Be Like Water – Sophia Kim

 

Transcript:

Thu, Nov 18, 2021

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 
people , crm , sales , organization , role , sales team , started , find , lead , leader , individual , team , healthcare , services , understand , person , deal , great , growing , absolutely

SPEAKERS
Christopher Smith & Sophia Kim

Intro
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith, talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Listen to find out how the best of the best achieve success with their team and CRM technology. And remember, unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes.

Christopher Smith
Welcome to Sales Lead Dog. Today I have joining me Sophia Kim, of Centauri Health Solutions. Sophia, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.

Sophia Kim
Thank you for having me.

Christopher Smith
Very excited to have you on the show. Sophia, tell me about your current role as Chief Revenue Officer and Centauri.

Sophia Kim
Sure, absolutely Chief Revenue Officer, I’m responsible for all the sales and marketing functions that happen at Centauri. And since our is an organization was founded on the belief that we could simplify healthcare and make better health care accessible to people. So as an organization, what we do is we provide revenue generating services that bolster and enhance the experience for the members, as well as the health plan. So, on what that means is for health plan hospitals, health systems, and insurers, we provide services that help engage with members, enroll them into services like Medicare and Medicaid. If the at the hospital side, when patients present and they don’t have any other insurance, we help them enroll into some sort of payment mechanism like finding Medicare, Medicaid, third party liability. We also provide services on the on the hospital side that are out of state Medicaid payments. So, we help basically we help the hospitals and health insurance plans, find additional dollars, where they wouldn’t normally find them. So, it’s just all revenue generating and accelerated payments. The other thing, the other thing that we also offer some quality and risk adjustment program. So those are, those are probably making everybody’s eyes just kind of go roll over. But that’s, that’s the service that we’re in.

Christopher Smith
And I don’t know if you know this about me, but I have a very deep background in the healthcare space actually started my career in that and founded my first company when I was 23, focused on healthcare management, consulting, and spent a lot of time on healthcare finance on that side, as well. And so, it’s something that’s also very passionate about obviously, because I spent so much of my career in that space. For people that may not be aware of this, that is a huge, huge issue for health care for hospitals, you know, for someone coming in just really helping them navigate a very complex journey, you know, trying to figure out all the whole payment side, it is a huge deal. What you guys do?

Sophia Kim
It is it’s a very interesting space. And I would have never, if somebody had said in college, hey, you’re going to end up selling risky dustbin services. Like you’re crazy, I have no idea what that is. Right? You’re absolutely right. It’s a, it’s an intriguing space, the more I learn about it, the more I know that there’s more to learn. And, you know, healthcare in the United States is a very difficult thing. There’re so many different facets to it. And I think all the help that we can get, you know, scenario scenarios whole thing is that we have a, we have a passion to serve and empower to solve. And so, with that, armed with that we’re out there trying to help people, you know, get the benefits that they deserve.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, exactly. And it’s and people need that help. That’s the thing that I think until you’re in that situation, you don’t understand just how hard it is, and what complexity is there. So, to have a company like that, that’s along to help and make it easier that that’s huge. So, I’m thrilled to have you on the show and to talk about this. So, Sophia, think back over your career. What are the three things that have really contributed to your success?

Sophia Kim
I want to say flexibility, curiosity, and passion. And I so it’s funny that, that you asked because the flexibility part has always entered in my career where I’ve had to flex and that make things happen when you know, you are just it comes at you from out of nowhere, right? And over the years, you can see I can see that. I’ve had to really be that my phrase is be like water. And the reason why I choose that as water when you fill it into a container, it takes the form of whatever container is there, right. So, whether it’s around shape or square shape, or triangle or whatever it is, it takes on the form of the interaction But that said, and so I’ve truly believe that I try to, you know, coming in to an organization, I really try to understand what the organization’s like, what the culture is like. And, you know, try to be like water, right, fill the gaps where there needs to be, where they need to be filled, be the support, where I need to be the support be the nourishment, where I have to provide nourishment. And so that’s, you know, that all comes in with flexibility. And I think, you know, passion, you really have to have a passion for something that you do. And without it, you are gonna find something’s missing in your life. And so, in order to work, the hours that we work, and the, you know, have the drive, I really think you need to be driven by passion. And so, I always say, you know, at Sentara, we do well, by doing good. And that’s something that really, I’ve strived to continue to do in my life, right, which is be happy about the things that we’re doing in our work life. And then it’ll flow over to your, your regular life, right?

Christopher Smith
Oh, yeah. Yeah, dude, I think you’re the first guest I’ve had on the show over 50 guests that has answered that question with flexibility. And I love that answer be like water that, that I’m gonna steal that I’m staggering.

Sophia Kim
You know, it’s one of those things that my dad used to say all the time. And I think it also harkens back to the fact that I’m actually an immigrant. Chris, I don’t know, if you, you know, not a lot of people know that. I came to the US when I was two, I wasn’t born here. But I feel like I’m pretty native coming here. When I was two. But my father as a physician, you know, of Korean heritage, he had to really face some uphill battles. And, and as I faced them to right as I was growing up, and even today, and one of the things that we have to always do is be flexible and accommodating. And whatever, whatever gets handed to you, you have to kind of accommodate and understand and digest what’s going on and then and then be able to accommodate the situation right now with being like water.

Christopher Smith
No, I love that. That is that’s a that over dinner today. My kids are gonna hear that. How’d you get your start in sales?

Sophia Kim
By accident, by accident. So, by trade, actually, I grew up, you know, in college, I was an English major. So, it was had nothing to do with sales, had nothing to do with anything I started with. Right out of college I got my first job was with Andersen consulting. And so, as a consultant, I was taught to do, you know, programming and systems design and business requirements and things like that. And so, I got into financial services at the time, because I started off in New York, and financial services then kind of led into a project with a large healthcare insurer. And that project kind of spun off into another health care project. And pretty soon before I knew it, I had spent 10 years with it with Anderson Consulting, which is now known as Accenture, and had found myself specializing in health insurance. And so that, that came in to being and was I was getting ready to make partner. I found myself with two kids, right, married with a toddler and a newborn, and trying to make partner and it was just untenable. So, what I had to do was go into healthcare, and I found myself at Kaiser Permanente. So, my first job with Kaiser Permanente really gave me the back backdrop of learning Medicare and Medicaid, low-income subsidy, all of the state and federal programs. And I took that and became kind of more of a subject matter expert. And when I first got recruited out of Kaiser, that’s when I started my my kind of work in sales in 2004. So, like I said, by accident, I became a subject matter expert in a certain area, I was asked to go out and talk to clients about it. And as I was talking to clients, I found out you know, making a connection and talking to people and being passionate about some things that you do really help to make that sale. And then what happened was, you know, I have a natural curiosity for how things work. So, as I started to dig more into Okay, well, why is why is the contract language like that? Why are the clients always, you know, coming back and asking for different things? I start I started to begin negotiating my own deals right and negotiating the prices. And so, once I started doing that, they just kind of gave me the whole thing and so Hey, go work on this strategic deal, go sell to this particular client. And then when my company got acquired, I went into doing more of a sales kind of strategic sales role. And that was that was the onset. That was the beginning of my sales profession.

Christopher Smith
It always amazes me how many answers when I ask that question, how many people answer the way you did? I started by accident I had no, that was not my path. I never considered that. And boom, here I am. Yeah, that’s great. Looking back at those early days in sales, and knowing what you know, now, what do you wish you had been taught back then? That would have made your journey a little bit easier?

Sophia Kim
Oh, my goodness. If I, if I knew what I know. Now, it would, I think the first thing that comes to my mind is confidence. Have confidence, right? Don’t back down. Just because somebody said no. Or they, they kind of threw something at you. Back then I think I was so naive and young. And when somebody said, oh, no, we don’t like that person. Back down right away. Right. But when you know, you have a good product, and when you know, that your services or something needed, I think when the person says something, contrary to what you’re what you’re saying or offering or when they say no, that’s when the selling starts. Right. That’s when that’s when the work begins. And that’s when kind of it starts to become, you know, alright, well, here’s what, here’s what I know you need. Now, let’s, why don’t you tell me what you think you made. And let’s try to get to the, you know, to the middle ground, right. But the confidence to stand behind what I’m saying, confidence to project. And I think one of the things that I also learned is, you know, negotiating with people is definitely an art form, right? So, you’ve got to find that kind of, you got to find the balance between when to push and when to give and understand the person’s mentality of okay, is, are they looking for this? Are they looking for that, and so that they think if I could go back and tell my younger self, hey, be confident in what you’re selling, be confident in yourself, and that you know what you’re doing, and then just finesse it a little bit? I think those would be the things that I would tell them, tell myself…

Christopher Smith
Can confidence be taught?

Sophia Kim
Confidence can be learned? I think? I think so. Because you can take somebody who is a little bit timid, and a little bit shy about certain things, right. I think I think you can’t teach bravado. Right. I think you can’t teach certain things about somebody’s personality. But I think that you can, at least I feel this way that you can build up confidence it can be built.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I believe. So, do I really do that? It’s sometimes you have to give people little nudges and things. But I do think that that’s something that can be, you know, not only taught but also brought out in people. You know, sometimes people don’t realize just what strength they really have inside. And sometimes that little nudge helps. Thinking back with any great mentors that helped guide you through that path.

Sophia Kim
You know, there were there were a couple of mentors, there were there was a woman that I still talked to at Kaiser, and you know, what she told me was, you’re hard to work with. And that was surprising. And it was, it was difficult feedback for me to take at the time. She said, You’re difficult. And I asked her why. And she said, because you’re constantly asking these questions, and you’re trying to do all the stuff and you’re so you’re so you’re so eager, right? And you’re, you’re, I want you to focus on this one thing, but you’re kind of always chasing after some other stuff, too. Right? And so that’s part of my nature. But I think that I took that to heart. And I was thinking, okay, I’ve got to be more, more focused on some of the things that I’m delivering, right? I can’t be constantly asking questions of my supervisors. And, you know, I need to make I need to figure out how to make myself a little bit better and easier to work with, right? What, uh, what about my work style is so difficult. And I think it was just from a manager’s perspective, looking at me, I was probably so eager to do so many things that she just had a hard time getting your hands around, you know, just settle down and focus on this thing that I told you to do. Right. Right. So, so that, you know, that’s one thing I do still talk to her.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Do you mentor anyone right now?

Sophia Kim
Well, I feel like I mentor my team. And you know I try to give advice whenever they definitely want to ask for it right? When it’s solicited. When it’s unsolicited, it’s more I mentor them in in terms of, hey, I’m looking at the data, or I’m looking at this particular thing, right? And my thoughts were x, you know, how would you approach it? So, I take kind of a Socratic, right, where I’m throwing out questions and saying, Hey, what do you think about this? Right? Not giving the answer.

Christopher Smith
Right. Right. When you made that transition from salesperson to sales leader, what was behind that transition for you?

Sophia Kim
So, I want to say was probably subject matter expertise, and a recognition that I had, I had knowledge in a particular service line, right. So, what really started was like my company, which was a family run company got acquired, and it was merged together with another portfolio company of a private equity firm. So, when that happened, I was I was thrust into an organization that already had a robust sales feature, right, and a function. And so then again, I had to flex, and I had to be, you know, become part of another team. And in that way, I was, I was able to, to tell people and show people that I had an area of expertise where, you know, I could manage certain things. Right. I was already a manager of a of an operational team at the time. But then was given responsibilities for sales.

Christopher Smith
Yeah. Was that a difficult transition to go from salesperson to sales leader?

Sophia Kim
Not really not for me, simply because I was already used to managing I think, I think the difficult part or the learning, right, the learning curve was measurement, right? Because for salespeople, it’s not very easy in terms of measuring success, other than wins, right? So, you look at okay, well, how many counts? Did you have any leads? Did you have? How many calls did you make, okay, but not all successful people, right? Or not all successful reps have to make, you know, 10 phone calls for one lead to get to get converted? Right? You can do that in a shot. So that, whereas on an operational side, you can tell by how many widgets get produced, right? Who’s good, who’s bad, who’s slacking off? Right? So, you could have the salesperson who looks like they’re slacking off all the time. But then they’re winning million-dollar deals. Right? So, it’s, uh, that was the difficult part. That was the part though I was, it was hard for me to kind of get my hands around the first time. How’d you figure that out? Well, because I had to do a lot of research. So, I had to do a lot of training, and reading and looking at what are what are common metrics? What are things that work? What are things that don’t work? Right? You know, I went into sales methodology and taking a look at that. And then I know one of the questions they’re gonna ask me at the end, it’s going to be about CRM, right? So, you know, one of one of those, the CRM provides a function of really tracking, and it’s a methodology that you follow. And so, it puts standards into an area where standards are somewhat lacking.

Christopher Smith
What’s the hardest thing for you? Or maybe, maybe it hasn’t been hard, but what what do you think has been the hardest thing for you in terms of building a sales team, as a sales leader, which is, I think that’s one of the big, the key role of a sales leader. What’s been the toughest aspect of that for you?

Sophia Kim
So organizational change, right? As when you’re building a sales team, you’ve got to put key people into the right places. So not only are you facing the challenges of employing the right people choosing the right talent, right, so you’ve got talent management, but then on top of that, I feel like the organizational structure and the culture of the company really play a big part. So, what I find difficult is when I know I have an organizational structure, I need to follow, right. I’ve got a sales team, we’ve got a strategic account management team, I’ve got certain people in certain roles, right? And then on top of that, you’ve got an organizational layer with, you know, your CEO, or your CEO or some other of your peers that are throwing other things at you. And they go, oh, well, I’m gonna I’m going to hire these people. And they’re going to do X, right? So, it’s a classic roles and responsibilities. thing where you want to make sure that everybody wants to help out right. And especially in startup organizations or organizations that are growing emerging, you find that well, this is my role. responsibility. And this is what I’ve outlined for the sales team. And here’s what we’re doing in the marketing team. And here’s what we’re doing on the Income Management Team. Well, when you merge two organizations, right, or three or four organizations, those are repeated everywhere. And not everybody’s doing it the same way. Right? So, having to merge and combine that, on top of the talent management on top of, you know, calming people down about, am I going to lose my job? Am I gonna have this? Right? Those are the things I find most challenging is the external factor, because I know what I want to build. Right. But then how do we how do we synthesize that? And how do we get the organization? Right, overall, the new organization to accept, right, and so, you know, a lot of a lot of times what happens is people brought bring in consulting advice, to say, oh, you know, there’s an industry leader, who has been telling people, you know, for eons, how to how to operationalize and how to structure an organization. Here you go, here’s the outside consultant coming in telling us what we already know. But saying it in a third voice. Right. Right. So, then it’s more digestible. But it’s always it’s always the kind of the organizational expectation and the culture that makes it that adds that extra level of difficulty in managing, I think, a sales team.

Christopher Smith
Yeah. You know, so often, I think, as a leader, whether you’re sales leader, or any other type of leader and organization, at periods, you do have to do that kind of gut check of do I have the right people in the right seeds. And that can be really tough at times. But it’s so important, because, you know, as the organization was growing, as you’re saying, the city, you know, what worked two years ago, may not work today. And, you know, so being able to take that step back, and like you’re saying, have that third party come in, as, you know, that different perspective to reinforce like you said, what you already know, I think that’s so important. But you know, you can’t be static, you have to keep adjusting as the organization changes in. So yeah, that’s a key role. How do you handle those tough conversations, you know, as the organization changes, and you have to shift people maybe in different roles, maybe roles they don’t want? How do you prepare? How do you handle those hard conversations?

Sophia Kim
Oh, wow, it’s you’ve got to prepare for a while, right? You really have to understand what role and it goes down for me to roles or responsibilities of what is the actual function of the job that I need to have done? So what does the organization need? What do I need, right? And then and then it’s, do I believe that individual is truly the right person for that role. And if I do, and I want to put that person in this role, and they’re resistant to it, I make a case for why I feel all of the stars are aligned, right? For them in this particular role, right? Then if it’s still not gonna fit, if the individual is so resistant, then there’s got to be a parting of ways, right? So, you, you either find that you’re going to be able to convince somebody that they’re great for this role, or they’re not going to be convincing, they’ll walk away. So that, you know, that’s the outcome. The thing that I do to prepare for that, though, is to really kind of list out the pros and cons, right? Not only do you have to, to make a financial argument, right for the individual, right? How is this making sense for your finances? How does just change your compensation? Right, you also have to consider, well, how does this how is this gonna work? How is the how are you gonna feel organizationally? How am I positioning your forces for success? How is this role going to develop you as an individual? And how is it going to further your career?

Christopher Smith
Yeah, no, I love that. And, yeah, that I think sometimes it’s hard for people to understand that, you know, sometimes you may have to take a shift or a role that you weren’t considering. But in the long run, it will be the best thing for you. And so that’s great. What’s the best thing about your role as CRO?

Sophia Kim
Oh, the best thing about my role as CRO is probably the ability for me to set the set the track and set the vision. I really like the fact that you know, when, and I’m very, I’m very color I find myself, you know, I would describe myself as a collaborative leader, right. So, what I like is having the team members come in and come up with their ideas and I like to watch that kind of come to fruition, right. So, you set the vision and then you watch the team kind of make it manifest, right. So, it’s, it’s, it’s part of construction, right? You see something you put you put the A framework together, and you have a vision of what it’s going to look like in the future. And then you just kind of watch it grow.

Christopher Smith
Right. But I love that too, you know that being an entrepreneur, it’s very similar, you know, and that you have this vision of where you want it to go, but you can’t do it on your own. You have to have a team in being able to get everybody aligned and in rowing in the same direction and to build something. It’s a tremendous feeling. What’s your strategy are for identifying those future leaders, those future people that you want to be a sales leader? What’s your strategy for picking those people out of the crowd?

Sophia Kim
Well, we have a couple of different constructs, right? I think that over the years, we’ve had tools that have been given, or at least I’ve found tools that have been put by disposal, right, where you have a grid, and you can see who’s kind of rating, rating people’s strengths, weaknesses, right, understanding their growth patterns, understanding rank ordering and putting them into categories of, you know, are they at the beginning level? Are they at a mid-level? Or are they kind of at the peak of their career? Or are they kind of on their, you know, on the downside, right? And so, if you do that, and put them in kind of a nine box, right, you can find where your team stands, and it makes you really ask yourself the hard questions, right? This this person seemed like, or I felt that this person was a star, right, a superstar. Now when I put them and put them in the nine bucks and put them against other individuals, right? And compare them against the same values. Do they still show up as a superstar? Are they still you know, is that is that individual that is absolutely knocking it out of the park, selling million-dollar deals, but everybody reacts negatively to the to the way they’re boasting or, you know, they go around and they make people angry, because they minimalize the work that the other folks have done, right? I mean, that’s not a superstar, right? So, it’s, it’s interesting for me to take tools like that, put people together on paper, and weigh that out. And see where the team comes in. You know, intuitively, I think everybody knows who’s going to do well, and who doesn’t, right. But then when you start putting, putting it, the metrics on paper, and you start looking at them, as just facts, right, facts and figures, then it the equation comes out differently. And then I think you have to apply a combination of your intuition, combination of a little bit of psychology, right? And then, and then apply the numbers and see what are all ways out? Because I don’t think that it’s just a purely mathematical equation. It can’t be right.

Christopher Smith
Now, I agree. But also, you know, I think a lot of people make that mistake of relying just on their gut of I think this person will be a great leader. But if you’re not doing that quantitative analysis to really look at it a different a different way, you can end up tripping over you’re making a mistake tripping up. So, I think that’s really important. What are your key success habits that you’re looking for in those future sales leaders?

Sophia Kim
Okay, it goes back to flexibility. And right, I think it’s, it’s, it’s the individuals that I feel have the, the temperament to be thrown into something and not get shaken. Right. So, your situation is you hire a new person, they come in, they’re used to a certain structure, and they’re used to kind of doing their metrics that I was just talking about this today, actually, as you give somebody who you interview and say, Oh, great background, you’re from a major competitor or a major health plan. You’ve got all this background information. Great, right? Well, you come from that type of an organization to a smaller organization where you’ve got less structure less rigor, right? So, let’s just say somebody was, was used to being given, you know, here’s your eight-hour day, here’s what you’re going to be measured on. We’re going to tell we’re going to ask you how many calls you’ve done. You’re going to write down how many leads you generated. And every day we’re going to see how much time you spent on the phone, and all this kind of stuff, right? You take that person, and then you put them in a in an environment where we don’t have call timing, right. We’re not timing you on that we don’t have call timing, functionality or technology. don’t have the software to track you, I’ve just got a CRM, I’m asking you to kind of suss out your own leads, right? Generate your ideas, work with marketing, because they’re not going to feed you stuff that come up with your ideas. And there’s some people that fail, or there’s some people that really thrive in it, right. And so, it’s finding, finding the right people that have that temperament to be able to survive through that right in my organization. We’re not that huge. We’re a midsize company, we’re still growing, we have a lot of functional, we have a lot of functions that need to be just done by ourselves, right? Know, the structure. And so, I’m not I’m not a $3 billion, or $5 billion organization that can provide all of the structural supports, right? That is that a sales individual might have at those larger organizations. I know because I come from there. Right, right. But going into a startup, you don’t have that. And so, you just have to find the people that can that can really, it’s either a sink or swim. Oh, yeah.

Christopher Smith
Yeah. It’s funny, as you’re talking, I’m thinking, I used I do a lot of consulting with startups. And a lot of the people that come from like, you’re seeing those large organizations, and then they come up with this idea, like, hey, I’m gonna build this company, or whatever. They’re used to coming where, hey, I had a whole team that could do this part, right? A whole team could do that part. And now they’re in like, you’re saying a startup where it’s like, it’s on you. You’re wearing that hat. Now, you’ve got to go build, you’ve got to go do the nitty gritty that you before it was a black box, because you had a whole team that just did that and handed it to you. Now you’ve got to do it. That is a shock for a lot of people. Yeah, it’s so

Sophia Kim
Funny, you reminded me of a story because who I used to say, you are the hero that you’re looking for. Right? So, stop waiting for somebody to come riding up on a horse and save the day because you’re that person. You’re the one on the horse. Get on your horse and save the day. Right? Yeah, look in the mirror and be like self. We’re gonna do this. Yeah.

Christopher Smith
Oh, man. I love it. Yeah. CRM, do you love it? Or do you hate it?

Sophia Kim
It’s a necessary evil.

Christopher Smith
Explain.

Sophia Kim
It’s a necessary evil. I don’t love it. I don’t hate it. I think we need it. I firmly believe that having structure on certain things really does help a process, right? So, call me call me old school call me grown up in a consulting organization where it was all about people process and technology. Right? So, I really do believe that you need the confluence of people processes and technology and the CRM is that technology that provides the process for the people?

Christopher Smith
Do you think there’s too much emphasis put on CRM or not enough?

Sophia Kim
Wow, that’s a I want to say that’s organizationally dependent, right? So, I think the CRM is only as good as the data you put in it. And the CRM is only as good as the workflows that you utilize for it. So, you can make yourself your yourself in the organization completely dependent on a CRM, which is probably not the best thing either, right? Or you could pay you could be paying for a CRM and hardly ever use it, which is also not a great thing. Right? Well, ultimately, what I have to use my CRM for is to make sales. Right? I have to deliver, and it has to be part of that delivery mechanism. So, you know, do I hate it, too? I love it. No, it’s a necessary evil. I think, does it add additional administrative burden? Yes, absolutely. Right. I mean, is it is it harder than just writing some notes on a piece of paper and sticking them in your brief? Absolutely. But guess what? Nobody can read the notes in your briefcase. Right? Nobody can share ideas about the conversation that you just had with somebody if you don’t log it. And so, if you have to collaborate with a team, and it’s a team effort, right, the CRM really does become that tool to help facilitate conversation.

Christopher Smith
What’s your biggest struggle with CRM?

Sophia Kim
adoption, user adoption?

Christopher Smith
Let’s talk about that. Because that is a very common answer. When you talk to your team about CRM, what is the why you give them about CRM?

Sophia Kim
Yeah, it’s exactly the scenario right. Okay. You had a great conversation and you’re nurturing this this lead. Great, right? Let’s just say We do get the deal. And that conversation now becomes history. Okay? We didn’t record it, we don’t know what happened, all of a sudden, there’s another opportunity with the same organization, same person, right? And you leave, right? Or, or you don’t leave, but you’re just in a different role, right? You’ve moved on to make another sale. And now somebody has left to do that, well, that history, right, could be very valuable in progressing the next deal or expanding that opportunity, or, you know, doing a cross sell, we don’t have that the CRM, and the information that you put into the CRM really facilitates the conversation of a larger team work on different parts of a client and an account and growing that and understanding what happened to that account. Right? If we don’t have that data, then it then we’re going in there blind. And so that is that is my explanation of why you need to be using the CRM and why you need to be in there. The other thing is, it helps me put reports together to understand where are we headed? Do we have enough? Do we have enough leads? are we filling the funnel fast enough, right, are closing fast enough? What’s our sales cycle? All that kind of stuff would have to be done manually.

Christopher Smith
Yeah. And it’s, you know, I tell people, there’s two things I always talk about when we’re doing training or whatever talking to people about CRM, it’s number one, if it’s not in CRM, it didn’t happen. It doesn’t exist. And number two, it like taking your scenario of well, you know, maybe you’re not working this deal. Because you’re moving on to a different role or whatever, what if you’re on vacation, you know, like, you’re on your honeymoon for two weeks, or whatever. And we have to get this deal done. How are we supposed to do that? If the info is not in CRM, you know, how, how’s your team going to support you if something happens to you, and you’re not available?

Sophia Kim
Exactly. And I’ve had, I’ve had some people that, you know, refuse to use it. And all of a sudden, we show them the functionality that’s in there. And we say, look, look at the notes, look at the history, look at the fact that you can pull up a contract. And oh, by the way, you had a question about what had happened and who had spoken to this individual, click here under, you know, under notes or details, and their eyes light up and they go, oh, you can do all? Yes, yes, you could do all of that. And you don’t have to.

Christopher Smith
Bring your Rolodex, right. Yeah, it’s like, it’s just, hey, here’s what hurts, you know, six months ago was the last time we talked to this person, what do we talk about? Well, like you’re saying, if it’s buried in a notebook somewhere, who’s gonna find that who’s gonna know that, right? And so, I’m also a big believer in making it. You know, a tool, a valuable tool, not an anchor that you’re dragging behind yourself, you know, that if you can create that, you know, position CRM is a tool that’s going to help you do your job that really drives user adoption. But if you’ve got an anchor that you’re dragging behind for that sales team, it’s just not gonna work.

Sophia Kim
Well, you might as well not have it. Exactly. Yeah, it’s gonna be a weight on the on the team, then you might as well not have it, you might as well go back to pen and paper.

Christopher Smith
Oh, yeah, I agree. It’s like it’s like, it’s a mess. It’s not helping anybody. If it’s weighing it down. Have you ever been involved with a CRM implementation? That was just a train wreck? And can you tell us about that?

Sophia Kim
I don’t think that there was an implementation that was a train wreck. I think that there were implementations that just the scope grew and grew and grew. And it was just one of those things where we’ve kind of lost where we were going. And so that, you know, that to me is absolute disorganization, right? We had the confluence of having four different CRM instances coming through. And we had, you know, my legacy organization, the legacy organization that bought us, right, they bought two other companies. And so, we had to merge four different sales languages, per se. Right, right. And then we had to normalize kind of all the data. And then on top of that, you know, we had other people chiming in, I want I want to do streamlined commission calculations, and I want to do a finance reporting, and I want this and I want that, all of a sudden, we turn around, we’re like, wait a minute, we were we get, we were supposed to have this thing implemented by x date. And now we’re two months late, and we still don’t have you know, the core functionality fully baked. That’s, yeah, that’s bad. Right. So that I think you have to, you have to start with a firm set of business requirements, stick to those primary requirements, and then really measure your scope and monitor the scope creep. Because otherwise, it just, it causes a lot of other issues, right? And the thing that I’ve found is that knowing, thinking that you know, the workflow, right? And trying to force the workflow is probably, it can be good and bad, right? Because you, you can be very set on something that you know, works. And you’re like, I need it to work this way. Great. But if the other organizations that you’re bringing into the company to the work that way, right, and you’re trying to force it on them, then now you’re getting into a cultural war, right? And so, then it’s going to become that anchor that people carry around, as does no good for anybody. Right? Right. Understanding the different workflows that come through, I think is really, really helpful.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I’m a big believer to in into Steven taking a step further back from the requirements and really having a clear definition of what are the strategic goals of the organization. And those become your guardrails for your CRM implementation. And if that functionality that people are asking for if it doesn’t directly connect to a strategic goal, then it’s going to get put into a bucket. And we’re going to hold on to that for some future time. But we’re not tackling that now. Because we’re focused on driving our strategic goals. And it strips the emotion out of it I found in and then so you can really, you know, it’s not a wish list anymore. It’s all about, hey, we’re trying to move the needle here for the organization. Yeah. And it just it changes the conversation.

Sophia Kim
It does. And you have to get in front of that conversation and make sure that people really understand because there are these, it gets very emotional, right? I mean, very stuck to their, to their own processes. Right. Oh, yeah.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, it’s amazing. I, we once had asked a group of executives to say we could you stack rank your, your strategic goals. So, we know, like, you know, whatever, his top three or whatever, that’s everyone knows, these are our top three, and we’ve got that alignment. They couldn’t do it. The only one they could come up with is revenue, you know, increase our revenue. You know, that’s easy, right? But everything else was there’s a lot of emotion tied to everything else, you know, and it’s hard to get through that emotion sometimes. Well, we are coming up on our time here on sales lead dog, Sophia, it has been great listening to you talk. I’m so happy you’re able to come on the show. If people want to reach out and connect with you. Learn more about you maybe learn more about centaury what’s the best way for that to happen?

Sophia Kim
Sure. Send me an email at Sophia SOPHIA dot Kim at Centauri C. e n t aurihs.com. So that Centauri hs.com. Or? Yeah, I think emails the best probably.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. And LinkedIn as well. Possibly.

Sophia Kim
Yep. LinkedIn. my LinkedIn profile is up there and you can look for me I’m so I don’t think that there’s a lot of Sophia. I’m the only one from Centauri.

Christopher Smith
That’s right. There you go. And it’s also if you didn’t get any of that it’s in the show notes. So be sure to check out our show notes to get that info. And, again, thank you for coming on Sales Lead Dog.

Sophia Kim
Absolutely. My pleasure. It was nice to talk to you.

Outro
As we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog, be sure to subscribe to catch all our episodes on social media. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Watch the videos on YouTube and you can also find our episodes on our website at empellercrm.com/salesleaddog. Sales Lead Dog is supported by Empellor CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed.

 

Quotes

• “We have a passion to serve and empower to solve and so we’re out there trying to help people, get the benefits that they deserve.” (3:33-3:41)
• “My phrase is, ‘be like water’ and the reason why I choose that, is because water when you fill it into a container, it takes the form of whatever container is there. Fill the gaps where they need to be filled, be the support, where I need to be the support. Be the nourishment, where I have to provide nourishment.” (4:42-4:51)
• “I think you have to apply a combination of your intuition, combination of a little bit of psychology, and then apply the numbers and see what are ways out?” (27:48-28:01)

Links

Sophia Kim LinkedIn
Centauri Health Solutions, Inc. LinkedIn
Centauri Health Solutions, Inc. Website

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter