“One of the areas to be clear on if you’re recruiting in the sales space is to focus on the essential traits of a good sales leader.”
Meet Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor, founders of Plan. Grow. Do.
Steve Knapp is a celebrated and influential UK sales expert. A best-selling author and keynote speaker – his inspirational selling techniques were pivotal to Shell International. This Sheffield-based entrepreneur’s clients include Whitbread, NOCN, Certas Energy, Fire Depot and many others.
Rob Taylor is an award-winning marketing professional. His two decades of professional marketing experience has seen the rise of digital marketing with adapted businesses that embrace the format rather than fear it. In his experience, Rob has worked with globally recognised companies and helped introduce modern marketing ideas and projects that support the workforce; these include Amazon, Google, Shell UK, and Live Nation.
We’re happy that you could join us today! Please introduce yourself to our readers. What’s your story?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: Plan. Grow. Do. began as a collaborative approach between myself and Steve. My background is marketing and helping smaller businesses in the B2B space understand more about the process. I have seen the growth of digital marketing and helped enterprises to adapt rather than fear change. I have also worked with companies to help introduce modern marketing concepts and projects to support the workforce; these include Amazon, Google, Shell UK, and Live Nation. Sharing an office with Steve made me realise that we were having similar conversations just from different angles of a marketing or sales lens, and we understood it was a common challenge for businesses who couldn’t distinguish between the two. Companies are still operating very much in a siloed approach. It was either a sales or a marketing job, but never the two. Steve and I are trying to break down the confusion by combining my marketing experience and Steve’s sales experience.
Steve: When Rob and I began to talk, we thought about the effects of ‘Modern Sales Leadership’ and decided to write a book of the same name. I am very fortunate to have twenty years working with Shell International, where I saw a traditional sales and sales leadership approach. I am sharing techniques that are still the cornerstone of Shell International, one of the world’s biggest brands. My clients have included Whitbread, NOCN, Certas Energy, Fuchs and many others. Over the years, I started to see more and more of the safe pairs of hands reaching the end of their careers or retiring or being made redundant. In that sort of global space, there was a reduction of workforces and a migration to cheaper places. We started to see a real gap in sales leadership. Sadly, the pandemic did nothing but accelerate that issue. It highlighted a whole set of skills that potentially the current sales leader is missing to help deliver sales results and connect their teams back to a very different buyers’ landscape.
CEOs and leaders usually have different motives and aspirations when getting started. Let’s go straight to the beginning. What was your primary goal for starting your business? Was it wealth, respect, or to offer a service that would help improve lives?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Steve: With Plan. Grow. Do. one of the things that I have seen is how impactful and liberating our training is for sellers. They begin to understand and grasp that selling doesn’t have to be this difficult and can avoid an awkward conversation with prospective clients. I’ve always been fascinated by structure and process to create better sales outcomes by understanding how those two things play out. I have implemented a sales excellence program in Shell across 45 countries, three and a half thousand salespeople and 250 plus sales leaders. I was keen to help more and more businesses recognise and unleash their potential by understanding how these aspects are so readily available in a corporate world—adopting processes in a much more modest medium-sized organisation.
Rob: I think it is seeing people realise that getting results is infinitely rewarding, mainly from my experience in marketing. It’s liberating for them to learn new ideas and see how possible something is and how that makes their functioning better improves their business and results because of our beliefs. Ultimately, our knowledge empowers them to go and pay that forward in their results and their businesses. It is gratifying that our mission is to help companies improve their perspectives and stigmas around sales one step at a time. We think we can get there.
Tell us about 2 things that you like and two things that you dislike about your industry. Share what you’d like to see change and why.
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: I like that with relatively small steps and positive implementation, we see early improvements very quickly, probably at the prospecting phase of a sales process. However, it can be easier to think of things we don’t like about this industry. One of the frustrating things is the perception from businesses that our processes are not the same as in their sector. Ultimately, they suggest that the salespeople and the sales leadership at their organisation are not putting the customer first. They form this opinion because they cannot take a step back and look at how their buyers are buying. Our sales leadership training will usually work in most sectors and industries, and I think we need to support them shift their mindset to get better results.
Steve: What I like about this sales industry is that we are in is how adaptable it is to change. I think about my thirty years of selling, the communication changes such as moving from using telephone boxes to my first mobile phone, the introduction of the Internet, the use of artificial intelligence, and the whole digital revolution. If the industry embraces progress, I believe it will thrive by recognising where it fits into how its buyers buy. I guess fundamentally dislike there is still a stigma associated with selling, and I think if I was to go deeper into that–people continue to do the things that customers dislike and feed that stigma–I struggle with that. Unfortunately, we see that these practices still deliver results, or people wouldn’t do them. This topic provides content for our book ‘Modern Sales Leadership’ as a leadership skills gap that allows these things to go on. These behaviours and the stigma cause me to dislike them.
Companies around the world are rapidly changing their work environment and organizational culture to facilitate diversity. How do you see your organizational culture changing in the next 3 years and how do you see yourself creating that change?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Steve: Things can change dramatically in the working environment. For example, the pandemic has seen far more video conferencing, which has made people far more accepting of this as a valid format to have early prospecting sales meetings instead of meeting in the coffee shop. The working environment has accelerated, and we have found other ways to disrupt our busy diary. Technology plays a part here, so that’s probably more about the tools and the behaviours.
If we start to think about how we deliver our training, we consider different preferences as one of the things that matter, but now we also think about more diverse challenges. With anxiety creeping into younger generations, is the best answer given in the training room? Can we rely on this framework? We must find more engaging ways to share learning with creative ideas, such as private reflective moments, maybe just creating a space that feels safe. We can do that in a face to face or digital room. I think our delivery will change because of that. I certainly think the way some sellers chain-sell will change too. We will survive and thrive if we recognise that these things are going on in both dynamics.
According to the Michigan State University “An organization’s culture is responsible for creating the kind of environment in which the business is managed, and has a major impact on its ultimate success or failure.” What kind of culture has your organization adopted and how has it impacted your business?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: For the first time, organisations can have four generations working in the same place simultaneously. This grouping is bound to bring challenges and different expectations and perceptions. Organisations could explore this as a positive step and help remove barriers. We need to shift working patterns to match the expectations of the Gen Z community and the coming Alpha generation. If organisations in a traditional sense of the B2B space are led from the top by baby boomers, then we have expected a 9-5 face to face office model with hard work as the reward. Compare this sales culture to the requirements and expectations of Gen Z and millennials.
Baby boomers are extremely hardworking and motivated by position, perks, and prestige. They relish long work weeks and define themselves by their professional accomplishments. Gen Z now addresses a personal cause or a hobby, and the workplace has to fit into what they want. Baby boomers aimed to get jobs for life. There is a fundamental shift there, and I think with that comes many opportunities. For example, in our book ‘Modern Sales Leadership’, we measure what matters. How could you make sales more meaningful? What can be measured? How often do we see organisations measuring the success of sales executives on the importance of a list of prospects? Any qualification of an actual valid prospect has come from learned habits, passed on, passed down and inherited. If we can embrace the opinion and demands of the younger workforce from the bottom up, we can listen to feedback more. We can then create a joined-up culture that builds on learned experiences from a whole swathe of generations.
Steve: I’m a baby boomer, and I had worked in corporate environments before where there was quite a heavy base of baby boomers. The older, more experienced team members trained the younger, newer people when they started. It is exciting to talk about repeating habits as I now question organisational culture. For example, whether that should be the default position to learn under the person that’s been at the company the longest, particularly when you start to see the different skill sets you need to succeed in business. At Plan. Grow. Do we recognise how digitalisation, more social media presence, creating personality behind our brand, and not just being the brand we represent, starts to have tangible benefit in the marketplace? It is now about getting the right person for the job and not the extended server. We realise that the individual plays a role in the success of the sales outcomes and the sales results versus the brand. We are beginning to see this flip in this sales culture.
Richard Branson once famously stated “There’s no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated.” and Stephen R. Covey admonishes to “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. What’s your take on creating a great organizational culture?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Steve: I remember my challenge to change the sales culture of the sales organisation at Shell. It was quite a daunting task. It was like moving a supertanker. It was moving underneath, but you do not see it move or change instantly. Organisational change requires courage. It needs courage from senior leaders to accept why the changes are necessary and have a clear definition of what change looks like and what it will take to get there. Ultimately one of the critical factors in the success of companies is a robust and supportive work culture that leads to better, longer-term sustainable results.
Successful companies are clear about what behaviour brings benefits and those they want to eradicate. They also recognise positive behaviours in a very tangible way. I’ve seen organisations fill their scorecards and awards with a mix of results and behaviour. If you can find a sales culture that recognises both equally, you get a less aggressively orientated result. Recognition in this way sends a consistent message that the collaborative, inclusive, considerate individual ultimately receives the result, and everybody feels part of the success. The culture itself needs to be where acknowledgement becomes part of the underlying mantra. That kind of sales culture is the formula for me, but it comes down to strong leadership.
The overwhelming majority of more than 9,000 workers included in a recent Accenture survey on the future of work said they felt a hybrid work model would be optimal going forward, a major reason for that being the improved work-life balance that it offers. How do you promote work-life balance at your company?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: The pandemic brought challenges to working environments almost overnight. We have mentioned that four generations working in the same place may create challenges and opportunities. Hybrid working also has its benefits and concerns. Baby boomers in our business can expect different things and have adapted at a different rate or a different pace and want something different from their hybrid working. Millennial or younger workers require home-life and work-life to mix harmoniously. Their work now fits into their life, and I think as we move forward into a post-pandemic working environment, that’s going to play out through more open working hours. Work will get done at times that will fit into a lifestyle beyond the 9 to 5.
Additionally, organisations will have more expectations to share parental leave; more considerations will allow school pickups and time away for more personal reasons. These might have been frowned upon or perceived as a weakness previously affecting the person’s position in the company. We like to create flexibility and know that a job just needs doing. I embrace working at times that suit me because I cannot simply switch on my focus. The work gets done when my mind is process-driven.
Steve: I have seen work-life balance become more and more of an accepted topic. When I started working, fathers probably got three days off when they had us, children. I think people have three weeks off now. Some of these things do surprise me. I must be transparent and say I am probably a little more protective of certain times outside what I would call traditional working hours. However, I have seen a different work-life balance come through with newer generations. It is now a regular and standard conversation and no longer a forced agenda because it is understood.
How would you describe your company’s overall culture? Give us examples.
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: Our company culture has helped us write our book ‘Modern Sales Leadership.’ It is also probably best described within our products and sales training. We create a space in our projects to integrate our skill sets and listen to each other’s experiences. Our content through our training materials connects to a modern sales world.
Therefore, there is this fundamental piece that we are relevant to, making our culture one of listening and relevance. It is about giving more than we take. In a modern buying world, we recognise that it is the personal relationships that create sustainable results. We acknowledge from a statistical base that it takes 5 to 12 contacts to make a sale. Therefore, we must be a very giving culture in ourselves, our relationships, and our content to nurture and create those environments. Only then do those opportunities, which are collaborative, become relevant to our potential customers.
It is believed that a company’s culture is rooted in a company’s values. What are your values and how do they affect daily life at the workplace?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: One of my favourite business quotes is that you can’t succeed in business by yourself, and it couldn’t be more accurate in the Plan. Grow. Do projects and business because we are a collaboration. Steve and I are at very different stages in our career with diverse experiences, and, therefore, so are our expectations, wants, and requirements. We must have the opportunity to make the outcome more significant than the sum of its parts. Our ‘Modern Sales Leadership’ book and our business would not exist without joined-up approaches.
The value of embracing ideas from others outside of your traditional industries and the conventional environments is essential. Our unity creates our collaboration and is something that we are reflecting in our training and our keynote talks in our networks. We are open to additional collaborative relationships that find us too, and we also actively seek them out, providing further innovation and products. Is collaboration a big part of our values? Yes, it stems from a collaborative approach that results from better listening, better innovation, and better product development.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make, this past year 2021, for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts.
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Steve: Our original Plan. Grow. Do. business model delivered face-to-face sales training to business leaders and sales teams. The pandemic produced an opportunity for us to innovate as a new company and re-think how our training services are delivered. Our hybrid model of face-to-face and online training is proving popular and is becoming the preferred option going forwards. Innovation drives our business, and the challenge remains to be even bolder, more proactive, and provide even more tangible advice and thought leadership.
Our new business model has enabled us to deliver over 4,500 hours of training since March 2020, with the majority being online. We have been working with some of the biggest oil and lubricants industry brands and beyond. Our company has supported 650 learners to take advantage of a structured and implementable process-driven approach to sales and marketing. Introducing our new online learning programmes in our marketing campaigns generated over 400 sales leads in just three months during the global pandemic. Plan. Grow. Do. has achieved a 100% customer satisfaction level, a five-star reputation on Google and a growing array of customer testimonials.
An organization’s management has a deep impact on its culture. What is your management style and how well has it worked so far?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Steve: I think that leadership profoundly impacts its culture more than organisational management because that is a consequence of the administration and the culture. I might frame the question slightly differently to compensate. I think the job of a leader and manager is ultimately to create heroes and not be one, so my style is one of empowerment. For salespeople to succeed and grow, I avoid over-management. Managing performance, working on outcomes and analysing results is essential. However, I think the question is about leadership.
Leadership needs inclusive conversations. You can then begin to have more collaborative discussions that connect the individual to the outcome, making it beneficial to them. When management is required, it needs to be authentic, based on trust and having honest conversations. That is then an answer to organisational management needs, decisive leadership.
Every organization suffers from internal conflicts, whether functional or dysfunctional. Our readers would love to know, how do you solve an internal conflict?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: Multiple generations working in the same environment can bring conflict in its nature; however, I don’t think the competition in this context necessarily means arguments. It can just mean disagreements, and it’s acceptable to disagree. Whether you are working in a marketing or sales background, a millennial or a baby boomer, there will be differences of opinion and ways of doing things. We cannot all be the same, and why would we want to? Great things spring from different ideas if we agree that constructive conversations are encouraged. In our environment, listening is essential, and that takes time and needs space to support listening and contribution. I think if that fails in the office, why not just go out for a drink and have a good old-fashioned conversation? A robust discussion must be welcome. However, it is understandable that as conflict or disagreement escalates into an argument, we have not addressed things soon enough. We know that many businesses fail, and so do most partnerships because of this agreement misalignment.
Steve: We see that in owners of businesses in partnerships, so we are very cautious of it. We see business operations every day where sales and marketing opinions create silos? I think we reflect this in our book ‘Modern Sales Leadership.’ One of the critical topics we talk about is breaking down those silos clearly and straightforwardly. For example, are the sales and marketing teams reviewing the same sales pipeline information? It is crucial to see results based on essential goals and outcomes and analyse what matters rather than the numbers. On a very tactical level, you can set a clear perspective in an organisation. In our business, we work it out; we see a supportive sales culture play out very much in day-to-day operations.
According to Culture AMP, Only 40% of women feel satisfied with the decision-making process at their organization (versus 70% of men), which leads to job dissatisfaction and poor employee retention. What is your organization doing to facilitate an inclusive and supportive environment for women?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Steve: Most of the B2B sales industries we work with are traditionally male-dominated, particularly sales managers and sales leadership roles. I believe it started to become a genuine issue over the last 20 years. In my experience, businesses are trying to overcome their lack of diversity. The conflict created by inequality plays out by creating a very transient workforce for salespeople. Six to nine months is about the average for a B2B sales professional.
When you overlay a more masculine, slightly less inclusive environment, you can appreciate that this is very challenging for women in that space. I remember my first Sales Rep job for Shell selling industrial lubricants. There was a sales team of 35, and only one was female. I remember that she rode a motorbike and wore leathers.
She sold advanced motorbike fluids and said it was a challenging sales environment, and sometimes she felt uncomfortable. Over the years, things have dramatically improved. When I left Shell four and a half years ago, there was a significantly increased number of senior female professionals. There were many high-profile leadership meetings and deliberate steps taken. For example, in my sales excellence team, I deliberately created an environment where females filled a minimum of 50% senior roles, and I think it’s incumbent. Therefore, other sales leaders need to recognise this progress and take the action they need to take.
What role do your company’s culture and values play in the recruitment process and how do you ensure that it is free from bias?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: We refer to our values and our culture of collaboration rather than focus on recruitment in the short term. We look for new ideas and know that specialists in those sectors can have incredible concepts and improved functions. Therefore we want to work collaboratively with partners that help solve a problem to ensure that we can deliver the best products and customer service. Building our team is a more collaborative approach and we challenge any natural bias tendencies.
Steve: One of the areas to be clear on if you’re recruiting in the sales space is to focus on the essential traits of a good sales leader. Generally, these are, in my view—crucial human values and beliefs. These characteristics will generate the right behaviours. I see bias playing out in terms of IQ and EQ. I see confident leaders having an overt preference for IQ, intellect, and sales who can rationalise and use data to make decisions.
In comparison, you have the EQ sales leader that is more emotional with a little more feeling in their thinking. If you understand the balance between IQ and EQ, you can ensure that your bias doesn’t negatively affect the team. Marketers tend to be IQ-focused, and salespeople are EQ aligned as a rule of thumb. You will have successful sales leaders and salespeople if you find that sweet spot. This spot is when IQ and EQ compliments a curiosity that cares about offering the right solution with the right outcome and helping people feel good about getting the results they need.
In the past, many managers or leaders recruiting sales teams looked to recruit a mirror image of themselves which can overinflate one the side of the IQ and EQ divide and create an imbalance. It is precisely because of this point that you may have a team of very clever people with absolutely no EQ, or you have a very inclusive EQ collection of salespeople that don’t use data to make decisions. Our book ‘Modern Sales Leadership’ talks about how confidence, process, and structure contribute to a well-balanced sales culture. If you have an overconfident team without the necessary function and form, it comes with many risks, as does a well processed driven sales team without confidence. We aim for balance.
We’re grateful for all that you have shared so far! We would also love to know if there was one thing that you could improve about your company’s culture, what would it be?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob: For us, it is about safeguarding our supportive sales culture as a small business and our ambition to scale our culture and grow with it. We need to put the foundations in place and build upon them by sharing that positive culture; so that those that come to work with us, either collaboratively or in-house, are aware of it. We aim to work with people we need and help them grow, whatever part of our organisation they fit.
Their contribution will scale as we grow with Plan. Grow. Do. We are at a fascinating point in our trajectory, and our objectives need to align. Our supportive culture must develop with us and not lose sight. It is tied back to the values that set us out in the first place.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Steve: Right now, we are facing a leadership gap. This lack of experience, skills, and knowledge is not helping salespeople enjoy a complex environment. During lockdowns, there were fewer customers, and they were harder to engage. Some companies’ budgets moved around, and people in the sales pipelines are no longer there. Priorities have continued to change. There is anxiety and concern about returning to work and how that might look. Sellers are asking if that means that making their sales targets becomes harder? Does that mean that there is going to be more pressure on them?
I think we have in sales reached emotional selling, and this is a real opportunity to act as leaders and support the environment. Sellers need to reestablish their equilibrium in a new working environment and recognise a hybrid working model. They are identifying buyers’ habits, so salespeople have probably changed how we will do work forever over the last two years of the pandemic. Therefore, if you’re trying as a business to go back to things that you did before the pandemic, I think this is a fundamental issue. I am sensing that salespeople are apprehensive and anxious about re-entering the workplace when speaking with companies. This recent experience has provided time for organisations to stand back and think about what they need to put in place. We need leadership skills to address and support this space.
Rob: I think we have got to get over the desire to go back to old habits regarding the day-to-day side of the business functions. This assumption is that somehow we’re still on pause, and everything will go back to February 2020. I do not believe we will go back to doing how we always used to do things simply because it has always been that way. We are not going to force our buyers to repurchase this way. Buyers have a lot more control. They have more information and more research at their fingertips, and companies and organisations must embrace that and not fear it. They need to start making champions more of the workforce as individuals. Therefore, we are no longer just a faceless brand because that is not what buyers expect. The biggest block is ensuring that organisations sell according to buyers’ buying habits, which have changed drastically over the past two years.
This has been truly insightful and we thank you for your time. Our final question, however, might be a bit of a curveball. If you had a choice to either fly or be invisible, which would you choose and why?
Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor:
Rob:I would choose to be invisible because I know I could observe important events without anyone knowing I was there or being that annoying noise in the corner of a room that is a distraction. I’d be invisible.
Steve: I feel compelled to say fly but will say invisible as well. I would love to see the background of decisions that buyers made and what they said about me. I would also like to see all those things that the younger me would have asked to have learned. For me, it is about hearing what people would think about you outside of the decision room.
This interview was originally published on ValiantCEO.
