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Prospecting Mastery with Sales Leader, Alice Heiman
62 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Alice Heiman dives into the intricacies of a successful sales strategy and emphasizes the pivotal role of CEOs in shaping and driving that strategy. She underscores the importance of quality conversations in sales, the need and game plan for better prospecting, and the crucial role of marketing in the sales process.
Alice also touches upon the significance of positioning in and the collaborative nature of modern sales strategies. The conversation is peppered with actionable insights, and is a must-listen for anyone looking to elevate their sales game.
Key Topics Discussed:
- Sales Strategy's Evolution: Alice speaks on the importance of a holistic approach to sales, which includes not just the sales team but also customer success, support, marketing, and subject matter experts. CEOs play a pivotal role in harnessing these resources and driving the vision.
- Prospecting and Quality Conversations: The essence of sales lies in having meaningful conversations. Alice emphasizes the need for better prospecting to ensure salespeople have enough leads and the importance of quality over quantity in these interactions.
- Marketing's Role in Sales: Marketing plays a crucial role in driving a company's online presence. This digital presence sets the stage for salespeople, making their outreach more effective.
- Team Collaboration in Sales: Modern sales is a team sport. From senior executives to customer success teams, everyone plays a role in ensuring a successful sale.
Resources Mentioned:
- Book: "How to get a meeting with anyone" by Stu Heinecke
- Companies for sending gifts:
- Alice Heiman's blog article: "Poorly Positioned" The article is also on LinkedIn.
Learn more about sales strategies by visiting Alice Heiman's website, blog, and check out the additional resources mentioned above.
Question to consider: What advice or insights would you like to incorporate into your own sales approach?
This podcast is brought to you by Women in Renuve. If you’re a resilient woman in a revenue role and crave connection, join our community!
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Focus
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Resilient Revenue, a women in revenue podcast series designed to magnify the voices, victories, and valuable insights of trailblazing women in revenue-generating roles. Each episode will showcase stories of resilience, mentorship, and self-advocacy. You'll learn exactly how these remarkable women are breaking barriers, redefining success, and showing us the transformative power of unity within the tech industry.
00:00:31
Speaker
So join us as we embark on this enlightening journey toward equality and empowerment in the world of resilient revenue.
00:00:51
Speaker
Great to be connected with. I'm so glad to be here. Awesome.
Alice's Sales Strategy Experience
00:00:56
Speaker
So Alice knows a ton about sales strategy. She was a keynote speaker on the subject, is the founder of her own company and also podcasts, sales talk for CEOs.
00:01:07
Speaker
Where she talks to CEOs about the vital role that they play in their company's sales strategy and I can't think of a more perfect person to connect with on this topic and the topic of discussion is all things revenue.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yes, my favorite topic. Yeah. So let's just dive right in and tell me about an experience where you faced a significant challenge in your role and what you did to overcome it and also what did you learn from the experience?
Facing Revenue Challenges
00:01:41
Speaker
Well, I've been in business a long time, over 20 years, so I've had many challenging times as well as many great times, more great times than challenging, luckily for me. But I would say maybe 15 or so years ago, I had a challenge with revenue, there wasn't enough, and I couldn't make my payroll.
00:02:05
Speaker
And I saw it coming, right? So it wasn't like I wasn't doing anything about it. I was trying to increase my sales and I was talking to people and getting ideas and how can I meet my payroll and what can I do? And it was very, very nerve wracking.
00:02:21
Speaker
And people had all different kinds of ideas and I was very discouraged and feeling like a total failure. But things worked out and here I am. And honestly, I don't even remember what happened. I must have either lent myself the money or maybe closed the deal. I don't remember what ended up happening, but it was a very tight, tight
00:02:44
Speaker
squeeze and it wasn't fun and it was gut wrenching and I figured it out and I did make my payroll and we did move forward to be our successful selves of today, but it was stressful. And what I can just say to everyone out there who feels my pain or who hasn't felt it yet, that wouldn't have happened to me had I been smart enough to have
00:03:10
Speaker
three months of overhead in the bank, just sitting there waiting for an occasion like this. And so my advice to everyone listening who is thinking of starting a business or who already owns a business and is full-fledged running it, whether you're just starting up or you're a 20 million, 80 million, a hundred million dollar company, always have that reserve so that you can borrow it from yourself, right? Always have that reserve handy.
Employee Retention & Layoffs
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, I love too that you in an instance of things being tight, you made it work versus just getting rid of a ton of people because like your people are important to you. So it's a beautiful thing.
00:03:53
Speaker
Well, and that's the first thing we think of, right? Reduce overhead. And of course I did reduce overhead to some degree. We were very careful with our budget, but you never want to lose good people. And I think companies are just too quick these days, especially really big companies. They're just too quick to let people go. These are people who have high value to you. They
00:04:15
Speaker
Are well trained they're doing a job that you need done and when you relieve them of their duties you're putting pressure on your other people not even if you let go the bottom ten percent which i do highly recommend happening but that work had to go somewhere and so usually when we're doing these massive layoffs it isn't just the bottom ten percent and.
00:04:36
Speaker
some important work is going to either go undone or be heaped on somebody else who really doesn't have the bandwidth to do it. So may not get done or definitely won't get done the way it should have been. So it is something to consider. And I think that smart CEOs always have that backup plan for when revenue is not where it should be. Good point.
CEO & Sales Challenges
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:58
Speaker
in your experience working with CEOs and sales teams for jumping into sort of overcoming revenue challenges, right? I feel like that's where it's leading. What are some common challenges that the CEOs and sales teams that you work with, what are some common challenges that they face when it comes to revenue generation and how can these challenges in your mind be overcome?
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, the biggest one that I see today is the pipelines or as I call them funnels are just simply not full enough. And so the leaders and the salespeople are focusing on the few opportunities that they have and pushing on those really hard. And hey, listen, closed dates come from customers, not quotas.
00:05:45
Speaker
So just because you need a deal to close doesn't mean a customer is ready to close. So if you put too much pressure on those deals, things are going to go haywire. And salespeople certainly should never be in a position where they have to focus so hard on just a few deals to get them closed to make their number or barely make their number.
00:06:05
Speaker
So what we need is lots and lots of opportunities. And that's the big failure I see today. Leaders are not ensuring that salespeople have enough leads. So what do we need salespeople to do every single day? We need them to talk to people who can buy from them. Not once a week, but three or four times a day, they should be having a solid conversation with someone who can buy from them and moving that forward.
00:06:34
Speaker
Now, it's just simply not happening. What salespeople are doing today is sending thousands of emails. They're doing LinkedIn crawling and spamming and sending out messaging. And they're dialing for dollars, but they're not having a quality conversation with someone who can buy from them. In fact, some sellers are telling me they don't even have one of those a week. Wow. So they spend their time
00:06:59
Speaker
just sending out email and doing cold outreach, that is simply not effective. So of course, you're not going to add anything to your funnel or pipeline if you're not having conversations. So we have to learn how to prospect better. So that's the solution. We simply have to do a better job of getting people interested
00:07:24
Speaker
and curious enough to talk to us. Now, that starts with marketing, right? Everything that a company can find about us on the internet, that's mostly marketing. Even if salespeople are doing it, if they're posting on social media, that's still marketing, right?
00:07:41
Speaker
So all that great content that we're producing, any videos that we have, our beautiful website that actually helps the buyer on their journey, which side note, most of us, our websites do not help the buyer on their journey. Take a look at your website, but we need to start with marketing and really make sure we're getting our brand presence out there and that people know about us, right? So that makes it easier for the salespeople.
00:08:09
Speaker
Now, sellers, before they do all this cold outreach, should take their lists, hopefully marketing, the leadership, build a beautiful list of who they're supposed to be targeting. And if not, then okay, you got to build it yourself. So make a beautiful target list and then find someone to introduce you to the people at those companies that you need to meet.
00:08:31
Speaker
versus going out cold. So it's a big mistake every company makes. Every company, I have never seen one who didn't. Now some of them have a little bit of a referral selling program, but not to the extent that I'm talking about, a formalized referral selling program. So that the first thing you always do is you go and see if you can find someone to introduce you. Now, that's not gonna be possible if you haven't built a network and nurtured it.
00:09:00
Speaker
It's not gonna be possible if you haven't connected with every single person that works at your company so that you can see. Who they know right now lincoln makes it super easy to do this there's other tools as well.
00:09:16
Speaker
A lot of times are missing great introductions that someone at your own company could actually give you. And I've seen it over and over again where finally somebody says, Hey, does anybody know anybody at this company or they're in a strategy meeting talking about how they couldn't get to this VP. And the CEO raises his hand and says, I know that guy, I went to school with him.
00:09:36
Speaker
And I'm like, OK, why are we doing this the hard way, Heidi? Oh, I'm so confused. Wow. So if we are really, truly interested in helping people get solutions, guiding them to make a great choice, right, thoroughly understanding what they need so that we can do that, we have to have conversations with them. And cold outreach isn't getting us enough conversations. So what about getting an introduction?
Networking & Referrals
00:10:05
Speaker
I'm going to be easy, Heidi, if I said, oh, Heidi, listen, my friend Beth really needs to talk to you. She needs to know how to do the thing that you provide, right? And then I called Beth and I go, Beth, you really have to talk to Heidi. She's amazing. She helped me so much.
00:10:20
Speaker
Do you think Beth's going to take that call? Absolutely. Right? Well, not only will she take it, she'll be excited to take it. So we're really missing great opportunities to get introductions. But again, that means that you have to, first of all, ask.
00:10:38
Speaker
people at your company, other people that you know. Do you know this person well enough to introduce me? Do you know someone at this company that I've been prospecting that I could talk to and then maybe they would know who the right person is and be kind enough to introduce me, right? So you're not always gonna get right to the person you need, but you can get to somebody and here's a little secret. Salespeople will talk to you. So if you're a salesperson and you're trying to break into a company,
00:11:06
Speaker
Call a salesperson. No, of course they can't buy from you. That's not their job. But they can tell you about the company and how it works and who the people are. And if you impress them enough, being smart and kind and helpful, they'll gladly introduce you. So let's make prospecting easier and fill up our pipelines.
00:11:28
Speaker
by getting introductions. Now, if you can't get an introduction, Heidi, there are other things you can do that will take your cold outreach up a notch. For all of those who are on LinkedIn and reading all the great content out there, follow Samantha McKenna. She's the hashtag show me, you know me,
00:11:54
Speaker
gal, her and her team spend countless hours helping sellers know how to use LinkedIn properly, know how to use email properly by just simply being human. I want to connect to you Heidi and I don't know you yet.
00:12:11
Speaker
There's so much information I can glean about you from your profile and reading about your company that I don't have to send a generic message to you. I can tell you exactly who I am and what I want so that you want to connect with me and I can talk about you rather than me, right?
00:12:30
Speaker
Hi, I'm Alice. We haven't met yet, but I have been following you and I'm super interested in blah, blah, blah. And I'd love to connect, right? Instead of, oh, your profile looks very professional or I'm growing my network and I'd like to connect or some other dumb thing that people write that tells me nothing about them or why they want to connect with me. Tell me who you are and why you want to connect with me, right?
00:12:55
Speaker
And if it's truly to sell me something, then tell me why I might be interested, right? So show me you know me. And in the email, it's the same thing. Stop sending emails that are all about you and talk about them.
00:13:13
Speaker
what they're doing and what they can gain and what you learned about them and just switch that messaging around and that'll help tremendously too. But still, even with great messaging, cold outreach is a numbers game. You have to reach out to lots of people to get someone curious enough to be on the phone with you or on a video meeting like this.
00:13:31
Speaker
What you can do that most don't think of is what my good friend Stu Heineck talks about in his book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. In that book, he teaches you how to do what he calls contact marketing.
00:13:47
Speaker
Now, you got to be clever here. And this isn't just sending gifts, although I think sending gifts is a great thing. I think further along in the sales process, it works better than totally cold, although if you do it well, it can work cold also. And there are great companies like Sandoso and Alice and Postal and gift goose and packed with purpose. There's many companies that will send beautiful gifts for you. And that's contact marketing, too. But in contact marketing,
00:14:15
Speaker
you research the person and figure out something about them and you mail them something that they're just going to love. It's not generic in any way. So here's an example, a very expensive example that most of us couldn't do, but Gary Vaynerchuk tells the story of wanting to get to some big executive and he kept trying to get a meeting and trying to get a meeting, couldn't get a meeting.
00:14:36
Speaker
And so he kept following this guy in social media and the guy kept posting about basketball. I think it was. I may be telling this story incorrectly, forgive me, but it was some sports player. So what did Gary do? He went and bought a jersey and got it signed and put it in a frame and he shipped it to the senior level person that he wanted to talk to. Do you think that person was willing to have a meeting with him after that? 100%.
00:15:03
Speaker
Of course he was, right? So we can't afford to do that, but a handwritten note with a well-crafted message about something that their company did that was highly successful, an award they won, or that personally won an award for business, something that you can, a beautiful handwritten note. I always have artists cards, cards with art on them, local art and photography and things, and I use those and send those out.
00:15:31
Speaker
and a book like I saw in your LinkedIn profile that blah blah blah blah blah. So I thought you might enjoy this book and pack the book up really pretty or just send it from Amazon with a note. So there's lots of ways that you can be creative.
00:15:47
Speaker
and not just sending out more email or dialing the phone a lot of times and not reaching anybody or sending a LinkedIn that isn't getting answered. Like stop doing all that stuff. We have to fill the pipeline. We have to get our salespeople conversations with people who can buy from them. And we're going to have to be much more clever and creative than we are right now because it simply isn't working.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, my God. So many good points. So many good points. I mean, the show me you know me piece. Absolutely. You want to. I totally agree. You want to show the person not only that you're taking the time to sort of get to know them and that you're interested in more than just viewing them as a number.
00:16:30
Speaker
Right. Nobody wants to be treated by a number. Nobody wants to be sold to, but everybody wants to buy something. You need things. And people have this inherent need to want to connect with other people, not sales people, but people who happen to be in sales. And so then there's so many good takeaways.
00:16:46
Speaker
So many good approaches for people, not only salespeople to be able to use, but also CEOs in ways that they can be able to help in their role, help other salespeople, even in making intros. What a great idea. We've got to up our GTM game. I mean, things have changed.
00:17:04
Speaker
dramatically. And we have to up our GTM game if we really want our businesses to do well and be sustainable.
Role of Senior Executives
00:17:12
Speaker
And here's another way to generate leads that most people don't think of. Your senior executives, right? Your senior executives should be out there evangelizing. They should appear on podcasts. They should be writing posts. They should be authoring articles. Now, I know that they're busy, so get a writer.
00:17:28
Speaker
You know, get a writer. This is not hard. Get a writer. But it's their ideas. Someone else writes them. They get posted on your blog, on social media. They can make short videos. Hold up your iPhone and make a video. I mean, it's not that hard.
00:17:43
Speaker
If they're out there evangelizing, they're not in sales. They're not selling anything. They're talking about the topics that they're experts in and they're drawing people to your company because people who can buy from you see that they're human and that they have something to say and that it's valuable and worthwhile and that it helps them. So you want to generate leads? Up your go-to-market game. Think about an account-based approach and how everyone on your team can approach that account.
00:18:12
Speaker
including your CEO, including the senior executives, including the sellers, the subject matter experts, the customer success people. It's an old saying, but it takes a village. If you want to sell, there's no lone wolf selling anymore. Senior executives must get involved.
Collaborative Revenue Generation
00:18:28
Speaker
Now they need to be positioned well. We can't get into that today.
00:18:32
Speaker
You've got to go to my blog and read poorly positioned. That's the name of the article. You've got to get them positioned well and you have to use your team appropriately. But it does take a team, especially when you're in that under a hundred million range and you're trying to sell to companies that are billions of dollars in revenue. They're a hundred to a thousand times your size. You've got to have a team approach. You've got to show them that you're strong.
00:18:58
Speaker
And that mitigates their risk of buying from a small company when you show them there's so much power in your team, right? So senior executives, get out there and help us generate leads. Don't complain that there isn't enough in the pipeline. Do something. Seriously, seriously.
00:19:14
Speaker
I can't tell you how many times in previous companies that the CEO is so incredibly busy. But there are a lot of times too, they're busy in doing tasks that they can do, but they really shouldn't do that they should be delegating to create more time to be able to do this type of
00:19:31
Speaker
I see it in small companies, Heidi, and I see it in big companies. It's like, you're the CEO. Do only what you can do. If others can do it, train them to do it and get them to do it. Work in your genius zone. I published an article about them not too long ago and just
00:19:47
Speaker
kind of been putting that on a social media game because I think people forget when you do things that are not in your genius zone, you don't do them very well. And they drain your energy so that you don't have the energy to do the things that you do well. So, CEOs, think about it. Make a list. Are you doing things that someone else could probably be doing so that you could stay focused on doing the things you do best and really shine and really help your company grow?
00:20:13
Speaker
Man, okay. So one of the questions that I had was about revenue growth strategies, but I feel like we covered that in overcoming revenue challenges. But I feel like maybe this question is a little more nuanced and can keep it flowing. And it's about sales leadership best practices. So in your podcast, Sales Talk for CEOs, you address various aspects of sales leadership.
00:20:37
Speaker
Would you share some practical tips or best practices for CEOs looking to optimize their sales team's performance in order to drive sales results?
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's something that everyone needs to do. I think that too many CEOs leave it to sales, right? And maybe it's because they think they don't really know much about sales because they were an engineer or an accountant or something else before they became a CEO. And so they think the sales leaders know that's why I hired them. Yeah.
00:21:10
Speaker
And especially if they have a VP level leader or a C-level leader, a chief sales officer, a chief revenue officer, a chief commercial officer. Now, certainly if you have a chief revenue officer or a chief commercial officer, they should be driving that strategy.
Aligning Sales Strategy with Vision
00:21:28
Speaker
But that strategy falls from the vision of the CEO and the strategic plan of the leadership team.
00:21:36
Speaker
right so that should never be separate heidi that should always be aligned completely. Driving a sales strategy is not just a simple thing right first we have to have a sales strategy and when i say sales really it's not just sales and that's why i think some people have started talking about revenue or as the whole commercial group.
00:21:57
Speaker
because it's sales, customer success, customer support, marketing, the subject matter experts. It's really everyone that is customer facing and driving that motion to help the buyer buy. And then everybody behind it that supports that is really playing a role in sales as well. So the CEO is really the only one in the entire company
00:22:24
Speaker
who can wrangle all the resources needed and change direction and power the vision and help that strategy move along. So they absolutely have to be involved. Even if they feel like they don't know that much about sales, great, you have someone else who does, you work in tandem with them. So a lot of times what happens is the CEO gets disconnected from what the sales leaders are actually doing.
00:22:51
Speaker
They know that the teams aren't making their number, right? And they might hear from the leader of the leaders, like the VP who all the sales leaders report to, the sales managers report in, they might hear, this one's weak, this one's strong, this team's
Account Strategy & Team Alignment
00:23:05
Speaker
doing well, this side. But that doesn't really help me make any changes, right? Right.
00:23:11
Speaker
I don't want to see the CEO in the day to day, right? I want to see the CEO playing the proper role. And every CEO will always have a role in sales, but that role changes as the company matures. So the first thing is that in order to help the leaders lead, the CEO has to know that role.
00:23:34
Speaker
So wherever you are, so if your founder led sales, you're still doing a lot of the sales, even if you have a team, that's one thing. If you're not at that level anymore, you've moved up and you've got a team doing the sales, you're still going to be positioned with your best, most valuable customers. You're still going to be positioned with those prospects that we really want to bring in, but you'll won't just be talking to their buyers. You'll have your sales people and your sales leaders positioning you
00:24:04
Speaker
with the higher level people at those companies. Now, I said we weren't gonna have a lot of time to talk about positioning, but here I am back on positioning because it's so important, right? So you have to train the sales leaders to train the sellers how to use the CEO properly, right? So the CEO can show up, talk to the higher level people that they need to and share the vision and help them feel comfortable and confident.
00:24:31
Speaker
right? Then the sellers can do their job more easily and be more successful. Now next, in understanding what the leaders are doing, if the leaders report to you directly, then you should be coaching them. But most CEOs don't know how to coach a sales leader.
00:24:49
Speaker
So sometimes they hire somebody like me to help them do that, but you need to do it. Somebody needs to do it. And you need to talk to them about what's working and what isn't and what changes need to be made so that it works better. It's very simple formula. What's working, what isn't working, what changes need to be made to make it work better.
00:25:08
Speaker
And as you see them failing rather than succeeding, it's probably because they are not aligned with the bigger vision and mission of the company. They've lost their alignment. And that means they're not targeting the right audience, possibly. They're not using the value proposition correctly. They're not training their salespeople to do all of those things. And they may also be very hands off and having the sellers go in there on their own, which they shouldn't be doing.
00:25:36
Speaker
So the salespeople do need to break into these accounts, but the sales leaders should help them and again, be positioned properly and talking to the right people at those accounts as well, along with the subject matter experts and bringing in customer support or customer success at the right time and all of those kinds of things. So CEOs, what are your leaders doing?
00:25:57
Speaker
Now, if you have a leader like a CRO or a CSO or a VP of sales that all the sales managers report to, then you need to be coaching them and asking them hard questions. What are you doing to help that sales leader succeed? What is that sales leader doing well? What do they need to do better? What needs to change to help them succeed? That's what you have to ask on a regular basis. So then it's that person's responsibility to lift those sales managers up.
00:26:24
Speaker
And there's only two ways to go. It's up or out. So those leaders and those salespeople are either improving every day and moving up or they are out. Don't keep them around. That's it. They have to have that attitude of learning and growing and changing and improving. And if they don't, they've got to go. So if you're not seeing that,
00:26:47
Speaker
in a short period of time, then you've got to make some hard decisions as CEO about what needs to happen next. Now, it's not your job to fire them. It's the person who directly manages them's job to fire them or to help them grow. But you've got to make sure it's happening. And what's going on right now in the companies that I see is the CEOs are not focused on the development of their people. They're focused on a number, a revenue number. Are we making it or are we not making it?
00:27:16
Speaker
right? And they're not focused on development. So the question then comes down to the leaders again, what are you doing to develop your people?
00:27:24
Speaker
Not just a training once a year or a celebration party once a year. Those are great. I love both of those. But day in and day out, what are you doing to develop your people? Because we only want A players on our team or B players who are becoming A players. There's no room for C. So you've got to develop them. And it's either up or out. If you can't develop them, they don't belong here. Set them off to go find a place where they can be highly successful. It's not here, right?
00:27:53
Speaker
So if we as CEOs put a portion of our attention on how are we developing our sales team, then they're going to get developed and they're going to continue improving and they're going to hit their numbers. So whenever a salesperson is failing,
00:28:12
Speaker
the first person I look at is their leader and the next person I look at is their leader, right? So it's not the salesperson's fault because you need to coach them up or out. Why are you letting them sit there and fail? Why are you letting them be a 50% of quota for two quarters in a row? Why?
00:28:30
Speaker
That's on you. That is not on them. Oh no. Because most people, most humans, if they could, they would. Most people want to please. They want to do well. They want to do the right thing. So if they could do better than they are right now, they would. So obviously they can't. And that is on you.
Team Growth & Letting Go
00:28:49
Speaker
That is not on them.
00:28:50
Speaker
Ma'am, you speak so much truth to this, and it's so refreshing to hear this, like, be present, be mindful. This is a team effort. And if we're not growing as a team, we need to cut the ties, right? And it's not only beneficial, it's mutually beneficial to cut those ties when it's not growing up. It needs to grow out and venture and live its best. The person who used to live their best life somewhere else
00:29:16
Speaker
And the company also needs to have that space to incorporate more talent that is able to grow in that environment. Yeah. I'll tell you, Heidi, the best dollars a CEO could spend today would be on getting great training for their sales leaders on how to coach impactfully.
00:29:36
Speaker
Oh, that would be the best dollar spent because you can train and train and train the salespeople, but nobody's able to reinforce that training, coach them, lift them up, help them grow, develop them. It doesn't matter. That training was a waste of your money. Let me ask you this.
00:29:53
Speaker
In your mind, what type of training is best for people that would be coaching sales representatives? Sales leaders and their leaders, right? Because the leader of the leaders have to coach too, right? So they need to learn how to coach.
00:30:10
Speaker
And coaching is a skill that can be acquired. And there's many great coaching programs out there. But I do highly recommend that you get a program that's specific to sales coaching, because there are things in sales that don't occur in other parts of the organization that you have to know how to coach. Most people really don't coach the pipeline very well. They really don't know and understand it well enough to coach it well.
00:30:36
Speaker
Most people don't understand positioning, for example. So coaching a large deal and understanding the positioning and helping sellers get positioned better, they just don't necessarily know that well enough. Or they may know it well enough to do it themselves, but not to explain it to someone else, right? Because we know that most leaders were just the best seller and they got promoted without any training. Right.
00:30:59
Speaker
So what we need to do is teach them how to coach, which is not managing. Managing is important too. And some of them might need to learn better management skills, but coaching is again, developing people. And it's more about asking than telling.
00:31:15
Speaker
It's helping people figure out how to do it better on their own. And there's a lot of questions involved in coaching and guiding people to change their behavior. And most leaders just tell a salesperson what to do and expect them to go do it. Yeah. Well, we all know how well that works.
00:31:36
Speaker
I've told them 13 times. I don't know why they can't do it. Right. Oh, really? Okay. So does that tell you something about yourself if you had to tell them 13 times? That's not about them. That's about you. Exactly. So the coaching needs to be something specific. There's so many great people out there that can provide good training on how to manage and coach their salespeople.
00:32:01
Speaker
just to name a few mike weinberg fantastic kevin davis there's many others i cannot bring to my mind right at this moment however if you direct message me on linkedin or get a hold of me i'll introduce you to someone who can and both mike weinberg and kevin davis have great books,
00:32:21
Speaker
on coaching and how to train leaders to coach and manage effectively. So you can get ahold of their books and read those. And again, there's many others out there, but the program has to encompass making sure first they do know what's the difference between managing and coaching. And they have to do the management piece, but the coaching is so much more important. And it's the part that doesn't get done because sales leaders are so bogged down with other stuff.
00:32:49
Speaker
that they don't even have the time to coach if they know how to do it. So CEOs, do a survey. What are your leaders spending their time doing?
Coaching vs. Meetings
00:32:58
Speaker
If sales leaders are doing a lot of meetings and a lot of reporting and very little coaching, you're in trouble. A great ratio is a sales leader should be able to spend 80% of their time coaching sellers to close business.
00:33:14
Speaker
Which means they're helping them manage their pipeline to keep it moving, keep it flowing, kicking things out that don't belong in there, keep the rest of it moving. They're talking to them about the deals and they're strategizing on the deals and they're not letting two weeks, three weeks, a month go by where there's no contact. They're coaching them to make those contacts and keep in touch and keep deals flowing.
00:33:37
Speaker
and making it easy for them to close. Taking away all the friction, right? That's what sales leaders should be doing. Not reporting and not meeting endlessly. Like, take a look CEOs, what are your sales leaders doing all day? If they're not coaching salespeople all day,
00:33:55
Speaker
They're doing the wrong things. OK, so with the you triggered a question because when you were talking about investing in professional development and also in training on how to coach versus manage, I think it sort of brought me to the idea of inclusivity. Right. And again, the whole team atmosphere and all of that. So in your experience, how does inclusivity contribute to excellence in revenue generation?
00:34:24
Speaker
such a broad topic, but inclusivity, let's just start with the team you have. Do they feel included? A lot of people, oh yes, yes, they feel included. Well, I don't think you even know what that means, right? Do I feel included? Well, I'm the only one who can answer that question.
00:34:43
Speaker
So when you are wondering about inclusion, starting with your own team, does this feel like an inclusive team? Do you feel included? What does that mean to you? Ask those questions. You'll find out, right? But included means I'm brought into things. I'm well aware.
00:35:04
Speaker
I don't feel left out in the dark. I know what's going on with my team, with the greater teams around me, and with the company. I know the vision. I'm included in the CEO's vision. I'm included in what our customers are thinking.
00:35:21
Speaker
I'm included in understanding their journey and how it changes. I'm included in feeling that I can speak my mind, respectfully, of course, to let people know what I need, right? I feel included when I know I have a friend or two on my team that I can talk to and share with. And when I need help with a client, I can get the help I need. So included just with your own team, let's start there.
00:35:51
Speaker
Now, if we talk about inclusion in terms of diversity and equity and inclusion, right? Which is in a broader topic. If I'm the only female out of 25 male engineers, if I'm the only Asian male and everyone else is white or something else, right?
00:36:12
Speaker
If I am the only one who thinks a certain way, if I'm the only one of any persuasion, whatever that may be, religious or otherwise, then it's going to be harder for me to feel included because I don't feel like I am like the rest of you. So when we really want people to feel included,
00:36:34
Speaker
And the reason we want them to feel really included is because our teams do way better when everybody feels included, right? So when we think about inclusion, then we want to, in the broader sense, build teams that are very diverse.
00:36:51
Speaker
And then it's not an only, right? The only person who thinks this way, the only person who acts this way, the only person who knows how to do X, the only person who looks like this, the only person who talks like this, right? When we get away from the onlys and we're more inclusive in who we bring into our teams,
00:37:09
Speaker
when there's lots of diversity, there's less chance for people to feel like the only and they see that you care about diversity and inclusion. And so they will start to trust that they can be included. You might say they're included, but they don't feel included. So they need to trust that they can be included. Yeah.
00:37:32
Speaker
And I feel like, too, going off of that, it is super important to have diversity and equity and inclusion just in general, because the more different types of people with different backgrounds and different experiences and different thought patterns and different everything, the more people are multifaceted in and
Inclusivity & Performance
00:37:51
Speaker
of themselves. So the more different types of people you have, the easier it is to be not only inclusive internally,
00:37:59
Speaker
but also inclusive to like your customer base, right? And oh, man, it is so important. Well, even just think about a simple one like language. Everyone at your company speaks English, but your customers speak many languages. Yes. What does that say to them? Right. So hire someone who speaks Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German. Hire somebody who speaks the language of those you sell to. Right. Now, I think most companies do that because it's an easy one to do. Right. But take that now to the next level.
00:38:29
Speaker
And think about how else you could make your customers feel like you care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Yeah. Going off of that and sort of feeling included and moving more towards mentorship, right? I'm very curious in your career, sort of mentorship and guidance playing a crucial role in career growth in general, right? Why don't you tell me about
00:38:57
Speaker
maybe like a mentor or an advocate who has significantly impacted your professional development. And how did their support help to shape your trajectory? What did that look like? I really believe that people should find a mentor. I think that the more mentors, the merrier.
00:39:19
Speaker
Imagine if every high school student in America had a mentor. Imagine what our world would be like. So I really believe in mentoring. I mentor many and I have been mentored, but the most impactful experience I've had with that is in a group setting.
Mentorship & Mastermind Impact
00:39:38
Speaker
I belong to a mastermind for almost 10 years.
00:39:41
Speaker
And the women in that group grew together, got to know each other and each other's businesses so well. That mentorship, that mastermind type of mentoring was built around the purpose of helping lift each other's businesses up. So we were all women owned businesses. We had all been in business at least 10 years.
00:40:04
Speaker
We all provided some service that helped companies increase sales. So we had a lot in common and we were able to get to know each other in a way that allowed us the freedom to ask hard questions. Yeah. Now there were some tears at times. I'm not saying there weren't.
00:40:21
Speaker
But hard questions that needed to be answered. And the only way to grow your business is to think about how you do business and why you do business and improve from there. If you just do business, do business, then you're not going to move from there. And to do that, sometimes you have to get outside your comfort zone. And that requires someone to point something out to you sometimes or to ask you a really tough question.
00:40:49
Speaker
And in this group, we were able to do that. And they got to know me so well that they could reflect back to me. Now, wait a minute, Alice. You said you wanted to stay focused on this, and yet we see you doing this. What's going on here, right? They used to say to me, this was a famous saying in our group, but they said it to me a lot, unfortunately. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
00:41:15
Speaker
And when you're in business and you're trying to grow, you cannot be everything to everybody. You have got to niche in. And it was the hardest lesson for me. But once I learned it, my revenue doubled overnight. Instantly.
00:41:30
Speaker
crazy, right? You know, so I would say that that mentoring experience was the most powerful one I've ever had. And it probably because there were many perspectives. And although we were similar in many ways, we were a diverse group as well. Yeah.
00:41:46
Speaker
on diverse in our thinking and our training and background and those kinds of things so that we could bring that diversity to help each other. Some of us knew some things really, really well that others didn't know. So we were able to bring that balance and help each other learn as well as ask those tough questions and point things out and help us stay on track. When we said, these are my goals. This is what I want to do. Here's the number I'm going to hit. Keep me on track, right?
00:42:12
Speaker
So, I do believe in mentoring. I think that companies who have formalized mentoring programs do very well. You can define it any way you want, even just assigning a buddy to someone who's new, right? Or rotating buddies every six months so that everybody gets a chance to know each other, especially in these hybrid worlds that we live in now today where we're not all
00:42:36
Speaker
physically together in an office as much anymore. I think there's many ways that companies can provide some sort of mentoring structure or program to really, again, help people develop, right? Because that's really what it's all about.
00:42:52
Speaker
Wow, I love too that you were talking about how to bring the idea of mentorship within a company. And there was a company in the past that I thought it was wonderful that they actually gave coffee gift cards, if you will, and they assigned like throughout the company, they're like, Heidi, you'll be with Jacob today. And you just had either a digital coffee or an in-person coffee if both of you guys were in the office and talked about whatever and just really got to know each other. And that's another great way too.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah, just peer to peer mentoring. It's like, hey, pick a topic and talk about it or figure out how you can help each other. It can be as informal as that or it can be, Heidi, you have a podcast and I've never podcasted. I want to learn from you. Would you mentor me for a couple of weeks or a couple of months on how to start my podcast?
00:43:40
Speaker
It can be as simple as that. Or it can be, hey, you're a vice president, and I'm just starting, but I really want to be a vice president someday. I'd love to just learn from you how I can develop myself and how I can develop my corporate presence and be confident. Will you mentor me?
00:43:58
Speaker
It could be one time or it could be a thousand times. Who knows? It could be formal. It could be informal. But find the people who know how to do the things that you want to learn how to do and ask them, will you mentor me? Man, part of the question was, what would you say to other women seeking mentors? And I think that that's just so appropriate, not only for women, but for everybody. Just ask.
00:44:22
Speaker
It is in the asking. And I feel like I don't know if it's necessarily a woman thing, but I had always been afraid to ask. But you got to get out of your own way. Yeah. And you do need to be specific when you ask someone because people might be afraid to say yes to being a mentor because they don't know how much time it will take or exactly what it is you want. So be specific. Could we talk for 30 minutes a week for the next four weeks? I'd like to learn about X.
00:44:49
Speaker
or something else. And then from those four 30-minute visits, you can figure out if there's more to do and do it in a way that's even better. But get started somewhere, but do be specific about how much of their time you want and exactly what it is you'd like to know.
00:45:06
Speaker
I feel like this conversation has just gone so, so well. And we are wrapping up with our final question, and it's about empowering women in revenue. And I feel like it'll just tie everything together up with a beautiful little bow. So the mission of our podcast is to illuminate pathways to success for women in revenue generating roles, right? Based on your own journey, what advice
00:45:31
Speaker
would you offer to women aspiring to excel in sales and revenue focused careers?
Sales Careers for Women
00:45:39
Speaker
Well, first of all, I think that revenue focused careers are the best careers, in my opinion. And the reason I think that they're the best careers for women
00:45:50
Speaker
is because there's so much flexibility. And we like that, we thrive in that, we need that, right? But there's also structure. So there's flexibility and structure, two great things for women. The flexibility for working around your family, whether it's taking care of parents or taking care of children or siblings, whoever in your life you need to take care of, we have more flexibility in sales than in many other roles.
00:46:16
Speaker
The structure is that of the buying process, right? If we learn that structure and understand it and stay current with it, we follow that structure and we can have great success. Another reason I think it's a great career for women is because sales is about helping. It's a helping profession and women are great at that.
00:46:39
Speaker
Men can be really great at it too, but women do excel in sales. It's just been proven over and over again because we don't go in there to try to force a situation or manipulate anyway or just drive our agenda. We go in there to help. Yeah. And today in sales, what we have to do if we are lucky enough because we knew how to prospect
00:47:01
Speaker
Remember what I said earlier, to get those conversations on the phone with people who can buy from us or face to face or however we're making those meetings, then first we have to understand. So we have to ask a lot of good questions and bring some insight into the conversation so we can thoroughly understand.
00:47:19
Speaker
then we have to seek to help. How can I help them? What's the best way that I can help them? And then we have to know how to solve. And really, in the end, selling is solving. When we solve, people will buy. If we don't solve, they won't buy. And people always say, add value. They need to see more value. And if they don't see the value, it's all about the price. That's right. So the value is in the solution.
00:47:45
Speaker
you have to show that your solution will meet their needs entirely and it will help them gain whatever it is they were hoping to gain from purchasing your solution. So if we do those things, sales is much easier. And I believe that women are very good at understanding, helping, guiding and solving. And not that men aren't, but women are very good at that.
00:48:14
Speaker
And so it's a great, great profession. And so I would say, consider it. If you are in a non-commissioned position right now, but it has maybe the periphery of helping sales, think about moving into a commissioned position and think about how great it will feel to help all of those people that are going to end up buying from you.
00:48:41
Speaker
Their success is your success and staying focused on your customers success is what is going to drive everything that's positive when they succeed you succeed. So there's no reason to focus on anything else when you focus on revenue.
00:48:58
Speaker
You get stressed, you feel pressure. There are problems. You don't always make the revenue. When you focus on your customer success, you're bound to make the revenue because they will buy from you. They will buy more from you. They will make introductions for you. So focus on your customer success. I think women can be very, very good at that. And I just think that get started anywhere.
00:49:24
Speaker
in a revenue generating position. Learn, be very curious and learn all the different revenue generating positions to see might you like customer success better or might you like marketing better or sales better or something else surrounding all of these things.
00:49:39
Speaker
because there's like in sales alone, their sales ops and just different pieces that I'm sorry, I'm not like not thinking of the words. But anyway, there's different pieces that you can do in sales that you can do sales leadership. There's lots of different pieces there. So get to know all the different types of sales positions and figure out which one you might do best and get a mentor.
00:49:57
Speaker
Right? And then you can have someone talk to you about what it would be like to be in sales ops or what it might be like to be in the event side of selling, doing all the trade shows or what it might be like to be the leader of sellers.
00:50:12
Speaker
and learn from them, right? The other thing I would say is just be a constant learner. So learn from other people, learn from books, learn from podcasts, take a course. Don't wait around for your company to give you what you need. I mean, I hope they will, but guess what? Most of them don't.
00:50:31
Speaker
So go find it yourself. Start a book club with other salespeople from your company or other companies and read great books on sales, right? If you all are aspiring to be sales leaders, then read great books on sales leadership. That's a simple, inexpensive way to help yourself develop, right? And grow. And there's so many free courses on the internet. If you have a premium subscription to LinkedIn, my goodness, there is no end to the LinkedIn learning.
00:50:59
Speaker
Are you using it? So develop yourself. Don't wait around for someone else to do it. So just kind of to sum that up. First of all, I think that women have what they need to be very good at the profession. Secondly, get a mentor and ask them what it would be like to be in the job that they're in. Be curious, open, looking at all these other jobs.
00:51:20
Speaker
And then just keep learning. Don't stop learning. Find some others who want to learn with you and just get out there and do it. I mean, even if it's a book or it's a LinkedIn learning or whatever other course you're taking, you can discuss it in your group. So everybody watches the same course and discusses it. Listens to the same podcast and discusses it. Make your own learning. Don't wait around for other people. So that's my advice to women who want to be in revenue generating positions.
Advice for Women in Revenue
00:51:48
Speaker
I love it. Wow. Again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being a guest on this podcast. It was such a wonderful conversation to touch base with you on all things revenue. And before we go, is there anything that I'm not asking that you would love to touch base on?
00:52:11
Speaker
I guess the last thing I might just say to women in the revenue world in general is remember that the humans who lead you are just humans. They were just like you at one point. They were learning. They didn't know the job that they were in. They had to learn it. We sometimes look up to our leaders and expect them to know everything and to guide us and to tell us what to do. And it's just so much pressure on that leader.
00:52:37
Speaker
Remember that sometimes the leaders don't have all the answers and they don't know what to do and maybe you do. And it's good to share with them or to ask them what you can do to help them, right? They're always trying to figure out how to help you, but why don't you ask your leader what you might do to help them?
00:52:55
Speaker
Maybe you could take a project off their hands. Maybe you could learn how to do a task that they do that would help you grow as a leader, but would also relieve them of something so they could spend more time coaching, right? And the same for your CEO. Sometimes we look at our CEOs and we can't figure out what they're thinking or what they're like, they're just humans. And they're trying to do the best they can every day, just like you. So help them out, right? Help them out.
00:53:21
Speaker
change your expectation to understanding them and how you can help them because they still need to grow and learn to and they don't know everything and they need your help and they need your trust and they need your support. So I guess I'll leave you with that. Alice Hyman, love it. Thank you so, so much. You're welcome.
00:53:43
Speaker
And that wraps up another episode of Resilient Revenue.
Joining the Women in Revenue Community
00:53:47
Speaker
These narratives are more than just personal triumphs. They embody the collective journey that we undertake as we strive for a future where every woman, no matter her career stage, location, industry, or demographic profile, has the opportunity to excel in her chosen field.
00:54:04
Speaker
Women in revenue exists because we know amazing things can happen when driven, talented, bottom line oriented women are fired up and collaborating to grow their careers and organizations. We invite you to join our amazing community of 7,000 plus members. If you'd like to become a member for free, head on over to womeninrevenue.org to join today. See you next time on Resilient Revenue.