Apply Your Knowledge – Dan Gizzi

Transcript:

Tue, Aug 30, 2022

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

sales , crm , company , important , people , career , role , internally , learn , mentor , transition , integrating , early , work , externally , based , leader , technology , strategy , systems

SPEAKERS

Dan Gizzi & Christopher Smith

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 Dan Gizzi. Dan, welcome to sales lead dog.

Dan Gizzi

Thanks, Chris. Great to be here.

Christopher Smith

Dan, is the Vice President of Sales for March or excuse me, Magic Edtech. Dan, tell me about your role in Magic Edtech.

Dan Gizzi

Thanks, Chris. My role at magic is kind of an interesting one. You know, we’re very well situated in the education and tech space as a vendor preferred partner. And my role here is working with and managing the global accounts team. So, working out more of the farming side of the house where we have established relationships. And for me, 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, that’s pretty wild.

Christopher Smith

Thinking back over your career, you’ve had a pretty long career in sales. What are the three things that have really gotten you where you are, that have really contributed to your success?

Dan Gizzi

So, some of the I would say my top three things that would have gotten me here, authenticity, I would say was probably number one. You know, really being able to be yourself is important in sales. Number two is short term memory. I say having a short-term memory for the things that don’t go our way. And still being able to wake up in the morning, put on the face and show up the next day is very important. And then for me, I would say number three is humility. You know, because again, we’re in sales, we’re only as good as what we did yesterday. And Today’s a new day. And, you know, we have to always think about, you know, what are we going to do again, tomorrow?

Christopher Smith

Oh, yeah, especially short-term memory, I love that. You definitely have to have a short memory. How’d you get to certain sales is that was that your dream as a kid?

Dan Gizzi

if you’re accidental, my dream is a kid. And I still think there’s this opportunity for me is the first base for the Yankees, you know, there’s still some nice, I just couldn’t hit the curveball or fastball, or you know, was not tall enough, unfortunately. So how to how to pivot very early on in life to decide where I was going to land. Now, actually, I started out in technology, very early in where I was at the time growing up in the 90s. I’m a product of the 80s, you know, growing up in the 90s, that was when computers were really starting to find their way into our homes, the Internet was very much in its infancy and, you know, really enjoy taking the computers apart, putting them back together. And at that point, you know, and I transitioned into college, I thought computer science was going to be for me and ended up actually finishing my college degree, combining a management with a portion of degree with the computer science, one of the first mis degrees before we were calling that degree and actually ended up a coder for a little bit, and realized that I was much better about talking about coding and talking about technology than I was building it. So, I had to pivot very early on in my career, ended up having an accidental career in publishing, actually, a friend of mine that I had known was they were hiring at their company and inside sales, and I was looking for my next opportunity. And, you know, Luke started out in inside sales was responsible for 100 Plus accounts in the Midwest, and I’m a sick kid from New Jersey, originally that, you know, my knowledge of the Midwest was, you know, what you would see on TV, and I was working with schools in, let’s see Chicagoland area, Wisconsin, Minnesota. So, lots of names I had never heard of before and, you know, thankfully, took a liking to it and was able to progress throughout my career from inside sales and outside sales actually moving to the Midwest for 10 years in Chicago, and then ultimately progressing to where I am today as a sales leader.

Christopher Smith

What was the toughest part about that early stage of your career doing sales?

Dan Gizzi

Really the resiliency piece, you know, aside after 911 was really when I just had determined Okay, it’s time to figure out what I want to do with my life. And, you know, very early on I’m in my mid 20s, and packed up moved to Chicago thankfully with the company I was with at the time. I knew one person in Chicago and was really beyond just starting over in a new career still very early on in sales, new city, New Town, new everything new culture, and you know, very quickly learned that the fish out of water syndrome is real. impostor syndrome is real, particularly in sales as well. And you know, what, 20 plus years, I still feel like some days the imposter syndrome can be there. But you know, it’s learning from the things that we didn’t do well in one day. And applying that knowledge forward is really what’s helped me grow to be where I am, at this point in my career.

Christopher Smith

Was there a mentor or someone back at that time that really helped you through that period?

Dan Gizzi

I’ve had a couple of my career that I can look back on and say that absolutely, I can still hear them, you know, with their coaching and guidance. And I think, you know, some of the best mentors I’ve ever had, were some of the ones that were most critical of me, but making sure that we’re providing that guidance to get to the next step to you know, I was, I’ve liked to say the phrase to the folks around me, making sure you’re comfortably uncomfortable, you know, never making sure you can fall into the patterns. And that was what some of my best mentors have always done for me, you know, when they see that I was falling into, you know, that early on pattern of, you know, not necessarily trying something new, or pivoting in a direction that may change the outcome, you know, they would always make sure that they would, you know, push the envelope a little bit, try to get you to think outside the box. And, sure, there’s 1,000,001 of the buzz words, I can probably throw at that. But, you know, it’s that, yeah, they definitely early on in my career, you know, the woman that hired me, in publishing at the time, I said to her during the interview, but said in six months, I want to be an outside sales rep. I said, That’s my goal. She asked me what my goals were. And she said, That’s great. Well make sure you’re on that path. And you know, it’s been very good since then, with obviously lots of bumps in the road, though.

Christopher Smith

Was there a moment? In that time? Did you just like that switch one on, we’re like, I’m good at this, I can do this.

Dan Gizzi

It was probably after my first big loss, you know, and then the first big loss? Yeah, 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. And it’s one of those things where I was having a very parallel track happening as well, in another account that was very similar to the one we were losing. And we were winning, you know, so it was it, we were applying the exact same strategies to both, we’re both very political, very driven by what was going to be the ROI at the end, not only for the end user, but also for, you know, the buyers at the time, and I can, I can see where, you know, we that didn’t matter what we were going to do the one we were losing, we were always going to probably in a bundle, we weren’t the incumbent, you know, and we weren’t the incumbent, and the one we ended up winning as well. And ultimately, you know, being able to shift and pivot the strategy to the ones that we saw that, okay, this is where the value is going to be for us, you know, let’s shift our efforts there, you know, in a different strategy and learn from what we’re not doing, right, I think was really where I can say that, you know, it clicked, right, it clicked that, you know, no matter sometimes how hard you work, sometimes you’re working even harder for the ones that don’t happen. But applying that knowledge forward, ultimately, actually ended up being very successful.

Christopher Smith

That’s awesome. What drove your transition into leadership?

Dan Gizzi

I really enjoy the training aspect of what a sales role can materialize into, I really enjoy seeing those aha moments. You know, it’s sad to say, I also enjoy the spreadsheet part that tends to come with moving up the ladder as well. And, you know, getting down into the nitty gritty in the process of what actually makes the workflows happen. But for me, you know, it’s being there to be that mentor, or in some capacity, hoping that I’m acting as a good mentor towards someone to be able to see and guide them in a path that’s going to move them in their career. And, you know, being able to instill that trust in that growth and watch that happen for me is, is really key to know the leadership position. And, you know, obviously, the budget meetings come and go the QBRs come and go, you know, watching that new sales rep or watching that’s that person, you know, that person and individual really have that first real aha moment or that first good, you know, that great sale, right? And being able to celebrate it from a different avenue with him. And knowing that, you know, you were not 100% involved every step of the way, but you are giving them guidance to grow and get to that point is for me, where, you know, I find the most level of enjoyment.

Christopher Smith

Was that a tough path for you to take? You know, and, you know, some people are just I love sales, you know, so you can be torn? Was that a tough decision for you?

Dan Gizzi

I think I’ve managed to find myself in leadership roles where I’ve been whether I’ve been directly managing people or not, I’ve been a senior sales leader role, solutions level roles, where you tend to have to fit that mentorship role, because you’re not key point of contact, but you become a point of contact for a certain degree of the sale. You know, so I’ve gotten to experience it on different levels. And now obviously, where I am today, you know, managing a team that I’m all So player coach to the so I do have my own accounts that I do manage as part of the process, I think it’s an important piece as a leader to still be involved, you know, not necessarily always on the day to day aspects of everything going on, you know, but trying to still have that involvement because it does keep you fresh, it keeps the skills fresh, right. I mean, it’s like, sales, just like anything else, you know, we’re only as good as what we’re learning and what we continue to hear, you know, still being able to hear what’s happening on the ground floor. And having that empirical data coming back to be able to translate across the team, I think is important thing.

Christopher Smith

Your role as a sales leader, what are you trying to do to impact the culture of your sales team?

Dan Gizzi

Culture is a very big aspect here at Magic, particularly. So, we’re an internationally based company magic has offices where I’m based out in the States, we’re based out of New York, and then most of our staff and delivery. So, we’re a professional services company, sits in India, you know, so we’ve got 99% of our employees are based in the either the central Noida region, NCR region, or now with us as COVID is a hybrid Lee placed throughout India. So, you know, culturally, as a company, you know, we crossed a lot of barriers from different languages obviously, being spoken, but we speak English, you know, when we’re on calls, for example, or even to the aspect of holidays being celebrated. So, you know, when we’re recording this right now, actually, there’s holidays going on in India, that are, we would never have heard of it. I just learned about one of them today, it was some it’s one of the holidays about how a sister actually celebrates her brother and vice versa. And it’s, it’s very interesting to learn and interact with different cultural aspects of, you know, we would not necessarily have here stateside, I actually had the opportunity to visit our office very recently, with some of our team here in the States. And, you know, we were there for 10 days in the office and experiencing, how they interact and how they work together with our production and delivery center. And it also actually did a retreat up into the Himalayas. So, we were in the mountains for half of the time as well hiking together and learning and growing from each other. And I can say, a bucket list item I didn’t know I needed in my life, visiting, obviously going hiking the Himalayas and, unfortunately, getting one day of Delhi Belly to you can google Delhi Belly after this, see what I mean there?

Christopher Smith

That’s awesome. Do you have a particular strategy or philosophy and how you build your team.

Dan Gizzi

So as a company, you know, we’re very hyper focused around accessibility. We’re very focused around inclusive and DNI and inclusive. It’s not only in our company, but also in the way we work with our partners, how we present ourselves as a company externally, you know, we have traditionally worked in this space for over 30 years now, where accessibility wasn’t anything that was ever talked about, myself included 17 years in educational publishing, I whispered the word final way compliant, maybe a handful of times, because it was never something we had to think about or even really present as a case. And thankfully, now with, you know, the forefront of that being in the education space, particularly in the K 12, market, of inclusivity, you know, bringing everyone to the table, ensuring that you can see yourself in the material being taught or the material being driven, is so important us as a company, for example. So, you know, we have become an accessibility vendor of choice for many of our partners where, you know, we will go through basic review of a website, for example, to show up, it’s compliant for accessibility, you know, we’ll remediate the product and deliver hopefully, a higher level version of accessibility when it’s done, you know, so that’s a lot of times how we would start engaging, and then it transitions into also us working in different levels of engineering or platform development work. So, it really gives us our own foothold as a company and but even just to think about in a hiring process as well, you know, are we hiring people that are not always 100% Like-minded? You know, groupthink is good, but groupthink can also become very detrimental to growth.

Christopher Smith

That’s, I think, the first time this has come up on sales lead dog, I’m really glad you brought this up. I really believe that, you know, you have to, if you’re going to connect with a particular market or segment, you have to be able to connect them always, you know, not just in, you know, your marketing lingo or your pitch or whatever. But as you said, you have to represent, you know, and so that that’s a huge commitment. Was this something that happened? Took a while to transform or, you know, can you talk a little bit about that transformation or that path?

Dan Gizzi

I think it’s been very organic. In the industry in and of itself. I know myself, it’s not something that I can look back and say it’s something I invented. But, you know, I think even women don’t like, for example, on my own level, when I’m, you know, trying to conduct an interview or interview process, I do my best try not to bring the unconscious bias. And I mean, obviously, they happens, right? You know, even, for example, my first interview, I tried to just do over the phone, I’d rather not have that face to face. First, you know, because we, we thought, we form unconscious bias, when we see that the impression, and I do my best to avoid that it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t always happen. But, you know, because then you have this ability to kind of think differently than what you may see presented the first time forward, or, you know, even as you’re starting to go through, and someone may check all the boxes professionally, all down the way they could be a rock star, they can have that superstar had been top dog every time or top, you know, number one in their company. But if they’re not going to be a good team player, you know, they’ll you know, so if you have an existing team, right, the last thing you want to do is have an individual contributor coming in, that can’t get along with the other individual contributors, because ultimately, you still have to bring people together, you know, so there’s a lot of that, that you have to think about that goes beyond just an accessibility or even inclusive inclusivity in the process, as well. But, you know, being able to then also represent forward, you know, you know, collide, if people like to talk to talk, understand that you understand what they’re saying, and it’s so important today, I know, we’re not just checking boxes.

Christopher Smith

Right, right. In your role as a sales leader, you know, you touched a little bit on this earlier, failure is such a big component of sales, you know, we wish we could win them all. How do you leverage your experiences on the front lines with failure in your role as a sales leader today?

Dan Gizzi

So we have a process internally where, you know, we will always look at, you know, the unfortunate ones that did not come across the finish line for us and the way we would like, you know, we, we have a root cause analysis review, of taking the time to pull together, the teammates that were involved, we also try to bring potentially people that would have an outside opinion that may not have been involved in, you know, the actual process as it went to really try to identify and understand, okay, you know, let’s, let’s see, where we may have been able to pivot differently in the future. If we hear the feedback, and we gather the requirements properly, you know, do we implement a strategy properly to ultimately come out and win and, you know, that’s important to be able to say, because, you know, we want to be able to learn from that mistake and not keep creating the same challenges and issues each time of having to have those analysis afterwards. Again, everybody would love to win everyone, but we know we, you know, the unfortunate news of sales, it’s, you know, the more leads we have the bigger the pipeline great, but are we bringing them all to fruition is important to know.

Christopher Smith

Is it hard for you to get that feedback from your prospects that on the ones you lose? Do you get good info from them as to why you lost or why they went with the other the other company?

Dan Gizzi

I think it’s gonna depend upon your interaction with them prior, you know, I think if it’s a cold RFP you’re coming into, you’re going to get less feedback, because you haven’t taken the time to nurture the relationship and the relationships out there, you’re answering blindly basically, you know, so it’s important to structure your time with them prior, try to get as much as you can off the record, potentially, as well. That’s not be, you know, the unstated questions in the RFP that aren’t there, as well as making sure you’ve got the relationship going into it that you can try to show some of the cards beforehand and get that gauge ahead of time, you know, maybe it’s a pricing question, or maybe it’s a direction question that they may not be thinking about, and try to gauge that interest prior to seeing if you may be taking it that separate direction of what they were thinking, because that can be very risky at times as well, because you might not be wearing the blinders that they’re asking you to wear but you know, getting them to think differently. And then obviously, the most important one is helping them write the RFP in the first place. So we’re helping them write that write the outcome and the first bit because you’ve been embedded prior to it having to go to it a session to prove the you know, the investment that’s coming.

Christopher Smith

What role does empathy play in your role as a sales leader?

Dan Gizzi

It’s very important. I think, you know what that figure, the emotional quotient has been a very high topic of everyone now, especially in leadership positions with how the world has changed how we work, how we interact, you know, particularly obviously, in the past, prior to COVID, we might have been doing this in the same room together. This shift away from having traditional office space and most of my career I’ve been at home or and outside sales-based employee, I’ve had the interactions in the office as well. So, being able to transition that thought process and understand you know, how do you work with somebody and get beyond just the professional piece? Understand, hey, you know, there’s a lot going on in life right now. We live in a very interesting time to say that At least I think, you know, as a world, we’re learning to accept some of the things that you know, have changed how we work, particularly in the education space, we, many of the things I was talking about for 15 years of my career about moving to digital, literally happened overnight, when students were put virtual. And, honestly, that’s what brought me back in education, you know, I had left, I was in, you know, an industry where I was working within our integration software for a while and then got to see what was happening with my young one here, it was in second grade at the time, and I’m like, nothing’s changed in this industry in 10 years for some aspects of this at, you know, how do I pivot back into that and ended up thankfully, you know, finding the role here of magic and working with a team to come on board. But, you know, empathy is very important, because, you know, you, as a leader, you are, you know, sometimes leader, sometimes boss, sometimes therapists, sometimes friends, sometimes drinking buddy, right when running or are sadly losing, but, you know, it’s so trying to fit that mold of, you know, being able to understand that there’s more outs going on outside of, you know, this screen here, or, or the client walls is important.

Christopher Smith

Do you have a certain characteristic you’re looking for in the candidates you’re planning on developing for a leadership role.

Dan Gizzi

I like someone that’s got a good sense of humor, you know, I think it’s a good quality to have in sales, I really enjoy someone that’s going to be authentic and be themselves right away, you know, I’m believing the cards on the table approach to a lot of this, you know, it doesn’t always necessarily pan out in a lot of cases. But I also do think that you can learn a lot about somebody within those first 15 minutes if they’re being authentic or not, too, you know, because that’s going to translate forward into how they work, when they’re independent, it’s going to translate forward and how they become an ink hopefully integrate into part of the existing culture and team without too much disruption. Right. And, you know, important to just being able to understand that, well, they challenge the system that may not be right, internally and externally as well. So being able to have an opinion that but also can accept that you can’t change everything overnight.

Christopher Smith

Right? What was your biggest mistake early on in when you transformed into leadership?

Dan Gizzi

Just one. You know, it’s a learning process every day. You know, it was interesting how I transitioned into beyond just the straight mentor role, I had moved into a consulting role for a bit and trying to decide what I wanted to do with the, with the rest of my life or a couple years ago, and actually got up in the corporate l&d space and had the opportunity to build a sales and marketing team for a company that provides call center operations around the world. So that was my first real dive into it, you know, great leader, that took a chance on me a company that took a chance on me and the same that I was taking a chance on them as well, leaving behind traditional education moving into the corporate space. And, you know, it was, for me, that interesting challenge was, you know, I had typically worked for companies that were us or British base, they were a French based company. And so there was a culture shock again, obviously, like, so that’s always big and tough, you know, being a new leader coming into a company, and then you’re how do we navigate how do we navigate those waters? How do you build a team around that culture. And then also, you know, the shift was away from thinking about always selling for an outcome of who’s going to use my product to then in the corporate l&d space, where it was driven by what’s going to be my ROI, you know, great, your product is awesome, your conversation was great. Now you gotta go prove an ROI for the next six months. And that was an interesting learning experience for myself, as well as the people that we’re bringing on. They were young, many of them were first or second sales job in their career. It wasn’t traditional sales, it was more of a solutions role. So, navigating and learning with them alongside of them, I think it was a lot of mistakes were always made. Of course, their mistakes are always going to be made every day. I think just you know, if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing it right. I feel no,

Christopher Smith

no, I believe that you have to fall in your face. Just absolutely the best way to learn. I get nervous when things are always going well, all the time. I get very, very nervous. Like, what am I not doing that I should be doing?

Dan Gizzi

What email did I not read today? Or for text? Did I not see? Because there’s got to be something right? It was?

Christopher Smith

Yeah, that voice in my heads goes, you’re not doing something that’s going to good. You know, you’re not pushing hard enough somewhere. So, let’s switch the conversation a little bit CRM, do you love it? Or do you hate it?

Dan Gizzi

So, in my time when I was outside of the l&d space on both sides of that I was actually involved in some aspect of the CRM world. So, I was the integration software I was working with actually, typically was integrating either CRM to ERP or some version of that being there. that middle were working with those systems. So, I got to know a lot about CRM in on the dirty side of it, working with, you know how they work. Being in sales, obviously, we can live and die by our serums as well. So, I’ve gotten to know many of them very well. They’re better than others. I think the best CRMs in the world are the ones that you can get your information quickly with as little steps as possible. You know, there’s always going to be room for improvement is always going to be I wish I did this, which is where companies like yourself come into play, I would assume, right? Yeah. And then, you know, being able to just think through what is my work for all flow improving? Because I’m using my CRM or not, or the information there when, you know, I unfortunately, get the hangnail and I’m out for six months, can somebody going decipher my notes of what I was working on and pick up where I left off?

Christopher Smith

Is CRM usually the problem? Or is it an excuse for what the real problem is? In my opinion,

Dan Gizzi

it’s about a training, you know, it’s always about the training, you know, the data is only as good as the person inputting it. You know, at the end of the day, it’s just a giant database responding back with the information that was in itself. If the end user is not religious with the work to do it, it’s always going to be just well, it was another tool that I didn’t use today, I’d say it was about 10 years ago in my career, where I actually made the transition away from paper notes as best as I could to making sure I was using the CRM and thankfully, you know, at this point, I’m very good about it, of trying to do my best to take my notes, while they’re happening in the CRM with the window, open another screen, you know, that way, they’re fresh, they’re there, I didn’t have to worry that I write it down, and then I translate it appropriately, or, more importantly, than I get too distracted, and not translate them in. So, I found for me, my own workflow, I use my CRM every day, it’s open, it’s there, my notes are there. I harp on my team for it. If any of them were here with me, they would know that I’m asking them, did they put their note? Did they track their meetings? And internally as a company? No, we do use our CRM to report back on the progress of the accounting, are we, you know, are we working enough at this account that we have enough quality meetings, you know, are there areas where we can improve our meeting outreach with the different teams internally that are tasked with working on the accounts as well. So, it’s always a work in progress, when it comes to a salesperson. But again, when we said that, let’s get to the next, you know, next one, but you know, being able to have that met that religious mentality of okay, my notes are there, I’m tracking it, or my opportunity is up to date, I’m tracking the opportunity. I’m tagging the people that I know need to help me on this opportunity. Again, another important piece of that accountability, right? It can’t just be me being accountable. But I know I need these four people to help me. Let me make sure they know what’s going on.

Christopher Smith

How do you leverage CRM, in your analysis that root cause analysis around the last deals?

Dan Gizzi

It’s an area where I say, we can improve, you know, so we actually, right now we have two internal systems that we’re using one specifically just for, you know, our prospecting are note taking on the account. And currently they are opportunities live in another system, we are transitioning to where they will all be gathered in one place. But so, there is a little bit of a disconnect when it comes to that for us. As far as you know, tying the two together, though, you know, we do track both, you know, did we can we look back at the notes? Or can we look and see, you know, how long was this lead up? And for example, right? That’s always, that’s always the hard part as a sales leader, let’s say, you know, this, well, they certainly was open for 90 days, were we working inappropriately, when we put the right effort into it? Maybe that’s one of the reasons why we ended up on the wrong side of this lead? Or did we have the right inputs early enough on to understand that we may have needed more help in the front end? And then we can go back? And we do go back? And look at that as well.

Christopher Smith

Right? I love that. Do you guys have a strategy around how you’re leveraging technology to enable the sales team.

Dan Gizzi

So, it’s kind of interesting being a company that also has its own technology, vertical internally. So, you know, beyond just working on the content side, we do have full platform development internally as well. So, you know, we do work and build systems like this externally for clients. So, we do transition that knowledge and certainly, you know, we actually just recently launched our employee portal for training internally, we have a SAS base product program that we also sell externally as well, that has LMS like features and different features that can be implemented white labeled as well. So, it’s kind of interesting having some of these things internally that are wrong we obviously do work third party for many of the systems as well. So, kind of integrating in different systems that have different functions for each one of the you know, so not wanting system having to be a catch all, for example, individual systems using for their, their expert.

Christopher Smith

That’s fine. It’s good stuff. What about marketing and integrating marketing technology with the sales technology and in and also using that to help create alignment between marketing and sales. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dan Gizzi

Your base markings huge, I think, you know, having the tools to be able to be integrated in and understand the hit rate, the click rate, digging into what the SEO is, for example, on the website, you know, correlating all that data. I mean, we’ve got so much data that comes at us now as a salesperson, and trying to say like, you know, Chris, open, Chris got the newsletter. Okay, Chris opened it twice. So, we clicked on this link once great, let me go, let me go pounce on Chris. Right. And then all of a sudden, you’re getting all of these what look for are obviously cold call messages in Europe, your view coming to your cold calls, but we’ve got all that data on you. Because you know, if GDPR is not involved, we’ve seen your click right. We’ve seen that pattern, right? Or you clicked on that ad that was in LinkedIn that we targeted you with because of where you are. And you landed on that landing page. And now we’ve gathered all that information. So, it’s, it’s that scary factor of data, as well of the of what’s being tracked. But, you know, how do we translate that and then into actionable items, right, the actionable items of okay, well, that’s something maybe is talking point the next time you and I talk, right, as opposed to having to just pounce on you. So being able to use the data in inappropriate ways. Did we establish a relationship prior? Hey, I saw you open that link. Chris, you know, my shoot you the message? What do you think? Right? Or if you’re somebody I don’t know, that’s probably not the most appropriate message because it’ll probably landed a spam and the next thing was six touch points before somebody responds, if they don’t know you, I think is the current average, or at least the average pre COVID? I’m sure that’s probably higher now. But yeah, it’s such an interesting, like, rabbit hole, you can go down with data.

Christopher Smith

Oh, really is it’s you said it, I mean, it is just a deluge of data these days, what you can collect, like you said, if you’re not GDPR, there’s just so much, and then it’s figuring out, okay, how do I leverage this, to actually come up with those, you know, engagement strategy? How are we going to leverage this information to make that appropriate outreach to where you’re not being creepy?

Dan Gizzi

Or, you know, you know, scared people, you know, then you have all of your account based people I want to do this where then you have your vertical base, people want to sell we have this campaign strategy we’re about to launch and it’s the overwhelmingness of everything that a salesperson has to has to do here. We got we got tough jobs. Oh, yeah. Nobody wants to believe work.

Christopher Smith

Everybody wants to so true. Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine, who’s you know, career sales guys. And he’s like, all the people in the office, they get so mad at me, they think like, I’m just like, I because I’ll come in the office for a couple hours. And then I’m gone. And they think like, I’m out, like going home taking a nap or I’m golfing or whatever, they have no idea how much work I’m putting into this and how hard my job is. And when you factor in, just like you’re saying the volume of data, and all these different things that you have to worry about. It is a hard job. Yeah.

Dan Gizzi

Nobody, nobody knows what we go through. Right. Unless, you know, the sales guys don’t do anything, right.

Christopher Smith

Yeah, that’s right. They just collect the big paychecks. Exactly. That’s awesome. Dan, really appreciate you coming on sales lead, Doug. If people want to reach out connect with you. Or if they want to learn more about magic a deck, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Dan Gizzi

Absolutely. So, our website is magic. edtech.com. That is the corporate website. They can find us on all of our all the social channels as well. LinkedIn, Twitter, if we’re on Instagram, Facebook, you can find myself as well. I’m on LinkedIn. Just search for gang Izzy, I’m on Twitter, not as active but more active on LinkedIn. And then really would love to obviously engage in any way with the network as possible. And you know, I love being here, Chris. Thanks for inviting him. And I look forward to having future conversations with you as well.

Christopher Smith

Yeah, no, it’s great having you on here on sales lead dog. Dan, welcome to the pack.

Outro

Thank you. 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 impeller crm.com forward slash sales lead dog sales lead dog is supported by impeller CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed.

 

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

Dan Gizzi LinkedIn
Magic EdTech LinkedIn
Magic EdTech Website

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter