The Movable Middle: How to Elevate Your 60% w/ Kelly Ross

The movable middle — that 60% in the center of every sales team — is where leaders win or lose the year, and Kelly Ross joins Mark McGraw to unpack exactly how to elevate them.
The movable middle is the 60% of your sales team that decides whether your year is great or just "okay." In Episode 62 of Building Your Sales Engine, host Mark McGraw sits down with Sandler enablement leader Kelly Ross to break down the 20/60/20 rule and how sales managers can systematically shift their middle performers upward.
Kelly and Mark unpack why top performers show up bright-eyed to every training while the middle hides in the back of the classroom, the role noise and distraction play in stalling growth, and how assessments, one-on-ones, and proven playbooks remove the guesswork. They get tactical on strategic vs. tactical coaching, the danger of "death by PowerPoint," and why progress (not perfection) is the real metric.
They also tackle a counterintuitive lever: addressing the bottom 20%. When managers tolerate underperformance too long, they give the middle permission to coast. If you're a sales leader trying to raise the average — or a seller ready to climb out of the middle — this episode hands you the framework.
About Kelly Ross
Kelly Ross is a longtime Sandler advocate and leader who runs Sandler's Oregon operations on the West Coast. With deep experience on the sales enablement side, Kelly specializes in coaching, training design, and helping sales teams turn frameworks into real behavior change.
Kelly Ross LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyannross/
Host: Mark McGraw — Building Your Sales Engine
Marks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/
In This Episode
The 20/60/20 rule and why the middle 60% is where leaders make or break the year
Why top performers always show up — and what their mindset signals about hiring and retention
The real obstacles holding the middle back: noise, distraction, and unclear priorities
Why "death by PowerPoint" loses the middle and how engagement-first training wins them back
Using assessments and surveys so sellers can't argue with their own data
AI in coaching — useful, but never a replacement for the human one-on-one
Strategic vs. tactical coaching: stop running every meeting on the next deal
Identifying the one bottleneck in a seller's pipeline instead of rebuilding the whole process
Playbooks beat "figure it out" — give sellers the system, then let them weave in their sauce
Mindset, the stories we tell ourselves, and reconnecting with your "why"
The counterintuitive move: addressing the bottom 20% to motivate the middle
Eagles vs. ducks — what kind of team are you actually building?
Links
Sandler: https://www.Sandler.com
Episode page: https://www.BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/
Show links: https://linktr.ee/buildingyoursalesengine
Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmcgraw/
Kelly Ross on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyannross/