You may have seen the viral video of a salesperson who recorded her experience of getting fired from her job. If you have not, here it is. It is a complete mess from both sides. Here is why, in short –

1. CRM Activity Metrics are good. They are just incomplete for determining employee success.
2. Not setting clear manageable (non-CRM) expectations creates situations like this.

This whole situation is easily avoidable.

Now, let’s get into it. There is plenty of opining on how things should have been handled from a pure HR perspective. We will skip that and focus on how this can—and should—be avoided through good SALES MANAGEMENT.

Start with the salesperson. She maintained that she was successful because, according to her side of the story, she:

1. Was having “great meetings”
2. Was having “good conversations”
3. Had lots of activities that her manager approved of
4. Had gotten 3 proposals out (none of which had closed)
5. Was on a “3-month ramp”

CRM Activity: What is it and what is it not?

Let’s start with 1 through 4 from the above list, which involves her activity. She says that she was successful from a CRM activity perspective. CRM tools are great. They track activity, and they track a pipeline. In this case, the salesperson sold $0.00 during her tenure but had “good” activity. She probably checked all of the activity-based metrics and, as such, felt like she was being successful, especially given the holiday season she was selling into.

Activity is important to track. But it is NOT a good indicator of success. We have lots of thoughts on prospecting and believe in managing to outreach metrics, strategic encounters, etc. But this is where MOST COMPANIES FAIL. Companies of all sizes, from solo founders hiring their first salesperson to enterprise companies with a large sales team, begin and end sales management with some type of CRM tool. Too often, companies hire a salesperson, do a small amount of “onboarding”, and very quickly make a MASSIVE assumption that the salesperson knows how to sell based on some past experience, whether it is a degree that he or she has, a personality trait, or some other reason. It is a BAD assumption. On a macro level, it leads to the 80/20 rule in sales and dead-ends with the video that started this post —a salesperson being fired while thinking she was being successful.

For companies, managing solely based on activity is a bad practice. For a salesperson, thinking you are being successful because you hit your activity metrics leads to negative surprises from HR.

The point is, don’t do it. But MANY COMPANIES do. That’s why it’s vital for companies and salespeople to understand the difference between QUANTITY of activity and QUALITY of activity.

What about this “3-month ramp”?

From the video, we have no idea what this entails. This could be some sort of pipeline-building ramp, or it could have been a training plan. But given that the HR team did not reference the training program, we can probably deduce that it was more of a grace period for ramping a pipeline vs. a true training program. But we don’t know for sure. This company could do a fantastic job of onboarding salespeople. However, we do know there was a reference to the ramp and more focus on the activity.

In short, every company, from a pre-revenue startup to an enterprise company, should define what success looks like for their sales team. That means activity AND how they expect the salesperson to execute a sales meeting. It is the company’s obligation to:

1. Position the employees for success
2. Equip them to be successful
3. See them achieve personal gains that create corporate success

Did this company define and train this salesperson on the following things in regards to her company?

• What to say
• When to say it
• How to say it

And did they verify that she could execute the messaging in a variety of settings where she will encounter prospects? It doesn’t seem like they did. And if they didn’t, then the company did not set the employee up for success. The corporation made the critical assumption, and we know how assumptions can turn out.

Did the company define how this salesperson should approach each and every prospect encounter an manage intentionality by preparing her on the following?

• What she was to say
• What she was to ask for
• What she wanted the desired next step to be

Seems like no. If not, then there is no way to determine if the meetings were good or bad or if the conversations were productive. They were just “activity” that lacked intentionality and no way to offer objective feedback on the salesperson’s ABILITY to execute a sales cycle.

Did the salesperson know how to qualify an opportunity properly before getting to a proposal? Is there a defined proposal process? In other words, were the proposals legit or just activity to check a box in a CRM tool and therefore didn’t go anywhere? We don’t know everything about this situation, but it does seem early to give up on proposals that were issued during the holidays.

All we have to go on is the video, but from that 10-minute conversation, it certainly appears that there was a “ramp” but that the ramp did not necessarily include defining how to sell for the company or how to create and manage to intentional interactions and judgement based on prepared plans on the success or failure of the interactions.

It could be that the salesperson may not have been performing and that a parting was necessary. But based on the video, everyone seemed to fail in this scenario.

The company seemed to fail by not properly preparing the salesperson. The company failed to create clear expectations. HR had one set of expectations of numbers while the sales management seemed to manage to CRM-based activities.

The salesperson failed because she didn’t recognize that there is difference in quantity of activity and qualify of activity.

We solve this problem.

I wrote this because this is literally a healthy part of our sales message. AskMultiply.com allows companies or salespeople to eliminate the assumptions that their sales teams know how to sell and execute a sales meeting. We provide processes, tools, templates, and technology that allow sales teams to define clear messaging, create clear expectations for success, and approach every encounter intentionally such that the CRM Activity becomes meaningful and strategic. We don’t compete or duplicate CRM functions. We complement it. Visit askmultiply.com or contact us at info@askmultiply.com .

In this episode, we meet with guest Ryan Robinett of Multiply, Inc, a Tech-enabled services firm. Ryan considers himself a career Consultant and explains how his Consulting start led him to create his company, Multiply. He shares his ideas about creating a repeatable Process for Sales Teams to adopt and how Customers prefer “simplicity” when it comes to being sold.

You can check out our guest on these channels:

Website: https://askmultiply.mysandboxwebsites.com/
LinkedIn: AskMultiply

The Women’s Committee of the Spain Rehabilitation Center will host its signature benefit and Valentine’s Day celebration, “The Firefly,” on Saturday, Feb. 13, at The Florentine at 6 p.m.

This year, the committee will honor former patients Kelly Garner and Ryan Robinett.

Garner is an author, inspirational speaker and community leader. Following a near-death experience and extraordinary recovery, he wrote the book “The Night That Changed Our Lives.” Garner’s book was inspired primarily by his experience during the massive January 2014 snowstorm in Birmingham.

Garner became familiar to many in the Birmingham area as the Good Samaritan during the storm when he offered assistance to stranded motorists and was injured after falling 40 feet off a cliff into a ravine. He spent over 12 hours in single-digit temperatures before a neighborhood rescue party located him early the next morning. He survived the fall but suffered shattered vertebrae and fell into a severe diabetic hypoglycemic state. Some doubted  he would ever walk again; but after numerous surgeries and rigorous rehabilitation at the Spain Rehabilitation Center, he has beaten the odds. Just a year after this incident, he completed the Mercedes half marathon. His surgical team was so inspired by his story that they ran the race with him.

A native of Birmingham, Robinett serves as the managing director of Computer Technology Solutions’ Birmingham Operations. Ryan received his MBA from the UAB.

Robinett was introduced to Spain’s Research and Rehabilitation programs in 2014 after experiencing a sudden onset of neurologic issues. Over the course of 16 months, his ability to walk deteriorated significantly. He has since made a full recovery following intense physical rehabilitation at Spain, is medicine-free and has been granted full medical release.

Throughout his medical trials, Robinett has been an advocate and partner of UAB research, especially focusing on demyelinating diseases. He is an advocate of innovative ways to improve current rehabilitation methods, particularly involving neuro-physical rehabilitation. 

To make a donation, please contact Catherine Newhouse.

For the past 15 years, the Alabama Launchpad Startup Competition has guided some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs in Alabama by investing $5.6 million in 100 Alabama startups. Now, Alabama Launchpad is introducing a few changes to the program to provide even greater support for participating startups. 

Read More, Here.

For many of us, walking is something that we often take for granted every day. But, imagine for a moment that one day you forget how to walk…or more accurately, just can’t. For Ryan Robinett (’06), that was the scary reality he faced just a few years ago.

UAB Green and Told Episode 42 March 29, 2021

★ Episode details: https://share.transistor.fm/s/268b99f0

★ Additional episodes: https://alumni.uab.edu/s/1881/alumni1…

Birmingham-based Ryan Robinett was a leader in IT professional-services firms for 18 years before starting Multiply in 2018. The goal? To help other companies succeed through rocking their sales. We caught up with Ryan to find out how it’s going, two years in, and to learn more about the new app Multiply has created to support sales teams everywhere.

When he’s not out fishing, Ryan Robinett’s busy figuring out ways to translate his hard-won sales expertise into systems that help companies scale.

Born and raised in Mountain Brook, Robinett is both an Auburn grad and a UAB grad. And, he’s married to Ashley and is the father of two kids.

• Favorite place: in the woods of Greene County
• Favorite watering hole: Local 39
• Annual trip: camping and fishing trips in the swamps of Louisiana
• Favorite quarantine activity: fishing. He also tolerates playing multiple rounds of Phase 10 with his family.

Multiply is a Birmingham-based startup that was born out of Robinett’s nearly two decades’ worth of experiences as an IT consultant where he discovered that things that are sold well generally end well. As a leader, Robinett learned that the process of scaling a business meant preparing people to sell well. 

The premise: Good salespeople (and teams) are made, not born.

Multiply: what it is

Multiply is an approach to sales that’s built on the premise that sales don’t just happen and that the “best” salesperson won’t magically walk through the door. Every salesperson, regardless of their background and experience, needs to learn a set of teachable skills from their company. In other words, when a company understands why someone buys from them, they can then help their sales team succeed.

Multiply has had great success as a services firm working with the largest companies in Alabama, as well as with some of the smallest stretching west to Colorado and east to North Carolina.  

When Robinett left the IT consulting world, he never intended to get back into IT.  But he couldn’t escape his IT mindset. So when he saw a gap in the market, he identified new ways to engage with clients and. With the help of IT consultants, he built the Multiply Application and released it in January 2021.  

The Multiply App: what it is

The application provides an easy way for Multiply to deliver services. It gives clients a lightweight, business-oriented, and inexpensive framework to set up and evolve their messaging. And, it allows clients to manage and measure the performance of their sales team.  

The Multiply App: what it’s not

The Multiply application is not a rehash of CRM (customer relationship management). 

There are plenty of tools that track sales activity. This is not one of them. Instead, Multiply complements existing CRM tools.

The Multiply application takes the guesswork out of how the sales team members will perform when they have the encounters that are tracked using CRM. 

Who should use Multiply

Multiply is for large and small companies that are looking to stand up a sales team or get more out of the team that they have. 

Check out case study summaries showing how Multiply’s approach works with companies of all sizes. These include research institutions, web-based publishers, general contractors and SaaS-based startups. 

Why it matters

“All too often, companies ‘hire and hope’ that their sales team members will work out successfully. Then they become frustrated when some perform well and others don’t.

Multiply eliminates the common assumption that ‘we hired the best sales person, so they should know what to say, when to say it and how to say it.’

”Ryan Robinett, Founder, Multiply

If you want to invest in your sales team, you can engage Multiply through their services or you can sign up for the Multiply app for $15/month per user. 

This week we have Ryan Robinett on Building Birmingham Together. Ryan is the founder of Multiply, Inc. Multiply is a tech enabled services firm which uses operational and HR management principles to help companies of all sizes create a sales process from scratch or get more out of their current sales team. Ryan is a graduate of Auburn University and has a masters from UAB – The University of Alabama at Birmingham. He and his wife Ashley have two teenage children. He began his career as an IT professional services consultant, at Accenture, before moving to CTS In 2006. Ryan was a key part of growing CTS around the southeast as it was acquired by CGI In 2017. Ryan departed CGI In 2018 and founded Multiply utilizing many of the key tenants that made CTS successful. He continues to build Birmingham together using those key tenants.

A self-described “builder and believer in the Alabama market,” Ryan Robinett channeled his enthusiasm for putting people in positions for success when he founded Multiply, Inc. in 2018.

Calling on his years of experience at a highly successful IT services firm, Robinett created Multiply around a set of core principles to which he has adhered throughout his career.

“The ability to put people in a position to be successful, equip people to be successful and see them achieve personal results that create corporate gains, that’s what I have always enjoyed most about my work,” he explained.

The universal nature of those principles has allowed Robinett to apply them to the sales industry and has resulted in substantial growth for his own company.

What began as a services firm helping some of Alabama’s largest companies expand the capabilities of their business development teams has now expanded into a multi-dimensional company helping some of Alabama’s smallest businesses create a sales process from scratch.

During its first two years of operation, Multiply’s clients have included Alabama Power, UAB, Brasfield & Gorrie and ServisFirst. Robinett has adapted his model for small businesses, as well. The company’s client base stretches up to Charlotte, North Carolina, and as far west as Colorado.

The firm hit a turning point at the start of 2021 when it added a software component to its offerings.

“I started seeing a gap in the market when I went in to deal with small and medium-sized companies, and even large companies for that matter. A lot of times there was this concept of ‘I know exactly what you are talking about, but budgets don’t allow for the services,’” recalled Robinett. “Or the companies felt it was culturally challenging to bring a consultant in. That was one impetus. The other impetus was I was looking for some way to stop simply building documents that would grow stale if not maintained by the company.  To give companies a way to easily maintain sales messaging and the necessary areas of HR in a frequently evolving environment. I went out and looked for a tool to partner with, surprisingly to no avail.”

The resulting effort has made Multiply a tech-enabled company which has increased the breadth and depth of its capacity to support clients.

“I decided to build a technology product that tightly couples with the Multiply services,” said Robinett. “Now, basically starting in 2021, I have a tech-enabled services firm that goes into companies large and small and not only provides services but also stands up a system that allows the company to continue with or without Multiply.”

Whether through that technology product or its consulting services, or both, Multiply can solve one of the most common problems in business development.

“There’s a huge gap of people doing what I call ‘hiring and hoping’ a sales team,” stated Robinett. “They forget the operational principles that we apply in other job functions. It is fraught with frustration for everybody involved.”

Robinett is quick to point out that his firm’s process fits easily for a company of any size because it is a sales management concept not tied to size of sales force or company.

“The massive assumption is that the salesperson knows what to say, when to say it and how to say it,” he outlined. “The Multiply process, every single thing through services or the tool, is to eliminate that assumption.”

The secret for any company, he says, is to turn a well-educated, new member of the workforce into a contributor quickly.

And that’s where Multiply comes in.

“It’s all teachable,” explained Robinett. “Take the mystique out of the sales process and create a repeatable pattern. When you have a repeatable pattern, you can plug people into a repeatable pattern and that creates scale.”

Under the Multiply model, clients benefit from a trained sales team that knows how to deliver the same pattern of information in any variety of situations. Robinett says his company does not create messages for companies but rather helps his clients understand why someone buys from them and then builds the information pattern that can be easily taught to the sales team.

“It is applicable in all walks, but the question is ‘how do companies turn people into relevant professional contributors quicker instead of saying I have to go hire someone with 5 to 7 years’ experience when that’s just as risky because there are no guarantees that the person is going to work out anyway?’” he offered.

In what has been viewed as disruptive to traditional sales management methodologies, Multiply offers a ROI calculation to help sales team members see the value they are providing to the company and help the companies understand the value their sales teams are bringing as a whole.   

As for what’s next for Multiply, Robinett looks forward to building off of the company’s newly-acquired capabilities.

“Covid will eventually abate, and a new normalcy will evolve, so I think it’s more important than ever for companies to have a finely-tuned sales force ready to contribute to their success,” Robinett concluded.

(Contact Ryan at info@askmultiply.com or give him a call 205.677.6087)