CliftonStrengths® for Sales Report: What's Included, How to Use It

Gallup Called to Coach Webcast Series -- Season 10, Episode 20.

Below are audio and video plus a transcript of the conversation, including time stamps.

Gallup recently launched the CliftonStrengths for Sales report. Modeled after the CliftonStrengths for Managers report, this report is designed to help salespeople apply their Top 10 CliftonStrengths talent themes to their sales role. Why did Gallup develop this report, and what expertise does Gallup bring to the area of sales? What resources are available for you, and what future enhancements can you expect? What do you need to know in order to get your own Sales report? Join Austin Suellentrop as he fills in the details and provides need-to-know information so you can effectively use this important tool.

When you transform talent into a strength ... that's taking your soul and applying it to your role. And that shift from that connection point is what we strive to do with this series of role-based reports that we've created.

Austin Suellentrop, 2:56

If there's ever a way that's going to help people reinvent how they sell, doing it through their strengths is the way.

Austin Suellentrop, 15:53

When we created this report, we were able to leverage ... [our] institutional knowledge, as well as actually get some of those experts who have been conducting those interviews and consulting with leaders on the hiring decisions ... for 25, 30 years to help write the content.

Austin Suellentrop, 26:13

Jim Collison 0:00
I am Jim Collison, and this is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on May 18, 2022.

Meet Our Guest on This Episode

Jim Collison 0:18
Called to Coach is a resource for those who want to help others discover and use their strengths. We have Gallup experts and independent strengths coaches share tactics, insights and strategies to help coaches maximize the talent of individuals, teams and organizations around the world. If you're listening on our live page, which, I tell you, would be a miracle, but there's a link right above me there to the YouTube instance that has the chat room. If you've made it to the YouTube instance, and you haven't signed into chat, get that done. We'll be taking your questions live during the program. If you are listening to the recorded version, and you have questions after the fact, you can always send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube with the Subscribe link that is right below. Austin Suellentrop is our host today. Austin is a CliftonStrengths Community Manager -- Channel Manager for Gallup. And Austin, always great to have you here. Welcome back!

Austin Suellentrop 1:08
Thank you very much, Jim. It's a pleasure to be here. Like I said, I'm, I'm so excited. We've been talking about the topic today for, for quite a while, and so, to be able to share with you all a little detail, a little insight into the new CliftonStrengths for Sales report. And so today is -- consider this the official kickoff launch introduction of this, right. So for those of you who I don't know, we -- and there are new people joining us every single time we host one of these, and we're hoping that this content reaches people who have not joined us before -- again, my name's Austin. I get the really cool pleasure of leading our global strategy for all things related to strengths. Right? So my mission and calling in life is to grow the adoption of the strengths-based mindset. I mean, how much better does it get, right?

Austin Suellentrop 1:54
And so part of how we do that is thinking about the tools, the resources and the products we create that make strengths more practical. And one of the most tangible ways you can make strengths practical is connecting it to the day-to-day life of a role. How do I live this out every day? I think back to, you know, I spent about 4 years training coaches and certifying coaches to be strengths coaches. And I would teach our, our coach course, and we, I would draw this continuum, if you will, on a whiteboard or a flip chart, you know, talk about talent and strength. And that talent is that potential, right? It's that sort of instinctive ability you have to do something. And that sort of, that is inherent to your soul. It is who you are.

Introducing the CliftonStrengths for Sales Report

Austin Suellentrop 2:49
You can't turn talent on or off; you either have it or you don't. It is embedded in who you are. But when you transform talent into a strength -- you have proven it in performance, you have created near-perfect performance consistently at something -- that's taking your soul and applying it to your role. And that shift from a, like that connection point is what we strive to do with this series of role-based reports that we've created. It started last year, when we created the CliftonStrengths for Managers report, which, believe it or not was like one year ago, we launched that -- almost this exact same time a year ago. So today, I'm gonna walk you through the next in our series of role-based reports, which is our CliftonStrengths for Sales report. At the, at the core of this, this statement is something I've probably heard 1,000, 2,000 times from, from people, which is something to the effect of, "Hey, I love strengths. This is awesome. It makes sense. But what do I do next? Like what do I do with it? How do I, how do I apply it?" That's what we're trying to aim at. That's what we're trying to solve is helping bring strengths into the day-to-day lives of the key roles in our organizations.

Austin Suellentrop 4:05
So we have the manager role from last year. And now we're, we're aiming strengths at the day-to-day life of a salesperson. And that salespeople are critical to any success in any organization. Right. So let's walk through a little bit about this report. Let's make sure you're comfortable with it, and understanding that without customers, no organization can sustain, right? No organization can exist without customers. And salespeople are our conduit to customers. Right? So just like the Manager report, you'll see this Sales report is laid out in the same template. OK? So it's gonna, it's gonna look and feel very similar. It is designed to be a very tactical tool. So the language in this report is going to be direct. It's going to be very straightforward. It's going to get straight to what we think the actions should be. It is going to focus on the Top 10 themes, right, so similar to the Manager report. We are not trying to build a replica of the 34 report here.

Austin Suellentrop 5:04
You know, when we're thinking about the tactics of a role, we don't want to overwhelm users with the full developmental toolkit of a 34 report; we want to give them guidance, advice, actions that are aimed at their strongest talent sets. You will have 2 pages of theme content for each theme. And then there'll be a resource in the back, the back end of it to help in the application of strengths in this role, right. So again, laid out very similarly to what we did previously, you'll see 3 Help statements: How does this theme help contribute to success in this role? And then, at the bottom of the first page, you'll see 3 ways that that theme may get in the way of success. Think of these as Helps and Hinders, right? We bold, sort of, we highlight the Helps statements, and then we have the Hinders statements below in white. Look, we're still strengths-based, right? We want to call attention first to how this helps, but we don't want to ignore how it may get in the way. So we provide guidance there for that, for each theme like that.

Austin Suellentrop 6:09
The second page of each theme's content are going to be 4 action items. Right? So, Go do this; try this; put this into practice. And the bottom of that second page are 2 theme-specific reflection questions. So questions that are tailored at that theme to help the individual process and synthesize a little bit of what they've just read. OK? So this, these 2 pages are unique to each theme. So each user is actually going to get 20 pages of theme-specific content. Now, if you have Significance, your 2 pages will look the same as anybody else's two pages with Significance. These are not Insight Statement content, meaning it's not personalized to you, based upon your 34 themes; it is standard, based upon the role applications and what we found from this. We do that very intentionally. OK. There's a couple reasons why. And I'm gonna call this out, because I know I'm gonna get asked about this.

Austin Suellentrop 7:09
One -- When we write content through the lens of a role, it has a higher likelihood of feeling personalized. When we, when we launched the Manager report, a year ago, I was blown away at how many people thought their reports were personalized content, that it was unique, that their pages were different than other people's. Because the theme is being applied in a day, in a setting that I live every day, it feels unique to me, OK? So that's one. And two, it allows us to translate this content quicker and get this out in multiple languages faster. So I'll talk here in a minute about what languages we're offering and when you can expect those. But we are writing this content, the content lift, if you think about, is significantly less if we don't, if we can write standard content, which enables us to take this tool worldwide. We prioritized globalization over personalization. OK? So that's sort of the key sort of core content that you'll see in this report.

Austin Suellentrop 8:13
And then we duplicate that for each of the Top 10 themes, right. So you'll see -- this report is going to have vibrance; it's going to be colorful; it's going to feel fresh and good, just like the Manager report, just like the 34 report. You'll see the DNA strand sort of imagery throughout -- really sharp-looking thing. It's much more modern than our sort of traditional reporting of black, gray and green. We're really excited about this.

Austin Suellentrop 8:39
But then, at the end, look, it's amazing how the single greatest invention in humankind, the wheel, continues to find new and simple ways to be used. This Strengths Wheel page is a really effective application, which is simply a page at the end for somebody to think about a goal they have, something they're working on. Write that goal in the middle; put that at the center of it. We prepopulate this wheel around it, with, with the individual's Top 10s, Top 10 themes, and we ask them, How will you use your strengths to reach this goal? And how will you know you've been successful? Simple coaching questions that you all know, right? Simple things that help them process and come up with actions. They are walking away with 40 potential actions from their report content. What we're having them do here is commit to something, commit to the first step towards this goal. Our vision here is that this can become sort of that, that page that gets printed off, you know, time and time again, depending upon what project, what goal, what client, what pursuit they're on, that this can be something that they are leveraging as a way to put into, put into practice the, the report every day.

English Version Now Available; Others in Translation

Austin Suellentrop 9:52
So that's the report content. We're really excited about it. It's about ready to be launched here in the next week or so. So that's the content that you'll see there. It is only available in Gallup Access. It's really important. So if you are one of our education clients that is working on CliftonStrengths for Students, it's not available on that platform. Right? It is available only in Gallup Access. It is being launched in English. But later this summer, you see there the languages that we are actively translating, and as soon as we get those translated, I'll have a clear timeline for you. But we're following the same process we followed last year with the Manager report. So in the next couple of months, we'll be following with these.

Austin Suellentrop 10:35
And you'll see there -- I've got another language there added at the end in italics -- we are excited to bring this language, we're excited to launch this report in Polish as well. Polish is one of our fastest-growing languages. We see a tremendous amount of growth in demand from Poland itself, but also from the surrounding region of people who are asking for Polish. So we're very excited to enter this report into the world with Polish being available. I know that we have some friends joining us live using the translator into Polish, which gets me excited. So there's a, hopefully a good news nugget for you today.

Pricing of the CliftonStrengths for Sales Report

Austin Suellentrop 11:10
From a pricing perspective, what do you, what can you expect? It's the same structure we did with the Manager's report? Oh, in fact, I think I included the Manager's report title there instead of Sales report. It's the same struc -- pricing, right? So you have two options: buy the code by itself -- so $39.99 U.S. will give you this report, the CliftonStrengths for Sales report; $79.99 U.S. will include the Sales report plus the 34 code, OK. So you get sort of that there. That's the bundle cost. The Certified Coach discount -- so if you are a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, your discount code does apply to both of these approaches, right? So you can apply your discount there. Excited to bring that to you as well. But we're not launching just a report; I think that's always the thing about this. When we think about CliftonStrengths for Sales, how do you help salespeople? What, in particular, is needed for sales? You can't just give a salesperson a report and expect their lives to change, right? We have to have supporting tools.

The Certified Coach Resource Page

Austin Suellentrop 12:11
So we have given you all some tools to, as coaches and as consumers out there and clients out there, several things we'll, we'll share all these with you. One is sort of our Sales Overview, sort of what's in this report, what's the approach? What's the background? We have some client testimonials included in this. We have a pricing grid, what are the different ways you can, you can purchase this? What comes with it? All of those kinds of details, right? Those will, but we'll get these posted to the Certified Coach Resource page, as well as these will be available on our website when you, once the product launches here in the next week or two. We also have a sample report; it's the same structure of sample as we did for the Manager report, in that you have sort of in 2 introductory pages, we give the, the first theme to sort of demonstrate the content for Significance. And the final page has sort of a summary of everything else that's included. That, again, will be available in the Certified Coach Resource page for all of you.

Austin Suellentrop 13:09
But then, as coaches, right, how do you use this in coaching? How does this report fit? Put together a couple page guide on how this can be used as a tool in the sequence of coaching conversations. How does this fit into some of that broader, broader discussion? Right? So again, we'll post this to the Certified Coach Resource page for you. Our hope is that those of you who are having conversations with people in sales roles can see that this is not just a rehash of existing content. Every line of this report was written new and fresh for this; you will not find this content anywhere else. So this was, this was customized content written -- excuse me -- for this report; never seen anywhere else before. OK? So that's, that's the stuff I wanted, the slides I wanted to show.

The "Why" Behind the CliftonStrengths for Sales Report

Austin Suellentrop 14:03
Jim, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop sharing my screen and just talk for a minute and, and address a couple of things. And I have not looked at the chat room yet for questions. I'm sure there's questions. But a couple of things that go into why we think salespeople was the next role to make sense for us. And when we started with managers, it was an easy, an easy jump to make from, with strengths managers. We've been talking about the importance of managers for decades at Gallup. Right? And we have lots of expertise. When we thought about where we went next, in terms of What's the next-most important role in any organization beyond the manager?

Austin Suellentrop 14:49
Salespeople are really the most critical role in growing a customer base. And what we have heard from our client feedback, from our polling, from our interactions in the marketplace ourselves, from our own teams, the sales market is so different today; the landscape has changed so much. I was with a group just yesterday. And they're used to being able to go on site and do what I call, "gripping and grinning" -- shaking hands spending time socializing, taking people out to dinner, bringing lunches by offices and leaning on a, an approach to building relationships and cultivating sales that has worked for years. They don't have those opportunities anymore. The landscape has changed; they are having to think about how they sell differently. And if there's ever a way that's going to help people reinvent how they sell, doing it through their strengths is the way. How do you leverage your strengths to rethink how you sell? That's the goal here. And we understand that we have a tool here that we believe will really revolutionize that for people; that if they can understand how to leverage their strengths in that process, they're gonna be far more successful.

Austin Suellentrop 16:20
So I wanted to make sure you all know, from a research -- look, we're Gallup; we research everything, right? We know that there's a market out there for this. We know that there are salespeople right now looking for tips and tricks and shortcuts on how to be better. And they're willing to spend time learning about that. And that is an opportunity for us to provide tools, and for you all out there that are inside organizations, realizing that your sales teams are probably asking you for help already. And if not, they're asking somebody. They're asking somebody for help. Those of you who are independent coaches, I guarantee either you yourself are thinking about how you can grow your business and how you can sell more effectively, or you're working with people who are salespeople themselves, right. So that's what we're, we're excited to offer this new tool in the toolkit. So I'm going to stop my, my rambling. I'm at my 15-, 20-minute mark, like I thought I would. And now let's spend some time answering questions, hearing what's on your mind.

June 1 Report Launch, Cost, Bundling With Top 5/All 34

Jim Collison 17:20
Austin, just for those regulars who come to Called to Coach, I probably will not be able to show the questions like I normally do. We just have too many. And we're getting a lot of the same ones. So I'm going to ask you guys live to listen very, very carefully. And as we roll through these questions, if we haven't answered your question by the end, I'm going to have you re-put it in the chat room just so we can do that we can come around to it. OK, let's get some basics down, because not everybody was listening; some folks kind of came in late. When does this become available, and when does it launch?

Austin Suellentrop 17:49
June 1. I probably should have said that!

Jim Collison 17:51
June 1, June 1 of 2022, just for folks listening. If you're listening --

Austin Suellentrop 17:57
Just about 2 weeks away. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Jim Collison 17:59
Chances are, as you're listening to this, unless you're live, it's probably launched. Let's talk a little bit about the pricing, because I think we worked through this. And you mentioned the slide. It, just like the CliftonStrengths for Managers report, but not everybody, you know, not everybody purchased that. And then there's always confusion about upgrades and some of those kinds of things. We've made this pretty simple. So can you walk through the pricing one more time for folks?

Austin Suellentrop 18:24
So $39.99, United States dollar. All right, so $39.99 U.S. gets you the CliftonStrengths for Sales report. If you have completed the assessment already, you just redeem the code. It unlocks the report. OK?

Jim Collison 18:38
Same price.

Austin Suellentrop 18:39
Same price. If you have not completed the assessment yet, right -- if the individual purchasing has not, they're invited to take the assessment, and they get this report and they get their standard Top 5 reports, OK. You do not get a Top 5 code and this code, right? So it's not like you buy this and you can, Oh, well, they've already taken the assessment, so I get this extra Top 5 code over here. No. It is, if you have completed the assessment, you just unlock this. If you have not completed the assessment, you're invited to take the assessment, OK? You can bundle it with the 34 report. That's -- look, that's the best value. It's the best experience -- the 34 report remains our flagship key developmental tool, without a doubt. So we give a little bit of a discount if you bundle this with the 34 report. You can buy that for $79.99 U.S. If you are a Certified Coach, you can apply one of your, your ability to buy codes at a discount to either of those code types -- to the standalone report or the bundle with the 34.

Jim Collison 19:44
And Austin, there had been a question -- I think Jennifer asked that -- about converting other codes into, into this. I think at this time, we're not doing that. But anything else that you want to add to that?

Austin Suellentrop 19:56
Yeah, I think any special sort of unique requests like that, contact either your Gallup, your Gallup team, if you have a salesperson or consultant you work with, or reach out to us directly. That's not something we generally like to do. It requires a lot of manual effort on our end that can lead to a mistake. And, and times, we generally it's not something we approach. But we'll certainly talk to you about what can do.

Sample Sales Report Available

Jim Collison 20:18
Yep. Lots of questions about getting a sample of this. So how would I go about, as of June 1, how would I go about getting a sample of this?

Austin Suellentrop 20:26
There will be a sample report on our website. OK. So we will, we will put a sample of this out there. Certified Coaches, we'll post that to the Certified Coach Resource page as well, for easy housekeeping for all of you. Let me, if you want, I can sort of pull my screen back up and show you what the sample looks like, to make sure we're all clear on what's going to be included in that sample. So there you go, Jim, if you'll throw that screen up there real quick. There you go. So here, here's what the sample report will look like. Because it is standard content, right, we're not going to publish a full version of a sample, because that would be over a third of the IP will be out there in, in a sample report having 10 themes, right.

Austin Suellentrop 21:14
So we have the 2 introductory pages. And then the first theme, which is Significance. This is, every, again, a nugget I repeat every time I talk about sample reports -- anytime you see a sample from us that shows Don Clifton's name at the top, that's actually Don Clifton's results. OK, so Don created the assessment. These are his results; we use him for all of our samples. So you see, his first theme was Significance. So we will show what the content looks like for Significance. And then the last page of the sample is sort of an overview of everything else, what the rest of the content would look like. So again, this will be available publicly, as well as on the Certified Coach Resource page, for you to see.

Jim Collison 21:04
Available June 1.

Austin Suellentrop 21:57
Available June 1.

Looking to the Future: a Personalized Sales Report?

Jim Collison 22:00
By the way, the, I've been putting this in chat, but the Certified Coach page is gallup.com/certifiedcoach. We try not to make that too difficult to remember. So gallup.com/certifiedcoach, and that'll be available for you. If you're new to this, and you missed the whole Manager rollout last year, there's actually a lot of resources around, like, we kind of copied what we did for the Manager report for this report, from a resources standpoint. So there'll be, there's some, there's some, some tools around how to coach with the Manager report that are available out there. So if you haven't done that, and then, since I have the ear of so many Certified Coaches and, the, the Directory page is also updatable -- there's a form if you want to update your Coaches Directory. I get -- this is the No. 1 question I get all the time: How do I update the Coaches Directory? gallup.com/certifiedcoach; Section 01, there's a form to get that done right there. Austin, you talked about globalization versus personalization. Manager report is also standard. Any thoughts? I got a few questions about, Will we personalize these in the future? And I know you and I can't predict the future, but some thoughts on that?

Austin Suellentrop 23:13
OK, so this is, anybody who knows me, and any, anybody in the audience who has attended these live in the past knows I have a tendency to -- with, I've got high Futuristic -- to overshare. Right. So I'm going to very intentionally not overshare here and say, Yeah, we would love to! We would love to create fully personalized versions of both of these. And if we feel like that is a true need, then we will prioritize it. We don't feel like that need is there quite yet; we feel like there's a tremendous runway for the standard-content versions of these first, before we go there. But I do think that's something I can absolutely see in the future. Is that future 2 years from now or 10 years from now? I don't know. I think that -- the, the parallel I draw is, you know, when we first created the assessment -- StrengthsFinder -- the first reports were standard content. It was StrengthsFinder 2.0 -- the second version, the update to it -- that created the personalized content.

Austin Suellentrop 24:12
When we, and then we had a 34 report. And the first 34 report was just a listing of 34 themes. And the second version was this beautiful masterpiece of the Full 34 report we have now. I very much see this as the same evolution: the first version of these role-based reports, standard content. Yes, I'd love to see a second version that are personalized and more robust and get to some more details. "When?" is the question. And when do we see the demand and the need for it? So I hope that answers the question. I can absolutely see a future of it. But I can't predict that to be 2 years from now or 10 years from now. But having high Futuristic, I absolutely see that.

The Development of the Sales Report

Jim Collison 24:53
What about the development of the report? How did we develop this? You talked a little bit about the Why, I think, earlier in the conversation, but how did we do it? And talk a little bit, maybe a little inside baseball, so to speak. I know that's an American term. Sorry.

Austin Suellentrop 25:11
Yeah. There's, there's nothing more antiquated American than the phrase, "Inside baseball," where baseball is like the least popular American sport right now, even though I'm a huge baseball fan.

Jim Collison 25:20
Thanks for, thanks for calling me out. I appreciate it. I'm just kidding.

Austin Suellentrop 25:22
Hey, that's what friends do. So how did we create this report? One of the things that many people may not know about Gallup is we have an entire section of our business that, for decades, has been involved in the selection and the hiring of people for organizations, where we interview and give, give recommendations on hiring for, for companies. Many of those roles we have worked with over the years have been in the sales capacity. So we have been helping advise organizations on who to hire for sales roles for decades. What that allows is that allows an expertise in knowing what great salespeople sound like. What are their, what are their behaviors? What do they do differently? How do they, how do they stand out from the average?

Austin Suellentrop 26:12
And so we actually, when we created this report, we were able to leverage some of that institutional knowledge, as well as actually get some of those experts who have been conducting those interviews and consulting with leaders on, on the hiring decisions, literally, for 25, 30 years, to help write the content. Of here's how, here's how we see great salespeople leverage Achiever. And here's how we see great salespeople struggle with Achiever. And so that was one of the ways -- we started with our research orientation, scientific data around what we know the best do differently. So the actual, you know, organic writing of the content, that's where it began. It goes through the entire review process of myself and our writing team and Jim Asplund, from a science perspective, of everybody -- we review this thing; it takes us, you know, months upon months upon months to write this content. And then we share it with clients and get feedback from clients around how we position things, how things resonate or don't resonate.

The Sales Report and Strengths Based Selling

Austin Suellentrop 27:16
And so I think that it's gone through many layers of review, many layers of feedback. And it begins in a place of, again, like everything we do, What do the best do differently? How do we, how do we translate that into content that can be digestible by a large audience? And so that's sort of the, the basis of it. I do, I do see a couple of comments in the chat coming up about this, the connection of this to maybe the book we have out there called Strengths Based Selling. And I really, I, I'm glad those questions came up. This is written completely independent of that book. So you will not see any reference in this report to the book, Strengths Based Selling.

Austin Suellentrop 28:03
If you have read the book Strengths Based Selling, you'll see how you can leverage the content of this report to put into practice what that, that book talks about. But we wanted to write this agnostic of any other structure or construct or resource. We wanted this to be, sort of make it stand alone on, by itself, and be a value add. So there are not right now any direct connections between the book, right? So there's no plan right now to update that book, to rewrite that book. Again, right now there's not; that does not mean we won't in the future. Just means you, there's not going to be any resource around this book published in June. I think that's an important thing, thing to know. So --

Unlocking the Report if You Already Have Your Top 5/All 34

Jim Collison 28:47
And the code, it's not like when you buy the book, the code for this is in the book like our other, like our other reports. Still Top 5 in all our books, and then this is an upgrade report to that as well. Austin, one more reminder for individuals, maybe just kind of coming in. I have Top 5 already. How do I, how do I upgrade? Do I, and do I need to take the assessment again, if I'm doing this?

Austin Suellentrop 29:13
You know, there's no need to take the assessment again. OK? I get asked, that's a question I get asked every day of my life. And I'm completely, I love talking about this, because the only time you should take -- feel the need to take the assessment again is if you really feel like you want to take the assessment again. OK? Like that's, that's, that's the driver of that. With, with if you have your Top 5 already, or even if you have your 34 already, if you buy the code for $39.99, and you redeem the code into your account, it will automatically unlock this report. It'll show up on your, on your dashboard under your reports, like anything else would, right? So you don't have to retake it or anything along those lines. If you are managing codes for somebody else -- so you buy the code, and you send it to them -- you send them the email, the code. They click on it; they redeem it; they're good. $39.99 U.S. for the report by itself; $79.99 for the report plus the 34 report.

Jim Collison 30:12
Just a single price and a single purchase. It's pretty easy.

Austin Suellentrop 30:14
We're trying.

Jim Collison 30:14
Pretty easy to remember. Yeah, same and, same as the Manager report. So we're trying to make that super easy. I know for some folks, they, the value -- I purchased, I bought this. One price, upgrade for everybody. And if you don't have it, if you haven't taken it before, Lisa had asked me earlier; she just wanted to confirm: Yes, you do get all the Top 5. If you just purchased the report, you've never taken CliftonStrengths, you purchase this report, it will unlock Top 5 insight and, and the Insight Report as well as the standard report that's there, and all the resources. Also, you had mentioned, only available in Access. And that doesn't mean you have to have an Access subscription to be able to purchase this.

Austin Suellentrop 30:55
Correct.

Jim Collison 30:56
What that just means is it's only being sold and delivered and fulfilled on the Access platform. Folks will come to Access to take the assessment; you'll purchase it through our, through the store; it'll be fulfilled that way. So just a reminder there as well.

The Target Audience for the Sales Report

Austin Suellentrop 31:10
I've seen a couple, seen a couple questions. I need to, I need to clarify a couple of things. So thank you. Keep the questions coming in. This is why we love the chat room, right? Is the target audience for this, in terms of a salesperson, you'll see that this, the content of this report is written at a B2B salesperson. OK? So that's our target is the business-to-business salespeople. But that does not mean it is exclusive to B2B sales. That's sort of who we had in mind when we were writing the content. If you're in B2B sales, direct sales, direct-to-consumer type of sales, there's absolutely an application here, right? So I was a, those of you who know, me, I grew up a banker. Right? And I had, and my lens when I was reviewing the content: How would I leverage this when I was managing my bank branches, for example? Absolutely practical application in that setting. Prior to my banking career, I sold pizza. I was a Marketing Director for a pizza chain in college, right? Absolute applicability in that kind of a setting as well, thinking about how you grow your customer base, how you get your word out, how you build relationships.

Austin Suellentrop 31:14
So it's going to be aimed at the key things we know salespeople have to do. The tone and the tenor of the report is going to be written with that B2B lens in mind. But by no means is it exclusive and is it going to be -- you'll see phrases like "clients" and "customers" used interchangeably, for example, right? Because we know each organization has a different vernacular in how they talk about their consumers. Are they clients? Are they customers? That's, that's different company to company. So we use those kinds of phrases interchangeably. I want to see if there's other questions that are coming in.

Jim Collison 32:53
Let me throw this one out to you. So from an experience standpoint, from a sales experience, report good for someone who is new to sales as well as experienced?

Austin Suellentrop 33:04
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the things, when we create these reports, is with the Helps and Hinders section, it's fantastic awareness-building, right? So awareness-building can come at any stage of a career, right, like there's value in being told on the front end, Hey, as you're entering into this, here's what you need to be think -- focused on. And here's what you need to be mindful of, as a, as a awareness-building on the front end, versus Hey, you've been doing this for a while, right? How has this shown up in your helping? How has this shown up to hinder you? can be a different kind of awareness of calling out the blind spots, where they may have more practical experience to draw upon to validate those kinds of things. Somebody who's newer in a career or entering into a career, it can be fantastic to create sort of awareness before you go into it.

Austin Suellentrop 33:57
I think the Action Items are where I would really focus a younger, less experienced salesperson, is Hey, as you're getting started, let's pick one of these to try out first. As you're building your routines, as you're building your clientele and thinking about, you know, what your process looks like as a salesperson, let's, let's apply this here. So I think that, yeah, we want this to be applicable to the whole lifetime of a salesperson. And that's why, when we share it for feedback to get feedback from our, our, our users, one of the things we do is we ask, you know, 22-year-old salespeople who are newer in their careers. And we ask, you know, 65-year-old salespeople who have, who are leading teams that have been doing this for, you know, 30+ years. And we ask the range in between to make sure that it is relevant for people in between, and we aren't just getting one demographic of the sales force to be validating this.

Jim Collison 34:53
Austin, I have the full 34 report. And I want to just unlock this. Is the content similar or is it completely different?

Austin Suellentrop 35:01
Completely different.

Jim Collison 35:04
So it would be, it's not sharing information with 34. If I have 34 already, like the Manager report, this will be an additional add-on to that -- new information for folks that are in that sales role. By the way, we're gonna do a webcast this summer called, "Everyone's a Salesperson." And I think this report can be used for everyone. Everyone sells something in their roles. Whether formally or informally, we all have an Influencing selling role in the things that we're doing. And I think this report is going to be great for everyone. I know we've been focusing on salespeople, but I will show you this summer how this report is going to be great for -- summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Just realized that's locationally based as well. So Top 5, just a reminder, if I currently have Top 5, and I unlock with this report, it's gonna give me a Top, it's gonna give me my Top 10, right, just not my Top 5?

Austin Suellentrop 35:55
Correct. Your report will show your Top 10. Your, your Periodic Table on your Dashboard will show your Top 10.

Jim Collison 36:01
I think Steve asks a good question. And I think I'm finally to a spot where I can keep up with the chat: Does the report offer insights on how a salesperson would use their strengths through all phases of the sale, such as prospecting, relationship management, all the way to close?

Austin Suellentrop 36:14
Great question, Steve. So in the content, we don't exclusively have a, like a sales cycle, for example, that you'll see like a chart or anything along those lines. But yes, we speak to every step of the sales cycle throughout the report. So Achiever, for example, you may see comments in Achiever that talk to one, two, maybe three steps of the cycle, right. But then Relator later may talk about the other steps of the sales cycle. So we're not going to have each theme step or connect to each step of the, of the cycle. But yes, the content throughout will reference the entire sort of sales experience. So yeah, we will have, there are elements of the cycle throughout the entire thing, but we don't have -- because each organization we've spoken with and worked with has little nuances to what their process is, we did not want to overtly assign one structure to it. We wanted to speak more holistically to sales. So yeah, I hope that answers your question, Steve. Yes.

Recap: Resources Available, Summit Opportunities

Jim Collison 37:16
Austin, talk a little bit more -- so we're going to drop some resources, like we did for the Manager report. We're going to drop some resources for our Certified Coaches: gallup.com/certifiedcoach. There's gonna be -- it'll be available on June 1. Don't, don't go out there today, well, it's not ready yet, but it'll be available here in the next few weeks. What are those -- really quickly again, what can they expect from those resources again?

Austin Suellentrop 37:39
One: Sales, we'll have a sample report we've talked about. Sample report is going to be out there, it's 5 pages. Two: You will have sort of a product overview. I would think about this like our classic sales flyer, right? What's the report? What's included? A few client quote testimonials from feedback around it. You'll have a pricing grid that shows and breaks down very clearly the different price points for where you can buy this, what comes with what? And then the fourth is for our coaches who are using this in one-on-one coaching -- How does this report fit into our coaching model? Where -- in the four conversations you have, how does this fit into each step? What are some questions you can ask around this to help leverage the content of the report? So those four things are the primary.

Austin Suellentrop 38:24
But then I'm going to add a fifth resource that's not being published but is out there. And I'm gonna say it's all of the content we're creating to support the connection of strengths to sales. So Jim, as always, is always putting out new, new webcast content. So there are webcast series on this. There are going to be new articles that are being published to gallup.com. We've already published one; we have another one coming out June 1 that I'm helping to write around why we wrote this report -- some of the findings, some of the research behind it. And then Jennifer Robison and Jody VanOsdel, who are two of those experts I talked about that are, that actually helped contribute to writing the content of this report, talking, writing an article as well. So there's things like that that are happening, aside from Strengths Based Selling, right, the book that exists out there that can help connect the dots.

Austin Suellentrop 39:16
If you are, I think it would be a tremendous miss on my part if I was not really clear about this next point: If you are curious about how this fits, right, how does this report fit to everything else we do? How do I connect the dots with a book and with sales teams? Brian Brim, Dr. Brim -- who is the author of Strengths Based Selling -- is leading a breakout at the summit on this, this exact topic. So he has, he has a dedicated set breakout at the, at the strengths summit coming up in a couple of weeks -- the first full week of June, it's June 7 and 8 -- that he is leading on strengths-based selling. He is going to reference this new report. He's gonna talk about how it fits in and connects. So that's a chance not only to hear and learn from Brim, who is incredible and fantastic, but also to ask questions and engage and be a part of that. So if you haven't yet signed up, I know we have, you know, nearly 3,000 people already who have signed up for the summit. If you haven't yet, hopefully, that may be what puts you over the top.

Austin Suellentrop 40:15
If you're curious about this, it's a tremendous opportunity to do that. I think that'll be a great chance to learn. At that point, the report will be live. It'll be published. You'll have the chance to get yours and sort of look at it alongside. I think, I was, this team I was with yesterday, we were talking about this, and we were talking about all of the things. And I will -- my last unsolicited comment, and then we'll, we'll make sure we answer any other questions: The single best way to be able to speak with confidence and sell this content in this report, to be able to leverage it and use it, is to have a personal experience with it, right? So I encourage you: Make the investment in yourself of getting this report, looking through it, reading it, finding how you resonate with it. And then think about how you can leverage it with your clients. It's hard to, to process this in the abstract, right? June 1, it's out there, it's live. Get it, download it, look at it, speak to it, then with your clients and the teams you support.

Jim Collison 41:26
Just a reminder, gallupatwork.com to register for the summit. So you've got, as of this recording, you've got a couple of weeks to get that done, if you want to join us. That is the only way to get that content from the summit. We'll be not, we will not be making that generally available -- that session that's Brian, that Brian is doing will be available just as part of the summit. It will be recorded and available for 90 days for those purchasing that. It's $195. Great price for everybody. Austin, you mentioned, this is only going to be available on Gallup Access, which means not StrengthsQuest. Any thoughts to educational pricing around this? I don't know if there's anything we --

Austin Suellentrop 42:03
Ben, that's a great question! Not currently, but that doesn't mean we can't explore it. So Ben, if you wouldn't mind, let's connect. Let's connect and talk about, about your, about your use case, so we can explore that. I think the, yeah, let's talk. Let's talk. That's a fair question. But no, there's not plans out of the gate on June 1.

Jim Collison 42:22
And yes, Phyllis, those summit sessions if, but you have to make the summit purchase, will be available 90 days after the summit is over. Debbie says, If I've coached someone on the Manager report who is in sales, then I have them purchase the Sales report, will it provide enough new information for coaching? And what's shared, or anything shared, between Manager and the Sales report?

Austin Suellentrop 42:42
Yeah, great question, Debbie. Completely different applications. So yes, new content. If you think about the role of a sales manager, which, you know, we have, we have not yet created a bundle for both, OK. So when I talked about the bundles earlier, it's, you can buy a bundle of a Manager report and a 34, or a Sales report and a 34; we do not have a bundle with everything, OK? So the Manager report is gonna be very focused on them and their relationship to their team, right? The Sales report is gonna be very focused on them and their relationship to the customer. And so the applications, the tone will be similar; the layout will be exactly the same. And then the application tool on the back will be the same. But the focus of the content will be distinctly different. There will be no, there will be no copy and paste between the two, other than that last page, the Strengths Wheel, right. The Strengths Wheel will, will be the same, because it's an application tool. But the, the 20 pages of theme content will be inherently different.

Jim Collison 43:48
One last question: Will we provide a sales deck for this, so the coaches can, can sell -- you know, we have, we have a sales deck kind of associated with the, with the, with the coaching course. So one PowerPoint presentation that folks can use. Are we providing similar resources? I don't think we did that for the Manager report --

Austin Suellentrop 44:07
We didn't.

Jim Collison 44:07
But your thoughts, Austin?

Austin Suellentrop 44:08
Yeah, that's, honestly that's the first time I've heard that direct question, in terms of like, needing sales resources like that. It's something we can look at and explore. We don't have that planned right now. So if that's something we feel like, from a community perspective, would be beneficial and helpful, we can certainly look at what that would look like to create. But no, it's not, it's not gonna be ready for June 1. But that doesn't mean we can't get something put together. To the Certified Coaches that are listening, Certified Coaches that are listening: I do, if you have not yet signed up for the summit, please check your newsletters that you're getting as part of that. I want to make sure you understand some of the special things we're running for coaches at the summit around tools and things you get when you, when you sign up. So make sure you're reading your news, your newsletter. If you're not a Certified Coach and you're listening, explore whether you want to be a Certified Coach. There's a lot of benefits to it -- the biggest benefit of which is you get to be interacting with Jim Collison all the time. And how does that not, like, make your day better, right?

Jim Collison 45:11
That's scary. That's a scary proposition. I always appreciate people saying that. But, Austin, OK, one, just a set of reminders as we kind of finish. One, there's been some summit-related questions in the chat as well. Contact our summit team: gallupatwork@gallup.com. Head out to the setup, the setup -- setup page -- the site page for that: gallupatwork.com is the way to get that as well. That site for Certified Coaches: gallup.com/certifiedcoach. You should be asking me the question, "Well, if you're giving that out publicly, can't anybody get there?" Yeah, for now they can; it was the easiest way to make it available. It will not always be that way. But, but for now, those resources available out there as well. And remember, this goes live on June 1, sample report. And all those things are out there. I'd encourage you to take some time to work through this. We won't have a deck available for you on Day 1. And so maybe take some of the things that, that you see in the sample and, and work those into your own presentations. You've all modified it anyways. And so work that into your own presentation. And we want to thank you for coming out today.

Jim Collison 46:18
A couple reminders -- visit gallup.com. If you haven't been out there in a while, this might be the time to go out and get that done. If you haven't looked at the Manager report as well -- we spent a lot of time talking about that last year -- it may be time for you to revisit both the manager and the Sales report as you think about your own coaching practice. These may be two brand new tools for you. In a way, you're like Ah, I mean, I think you can see from the chat room, we had amazing reactions on the Manager report, and many have used it, and it's been a great opportunity. So head out to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. For coaching, master coaching or if you want to become a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, or if you have any questions about anything we talked about today, send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. They'll route that to Austin and I, so we can answer those for you. Of course, you can find us on any social platform by searching "CliftonStrengths," and they're doing a bang-up job out there getting a lot of, a lot of materials and information. Certified Coaches, we just set up a whole bunch to celebrate International Coaching Week, International Coach Week -- Coach Week.

Austin Suellentrop 47:21
It's a focus on the coach, not coaching, not the act; it's the person who's the coach.

Jim Collison 47:26
We provided a bunch of, a bunch of stuff that you can use and share out there as well. If you're not getting the Certified Coaches Newsletter, and you are Certified, send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. I just have so many of you. I want to make sure we get all these things in. We want to thank you for joining us today. If you're listening to the recorded version of this, again, or actually, I'm going to recommend everybody go out and just, this will just go into replay as soon as we're done. Just go listen to it again, because I bet you missed something. We want to thank you for joining us. I look forward to hearing from all of you in the next week or so. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

Austin Suellentrop's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Communication, Activator, Futuristic, Belief and Positivity.