know, he was a business person. Um, but actually he you know, he's read, he's studied and I was just interested in, in, in, uh, sort of seeing the potential for, um, expanding one's horizons through knowledge.

Um, and so that part of it was just being with someone who I felt I could learn a lot from. The other thing was about, um, resilience. And I remember, you know, you talked about recruitment and it being rather strange. Well, I did a lot of recruitment, you know, when I was involved in the business, and I remember one of the senior managers was ill, and, uh, I'd literally been in the business for about a couple of weeks.

And David, his, as, uh, the owner of the business came in and said, look, Phil, I've got a problem. You know, someone's had to drop out. Would you go and handle the recruitment for us? And it was about an hour's worth of sort of presentation, I suppose, um, selling this idea of, of, of working for this broker. And I lept at the opportunity, you know, I just believed in it so much.

But, uh, about after about half an hour or 20 minutes even, one person got up and left, and then a bit later on, a few more people got up and left. And then after about half an hour, the, the room was empty. You know, we had about 20 people in the room, and I, I was completely distraught. I thought I'd I, you know, the company was gonna cave in because of that performance.

And I remember him saying, he says, it's gonna do one or two things for you. See, they're gonna make you or break you. And, um, and there was no, uh, reprimand, you know, he did not say, what on earth have you done? Uh, the focus was purely on how I was going to react to that moment in time where I, um, had failed at something and, uh, and actually sort of humiliated in the process, you know, all sorts of things.

I was very young. I mean, I was, I don't know, 20 years old at the time, you know, so, so sort of very little experience. But, uh, when I look back on, uh, the learning from that four years, I, you know, I, I think, uh, I learned a huge amount from it and I don't regret it, but I was ready to leave, you know, at that time.

But, uh, interesting. Anyway, let's move, uh, let's move to more modern day, day times because, um, uh, you know, you, you've obviously sort of taken an interest in the learning world and I suppose, you know, uh, because a lot of your, sounds to me, a lot of your track record has been connected with development. I mean, it could have been other things, particularly on the technology side.

Uh, is there something that's really attracted you about that particular topic, or is it just a, is it secondary to the idea of building a business, growing it, then selling it, which is obviously what you've been doing as a, as an entrepreneur?

Patrick: Yeah, I guess, I mean, uh, that's an interesting question, especially, okay, sales and learning sales came automatically, uh, with Yeah.

Or with the first job, right? And then you dive in. I think learning in general, I was not, I didn't have a, a one point where I got like, oh, wow. Um, I mean, I did go to university, but I would tell you, Phil, that it probably wasn't worth my time. Uh, nowadays I wouldn't, I wouldn't go anymore because the only thing I learned at university, one of my professors said, Hey, um, in order for you to, it was the economic history professor.

He said, in order for you to really understand economics, you have to read primary literature. You have to read Adam Smith. You have to read John Keynes. You have to read,

Phil: yeah.

Patrick: Uh, Ricardo, you have to read the stuff of people who wrote the first book about it, and then all the other books build on top of that.

So if you wanna really learn economics, that's what you have to do. So that's what I did actually. And I think that was for me, the, the actual impact. If universities, the guy told me, read books with yourself, because all the, all the, all the materials at university were finished products, like a, a, a book about macroeconomics.

A guy who already synthesised all this stuff on economics on his own, like obviously being biassed in one of the economical directions, either neo classics or, or, uh, Ian or whatever. Like they were already skewed or already kind of, you know, in one action, but you didn't know that as a student. You had no idea what's the basis, um, what was the basis.

And I think that alone taught me a lot. I also realised, wow, I, I like learning in terms of my learning. I'm an auto, probably I would, I, I I read about hundred sales books. I, I continue to do that. Obviously, when I started in sales, I had no other idea to read all the books that were there. So I read all the books.

Um, I know that most people don't wanna read all the books.

Phil: They don't, I mean, very few salespeople, uh, from my experience actually sort of read seriously. And when they come on master, that's programme.

Patrick: That's, yeah, that's quite, but that's quite normally in any job, right? If you starting in banking, you don't read the latest banking books, uh, corporate banking era, like these kind of books about corporate banking.

Does anybody read that? Probably only those who study or go to university, but not out of. Interest. And I think that was the difference at sales, what I realised is sales, and that's why I'm still in sales, even though sometimes I don't. Well, and now I enjoy it way more because of ai. Thanks to ai, I really enjoy my job fully again.

'cause a sales is also a lot about, well you have to build presentations, you have to build quotes, proposals, RFP answers and all that stuff. That is not fun at all. The only fun part is talking to people. Uh, actually that's the fun part. Um, and that's what luckily sales reps will only need to do as of now if they use the right tools.

I mean, at least that's for us is the case. But I realise that sales, what you learn in sales is so transferable to real life. Like active listening, right? Would be good to, to listen actively to your wife, right, and also to your client, to your prospect, both. And this kind of, I saw this transferability of sales, what I learned in sales, what I learned by reading all those books.

I just realised it made my life better as a human, which I really enjoyed, I would say. And that's why I think I got into learning a lot.

Phil: Into learning.

Patrick: Yeah.

Phil: Yeah. That's good. Um, so, so can I just ask you about some of the books you've read that's made the biggest impression on you from a sales perspective?

Yes. Are there any ones that you would like to highlight? Uh, if you don't mention my book, I'll be very offended, Patrick, which I'm sure you haven't yet, but, uh, you better go ahead and read this after this podcast.

Patrick: Now, now, now is the question. Can I google it fast enough and say, I've read this book

Phil: Selling Transformed.

It's a really good book, and I think you might

Patrick: what says Transformed is the book. Yeah.

Phil: So Trans Transformed. Yeah.

Patrick: How old is the how? When did you write it, Phil?

Phil: Um, in 2020.

Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah, yeah. Um, it's on my list now, so, no, unfortunately I haven't read that one yet.

Phil: Don't worry, don't worry. I put you on the spot.

But anyway, going back to the original question, what would you, you know, what sort of books did you find?

Patrick: So the first one that really, that really, uh, transformed me was, let's Get Real, or Let's Not Play From Mohan ksa and not very well known book. I think, and I don't know many people who know it, but that that's not what

Phil: I.

Yeah,

Patrick: that was, that was good for me. I mean, it's so tactical, uh, this, uh, consultative kind of, yeah, it's going a bit into this consultative part and, but also quite honest, like direct, say what you think, say what you feel like if the only person on the other side is acting, gives very short answers. Say it.

Hey Phil, I feel like you're not so happy in this discussion. 'cause you, I realise you give very short answers. How do you feel about the conversation right now? And people open up, you know, and then, then, then it's psychology and, and then again, we are, what I learned about economics, about basics, and you have some psychology basics obviously, that are interesting to learn as well.

Um, so tini obviously for especially marketing is interesting, but in sales, I mean, challenger sales, I really do like, uh, that one, I do like the approach, I like old effect as well. The more modern one with the like four top sales skills that sales reps need to have is a very good one as well. Um, so these, I think for if you sell, if, yeah, if you don't have a, like, crazy transactional selling job and a bit more complex stuff, those are, those are quite interesting.

I mean, uh, yeah.

Phil: Yeah, it's, I mean it's, uh, it's always interesting to know, uh, sort of what books have, have influenced, uh, influenced people. Um, yeah, so of course the Challenger cell is very well known, and that was published, um, that was published just the year after my doctorate was published.

Patrick: Oh, okay.

Phil: Most quite what, what, what was quite interesting about the challenger cell when it came out because it really did, you know, set the scene for, uh, sales methodology, you know, after Michael Bos with solution selling and, and many other sort of genres of books on sales over the years, but it really did come at selling from a slightly different way, and they're rather provocatively said actually the, uh, relationship.

You know, it's, it's not so much about relationships, it's uh, it's about, um, your ability to, to challenge and to ask questions and come up with thought provoking points of view.

Patrick: That is the most remarkable. Uh, exactly Phil. I think, uh, that, that bit like the, the relationship is not the thing you, you sell.

It's not the core thing you sell around. You can build a relationship by being incredibly competent, by challenging the customer. And if you do that, because by challenging and being competent, that's way better. Building the relationship around that sales part rather than putting the relationship in the focus and then try to sell.

We all know the relationship sellers who are like, yeah, let me go and have some drinks with the guy a few times I have coffee with him, and then they sit down, eat, lunch, know each other, no selling for like half a year. Nothing happens. And maybe if they built a really good relationship at some point, suddenly somebody's coming.

That works as well, especially in the service business. But it's not,

Phil: yeah,

Patrick: that's not selling. That's kind of, it's not, but

Phil: yeah.

Patrick: In some, in some areas that's, that's still, that can be more successful let's say maybe, maybe with existing clients, for instance, existing clients.

Phil: It's huge.

Patrick: Um, it's huge, right?

It's not,

Phil: it, it was interesting because, um, so what drove, um, what drove my book and the doctorate was, um, a huge number of interviews that were done with customers, um, about how do they want to be sold to. Um, and that's in a research sense is was sort of unusual because most, most books on sales are written by people who think they're quite good at selling and they've written about this is, this is what we're done quite well, challenge to sales, slightly different.

Their research was based on thousands of interviews with, um, salespeople, you know, across the client base. That was within, within the corporate executive board at the time. Yeah.

Patrick: Yeah.

Phil: So this research was actually starting with customers and sort of working back and, and rather than, um. And sort of look at particular methodology, it touched upon values and the values that we touched upon, and I'll come back to the challenger approach a bit later, is we looked at, um, uh, authenticity as a, as a value.

And in fact, it's, we now call it intellectual authenticity, client centricity, which is, you know, having a passionate interest in the problems your client's trying to solve. And then, and then, um, the two that we found are rarest, but most wanted by customers were proactive creativity and tactful audacity.

So practical creativity is having the ability to come up with, uh, you know, ideas, but tactful, audacity, um, is being, or, you know, being bold, being challenging, but tact is important, but it's, it's knowing when to be bold. And the opposite side of the taal audacity coin is arrogance and, and being overconfident and too provocative.

Patrick: Yeah.

Phil: So it's quite interesting that, that, um, my research and the book came out at roughly the same time. Um, and it was quite interesting because the, the topic challenge has a both a positive and a slightly negative connotation in my view. so anyway, we can talk about the nuances of words and things like that for some time, but,

Patrick: I mean, and you definitely got me interested to read the book field now even more so.

Um, and, uh, the interesting topic, I just want one, one comment that I can also, because it's learning and sales and you, you talk about authenticity. I think it's actually one of, I'm, I'm also a massive, massive interest in philosophy in general. Um, um, and I find authenticity an interesting concept. The concept that I didn't get my head around for quite a long time, because it kind of, it is okay, what feels right for me to do, right?

That comes across more authentic, something that feels like it's me, right? I can express myself in the, in the way I want to express myself. Now, the issue I have, or the one of the struggles I used is, is from my journey. You know, I was never person who asked questions. Like in you were never, never. My wife was, was like, when I met her, um, 15 years ago, 15 years ago, she was like, at some point she took me out after like three months she knew each other.

She said, Hey, Patrick. And so when I hear you with your friends talking, it's such, you always have these conversations that somebody's telling a story. And then another one is really not an interesting conversation you have. I mean, nobody ever asks a question, nobody's interested in somebody, nobody fuck asks a follow up question.

I'm like, whoa, okay. Never thought about that. And then I kind of started to, you know, think about questions I could ask, which was really difficult because then you are, you think about a question you can ask, and when the person stops talking, you want another question and you don't have in mind. So you're thinking about questions, you're actually not listening.

But then you realise if that gets, if that gets kind of a normal thing to do, it becomes suddenly authentic. And, and now it turned into, for me, turned into channelling interest into others. I realise, hey, it's actually way more interesting to listen to other people than to talk myself. Now I got in the other opposite extreme.

Now I rarely talk about myself. I don't really want to talk about myself. I actually am way more interested in talking, in, in hearing others and what I wanna say with authenticity that would, would never have felt authentic for me to ask questions. And I'm, I can tell you for sure that my sales team would say active listening is probably one of my strengths.

And it really is, like I, I'm listening and I'm asking a follow up question based on what I heard. And for me, it's just the best and most interesting thing to do.

Phil: It's, it's, uh, when I, when I did the doctorate, there were these four positive mindsets, which I mentioned, and they were authenticity content. Uh, at the end of last year, we redid the research because the 15 years had, had moved.

I mean, the other stat actually, you might be interested. Is 15 years ago, having asked customers what they look for from salespeople and, and to give us examples as well, which the examples were amazing. Um, I asked the question, what percentage of salespeople sell in a way that you want? You know, you've just told me what you want.

You've told me what's important to you, what percentage to actually do it. And I remember on the very, very first interview that I did, um, the guy said, well, actually, and he, he, he sat back and thought about it. He said, well, actually, 90% of salespeople are a complete waste of time. In said, in fact, I'd say it's 95%.

95. Yeah. So, so I thought, you know what, I'm gonna ask that question each, each person I interviewed, so, so I, I think interviewed just under a hundred people, uh, for the doctorate. And the second person I asked the question was, uh, he said, uh, less than 10% of salespeople sell in the way they want. So this was, uh, this was, um, the thing that got me interested because in, because my business is all about teaching people how to sell better, how to perform better.

And I began to question, well, these people are sitting on massive budgets. You know, this is complex B2B kind of procurements. Yeah. Anyway,

Patrick: yeah.

Phil: The second, second time round we asked the same question and, the figures have improved. Yeah. from 15 years ago, I'd say. So, it's not less than 10, it's less than 30%.

So in a way that people want. But there was one word that surfaced, um, that has quite a profound change on the original hypothesis or theory, which is that buyers were using the word intellectual dishonesty for things that they don't like, and intellectual honesty for things that they looked for in salespeople.

And this may link to your philosophy a little bit, your, your, your philosophy. And I began to work out, well, what is intellect? You know, what does that mean? You know, what does that word really mean?

Patrick: Mm-hmm.

Phil: And how do you tell if someone's in being an intellectual? You know? And actually, I, I also thought, you know, that intellect and salespeople don't normally, they're not two words that normally come together.

Yeah,

Patrick: no. That, maybe that 10%,

Phil: that one you are right. But you know, what was interesting is I've begun to look at, and this comes back to what you're saying about listening and asking questions, because when you start to look at what makes an intellectual an intellectual, yeah, no. Um, and I, and this is early stages, and I may be wrong at this, but I've come up with three things that I think possibly helps.

One is instinct. You have an instinct, you have a conversation that sparks an idea, but you need to have an instinct. Then you have curiosity, which is you have a curiosity to follow that instinct and want to learn more. And then you have imagination, which is what you've learned more, the ability to synthesise information and make sense of it.

And, um. And then I, I began to sort of link this with ai, you know, you've got intellectual authenticity on the one hand, and you've got artificial intelligence on the other. And if you have two pages of the book and you have wet ink and you write AI on one page and then close the book on the other side, you have ia.

So it's quite an interesting balance. If you have intellectual authenticity with ai, then I think you have the best of every world. You, you, you, you have the human in the loop component leveraging the enormous power that you can get from artificial intelligence. Um, so

Patrick: yeah,

Phil: this is where my head's going at the moment on that particular topic.

Yeah.

Patrick: Well, let's, let's, I think that's super interesting. Uh, goes quite, uh, deep. Let's take, I pick up one thing that, that, let's take the 10% again from this sales leader you had in your second interview says, only 10% of people do actually sell the way I want. Um, actually for most organisations, the problem here also lies with the sales leader, because I'm not sure also this guy, did he really write down what he wants a sales organisation to do?

We call that a sales playbook, right? Every organisation should have a sales playbook where it says, this is our ideal customer profile we go after. These are the messaging and talk tracks we use. That's our value proposition. Here is our sales process On the first call here is what I would do. Here's a script on the second call.

Here is a, here's what I would do. So I would define this quite well. You don't need to script everything perfectly, but for new, for new starters, it's probably very valuable to have that. That's what I would say. So learning at the beginning is a bit different than, than afterwards. So most leaders actually fail to actually provide this.

But one must also say, I mean, before ai, you had this sales playbook in a, you know, in a notion page or in a, on a, on a Google or on a word, uh, file or a PowerPoint presentation. Nobody ever read it. It was never adopted with the organisation, how it evolved. So nobody cared. Really. No sales rep read this and knew exactly what to do.

So that was also a problem, or that's still a problem. But now that changes with AI because AI can actually read that sales playbook and help the reps coach the reps on the go. One thing that is important here. So for, for sales reps, it's really difficult. Like if you, if you know, if you have like 20 skills that you have to work on, it's really difficult to work on all the 20 skills at the same time.

You will never improve. It's like, okay, I should improve on three skills and constantly. So over the next two months until I changed my behaviour, uh, and my mindset by the way, changes maybe also with behaviour as it did with me, right? When I started to ask questions, I suddenly got interested in people.

My mindset changed because of my behaviour. So both are possible. I can change my mindset and then adjust my behaviour or the opposite way around that. I also find a quite interesting thing how that works. I have both ways. What is more common? I actually don't know. Maybe you have some insights here, Phil, but you can.

So what, what's important, and that's what we figured out. You can't just after every call, just give a random feedback to the sales rep, Hey, here's what you did. Well, here's what you didn't do. Well, hey, uh, here's some, you know, it has to be very specific on a few skills. After every call, repetition until they put it into place, you have to track it.

Which, when you go back to motivation, it motivates sales reps to see progress. We love to see progress. We love to see us improve. If we don't see that, if every single call is a single, like, separate feedback that I get, that is always separate. Okay? Sometimes these calls get a, get a score, which is useless, uh, most of the time.

But you have then, and I see me, I see myself improving and also see how my conversations get better. I see how I make more revenue that is fantastically motivating if it's done. And that's exactly how we figured it out. While combining learning and sales is like really focus on a few skills, derive the skills from the sales playbook that the sales leader says.

That's how I want our reps to be. That's we derive the sales, uh, the, the skills, and then we help the reps develop the skills and track it. That's the crucial part here, I would say.

George: Hi everyone, George again, just to say that I hope you enjoyed the first part of Phil's interview with Patrick Trümpi, and to remind you to come back here for part two next week. See you then.

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