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"Unless you are the lead dog, your view never changes." On the Sales Lead Dog podcast, CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith talks with exceptional sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest and achieved a sales leadership role in their organization. Hear what they did to become the alpha, lead their pack, and how they leverage CRM technology to drive sales for their organization. If your goal is to rise higher in your sales career or you currently are the alpha, this podcast gives you useful insight on how the best-of-the-best achieve success with their team and CRM technology.
Episodes
Monday Aug 29, 2022
Monday Aug 29, 2022
On Today’s episode we have Matt Paige, VP of Marketing & Strategy for HatchWorks. HatchWorks is award-winning firm specializing in software development and cloud application services.
This week’s episode is a little different from what we’ve normally done. Matt talks about the importance of sales and marketing teams working together and why simplifying your customer’s experience and becoming one with your customer can only be done when you utilize both your sales team’s input and your marketing team’s expertise.
Tune into this week’s episode to hear from Matt Paige, VP of Marketing & Strategy for HatchWorks to hear about the marketing side of things and why collaboration and teamwork is so vital to a company’s success.
Quotes:
- “Take it from somebody that gets ‘pitch-slapped’ a lot, you know, where you just get the cold pitch, don't do it, build the relationship first, offer up some value.” (5:00-5:10)
- “There's a lot of cues, customers will give you that you may not pick up at first. But if you start to have a keen ear for things, there's opportunity that are there for the taking, if you just listen.” (11:47-12:02)
- “I like the 80:20 rule, like give me 80% of value, content, your perspective, the pain you've experienced, and maybe sprinkle in about 20% of patchworks.” (23:30-23:40)
Links:
Monday Aug 22, 2022
Monday Aug 22, 2022
This week’s guest is Christopher Croner, Principal for SalesDrive, LLC, a company dedicated to helping businesses perfect their salesperson hiring process by offering a variety of tools. One of the tools being, Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again, a book co-authored by Christopher.
His passion for trying to understand the psyche of the highest performer started in college as a PhD student studying psychology and specifically when he created his own internship tailored to delivering psychological consultations to business management. Fast forward to present day and SalesDrive is helping businesses find the best sales hunters based on 3 non-teachable personality traits: Need for achievement, competitiveness, and optimism.
Tune in to today’s episode to hear from Christopher Croner, Principal for SalesDrive, about why you might be hiring the wrong salesperson for your team and why it’s important to look for these 3 non-teachable traits.
Quotes:
- “We set out to understand well, what is it then that truly differentiates the highest performing hunters, and we found there really these three non-teachable characteristics.” (1:24-1:32)
- “…Number one, the need for achievement, the person who wants to do well, simply for the sake of doing well. The second trait is competitiveness. Then the third piece we look at is optimism and that's of course the person who is certain that they will succeed.” (1:33-2:19)
- “He allowed me to develop my own internship or my own rotation on an internship in delivering psychological consultation to business management.” (3:32-3:39)
- “You have to adjust and you have to find out so much more about the person and what's going on underneath the surface for that individual.” (9:33-9:39)
Links:
Dr. Christopher Croner LinkedIn
Monday Aug 15, 2022
Monday Aug 15, 2022
David Schlosberg is a business advisor for Ferguson Alliance and an independent sales & business consultant for farming and horticulture industries. He has demonstrated excellent leadership in selecting, training, building, directing and retaining effective sales teams and technical teams that meet or exceeded company goals.
David’s passion is helping smaller businesses grow to their fullest potential by getting them to step back, look at their business strategically and understand when they’re just too deep in it. In today’s episode David breaks down his unlikely transition into his sales career and how he’s made a vocation out of solving companies pain points in order for them to keep scaling at the rate they want to.
Tune into today’s episode to hear from David Schlosberg, business and sales advisor for Ferguson Alliance and learn how he’s solving small businesses’ problems.
Quotes:
- “The owner of the company said, I need you to actually sell and I was mortified. I had no aspirations to be in sales.” (2:57-3:07)
- "Do more listening, stop talking, and ask questions and find areas where you have a common interest or common ground where you can actually connect with that person on a personal level” (4:56-5:12)
- “It's usually pain and realization or recognition that they've got too much on their plate, and they're not able to step back and look at the business strategically- they're just too deep in it.” (7:30-7:40)
Links:
Monday Aug 08, 2022
Monday Aug 08, 2022
Kay Miller graduated from college with a degree in marketing only to find herself more prepared for a career in sales. Fast forward and she’s landed in a sales job as the first women ever hired by Amerock. She ends up excelling in her field as one of the top salespeople in a male dominated career.
On today’s episode, Kay walks us through her career journey and how she inevitably ended up writing one of the top selling sales books on Amazon, Uncopyable Sales Secrets. Her inspiring story of tenacity and hard work is worth a listen for anyone wondering what it takes to write a book and be the best in their field.
Tune into today’s episode, to learn from Kay Miller, author of Uncopyable Sales Secrets and walk away with a knowledge of how to make more sales and build an advantage over your competition.
Quotes:
- “I ended up landing a sales job as the first woman ever hired for a company called Amerok.” (1:16-1:24)
- “I think that one of my answers, probably the biggest answer is that I've heard it said that this is the most fun sales book you'll ever read.” (6:09-6:19)
- “They said, if a client or customer of yours or prospect would describe you, what three words would they say about you that they couldn't say about anyone else? And I have those three words: moose, uncopyable and orange.” (14:23-14:40)
- “Especially when you're negotiating when you're giving someone time to think about it- don't be afraid of silence.” (29:09-29:15)
Links:
Monday Aug 01, 2022
Monday Aug 01, 2022
Today’s guest on the show is Yair Areli, the VP of Global Sales for DataRails a financial planning and analysis platform that automates financial reporting and planning. Yair relocated to New York City from Israel and took on a leadership role in sales. Between the cultural gap and the new responsibility in his company Yair had much to learn and many hurdles to overcome.
His experience has led him to live by 3 pillars- 1. Innovation 2. Discipline and 3. Coachability. His view on coachability is a great example of what being a true leader in sales means, “if somebody gives me feedback, I coach myself to take a deep breath, not resist it and ask questions- let the rational side of my brain kick back in.”
Tune in to today’s episode to hear how Yair Areli, VP of Global Sales for DataRails took his coachable moments and learned from them in order to be a more humble, effective leader.
Quotes:
- “Now we have a great solution that solves that problem. So, I really, really feel the pain that our customers are feeling and I'm glad to see that we solve it for them.” (1:42-1:49)
- “One of the things that worked for me is persistence, I outwork others and when everyone else gets tired, I know that it's my time to shine.” (4:31-4:37)
- “So if somebody gives me feedback, I coach myself to take a deep breath, not resist it and ask full of questions, let the rational side of my brain kick back in.” (5:27-5:35)
- “I realized that nobody will take feedback from you if you're not demonstrating, you don't lead by example.” (7:39-7:46)
- “He says, you may report up to me all of you, but I work for you. I have no work to do, but enabling you, that's my job.” (18:33-18:40)
Links:
Monday Jul 25, 2022
Monday Jul 25, 2022
Gene Villeneuve is a software executive with over 25 years of experience running small to large teams at Tehama, Cognos, OLAP@Work, and IBM. Coaching, mentoring, endurance sports, and business are his passions.
Gene is semi-retired and now offers advising or mentoring engagements with individuals or team. His passion for cycling has kept him levelheaded throughout his career and now offers more fulfillment now that he has more time to do the things he loves.
Tune in to today’s episode to learn about the risks that paid off and the discipline that has led Gene Villeneuve to be successful and now semi-retired and living his life to the fullest.
Quotes:
- “That's how I got into cycling, that's always been a core aspect of my personality. Not only is it a way to de stress after a long day, but it just becomes something else, in addition to family and in addition to work, and it is something else, that's your own.” (2:16-2:43)
- “I think when it comes to the professional sort of things, it's always, the curiosity, the willingness to take risks and the third one is always be driven to help others be successful as well.” (6:40-6:57)
- “Where I became unique and different is, is that I became an enabler for those sellers. I would have people telling me you're actually on the phone or in people's offices trying to get those issues resolved within IBM, and other sales leaders didn't actually do that for us.” (14:38-15:18)
Links:
Monday Jul 18, 2022
Monday Jul 18, 2022
Amy Walther is the Vice President of Sales and Business Development for Westell, a leading provider of high-performance wireless infrastructure solutions focused on innovation and differentiation at the edge of communication networks where end users connect.
On today’s episode, Amy brings us through her career journey that led her to sales and how maybe an unconventional job as a professional cheerleader prepared her for her role as a sales leader. Amy touches on the challenges of being in sales as a woman and why it’s so important to hire self-starters and go getters.
Tune in to the episode to hear from Amy Walther, VP of Sales and Business Development to become inspired to keep pushing towards your goals and stay engaged no matter life’s challenges.
Quotes:
- “I came from a not so well to do area, and my mother was very ill as a child. So, I had to take care of her when I was little, and I always knew that I didn't want to struggle, and I wouldn't mind to have some money.” (3:04-3:22)
- “I started cheerleading as an older person for a professional NFL team. But the one thing I want to say is that, if you can do that in front of 80,000 people, you literally could do anything.” (11:09-12:06)
- “As a female, things are different. It's still not easy, right? I would get bypassed by people- didn't matter if I was better at it, it did not matter.” (14:16-14:32)
- “I really want to make sure that I don't have to tell anybody, anything twice. So, when I am trying to find those people, you know, there's a lot of questions that I ask to try to extract from them to see, you know, how they live their life and how they would work?” (20:33-20:51)
Links:
Monday Jun 13, 2022
Monday Jun 13, 2022
Jamie Shanks is the CEO of Pipeline Signals- a business built on making life easier for their clients. Based out of Toronto, Canada, Pipeline Signals does account monitoring, as well as map total addressable markets. This gives their clients valuable insights on where they can expand their pipeline, existing networks they can leverage, and other verticals that they can tap into.
On today’s episode, Jamie takes us through successes and failures that landed him in his role as Chief Executive Officer for a data mining company. Initially, he quit his job as VP of Sales of a SAS software company to start his own sales consultancy business, which he admits failed miserably but from his initial research an idea was born.
Tune into this week’s episode with Jamie Shanks, CEO of Pipeline Sales to hear why striking out on your own can lead to great things with unexpected outcomes.
Quotes:
- “At the ripe age of 30 I thought I knew everything there was to know about sales, and I decided I was going to quit my job and start a sales consultancy, which over the next two years failed miserably.” (1:10-1:22)
- “In the pain of trying to build pipeline for myself, I ultimately had to self-discover a new way.” (1:23-1:32)
- “Along that journey sellers would ask me, you're teaching me to mine intelligent sales intelligence out of LinkedIn, why don't you just do this for me?” (2:52-3:01)
- “It's kind of crazy that you ask your sellers to be researchers, so that's the problem we're solving.” (6:22-6:28)
Links:
Monday Jun 06, 2022
Monday Jun 06, 2022
Donna Serdula pioneered the concept of LinkedIn profile optimization, realizing early on that the LinkedIn profile was so much more than just an online resume. A job change in 2006 led her back to LinkedIn as Donna looked for tools to help her build a sales territory. It was during this time she had her LinkedIn epiphany and forged her LinkedIn 4 point methodology. By integrating LinkedIn into her sales process, she found tremendous success.
In 2009, she walked away from her successful sales career and founded Vision Board Media and LinkedIn-Makeover.com. Donna and her team of over 40 writers have helped thousands of executives, entrepreneurs, sales stars, business leaders, and professionals from around the world create professionally branded LinkedIn profiles.
She is the author of the book "LinkedIn Profile Optimization For Dummies," published by Wiley. Donna has been featured on Forbes, Business Insider, Time's Money Section, Wall Street Journal's Market Watch, LA Times, NBC, SiriusXM Radio's The Focus Group, and many other news outlets.
Tune into this episode to hear why LinkedIn Optimization is the key to your success and why Donna Serdula has built her career on leveraging this search engine to help her clients put their best foot forward.
Quotes:
- “I remember looking at it and thinking, this looks a lot like my resume. Let me let me pull up my old out of date, boring resume. Let me just copy and paste these fields right in” (3:07-3:22)
- “We've got to really start utilizing it in a smart, strategic way and at that point I started my company.” (8:22-8:30)
- “Why would I want to go to a place where people are trying to escape?” (12:17-12:19)
- “When a person looks at your LinkedIn profile and it says this person doesn't have any activity for the last 90 days… people like to do business with sales professionals that have a strong brand.” (14:57-15:20)
Links:
Donna's IG: Donna Serdula (@donnaserdula)
Monday May 23, 2022
Monday May 23, 2022
Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School. He has designed and delivered learning programs in areas such as innovation, talent and performance management, strategy, marketing, sales, leadership skills, and managing change. He has also consulted to companies in consumer goods, information technology, professional services, retailing, telecommunications, and financial services; and has been a Board member of start-up firms, corporations, private-equity companies, and the Education for Employment Foundation.
Frank has also written for numerous publications, but on today's episode we’re talking about his most recent book, Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing. One of his former students said this about the book, ‘It is structured logically, easy to read, and clear. It’s worthy of being a desk reference for any owner or senior executive looking to maximize their sales performance."
Tune into today’s episode to learn about the extensive research Frank Cespedes has done in order to write his most recent book and pick up a copy if you would like to get expert insight on sales management that will work for you and your team!
Quotes:
- “I think it's a book that will help salespeople sell better, it will help sales managers allocate their resources more effectively.” (1:35-1:46)
- “If you look at the amount of money they spend annually on sales, hiring, training, development, etc., that number is often as big or bigger than their biggest capex projects. But it typically gets much less rigorous attention than buying software does.” (7:53-8:11)
- “The job of a manager is not to test people, the job is productivity, and maximizing time, to productivity. All of that is what onboarding is about, in my view.” (13:23-13:35)
Links:
Harvard Business School LinkedIn