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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 Oct 30, 2023
Monday Oct 30, 2023
When David Cady, Chief Revenue Officer of Virtuous, made a career jump from teaching high school English to sales, he carried with him a perspective that sales is a teaching role. He's discovered that stepping back and really understanding customers' needs, especially when introducing transformative CRM technology, is what creates successful sales. It's a lesson that he, a former teacher, is keen to impart.
But David's wisdom doesn't stop at the sales strategy. He also has a unique viewpoint on leadership, one that emphasizes self-accountability, motivation, and continuous growth. He shares how he managed to find the right balance between his roles as a teacher and a results-driver, and how these experiences have shaped his approach to nurturing future leaders. Interestingly, David has developed a healthy detachment from results, choosing to concentrate more on the process with a goal to improve by 1% each day.
In our conversation, David opens up about the challenges he's faced in his leadership journey, including a heavily personal experience of a sales role loss. This sobering experience reshaped his perspective on the importance of staying committed to the process, not just chasing outcomes. Shifting gears, we delve into the nonprofit sector to discuss the significance of building strong donor relationships, the struggles of donor retention, and the role of understanding donors’ motivations. David's insights, particularly on how technology like a good CRM can help enhance generosity, is bound to be of value to anyone interested in the nonprofit sector, leadership, or sales strategy.
David is the CRO at Virtuous, a CRM, Marketing and Online Giving platform designed to reimagine generosity in the nonprofit space. David has spent the last 17 years leading teams at some of the best tech companies in the world and the last 7 years building the GTM motion at Virtuous including Sales, Marketing, Partnerships and Revenue Operations. David’s all about building, creating, and helping others along the way. You’ll generally find him kicking back in sunny Arizona with his wife and trio of awesome kids, hunting down the next great foodie spot, or soaking up some outdoor time in every spare moment he gets.
Quotes:
"I think there's this idea of opportunistic, risk taking and calculated risk. I think that is number one. It's sort of born out of this maybe opportunistic or altruistic belief that you can continue to do more and believe that more is possible with effort and input and sort of you always have more to learn."
"Sales and deals are generally not closed in one day, especially CRM sales. We're many times selling transformation, right? This is a large transformation. I always joke it's open heart surgery that we sell and you have to deeply understand their why."
"The biggest thing that I love is helping people see things in themselves they didn't see possible. That's the biggest joy for me in leadership.”
"My success will always be defined by how I work and what I do, and not necessarily the scoreboard, which is hard, right, because that's not always what you're taught in a go to market or sales environment."
"Sales is sometimes looked at as a four letter word. It requires people to believe that we're playing the game on hard mode. Doing sales the easy way is cutting corners as shortcuts as things that doesn't serve customers. So not everyone can actually do it, but done the right way, all we're doing is bringing customers close to a solution or outcome that they're already expressing they need."
Links:
David Cady LinkedIn
Virtuous LinkedIn
Virtuous Website
Get this episode and all other episodes of Sales Lead Dog at https://www.empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog
Monday Oct 23, 2023
Monday Oct 23, 2023
What if you had a roadmap to guide you through the intricate maze of sales, leadership, and business growth? How about if you could get that advice straight from a top industry expert? That's exactly what you'll get from our conversation with Bob Poznanovich, Chief Business Growth Officer at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Bob reveals the secrets of his success, blending ambition and sales acumen with a deep understanding of customer psychology. It's a compelling story of metamorphosis, from his role as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development to a leader who shapes organic growth and sees challenges as entrepreneurial opportunities.
Transitioning from salesperson to sales manager and eventually, a leader, isn't a stroll in the park. This week, we unlock the strategies that helped Bob successfully navigate this journey. Sharing his experience in anticipating market trends and implementing creative go-to-market strategies, Bob gives listeners invaluable insights on maximizing current capacity, while also exploring new revenue opportunities. He also candidly discusses the challenges of aligning an organization and cultivating a growth mindset, with plenty of practical tips on how to transform strategic goals into actionable successes.
The final segment brings a riveting discussion on healthcare innovation. Bob delves into his experience of product development from the PC era to the launch of a virtual care product in 2020. He gives a glimpse into the future as he talks about his collaboration with Apple, the potential of AI and wearables in healthcare, and how patient feedback can shape better outcomes. With his deep understanding of customer needs and strategies to overcome their resistance to change, it's a goldmine of knowledge for anyone interested in sales, business growth, and healthcare innovation. Join us this week for an episode packed with professional insights, personal experiences, and inspiring leadership lessons.
As the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation's chief business growth officer, Bob Poznanovich is responsible for bridging the gap between product development, marketing and sales to help the nonprofit reach more people with its lifesaving substance use and mental health care and resources. Prior to joining Hazelden Betty Ford, Poznanovich co-founded and served as the CEO of AiR Healthcare—a behavioral health organization that provides solutions to individuals, families and employers dealing with behavioral health issues. Before that, he spent over 20 years as a senior business development executive in the technology industry. He is co-author of the Hazelden Publishing title, It Is Not Okay to be a Cannibal: How to Stop Addiction from Eating Your Family Alive.
Quotes:
"I've done a lot of work not only perfecting the sales perspective, but also the buying perspective"
"Not many people talk about selling as a buyer, as opposed to selling as a salesman… there is there is a psychological buying process that people go through when they're making a decision."
"I think if you look at that way to being innovative in the area of growth, of selling to more, which is looking at products and services that we don't have. So part of this vision was that we've got to create x number of millions of dollars in growth over the next year for products and services that don't exist while we're also selling and maximizing the capacity of what we currently have and then looking for ways to get more value so we could sell for more."
"And when you go to customer one, he goes, I got this problem. Go to customer two, I say, I got this problem. I could say to customer two, what about customer one's example, right? Do you have that problem, too, right? Now, when I go to see a third guy, I got three problems tee up, right, his plus the previous two. And I could start this dialogue where I get smarter in every sales call I get to see that the patterns and opportunities exist."
"I think in any sales job, no matter what you're selling, your biggest competitor is always willingness to change."
"We need to invest in more personalization of healthcare. So the tools that allow us to personalize care, to personalize the initiative, to deliver care personalized, to use real feedback from wearables, I think, is the next area, I think, to get past some of this denial."
Links:
LinkedIn
Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation’s LinkedIn
Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation
Monday Oct 16, 2023
Monday Oct 16, 2023
One of Chris’ favorite things about hosting the Sales Lead Dog Podcast is the opportunity to listen to guests like Gale Crosley. Gale is a very experienced sales leader, and in this episode we focus on driving strategic growth and the many of the aspects of leadership that are required.
Gale Crosley, CPA, CGMA is a strategic revenue growth consultant, who has helped almost 500 accounting firms worldwide over the past 20+ years to achieve profitable, sustainable organic growth. Early in her career she spent several years in technology at IBM and tech start-ups, after beginning her journey as an auditor at Arthur Andersen and PwC.
She has been selected one of the Most Recommended Consultants in Inside Public Accounting’s Best of the Best for 16 years, and one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today for 16 years.
She brings all her experiences to the current transformation facing the accounting profession.
Links:
LinkedIn: Gale (Gunderson) Crosley, CPA, CGMA
LinkedIn: Crosley+Company
Website: Crosley and Company (crosleycompany.com
Get this episode and all other episodes of Sales Lead Dog at https://www.empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog
Monday Oct 09, 2023
Monday Oct 09, 2023
On this episode, marketing expert Russell Lundstom joins Sales Lead Dog to discuss the necessity of fully integrating the marketing and sales processes inside your business. Russell shares advice on first, tracking your company’s data, then second, diagnosing where issues within your sales process might lie. After that, Russell provides insight on fine tuning your business’ strategies, wherever the problem lies, to better fit the needs of your clientele.
Russell Lundstrom is a born and bred entrepreneur. Having started multiple 7-figure businesses, and helping hundreds of other businesses repeat that success, he is now on a mission to simplify the world of marketing. Passionate that entrepreneurs are the mind, heart, and engine of the world, he is driven to improve the world through better business.
After 35+ years on the front lines of marketing, Russell created the step-by-step marketing framework called the Marketing Plan Formula. This simple 5 step process reveals the most profitable marketing strategies through reverse engineering the unique keys to success already contained within your business.
Russell is now on a mission to teach this process to every entrepreneur on the planet.
Quotes:
“99% of your marketing problems have nothing to do with marketing. It's really you don't know your numbers.”
“That's one of the biggest problems I don't see is the integration of the marketing people all the way through to the sale.”
“If I'm tightly integrated with my salespeople, they can make my job 1000 times easier just by asking those two questions. What's the problem, and where do you go to solve it?”
Links:
Marketing Plan Formula Website
Marketing Plan Formula Free Sales Lead Dog Marketing Workshop
#salesleaddog #marketing #sales #leads #conversion #engagement
Monday Aug 21, 2023
Monday Aug 21, 2023
In this episode of Sales Lead Dog, Jeremy Painkin joins Chris to talk about being a people-centric sales leader, the power of grit in a salesperson, and how Jeremy builds his sales team around diversity and a few core attributes. Jeremy also discusses leveraging CRM as a tool to help the sales team achieve their “why” of why they do what they do.
Jeremy Painkin is an accomplished professional with a versatile skill set and a proven track record of success in the corporate world. With a background in business strategy, Jeremy has consistently demonstrated his expertise in driving growth, optimizing operations, and achieving business objectives.
Throughout his career, Jeremy has held key leadership roles in prestigious organizations, where he has leveraged his exceptional analytical abilities to identify and seize opportunities for improvement. Through his strategic vision, he has guided teams towards setting and surpassing ambitious goals, resulting in significant revenue growth and increased market share.
Jeremy's strong leadership skills and collaborative approach have made him a trusted advisor among his peers and colleagues. Recognized for his ability to motivate and inspire others, he has successfully fostered a culture of innovation and excellence within the teams he has managed. His natural talent for building and maintaining relationships, both within and outside of the organization, has been instrumental in creating long-lasting partnerships and driving business success.
As a passionate advocate for social impact, Jeremy also lends his expertise to various philanthropic initiatives, where he actively contributes to creating positive change in his community. He strongly believes in the power of business to drive positive social and environmental outcomes and actively seeks opportunities to align his work with his principles.
With his diverse skill set, leadership acumen, and commitment to excellence, Jeremy Painkin is a valued professional who consistently delivers results and adds value to any organization of which he's a part.
Quotes:
“I learned really early on that you got to be people focused, because you can't do it yourself.”
“Be willing to have those tough conversations and tell people you know the good and the bad, and I think you want that in return. I want that just as much as they want to receive that.”
“Selling to me is just people. It's understanding people that have problems with pain, and helping them solve it.”
On being a sales leader, “We should get behind that and support people in whatever it takes to get them what they want. Because ultimately, it's not your why it's their why. Why are they doing it? No one cares why I'm doing it. They care why they're doing it. But looking for those leaders, I definitely learned to probably be more people centric, and less, less stick.”
“The more diverse of a team you have, the more difference of opinions that you have and the more differing viewpoints that you have, which only help make you more successful because it diversifies your entire team.”
“What people are looking for is a team”
Links:
Jeremy Painkin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremypainkin/
Community Brands: https://www.communitybrands.com/
#sales #podcast #salesleaddog #leadership #salesleaddog #teambuilding
Monday Aug 14, 2023
Monday Aug 14, 2023
Chief Revenue Officer Bradley Pierce of Guardspace joins the pack to talk about mobile app security and his career path to where he is now. Bradley also discusses the role of interpersonal relationships and mentorship in guiding career paths, how resilience can help us cope with the challenges and transformations we encounter, and his strategies around building a team as a sales leader.
Bradley is currently the CRO at Guardsquare, the leader in mobile application protection.
He has held several senior leadership positions and has over 25 years of experience building and scaling high-performance teams, driving revenue growth, and creating value for customers and investors across various domains, such as risk management, compliance, cloud, and AI.
Quotes:
“Never be too full of yourself. I mean, I'm a CRO, and they're people that look at me and say, Well, you're a CRO, you've achieved, but I have so much more to learn and to gain. And I would say continue to be inquisitive, right? It's the people who are 80 years old and go run marathons. It's the people that learn and pick a painting. It's the people that decide to go take a trip to places unknown. Once you stop learning...you're in trouble.”
“One, it's about alignment. And I can't answer that for you. I can say what we can offer. I can say what we can do, I can give you, I've offered to give people references, people who used to work for me so it's not, you know, we always ask when we're interviewing, "’ want your references.’ I say ‘Here's, here's people who've worked for me, individual contributor roles. Here's other people, reach out to them, find out who I am. Do you think you can work with me?’”
“If you just take a pause back, you recognize that everyone's human, you recognize that really, for the most part, people come from place of good, and ultimately it's not about you.”
Links:
Bradley Paster | LinkedIn
Guardsquare: Overview | LinkedIn
Leader In Mobile App Security | Guardsquare
Empellor CRM
Sales Lead Dog Podcast
Empellor CRM LinkedIn
#sales #podcast #change #salesleaddog #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #interviewing #recruitment
Monday Jul 17, 2023
Monday Jul 17, 2023
Interested in learning about AI generated synthetic data, leadership development, and sales as an interdisciplinary process across your company’s teams? In this episode, Mike Eckhoff, Chief Revenue Officer at AI MOSTLY, joins Sales Lead Dog to share his expertise on these topics and more. Mike and Christopher also discuss what makes a CRM tool effective and successful and the importance of honesty in sales.
Mike leads sales, customer experience and revenue growth for MOSTLY AI, the leader in Generative AI Synthetic Data. Most recently, Mike led sales for Armory, the first Continuous Delivery platform built on open source software developed by Netflix and Google. He has over 20 years of experience leading enterprise sales with CA, HP Software, Tricentis and others. Mike specializes in building scalable sales teams to deliver consistent revenue growth through repeatable sales motions.
Quotes:
“We've got to be generous with our time, and that's the most valuable resource that a sales rep has is their time. So deciding where and when to spend your time is probably the hardest part of the job today.”
“It's not something you can tell someone that you're honest, you have to show it.”
“CRM has to be a value add for the frontline sales rep. And for the frontline sales manager, if CRM is a task, you know, I've had places where you had to put a calendar entry to update your CRM once a week. If that's the case, then you might as well throw it away, because it's not serving the purpose.”
“The entire business is sales. And if we aren't able to deliver results, you know, with accuracy in a predictable manner, it affects the entire business. And so I always want to include those other groups into the sales process”
Links:
mike.eckhoff@mostly.ai
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeleckhoff/
https://mostly.ai/
Empellor CRM
Sales Lead Dog Podcast
Empellor CRM LinkedIn
#sales #podcast #change #salesleaddog #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #marketing
Monday Apr 24, 2023
Monday Apr 24, 2023
Today, Mark joins Sales Lead Dog for a second time to talk about his recent book, "Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy."
Before the Covid pandemic, Mark predicted that the final frontier of marketing is community, and now, post-pandemic and in our current world, building community has become even more essential. In today’s episode, Mark speaks about how to build authentic communities by examining your company’s culture and community leadership. Join us to learn about community, the last great marketing strategy.
Mark W. Schaefer is a globally-recognized author, keynote speaker, futurist, and business consultant who blogs at {grow} — one of the top five marketing blogs of the world. He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University and has written 10 best-selling books. Mark’s new book Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy describes an essential new path to connect to customers in the modern digital world. His many global clients include Pfizer, Cisco, Dell, Adidas, and the US Air Force. He has been a keynote speaker at prestigious events all over the world, including SXSW, Marketing Summit Tokyo, and the Institute for International and European Affairs. Mark has appeared as a guest on media channels such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CBS News.
Quotes:
“Put down your algorithms for a minute, put down your automation for a minute. And let's look at what human beings really want. Let's remind ourselves what marketing and sales are supposed to do. And one of the chapters was about belonging and community. When I finished writing the book, I thought, that is the most important chapter in the book, that is the future of marketing. When all this other spammy stuff starts to fade away, we're still going to have each other, we're still going to have community. And that's what's that's really going to be the future.” (2:00-2:36)
“This book is about creating community or considering community, because it is the greatest overlooked sales and marketing opportunity in the history of sales and marketing opportunities.” (4:20-4:33)
“Most communities fail. And the reason that they fail, the number one reason that they fail, is because they're designed to sell things.” (10:47-10:59)
“What can you do in this world, as a company, that you could do better? If you had customers along the ride with you? What do you want to be known for 10 years from now? What's your legacy? What would happen if we brought our customers along with us and actually let them lead the thing? That's where the magic starts to happen.” (12:09-12:31)
“The very first question you have to ask is, do we have a culture that can sustain this?” (21:21-21;27)
“Community is an implied social contract. What other marketing or sales promotion do we have that's an implied social contract? There isn't one.” (21:49-22:02)
Links:
Mark Schaefer: LinkedIn
Business Grow Website
Amazon: “Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy”
Empellor CRM
Sales Lead Dog Podcast
Empellor CRM LinkedIn
#sales #podcast #change #salesleaddog #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #marketing #Belongingtothebrand #community
Monday Apr 17, 2023
Monday Apr 17, 2023
Monday Apr 10, 2023
Monday Apr 10, 2023
In today’s episode, Simon breaks down how sales leaders can increase their market relevance in the context of today’s economy and ever-changing technologies. Simon also examines what it means for salespeople to be the educators of their companies and how salespeople can learn from other teams in their companies, creating a company culture of shared leadership and responsibility.
Simon Severino helps agency owners automate 85% of their B2B sales. He is the CEO of Strategy Sprints and Host of the top 2.5% podcast called "Strategy Sprints." He created the Strategy Sprints™ Method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting owners out of the weeds. Simon teaches Certified Strategy Sprints™ Coaches to scale agencies via better systems. As a member of SVBS (Silicon Valley Blockchain Society) he enables cross-stage capital flows and helps minimize execution risks in tech scale-ups. His team is trusted by Google, Consilience Ventures, BMW, Roche, Amgen, AbbVie, and hundreds of frontier teams. He is a TEDx speaker and has appeared on over 800 podcasts. He writes for Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine about scaling digital agencies.
Quotes:
- “And we are right now in the time where we need to adapt quickly. We need to learn quickly, adapt quickly in iterations. So how do you organize as a sales leader? Your department, being it five people or 1700 people, the concept is the same. You want to have a daily habit, a weekly habit, and a monthly habit in your team. And that is what I call sales leadership.” (6:45-7:11)
- “And then operations, this is really where the magic happens because you know the first sales is done by the sales team, but the second is done by the operations team when you keep people, when you retain them, upsell and cross-sell them.” (13:54-14:07)
- “Leadership starts with the tough conversations, because every other conversation, everybody can have that.” (25:00-25:07)
Links
Strategy Sprints Website
Simon Severino’s LinkedIn
“Strategy Sprints” book on Amazon
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Twitter