Transcript
Speaker: For staffing firms, sales has been especially challenging over the last couple of years. Market shifts, tight talent pools, and changing buyer expectations have all made winning new business harder.
Speaker: At the same time, new technology, especially AI-powered tools, is promising to give staffing sales teams an edge. But when margins are tight, the bigger question is what technology actually makes a difference?
Speaker: What's overhyped? And can you build a successful sales strategy using the ah CRM and tools you already have? Before you spend money on the next shiny tool, you'll want to hear this conversation.
Speaker: We're bringing you in a respected sales expert to break down where technology can truly improve your sales efforts and where it may not be worth the investment.
Speaker: Welcome to another episode of Aviante Digital Edge. I am your host, Casey Wagonfield, strategic partnerships at SimpleVMS, a division of Aviante that offers a staffing-friendly VMS built with the industry in mind.
Speaker: Also 16 years in the staffing industry, and I'm excited to dig into the question that's especially relevant right now. Which technology investments can actually move the needle for staffing sales, and which ones may not deliver the ah ROI you're looking for?
Speaker: We know that the right technology can help agencies work smarter and compete more effectively. But with margins tight, it's worth taking another look at where you're spending your money. Do you really need another tool or can you achieve your sales goals with the technology and the CRM you already have in place?
Speaker: To help us answer these questions today, I'm excited for today's guest, Mark Winter, the principal and CEO of the Windsource Group. He's got more than 20 years in the industry.
Speaker: From running branches to leading sales enablement for multi-billion dollar organization, Mark brings a ton of experience and practical insight into building stronger pipelines, tightening execution, and helping sales teams sell with confidence in a tougher market.
Speaker: So if you're considering new tools to strengthen your sales strategy, this is a current conversation you'll want to hear in your next tech investment. Mark, appreciate you joining us today. Thanks for having me. Appreciate the Aviante team for suggesting this and always enjoy good conversation with you.
Speaker: I always enjoy talking to you, Mark. i want to jump first into why staffing sales is harder right now. And I think this is something we've probably been talking about for a couple years now, but me and you have been both around staffing for a while. You a lot longer than me, of course.
Speaker: But why do you think so many staffing firms are having a harder time consistently bringing in new business right now? I just want to acknowledge that you very politely called me old. Just then. That was good. Well played. Well played, sir. 27 years I've been doing this and I don't regret a day of it. It's been so much fun.
Speaker: Listen, staffing sales always has its challenges. And you said we've been talking about this for years. We have. The story changes a little bit though. It is hard now and it's hard for different reasons. So I think there's four things that are driving challenges in staffing sales.
Speaker: A couple of them are out of our control. One of them is as much as we're looking at technology and efficiency and changes in the business, so are our customers. So they're having meetings and podcasts and webinars just like this about how they can change things. And so if they've been a staffing user for a quarter century, they're probably thinking about, well, should I be doing something new? Should I be trying new technology? Should I try something else out? So we're dealing with all that. Their business is in a swirl. Sometimes we forget about that.
Speaker: Number two is it's never been tougher to buy something in an organization. I call it internal complexity. So if you've tried to get an invoice across the line or you've tried to get your company to sign on to something, you know it's tough.
Speaker: Well, it's tough for our customers too. And so sometimes they may want staffing services or they might want to talk to us, but they don't know how to get it done. They're not in a position of power to sign off of the invoice or they got to go to a CFO, you know, whatever the thing is.
Speaker: So internal complexity is stalling deals left and right. One that we contribute to is noise. There's a lot of noise out there. There's so much noise. And at some point people just turn a blind eye or a deaf ear.
Speaker: They've turned it off. They flipped the switch and they're like, all right, I'm done with that. I don't want hear anymore. Even if it's valuable, want hear anymore because it's just so much swirl and they're getting hit from every angle. So that's part three. And I say we contribute to that because If you're not thoughtful about your technology and you're using tools at an accelerated rate, you're probably contributing to that noise. I know you don't mean to do any harm, but you're probably contributing to that noise.
Speaker: And then last but not least, it's harder to get ahold people. We're distributed now. People are working from home or they have a ring doorbell at their front door or of the business, not just of their home.
Speaker: And they've got a security guard out front or the business is shut down or whatever the thing is, but it's just straight up harder to get ahold of people. So those are the four things that I think are making staffing sales hard right this second.
Speaker: That's a great breakdown. That's all things that I've seen in the past too. Yeah. I'd love to hear what you're hearing from the staffing leaders. So you were at Avionta User Conference Connect this past summer, and you talked about turning your ATS into more of a revenue engine.
Speaker: So after talking with all of those staffing leaders, what were you hearing that lined up with what you're seeing in the market? Starting with the technology front, one of the questions that I hear from staffing leaders is, am I behind? Am I doing the right things? Am i focused on the right stuff?
Speaker: I feel like, and I'm paraphrasing, but a staffing leader says to me, i feel like I'm so far behind right now, like I should have things hooked up and integrated and tools running, and I don't even know where to begin.
Speaker: And that's going to be a lot of weight to carry for some of those staffing leaders, right? so I hear a lot about that. I hear how much reliance should I have on my sales team? How should I structure my sales team? What types of salespeople should I have?
Speaker: I hear what used to make us successful is not making us successful anymore. I hear I'm paying a whole boatload of commission to a salesperson that's been with me a couple of decades or a decade, and I'm getting zero productivity. if They haven't closed anything in a long time, but the commission checks are fat and they keep rolling out.
Speaker: All of these things cause staffing leaders to start to question the entire sales package. Am I structured the right way? Do I have the right tools? Are we doing the right things? And that's before they even get to messaging and capabilities and all of that other stuff.
Speaker: That's a lot of weight to carry. And at the same point, I guess you can have the value propositions, but if you don't have the right messaging, you don't have the right people in place, you don't have the right technology or give them and the ammunition they need to go out and be successful as salespeople, then mean, it all kind of comes together, right? You have to have it all working in sync.
Speaker: Yep. I talked to a staffing leader who had a niche. That niche was administrative roles for construction. And I thought that's really niched, right? But that's really great. Super clear messaging.
Speaker: Just by hearing that one line, I know exactly where they should network, how their marketing should look like. They also had no salespeople. And they were like, well, we don't have any business coming in I'm questioning whether or not that's a viable line for us, if that's a space we should play in. And i'm like, well, hang on. You gotta to have both. You gotta have somebody knocking the doors out there. You can't just put up a website and hope for the best.
Speaker: You know, it's funny you say that with the niche too. I mean, there's so much opportunity out there. know companies that have hundreds of crossing guards on assignment. Some companies that only place paraprofessionals inside schools and they've got hundreds of them. Like the things that you wouldn't know or think you staffing that are out there. Yeah, totally.
Speaker: So we talk about where staffing firms should actually focus first, if revenue is tight and the budget isn't unlimited, where do you start? Is it the people, the process, the technology? What usually needs the most attention first?
Speaker: I think the thing that needs the most attention first is that question. Is it people processor technology? And the question is, are we people processor technology? Meaning the staffing company.
Speaker: So I hear staffing companies all the time that say, we're in a people business. We're in this for relationships. How can I get my marketing automation to create a sales funnel without actually having to talk to someone?
Speaker: Well, those two things don't work. You can't be in the people business and then separate yourself from the people. The thing's not going to work. So I would say the first question is, are you a people-centric, process-centric, or technology-centric?
Speaker: That's the place to start. And then the investments should follow that line. So if you came back to me and said, I'm a technology first company, then your tools better work. You can't be trying things out on your end user. You've got to make sure the technology works, invest in that, then invest in a solid website to capture leads and align yourself to a great VMS partner, like simple VMS so that you can promote that. And the technology works when you expect it to.
Speaker: If you're a process driven company where everything's about, say, how quickly you're able to get medical or administrative or IT staff on projects, then invest in that process. Make sure that you don't have any gaps in the structure that supports that process. Meaning you can't have a process built company around good recruiting process and have five openings for recruiters on your team. That's not going to work. Your process is going to break down. So invest there.
Speaker: If you're a people-focused company where relationships are important and you do a lot of grassroots marketing, then spend your money on networking. i would rather see you put up a booth at a trade show and spend 25 grand on that type of marketing than to invest in a new piece of technology, if that's your focus, the people focus.
Speaker: So I think staffing firms should actually focus with something that aligns to their aspirations, people, processor, technology. I love that. And when we talk about, you know, sales teams, are they actually productive or are they just busy?
Speaker: i think that's one a lot of staffing companies struggle with. And I remember going through this, when I ran a sales team in staffing, talking with people like, yeah, you left 1,500 messages last month, but you talked to one person. So...
Speaker: Tell us when you're just throwing things in there to make the CRF happy, to make it look like you've done something. Because you can make a ton of calls, send a ton of emails and make it look really busy. But how do you tell the difference between activity that's actually creating momentum and activity that's just keeping people busy?
Speaker: Yeah, it's about connection. Are we making connections? Now here's the thing. If left to their own devices, people will gravitate toward work that they like or that feels good. That's what I know. If you give little to no direction to your sales team, that's where they're going to spend their time. They're going to spend their time on what they like and what feels good.
Speaker: So busting out 1500 calls might feel good because you're like, I've made more calls than anybody else. Well, in that case, we just have to focus on making connections then. So we've got to take that good momentum. We've got to take all that activity and we've just got to redirect it. And frankly, that's the work of the sales leader.
Speaker: I think right now we are underestimating the potential of our sales leaders out there, sales managers, sales directors, whatever your company has, or in some cases it's the CEO doing some of that work and that's fine.
Speaker: But we underestimate how much direction, guidance, and coaching our salespeople need or even want. Listen, good salespeople want to be successful. They want to make connects. They want to move deals through the pipeline.
Speaker: And I assure you, if someone's making 1,500 calls and they're not making a connect, they're super frustrated. And they know that you know, and they know that they know, and they just want to have a conversation about it. And man, wouldn't they love it if somebody could help them get better?
Speaker: So i would say if you're not knee deep in some sales management philosophy with them, if you're not regularly having coaching calls, pipeline visits, ride alongs with your salespeople, then your salespeople probably are just being busy. They probably are being left to their devices and they're doing things that feel good or that they like to do.
Speaker: And it's probably not the most productive work. And so I would suggest that people get in there and see it with their own eyes. If you're a CEO that's asking this question, are my sales teams busy or productive?
Speaker: Go ride with them for two days, not for one day, not for two hours, for two days, bell to bell all day long, because nobody can hide anything for two days. Not that salespeople are hiding anything, but bride you'll see the true essence of sales come out if you spend a couple of days in a field with salesperson.
Speaker: And I know that seems like a lot of time, but you'll get the answer to your question and then you'll know exactly where to help them. That's great. Mark, when you talked about a connect, like what to you is a connect? To me, that's a, hey, somebody responded to my email. Somebody answered the phone and talked to me. Somebody talked to me in their lobby.
Speaker: Maybe I connected with somebody at a networking event. feel like that's the end goal we should be looking at of how many k connects does it take to make a meeting? Is that what you would consider connect?
Speaker: yeah any of those Yeah. It is not at all important what the salesperson did. It is important what the prospect does. That's how you know you have a connect. If the prospect answered the phone, if the prospect met with you, if the prospect showed up in the lobby, if the prospect was at a networking event, that's a connect. That's what's important.
Speaker: If you really want to measure something, that's the thing to measure. Now there's people out there that hear me say that and they're like, well, okay, we won't measure calls and emails anymore. Nope. That's not what I'm saying. You got to have both calls and emails is like your speedometer in a car and connects are like your mile markers on the highway.
Speaker: So we want to make it a certain distance. We still need to know what our speedometer says. We still need to know what our instrument panel says. So you need both, but the connect is about what the prospect does. And each individual rep should know whether it's making phone calls, doing drops or emails, how many calls does it take me to make one connect and how many connects does it take to get a meeting? Now I have a real understanding of here's probably how many calls I should make.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right. You should have some sense of that. I mean, if you've been doing it long enough, it doesn't take long to bust out a thousand calls a week or so. And you should have some data. And sometimes we don't want to look at that number because it's, but if that's what it is, that's what it is right now. We know. And So then the question becomes, well, okay, either A, let's get some technology that helps us get better quality lists, or let's try a different phone tree in the organization, or let's try a different approach. Maybe we show up in person if that's something that our business can do.
Speaker: So what's the biggest mistake you think salespeople or sales leaders make when they look at their pipeline or their people's pipeline and think that things are healthier than they really are? Yeah, going to give you a short list of things on this.
Speaker: The biggest mistake is they don't know where the thing is supposed to be. They know where it is. They can look in there and they can see a bunch of deals, but they don't know things like, well, a deal of that size and shape should only take six weeks to close, but that deal's been in there for 24 weeks. That's a problem.
Speaker: So they look at a pipeline and they look at the value of the pipeline and they think because the value of it, or because there's a bunch of stuff in there and they see last activities done, they feel like it's probably okay.
Speaker: But the real health of a pipeline is, is stuff moving? Is it progressing from one stage to the next? So that's the biggest mistake leaders are making. And frankly, salespeople too.
Speaker: You know that we have such great salespeople out there in the field that are just diehards. They go back over and over and over to the same door and they think to themselves, eventually it's going to close. I've asked salespeople like, when are you going to pull that out of your pipeline? And they say, never.
Speaker: It's going to break. And listen, I'm all for that stick-to-itiveness, but listen, man, there's timing to this. There's questions you can ask that will tell you when this thing's going to close or if it's going to close. And there's things that you can do to push this thing along.
Speaker: And so not knowing what those things are or just using pure tenacity to try to close deals, that's a huge mistake on a salesperson's part. Yeah, I was always in the mind of you don't want it to sit in your pipeline because then it just looks bad, right? You've got this huge pipeline that's not closing. And just because you remove something out of your pipeline because it's stalling or not moving doesn't mean it's not an opportunity for the future. It's just not an opportunity right now, right? Right.
Speaker: Still a lead. But I also think when you have that pipeline and you have different stages within that pipeline, it's a good way to also train, like you said, your salespeople to know, okay, well, if a lot of your deals are getting stuck in negotiation stages or in what we've offered them stages or whatever it might be, maybe that's what we need to work on your negotiation or your messaging, whatever it might be, but it helps you identify where different sales reps might be struggling within different pipeline stages.
Speaker: Yeah. And since you brought up pipeline stages, let's put a plug in here for Aviante. One of the things that is so easy to do at Aviante is change the pipeline stages. So you can make that reflect your business. And that's a mistake that I see people do is they don't.
Speaker: Now, I'm not. saying you got to go crazy and put 15 stages in there, but it should reflect the way your people sell so that you know what's expected at every stage and your people should know what they're expected to do and what the exit criteria is for each of those stages. That was one of the things that I put in my deck at Aviante Connect was every stage of the pipeline should have an exit criteria.
Speaker: So you create a set of stages. Let's say have five or six, right? And when I've had a discovery conversation and the customer says, this is something we could use, doesn't mean that they're committing to an order, but they're like, yeah, this is something we could use. We could have another conversation.
Speaker: Great. Now I can move out of that discovery stage into my advocating stage or whatever you call that stage, the closing stage. So you've got to make sure that it aligns. I get so frustrated when I show up to a client and they're managing a spreadsheet because the Aviante pipeline doesn't match what they want. Just build it that way. Just spend a minute and build it. It doesn't even cost anything for crying out loud. Then make sure that the stages go in order. One of the things that I see in the field all the time is when we start doing a pipeline review, we'll see a person that shows up to a job site, let's call it three or four times. So they show up to a job site three or four times, and then all of a sudden there's a submittal for a quote, an unsigned quote is sent out. And I'm like, okay, well, well where's the in-between? Because there's probably two or three steps in between, like developing new contacts in the business or doing some sort of discovery.
Speaker: And what's happened is... They've compressed the process. The salesperson has deviated from the process. So they went from marketing and engagement to, boom, I'm actually going to propose a close. That's what sending a quote over is doing, is proposing a close.
Speaker: And then they're going to hope for the best. So the rest of the sales process is bunk now because we've already done step six in place of step two. I think that's a huge mistake people are doing in their pipeline.
Speaker: I've always thought that once you have the meeting, it's it's a prospect you're calling, hey, we have a need and I'm willing to meet with you. At that point, it's now an opportunity or should go into your sales pipeline and to your point, follow those.
Speaker: I had very similar ones. You know, it's the introduction, they're willing to meet with me. We're putting them in the pipeline. Then we develop some type of solution or proposal. Contracts and then fulfillment. And I know a lot of people listen have been in the case where they thought they had the business. They get the contract signed it's sitting in fulfillment may they either never get a job, never fill the job or... It just never turns into business, but being able to track that by stages is huge.
Speaker: Huge. as To your point earlier, it tells you where things fall off or where things get stuck. That's another mistake is leaders look at a pipeline and they don't know where things get stuck. And typically it's in the same area for that salesperson each time or a lot of times, not all the time.
Speaker: When you were speaking at Connect, you had talked about effort, engagement, and advancement. Yeah. I thought that was a really useful way to look at it. Maybe you could walk us through what those three mean and what should a sales leader really be looking for at each stage? So when I was putting the deck together for Connect, I was thinking about the real phases of a salesperson. So there's a whole lot of effort that goes into gathering leads, making contacts.
Speaker: So in Aviante, what we would do is we'd manage a contact and we put a bunch of activities against that contact. Well, that's all the efforts, right? We're trying to get engagement, but it's a bunch of efforts. So we're trying to figure out who those contacts are. Maybe you're using an Apollo, maybe using Zoom or RocketReach or any of those tools out there. But you're putting a lot of efforts and gathering information so that you can then engage with those folks.
Speaker: When we switch from effort to engagement, the difference is we have something for them or we believe that they need something from us. Either way is fine. But at the engagement stage, we're now trying to unpack the question of yes, no, not right now.
Speaker: So every deal, every contact, every company that you talk to, I think in my head, there's a flag. Yes, no, not right now. And so when I'm engaging them, I'm mining for that. So I might send them, i don't know, wage articles, or I might just...
Speaker: be persistent and make calls. And I might tell them about our process. I might say, Hey, we're a people focused company, whatever it is that I'm trying to get them to engage. I'm trying to figure out, do they have a need for us?
Speaker: And if the answer is yes, great. If the answer is no, they come off the list. If the answer is not right now, they go further downstream. And then that helps me with advancement. Because one of the things that salespeople tend to do is they confuse engagement and advancement, and they don't know when to push the buttons.
Speaker: There are some companies that if you just ask them, they would tell you, hey, we're not going to use you till the start of the year. We will use you, but we're not going to use you till the start of the year. Okay, cool. Now I know why that thing's not advancing because I had proper engagement with them. if I had that yes, no, not right now conversation.
Speaker: I can either pull it out of my opportunity pipeline or... I can just kick the can down the road with a new date, which is fine. So I can put a new close date on it for the start of the year. And I still have to touch them along that period of time, but I know how that thing's going to advance because of the type of engagement. So I just wanted to have a simple framework for salespeople to say, yes, there's an effort period where you're doing all this gathering. There's an engagement period where you're sparking interest and you're doing that rudimentary filter of yes, no, not right now.
Speaker: And then look at how are your deals moving? And if your deals aren't moving, then go back to engagement. And if you're not getting engagement, then go back to your effort. And everybody should know what company, where they sit in there, right? Yeah, absolutely. And these get blended all the time. We have sales leaders that accidentally blend this. So they'll say to their salespeople, they'll say,
Speaker: Hey, what do you have that's going to close in the next 30 days? But that salesperson is squarely in the effort stage. And so even if something closed, chances are it wasn't a result of that salesperson selling.
Speaker: It might've been luck in timing, which is fine. I'll take that kind of win all day long, but it's not a result of that salesperson's skill and knowledge. Right. So wanted to also touch on whether companies are getting enough out of their current ATS or CRM that they already have. So before somebody goes out and buys another tool, how much could most staffing firms probably get out of the ATS and CRM they already have?
Speaker: So short answer is no, they're not getting enough out of the AT-SCRM that they already have. But there's a couple reasons. One is knowledge. So I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation with someone who says, ah yeah, we're kind of using the Avante CRM. I don't know how great it is.
Speaker: And so then my radar goes up. well You don't know how great it is. Okay, cool. Well, what do you know about it? Like, how do you use it? Well, you know, there was a training class two years ago, but I didn't go. Okay. So let's just start there. And 80% of the time, the things that they thought the CRM wasn't capable of actually exists in there, or there's a way to get it done.
Speaker: They just didn't know. So much of it is a training issue. They just don't know. And they don't make the time into their schedule to learn. So you got to learn. And you can't just pass that off on your salesperson.
Speaker: If you're a sales leader, you've got to be the knowledgeable one to pass the information and coaching on to your salesperson. You can't expect your salesperson to call in for a help ticket or whatever. So you'll be training that stuff from Jump Street.
Speaker: The second thing is they don't know what they truly want their ATS or CRM to support. So they'll say things like, hey, I think we ought to move to HubSpot. Okay, tell me more. What are you doing right now that your current CRM doesn't support that you think you would get HubSpot?
Speaker: And they're all like, I don't know, but it's HubSpot looks cool. It's very user friendly. Okay, sure. So before you go writing off what your CRM can or can't do, you've got to know what your process is. Your system should be supporting your process.
Speaker: And if you're a company that's really focused on marketing automation, let's say, I'll use that because I know HubSpot's really good at marketing automation. Listen, Aviante can send emails right out of the CRM. You know how many people don't know that? A lot.
Speaker: Okay, so if your salespeople are the ones sending the emails and you don't have centralized marketing automation, then the Aviante CRM's probably fine. If you're going to do a thousand emails a day through some tool and you need HubSpot to manage it and lead score,
Speaker: okay, well, that's a different animal, but tell me that. Don't just tell me that you want to go to HubSpot because it's more user-friendly. Do you know what I'm saying Like yeah know what the deficiencies are, know what you're shopping for, and that'll help you decide what CRM you need, or even if the capabilities exist in the CRM that you have today. And most of the time, the system's good enough. We're just getting enamored with flashy lights and yeah the latest and greatest technology.
Speaker: For 80% of staffing sales, basic CRM, CRM 101 is good enough. So before you go lay it out six figures on a new technology tool, be careful, know what you actually need to get supported.
Speaker: I remember years ago talking to the sales forces and HubSpots and the Microsoft Dynamics and none of them at that time really played well with VMSs. So you had to purchase them and the integration at that to link them together. But then you have two systems.
Speaker: So which one do I put the data in? Which one is the system of truth? And to your point, after doing all that, we just simply asked the ATS we were using at the time, how can we best utilize this for our salespeople and sales processes? And I think that's the question that listeners should take away is go to your ATS and ask them, how can my salespeople be the most productive using your tool as a CRM? Totally. There's been a number of times where I've leaned on the Aviante team. I'm like, hey, my customer's doing this thing.
Speaker: How do we get it done? And they're like, oh yeah, that's easy. Click the thick and boom, it spits out. And I'm like, oh, well, okay. So we just had a knowledge issue. one other thing that I want to touch on here, Casey, about this, are they getting enough out of their ATS and CRM?
Speaker: You cannot underinvest in this stuff. And I think people underestimate the cost. So they hear things like they're going to try a new CRM or something, or they're trying to get a new tool like an Apollo or whatever.
Speaker: And they hear the seat license cost and they kind of waffle. They're like, yeah, all right, I guess we can swing 1500 a month or whatever the cost is. Listen, whatever you're told by a technology company, I would double it.
Speaker: I would double the cost. And that's just Mark's rule of thumb. There's no science behind that. But I do that because then it gives me a little bit of a buffer for things like integrations, add-ons, bells and whistles.
Speaker: Because what happens is, let's say I've got a client that's got Aviante and they're using HubSpot. Well, they bought the base model HubSpot. And so now they've paid for a CRM outside of Aviante and it still doesn't do what they want it to do because that's in the Cadillac package. They got themselves a Toyota Camry and they should have paid for the Cadillac package.
Speaker: So don't underinvest in these systems. Make sure you're really clear about what you want it to do so that whatever system you buy actually does it and budget it appropriately.
Speaker: This idea of, oh, we're going to grow into it is bunk. You'll do brand damage before you actually get it off the ground. So I want to also talk about when does another tool actually make sense? Because you've made the point that the first question shouldn't be, what technology do we need? It should be, what are we actually trying to do?
Speaker: Yeah, new technology makes sense when you're gonna create a process efficiency. So if you know what your process is and you've got that process measured and you see a way to make that process faster, better, or more productive, then explore technology to get that done.
Speaker: That makes total sense. That's when you should do it. So if you have a team of 25 salespeople out there on the street, and those 25 salespeople are spending X amount of time putting data in a system, let's say they put four hours a week measured time of putting data in a system, and you feel like, man, those four hours a week could be used for productivity. And there's a technology tool that could save me two of those hours.
Speaker: Great. Then start exploring and do a proof concept and start to look at that technology. That's a perfect use case. So efficiency is the first place. Process improvement for sure.
Speaker: The other thing is if it can help you engage with your customers better in the way that you choose to engage. So if technology will allow you to get more in-person meetings, if you're a people company, Or if technology will allow you to push better branding out there to build better relationships for your technology, then great. Then do that.
Speaker: When we talk about does technology actually make salespeople better? Most people know the answer to this, if you have some common sense, but if I give a salesperson ZoomInfo or Apollo, like you mentioned, or LinkedIn sales navigator, AI, and a sequencing tool tomorrow, does that actually make them better of sales or does it just make them faster at doing bad sales?
Speaker: It can do both. You know what makes them better is training. And I know I'm a training guy, so I'm going to say training. But what makes them better is actual training because training is tell me, show me, let me coach me. That's the training path. So I always say you can't learn how to make a grilled cheese without flipping a grilled cheese in the pan.
Speaker: You can watch a video on it. You can see someone else do it. You can look up what's the best cheese to use. And should I use mayo on the bread instead of butter? You can know all of that, but until you flip a burner on and put a grilled cheese in a pan yourself and get a feel for how it goes, it's never to click.
Speaker: And I feel like the same thing with these technology tools, we stop part way. So we do the tell me, show me part. We don't follow through with the let me coach me. And that's where people get better.
Speaker: So they get smarter with the tell me, show me, but it's the let me coach me. That's the flipping of the grilled cheese. You know what i'm saying? So if you're going to use these tools and you're going to make your people better, you have to follow through. You have to be with them on the follow through. You got to say, okay, here's the tool. Here's your list.
Speaker: Curate your list. Now make a hundred dials. You used to get one appointment for every hundred dials. so Let's see if you get two or three. If you do, then we'll know the technology is working, right? Then we'll see it. But you got to take it all the way through the process.
Speaker: hundred percent. You know how many grilled cheeses I've burnt till my wife coached me? Uh-huh. Yep. So I think the short answer is technology alone is not going to make people better. In fact, you run the risk of just confusing people or causing brand damage yourself because your folks are going to get list after list after list of people that they can just blindly send emails to, or they can just dial for dollars. And that could actually have a negative impact on your prospect list. So be careful with that. Make sure that you're getting the results that you want with the tools that you put in play.
Speaker: Follow through all the way from initiating that tool to using the tool to seeing the results of that tool. There's so much competition in those types of services. So many. You got shop around. They all have similar data.
Speaker: Now, I did want to talk about using technology to find a real person to call. And this is probably the part that I care about more than just getting somebody's contact info. Anybody can get a name, an email, or phone number now.
Speaker: How do you use technology to figure out who's actually worth calling and what the reason is to call them? Yeah. Let's say I've got Zoom info. I'm going to use the technology of ZoomInfo to curate a list around my ideal customer profile. So I'm going to take my ideal customer profile. I'm going find companies that look like that.
Speaker: Then I'm going to find buying roles in that organization that match how I sell. That's going to get me my list. Then I'm gonna look at, okay, based on what I know about this company and the fact that they're an ideal customer profile, what's the highest likelihood they would need us for?
Speaker: So that's my reason to call. That's where I'm starting to develop the reason to call based on my prior experience in that industry or prior experience in that niche or whatever. And then what I wanna do at that moment is get an agreement with leadership or sales manager to say, okay, this is what I think is a curated list. This is what I think it looks like. Here's what I'm thinking about using for a script. This is my step one, step two, step three. And by the way, you gotta get past step one. You gotta to have your first few steps mapped out because we already know it's gonna take more than one call to get people.
Speaker: So I want to get it mapped out, but I want to get it agreed upon with my sales manager. And you might be asking me, well, that seems clunky. Why would we involve the sales manager here? Because it's the sales manager's job to make sure that I, as a salesperson, don't spin my wheels, that I'm not going after something that we've already chased or that we know is going to be a dead end.
Speaker: I think about my early days in staffing. One of the things that I did accidentally, like my first month in staffing is I closed a hundred percent order at a call center. We were not equipped to service a call center.
Speaker: And had I known that, had I had that kind of coaching and guidance, I would have saved a ton of time and embarrassment and frustration on the customer's part. It was an abysmal failure. It was good learning and I never forgot it, but it could have been nipped in the bud at the moment we were building our list.
Speaker: So as far as finding a reason to call now, there's all kinds of tools out there that show buyer intent. So stuff like Apollo will show you buyer intent. It'll show you companies that are making Google searches about staffing, contingent help, workforce management, all of those things.
Speaker: You can use all of that to your advantage, but we all know the first call that you make has to be something that's providing some kind of help or offering something or giving something. Otherwise you're just going to sound like every other salesperson.
Speaker: So to boil down that question, use the technology to help build the list. Use the technology to help define who the buyers are within the organization. Use the technology to ensure that it matches your ideal customer profile. Get alignment with whoever your internal hierarchy is to ensure that that's the right list to chase.
Speaker: And then start to look at multiple calls around buyer intent and try to find reasons that they're sourcing staffing. I love that. And it leads into the next question because you can't talk about tech without talking about AI. I think AI could certainly help with some of those things that we just talked about there too.
Speaker: And there are a whole lot of ai tools being pushed at sales teams right now. What are you seeing salespeople using AI for today that you think is legitimately making them better? And on the other side, what are they using it for that could actually make them worse?
Speaker: So there are a number of tools out there that will record conversations like sales calls and they provide outstanding coaching. I mean, they really pick up on some great stuff. So I think that helps make salespeople better. I'm a fan of using tools to develop a transcript for meetings. Obviously you gotta to let your prospect know that you're doing that, that you're transcribing, but I use it for my own coaching all the time. I'm seeing nuggets of things that I can do better.
Speaker: or word fillers, or it monitors things like, do you talk too much? Are you asking enough questions? I think all of those things are great. And AI is awesome for that. AI is helping us build lists at a rapid clip. So it's helping us figure out who's where and who's doing what and who's using staffing and So all of that is great on some level. It's making our job a whole lot easier.
Speaker: It's given us insight into companies, nothing sacred anymore. We can find out anything about anybody. So that's great. Don't be a stalker, but that's still cool. Use that to your advantage. On the things that salespeople could be cautious of, AI runs the risk of making us dumber.
Speaker: i feel like some salespeople are disconnected from their own messaging. There's something about sitting down to an email and crafting that email for a specific person. Like I'm getting ready to just write a couple lines to Casey, put a little joke in there, or I might put something that was unique between the two of us. There's something about that that connects me to that moment.
Speaker: And AI strips us of that. So if you're the type that just has ai do your emails and then you're just sending them as written, that could actually make us worse because you've got no skin in the game. And I think a salesperson needs to have that palpable feeling like, man, I hope I get this. I really want this thing. I want them to respond. Will you get that? Because it's so personal to you. If you're letting AI do all that work for you, it's no longer personal to you. And you're like, oh, I'll check my email box later. Hopefully something shows up.
Speaker: Yeah. But I think there's also ways to have AI in those scenarios. If you have a call with someone and you run that transcript through AI and say, make sure I'm not forgetting anything on my follow-up here. Bullet out what I need to follow up with this person to help you at least generate a better email on your own.
Speaker: Yeah, I think those could be huge for people that need that type of help. And you already touched on that, but AI for like research and prospecting, think that's really from a sales perspective where people can really have an advantage by using AI. So using AI to look at a company What's going on there? They're hiring trends, any new locations they have, leadership changes, potential problems they have, labor demand indicators or active staffing signals.
Speaker: How much do you think that changes the way a good salesperson should prepare before they reach out? Yeah, I think AI helps us get really smart about what's happening behind a closed door.
Speaker: So that's cool. That's awesome. But isn't the magic of sales getting the door open? That's the magic. So get educated, use it to tip the scales in your favor. I always use the Hunger Games. you gotta tip the odds in your favor as a salesperson. You need all the advantages you can get.
Speaker: But you're still looking at a closed door. You're still sending emails into the void. You're still sending texts to who knows what. You've never met the person. There's no substitute in my mind for showed up at a networking event.
Speaker: Any town USA, any staffing company, any type of staffing, first question I'm going to ask as a new salesperson is, what type of networking are we involved in? Because you want to go where people are hanging out. And networking gives you at least a peek through the keyhole.
Speaker: You at least get to see what's inside the door because you're talking to people. You're getting a real conversation. Even if they're people that aren't going to buy from you, they're just giving you insight. They're being a little bit of an informant. It helps you get a better visual of what's on the other side of the door. And you couple that with AI and that's unstoppable. That's great. Now you can talk educated about what's going on in that company. You can see what's in the news. You can hear what they've done in the past.
Speaker: AI will give you props of things, good discussions to have with people of the right level. So you're ultimately prepared. You get all the tools in your tool belt and then you show up at some kind of networking event and that door cracks open for you a little bit. That's gold. That's great.
Speaker: My advice is just keep it in perspective. Keep the AI and research in perspective and know that it's not going to be a substitute for action. Networking will always be my number one. Nothing like getting in front of somebody face to face. And I think, yeah, you want to use AI to do some research, but there's a line between doing too much research and doing just enough research to sound different. That's something we came across on the Staffing Made Simple podcast talking to buyers is they really appreciated when somebody called them and had something unique to say about their business that they knew. They did the research and they were able to tell them something about their business.
Speaker: Just set them apart from the other people that called and were saying the same things. And when we talk about automating too much, there's another side to all of this. We can automate emails, LinkedIn, follow-ups, and let AI write the message. At what point do we just automate ourselves into? Sounding ex exactly you like everybody else.
Speaker: Yeah, it goes back to that first question. We're kind of coming back to where we started, the people process technology. If your whole thing is automating process, well, that's great. I don't know that you can automate too many processes. So that's awesome. If you're in the people side of things and you're automating to the point where it's separating you from your customer, then you've automated too much.
Speaker: So I don't know that there's a blanket answer. I think it depends on are you people process technology focused and align your level of automation to those three swim lanes.
Speaker: yeah And for sales leaders that are listening right now and coaching their people, if I'm sitting down with my team every week, what should we actually be talking about? What should I be coaching instead of just looking at all the calls and the emails and accounts and activity numbers?
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. First question of every sales leader. This is my dream. They walk into a branch or they pick up a phone. After you get past all the pleasantries or whatever, the first question is, what can I help you get across the line today? What can I help you close? That's the question.
Speaker: That's the goal, isn't it? At the end of the day, that's the whole thing is how can we realize some revenue? So if sales leaders started every conversation with that, it would really send a message that movement through the process is the important thing, not just activity. Even though we measure activity, movement of the process is the important thing.
Speaker: So if I were a sales leader, I would say, what can I help you close today? And then I would say, what's new? What have you brought into your pipeline that's new? Because you got to keep that pipeline full. So that way you're working both ends.
Speaker: I would then focus on sales process. So then if you've got time, dig in the sales process, pull up Abiyante, go into the system, pull up all your opportunities and just do a debrief on each opportunity and figure out where they are and what it's going to take to move them to the next phase.
Speaker: That's the best thing you can do as a sales leader. I agree. And as we bring it home here, i want to make this practical. So if I'm now running a staffing company, sales need to get better. i don't have a huge budget. I'm not buying six or more tools and I'm not hiring 10 more salespeople. What are a couple of things that you'd tell me to focus on first?
Speaker: Start with your sales process. Know what things are supposed to take, how much time. So if you start with the leads, make sure you have a lead process, a way for leads to get to you and to your salespeople. If you're focused on opportunities, then make sure you're doing pipeline reviews. Make sure that your opportunity flow matches your actual process.
Speaker: Use the system. Don't give up on the system. Even if you think the system's broken, next time you do a pipeline review, jump into the system and let the system help guide you through the pipeline review, because then you'll be able to say exactly how the system's broken or how it doesn't meet your needs or what it needs to be tuned up or how it needs to be configured.
Speaker: So use the system to help guide that conversation, but process is key. So focus on your sales process, know how long it should take you to close a deal. Make sure that you're using up-to-date lists and tactics and all that stuff. But really, it comes down to process. Focus on the process.
Speaker: For sure. Another insightful conversation with you Mark. I always enjoy sitting with you. Always learn something anytime we're together. I'm grateful to see you at the conferences and get to do this with you. So i appreciate you coming on here.
Speaker: For the listeners, though, that don't know who Mark Winter is yet, where can they connect with you? Where can they find out about you and WindSource Group? Yeah. So winsourcegroup.com is our website. Then I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, all the other social stuff.
Speaker: Make sure you check Mark out. Very respected in the industry. Always learn something from him. and This has been another episode of Aviante Digital Edge. Thanks to Mark Winner for joining us and thank you to everyone for listening.
Speaker: If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you'd like to learn more about Aviante and how our all-in-one staffing platform can help your business grow,
Speaker: visit aviante.com. I'm Casey Wagonfield. Thanks for listening. And until next time.
