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This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features Oliver Tuffney, Founder of Sales Velocity, a company helping B2B businesses build predictable revenue by installing the systems, structure, and accountability behind high-performing sales teams. Ollie began his career as the first employee at a sales growth consultancy, helping scale that business into a multi-million-dollar company before launching Sales Velocity about a year ago. He has worked with more than 100 businesses across 30 industries, with a particular focus on B2B companies generating between 1 and 20 million dollars in annual revenue, and today his firm serves clients across Europe and the U.S.

In this episode, Ollie and I discussed:

• Why founder-led sales eventually becomes the ceiling on your growth, how the "founder advantage" makes it unfair to expect your salespeople to sell like you do, and the path to getting off the hamster wheel.
• The five-pillar operating system Sales Velocity uses to build scalable sales machines—positioning, process, people, performance, and planning—and how to find the key constraint holding your team back.
• And practical tactics you can implement right away: how to attract, assess, and onboard sales talent without falling for the "black book" myth, why public dashboards tracking percentage of time gone versus target achieved create ownership and urgency, and how to structure your weekly accountability and coaching meetings.

Whether you're the owner still carrying your company's sales on your own back or you're looking to build a repeatable sales engine, you're going to love this conversation. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Ollie Tuffney. Let's get started!

SEE ALSO: #362: The Power of Vulnerability: Jason Zuniga on Peer Groups and Second Chances

Transcript 

Ron:

Hello, hello there. Ron Callis here with another episode of Automation Unplugged. As always, Automation Unplugged is brought to you by my day job over at One Firefly. Hope you all are having a wonderful summer — hopefully spending time with family and friends, and maybe some trips or some vacations. Or maybe you're like me and you're busier than you've ever been. I know that this is a particularly busy season, in a good way, here at One Firefly and Amplify People. But nonetheless, I have carved out a trip — I'm going to take a little bit of personal time in August here to get away. But let's talk about our guest today. I have a special guest for you. I have a treat for all of you that are really working on your business. And I know that this particular topic is going to strike a chord with so many of you — so many of you that are running businesses where you have founder-led sales. The owner or founder of the company is one of your top salespeople. Maybe that's you. Maybe that's you listening. I can tell you it was me here at One Firefly for many, many years, as the top salesperson in the company. My personal journey was back in 2021 — really around 2020, 2021 — I knew that I wanted that to be different. I wanted to grow a sales organization, and I wasn't quite sure how to do that. Like maybe many of you, I would say, "Well, no one could sell like me," or "No one could be as effective as me." And so it was hard for me to see past that, to see how it was possible — until I met this individual. And this individual is going to be on the show today. So this is Oliver Tuffney. He is the Founder of Sales Velocity. And to fully respect where he came from: when I ultimately hired Ollie, he was with an organization called Immerse, and he has since gone on to start his own firm — we'll be talking a bit about that. He started that firm, stood that up on his own, about a year ago. He now already has a substantial team that's providing coaching and consulting to businesses across 30 different industries, across multiple continents. And he's still a regular consultant and advisor to us here at One Firefly, for full disclosure. He's actually worked across our sales org, into our account management team, and today he's working in a different pod, actually, over on our SEO team. So we've found lots of value and gold out of his counsel and advice, and the way that he thinks and the way that he trains. And so now I've got him here, and he's going to share it with all of us publicly. Let's go ahead and dig in. Let me bring in Oliver Tuffney. Oliver, how are you, sir?

Ollie:

Hello, Ron. Very, very well. Thank you for having me.

Ron:

Man, how are you doing? Now, where are you coming to us from? Because I'm here in Florida, and I'm actually recording this — it's just before noon as we're recording. So where are you at, and what time is it?

Ollie:

So currently over here in the UK, over in London. Now, I suppose the big difference is, normally it would be really quite hot over in Florida and very cold over in England. Right now, we're in the depths of a heat wave. So if you see a little bit of sweat on me, that's because we're not accustomed to having AC.

Ron:

So your room or building or facility — no air conditioning?

Ollie:

I've got a Dyson fan working in overdrive.

Ron:

Well, we have to pull this thread. I'm just going to admit something publicly here. In my house — I'm in my home office — you know, I keep my house... Do you think Fahrenheit or do you think Celsius?

Ollie:

Celsius.

Ron:

Okay, so we're already going to have a disparity.

Ollie:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife is American, so I get it a lot. I've got the rough conversion, but very much homeland is Celsius.

Ron:

Okay, so I normally keep my house around 72 degrees during the day, and at night I put it on chill — I go down to 65 degrees. And if it's one degree above that, I don't sleep as well. I'm such a spoiled brat. How are you surviving? Do you have air conditioning at home?

Ollie:

Yeah, so we managed to get one portable unit. We recently had a baby, and I never realized how much of an obsession there would be with baby's temperature. And so when you've got a heat wave versus baby's temperature, that becomes a very real thing. So we've got this portable unit that we're running from room to room — Heath's room during the day, and as soon as it gets to a certain point, running back to the bedroom, on all the monitors, tracking the temperature. Outside of that, Kristen, my wife, is taking the baby to all the different local spots, wherever there's air conditioning. It's a thing. It's a real, real thing. We are not equipped for heat whatsoever.

Ron:

And let's be clear — I could go and Google this — what is this heat wave? How warm is it there in the UK, or in London, right now?

Ollie:

So I can only give you this in Celsius: 34 degrees.

Ron:

34 degrees. All right, so what's going to happen is, if I'm not mistaken, Allison is helping me produce this. So she's going to drop into Slack and she's going to convert that for me. She's going to convert that to American.

Ollie:

I don't want all the Americans now to look at this and go, "What kind of temperature is that? That's a rookie temperature."

Ron:

Yeah. Oh, no, that's quite warm — it's 93 degrees Fahrenheit. That is quite warm, actually. I mean, I would say that's actually probably what it is outside here in Florida. With the humidity, it's probably over 100 right now. But we have air conditioners, so it's not a big deal. We're spoiled. All right — no one wants to hear us bantering about the weather. They want to get into the meat and potatoes here. So why don't you give the audience just an understanding: what is Sales Velocity as a company?

Ollie:

Sure. Sales Velocity — what we do is work with, typically, companies that are turning over between $1 million and $20 million in revenue. And more often than not, people reach out to us when they feel like they've hit a bit of a sales ceiling. We've got growth, we've got growth, we've got growth — all of a sudden it's staggered. More often than not, the most common symptoms that we tend to deal with in companies of this kind of size are: number one, the founder is the sales strategy — right, they are where leads start, they are what gets deals closed. That's number one. Number two would be there's no repeatable way of winning deals. It can be related to the first point, but there's no sense of repeatability — it's the Wild West, a little bit random. And then number three would be that there's no consistency between the different people. And what that leads to is: we're trying to do more activity, we want to grow, so the thinking is more calls, more emails, do more. But the revenue doesn't go up in proportion with the activity that gets done. So there are three symptoms, three frustrations, that people are usually experiencing when they reach out to us.

Ron:

To my understanding — and again, I'm following you on LinkedIn, so I see a lot of your posts and your content — you guys appear to be pretty affiliated with the EOS organization. Do you maybe want to describe for folks: what is EOS? Some listening probably are following EOS, just as we at One Firefly are following EOS. And then maybe what that partnership or collaboration is between your org and those people?

Ollie:

Yeah, I'd love to. EOS is effectively a simple operating framework for how to run a small business — so typically within that same kind of range, that $1 million to $20 million range. It was popularized by the book Traction, and it's got a massive following behind it across the US, and now gradually across the globe. The reason why it's gained so much traction is because it's enabled founders to get a grip on their business. What does that mean? In terms of scorecards, accountabilities, who's doing what, processes — a tight grip. Now, what does that mean in terms of Sales Velocity? Where I was working previously, a lot of the clients that we worked with would be operating on this framework, or perhaps a similar framework, but sales would get flagged as an issue and it wouldn't necessarily be solved. My job historically, as Chief Solutions Officer, was to look after the coaches, look after the clients, and more importantly, build all the products. So I would be seeing all of these problems within the $1 to $20 million companies. They're trying to get a better sense of: who is it that's on the team? What does the sales playbook look like? What are the key KPIs or dashboards? They're trying to get a grip. And so I was building all of these products specifically for these types of companies. But then eventually it got to a certain point where enough people were knocking at the door, and enough people were sharing these same problems, that I decided: you know what, I'm going to take all of these different tools and things that I've built and stitch them together into an operating system. And what that operating system is, is basically a way of building, running, and scaling a sales function. And by proxy, within doing that, what you're doing is extracting the founder out of what we would call the sales seat — the primary sales role — and converting it from something which is... I don't want to go as far as saying random, but certainly a little bit chaotic, everyone doing their own thing, a bit of the Wild West... into something which is more of a sales machine. We do these things, we get these results, we know what works, we know what doesn't, we do more of this, we do less of that. So that's the essence of how it bridged from one world to the other, and what that looks like. Ron: I would imagine that your area of support — and I'll use the word "support" — for businesses has to be the hottest, most interesting topic for every business owner that you've probably ever met. They have other parts of their business maybe a little more figured out, but this sales scalability thing feels like cloak and dagger, mystery, smoke and mirrors. Like, how the heck does that scale? I don't know. Was I the only one that brought that positioning to you, or is that true for others? Are they leaning in like, "All right, what have you got, Ollie? How can you actually help us?" I don't know if there's much of a question there, but is that common — that you talk to business owners and they're like, it is really gosh darn hard to scale this part of the business?

Ollie:

Yeah, let me riff on that. I suppose there are two things. Number one — and credit where credit's due to One Firefly — you very bravely, a good number of years ago, said to me, "Ollie, there are no sacred cows here. You can rip up everything. You can start again. You've got the keys. Whatever it is you want to do to the sales function, you do it." That was obviously an awful lot of trust and faith that you put in me to do that, and that was really the genesis for what this all became — because it was like, okay, well, if I could rip everything up, what exactly would I do? So that was a large part of the foundation. Now, most people don't do that. That's a big separation. Now, the frustration is there, but I think sales is a very informal department. It is the most informal department, and it doesn't typically come with formal education. People aren't doing degrees in this. And so, yes, there's frustration, but there's also an even larger element of "you don't know what you don't know." And if it's the case that you don't know what you don't know, you don't necessarily know that there is another world out there. You always feel like you're one step away. I'll give you a good example. Quite often when I speak to prospects or business owners, I'll say, "What's your sales plan?" And they'll go, "Ah, well, we've just got HubSpot." Okay, that's not a sales plan, no. "Okay, well, what else is there? We're going to look at the comp structure." Okay, that's another thing, but that's not you building a scalable sales function. But to somebody who has never built it before, they don't know what that actually entails. They don't know what they don't know — they don't even know how to answer the question. So it's the next thing that they see that kind of seems like the obvious missing puzzle piece, until it's put in and then the revenue doesn't really change. And so quite often what happens — and the way that I come across a lot of people — is they do that for long enough, and it's the frustration of "this has to be the puzzle piece, this has to be the puzzle piece," and then bit by bit by bit, it's not. And then it's, "Okay, fine, what else is there? Someone else is doing this. Someone else has this same kind of business and they have managed to scale it. There is a path — I just don't know it." And that requires... it's funny, because sales is a department that also can carry quite a lot of ego, but you also need—

Ron:

You don't say. You wouldn't believe it. Our audience here on Automation Unplugged — you have businesses or business owners that are selling technology systems or solutions in commercial or residential environments. I'll pick on residential: they're out there rubbing elbows with the rich and famous of planet Earth — the movie stars, the tech titans, the titans of industry — and they're in their house, and they're on a first-name basis with them. And not all, but what happens on some occasions is some of that ego and bravado rubs off on those salespeople. And, you know, I'm not saying it's good or bad — I'm not going to pass judgment — but I've certainly been in many rooms where there are lots of egos. Lots of people that think very highly of themselves, or maybe their network, or their abilities.

Ollie:

There's actually — this is unrelated to sales, really — but there's a term for that, which when I heard it, I thought, "Oh, that's interesting." It's called a SID: status-income discrepancy. And you often get that when you've got people that are — let's say I'm a store clerk, but I work in Burberry. In terms of what my role is versus who I'm regularly associated with, it creates a little bit of an imbalance between where I actually am and what I'm actually doing, versus the perception of the way that I see myself. So what you just described there — dealing with the rich and famous, but my contribution isn't... I am not that. That's what it is. I've always found that fascinating.

Ron:

What did you say it's called — SID?

Ollie:

Yeah, status-income discrepancy.

Ron:

That's the first time I've heard that defined, but I would say there's certainly a bit of that, at least in our industry — and probably lots of industries where the sales team is selling to luxury consumers, customers that have net worths of tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or billions. And at least in the industries we serve at One Firefly, not many — none — of our business owners or salespeople are worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, that's for sure. But anyway, neither here nor there. Real quick — I have so many questions about sales and sales structure, and I'm even happy to go into the journey of how you've worked with us here at One Firefly. But what's your background? I'm sure people are curious. How did you land here today, running this successful, growing, scaling sales consultancy? What was your journey like?

Ollie:

So I suppose it started... I came from a family of entrepreneurs — like, an entrepreneur on every branch of the family tree. So that was always going to be my end destination; it was just a question mark as to how. Whenever I was growing up, all of the conversations, ever since I was like five years old, were about sales, business, commercials. Fast forward: university in the UK, a business enterprise degree and marketing. Believe it or not, before I went into sales, marketing was my thing. I often consider myself a marketing person in a salesperson's jacket — that was very much my core. I subscribed to all the content, magazines, everything. But then it wasn't until I got into a commercial graduate program at a big corporate blue-chip organization, and I'm rotating between the different functions — one marketing, one sales, one research and analytics. At the time I thought, "I don't want to get into sales. I really don't want to do that rotation." And I get into it and think, "Wow, I actually really, really like this." And the reason why I liked it so much is because I found that marketing was actually more project management than what I thought it was initially. What I was thinking of was more advertising, but when I got there, it was more project management. But I've got to say—

Ron:

You thought it was all Mad Men — the big creative ideas.

Ollie:

I was going in like Don Draper, and it wasn't happening. It wasn't happening. But then when I got into sales, what I loved about it was you could have an idea, you could execute it, and it was entirely on you whether the numbers went up or down. It was just so binary. And so I kind of got hooked on the back of that. But then, as to how I fell into the coaching and consulting space — it was super random. I was out in New York, speaking to someone who'd done very, very well for themselves in their business, and I was peppering this guy with questions. And at the end, he was like, "Okay, okay, okay — here's what actually happened, as to how we scaled: we brought in a consultant. I actually think you would get on with him really, really well." And that person ended up being Mornay. He was like, "You've got to meet this guy, you've got to meet this guy, you've got to meet this guy" — and he kept peppering me over the next couple of days. And so when we met, we got on like a house on fire. So I was super excited about this consultancy that was just being set up, and I joined as the first employee. I suppose I was kind of seeing myself as like a Mike out of Suits — that was what I expected it to be. I'm going to go in and start slaying dragons. Whereas the reality was... I mean, I look pretty young as it is, and it looked like someone had just brought their son to work. So the reality was very different versus what I was expecting. But there's actually a core part of the story here, because in order for me to be heard — in order for me to actually have a voice, and it's not just "okay, you're the young person; you need to grow a little bit of gray hair before people will listen to you" — I became obsessed with: what does it actually take to grow? What is the actual difference between sales functions that do grow and sales functions that don't? And I made sure that I was an expert on a lot of things that were valuable but difficult to do, like financial modeling. So I could be in a room with a founder, and we'd be talking about conversion rates and average deal sizes, and I'd be able to whip up a dashboard in no time and display exactly what that meant. I was going really deep on: what is it that I can do that no one else can do? And that was really how I initially found my wedge. And I did that again and again and again and again and again. I think that was probably what pushed me down more of the product side — the productization of sales path — because initially, you're not going to get in just based on background and experience; you need to have something different that you're bringing to the table. So that was ultimately my obsession. But then as I did that more and more, I became the only person that was actually able to explain what it was that I had created. And then, as Immerse was growing, I was hiring the coaches to deliver the products that I had created. And so then you have to think in terms of systems — because you're not just thinking "I'm building a product for this particular client." You're thinking "I'm building a product that's going to be delivered by somebody else, and it needs to apply to every client." So what's the level of abstraction that you need to go out to where it's broadly applicable, and in a way which is intuitive for other people to look at and understand? That was basically my world for seven or so years. And then after that, eventually, I'd built enough of these different products. And that's where — going back to the beginning of this conversation — it was like, you know what, it actually feels like I've got lots of different things. I've got dashboards, I've got sales quarterly planning, I've got sales playbooks, I've got role practice, I've got team performance coaching — I've got all of these things. How do they actually stitch together? And how can you do that in a way that's not massively overwhelming? So that's when I set out on my own. I spent five or six months really building out: what does that look like? How is it that you could roll this in as a system into a sales function — be that of one person, two people, ten people, twenty people? How could you create something, roll it in, and have it be digestible enough to take in, but powerful enough to make a really big difference? That's what I spent a lot of my time doing. And going back to your point earlier, that's why we've been able to grow as fast as we've been able to grow. I often say this: in my world — the sales coaching and consultancy world — all you need to be able to do is just what it says on the tin. That's literally it. Because everyone says that they can help you grow. How many people can actually do it? And if you do actually do it, your name gets passed around very, very quick.

Ron:

I mean, you've helped us grow. We've grown our top-line revenue two to three times since we started our engagement with you back in '21. Hard to believe — I was thinking, did we really start working together in '21? It's been like five years. And you've now worked through different departments at One Firefly, and everyone that has worked with you has sung your praises. So it's for real. Maybe the first topic that comes to mind for me — it's not sales advice, but it's the fact that you are a consultant, and consultants have fees. And I'm betting so many businesses and business owners probably immediately have friction there, thinking about paying an outside firm or entity for coaching or advice or whatever the thing is — marketing, right? The idea of paying someone from the outside. My testimony is that we've been able to grow the top line, and at the same time we worked on the bottom line. So net-net, it's been a win — a win for One Firefly, a win for our clients, and a win for you and your enterprise. I'm just curious: how common do you see friction with the businesses you interact with around their willingness to pay for outside counsel?

Ollie:

I suppose, generally speaking, in terms of openness to outside counsel, that really depends on who it is that we're speaking to.

Ron:

Okay. What's the ideal customer, then? What's the ideal frame of mind or business operator?

Ollie:

This is roles. This is roles. So if we're speaking to the owner of the company, usually there's a great deal of openness. And what we also bake in — this isn't a self-plug, I suppose it's just...

Ron:

It's just true.

Ollie:

Yeah — we literally bake in a money-back guarantee. We literally put our sales right on the line, which is: if you don't see the value, don't pay. And it's entirely subjective. We do it because everyone else says that they can do it, but very few actually can. So I'll put myself out there — shoot me. But in terms of who's actually open to it and who's perhaps resistant: the founders tend to be very, very open to it. The sales managers and sales leaders are the ones that typically have a little bit more resistance initially, because they see it as, "Well, I've got my own way." And a lot of the dance that we have to do is conveying the understanding that, look, we are not trying to go against your way. It is still you. What we're doing is providing a framework and tools to get the best out of you, and make it in a way which is repeatable. And that's usually the hump that people have to initially get over — versus "you're being tucked aside and being replaced," which is very much not the case. But that's the hurdle.

Ron:

You mentioned the businesses you work with are in that $1 to $20 million range. My business was in the lower end of that scale when we started working together, and we didn't have a sales manager per se. So I'm curious about that concept of a sales manager leading people — theoretically holding people accountable, designing systems and processes, conducting training, doing active management. How common do you run into businesses that are actually doing that, versus some other "yeah, we have salespeople and they're doing stuff"?

Ollie:

Yeah — like 95 percent. "We've got salespeople and they're doing stuff."

Ron:

We didn't have that, because I was a founder-led salesperson, and I was out there running the business over here and running client meetings over there. And I just could not see... although, the difference maybe you'd describe in me is that I believed it was possible. But I did not know how to design a structure where I was not a principal breadwinner. I had read enough books to know that it was possible. And so that's where the intersection came. I said, "Ollie, I don't know how to do this, but I believe it's possible. Is it possible?" And you're like, "Ron, it's totally possible." And there's the beginning of the relationship, five years ago. So I guess my question in that statement is: how common, from your perspective, is the founder-led salesperson becoming the bottleneck to the growth of that business?

Ollie:

The interesting thing about founder-led growth is that I think it often gets a little bit of a bad rap — because it can be very frustrating when it becomes a bottleneck or a key constraint. But the reality is that it's a wonderful thing initially. The founder title does carry weight. It does help you initially get your first deals — let's say up to the first million. You're able to bend the rules. You can carry the weight of credibility. You can pull in favors. You can do all of these things, and that is the guerrilla warfare that you absolutely should do. But the challenge — and this is where it becomes a big constraint — is that as you're bringing in those deals, you're building an infrastructure on the back end: the delivery mechanism, the finance mechanism, the people mechanism, around the opportunities that you're bringing in. And eventually, there's only so much that you can do as an individual. You reach a ceiling, because there are only so many hours in the day. And what happens is you build the business around what it is that you're able to produce. Gradually, eventually, that catches up. But then you find yourself on a hamster wheel — because you can't get off, in order to keep all of the other overheads that you've now taken on going. So then what do you do? You're in a catch-22 here: I can't get off the hamster wheel because I've got all these mouths to feed, but at the same time, I need to get off, because we can never grow if we don't get past this point. And that's why it becomes crazy.

Ron:

That's exactly where I was. Exactly. You just defined my state of mind and body in early '21.

Ollie:

It is so common. And the funny thing about it — the beautiful thing about it — is that it's a really niche problem. Because, I mean, firstly, how many people are founders? That's already niche. And then within that, how many founders are not solopreneurs, but have actually built a business up to a point where that becomes a constraint? And in something where the deal size is, let's say, above $10K, so it actually requires someone to sell it, rather than e-com or anything like that. It's a niche, niche, niche, niche problem.

Ron:

Good point.

Ollie:

But it's real. And if you've felt it, and if you know it, then, man, you know it deep. And if you speak to someone else that's had it, it's like — you get me. You get me, and no one else does. Everyone hears it; they don't get it. And so that's why there's a lot of resonance when you have that kind of conversation. There are a lot of other things out there talking in general about how you sell — value selling, solution selling, Challenger selling, all of these different ways of selling. And that's all great, but it doesn't get you out of the seat. Ron: Something that you've already touched on here, but I'm going to go deeper into it — something you helped me see. And I know now, in hindsight, I did this so unfairly for so many years to my poor sales peers at One Firefly. I would go in and make a sale or conduct a meeting and convert the business — and I would convert it in X period of time. And I would, air quotes, "make it look easy." I don't want to demean that — it was just: you discover, you identify the opportunity, restate it, understand timelines, understand budget, gain a commitment, move forward. And I could go do that in thirty minutes. And then I would go and challenge my team — and they'd be on their third or fourth meeting with the customer, and they didn't know the timeline, they didn't know the budget, and they didn't know if and when it would close. Anyway, I'm mixing some concepts, but I was unfairly judging others on my team — not factoring in the weight of my title, and not factoring in the weight of the seniority and authority that I could bring to bear in an interaction. And I now see it very clearly: it's very unfair for me to expect a salesperson on my team to go sell the way that I sell. I'm not saying I can't have salespeople far more effective than me — I believe that's true as well — but they're going to sell differently. They're going to sell with systems, and they're going to ultimately stand on the platform of the company, the brand, the offering, their process, thorough discovery. In our case, we do consultative selling, so we're bringing value every step of the way. It was like a light bulb moment for me when I saw that. How common is that — that that's a point of friction, with founders expecting and holding their other salespeople to the standard of themselves? Is that even fair, or what are your thoughts on that?

Ollie:

It's certainly not fair. It's certainly not fair. But here's the reality of it, to level the playing field a little bit: you're only ever seeing the world out of your own eyes. And all the while you're in your own business, you've been working on deals, you've been working on opportunities. Yes, you are the founder, but you don't know anything other than being the founder. So you're in an echo chamber a little bit. And there is no one telling you that you have a founder advantage — unless you work with me, and obviously I'll say that.

Ron:

You told me pretty quickly.

Ollie:

I told you that. But no one else is really going to tell you that — or actually be specific enough to say, "Here's where it's showing up: here, here, here, here, and here. So if you're designing wider processes, these are the handicaps, if you like, that you need to adjust for." No one else is doing that. And so when you're bringing in another salesperson, the expectation — and I get it, I get it — is that you're looking at the opportunities and going, "Well, obviously you just do X. Obviously. Of course." It's almost like you're taking a civilian and putting them in front of a hibachi grill. You can do everything — you can create a little onion ring tower, you can do all of that — and then you chuck them the knife and say, "Off you go." And they're like, "I didn't even see what you did there. I've got no idea what that was." But to you, it's just second nature.

Ron:

Yeah.

Ollie:

So — do you want me to segue into what you actually do?

Ron:

Yeah, go there.

Ollie:

Okay. So look, there are a number of different variables here. We look at this as a five-part system — this is when we're looking at the wider operating system. I'll share that as headlines, and then I'll double-click into the very mechanics of what this actually means.

Ron:

This is your Sales Velocity structure, or rubric, of how to build sales systems.

Ollie:

Exactly right. This is our operating framework — what we do within sales functions in order to—

Ron:

Am I allowed to say you're writing a book on this that'll be out later in the year? Am I allowed to say that?

Ollie:

Absolutely not.

Ron:

Okay. We'll cut that out.

Ollie:

I'm only joking. I'm only joking. Yeah, yeah — absolutely. Absolutely. And look, part of the reason for that — it's funny, we were talking in the pre-show here — what I was saying is, what I don't want that to be is a book as a business card. That is not the intention. What I really want it to be is a standalone artifact, an asset that works by itself, which someone can pick up, read through, use, deploy — something that's genuinely useful. If we go back to my earlier experience, as I was coming up through the ranks, all I could rely on was substance — just build something that actually works — and I want the exact same thing to be true with the book. And part of the reason why I want this book so much is because, for a lot of people, it goes back to "you don't know what you don't know." I want to give someone an easy, light read where they can scan through and go, "Huh. There is a way. Fair enough — I hadn't thought about it that way before." That's really where I want to get it to.

Ron:

So take us into these five pillars.

Ollie:

The five pillars — and these are in order; they're all interconnected, but it's a stacking. You've got to start at the beginning, then each one stacks on top. The first one is positioning. When we're looking at positioning, we're saying: which specific part of the market is it that you're going after? We want to be the number one — we want to be famous for this particular part of the market. And I'm not saying "Florida" — be specific. And then equally, what's the messaging that we're taking to that market? We don't want to be vanilla. We want something that genuinely cuts through. The next one is process. The way that we look at process is three different parts: find it, win it, grow it. How is it that we are generating new opportunities, new meetings on the calendar? How is it that we're converting those opportunities? And then how is it that we're growing it as an account — how are we getting repeats, or referrals, depending on your type of business? Find it, win it, grow it. The next one is people — and I'm going to start to give you a little bit of how these are interconnected. We know which market we're going after. We know find it, win it, grow it. How is it that we're then organizing our talent around those different processes, within that particular market, so each part has accountability and ownership? The next one is performance. This is when we have key KPIs and measures in order to assess: are we actually doing what we need to be doing? So if our target is — let's say we're at five million and we want to get to ten million — what does that look like in terms of conversion rates, number of leads, average deal sizes, all of that stuff? Then what does that actually look like on a per-month basis? How does that translate by salesperson? And then what is the rhythm of coaching and accountability, to see if we're actually getting there or if we need intervention? That's the fourth one. And then the fifth one is planning. Let's take that same example: we're looking to go from five million to ten million over the course of the next couple of years. That's all well and good — but what actually needs to be true in order for that to happen? What needs to be true over the course of three years, then one year, all the way down to this next quarter, this next ninety days? So that's how those different component pieces all stitch together. And that's really what makes it more of a system rather than just a list — because they're not isolated; they're all feeding into the same thing. And what you'll find, just zooming back out: for most organizations, sales leaders, founders — none of what I've shared there is mind-blowing. Everyone will be familiar with all of those different things. The thing which is unique is having all of the different puzzle pieces together and seeing the picture on the front of the box. That's really the thing that's unique — and knowing the appropriate order to put all of these things into place. Rather than lots of different experiments, lots of things half-baked, lots of things started, stopped, went back on hold again. We did a little bit of outbound — didn't work. Let's go to accounts — did a little bit of that, didn't really work, spent lots of time on it. Went after this market — didn't work. Went after this market — it did work a bit, then we had to come off it. These are all things that people do, but it's just stitching it together.

Ron:

How do you approach it, when you start working with someone, to evaluate their current state — to know how to triage or prioritize these five pillars, and what gets worked on and in what order?

Ollie:

Yeah, excellent question. So early on, initially, what we'll do during discovery is basically work through each of those different areas — that's the operating system. In terms of the questions that I'd be asking, I'm effectively doing an audit and an assessment against each of these different areas. And then what we do — and this is pre any kind of engagement — I synthesize: "Look, based on what you shared with me, and based on where you're looking to get to, this is what it seems like at the top." Typically between four and six key constraints. And that's not me pushing — that's a workshop discussion. Do you agree? Feel free to shoot me down here, but this is what I heard and what I'm observing. What do you think? And then what we'll do together is stack-rank in terms of the biggest priority or biggest constraint that we need to unlock. Then once we have clarity on that — and we shortlist this in the background; we've got loads and loads of different tools that we could use, and that's overwhelming to look at as a collective — only once we have that stack rank of key constraints do we then get into: all right, it looks like these would be the top tools, these would be the top things worth installing. Now, what's going to add the most value now, versus soon, versus later? And we do that through two different lenses. I'm sharing this as what we do, but equally, if you're just taking this and running with it, I would still apply the exact same mindset and criteria — the two different lenses of thought. One is execution: what is it that the team is going to be doing? That's the tip end of the spear — what are they doing in front of customers that they need to be better at? The other thing, which runs in parallel — think of it as sales management or sales infrastructure — is the guardrails that you're creating for your team to execute in. That might be having a sales process; that might be the KPIs; that might be sales quarterly planning rhythms, so you ensure you're on the right track; that's the way that we're hiring, the way that we're doing performance plans and triaging out if somebody's not hitting the mark. That is the function-building — that's what enables scalability. But the other part, the execution part, is what gets you deals right now.

Ron:

Do you mind if I rapid-fire some sales questions? I'm going to try to put myself in the head of our audience — business owners — like, "Wow, I've got a sales expert in front of me." I want to throw some random questions at you and see what your reactions are. All right — you have no idea what I'm going to ask.

Ollie:

Absolutely no idea.

Ron:

Okay. Hiring salespeople — I've heard from many that it's one of the toughest types of roles to hire. And for the customers we serve at One Firefly, there is a belief that the most effective salespeople come from within the industry — I don't even know that this is true — and have sold these technology systems before, and ideally, in a perfect world, already have a Rolodex of people to go sell to. And when you define it that way, there's this microscopic pool of sales talent in any marketplace, and therefore sales talent is absolutely a bottleneck in the way that my customers currently think about who they need to join their team in a sales function. Are they right? Are they wrong? Is there another way to think about it in terms of building out a sales apparatus? And I'm being specific: within the types of businesses my customers run — let's say the residential contractor is a B2C contractor, selling to consumers, but they might also work with builders, they might work through architects, and relationship-building, or interior designers, right? So they can navigate different avenues for their lead gen. Just at a high level, what are your thoughts?

Ollie:

Yeah. So the play of hiring someone for their black book sounds obvious, seems great — in very, very, very few cases have I actually seen it work. I've seen lots of people during the recruitment process tell the employer that they have a fantastic black book, and nine out of ten times after that, the black book seems to have disappeared somewhere. Always, always, always. So that's number one — I would not have that as your primary. And those that do have one become very, very, very expensive.

Ron:

Right — you're paying a premium.

Ollie:

Massively. Massively. I see this a lot in the construction space. So then the question becomes: okay, if you're going to go outside of that, what does that actually look like? I don't necessarily push for "must be from industry," but I look at what is actually happening in the way that they're selling. So let's say you're working with architects and designers as part of the sales process — what I'm really looking for there is somebody that can manage partners. And then if it's a large deal — in the B2C business, deal size could be tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars — what I'm looking for is somebody that has sold large deals before to consumers. So it's the profile that I'm looking for, far more than "they have done it in exactly my industry." Because what would the perfect world be? The perfect world would be: they joined another company that was just slightly bigger than our company, that had phenomenal training; they absolutely crushed it; and now they've handed in their notice and want to take a pay cut and join us. That would be the ideal, and that's what we're shooting for a lot of the time.

Ron:

Sounds like a pipe dream when you describe it that way.

Ollie:

But it's true, though, right? That is often what we're looking for. So instead, I look at: what is the profile of what we're actually looking for, in terms of what's actually going to make the difference? And then you've got three different ways of looking at it when it comes to bringing in sales talent: you've got attract, you've got assess, you've got onboard. What you're really looking at there, with the attract part — I would always encourage you to broaden the net and bring it down to the profile. But that doesn't mean you just let anyone through the door. And I think this is where a lot of people mess up, because the assessment process for sales talent is so informal. Quick chat — nice guy, nice girl, I think you've got the job. "Have you got a black book?" "Yep." "Cool, come in." I'm obviously oversimplifying, but it's not robust. So what I always advocate for doing — and this is a core part of our system when evaluating sales talent — is: what are the three to five, ideally three, absolute must-have traits? The things that you really want them to be able to nail. And then for all of those, I wouldn't say ask questions — because the reality is most salespeople will give you their best pitch during the recruitment process, because there's a salary on the line. Instead, I want an assessment for it. So let's say, for example, you're selling a large deal, and you're typically going to be doing that in person. Cool, great — we're going to replicate that exact same scenario. I'm going to give you a case study — you only have to create it once, and with ChatGPT and Claude you can do it in all of two minutes — and then you have the salesperson actually pitch it. And let's say architects are a real thing, and we're trying to get in with another architect and share our proposition. Great — give them that as a brief. "You've got ten minutes to come up with whatever you want to do. George over here is going to be the architect. Pitch." So you're actually running it like you want to be able to have it. You've got a score sheet, and you're objectively assessing: can this person actually do what they say that they can do? And more often than not — I think LinkedIn is a scary thing, if LinkedIn is a big thing within your sector — because people can get sold away with titles. They can look at it and think, "Wow — from a big firm, big role, big hitter. They're going to kill it." And the amount of times that I've seen that happen, where that person actually got lucky getting into that big company, and then they spent three years pretty much under the radar — but now everyone thinks they're hot as mustard. And the reality is, when they go into the next organization, they're really not good. So yes, we're trying to get great talent in, but we should be ruthless — like, military-grade assessment — when it comes to who's actually coming in. What are those variables that are absolutely essential? And then what is the assessment criteria that we're going to put in place to really put them through their paces, to ensure we do actually have someone that's brilliant here — not just someone from some kind of pedigree background that we're going to overpay for?

Ron:

It was attract, assess, and what was number three?

Ollie:

Onboard.

Ron:

Tell us about onboarding for that sales role. What should that look like?

Ollie:

Yeah. So I think this is particularly important when you've got long deal cycles — which is obviously the world of a lot of your listeners — because, well, how long do you leave it before you know? If you've got a six-month deal cycle, you can be paying someone's salary for a long time before you realize that they're not very good and they're not working out. So when it comes to onboarding: if you want an A-player, you've got to give them an A-player onboarding. You can't bring in the best talent in the world and then just give them a machete and send them out into the jungle — you're not going to get what you're after. The way that we look at this is structured: what is happening over the first 30, 60, 90 days? What is happening over the course of the first 30 days, and who is running that and responsible for it, in terms of what they should be learning, doing, and what's expected of them? Have it measured. And even if it won't necessarily be deals closed — of course it won't — it could certainly be quality conversations. It could be sign-off from the founder, having sat with them in these conversations. Green shoots — how do we define green shoots, as to what's good and what's not good? Because really, both sides are on trial, and you want to be able to pull the trigger if you need to. It's far faster in the first month than it is in the eighth month, you know? Then when we get into month two, we're doing the progressive increase of activity and expectations. That might be that they're now working a pipeline, or a quantity of events that they're going to, if networking is a big thing, and we expect them to have a couple of opportunities. And then by month three, it may well be the case that we're now expecting them to be independent — whether it's closed deals or whatever it might be. I think one of the upsides of running that as an exercise is — and I see this all the time in founder-led businesses — a salesperson comes in, week three, there's no revenue from that person: "I don't think it's a good fit. Got to let them go. Got to let them go." But the reality is, who's going to do that in a couple of weeks? So we've got to be deliberate about that. And I'm not saying you just let someone coast — but come into it eyes wide open. Ron: Love it. All right, next hot topic. Something you did when you started working with us: you implemented public — I say "public" — dashboards. The idea that sales performance metrics are defined — like, what do you expect of them? — and they aren't kept confidential and private for the individual on the sales team. Now, not necessarily company-wide, but within the sales apparatus, everybody — the manager and all the players on the field — knows what everybody's goals and targets are, and they know how everybody's doing. That was awesome. I mean, we weren't doing that before. We now do that religiously. And we actually now go beyond just the sales criteria — I mean, the category-based, like these types of sales or those types of sales — and we also have the activity tracking. So we have sales data, CRM pipeline tracking data, stage tracking, and then activity tracking. And that was all influenced by you coaching Kendall on our team to build that out and implement it. And now, frankly, me and our EMT at various levels are in that sheet every single day, in addition to the sales team. It's very valuable. I'm wondering: how common is that? And do you believe that that sort of methodology is important for the improvement of a sales function?

Ollie:

Quite frankly, I don't know how you can operate without it. Because without it, you're kind of operating with good feel and vibes.

Ron:

There are a lot of people listening that are doing some version of this tracking on a whiteboard in their office.

Ollie:

Yeah. So let me give you the difference, and why I would make a case for it. The number one thing I actually care about — I don't want to get into "this is exactly how to design a dashboard"; I think it would be way too in the weeds, but I'm more than happy to share with anyone that wants to reach out to me after — the number one thing that I really, really care about is percentage of time gone versus percentage of target achieved. What we're trying to create with a salesperson is ownership and urgency. The amount of business owners that I speak to — when they talk about their team, they say, "They just don't care enough. They just don't get it. They're not leaning in. They don't own it." And what also often happens, as a kind of byproduct of that, when we're looking at setting a target: everything's always going to come in at the very end of the month. "I know my numbers are low now..."

Ron:

I can't tell you, even here at One Firefly, how often we're giving our finance leader a heart attack — but it's Friday and magically we hit the number. He's like, "Couldn't you have hit it throughout the month?"

Ollie:

But here's the thing. Let me just explain first: percentage of month gone, percentage of target — what does that actually mean? That means if we've got a thirty-day month and we're fifteen days in, fifty percent of the month is gone. If your target is $100K, by the time we get to that point, you should be at $50K. And every day that goes by, that percentage of time gone is going up, and therefore your expected achievement has gone up. So every day you're playing the cat-and-mouse game of "am I ahead of the number?" And you always want to be ahead — percentage of target achieved versus percentage of time gone. That's the very crux of it. And it is the most effective way — when that is created, updated daily, distributed daily, and that's what everyone sees: leadership, sales team. That will be the thing that creates ownership. So — whiteboard: good. Don't get me wrong, definitely better than not tracking at all, and oftentimes better than most. But in terms of what's really, really effective, it's: where are you right now? Because what that does, by comparison, is create urgency three days into the month if someone hasn't brought anything in just yet — versus several weeks in, "Hey, it seems like we're a little bit light. What's going on?" It completely eradicates that. And again, that's a structural difference. That's not a people difference. It's a structural difference.

Ron:

I'm looking at ours. You call that... so there's the time, but it's "gap to target," at least on our dashboard. And so it's the idea that we're this far along in the month, our quota was this, and if we haven't achieved that, here's how far behind we are based on where we should be at this point in the month.

Ollie:

Yeah, exactly.

Ron:

And it's red, right? If you're really behind — we color-code ours — you're behind and you see it, and that creates a level of urgency, certainly in every sales meeting. All right, let's pivot: sales meetings. Sales meetings and trainings — and I'm watching the clock, and I'm going to try to squeak an extra nugget or two here. What should be best, in terms of the idea that whether it's the owner or a sales leader running some type of a sales meeting — and I'm going to say that has a purpose separate from a sales training environment, where that's pure training. What's your opinion?

Ollie:

Great question. This is something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Let's say I've worked with a hundred clients, sat in a hundred different meetings, and seen a hundred different ways that a sales meeting was being run. Some — no numbers looked at whatsoever. Some — it was just a pipeline audit. Some — it was just the team getting whacked for an hour. A massive spectrum of different things. Within a healthy, high-performing sales function, you want to have at least two group meetings per week — two team meetings per week. One is for accountability; the other one is for coaching. In the one where we're looking at accountability, that is where we look at what is going on with the numbers. So if we're saying time-to-date versus target: where is that? What are the headlines if we're looking at key deals? What's going on in terms of core constraints, core challenges? When I'm looking at a pipeline or a dashboard, I always look for two things: what is the measure that's holding us back the most? So looking across the team, what's the measure — that might be conversion rate, average deal size, lead flow, whatever. And then, who's the person that's holding us back the most? They're the two key constraints. So when it comes to — after we do the core reporting, pipeline numbers, key actions from the previous session — we get into the problem-solving part, that's always where we start. That's the key thing we're looking to problem-solve together: what is blocking this piece the most? And it's debate, discussion. Is it a little bit uncomfortable? It can be a little bit uncomfortable, but it's a forcing function. You can't get away with it. We're always raising the floor every single session. So that's one. The other one is a coaching session. And when I say a coaching session, I think a lot of sales managers hear this and think, "I don't have time to build a whole load of PowerPoints." That's certainly not what I'm advocating for. What I'm advocating for is: if you were to look at your numbers and see what that biggest constraint was, when it comes to that coaching session, I want to be doing role practice, or some kind of development, or call reviews, or deal assessments, based on where that key constraint is. So it goes from just "happy training" to more performance engineering. If we look at it as: in order to hit our goal, our numbers need to be this — conversion rates, deal sizes — and this is where we're falling down the most, then this is where we're intervening. That might be: okay, we need to get our deal size higher, which means we need to be in bigger properties, which means we need to be having conversations with other architects. Great — what does it look like to be having a conversation with an architect of this stature or that stature? What is that conversation going to be? Let's play that conversation right now. What is the pushback going to be when they're dealing with somebody else and not interested? Let's play that conversation right now. Then we go into the next week — dashboards are all updated, numbers now have the benefit of that intervention training. Does it change overnight? Obviously not. But over time, what you're seeing is the yin and the yang — those two things operating together. They're not separate. And that's one of the common, common, common problems that I see: we find that there's a problem in the numbers, but then it's an open loop. There's no closing of the loop — numbers are bad because of prospecting, or because the team has low levels of capability when it comes to X. "Cool. Problem. Now what?" Closing the loop is what makes it so that we're performance engineering. Those two are of key, key, key importance. One other one that I'll throw in: both of those meetings are not deep-dive pipeline audits. And this is a big mistake that I often see founders and sales managers making — everyone is in the session together, and we're running through deal by deal by each individual. Let's say we've got even just three people on the team: two people are entirely clocked out, effectively having their time wasted for twenty minutes, while we're going through all of Sally's deals — and then the next person, and the next person. It's just a waste of time. So what you want to do, depending on the seniority or level of independence of the salesperson, is a weekly one-to-one pipeline audit. If they're super capable and very independent, you can reduce the frequency to every couple of weeks, every three weeks — you've still got to ensure there's a little bit of oversight. But if they're a bit more junior, you want to make sure you're on top of: what are the key deals? What are the next actions? What's blocking it from going ahead? If you don't have that, that's where you often feel like you're out of control — lots of things happening, but I don't really know what's happening. So they're the three key things that will give you the tightest grip over your sales function.

Ron:

Brilliant. All those things you're saying, I'm like — hey, we do that, we do that, and we do that. I'm putting them together now. That's awesome. Well, Ollie, you're a wealth of knowledge and information, and if anyone is fortunate enough to engage you and your team — I know you have a great team of coaches working with you — I know that you can make an impact. Thank you for joining me on the show. It's been a pleasure. I know you and I get to talk on occasion — you're actually talking more these days with my team than with me — so it was a great chance for us to catch up. For folks that want to get in touch with you, where can we send them? And for those that are watching, I'll put the art on the screen. But yeah, take us through it.

Ollie:

Sure. A couple of ways of getting in contact. The easiest way would just be via LinkedIn — just type in Oliver Tuffney, T-U-F-F-N-E-Y — or reach out to me directly: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Ron:

And for clarity, if it wasn't obvious, folks, the website is salesvelocity.co.uk. Ollie, we will have to make it not another four years — because we did. I had you on the show in January... I was just looking at my notes: January of 2022, man. We were still just coming out of COVID then. Episode 234. So my commitment to you: I'll reach out and make sure we have you on sooner rather than later. Maybe as soon as your book comes out.

Ollie:

Yeah. Well, I very much enjoyed it. Thank you.

Ron:

Yeah. So thank you for coming on, Ollie, and we'll talk to you soon, buddy.

Ollie:

You got it.

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Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

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Resources and links from the interview:

Show Notes:

• https://salesvelocity.co.uk/

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivertuffney/