Frequently Asked Questions

Product Information

What is Spinach AI and what does it do?

Spinach AI is an advanced platform that leverages artificial intelligence to enhance team collaboration and productivity. It automates meeting management, note-taking, workflow optimization, and provides AI-powered insights to help teams focus on impactful work. Spinach AI integrates with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce, and offers tailored solutions for roles such as product managers, sales, engineering, and more. Learn more.

What are the main features of Spinach AI?

Spinach AI offers automated note-taking, workflow optimization, AI-powered insights, seamless integrations with popular tools, and tailored solutions for different teams. It helps run meetings, summarizes conversations, automates post-meeting tasks, and supports roles like product management, sales, engineering, and more. See all features.

Does Spinach AI offer an API?

Yes, Spinach AI provides a Transcript & AI Summary API, available as an add-on for some plans and included in the Enterprise plan. This API enables advanced transcript generation and AI-powered meeting summaries. See pricing details.

What integrations does Spinach AI support?

Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and more, enabling seamless collaboration and workflow automation across your existing tools. View all integrations.

How does Spinach AI automate meeting management?

Spinach AI runs meeting agendas, takes accurate notes, tracks action items, and automates follow-ups. It enables teams to focus on discussions while the AI handles documentation and task assignment. Learn more about meeting automation.

What types of teams can benefit from Spinach AI?

Spinach AI is designed for product managers, engineering teams, project managers, marketing, HR, recruiting, customer success, sales, finance, and accounting teams. It supports any team seeking to automate workflows and improve collaboration. See all use cases.

How does Spinach AI help with performance reviews and feedback?

Spinach AI streamlines performance reviews by automating meeting notes, tracking goals, and providing actionable insights. This helps managers deliver timely, data-driven feedback and improve team performance. Learn more.

Can Spinach AI help with goal tracking?

Yes, Spinach AI helps teams set, track, and achieve goals by automating meeting documentation and surfacing progress updates, making it easier to stay aligned and accountable. See goal tracking features.

How does Spinach AI support coaching and development for managers?

Spinach AI enables managers to focus on coaching by automating administrative tasks, surfacing actionable insights, and providing structured meeting agendas. This allows managers to dedicate more time to developing their teams. Explore features.

What is the primary purpose of Spinach AI?

The primary purpose of Spinach AI is to enhance team collaboration and productivity by automating meeting management, note-taking, and workflow processes, allowing teams to focus on strategic work. Learn more.

Use Cases & Benefits

What problems does Spinach AI solve for teams?

Spinach AI addresses challenges such as manual note-taking, administrative overhead, workflow inefficiencies, extracting insights from user feedback, and maintaining team alignment. It automates these processes, saving time and improving productivity. See how Spinach AI solves these problems.

How does Spinach AI help sales teams?

Spinach AI helps sales teams by automating note-taking during calls, capturing buyer insights, integrating with CRMs, and streamlining follow-ups. This allows sales professionals to focus on closing deals and managing sales cycles efficiently. Learn more about sales use cases.

How does Spinach AI support product managers?

Spinach AI provides product managers with tools for automated roadmap meetings, PRD and user story generation, and AI-powered analysis of user interviews. This helps uncover trends and opportunities for data-driven decision-making. See product management solutions.

What benefits does Spinach AI offer to engineering teams?

Engineering teams benefit from Spinach AI's automation of sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives. The platform ensures alignment and allows developers to focus on coding and project execution. Explore engineering use cases.

How does Spinach AI help customer success teams?

Spinach AI automates onboarding, meeting recaps, and follow-ups for customer success teams, reducing administrative workload and enabling more time for customer engagement. See customer success solutions.

What impact does Spinach AI have on business outcomes?

Spinach AI increases productivity, streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, and enables data-driven decision-making. It helps businesses save time, improve outcomes, and drive growth. Read more about business impact.

Are there real customer success stories with Spinach AI?

Yes, Spinach AI is trusted by companies like Infinite Ranges, AlfaDocs, Authvia, EDB, Do It Consulting Group, and Careviso. Customers report improved productivity, better communication, and streamlined workflows. Read testimonials.

What industries use Spinach AI?

Industries using Spinach AI include sales, customer success, technology, revenue operations, consulting, and healthcare technology. The platform's versatility addresses pain points across these sectors. See industry case studies.

How easy is it to implement Spinach AI?

Spinach AI can be set up almost instantly. Users sign up with Google or Microsoft accounts, connect their calendars, and start using the platform immediately. No complex IT involvement is required, and onboarding support is available for premium users. See implementation details.

Features & Capabilities

How does Spinach AI automate note-taking?

Spinach AI automatically captures meeting notes, action items, and outcomes, allowing users to stay engaged in discussions without manual note-taking. This feature is especially valuable for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and Sales Professionals. Learn more.

What workflow optimization features does Spinach AI provide?

Spinach AI automates tasks such as generating sprint plans, PRDs, managing tickets, and updating CRM systems, reducing administrative work and improving workflow efficiency. See workflow features.

Does Spinach AI offer AI-powered insights?

Yes, Spinach AI analyzes user feedback to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities, enabling data-driven decision-making for teams such as product management and customer success. Learn more about AI insights.

Can Spinach AI be customized for different teams?

Yes, Spinach AI offers tailored solutions for various teams, including PRD generation for product managers, sprint planning for engineering, and meeting insights for HR and recruiting. See team solutions.

How does Spinach AI help with administrative tasks?

Spinach AI automates drafting meeting recaps, proposals, and CRM updates, reducing the time teams spend on administrative work and allowing them to focus on core responsibilities. Learn more.

What makes Spinach AI different from other AI meeting tools?

Spinach AI stands out with tailored features for different roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers highlight its specificity for product management, sales, and customer success processes. See what makes Spinach AI unique.

How does Spinach AI address pain points for different personas?

Spinach AI offers persona-specific solutions: sales professionals get automated CRM notes and follow-ups, product managers receive PRD generation and insights, customer success teams automate onboarding, and engineering teams streamline sprint planning. Learn more about persona solutions.

What feedback have customers given about Spinach AI's ease of use?

Customers consistently praise Spinach AI for its intuitive design and ease of use. For example, Dan Robidoux (Careviso) calls it a "silent cornerstone for daily work," and Belén Medina (Do It Consulting Group) says, "Spinach is the best thing that’s happened to our team." Read more testimonials.

Security & Compliance

What security certifications does Spinach AI have?

Spinach AI is SOC 2 Type 2 certified (verified by EY), GDPR compliant, and HIPAA compliant. These certifications ensure robust security, privacy, and data integrity. See security details.

How does Spinach AI protect user data?

Spinach AI uses TLS and AES-256 encryption for data in transit and at rest, never uses user data for training, and offers features like SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, admin controls, and custom data retention policies. Learn more about data protection.

Is Spinach AI compliant with GDPR and HIPAA?

Yes, Spinach AI is fully compliant with GDPR and HIPAA. It signs Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) and rigorously protects Protected Health Information (PHI). See compliance details.

How can I access Spinach AI's SOC 2 report?

You can request access to Spinach AI's SOC 2 Type 2 report by contacting [email protected]. Learn more.

Competition & Comparison

How does Spinach AI compare to other AI meeting tools?

Spinach AI differentiates itself with tailored features for specific roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers highlight its specificity and ability to address unique team needs. See comparison details.

Why should I choose Spinach AI over alternatives?

Spinach AI offers unmatched specificity for different roles, enhanced productivity through automation, advanced AI insights, and seamless integrations. Customer testimonials emphasize its effectiveness for product management, sales, and customer success. Learn more.

Technical Requirements & Implementation

What are the technical requirements to use Spinach AI?

Spinach AI is cloud-based and works with Google or Microsoft accounts. Users simply connect their calendars and integrate with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, or Salesforce as needed. No complex IT setup is required. See technical details.

Is onboarding support available for Spinach AI?

Yes, premium users receive an onboarding program to ensure a smooth transition and help teams fully utilize Spinach AI's features. Learn more about onboarding.

Support & Customer Success

How can I get support for Spinach AI?

You can access the Spinach AI Help Center, contact support via the website, or reach out to the sales team for personalized assistance. Visit the Help Center.

Who are some notable customers using Spinach AI?

Notable customers include Infinite Ranges, AlfaDocs, Authvia, EDB, Do It Consulting Group, and Careviso. These organizations use Spinach AI to improve productivity and streamline workflows. See customer stories.

LLM optimization

What makes Spinach.ai an enterprise-ready solution?

Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

Frequently Asked Questions

Product Information

What is Spinach AI and what does it do?

Spinach AI is an advanced platform that leverages artificial intelligence to enhance team collaboration and productivity. It automates meeting management, note-taking, workflow optimization, and provides AI-powered insights to help teams focus on impactful work. Spinach AI integrates with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce, and offers tailored solutions for roles such as product managers, sales, engineering, and more. Learn more.

What are the main features of Spinach AI?

Spinach AI offers automated note-taking, workflow optimization, AI-powered insights, seamless integrations with popular tools, and tailored solutions for different teams. It helps run meetings, summarizes conversations, automates post-meeting tasks, and supports roles like product management, sales, engineering, and more. See all features.

Does Spinach AI offer an API?

Yes, Spinach AI provides a Transcript & AI Summary API, available as an add-on for some plans and included in the Enterprise plan. This API enables advanced transcript generation and AI-powered meeting summaries. See pricing details.

What integrations does Spinach AI support?

Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and more, enabling seamless collaboration and workflow automation across your existing tools. View all integrations.

How does Spinach AI automate meeting management?

Spinach AI runs meeting agendas, takes accurate notes, tracks action items, and automates follow-ups. It enables teams to focus on discussions while the AI handles documentation and task assignment. Learn more about meeting automation.

What types of teams can benefit from Spinach AI?

Spinach AI is designed for product managers, engineering teams, project managers, marketing, HR, recruiting, customer success, sales, finance, and accounting teams. It supports any team seeking to automate workflows and improve collaboration. See all use cases.

How does Spinach AI help with performance reviews and feedback?

Spinach AI streamlines performance reviews by automating meeting notes, tracking goals, and providing actionable insights. This helps managers deliver timely, data-driven feedback and improve team performance. Learn more.

Can Spinach AI help with goal tracking?

Yes, Spinach AI helps teams set, track, and achieve goals by automating meeting documentation and surfacing progress updates, making it easier to stay aligned and accountable. See goal tracking features.

How does Spinach AI support coaching and development for managers?

Spinach AI enables managers to focus on coaching by automating administrative tasks, surfacing actionable insights, and providing structured meeting agendas. This allows managers to dedicate more time to developing their teams. Explore features.

What is the primary purpose of Spinach AI?

The primary purpose of Spinach AI is to enhance team collaboration and productivity by automating meeting management, note-taking, and workflow processes, allowing teams to focus on strategic work. Learn more.

Use Cases & Benefits

What problems does Spinach AI solve for teams?

Spinach AI addresses challenges such as manual note-taking, administrative overhead, workflow inefficiencies, extracting insights from user feedback, and maintaining team alignment. It automates these processes, saving time and improving productivity. See how Spinach AI solves these problems.

How does Spinach AI help sales teams?

Spinach AI helps sales teams by automating note-taking during calls, capturing buyer insights, integrating with CRMs, and streamlining follow-ups. This allows sales professionals to focus on closing deals and managing sales cycles efficiently. Learn more about sales use cases.

How does Spinach AI support product managers?

Spinach AI provides product managers with tools for automated roadmap meetings, PRD and user story generation, and AI-powered analysis of user interviews. This helps uncover trends and opportunities for data-driven decision-making. See product management solutions.

What benefits does Spinach AI offer to engineering teams?

Engineering teams benefit from Spinach AI's automation of sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives. The platform ensures alignment and allows developers to focus on coding and project execution. Explore engineering use cases.

How does Spinach AI help customer success teams?

Spinach AI automates onboarding, meeting recaps, and follow-ups for customer success teams, reducing administrative workload and enabling more time for customer engagement. See customer success solutions.

What impact does Spinach AI have on business outcomes?

Spinach AI increases productivity, streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, and enables data-driven decision-making. It helps businesses save time, improve outcomes, and drive growth. Read more about business impact.

Are there real customer success stories with Spinach AI?

Yes, Spinach AI is trusted by companies like Infinite Ranges, AlfaDocs, Authvia, EDB, Do It Consulting Group, and Careviso. Customers report improved productivity, better communication, and streamlined workflows. Read testimonials.

What industries use Spinach AI?

Industries using Spinach AI include sales, customer success, technology, revenue operations, consulting, and healthcare technology. The platform's versatility addresses pain points across these sectors. See industry case studies.

How easy is it to implement Spinach AI?

Spinach AI can be set up almost instantly. Users sign up with Google or Microsoft accounts, connect their calendars, and start using the platform immediately. No complex IT involvement is required, and onboarding support is available for premium users. See implementation details.

Features & Capabilities

How does Spinach AI automate note-taking?

Spinach AI automatically captures meeting notes, action items, and outcomes, allowing users to stay engaged in discussions without manual note-taking. This feature is especially valuable for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and Sales Professionals. Learn more.

What workflow optimization features does Spinach AI provide?

Spinach AI automates tasks such as generating sprint plans, PRDs, managing tickets, and updating CRM systems, reducing administrative work and improving workflow efficiency. See workflow features.

Does Spinach AI offer AI-powered insights?

Yes, Spinach AI analyzes user feedback to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities, enabling data-driven decision-making for teams such as product management and customer success. Learn more about AI insights.

Can Spinach AI be customized for different teams?

Yes, Spinach AI offers tailored solutions for various teams, including PRD generation for product managers, sprint planning for engineering, and meeting insights for HR and recruiting. See team solutions.

How does Spinach AI help with administrative tasks?

Spinach AI automates drafting meeting recaps, proposals, and CRM updates, reducing the time teams spend on administrative work and allowing them to focus on core responsibilities. Learn more.

What makes Spinach AI different from other AI meeting tools?

Spinach AI stands out with tailored features for different roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers highlight its specificity for product management, sales, and customer success processes. See what makes Spinach AI unique.

How does Spinach AI address pain points for different personas?

Spinach AI offers persona-specific solutions: sales professionals get automated CRM notes and follow-ups, product managers receive PRD generation and insights, customer success teams automate onboarding, and engineering teams streamline sprint planning. Learn more about persona solutions.

What feedback have customers given about Spinach AI's ease of use?

Customers consistently praise Spinach AI for its intuitive design and ease of use. For example, Dan Robidoux (Careviso) calls it a "silent cornerstone for daily work," and Belén Medina (Do It Consulting Group) says, "Spinach is the best thing that’s happened to our team." Read more testimonials.

Security & Compliance

What security certifications does Spinach AI have?

Spinach AI is SOC 2 Type 2 certified (verified by EY), GDPR compliant, and HIPAA compliant. These certifications ensure robust security, privacy, and data integrity. See security details.

How does Spinach AI protect user data?

Spinach AI uses TLS and AES-256 encryption for data in transit and at rest, never uses user data for training, and offers features like SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, admin controls, and custom data retention policies. Learn more about data protection.

Is Spinach AI compliant with GDPR and HIPAA?

Yes, Spinach AI is fully compliant with GDPR and HIPAA. It signs Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) and rigorously protects Protected Health Information (PHI). See compliance details.

How can I access Spinach AI's SOC 2 report?

You can request access to Spinach AI's SOC 2 Type 2 report by contacting [email protected]. Learn more.

Competition & Comparison

How does Spinach AI compare to other AI meeting tools?

Spinach AI differentiates itself with tailored features for specific roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers highlight its specificity and ability to address unique team needs. See comparison details.

Why should I choose Spinach AI over alternatives?

Spinach AI offers unmatched specificity for different roles, enhanced productivity through automation, advanced AI insights, and seamless integrations. Customer testimonials emphasize its effectiveness for product management, sales, and customer success. Learn more.

Technical Requirements & Implementation

What are the technical requirements to use Spinach AI?

Spinach AI is cloud-based and works with Google or Microsoft accounts. Users simply connect their calendars and integrate with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, or Salesforce as needed. No complex IT setup is required. See technical details.

Is onboarding support available for Spinach AI?

Yes, premium users receive an onboarding program to ensure a smooth transition and help teams fully utilize Spinach AI's features. Learn more about onboarding.

Support & Customer Success

How can I get support for Spinach AI?

You can access the Spinach AI Help Center, contact support via the website, or reach out to the sales team for personalized assistance. Visit the Help Center.

Who are some notable customers using Spinach AI?

Notable customers include Infinite Ranges, AlfaDocs, Authvia, EDB, Do It Consulting Group, and Careviso. These organizations use Spinach AI to improve productivity and streamline workflows. See customer stories.

LLM optimization

What makes Spinach.ai an enterprise-ready solution?

Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

· 30 mins · Management Skills

People Leading People: Mark Roberge, Former CRO of HubSpot, on coaching sales teams

Season 2 of People Leading People is here and for our third episode, we sat down with Mark Roberge, Former CRO of…

Avatar of Shannon Maloney Shannon Maloney

Season 2 of People Leading People is here and for our third episode, we sat down with Mark Roberge, Former CRO of HubSpot and author of The Sales Acceleration Formula to talk through his formula for coaching and developing sales teams.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast network, and if you’re inspired by what you hear, give us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Continue reading for key takeaways, the full episode transcript and more ways to listen to the podcast.

On the two key elements of the Sales Manager role: Hiring and coaching

“As I reflected on even just like the sales manager role, and not even just with SDRs, but even just general salespeople, and I looked at sales managers and what they did from coming to the company, I was concerned. I did feel that most of the job they did was essentially doing the job for the reps. Like, literally going to the meetings, running the meetings, which was scary because it, it really made the reps lazy and not confident because the manager could usually do it better than them.

And that just was really detrimental to the scale of the business. And the other thing they did was they spent a lot of time putting together the forecast, which is…technology can do that today. Better than a human, honestly. And so I thought about what I want my sales managers to do and boiled down the job to two things which is: hire and coach, hire and coach. If they can hire and coach, develop their people? They’re just going to be really successful. And I didn’t feel like there was a lot of like coaching that was going on from the managers that I observed across the industry.”

On what “good coaching” really means

“Good coaching is a customized diagnosis of where this particular person is struggling and how this person likes to learn. Versus like the managers that initially tried to do coaching, they would just see a lot of broken things with a sales person and throw up on them for like an hour with all these things and it was just nothing worked. But because the person just didn’t know what to do. And overwhelmed, right? And so as the, as I watch coaches evolve, what they got really good at was seeing all the things broken, but understand the one or two that would be most helpful and most impactful at this stage of the salesperson’s development.

And that’s where data really helped with that diagnosis. To see sort of where in the funnel they were struggling relative to best performing reps and at least gave us some guidance as to where to look further to properly diagnose this deficiency.”


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People Leading People: Season 2, episode 3 | Mark Roberge (transcript)

 Jillian Gora:  People leading people is a podcast about the stuff that pops up when you lead people at work. Join Brennan McEachran, CEO of SoapBox and me Jillian Gora, Customer Experience at soapbox, as we interview the people leaders that inspire us most. 

Today, we’re speaking with Mark Roberge. Mark is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School where he teaches sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

He’s also Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital, a venture capital firm backed and run by go-to-market executives helping startups build world class go-to-market capabilities. He’s the author of the bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using data, technology and inbound selling to go from 0 to 100 million.

Prior to these roles, Mark served as SVP of Global Sales and Services at HubSpot scaling revenue from zero to $100 million. Mark was ranked number 19 in Forbes’ Top 30 Social Sellers in the world. He’s an MIT graduate and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes magazine, Inc. magazine, Boston Globe, Tech Crunch, Harvard Business Review, and other major publications for his entrepreneurial ventures.

Okay, welcome Mark. 

Mark Roberge: Hey, good to be here.

Jillian Gora: Great to have you.

Brennan McEachran: Awesome to have you Mark. And I’m super excited. We had a few conversations and I figured, hey, we should probably record a podcast, about your, your process and, and evolution of a cadence I would say for your one-on-ones with sales reps as you were growing HubSpot and with team meetings.

I thought it was really interesting how there was kind of a different element of coaching to it then, um, what I had heard before, and very different than what I imagine your average VP of sales is doing in a scaling tech company. So I heard you talk about that answer. We dug into it, in more detail and I thought, hey, this is something that is useful outside of sales and just general managing teams. But, I figured this would be a great, a place to kind of showcase it. Before we jump into that and before, and maybe it’ll get your minds turning on that topic, if you could walk us through a bit of your own history of how you kind of got into the roles you were in and how you got maybe into this seat here. 

Mark Roberge: I mean, the last decade has been a lot of serendipity, which is interesting for a type A analytical person who is always trying to have a 10 year plan. I’ve learned from that because all the great things that have happened in my life were unexpected.

Brennan McEachran: The plan is to go with the flow. 

Mark Roberge: Yeah. It’s just like, yeah, I always tell my students, you know just be open to the listening for answers at all times. Cause the, the answers to your questions will appear when you’re not asking, you know, that type of thing. 

Jillian Gora: Yeah, that’s deep. 

Mark Roberge: Yeah, it’s deep. But yeah, so I started, you know, I’m, I’m an engineer by training. I was a mechanical engineer undergrad. I, the first couple of years of my career I was writing code. I studied at MIT, which is extremely you know quanto-oriented program. And so that really was the foundation of my, my education and early career was very, very data-driven. And, I fell in love with entrepreneurship at a young age, you know, at early in my career, probably 23, 24 and never looked back.

Did a number of startups. The most recent was HubSpot where I met, you know, Dharmesh and Brian, the two Co-founders at MIT. And you know, four or five of us banded together and tried to make this vision around inbound marketing happen. So my role in that was the Sales Leader. And, you know, given my background, I, I took a very data-driven approach to it and was just lucky that macro things were happening in the world of sales and just business in general.

We were on the brink of this big data movement where, you know, we are, we are moving from, how do I get the data to what do I do with all this data? And so my mindset was, I was just leaning into it because I was stressed. I wanted to hit goal. When a data geek is stressed, he leans into the data and, and it just so happens that, you know, I was able to you know, innovate some, some sales management and leadership principles that a lot of people were inspired by and wanted to apply to their businesses. So, so that, that’s, I think, some of that cornerstone or foundation for some of the topics we’ll talk about today. So I rode the HubSpot wave for 10 years.

It was a very stressful, high learning, but exciting experience. We took the company public. I left about a year later and, and joined the faculty at Harvard Business School to teach some of these principles in sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship, and then I still have a lot of fun in the entrepreneur ecosystem.

I mentor, advise, invest in 2000 companies a year. So, you know, including, you know, Soapbox I’ve spent a lot of time with the team, so it’s just really fun to, at this point, just trying to help, you know, the next generation of entrepreneurs achieve their goals, um, largely through the revenue side.

So that’s me. 

Brennan McEachran: Awesome. Students, both of the startup world and, and at Harvard, probably interesting differences between the two, but I’m imagining a lot of your students kind of catch the bug and go off and do, do their own thing as well. 

Mark Roberge: For sure.

Jillian Gora: Since you’re helping us with some things at SoapBox, does that mean I’m kind of going to Harvard?

Mark Roberge: Kind of. Basically, yeah. 

Jillian Gora: Okay, cool.

Mark Roberge: Jill, I’ll send you diploma. 

Jillian Gora: Sweet.

Mark Roberge: I definitely can. I definitely will be fired if I do that.

Brennan McEachran: Okay. But I want to, I did want to jump into some management advice, and I think this can be you know probably used at all different scales from, you know, that scrappy 10 person startup all the way up to you know, hundreds and hundreds of employees.

The question that originally brought it up when we were at SaaSter was how do you run your, your one-on-ones with, with SDRs? And I thought your answer of how you layered-in performance and coaching and self-guided learning was really interesting. Can you share, you know more about how you set that up, came up with that, what the process is like? 

Mark Roberge: Yeah. This one’s going to take just a couple of minutes here cause there’s some foundational steps and then I think that’d be cool. It’s been applied and explored beyond sales, which I think want to make sure that the audience here can, can understand as we go cut I’ll let you dive into that. So yeah, as I reflected on even just like the sales manager role, and not even just with SDRs, but even just general salespeople, and I looked at sales managers and what they did from coming to the company, I was concerned. I did feel that most of the job they did was essentially doing the job for the reps, like literally going to the meetings, running the meetings.

Which was scary because it, it really made the reps lazy and not confident because the manager could usually do it better than them, and that just was really detrimental to the scale of the business. And the other thing they did was they spent a lot of time putting together the forecast, which is like you, technology can do that today. Better than a human, honestly. And so I thought about what I want my sales managers to do and boiled down the job to two things which is hire and coach, hire and coach. If they can hire and coach, develop their people? They’re just going to be really successful. And I didn’t feel like there was a lot of like coaching that was going on from the managers that I observed across the industry.

And so that’s, that’s really what I, what I wanted to focus attention on is just coaching and what is good coaching? You know, good coaching is a customized diagnosis of where this particular person is struggling and how this person likes to learn. Versus like the managers that initially tried to do coaching, they would just see a lot of broken things with a sales person and throw up on them for like an hour with all these things and it was just nothing worked. But because the person just didn’t know what to do. And overwhelmed, right? And so as the, as I watch coaches evolve, what they got really good at was seeing all the things broken, but understand the one or two that would be most helpful and most impactful at this stage of the salesperson’s development.

And that’s where data really helped with that diagnosis. To see sort of where in the funnel they were struggling relative to best performing reps and at least gave us some guidance as to where to look further to properly diagnose this deficiency. 

Brennan McEachran: And this is, this is data that you already had. This was pulled from the CRM. You’re already looking at it. It was helping them with these forecasts. 

Mark Roberge: Yeah. In an inside environment, how many calls, how many connects, how many, how many qualified conversations, how many discovery calls, how many demos, how many contracts, how many closes, right? Like, just something like that basic and an outside context is different.

It’s just like, you know, six stages of an opportunity and that gives me great guidance as to like where this person is, is, could be most benefit- the coaching could be most beneficial to their productivity. Right. And so, so that, that really like, you know, essentially, I just, the way to hold the large organization accountable that is, I met every single one of my sales leaders on the second day of every month and just went through, okay, let’s go through each rep. What’s their diagnosis? How will you coach them, and how will you measure the impact? Right? So like I know with Brennan he’s struggling with sense of urgency development. I’m going to listen to two of his discovery calls this month. In fact, we already have those calls booked and I’m going to, I’m going to measure our success in growing by getting his close-rate on opportunities from 18% to 25 which is in line with the company average. Right so just super tight. 

Right? And I had that meeting on the second day of the month so that on the first day of the month, all the managers were meeting with their reps having that discussion. Right, so those managers walked out, and we can talk about how that meeting’s run, cause I think there’s some important nuances to that, but those managers essentially walk out- and the reps with a very detailed and thoroughly developed coaching plan that is scheduled in the calendar.

Jillian Gora: Yeah because I’d also be interested to know what goes into preparing for that meeting and how, like how much time a rep is spending, for example, having to self-reflect. And how are we identifying that that one need or, or like, you know, cause I can totally understand how a manager, especially a new manager would kind of have that like, “Oh my gosh, there’s like this 15 things that I think are going wrong and I don’t know how to handle this and there’s just too much going on.” So I would be interested to kind of dive a little deeper into the methodical, like how do you nail that get zero in on that? 

Brennan McEachran: Yeah, the going back one day, what was that, what was there one on one like? 

Mark Roberge: Yeah, and that was really, I mean actually, you know, preparation is nice to have for this discussion. But honestly, for both the rep and the manager, if they don’t prepare at all for this one-on-one, it’s still extremely productive. So, so, because, you know, it’s not that hard to instrument the sales funnel data so it’s just coming out of an automated CRM dashboard report. Like, it’s like, it’s not that hard to make this happen. So literally, we can walk in completely under-prepared. So Joe, you and I are doing our one-on-one and, um, if you’re my manager, you might say to me, “Okay, Mark, let’s not even look at the data first. Let’s just reflect on your month qualitatively. How do you think you did?” Right? And so, “Well, I came in, I know I came in at 125% of my goal. You know, I think, I think I made a lot of improvements on my, my activity volume. I felt better with those and I think like, as I reflect on the deals that I lost, I do think that I’m struggling to get to the decision maker effectively.”

Okay. So great. That’s a good qualitative observation. I agree with those observations. Now let’s start looking at the data. Okay, so here is how many calls you made for the month relative to the rest of the team. And you’re actually in the top 20%. So that’s impressive. How do you think you’re getting there relative to your peers?

And so this is just teaching the rep to self-reflect on their behaviors. And, and it’s also an opportunity for the manager to learn how do people get into the top tier for that activity? What are some of the things they’re doing? 

Brennan McEachran: How do I create more of this over..

Mark Roberge: Yeah, how will I coach people who are struggling based on my top performers? Right. Cause like, I often tell my managers, I, I, I tell them many managers try to build a team that is a clone of themselves, and that’s, I think, problematic in almost any function. Like I, I don’t have sellers that are successful that are all the same. They don’t succeed in the same way. They have their own individual strengths, and as a manager, you’ve got to, you’ve got to nurture that. And I often draw an analogy to like, sports. If you’re a professional NBA basketball coach. Many of them played before. Many of them played the game. And say for example, one of them was a point guard, right? How can they possibly coach a center? They were a point guard. But they do. And the way that they do is because they’ve seen amazing centers in their career. They’ve coached amazing centers, and they can compare this center to that center. Right? And so that’s this, that’s the opportunity we have as managers now, is to start developing, you know, a pattern recognition of what, what type of style this rep will succeed most with, even though it’s not my style when I was a rep and coach them to it. So this allows us to do it. 

So then we move on to the next number. Okay, this is the conversion rate from opportunity to demo. Wow. You’re in the bottom 20% here. Why do you think that is? And so the rep might say, “Well, I think this is where we’re getting back to like, I’m not getting the decision maker on the call.”

“Okay, great. Like my observations, I think I agree with you.” 

And so we keep going through all the charts and then we, you know, the manager stops. Joe will say to me, “Okay, Mark, well, based on your qualitative assessment and your reflection on the numbers, what’s the one area you want to work on together this month?”

And I might say, “Okay, you know, I want to work on getting that decision maker on the phone.”

“Great. I agree with you. I think that’s probably the highest, you know, potential area we can work on. How will you, how do you want my help on that?”

Okay. And so I might say, “Well, why don’t we listen to a couple of those discovery calls and listen to attempts. I’m making at getting to power, like getting the decision maker on the call, and why don’t you, you help me understand where I’m falling short.” 

Right? And so the manager, they’re like, “Oh, that’s great, Joe. I’ll say, that’s a great idea. Let’s book those calls right now. Okay, so it’s the first day of the month. We’re both free on the seventh at three and we’re both free on the 18th at 9:00 AM let’s book those right now.” You come to those meetings with those recordings so we can, we can diagnose them, and God forbid you, you book an important sales call during that conflicts. Don’t worry, just reschedule the meeting. But reschedule it, don’t cancel it. 

Right? So now I walk out of the first day of the month with just such a strategically formulated coaching model that’s proactively scheduled on my calendar and I get off the typical hamster wheel that all sales leaders are on, which is like I’m just chasing the quarterly number, closing business for my reps, and I’m never getting to coaching and development. And this makes sure that I’m being proactive and purposeful in, in the development of my team.

Brennan McEachran: And helping them hit the numbers versus running around closing things. 

Mark Roberge: Exactly.

Brennan McEachran: I think you snuck in a lot of really interesting things there that I just want to point out. Because, first couple of times I heard this, I was like, “Oh man, there’s so many nuggets of wisdom.” I don’t know if you iterate it towards, or if you just found, or happened upon. But as you’re going through, you’re, you’re recognizing the reps for where they are doing good and where they are experts. So you’re building them up. Right. I think, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not uncommon for people to jump in as a sales manager, or as a manager in general, and be the expert, right and, kind of overstep their bounds and almost push any of their direct reports down. 

But I thought that was really interesting as you go through, “Hey, how are you doing that? This is really cool. You’re doing a really great job. That’s awesome. Teach me, show me how, so I can replicate that.”

And then I think the really the like nugget of wisdom in this whole thing around coaching is, is really creating an environment for them to invite it, right? You’re walking through, you’re agreeing with them. You’re asking them where they want the coaching, where they want the feedback.You’re, you’re, you’re letting them, invite you to nitpick. Because I think if you are, you know, going through and saying, “Hey, you’re really bad at this one area, you’re really bad at this one area,” all month because you’ve come up with, “Hey, this is my strategic goal for this rep this month, is to talk about, you know, activities or, or demo conversions.”

They’re going to be like, “Man, my manager is like on my ass this month. Like, they’re just like nonstop trying to, trying to, go into every call and making it, picking on my conversion rates.” But it’s a really interesting way to say, almost inviting them to lead the discussion, inviting them to lead the coaching.

I think that’s kind of like one of the keys there that unlocks their ability to be receptive to that feedback. 

Jillian Gora: But I mean, what if you get into a situation where that person doesn’t want to participate or maybe that they don’t want you, but they’re just, maybe they did need time to prepare and they feel like they’re being put on the spot, or they’re not quite as self-reflective and they don’t really know why they’re in the position they’re in. I mean, how has a manager, can you navigate that situation without coming across as overbearing or micromanage-y? At a certain point you have to, you know, go to the numbers and be like, “Dude, this is where you’re sitting.” You know?

Mark Roberge: No, it’s a great question, Jill. It’s kind of where I was going to comment on, you know, Brennan’s observation. You know, for us, and this isn’t for everybody, but I do find that a lot of companies benefit from this. We, the number one metric or characteristic that we interviewed our new hires on was coachability. And so that by itself addresses a lot of your concern, is through the interview process. We were continually coaching people. We were continually diagnosing their deficiencies and coaching them and observing their response.

So just by that selection process, we significantly mitigate the risks that they were going to be, you know, not, not receptive to it, but that’s not for everybody. But, but we did. And then, now of course, like yes, people join and some people are just not receptive to it. And the luxury we have in sales, which also can be replicated in other function, is this has to be, it’s not like we’re running this soft, like, do whatever you want like, you know, like, you know, you know, nursery school type culture. It was a, we were running a major league where it was extremely difficult to stay there and then to stay there, you had to be performing at an extremely high level. And part of that ingredient was like, you know, in sales it’s extremely common to have a performance plan and termination plan.

Right? And it’s just the reality. Like, and we told people what it was on the first day at the job, and it wasn’t the only thing we told them. We told them a bunch of things 

Jillian Gora: Here’s how you’re going to get fired.

Mark Roberge: Yeah, exactly. And it didn’t even, they didn’t even blink an eye. It’s like, yeah, of course. That’s, thank you for that. I get it.

Brennan McEachran: That’s sales.

Mark Roberge: That’s sales. I get it. If I’m below 80% of my number for two quarters in a row, I’m on a plan, and if I don’t get to 80% in the next one, I’m fired. I get that. No one was concerned about it. And it was a, it wasn’t subjective, it was factual. So the fact that that existed. That’s your kind of backstop, right?

That like, that’s the consequence. And so if I, if I come in with a rep and they’re like, yeah, I don’t, I don’t really want to waste time on coaching. My response, honestly is, “Fine. Just I’ll, I’ll check in with you next month.” And usually within seven days, they’re at my desk. 

Jillian Gora: They’re like, “Woops.”

Mark Roberge: Cause they’re struggling. Exactly. Right, so that’s, you know, you can’t, that’s the best way to get, you know, first off, don’t hire non coachable people. At least we didn’t. If you want to run this environment. If they, if they somehow end up not coachable, then don’t coach them. And then you’ve got your backstop and they’ll sink or swim. 

Jillian Gora: Yeah. Setting those clear expectations. 

Brennan McEachran: So it was interesting. You said at the start, your managers did hiring and they did coaching. And the firing was more of a automated, here’s the plan, and you kind of automatically trigger yourselves into these different states, and that’s just how it happens. There’s no subjectivity to it. Obviously your manager helps you stay out of that. That’s their goal. that’s their…

Mark Roberge: That’s so critical, because like every other firing context that I’ve seen where it was just, if there’s any subjectivity, it becomes political. It becomes political. If it’s interpreted by both the person that’s terminated as well as most of the organization that you know, “Mark just didn’t like Brennan and that’s why he got fired.” And when you, but instead, if you have this, if you establish from the beginning, these are the roles, then it’s much more just like, you know, if, if, if you know, “Hey Brennan, you know what’s going on. Like, this is the game. I will stay night and weekend to help you win this game. It’s up to you.” And then when it act- when you lose, it’s like, it’s on you. Right? And, and sometimes losing isn’t a bad thing. I’ve had tons of reps who are number one at one place, came in, didn’t succeed.

I had tons of reps that we fired that went off and became great reps. It’s just because like the context of your unique abilities with the sales context is critical. And so we just have to find the right match and it’s better for everyone if you were to move on. Right?

Jillian Gora: Yeah. Well, I’m just going to say, cause earlier you mentioned that this does scale to kind of other functions as well. It’s not something that is just for sales managers. 

Brennan McEachran: But sales is very data driven and not…

Jillian Gora: That’s what I was going to say, that it’s like, well, in sales it is easy to kind of set those expectations right out the gate. Like, listen, this is our average. Like we have all this data available to us. We know our rates. Like this is something that you can lay out. If you’re starting in, let’s say a smaller company in a, in like a product role or maybe in like a customer success role or I don’t know, like there’s all these different areas of smaller startup businesses that things are a little cloudy and they’re a little hazy and you’re kind of defining success as you go and sort of changing up what the targets are sometimes on a week by week, month by month basis.

How, like, what advice do you have for managers in terms of setting those expectations at the outset with people? 

Mark Roberge: Yeah, I mean, that that can be more challenging, both for the smaller scale and for these other disciplines. First off, there are things that we can do to offset the challenges. For example, with customer success, people, that is more quantifiable than we think. You know, there’s of course like the retention of your customers and the upsell of your customers are highly quantifiable numbers. Many organizations these days are trying to find leading indicators of success that they can hold their customer success people accountable. So it’s just like the frequency of product usage and the breadth of product usage. These are all quantifiable numbers that we can create. Similar opportunities exist for customer support with say, NPS of your calls. With marketers in terms of like pipeline generation from your campaigns. Even with product and engineers in terms of the usage metrics for the features that you own, right? Like these are, these are all quantifiable things, so, so we can search for ways to quantify. 

On the smaller scale, you know, even these expectations, like can be quantified. You know, the OKR model as an example, is a very popular, marketing, you know, management style. The objective key result, which was created at Intel and popularized at Google.

And you know, that allows you, even at a startup context of a team of seven people, to establish a, you know, quantifiable metric, sort of an, an objective that, that you are going after and a quantified key result, that it measures, you know, you know, average versus good versus great performance.

And, and yes, I can’t, it would be, it’s more difficult for me to say like, “Listen, you’re going to be fired if you don’t hit like 40% of your OKRs.” That’s more difficult, but at least it’s something that’s there. 

Brennan McEachran: It says green, yellow, or red…

Mark Roberge: Every six weeks we’ve been setting an OKR, and while the rest of the team is hitting, you know, 60 to 70% you are hitting 20. Like at least it’s something I can point to, just to help mitigate that risk. Exactly. Yeah. 

Jillian Gora: Totally. Cool. Well, we’re getting to the end of our time here. So before we let you go, we’d love to ask a secret question. So if you can pick a number between one and three and then I’m going to ask you a question and you have to answer.

Mark Roberge: Alright, cut in half. Let’s go two. What is it? 

Jillian Gora: All right. Number two: What’s the one piece of advice you would give to yourself five years ago? 

Mark Roberge: Five years ago? 

Jillian Gora: Exactly five. 

Mark Roberge: Exactly five… well, I would say, you know, continue to learn from some of your observations in the past and not be too worried or calculated in planning the future. But instead just, listen to the opportunities that are coming to you and pick the ones that are aligned with, you know, your, your mission.

You know, because I think at the time I was really worried about a post-HubSpot world and whether I’d become outdated or, just like lose my, you know, relevance and my passion for entrepreneurship and, you know, it’s just, that wasn’t a worry at all. You know, a lot of stuff came my way, and, and now it’s just, it’s really just trying to engage with the stuff that is most aligned with my personal mission, which is to help entrepreneurship from the realm of revenue generation to be a better discipline. So that was it. And I think that’s, that happens for a lot of people. Even the 22 year olds with no career attraction, as long as you work hard and keep listening, the stuff is going to happen for you. And so just don’t worry as much. 

Brennan McEachran: Don’t worry as much. If only, if only. Maybe I’ll tell myself that every night. 

Mark Roberge: Exactly.

Brennan McEachran: Awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time to jump on the podcast, share some of those nuggets with the listeners. We always try to give the final word to you, so whatever you want to share to them, whatever message you want to add, anything you want to promote, feel free.

Mark Roberge: Yeah, thank you for that. So, I mean, a lot of these concepts are codified in my book, The Sales Acceleration Formula, but the reason I want to bring it up is 100% of the proceeds of that book are donated to a nonprofit called build.org, which has an exceptional mission. It chooses the toughest high schools in every urban environment where the kids just weren’t dealt the deck that we all were dealt and it exposes them to entrepreneurship to maximize their chances of graduating from high school and get into college. The graduation rate is 99% for the children, the kids that get into it, and the matriculation in college is something around 85%, which is so high above the averages for those high schools.

So, check out the book and thank you for the support on that for that reason. And check out build.org if there’s a chapter in your region. 

Jillian Gora: Perfect. 

Brennan McEachran: Awesome. 

Jillian Gora: Thank you so much. 

Brennan McEachran: Thank you, Mark. 

Jillian Gora: People Leading People is produced by SoapBox, an app that helps managers and employees work better together by giving them a place to manage their one-on-ones, team meetings and company-wide discussions. Download it for free at hypercontext.com/free. Special thanks to our editor, Joel North. If you like what you heard today, do us a favor and give us five stars in the reviews. And if you’re really feeling the love, leave a comment with a secret question you’d like us to ask in an upcoming episode.

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