25.1K
Downloads
136
Episodes
”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 Sep 19, 2022
Monday Sep 19, 2022
This week’s guest is Ruby Raley, VP of Sales for Axway working in their Healthcare and Life Sciences division. Axway gives heritage IT infrastructure new life, helping more than 11,000 customers worldwide build on what they already have to digitally transform, add new business capabilities, and drive growth.
Ruby is a healthcare sales leader creating value for customers and building long-term relationships. Her work in API and digital transformation allows companies to meet their goals year after year. Now that she is running a sales team her insight on getting to her position has shown her that not everything that brought her to that seat will help take her to the next level.
Tune into this week’s episode with Ruby Raley, VP of Sales for Axway, and hear why with every seat you move in your career, you must be prepared to leave behind the things that won’t take you to that next level.
Quotes:
- “I like to say if you think about it in history, when it was sailing around the world and trading, people would take letters with them and the letters would say, hey, I'm a real person, I have a real account at a bank, I am good for this amount of money.” (3:21-3:34)
- “I think all technologists have to adopt a lifelong learning mantra. But to me, I read constantly, I try to absorb as much as I can, and I read about a variety of things.” (5:22-5:35)
- “Be careful not to oversell- I like to create and envision and you can get too far ahead of your product team and too far ahead of your organization.” (8:43-8:56)
- “Every time you move to a new seat in your professional career, you always have to remember that what brought you to that seat might not take you to the next level.” (14:10-14:18)
Links:
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Monday Sep 12, 2022
This week’s episode is with Dan Gizzi, VP of Sales, Global Accounts for Magic EdTech, a company dedicated to helping educators and corporations make learning more accessible, immersive, analytic-driven, and device-agnostic.
Today’s episode, we’re asking Dan how he builds successful sales teams and what career lessons, and character building led him to a position as a sales leader. His biggest takeaway as sales leader is don’t be afraid to make mistakes but always learn from everything going forward.
Tune into today’s episode, to learn from Dan Gizzi, VP of Sales for Magic EdTech, to hear his expertise on successful sales leadership and the growth that comes from making mistakes.
Quotes:
- “What's kind of interesting and unique is actually at a point in my career, where I'm now working for companies that I used to work with previously, so, it's come full circle for me.” (1:05-1:15)
- “I think it was, you know, we had poured a lot of effort, a lot of money and a lot of time into a very politically charged sale and it did not go our way.” (6:48-6:56)
- “Sometimes you're working even harder for the sales that don't happen. But applying that knowledge going forward, ultimately, actually ended up being very successful.” (7:55-8:04)
- “I think, if you're not making mistakes, you're not doing it right.” (24:03-24:06)
Links:
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: