Hire the Go Getter – Amy Walther

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.

 

 

Transcript:

Mon, Jul 11, 2022

 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

sales , people , crm , salesperson , happen , company , struggle , opportunity , confidence , quota , older , drive , successful , customers , crm tool , lead , dates , team , constantly , realized

 

SPEAKERS

Amy Walther & 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. Joining me today on sales lead dog is Amy Walhter. Amy, welcome to sales lead dog.

 

Amy Walther

Thank you for having me, Chris.

 

Christopher Smith

Great having you here. Amy. Amy, tell us a bit about your current role and your company?

 

Amy Walther

Yes, well, I work for a company called West Hill technologies. And I am VP of sales in one of our three divisions. So, we have three sales divisions. One side is in building wireless, there is another side of our house, it does cabinet enclosures and power abuse panels. And then my side of the house, which does intelligent site management. So, we are a technology company, we’re fairly small. We’re out of Aurora, Illinois. And there’s not many of us that do what I do for a living. So, there’s not many of us out there. And it’s, it’s a really fun job. I can literally talk about monitoring all day long I if you let me I would do it.

 

Christopher Smith

We’re here to talk about your sales, career and sales leadership. And maybe we’ll get into that side of it. Here. So me thinking back over your career, what are the three things that have really driven and led to your success?

 

Amy Walther

Yeah, so um, I’d say that, as a young person, I think I always wanted to be successful. So, I think that drive is extremely important. I don’t think anybody is successful without some sort of drive. I’m not sure where it comes from with people, I know where it came from with me. But I wanted to make sure that I had an actual career, and I was never dependent on anybody. So, I just tried really hard to always do good at whatever it was, from the bottom to the top. And I think that that drive is really important. I’d say the second piece of it is definitely a positive attitude. You know, nobody can be successful, when you’re not positive, I will definitely say that for sure. And I’d say that the third piece, since you said three, I find that if I have a lot of fun and enjoy the people that I work with, I am happy, I’m happy all the time. And I think that people that are happier, are more successful in their career. So, I think that that helps me do a good job, even you know, in sales. If you’re happy and you have fun, you’ve had fun with your, your passions, you have fun with your customers, I think you’ll always be successful.

 

Christopher Smith

Now, you mentioned you knew where your drive comes from? Where does your drive come from?

 

Amy Walther

Well, you know, I, I came from a not so well to do area, and my mother was very ill as a child. So, I think I had to take care of her when I was little. And I just I think I always knew that I didn’t want to struggle. And I wouldn’t mind to have some money. I would be great. So sometimes, and I’ll tell you, even when I’m talking to other people, I want to hire other salespeople, if you don’t notice that they if they don’t like money, I don’t even think they should be in sales, they should definitely want to make some money or you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t really be a salesperson.

 

Christopher Smith

How those thinking back from those early years, have you ever really thought back and said or pondered how that has shaped you and your approach to sales?

 

Amy Walther

Yeah, I think about that all the time. I think about it. I feel grateful that I was that little girl who never spoke up. I was really quiet. And I think that some things happened to me throughout my life that made me go wait a second, I can do all of these things. I think I could do it better than you and you and you. And I think I just always wanted for some reason there was just a competitive nature about me. Maybe not necessarily like in sports or something like that, but just wanting to be better. And I think that is it. I don’t it’s always been there. It’s always been there. And I’m not really sure. I feel I feel bad for my husband that is like that, but he’s also in sales. So, there’s always competitive nature in our house with the sales thing like we talk about it every day.

 

Christopher Smith

You didn’t start your career in sales. How did you make that transition? Tell me that story of how you made that switch into sales.

 

Amy Walther

Yeah. So, I used to be in banking and then I moved over into the telecommunications world. And I had some opportunities that were not given to me, I had to fight for them. And as I work, I was handed these opportunities, I realized that I had I had a boss once that said, in order to, in order to get the job, you need to do the job. And I still say that to this to this day, I say to my kids, and what that really means is, if you want that job bad enough, you go get it, you go get that job, you find a way to get that job, and you show them that they want you for that job. And so, I think that is, that is where that started. But then I helped create some pretty big things that happened. I wasn’t really getting promoted. And I realized that it was time to go somewhere. But they didn’t know where, as I mentioned to you before, my husband is always been in sales since I met him. And he, I feel like he kind of pushed me into it. He’s like, you should be in sales. This is ridiculous. Why are you not in sales? It was constant. It was a constant conversation. And I finally was like, fine. I’ll go do it. As long as we’re all supportive. Right? So, I did, and I took my first sales job. And I did a really, if he was right, it was the right place. I mean, I don’t want to tell him that there’s this right. Was gonna tell anyone, right.

 

Christopher Smith

Keep your secret. Please do. That’s awesome. Was that a hard? It sounds like it’s a pretty natural transition for you.

 

Amy Walther

Was it hard?

 

Christopher Smith

Is everything about it easy? Yeah, talk to me.

 

Amy Walther

It wasn’t easy. Because I had small children at the time, I was I was a very, I was an older mother and I but I was, you know, in the middle of trying to do something with myself. And so, when I did this, I had to travel a lot. And my children were very small. They were a toddlers, maybe in young ages really young. And it was really hard. Because when I would be at home, I always I’ve always worked from home when I’ve done this. So, I would have to wear a thing on my head, like bunny ears or the devil horns or something. And if the kids saw that I had this on my head, they were not to come talk to me. Like if there was a glass door, they were not to speak to me because I was trying, you know, I’m a woman in a career space. And it was always, you know, they always think that we have our kids and I just I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that I was serious. So back then we didn’t have cameras on.

 

Christopher Smith

So that was before zoom. Obviously, it was always on a phone.

 

Amy Walther

They didn’t know I could stare and make faces of the kids. Nobody would even know. But yes, it was very hard. And then I would have to leave my small children. And it was really difficult for me. Like if they lost a tooth and I wasn’t there or something, right? Yeah. Weird things that would happen. So, it was very difficult that that part was difficult. The second part that was hard was the scare and worried that you weren’t going to be able to meet your numbers or you weren’t going to hit you know, those when you when you jump into sales, and you get these things called quotas. You’re like, what is a quota? And oh, my God, this quote is so huge. And it this is frightening. And what if I don’t meet my quota? What if I don’t make any money? And what if what if and all these scary things that happen when you’re trying to figure this out? And thankfully, like I said, I suppose I had my husband, as a mentor to say, don’t freak out once just, you know, you’ll get it, that kind of thing. So that was the scariest part, I think making sure that I could hit my numbers and make money was kind of important for the household.

 

Christopher Smith

Right? What would you say to that younger version of Amy, who was just getting started in sales? Coming from your position now in sales leadership? What would you tell young Amy?

 

Amy Walther

Well, I would definitely, well. Confidence is a big thing. And confidence doesn’t just naturally happen. It is a very difficult thing to you don’t just become confident, right? Something either happens to you in life in to make you confident or something happens, or it takes a lot of time to become competent. So, if I could have gained that confidence years ahead, I think I would have been I would have been more successful than I am now at this age, I guess I would say but for a younger, I have two daughters and I am constantly working on that competence thing. And I make sure that they understand that they’re, you know, worth it and teaching people to be competent. I don’t know where it comes from. Does it come from your parents does come from yourself? Does it come from your Coaches are your teachers, maybe all of the above? But I would definitely say that working for some good bosses over the years has helped to if you if you’re, if you work for someone who gives you a chance, you’re really lucky. But if you work for someone who’s never going to give you a chance, you almost got to go to another job. So, I’d say competence and just, you know, push through, don’t give up. Don’t give up.

 

Christopher Smith

Now, for me personally, I realized at some point, I used to be super nervous about doing presentations or get in front of a group. But I realized at some point, like, there were times when I did that, and I had absolutely no issues whatsoever. And I thought about it. And I realized, well, the reason why is I completely and thoroughly understood whatever it was, I was presenting the topic, I knew my stuff. And just out of that came confidence. Is that similar for you? Or did you have a similar experience developing your own confidence?

 

Amy Walther

Well, so another funny story, I like I said, I was a very shy person. But as I got older, I started cheerleading as an older person for a professional NFL team. Yeah, there’s a story. That’s a story right now, before that I, I cheered for a professional lacrosse team. But those are smaller, right. But I was older I was, I was in my late 20s, which is like an old lady that’s ancient for that kind of ancient, right? You’re like 10 years older than them. And they’re all these young people. Anyway, I will tell you that I did this, I don’t know what provoked me to do these things I had come out of a divorce or whatever. But I just was like, you know what, I’m going to do all the things that I want to do. And I tried out for that team. And I made it. And I was, like I said, 10 to 12 years older than everybody else there. But what 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. And I will tell you that that confidence that that was the real beginning of me going, whoa, I could do anything, I could do anything. And, and to this day, I have zero problems making eye contact with people. I don’t care if people think that I look funny, I don’t care if anything, and it doesn’t matter. I have confidence I can get up on a stage and do a presentation to and I have in the past hundreds of people. And you know, the first few seconds, like you said, the first few seconds when you have the hot lights in your face. And everything is it’s you’re sweaty, and that part stinks. But you get through that first few minutes. And then you’re just it’s just being yourself again. And I think that confidence level has changed since I did the truly…

 

Christopher Smith

What team did you cheer for?

 

Amy Walther

I cheered for the Buffalo Bills, which we don’t have cheerleaders anymore. So, by the way, the Buffalo Bills are going to kick some bought this year. So you go,

 

Christopher Smith

we finally got there. It’s gonna be out. That’s awesome. So, let’s talk about your transition into sales leadership. Was it a similar transition as getting into sales? Was it a difficult transition? Or was it a much easier transition?

 

Amy Walther

Nothing, nothing’s easy. Now, nothing has been easy, I would say, you know. So, if you jump into sales, you’re kind of starting all over again. The one thing that I had have going for me, I guess I’ll say the one thing is that I know I’m in a niche business. So just know, like you said, knowing your content, and being a being a person that that specializes in something and is very good at it is extremely helpful. So that part helps me. But that didn’t mean that I naturally just moved up the chain. I’m not sure how many females you’ve spoken to. But in my life in the areas that I’ve been, it’s been very difficult to move up. As a female, things are different. Now my kids are going to have it made. But when I was moving up, it still wasn’t. It’s just never it’s still not easy, right? You know, it’s not as simple as it used to be. So, I would get bypassed by people didn’t matter if I was better at it, it did not matter. And so, no, it was not easy. And I just kept pushing through. And I will say that there have been times in my career where in order for me to promote myself, I had to leave. So, it’s, you know, in the olden days, when our parents were working, the goal was you stay there for 30 years be you know, be committed. Right? You stay with those people and then well there were pensions back then it was a different situation. We don’t do pensions anymore, but I will say that at nowadays, in order to promote yourself, sometimes you need to move you sometimes you need to leave. And that is I will tell you right now, that is when people go, oh, no, she left, and they see that things maybe fell apart. And then and, and then in their West how I actually left, and I came back. And it was it was a great decision. It, everything worked, worked out, everything happens for a reason. But I’m very happy. I’m very good boss, and he does believe in me, and he trusts me. And that I think that’s very helpful. When you have a company that believes in you, that makes a big difference. But you need to earn, you need to earn that right? It doesn’t happen. Easily.

 

Christopher Smith

Do you try to do the same thing with your team? In terms of having that trust or demonstrating that trust?

 

Amy Walther

I do I don’t like I know what I didn’t like. So, I don’t do that to them. I don’t think that any adult likes to be told what to do. I think that adults should be able to figure out what they you maybe some coercion and some maybe not coercion, maybe that’s not the right word, maybe some like little nudges into making having them figure out that they made the decision themselves. I feel that that is the best choice to get the best results out of anybody. I don’t think micromanaging is ever good for anybody. And I feel like it’s very uncomfortable for everybody. So, with my team, I just want them you know, I think one of the things I always ask is, well, what would you do? What do you want to do? And then I’ll tell you what I would want to do? Because I don’t want them to hear what I think first I want them to tell me what they think. And then maybe that’s the right choice. Or maybe I said, well, you know, I think you should try that. I think that’s a good I think it’s a good choice. I think you should give it a try. And if that doesn’t work, then I tell them what my ideas. And then maybe you could try a little bit of us. And I do that every day. Because I don’t think that anybody will grow if they’re not given opportunity.

 

Christopher Smith

How do you establish that trust with your team to where they feel comfortable and in to make themselves vulnerable to come to you say, hey, I have this problem, I need help.

 

Amy Walther

I have a very small team here. And we’re very close. So, there’s one gentleman that works under me, I call us we’re both we’re good friends, and we work very well together. And I think that just I don’t know, it sounds corny, but I am very a big believer in getting to know the people that you work with, because they have a life, right? They have a life, they have a family, if if they left this company tomorrow, they may know they still have a life, right. And I think that getting to know them really helps it helps them. If I asked them about you know, if they had a sick spouse or something wrong with their kids, or somebody got COVID or their dog is dead. I you know, I want to I want to know, I don’t want to find out from someone else that something like this happened. And I just seem like a cold, heartless person. So, I think I think it really does establish a trust. I think that sounds crazy. But it’s no different. When you’re talking with customers. When you start to get a connection with customers, you’re talking about the weather, you’re talking about their vacation or whatever. And there’s some kind of connection there you can make. I’ve always been good about making a connection. It could be about anything like literally I’ve done it all. So, if somebody brought up a topic about something I’m chances are I probably dabbled in it or know somebody who has I can at least keep the conversation going. So definitely want to make sure I just feel like there needs to be a connection there. And then when they do really need something they will talk to me about it. And then secondly, I’ll just say that I’ve worked for bosses that believe that you should be literally connected in all day long, right? You should literally you shouldn’t talk to your family. You should be doing this during your dinner. You know, don’t talk to your kids. And I don’t believe in that. I tell everybody listen, I want you to I mean yeah, I will check things once in a while or if there’s an urgent thing, take care of it. But I want you to have your life if you have your life you’re always come back to work refreshed every day and you feel a little bit better and you’re they’re more they’re more useful. They’re definitely more successful in what they need to accomplish.

 

Christopher Smith

What do you look for when you’re building a sales team? You know, there are certain attributes that you’re looking for.

 

Amy Walther

I want I really want to make sure that they’re self-starters, right? There’s nothing worse in the world than when you have a new person working for you or a person working for you. And you realize that they didn’t even start their day until, like, 10 o’clock in the morning that drives me insane. I know that I just said, I don’t micromanage, but I’m just saying like, that makes me crazy, right, I, you know, you still have things to get done. So, I just really like some go getters and self-starters and people who can manage prioritizing things, right? I really want to make sure that I don’t have to tell anybody, anything twice. So, when I when I am trying to find those people, you know, there’s a lot of questions that I asked to try to extract those from them to see, you know, how they live their life and how they would work? How what a normal day to day look like for you. You know, if you’re trying to go get this sale, if you’re trying to go get something like what are you going to do? Are you going to? Are you gonna wait till they can’t call you? Are you gonna keep calling them? Do you have a plan? Like, you know, there has to be something coming out of them that makes me believe that they are really a go getter. And I’ll tell you, when, when I’m negotiating salaries with people that want to like, I’d say rule number one in my mind, if they don’t ever if the if I give them an offer. And they don’t ask me for more, I almost don’t want them working for me. I don’t. And I, I wait for it. And I, I hope that they do it. And if they don’t, then I go, why don’t even offer this person. You know, for something, it could be anything, just show me that you’re a salesperson, right? Show me your salesperson. Now I don’t like the braggy salesperson that one doesn’t always work is so great with me. Because sometimes you do that, you find out that there’s the name droppers, and I the Name Dropper is driving me insane. But I mean, you can usually wiggle your way through that.

 

Christopher Smith

But yeah, it’s I think that’s one of the toughest things, but also the most important thing as a leader, you’re only as good as your team. And if you don’t have a good team, you’re going to struggle.

 

Amy Walther

Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

 

Christopher Smith

How do you leverage failure in your role as a leader?

 

Amy Walther

Well, um, I would have those, yes, you definitely need to learn from them. There have been many things that, you know, you go back, and you look at it again, and you go, you know, what, I should have done this. Or I really, I’d say, in the past, I think I questioned myself and I didn’t follow my instincts. I follow my instincts more now than I used to. And I think that’s, that’s helpful. It doesn’t always work. But most of the time, I feel like it’s a better solution than maybe 10 years ago, when I was a little younger. But definitely trusting my instincts, and, you know, listen, crazy, but you know, listening to the customer’s tone, you know, trying to see if, you know, I deal with competition all the time. We all do, right? And sometimes it’s not always about price. Many times, it’s not always about price. And so, you know, I just I, I really learned from, from those experiences, right? What did, how did I lose this deal? How do I lose this deal? What can I do? So, I don’t do that, again. Because these deals that we’re talking about, like it takes me, you know, we’re talking a 12-to-18-month sales cycle over here. And when you work that long for something, and you lose it, it’s very devastating. It’s very devastating. So, but I talked about it, I talked about it with my boss, I talked about it with my staff. I talked about it with my husband, I talked up I tried to figure out like, you know, I really don’t understand, like, why did I lose this? And I think they think it through because nobody likes to lose customers.

 

Christopher Smith

What’s that? Do you ever ask your customers while you lost?

 

Amy Walther

Yeah, I mean, of course, yeah. You know, tell me tell me what I could even at the end, if I find out that I lose, I say you don’t just tell me. I just want to know, what was it that made you pick this other decision with this other choice or whatever? At some time, sometimes I can string that along, you know, if I can figure out how to get through that many times, actually, even Yeah, regularly. I’m constantly trying to get into their head and understand, you know, why, why maybe you didn’t stick with us. And so, and you know, it’s, I always tell everybody, I think it’s harder. It’s harder to it’s harder to keep a customer than it is to get a customer sometime. I am so, you know, I don’t want to lose them either. So, I always try really hard to make sure I don’t forget about my existing customers, you know, sometimes people make a sale, and then you don’t even go back and talk to those people. That’s, that’s not smart.

 

Christopher Smith

That’s a great point I, what is your I don’t know what the word is the word I’m searching for. But when it comes to that managing that customer relationship as part of your ongoing sales cycle, what is your philosophy around that, you know, as a sales leader, because a lot of times I’ve seen a lot of companies I’ve talked with and sales leaders I’ve talked with, what’s the deals on their moving on to the next one?

 

Amy Walther

No, not me, I am constantly trying to, I mean, many of those customers have more opportunity for me, right? They don’t always have in my business. Or in my opinion, maybe it’s more about my reputation than anything, I never want anyone to look at me and think that I neglected them, or just got their PIO and ran away, you know, that kind of stuff, I don’t, I am very concerned about my reputation. So, I am constantly making sure that I am checking in with people. And if I’ve disappointed them, or we, our company, or whatever has happened has even the tiny little things, right? It could have been something else, it could have been something in technical support, it could have been, they got they had a broken unit, and they didn’t know how to come to me to get something repaired or different things that are not even necessarily my job, I will make sure that they get an answer for so it is extremely important to do to do that. And I’ll tell you the bigger thing, what happens a lot, I’m sure in everybody’s business, but especially in mind is that people move around, and they move from company to company to company, and they’re getting promoted, or whatever’s happening. And if I did that to them here, and then I had an opportunity with them over there, I really just kind of messed up all my all my chances. So, I am I- everybody needs to get attention. You know, they all need to get attention, they need to be paid attention to and they need to be talked to regularly to because you don’t have any idea if they don’t. Maybe they acquired another company, maybe they have more opportunity, those kinds of things. And, and it is it is a bigger part of my business than sometimes going out and getting new, new customers, I want to do all of those things. But I need to make sure I take care of my customers.

 

Christopher Smith

Let’s talk about that tool that you use to do what you just said, CRM. Do you love it? Or do you hate it?

 

Amy Walther

I love it. I should use it more than I do. Everybody should. But thankfully our company uses it and constantly is saying update these dates. Why is this stale? You know, all that kind of stuff. But we use it for forecasting and everything. And if we didn’t have it, I am getting older. And I can’t remember everything. So, the CRM notes and all of my dates and the detail of the hardware or whatever that that’s connected to it for the forecast. If I don’t put it in there, there. Sometimes a piece of paper is not going to be found when I’m going to look for it. So, CRM is great tool.

 

Christopher Smith

Yeah. What’s your struggle? You said? You don’t use it as much as you should? What’s that struggle or blocker from keeping it from being a part of your routine?

 

Amy Walther

Yeah, I’d say that, you know, it’s, it’s go I do a little bit of this sometimes. And I think that I would be better off if I looked at it all the time, printed off my records and looked at this stuff. But like I said, it’s at least, you know, a couple of times a week event, and I think it should be more. So that’s, um, that’s on me.

 

Christopher Smith

As a sales leader, how do you motivate your team to be engaged with because that is a common struggle, we hear all the time is that we’ve got this great tool, but I really struggle getting my team to engage with it. What’s your strategy there?

 

Amy Walther

Well, like I said, I find that it’s different for different companies. And I like some of these people that I talk to that I don’t work with, like different salespeople. But I find that if the, if the company enforces the use of it, you’re almost you have to use it right? Just like ours, right? We are forced to use AI. Like I said, I could do a little bit better at it, obviously. But if your company does not enforce it, or you don’t use that tool for I’m just gonna I’ll just say like forecasting for equipment, and things like that. I can see how people wouldn’t necessarily find them. sells using it. I think as a salesperson, if you didn’t have a CRM tool, you’re, you’re never going to be successful because you cannot count on this little list of paper that you write down the notes and, or even I even tried to write the Franklin Covey thing for years, I did that for years, I did it, then I moved the thing over and I stopped wanting to buy the pieces of paper. But honestly, the CRM tool is the best way for you to keep track of the dates and the timeframe when you think something’s going to happen, the stages of where it is. And it’s definitely I think every sales leader out there probably struggles with certain employees of theirs that they wished used it more so that they had better visibility and things now on this on another hand, as I was a lower salesperson, sometimes you didn’t always want to put everything in there, because then you get this ginormous quota from your company. And then that would really stink, too. So, there’s a whole bunch of you know, politics in the middle of that, that you have to be careful in the time of the year and what you’re forecasting and putting in there so that you don’t get a ridiculous quota. So, we all struggle with that, too.

 

Christopher Smith

Yeah, but so that’s not really a serum thing. That’s a management thing. That’s a sales leadership thing. And I think as sales leaders, I talk with these about this a lot with people that it’s like, like anything else in life, there’s a balance. And if you’re constantly whacking people with a stick trying to get them to do stuff, they’re not going to do it, you have to give them an incentive. So, you’re going to disincentivize them by saying, hey, looking at your pipeline, looking great, we’re gonna bump your quota 30%.

 

Amy Walther

Yes, and I, right, we all have, we all have upper management, and I agree with you. So, I think, again, I do think that everybody needs to put that stuff in there, and they need to really think about it, and they need to continue to look into it. And not forget about those opportunities. I think the biggest thing that I’m saying that I find when you’re a busy salesperson, and you put these things in CRM, as long as you put it in, you remember that that was a potential opportunity. And it’s really about tracking those opportunities. But for the for, you know, for the folks underneath that need to make sure that they’re keeping track of things, you’re right, and this the wagon with a stick doesn’t always work. But if you if you make it sound like it’s, it’s, it’s a good thing to do is to keep track of your, your things. And we have reports to see those things, it’s a useful tool to remember to check in with people. Because, like I said, you could put something in there that there’s an opportunity that could be for, you know, six months from now. And if you didn’t actually put it in CRM, you’re actually you would probably never, you probably forget to reach out to those people and reconnect with them. So, it’s a good tool for that.

 

Christopher Smith

One of my favorite questions asked companies when I engage with as a consultant is what’s your number one struggle? When it comes to CRM, some people’s data, some it’s adoption? Could be lack of integrations, whatever. What’s your biggest struggle with CRM?

 

Amy Walther

Um, like I said, I use it. I don’t think I have a struggle with it internally here, I think. I think they use it. So, the whole company uses it so intimately, that my biggest struggle is keeping up on shifting dates when a customer is not ready to do something. So, you know, you guess you guess when you put this stuff in. So, we are asked to update those things. And all of our, you know, all of all of the sales folks and the people underneath need to update those things. So we keeping track of all of that, but I think that I think that keeping up on the dates and making sure that I’m keeping track of everything that’s going on is my biggest problem, which is why I like CRM, because it again, it forces me to recall these opportunities that I’ve kind of learned drop off or you know that the sales folks opportunities have dropped off, you can remind people Hey, what’s going on with this? Or, you know, you had this in here, and this was this is about a year still. Is this going to happen? You haven’t marked in this quarter, you know, that kind of thing. Right? Yeah.

 

Christopher Smith

Well, you mean, we’re up on our time here on sales lead dog really appreciate you coming on the show. If people want to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn about Westell what’s the best way for them to do that?

 

Amy Walther

Yes, well, thank you for asking. So, there is, you know, westfall.com or reaching out to me on LinkedIn, I can be reached at a Walther Awa LTH er At West toe, W E S T E. l l.com. And I will, I will be ready to help anybody at any time. You know, we’re trying real hard to get our word out about some new products, and make sure that people know about us. We did just get mentioned in the CIO review. So, we did get a plug for one of the top 10 vendors for IoT. So that’s kind of exciting. We’re really, we’re really trying to do a better job at advertising ourselves, we find that we’ve gotten a little bit busy, and it’s one of my pushes for us to try to get more publicity and drive people to us. So hopefully, hopefully, they will. And you know, we it’s a monitoring company, and we monitor lots of edge devices. And that’s, that’s what we do we do it best. I tell people that we’ve been doing IoT before IoT was a thing. And so, we’ve been doing it for years, and somebody gave it an acronym. And now everybody, everybody’s talking about it. So. All right, so hopefully, hopefully, people will reach out to me if they need help.

 

Christopher Smith

Yep, and all that information may be shared will be in the show notes. So be sure to check us out on the other crm.com forward slash sales lead dog and you’ll find this episode and get a new show notes. And please reach out to reconnect. So again, Amy, thank you for coming on sales lead dog and welcome to the pack.

 

Amy Walther

Thank 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

Links

Amy Walther LinkedIn
Westell LinkedIn
Westell Website

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter