0:01
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith.
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Talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack.
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Listen to find out how the best of the best achieved success with their team and CRM technology.
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And remember, unless you were the lead dog, the view never changes.
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Welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
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Very excited for today’s episode.
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Joining me today, I have Karen Pugliaze of C&D Technologies.
0:36
Karen, welcome to Sales Lead Dying.
0:39
Thank you so much, Chris.
0:40
I’m excited to be here.
0:41
Oh, it’s, yeah, it’s a wonderful day.
0:43
Tell me a bit about C&D Technologies, Karen.
0:46
Yeah, C&D Technologies has been around for over a century.
0:50
We’re an energy solutions manufacturer.
0:55
We go ahead and manufacture a variety of different battery solutions globally.
1:01
We’re a market leader.
1:02
We’re really focused on honing in on some very specific verticals, so energy infrastructure, so the utility market, nuclear market, data center, and then what you would consider to be telecom.
1:15
So that’s the cable operation operators and service providers.
1:19
I have a background in telecom and I remember very early in my 20s going into the call centers or I think not the call centers, they’re the, I forgot what they call them, but the block buildings like the central, central offices, yes.
1:35
And they’d have these massive batteries of and there were chemical based and just row after row.
1:45
I imagine the technology has advanced quite a bit since then.
1:49
It has, but you know, you’d be surprised to see the number of customers that still have those flooded batteries that that you referenced.
1:56
I mean, the chemistries have obviously changed.
1:59
Lead acid is probably the most dominant today in the market and certainly C&D has had a lot of focus in terms of maximizing their pure lead VRLA batteries.
2:11
And then obviously, you’ve got other chemistries that are constantly in play.
2:15
Yeah, that’s such a huge, I mean, with where everything is going around energy, batteries, I don’t think have ever been more important.
2:24
And they’re just get that importance is just going to grow 100%.
2:27
You know, it’s interesting ’cause when you think about it, you know, historically, no one was really concerned about the, about the, you know, the standards that you would think about in a building, right?
2:39
So you have electricity, you’ve got, you know, plumbing, you’ve got water.
2:43
Like no one was really concerned about the availability of those.
2:47
And yet today you look at something crazy just like what you’re looking at when you go on to ChatGPT and you query something.
2:55
I mean, that’s 10 times more compute power requirements for that search versus using Google.
3:02
And so when you think about that, you know, that 10 times exponential increase in terms of compute and energy is incredible.
3:11
And so, you know, now you’ve got countries that are putting moratoriums on data centers because they just don’t have enough energy just to maintain the people in their homes, let alone, you know, adding EV charging data centers, AI by additional compute.
3:29
So I think it’s a really interesting time in the, in the energy services place.
3:34
It really is.
3:34
It’s because it’s wherever you have power generation, you also have to have power backup, you have to have storage exactly that.
3:42
It’s not, you can’t count on that power source being 100% all the time.
3:46
It’s, it’s just not reality.
3:49
Agreed.
3:49
And and no one has the patience that they used to.
3:53
I think that one of the things that happened during the pandemic is that everybody became very focused on, on availability and uptime.
4:02
And so now, you know, any glitch that you have in your life is almost deemed unacceptable.
4:09
And so, you know, that whole kind of like that kind of circle of death that you see is something’s buffering.
4:16
Like it’s almost unheard of today, except for maybe when that UFC fight was on Netflix and they, and they had problems.
4:25
But but that had everything to do with latency and, and, and fiber backbone and all of that wonderful stuff and, and nothing really to do with batteries and, and backup.
4:38
So, Kevin, you’ve had an incredible career.
4:40
When you look back over your career, what are the three things?
4:42
If you boil it down to three things, what are those three things that have really driven and LED to your success?
4:48
Yeah, I’d say the first thing is kind of like how my career got started.
4:53
I I started off at GE, great organization, can’t say enough wonderful things.
4:58
So it’s back in the days of Jack Welch.
5:00
So I’m going to age myself a little bit when I say that, but I had a great mentor.
5:06
And I think for me that was, you know, that was really a critical turning point, was that I had a great mentor who kind of said, like, you know, the world’s your oyster.
5:17
Here’s all the things that you can do.
5:19
And so that was kind of the first thing.
5:21
I think the second thing was really around understanding that, you know, the sales is a is a little bit of art, it’s a little bit of science, but it is truly a profession.
5:32
And I think that, you know, some sometimes sales people get a little bit of a bad rap as a result of that.
5:39
But you know, I think that understanding that it is a profession and there is the opportunity to hone your skills over the course of time.
5:48
I think was the second thing.
5:50
And the third one was really the network that I was able to build.
5:55
I don’t think I would have been able to grow my career, go from, you know, the last role that I had at GE was in healthcare and now I’m working for an energy storage solutions company.
6:07
Like those two things don’t often go together.
6:09
And then there was a bunch of security stuff and connectivity in between.
6:13
So I think the ability to kind of grow my network over the course of my career has been, has also been very critical in terms of the success that I’ve had.
6:23
That’s a common thread that I’ve seen with a lot of very successful people is that they have a tremendous network that they can rely on, that they can reach out to when they need to.
6:33
Yeah.
6:34
And it does need to be, you know, one of the things that remind people when they talk about, you know, how do I build my network is like, well, it’s, it’s really a symbiotic relationship because you can’t just connect with someone.
6:47
They’re going to want to, they’re going to kind of they’re going to want to come back to you and ask for something at some point in time during that, during that engagement over the course of years, obviously.
6:58
And so you kind of have to give as much as you get.
7:00
And they think that that’s like a really important aspect to remember is that it’s not just, it’s not just reaching out and trying to, you know, gather them up like coins or chips.
7:12
It’s really like you’re constantly trading back and forth.
7:15
Yeah.
7:15
Oh, yeah.
7:16
I believe it.
7:16
I believe it.
7:18
Yeah.
7:18
And it’s got to be a two way St.
7:19
too.
7:19
It’s not just, hey, I’m going to take from you all the time because your network is going to wither and die.
7:25
That’s the perspective.
7:26
Yeah.
7:28
So your VP of global sales did you when you started your career?
7:33
Is that something you envisioned?
7:36
This is where I’m going to be at this.
7:38
Yeah.
7:38
No, not at not at all.
7:41
I have a degree in political science and economics and I really thought that I would end up probably in, I’m going to say some kind of policy related government role that that was kind of where I thought I was going to be.
7:57
It wasn’t like it kind of wasn’t even in the cards for me.
8:01
And then I started working at GE and, and just through the mentor relationship that I had, it just kind of, I’m, I’m going to say it just kind of happened, but I ended up in a sales, I ended up in a sales role.
8:16
And it was really my mentor at the time that said, listen, the best salespeople understand how a business works.
8:23
And so I think you should leave your sales role that I was very happy with, very comfortable with and go and take advantage of the Six Sigma initiatives that were happening in GE.
8:37
And I was like that at the time.
8:40
I thought it, I felt like it was a little bit of a punishment management.
8:43
I, I have to say.
8:46
And it was one of those things within that GE environment that kind of when you got tapped on the shoulder to do something like that, it was career limiting to say no.
8:53
And so I said, I said yes, obviously.
8:57
And I think for me, that was when it, all the pieces kind of started coming together when I left GE and, and I was working at Stanley, you know, the, the leader at Stanley who’s the next GE person was like, you know, they, they did a great job in terms of making you a great sales leader and a great business leader.
9:19
And I was like, what are you talking about?
9:21
I just spent like a whole bunch of time doing 6 Sigma stuff.
9:24
And then I did a little bit of a, I’ll say the first kind of foray into e-commerce in terms of getting the accessories and supplies, the healthcare accessories and supplies business online, which really wasn’t online.
9:37
It was just a whole bunch of pictures on a website and then you put them in your cart and it spewed out an e-mail at the call center.
9:46
So I really didn’t see myself as being in a sales leadership role, nor did I see that I had acquired the skills to be able to do it.
9:54
And it wasn’t until I went to Stanley that they kind of turned around and they said, like you, you take all the boxes and I was like all the boxes for what it was.
10:05
The little.
10:06
I was a little bit surprised.
10:09
So you’re so in the middle of it.
10:11
So in the thick of it, oftentimes we’d lose that perspective of those skills that we’re actually developing.
10:17
Right?
10:18
Yeah, 100% Chris.
10:19
And I think that I think the other thing is, is that when you’re, you know, they had a very defined approach where like every two to three years your role changed.
10:30
So when, you know, I was there for, for just a bit over 10 years.
10:34
And so you know, that’s a lot of different roles with a lot of different focuses.
10:39
And when you’re in it, you don’t really realize the things that you’re learning and that you’re gaining and that you’re understanding and and you don’t necessarily see how all those pieces kind of fit together until the puzzles kind of complete.
10:54
I just needed somebody to show me the completed puzzle for me to get my head around it.
10:58
Oh yeah.
10:59
I, you know, one of the things that again, I’m, I’m, you know, I think we’re similar age and although I never had the opportunity to work at GE, you, you had to have your head in the sand to not understand what was going on at GE in the Jack Welch era.
11:17
And I think there was a very common theme there of constant learning and evolution.
11:22
Constant.
11:23
Can you talk about that and what played with, with the rest of your career?
11:28
I think, I think first, I think the first part of it is that, you know, I think inherently I’m a constant learner.
11:35
Like I’m an avid reader, you know, I tend to sometimes go down rabbit holes, you know, to try and understand something.
11:43
So I think that for me, it was a great alignment at GE because it was a culture of learning.
11:50
You know, you could there, there are people that I, that I still am in am engaged with today who like started their career in, you know, light bulbs and ended up in like jet engines like it.
12:03
It’s almost unfathomable when you think of somebody’s career.
12:06
And so if you if you weren’t really great at learning, if you weren’t really great at kind of embracing that, you really struggled kind of within that culture.
12:16
So for me, I think 1, the learning piece has always been important.
12:20
I probably could have been a student, like I could have been a professional student if, if I could have survived on that.
12:28
So, you know, when I look at, when I, when I look at going from 1 industry to another, from, you know, 1 manufacturer, one tech company to another.
12:37
For me, it’s like it’s exciting to try and understand how does the new stuff fit into all the old stuff that I understand and that I’ve, you know, kind of gotten my head around over the course of time.
12:50
And so I think it allows you to see things from some different perspectives.
12:54
And it really, and it really forces you to understand the business and not just the product or the solution.
13:01
And I think that’s the exciting part for me in most organizations.
13:04
Yeah.
13:05
And that’s what they remember about Jack Welch too, is that a great leader can lead any business.
13:12
But I think that’s because you have to be able to learn.
13:14
You have to be able to come in and know how to ask the right questions and to be able to listen right, Agreed.
13:21
And, and, and it’s interesting.
13:24
I, when I first, when I first kind of started thinking about it, you know, once I left GEI was like, I don’t do I have any transferable skills.
13:33
Like I worked in capital, I worked in corporate, you know, I worked in healthcare, I worked in their IT business.
13:40
It’s like all of these things kind of felt very disparate, but the reality is, is that every business that you go into is trying to figure out, you know, how to optimize their processes.
13:51
They’re trying to figure out how to grow their businesses.
13:53
They’re trying to uncover, you know, new verticals or new applications or new customers or looking at expanding into new geographies.
14:02
All of those things are the same regardless of what your solution is.
14:05
And so, you know, I, I think those skills become very transferable.
14:10
And I’m, I have to say, I’m, I’m always a little disappointed when I speak to someone and they say, oh, you know, I applied for this role and they said, you know, oh, you needed to have financial services background or you needed to have, you know, experience in, in, you know, some kind of SAS solution.
14:31
And it’s like, that’s really unfortunate because once you peg people into those roles, like that whole concept of diversity, like diversity of thought, diversity of experience, diversity of knowledge kind of gets lost if all you’re doing is creating a scenario where you’ve just got people kind of moving themselves around the same industry.
14:54
And, and so I’m always a little bit disappointed in that.
14:56
I think that it doesn’t, it doesn’t create that that growth and, and learning excitement when you, when you kind of limit that opportunity.
15:05
I couldn’t agree more.
15:06
In fact, I was going to ask you a question, I was going to tee you up with a question on that and you jumped ahead and answered it because that I think that’s really important.
15:14
It, it drives me crazy when I talk to people like that.
15:20
It’s it’s like, yeah, it helps to understand that industry, but the danger, there’s a flip side to that to where you become myopic and and everyone you have group think because everyone’s doing it and think about it the same way.
15:35
It’s very helpful for someone to come in with that is naive, that maybe doesn’t that’s going to ask questions.
15:44
They’re going to reframe the conversation 100%, 100%.
15:48
And I think if you look at organizations that have that have made evolutionary or revolutionary change, like it’s often because they had somebody come in who just saw the business or saw the market from a completely different perspective.
16:05
And in most cases, they didn’t come from the competitor, right?
16:09
Like they came from something completely different.
16:12
And I think that that’s, you know, I think that’s where the creativity often comes from versus kind of what I call, you know, you know, copy, rinse, repeat.
16:23
Oh, yeah, yeah.
16:24
As as kind of being an approach.
16:27
Yeah.
16:27
I remember reading about when Ford, I think it was Ford Motor Company, brought in the former CEO of the of Boeing to take over.
16:36
And everyone’s like, Oh my God.
16:37
He doesn’t know what you think about the car industry, what the world is seeking to be able to bring.
16:42
He brought a whole new perspective on how to do things and really shook it up.
16:48
But a lot of times that’s what you need.
16:49
You need a leader that’s willing to shake the tree and ask why.
16:54
Why not?
16:56
Yeah.
16:56
And every business goes through, you know, some kind of evolutionary cycle, right?
17:01
Some are more mature than some are more mature than others.
17:04
And, you know, why would you want to try and start from scratch, right?
17:09
Like I, I often think about it, you know, like I look at an organization that’s, you know, looking at leveraging a channel strategy.
17:17
Like why would you try and build that in house?
17:19
Why wouldn’t you go to another industry that has a really mature channel strategy that’s kind of tripped over itself, figured out what works, figured out what doesn’t work and bring those lesson lessons learned and then reframe the channel strategy kind of within your business or, or within your industry?
17:39
I mean, I, I just kind of look at that as as a bit of a no brainer versus trying to figure it out from scratch and then going through all of those pain points, which means you end up going slower than you need to in order to be successful.
17:53
And you’re falling in your face a heck of a lot more than you need to.
17:56
Yeah, exactly.
17:57
That’s why YouTube videos are so popular, right?
17:59
Instead of trying to figure out how to do it, you know, on your own, try and put the bookcase together or figure out how to build a fire pit, you go on YouTube and have somebody show you.
18:09
So we do it in our personal lives, and yet we’re a little bit less embracing of it from a professional perspective.
18:16
What was your biggest challenge for you in your evolution as a leader?
18:22
Wow, that’s a great question.
18:25
I’m going to say my biggest challenge was actually leaving GE and, and yeah, and, and I say that because, you know, it was my first, I’m going to call it my first real job, you know, after university, I spent 10 plus years there.
18:41
It’s kind of like that’s where my friends were, that I felt comfortable in that culture.
18:47
I knew.
18:49
I knew how to get things done.
18:51
I knew, you know, what worked, what didn’t work.
18:55
I understood a lot around the expectations.
18:58
Even if even if it was different businesses and different roles, I knew at a very high level what the expectations were and how the organization, how the organization ran itself and, and it was.
19:12
And after 10 years, you know, I could manage my way through it.
19:16
It I don’t want to say with my eyes closed, but I could manage my way through it.
19:20
When I got to Stanley, it was, you know, my husband joked that, you know, I was leaving a utopia that didn’t exist anywhere else.
19:29
And there was nothing wrong with Stanley.
19:31
Stanley was a great organization, don’t get me wrong, but it just operated completely differently.
19:39
And, and that you know that for me, I think at that point, I think I was the youngest VP that they’d ever had.
19:48
I was the youngest female VP that they had in their business.
19:53
I had no security.
19:55
I had no security background.
19:58
So I was coming in like completely green.
20:03
All of my previous kind of management roles had really had been PLPNL focused, but most of them were kind of in that startup realm within the GE world.
20:13
And so I wasn’t walking in.
20:16
I’d never walked into a long standing business that already had, you know, ingrained processes, ingrained people.
20:27
And so for me, that was like the, it was overwhelming.
20:31
And I can remember and just to just to add a little bit more flavor to it, I think they’d had like, I think they’d had like 12 liters in like 14 years or something like that.
20:45
And so it was just like it was, it was, I’m, I’m gonna say it was good that I was young and naive and I just didn’t know any better because I don’t, because walking into it, I really didn’t, don’t think that I really understand what I was getting into.
20:59
But it was, it was probably the biggest challenge because I had to completely change my thinking and how I saw the business.
21:10
I couldn’t frame it within a GE world, right?
21:12
Like it just didn’t.
21:13
The culture was completely different.
21:16
How did you cross that bridge?
21:17
And reframing your thinking, ’cause that’s that’s not an easy task.
21:20
That’s a huge task.
21:22
Yeah.
21:23
I was really lucky that there were a bunch of ex GE people who were actually at Stanley and, and very quickly I figured out that I needed some help and I and I reached out to them and basically said like, OK, like I’m, you know, I’m struggling a little bit going from like GE mindset to Stanley mindset.
21:47
And they were, there were two gentlemen and they were both fantastic.
21:51
They were like, Oh yeah, the first four months are horrific.
21:55
They kind of, they kind of, they did two things, which was fantastic.
21:58
One was that they validated that what I was going through was normal and acceptable and expected and expected, I think was the other thing.
22:06
And then the second thing was they were like, you know, be careful that like don’t, don’t hold on too tightly to the GE stuff, but don’t get sucked in too much to the Stanley stuff either.
22:18
Like try and find, try and find some footing.
22:20
That’s in the middle.
22:22
That’s why we hired you.
22:24
And so it took me a little bit of time, but, but I would have to say that those two gentlemen were just, we’re, we’re pretty fantastic.
22:31
And, and that’s kind of where I started.
22:35
I’m going to say I started to learn that I needed to be, that I needed to be authentic around, around challenges and around, you know, trying to find the right way to fit, like to fit in it.
22:56
It was the, it was and, and I think I was authentic when I was at GE.
23:00
It’s just that I was authentic.
23:02
Like GE was my authentic self.
23:03
Like that culture was my authentic self.
23:06
And then when you go into a culture that’s not like that, then like your first, your first reaction is like, I’m going to put on my armor because I need to protect myself.
23:15
And so, so, so yeah, they were, they saved me.
23:20
I’m going to say those those, they saved me in those first four months.
23:23
But you, I think you took a huge first step in terms of making yourself vulnerable.
23:29
I think the best leaders are those that are willing to admit I don’t have all the answers.
23:34
I need help.
23:36
The ones that are pretending that they know everything and don’t need help, Those are the ones that are the worst.
23:43
Was that a difficult thing for you to do to make yourself vulnerable or was that fairly easy for you?
23:49
So I’m going to say so here’s here’s what I would say, Chris, if those two gentlemen hadn’t been from GEI don’t know how it would have gone.
23:57
Because I think the fact that we had we had people in common, that’s the first thing, right?
24:06
They knew people that I knew.
24:08
I knew people that they knew we’d been, both of them had been in healthcare at some point in their careers.
24:15
And so, you know, we had that in common.
24:18
I I think if, if they had not been, if they had not had that GE background, I don’t know if I would have been as as vulnerable as, as authentic with them.
24:31
So I think that the fact that they had the same background as me kind of allowed me or made me feel more comfortable doing it.
24:40
I, I have to say that for most of my, for most of my career, probably up until very recently, I probably had more armor on than vulnerability.
24:54
And I think part of that is because I, you know, I was a woman in some very male dominated industries.
25:00
And so you tend to like get up every morning, put your armor on and then go out into the world.
25:07
So it’s it’s probably only in the past kind of five years, I would say that I finally kind of said and I I’m, you know, I’m transparent about the fact that I think the pandemic really had a lot to do with it.
25:22
I had one instance where I had one of the individuals who worked for me kind of reach out to me and say, like, I don’t think I can do this.
25:31
And I was like, what do you mean?
25:32
What do you like, what are you talking about?
25:34
And they said, I don’t think I can do this working from home, something I don’t think I can do this, like not going out, not travelling, not being out in front of people, like, I’m struggling.
25:44
Things are not going well.
25:46
And I was like, yeah, I know.
25:48
And they were like, what?
25:50
And I was like, yeah, like, we’re all going through it.
25:52
And they were like, oh, but like, you make it sound like you’re doing great.
25:56
And I was like, what?
25:57
Like in that moment, I was like, oh, my goodness, what a disservice I’ve done to my team.
26:05
Yeah, I have LED them to believe that like everything’s going perfect for me and I have set an unachievable bar slash standard for them.
26:19
Like and, and in that moment I was like it for me.
26:23
Like it was like a light bulb going off saying like I can’t, like this is completely unacceptable.
26:28
Like I can’t do this, you know.
26:30
Meanwhile, I had two teenagers.
26:32
Well, my daughter was a teenager.
26:34
My son was was in his, I guess late.
26:38
He was probably like 10, I guess maybe if I think about about it like preteen years, they were, they were struggling.
26:47
You know, I had, my parents were in their late 70s, early 80s at the time.
26:53
I was worried about them.
26:54
My sister’s a social worker.
26:57
Her life was horrific.
26:59
Like it was like, you know, it, it, it was brutal.
27:04
And I’m like, and here I am leading everybody to believe that, you know, I’m doing cartwheels and everything is, you know, beautiful, lovely roses and everything’s wonderful and I’m making sourdough bread.
27:16
None of that was happening.
27:18
Yeah.
27:19
I, I saw a video yesterday of Malcolm Gladwell talking about, I don’t know what triggered him to do this, but he started researching and identifying women that were the first board members of a corporation reaching out to them and said, what was your experience like?
27:42
And every one of them horrible, horrible, horrible time.
27:45
I was ignored, just horrible experience.
27:49
And they just said, well, what happened when they had their second member of the board said, well, it was better, but it was still horrible.
27:57
They didn’t see a he didn’t see a transition until they had a third female member of the team.
28:04
That’s when they said everything shifted then because now we couldn’t be ignored anymore.
28:08
We had we had a voice, a collective voice.
28:11
What was your experience like working in as a woman leader in a male dominated place?
28:17
I think it’s important for everyone, especially men to understand.
28:20
So you know, so I’m, I’m going to say again, within the GE world, you know, in, in 1994, GE had a women’s network, right, Head of legal counsel in Canada, Women, he had women leading businesses.
28:37
So it was utopia like it, I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was utopia when I left and I went to Stanley, it was a little bit of a rude awakening and, and that awakening kind of continued for, for a good portion of, of my career where it was not uncommon for me to be the only woman in the room.
29:00
And you know what, I’m, I’m going to say that it, it drove some, it drove some unhealthy behaviors, right?
29:08
So, you know, one of the unhealthy behaviors was that I always felt like I needed to be, I needed to work 10 times harder just to be perceived to be like on the same level as my male counterparts.
29:22
If there was, you know, a tough assignment, I was the one who put my hand up, right.
29:28
I, when I was working for a company, we had problems in, in one of our manufacturing plants in, in Juarez.
29:35
And you know, the leader of the business said, said, OK, I need somebody to go down there and try and figure out what was happening.
29:43
I put my hand up and, and then afterwards, you know, my husband was like, do you know anything about Juarez?
29:50
I’m like, I have no idea.
29:51
And he’s like, OK, like they had like 15 shootings yesterday and I was like, oh, well, I guess I’m going like, but none of the guys put their hands up.
30:00
And so I put my hand up.
30:03
You know, I think.
30:05
I think for me, I really intentionally tried to find allies kind of within every organization.
30:14
You know, there were there were times where it was like there was myself.
30:18
There was, was the admin assistant or the executive assistant and we were the only two women in the room.
30:25
And, and I knew that her, unfortunately, I knew that her being my best friend wasn’t going to solve, wasn’t going to solve my problem.
30:33
And so I really intentionally tried to look for allies within the space.
30:38
And, and I was lucky in a lot of cases, I was able to find those allies.
30:42
I was able to find, you know, those leaders or those mentors who in a lot of cases were, were willing to provide me with some guidance, really lay out the political landscape.
30:54
And I think that was the most important piece was to understand the political landscape because sometimes you, you kind of think like, you know, that person speaking to me that way because I’m a woman.
31:07
And in reality, they speak to everybody that way.
31:10
It’s not specific to you.
31:13
And and so I just really, in most cases was just like, I’m going to work.
31:18
And this is the unhealthy part, right?
31:19
I’m going to work 10 times harder.
31:21
I’m going to volunteer for more stuff.
31:23
I’m going to, you know, I’m going to build a better network.
31:26
I’m going to do more stuff than everybody else does.
31:30
And, and I’ll let my hard work just kind of speak for me.
31:35
The reality is, is that sometimes that’s untenable over the course of time, right?
31:41
And so.
31:42
Yeah, exactly.
31:43
And everyone, you know, everyone around you is paying a price.
31:48
It’s very hard.
31:49
Yeah.
31:51
And yeah, so, and I appreciate you sharing that.
31:54
Let’s shift topics a little bit.
31:55
CRM.
31:56
Do you look better?
31:57
Do you hate it?
31:58
I love it.
31:59
And I, and I’ll tell you why I love it.
32:03
And it’s, and, and I don’t know if it’s going to be for the reasons that other people love it, but I, I, I’m, I’m not, I’m not a, a huge fan of it from the perspective of using it as a means to monitor, you know, what everybody’s doing.
32:19
That’s not why I love it.
32:20
I love it because you can learn, right?
32:23
And, and if you’re, if you do a really good job of inputting information in like, why did I win?
32:30
Why did I lose?
32:32
Who are the decision makers?
32:34
Who is I up against?
32:36
What could I have done differently?
32:38
You can, I mean, and I’m great.
32:40
I, I’m still like paper, pen book kind of person.
32:44
But I can’t remember why we lost something 18 months ago, right?
32:50
And if I want to continuously learn, if I want to make sure that I’m not making the same mistakes over again, then I need to be able to go back and look at who were the decision makers, who, who was pro our solution, who was not a big fan of it?
33:08
Why weren’t they a big fan of it?
33:10
What was their decision criteria at the time?
33:12
What were they trying to achieve?
33:14
And then, you know, then you can look at, OK, 18 months later when you’re engaged with that customer again, has their decision criteria changed.
33:24
And then you can start asking some really smart questions, which is, you know, what do I need to do in order for you to choose me this time, given that you didn’t choose me last time.
33:37
Right.
33:37
And then they start saying things like, well, you need to be 20%.
33:41
You know, if everybody goes to price right away, you need to be 20% cheaper.
33:45
And so if you know that, like, there’s no way that you’re going to be 20% cheaper, then you can lose fast.
33:52
Oh, yeah.
33:53
Yeah.
33:53
Right.
33:54
You can lose fast.
33:55
Yeah.
33:56
And that’s waste a whole bunch of time chasing a deal that where they’re dangling this this fish in front of you that you’re never going to catch.
34:04
Focus on the ones that that are.
34:06
And I’m glad you’ve said it that way because that’s one of the, you know, I’ve been implementing CRM for a long time now.
34:12
And one of my struggles is getting people to understand and reframe their perspective around CRM that, yeah, while you can monitor people, that’s not what it’s best for.
34:23
It’s really, it’s a wealth of information that should be driving learning, that should be driving strategy of, you know, how do we get better, How do we improve?
34:35
Hey, we’re constantly, you know, we consistently lose to this competitor.
34:39
Why?
34:40
What are they doing to win these deals that we’re not doing?
34:43
So next time we come up against some, what adjustments do we need to make so we can start winning?
34:48
If you don’t have that beating your CRM, you’re never going to be able to make that adjustment 100%.
34:53
And I think the other piece is really also understanding the decision criteria that customers have.
34:59
And so, you know, for for an organization like C&D where, you know, we’ve got some focuses around some specific verticals like you want to understand, I’ll just use a utility as an example, like what is their decision criteria?
35:13
And if you meet customer where their decision criteria is different than everybody else in their space, then you can start having some really intelligent conversations, which is like, hey, listen, everybody else in your space, these are the four things that are important to them.
35:27
I noticed that none of those four are on the criteria that you’ve outlined.
35:31
Is there a reason why?
35:32
Is it because you didn’t know that those four were probably more important than maybe the four that you had?
35:38
You know, what led to your four being different?
35:40
Are you trying to achieve something else?
35:42
And then you really Start learning about their business.
35:45
And I always get a little disappointed.
35:49
I’m going to say from a seller’s perspective that, you know, usually the sellers are so focused on knowing everything about the products and solutions that they’re selling that they forget to really learn about what’s important to the customer, what’s going on in their business.
36:07
And so if you can have a tool which is not a book that you’re going to throw out as soon, as, as soon as that’s full, if you have a tool that you can start inputting that information in and start understanding, hey, when these are the four criteria, we always win.
36:26
And then you can say, hey, listen, when this criteria comes up, we know that it’s unlikely that we’re going to be successful.
36:33
Then you can start making much smarter decisions around where to spend your time, where to build effort, where to market and position yourself.
36:42
And, and I think that like those are the things that are so critical in terms of finding ways to be successful.
36:49
And you want to have successful salespeople like the most, you know, the most difficult thing as a salesperson is to try and, you know, sell pens to somebody who has no intention of writing, right?
37:05
Like, like it is it is it, you know, it kind of hurts your soul when you’re doing that all day every day.
37:12
And so the more information that you can gather in a CRM and really use it as a means to be able to focus your sellers on what is beneficial for the customers and how we can solve problems.
37:26
I mean, I, I, I think that I, I don’t know any other tool that that does that really well.
37:32
I mean, people tried to do it in Excel spreadsheets for years and, and that never worked.
37:36
And it certainly doesn’t work in a book.
37:39
No, no.
37:40
What’s if you had one thing to fix with CRM in general, what would, what would that be?
37:46
Oh, I think for me, it’s really around having that differentiation between a seller identifying kind of what their key, what their key metrics or dashboards are.
38:04
I, I feel like in most CRMS, it’s like, here’s your canned, kind of like here’s your canned version.
38:12
And for, and for some sellers like, and you know, some sellers are on their opportunity.
38:18
They could have 100 opportunities.
38:20
Like there is never one that goes past due.
38:22
There’s others that, I mean, they constantly have things that are past due.
38:27
And so you know, for them like the past due, the, what’s coming up, you know, what is kind of in its final stage of the sales cycle.
38:37
Like I, I’d love the opportunity for a seller to be able to say like here’s the three dashboards that I want to look at every day when I log in and everything else I don’t really want to see as you know, as a director, here’s the three things that I want to look at as, you know, as a business development person, they’re going to want to look at things that are very different than somebody who’s selling in a channel.
39:04
So that for me, I just find that it’s just not customizable enough for the user without doing a whole bunch of work.
39:13
Oh yeah.
39:14
I just did a presentation at a big user group conference a couple months ago on data analytics, getting beyond the basics.
39:22
And because that’s where when we come and engage with a client, a lot of times that’s all they’re doing is very basic dashboarding.
39:27
It’s really not driving decision making or driving action.
39:32
And and so to me that’s, you know, the other thing that most dashboards I think lack is context.
39:39
You know, it’s just here’s my number, but OK, it’s a number.
39:43
What is it telling me?
39:44
If you don’t have context, you can’t make a decision.
39:48
You don’t know, are we going up and down?
39:51
How does this, how’s it compared to, you know, same quarter last year, whatever, whatever that context needs to be?
39:59
I, I, to me it, it’s actually surprises me how much we see that this day and age that people are still struggling in that area.
40:07
Yeah.
40:07
And I think part of it is that.
40:10
I, I think two things drive it.
40:12
I think the first thing is, is that most organizations think that they know their sales cycle better than than the experts that built the CRM and and nobody wants to hear that their business is not more complicated or more different or any of those things.
40:29
So I think that’s the first mistake is that people tend to want to go in and change stuff.
40:35
So I think that’s the first error.
40:37
And then I think that the second one is that that the dashboard should show a trend or a behavior that should result in action.
40:47
Yes.
40:50
Otherwise, why?
40:51
Why do you have it exactly?
40:53
What’s it there for?
40:55
And so, you know, the tendency more so is to say, and this is one of the things that, that it, that we tend to make things more difficult than they have to be.
41:08
And so, you know, I, I really try and find ways for my, for my sales team and my leaders to try and boil things down to like, you know, what are the vital few criteria to measure success?
41:22
And, and it’s not about, you know, it’s not about big complicated formulas.
41:28
It’s like there’s only three ways to grow your business.
41:31
You can either find more, win more or get more, right?
41:36
We can find new customers, improve your, improve your win ratio or go or go get more within the existing customers that you have.
41:45
And so the only things you can control are how many opportunities are you finding?
41:50
How many times do you actually get to bid them and put a price in?
41:54
Because if you don’t get to bid it, then your opportunity to win is 0.
41:57
And then what is your close ratio?
42:00
And then what is your average deal size?
42:02
Because if your quote is $1,000,000 and your average deal side is $100,000 and you only win 50% of the stuff that you actually bid on, then you know you need a 2X funnel in order to be successful.
42:15
That’s not complicated.
42:17
That’s like really easy math.
42:20
Yet we have a tendency to try and look at the analytics piece and you know, look at 18 month rolling averages and you know, try and understand well, you know, this one only went through 2 stages and then we lost it.
42:34
It like that complexity, I think is a lot of noise and, and just because you can measure it, just because you can report on it doesn’t mean that it’s actually beneficial to your business and to your activities to be looking at it all day every day.
42:48
That’s the the key thing anytime you know, when I, when I gave my presentation, it’s like if, if you have a number on there, you better have a clear definition of what is the purpose of this number?
42:59
How are we going to use it like 1 action?
43:01
Is it driving?
43:02
And if you don’t have a clear understanding of that, go back to the drawing board and and also explain for like every business has maybe 3 to 5 numbers that if I look at those numbers every day, I know the health of my business.
43:18
And So what are those numbers for your business?
43:21
And it was funny.
43:22
One person raised his hand to him, like, what are those numbers?
43:25
Can you tell me those numbers for my?
43:28
No, you misunderstood.
43:29
It’s not the same 3 to 5 for every business.
43:33
Every business is your three to five your numbers.
43:37
You have to understand what that is.
43:38
Look, yeah, OK, but it’s it, Yeah.
43:41
It’s like you have to know those numbers and you have to be measuring those numbers.
43:44
And so if you have to see Rev set up the right way, it should be feeding those numbers.
43:49
Agreed.
43:49
I’ll I’ll share, I’ll share the funniest thing, a customer, it was a channel partner actually once said to me, Chris, and, and we had built a portal for them that fed into our CRM.
44:03
And, and so we were going through this pilot phase.
44:06
And, and so I asked him like, so you know, what does you and your team think we’ve done the training?
44:12
You guys have been a part of the pilot for the past six weeks.
44:14
And he said he’s like, everything’s great.
44:18
He’s like, but I just want to say this one thing.
44:21
Just because the field exists does not mean that you need to use it.
44:27
And I was, and I was like, I was kind of taken aback.
44:30
He’s like, there’s really only three pieces of information that you want to really know from me.
44:36
He’s like, but you’ve got 18 fields.
44:40
Get rid of, get rid of the 15 that you’re never going to look at.
44:45
You’re never going to use it for any kind of reporting.
44:47
It’s not going to give you, it’s not going to give you any data.
44:50
It’s not going to tell you whether you’re efficient, non efficient, directionally correct, not directionally correct.
44:56
He’s like, so get rid of the 15.
44:59
Just because the field is there doesn’t mean you have to use it.
45:02
And, and I was like it.
45:05
And, and I laugh when I think about that, Chris, because when you go into some of these initiatives, it’s not the first thing that you’re thinking of.
45:17
You’re thinking like, wow, this is great.
45:19
Look at all the information that I’m going to get.
45:21
But then you don’t do anything with it either because it’s not relevant to your business.
45:25
It doesn’t move the needle.
45:26
It’s not going to create a tipping point.
45:28
Just to quote Malcolm Gladwell, you know, but it was like, and so like every time that I’m looking at, at our serum, I, I remind myself, just because the field is there does not mean we need to use that.
45:42
Not exactly.
45:43
And that that’s what I’m constantly telling people, strip away, strip away, strip away, get to the rare bones because there’s a cost every day to field you have on there.
45:50
People don’t realize that, but there is a cost.
45:53
And if there’s an impact, we had a client when we first engaged with them, they had over 300 fields on their opportunity.
46:01
Absolutely not.
46:03
And when we analyzed how those were being utilized, they, they were like 5 or 6 that were actually consistently being populated.
46:10
But because nobody knew what the heck to do with all these other ones, you know, because if someone had this great idea, well, let’s add this field, someone else, let’s add this field, and then they move on to a different role or that problem goes away.
46:21
We don’t need to.
46:22
No one ever takes that stuff away.
46:24
And no, and it just, it’s, it’s insane.
46:28
And, and keep it simple, keep it streamlined, make sure it serves a purpose.
46:32
Otherwise, get rid of it.
46:34
Yeah.
46:35
If you need, if you need the little information thing that just tells you what needs to go into the field, you know that you probably don’t need it.
46:42
No.
46:42
Yeah, exactly.
46:43
And, and.
46:44
Yeah.
46:44
So.
46:44
No, it’s crazy.
46:45
We’ve gone way past our time.
46:47
I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.
46:48
So, so have I.
46:49
Chris, thank you so much.
46:50
Turn off the the hit the off switch.
46:54
I really appreciate you coming on, Karen.
46:56
If if people want to reach out, connect with you, if they want to learn more about your business, what’s the best way for them to do that?
47:04
Linkedin’s the best way.
47:06
That’s, you know, I’m a big believer in building my network and so I’m on there and that’s probably the best way to connect with me.
47:14
Awesome.
47:15
So we will have her LinkedIn profile in her show notes as well as access to links to the to C&D’s website.
47:24
So be sure to check that out at impellercrm.com/sales Lead Dog, where you’ll get not only this episode, but all our hundred plus episodes of Sales Lead Dog.
47:34
So be sure to check that out.
47:35
Subscribe so you get all our future episodes.
47:38
Karen, thank you so much for coming on and welcome to the Sales Lead Dog Pack.
47:43
Thanks, Chris.
47:45
Appreciate it.
47:45
So much fun.
47:46
I appreciate you having me.
47:50
As we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog, be sure to subscribe to catch all our episodes on social media.
47:57
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48:09
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