Joshua Bruton runs BDR/SDR teams and has led orgs from 18 to 80+ reps across multiple companies. 

He's obsessed with change management, people-first leadership, and building systems that make reps actually want to hit their numbers.

He sat down with Luke from Origami to discuss what makes change stick, people-first leadership systems, and what makes great leaders tick.

Organizations massively underestimate how much change happens daily in sales. New products, shifting markets, evolving targets - it's constant. And most change management systems are too complex. Week-long trainings, six-stage acronyms, assessing 50 people individually. Nobody has time for that.

My framework (stole it from Switch!) is simple: logic, emotions, environment. If you don't address all three, change won't last.

Logic: Script it out with detail AND explain the why. Run pilots so people see it working. "Luke's been doing this for two weeks and he's got these outcomes" makes adoption 10x easier than theoretical mandates.

Emotions: Find their trigger. The down payment they're saving for. Then shrink the goal - don't talk about $1.2M annual pipeline, talk about $100K this month. Bite-sized feels accomplishable.

Environment: Force the behavior until it's habit. I had a guy struggling with deal logging. Put four calendar appointments on his schedule, made him do it live on the call, wouldn't let him leave until he screen-shared completion. Six weeks later, it's natural.

Do those three and change actually lasts.

Every month I do a business review with my team - 30 minutes on last month's performance and this month's goals. Then we break into small groups.

Everyone itemizes 5 things working in their business that others could benefit from. Talk tracks, emails, whatever's moving deals forward. We document everything in a shared doc.

Then everyone picks what they want to try that month and publicly signs up for it. It's motivation, specificity, and environmental pressure all at once.

This creates a collective playbook that updates itself monthly without formal training overhead. You're not forcing adoption - people are choosing what resonates and committing in front of peers.

Most sales leaders only communicate the business's goals for you. Pipeline, closed-won, meetings booked. That's motivating to a degree, but at some point reps start tuning out.

I communicate in terms of YOUR goals for you.

Every January, everyone on my team comes up with three goals. One work-oriented (make X money, get promoted, etc), and two that can be personal (run a marathon, buy a house, propose to your girlfriend, etc).

We write down incremental milestones. If you need $25K for a down payment by December, how much are you saving each month? Document it.

Then once a month (NOT in our normal one-on-one) we have a separate meeting where we ONLY talk about your personal goals. How much did you save last month for your down payment? Are you on track?

This forces accountability and actually gets people to do it. Which translates directly to hitting the pipeline number. Because motivated humans sell better than robots checking boxes.

If you don't care about the person in front of you, you're going to be a shitty leader. Period.

We all run businesses that come down to dollars and cents. But the business is made up of humans. Not being able to build a relationship, care about what they're dealing with, care about how they run their business - that lack of concern makes you a bad leader. The opposite makes you great.

The other problem? Leaders often don't study leadership like an actual craft. They just do what they do, and they're not open to correction, advancement, or developing the craft of leadership. When we all took our first sales job, we studied the craft of sales in order to make us good. It’s that dedication to the craft that made us good and landed us a leadership role. The same should be done as a leader, hone your craft.

It’s the simple stuff. But it’s the stuff that matters.

That’s it for this week!

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Find more Modern GTM interviews here.

Learn how Origami helps sales teams here.

And connect with Luke + Eric, if you feel so inclined.

‘Til next time!