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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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On today’s episode, I have joined in me Kirk Thacker of I Core Technology.
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Kirk, welcome to sales lead dog.
0:36
Thank you so much for having me.
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Chris, tell me a bit about I core technology.
0:42
Sure.
0:42
So we’re a about a 75 person, I’d say boutique consultancy.
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We do traditional IT stuff, but I think where we differentiate is we have a deep expertise in cybersecurity as well.
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So over the course of 30 years, we’ve taken essentially a traditional managed service provider into a more kind of end to end IT cloud strategy, security business.
1:10
Yeah.
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And that to me, if you’re really, in my opinion, and I’m a little biased here, if you’re going to outsource your IT, you better go to a firm like icor that can truly go end to end, especially in these areas around security.
1:24
Yeah, totally agree.
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Yeah, This world, everyone is trying to attack you, whether you know it or not.
1:32
It’s happening.
1:33
That’s fair.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
1:35
Awesome.
1:37
Kirk, when you look back over your career, what are the three things you’ve had a heck of a career?
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What are the three things that have gotten you where you are today and had this level of success?
1:49
Can I say my wife?
1:50
No, that’s kind of you can say whatever you want.
1:52
Would you be the first one?
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If I get some bonus points for that, I know she might listen.
1:58
I, I graduated with an English degree.
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My wife graduated with a computer science degree back before it was school and she had some in in high in college.
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She was in in different internship programs.
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Her advice to me, which I took to heart, was don’t go into English.
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Instead, find the smallest tech company ad in the back of the paper and talk your way in or beg your way in, which is what I did.
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So I I came at it from the point of view of complete humility in terms of technology and an open mind and and willingness to start small.
2:34
So I think that was helpful.
2:36
I think over the years I never pictured myself as a salesperson, but I think I’m a decent listener.
2:45
So I’ve tried to really kind of hone those skills.
2:48
I mean, this terms you get tossed around like active listening.
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I think I do that kind of by default, which I think it’s been extremely helpful.
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And because I’ve had a long career at this point, I’ve made all the mistakes.
3:02
So the trick there is to, you know, basically not just make the mistakes, but get better each time, take away lessons from each failure and get better.
3:14
So excuse me, English degree.
3:18
What, what, why English?
3:20
What was it about it?
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They’re like, Hey, I want to major in English.
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At that point in your life.
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I was in in high school, I was a avid reader as well.
3:29
Actually, all my life I’ve been an avid reader and I began doing writing.
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My dad wrote books.
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My stuff is different.
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I was more on the creative writing side of things.
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He was a academic expert, but that was kind of in the blood.
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Books were everywhere, and it became quite natural to not just consume them but also get interested about creating written pieces, which I did in in high school.
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And that was what drove me towards English for college.
4:01
Yeah.
4:01
So then girlfriend is telling you like, look, English, you love it because I get it.
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I was the same way in high school.
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That’s why I asked that question.
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If I thought I could have made money at it.
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English history were too just I was crazy about and also math when I was in school.
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So like any three of those options.
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But I was like, you know what, I don’t think I can make any money at that.
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And so I have to be a realistic.
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And my dad was also like, hey, both major in whatever you want, but make sure you can get a job after you graduate.
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And so I ultimately ended in computer science.
4:46
That couldn’t have been, that had to be a little scary for you to sit there and say, hey, I’m going to go down this path.
4:51
And quite a bit of humility too, right.
4:54
So tell me about those first, like when you come in for those first interviews, what was that like for you?
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Well, I, I had the humility because I tried to make money in English first.
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It was like an editorial assistant briefly, which is about the worst job ever.
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So that advice I took from my then wife, ’cause we get married young it, she had already kind of launched her career.
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She got out of college with the proper degree and she instantly entered the workforce as a, as a programmer.
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So I think for me that was easy.
5:27
I think I got, I was also, I had some fortune.
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My resume appeals to a leader of a small tech company based in Miami with the Boston office.
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So I think I, I didn’t apply to a lot of tech jobs.
5:40
I I think I just got lucky.
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And the guy that hired me was an English professor before he went into tech.
5:48
So there you go.
5:50
So he’s one kindred spirit.
5:53
Yeah, yeah.
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He’s like, hey, I’m gonna help this person.
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I was on.
5:57
I bet on that journey.
5:58
I’m gonna help this person along the way.
6:00
Yeah, That’s awesome.
6:01
I love that.
6:03
So you’re in the tech world.
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How have you leveraged your writing background in your progression into sales leadership?
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What was that like?
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You know, did it help you?
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Was that an advantage for you, do you think?
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It certainly was, and I think it still is.
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I think being able to write proposals, even emails succinctly to self edit.
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So there’s a lot of disciplines around writing beyond putting the words on paper.
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One of them is thinking first, you know, listening to your thoughts and not making instant decisions like replying to that e-mail at the wrong time of day with with your anger.
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So I think that has helped, but also just in composing everything from emails to proposals, I think it’s also been helpful.
6:55
It might be somewhat less relevant now, but I think the listening part has become just that much more important.
7:01
Oh, I bet I I don’t know what your experience has been like, but for me, I’m shocked at how poorly most people write.
7:12
Yeah, it to me is a lost art, or it seems to be that way.
7:18
Is that your experience as well?
7:21
It is.
7:22
And I’m quite careful about this because I’m dealing with sometimes leaders of companies that, that text all the time.
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And I have a lot of respect for that.
7:31
I text too, but they also write like they text in an e-mail, which, which this kind of blows my mind.
7:37
It’s not, it doesn’t actually matter, right?
7:39
As long as you’re communicating a point succinctly.
7:42
So I think in that sense, the texting generation, they get to the point faster.
7:48
I mean, I, you know, I, it, it does.
7:49
You don’t need to write an essay.
7:51
You try to figure out how to communicate something as simply and quickly as possible in this in this current time that we live in now.
7:58
Yeah.
7:59
But it does, I think, help a huge amount when you’re writing proposals because you have to create a picture.
8:04
You have to tell the story, right?
8:07
How do you craft your stories or what’s your process for crafting the stories when you’re engaging a prospect?
8:14
Yeah.
8:14
So I think in my current role, what we do is less about crafting complex stories and more about discovering needs quickly and responding with relevance quickly.
8:27
So for us, and this may feel like a pivot, but I think the most important meeting we have with the prospective client is the first one They’re they’re coming or they’re agreeing to a meeting for some reason beyond the fact that we’re charming, right.
8:42
So they, whether they have self identified something they have a need of or we have chosen them and tried to dig into their need, that first meeting is, is huge and listening to people and then moving with the conversation is, is it’s, it’s, it’s an art.
9:08
And some people are better out of the gate than others.
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And salespeople like to hear themselves talk.
9:14
And I’m probably not fully immune from that.
9:16
But essentially listening and adapting and moving with someone is probably the most important thing we do at I core from a sales side.
9:26
Yeah, No, I agree with that, that I just had someone say this.
9:31
Two ears, one mouth, use it in that proportion, you know, right.
9:35
And it was a just an episode recorded I think earlier this week.
9:39
And I’ve heard that many times.
9:41
But it’s so true.
9:42
We do love to hear ourselves talk.
9:45
And that’s something I have to remind myself as I’m because I get excited, right?
9:49
And I want to educate and inform.
9:53
But when you’re doing that, you’re not listening and you’re not letting them talk, right?
9:59
I think the excitement excitement is quite relevant.
10:02
And that’s back to picking the right company, the right solution.
10:06
If you’re just trying to communicate excitement that you’re not feeling that comes across as phony and and and kind of really out of the gate you’ve you’ve lost already.
10:17
So I think if you’re fortunate enough to be in a role that you’re actually passionate about as and currently that makes the job of sales so much easier.
10:25
Sure does.
10:26
So tell me about your in tech entry level.
10:30
What was that progression like for you into sales?
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Was it easy, difficult, something you embraced or were hesitant about?
10:40
Yeah.
10:41
My, my first company that I joined out of college after the editorial assistant debacle, I, I stayed for 12 years and I stayed as I joined as what they called a client liaison, which is a fancy way of saying customer service.
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The first role they’d had for that role, the English professor had thought of this role and it made sense.
10:59
And I moved into tech from there.
11:01
So I became the operations manager of a branch office at this company and that was pretty hands on.
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So we had to learn their technology.
11:13
I had to essentially act as a as a like a sales engineer for the sales manager and the sales team.
11:22
So I learned a little bit about consultative selling just through immersion from the from the other sellers that were again senior and better at it than I was.
11:33
And then years in, I was offered the role of IT director at this company, which made no sense to me and it would have involved moving to Miami.
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So I declined it.
11:44
And then within like a couple of months, the sales manager role opened up in in Boston.
11:49
So that’s kind of my journey over 12 years at at my first company.
11:53
Yeah.
11:54
So was that an easy adjustment for you into sales IT to me I’m guessing before you answer, I’m going to guess based on what you’ve said so far.
12:04
I’m making the assumption that when you made that leap, it was a fairly natural transition for you because you didn’t necessarily go on trying to sell, you stayed true to who you are.
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And is that, is that accurate?
12:19
Partly.
12:20
I didn’t have any sales skills and I had a pretty bad attitude about salespeople at the time because I was basically acting as their sales engineer.
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And it’s, it’s, it’s very easy to think that you’re more important than you actually are as a young person acting in that capacity.
12:37
So I didn’t have a lot of respect for the profession, quite frankly, if I’m being honest about this.
12:42
So it took me a while to learn that kind of humility.
12:45
And also just that’s really important.
12:47
I think a lot of people come into sales thinking of a used car salesperson.
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And I’m not going to be that person or be the opposite of that.
12:55
And I get that.
12:56
But I think once you’ve been in it, you realize just how hard of a job it is and how much how you really have to work your tail off.
13:06
I’ve talked to a lot of friends of mine that are in sales and they’re like, oh, the office gets so mad when I, they see me leave the office at 2:00 thinking of going to play golf or whatever.
13:15
They don’t know that I’m not cold calling or I’m, you know, I’m doing, I’m beating the bushes, doing whatever I can to, to generate business.
13:25
And they don’t see all the other stuff, right.
13:28
So, yeah, I think you have to be in those shoes to understand it.
13:32
They don’t see the effort.
13:34
They also don’t really, and I say they ’cause it was me, don’t don’t respect the actual skill it takes.
13:41
And that’s something that I, I fully, I’m on board now.
13:45
It took me a couple of years.
13:46
But man, it’s not just hard, it’s it’s, it’s, it’s not just demanding in terms of time, it’s, it’s actually difficult.
13:54
It’s a very cerebral thing.
13:56
If you’re the best people really either have some native ability to just intuit and move when and those of us that don’t have that have had to learn it and kind of compensate for those lack of skills.
14:09
What was the toughest part of your journey into sales leadership?
14:14
I would say really get becoming a solution salesperson.
14:19
The company I worked for at the time was quite successful in in its market.
14:27
It was a highly profitable company and I won’t say that that selling was easy, but it was deceptively simple to me.
14:36
So to me actually moving from that transactional kind of seller to someone more solution based that that was a lot of time and and thinking and effort that I wasn’t expecting.
14:50
Oh yeah, I bet, I bet.
14:54
Was there a part that you came to more naturally or that was simpler for you to to develop and engage with?
15:05
I think to the earlier point, I had a lot of credibility.
15:09
So this wasn’t pure net new business, this was net new plus existing clients relationship management.
15:15
So the, the folks that I’d already had worked with as that operations manager slash sales engineer role trusted me deeply.
15:24
So they were happy to buy from me.
15:27
The part that I had to learn was how to make new friends, you know, and I’m really kind of take, take myself out of my own head ’cause I’m naturally kind of introverted and, and put myself out there in ways that were quite uncomfortable.
15:43
Well, that was the toughest thing for me too.
15:45
I’m naturally painfully shy, very much an introvert.
15:51
I’ve had to work incredibly hard to overcome that.
15:57
One of the things I did is I would say hi to everybody if I was on an elevator.
16:02
I’m saying hi.
16:03
I’m asking how your, you know, how was your day?
16:06
I’m going through a checkout line.
16:08
I’m engaging the checkout clerk.
16:10
I say hi to everybody walking down the street.
16:12
What have you done?
16:14
Because it’s hard to be.
16:16
I think it could be a secret weapon as a salesperson being introvert, but what are some things you do to break out of your shell?
16:24
It’s taken decades, but I do the same thing.
16:27
Now that you’re describing.
16:28
It’s, it’s, it’s an effort like the, the, the classic definition of of an introvert is someone that expends energy in social situations.
16:40
Extroverts receive energy from those situations.
16:43
So I’m always spending.
16:44
It’s a constant kind of red.
16:48
I’m in the red emotionally all the time, but it’s quite rewarding for all that.
16:53
If and when that pays off.
16:55
I don’t just mean in a sale.
16:56
I just mean in the feedback you get back.
16:59
If it works, it it’s incredibly rewarding.
17:01
So that that’s been the thing I still work on.
17:03
Oh, yeah.
17:04
It’s I have to remind myself, like if I’m at an event where I don’t know anybody, engage, Chris, engage, put yourself in there.
17:14
Go break into a conversation, whatever it yeah, it’s just something we have to do, right?
17:21
Yeah.
17:23
What’s your favorite part about being a leader?
17:26
So I that, that’s probably a good segue.
17:28
Cause one thing I think I do have both a passion for and abilities around is mentoring.
17:36
And so that helped me overcome my introversion.
17:40
I, I mid career I began doing mentoring and so forth.
17:45
So I think that is, is that kind of Venn diagram intersection between things.
17:51
I’m actually decent at and working on and things that kind of drive me.
17:55
So I, I think I feel like if I can, a seller has to listen, so does a manager, right?
18:06
You you essentially have to understand in the same way where your prospect is coming from, you have to understand the skill set of your employees and what their needs are, what their growth lands, if any are and and really kind of fit the adapt how you handle them as well as sometimes even the role itself to what their their own passions and skills would indicate.
18:35
It’s really interesting, you know, listening to especially about mentorship.
18:39
It got me thinking what makes a good mentor?
18:44
I think well lived experience is huge.
18:47
Obviously it’s one thing to say I’m a, I’m a mentor because I’m good at it.
18:52
I mean, there’s an aspect of teaching like I, I read a book called the Challenger Sale like a long time ago.
18:59
And there’s the, the three kind of driving pieces in there, teacher teaching, tailoring and taking control.
19:04
I think those all really apply to mentorship.
19:06
You have to be able, you have to be in a position to be able to teach.
19:11
You have to tailor how you teach and and mentor to the individual and the role that they’re in and you have to drive it forward.
19:20
So that’s the thing that it often gets overlooked because it’s one thing for a mentee to appreciate your support, but you, you can’t become friends.
19:32
You, you have to, you have to be a taskmaster as well.
19:35
So it’s essentially all of those things at once.
19:37
I think to make a successful mentor.
19:39
I think that last point is especially critical in that mentor mentee relationship is, and I’ve had someone else tell me this before, that my time’s valuable.
19:50
If I’m a spend it on mentoring someone, they better be driving action out of it.
19:57
They don’t have to necessarily listen to everything I say, but they better be driving something out of it.
20:03
Otherwise, why am I spending my time on it?
20:05
Right?
20:06
Yeah.
20:07
Some of them just want to have like a pest dispenser of contacts and relationships and pearls of wisdom, and it’s not that’s not how it goes.
20:15
No, no, no.
20:20
Why mentoring is that?
20:21
Do you, if you had a mentor in your life that made you say that, hey, I need to to do this to get back?
20:26
Or is this just something you felt you needed to do?
20:30
I think for me, I did a series of very small startups.
20:35
So I was at this one company for 12 years practically.
20:38
And then I went into the world of startups.
20:41
Probably the exact wrong time about the year 2000, I want to say when it was just starting to get tough.
20:47
So I, I was in literally a series of five different start-ups over the course of the next 10 or so years of my life and having gotten through that, I missed it.
21:00
So I, I feel like I’ve learned a lot.
21:02
I’d have a lot of kind of tire tracks on my back from mistakes I’ve made in situations that weren’t perfect and some modest successes here and there.
21:11
So I just felt, man, this is like this is a PhD in how to how, how not to start a company, but also equally how you how you know how to support someone who’s maybe got a better value prop than I had in a couple of them.
21:25
And you know, basically it.
21:26
It’s also a bit like having grandkids, right?
21:29
So I’ve already had my kids.
21:31
That’s a lot of work.
21:32
Like the startups were my kids and that analogy.
21:36
And now if you’re like a grandfather, then you can.
21:39
You’re not changing diapers anymore.
21:41
Like they’re, they’re doing that work.
21:42
The parents are doing the work, and you’re just there to offer advice and support.
21:47
Yeah, I like that.
21:48
That’s a good analogy.
21:51
So in your career, you’ve had to manage really different teams, you know, in terms of the composition of the teams.
21:59
Yeah, you’ve had junior people that you’ve managed.
22:03
You now are a team of very senior people that you’re managing.
22:07
What have you had to do from a leadership perspective to really align yourself and meet your teams where they are?
22:16
What are some things you’ve had to do?
22:20
I think that that book I refer to the challenger sale was incredibly helpful because it, and it’s maybe slightly out of date at this point, but it it provided a different general personas of sellers.
22:31
And it’s it’s obviously a bit of a simplification, but like I one of the things I think about is the lone wolf, which I think still applies.
22:41
I think it’s more harmful now to have lone wolves than it used to be, But this is a person who just has all the skills.
22:48
They’re just good at their job.
22:51
They they close in many cases, the majority of the business in the small team disproportionately they close much more than the next person in line usually.
23:00
But they can be incredibly difficult to deal with, not not just as a manager, but within the organization.
23:06
So it figuring out that if, if I have a lone wolf, as I’ve had in the last couple of jobs, is it A, is it worth it?
23:17
And B, if it’s worth it, how do I make sure that this person is highly productive and not destructive or toxic to the business or, or my team?
23:29
So that’s one thing.
23:30
And then on the other end, you know, people that come in with far less experience.
23:35
I think really the hiring process is huge.
23:37
And I’ve, I’ve become a huge advocate of, of doing a lot of due diligence before bringing somebody in, not just in terms of their sales skills, but they’re fit.
23:48
So with some of the teams I’ve had, I just had to, I had, I joined a new company and these are the people.
23:54
So, so they’re figuring out, you know, who can be successful, how I can make them successful and who’s going to be someone we have to manage out or, or limit has been something that I’ve become more attuned to.
24:09
And I think parallel, just making sure you make the best hire possible out of the gate.
24:13
If you have a new opening, don’t waste it on someone that may look good on paper, but it’s going to be that detrimental to the business potentially.
24:22
Yeah, I, I think that culture fit is, you know, I, if you’ve done, if you’ve done any significant amount of hiring over the years, you’ve made mistakes, right?
24:34
I’ve, I’ve done that.
24:36
Probably more mistakes than I care to admit, but that’s the reality.
24:40
And I’ve had to learn from that.
24:43
And one of the things that I’ve learned is first and foremost, you have to hire the values.
24:51
How is that?
24:52
How do you go about assessing fit when you’re hired?
24:58
Yeah, I, I think that there’s some baseline things that just have to be true, right.
25:04
So if the person gives me any kind of willies about their ethics that that’s obviously a non starter.
25:13
But each company I’ve been at, the culture has been different.
25:16
So even someone who might have been quite good for one of my previous companies, it might not be a good fit here.
25:22
So taking account the company culture is is huge.
25:28
And it’s not to say that a given culture is better than another one, but there are realities around whatever kind of company you’re at that you need to make sure that you’re aligning the salespeople and any hire really with what the culture is.
25:44
So for instance, when I joined Icor, it was a show up at your seat everyday kind of a place unless you were out selling, right?
25:54
So the people that I would hire back then before the pandemic had to kind of have that mindset or DNA.
26:04
Now that we’re hybrid, it’s a different, it’s a different kind of hire.
26:08
So that that’s an example of how you have to adapt not just within between companies, but within the company as the culture might shift.
26:16
No, no, I think that’s so true.
26:19
And I also like your what you’re saying about you have to hire slow and hire very deliberately.
26:24
That was one of the other key lessons that I’ve learned is hire slow, fire fast.
26:28
Yeah, don’t.
26:30
That’s something that I’ve fired and fast to somebody I’ve struggled with in the past because you want to help people, you want to rehabilitate or whatever.
26:38
But when you have someone who’s being toxic or destructive or whatever the issue might be, I’ve just learned it’s so much better to deal with that and move on because you’re doing them a favor.
26:49
That’s the part I didn’t understand is often times you’re doing them a favor by getting them out of a situation.
26:54
It’s not good for them.
26:55
You excuse me?
26:56
That’s so true.
26:57
There’s a guy I see in LinkedIn all the time now that I fired and he’s doing great.
27:02
So he he had to find the right situation.
27:06
It wasn’t he wasn’t toxic, he just wasn’t good at doing what we do.
27:10
But he found something else more in line with his skills and he’s thriving.
27:14
Yeah, exactly.
27:15
That’s that’s the part I didn’t understand that often times you’re doing the person a favor.
27:19
It’s a two way St.
27:20
in that regards.
27:21
It’s not necessarily a negative.
27:23
I mean, nobody likes getting fired, but it sucks.
27:25
But sometimes that’s the kick people need to like, hey, I need to reassess, right?
27:30
Yeah.
27:33
When it comes to, you know, if I’m a new, let’s say I’m a new sales leader, what advice would you give me beyond what you’ve already said?
27:42
Is there anything else you would add to how they should go about building their team?
27:48
Yeah, if, if it’s a Greenfield opportunity, I’ve got one set of answers.
27:52
If you’re inheriting a running business, I’d have a different set.
27:57
In the second case, I think we’ve covered it is, you know, figure out your people, figure out how this is going to work with the the culture and the products and services quotas, all that stuff.
28:11
If you’re blessed to be able to start now, I say blessed, but now I’m talking start-ups, you know, which is a mixed blessing.
28:19
But if you’re coming into a new situation or if a company is grow, is growing and you’ve had been promoted into it, then you have to think not just about the people, but the strategy, right?
28:29
So for each company I’ve joined, I’ve done like a playbook, like I, you know, I’ve looked at whatever they had, if they had anything.
28:38
And I, I’ve tried to just listen for the 1st 30 days or so to just not make a lot of suggestions the first month, just kind of take it all in, meet customers, learn the business, learn the industry.
28:52
If you’re not from the industry, ’cause you’re not adding any value to come in and with your kind of hot reads, you know, So if you, if you are a new leader and you don’t have the background or experience, it’s even that much more important to be humble and understand the business and the people before making changes.
29:12
But I think even in that case, and there’s a lot of tools out there you can leverage to create a sales playbook and, you know, basically build a strategy.
29:22
Having a mentor is huge there too, by the way.
29:25
Oh, yeah, yeah, I believe it.
29:28
It’s listening to you.
29:29
It’s like, hey, come into that new role the same as if you’re meeting, doing discovery with a new prospect.
29:35
Listen, Learn what’s working, what’s not working.
29:40
Don’t talk.
29:41
Listen.
29:42
Right.
29:43
Yeah, yeah.
29:47
If you could go back and redo something from your career, is there something a, a significant change you would make?
29:57
Yeah, I, I think I would, since I ended up in sales management after all these years, I think I would have made more of an effort to understand what I was getting into and maybe just again do that, that the advice that I’m giving to this theoretical new person, I, I’d like to have my younger self take it.
30:16
Listen first, don’t come in with attitude.
30:19
Just come in with humility and learn beyond that.
30:23
I think you experienced this huge and you can’t like, it’d be nice if you could go back in time and deliver experience to your past self, but you can’t.
30:32
So I think just acknowledging that every experience adds something and if if you have the mindset to learn from it, then I think you don’t need to go back to your previous self and have that talk.
30:46
That’s right.
30:47
CRM, Do you love it or do you hate it?
30:51
I love it now.
30:53
It hasn’t always been that way.
30:55
So the, the pivot point for me was, I mean, part of it, the technology is so much more not just robust, but integratable that that’s not really a word.
31:06
But early CRMS, like I go back far enough when they were like on hard drives, it was just like a bucket you put things in or drawers.
31:16
And some of them are still that way.
31:19
But I, I, what I, what I, how I’ve come to love CRM is not just thinking of it as a reporting tool ’cause obviously that’s why we built them right?
31:30
To understand our customer and relate to them and manage their relationship, right?
31:35
That’s, that’s right there in the name.
31:37
But as a, as a modern seller and manager, there’s so much they can plug in.
31:44
So I think to make a Rep, a Rep love CRN, you’re not going to get them to love it for the data you want them to enter.
31:51
You have to bring in a set of tools or if you’re fortunate enough that the CRM you have has those tools that actually make them more productive, then they’re going to use it and they’re going to love it.
32:02
That’s right.
32:03
That’s I see that all the time that it, it has to be a tool that’s enabling the user.
32:10
And a lot of times, you know, when you talk to CRM it we’re talking about the sales team, but most companies are using CRM well beyond the sales team.
32:19
So it’s for whatever users using it, it needs to enable them and make the their job easier, better, more efficient, whatever.
32:28
If you’re able to accomplish that, people are going to use it and embrace it.
32:32
And if they’re not, it’s usually because the tool’s not helping them.
32:35
It’s an anchor they’re dragging behind them.
32:38
That’s right.
32:39
So management wants to the data, you know, the analytics, but the, the people that are actually, the users need to not just be bought in, but actually enabled.
32:48
Otherwise it’s going to be highly imperfect.
32:51
The data you’re going to get is going to be much less rich if people aren’t really invested in it.
32:56
Yeah, exactly.
32:57
And they’re just, it’s going to be pulling teeth like, hey, it’s Friday, make sure you update the CRM.
33:03
You know, if you’re saying that to your team, that’s a pretty good indicator your CRM is not helping the team.
33:09
Exactly.
33:09
Yeah.
33:11
If you had a magic wand 1 area to improve CRM, how would you use that magic wand?
33:17
I’m interested in how AI can help with the analytics.
33:23
One of the things that is from the management level that’s hard is really learning from past deals and also like deals like those have to be created, right?
33:37
So as an example, something comes in inbound, right?
33:41
It’s a lead.
33:42
Somebody fills out a form, it’s a lead in most CRMS.
33:46
Those things get, I mean, the level of which they get paid attention, like the seller makes a judgement about whether this is going to be interesting or not, or the business development Rep or whoever it’s going to be.
33:58
So you have people early on in the cycle making decisions about that lead that then it’s, it’s like it’s, it’s a Cliff, right?
34:08
So if it’ll act on it or or do the right thing, move it to a workflow, then then it’s a data point you don’t have any more.
34:15
So the the role of AI and being able to lift out information about there’s things like lead scoring and things like that.
34:23
I think AI is going to have some exciting implications for the lead scoring and being able to look more holistically at the whole data set rather than just the opportunities.
34:32
Oh yeah.
34:32
And I agree with that, but that’s an area of opportunity that I see all the time that when we come into a, a company that they’re like, hey, you know, we have issues with our CRM that we need your help to address.
34:47
That’s one of the first areas we look at is lead management because it’s usually done very poorly because they don’t have a standardized system of how do you assess that lead?
34:58
How do you how, what is your process to qualify?
35:00
Is everyone doing it the same way?
35:01
Frequently it’s left up to the individual to make that determination.
35:06
So how do you analyze it when it’s the Wild West?
35:11
You know, how do you fix something when it’s, it’s really chaos is what we’re describing is when you don’t have a standardized process.
35:21
So if you as a sales leader, what’s your advice to someone who say, hey, that’s me, our lead management sucks, it’s the Wild West.
35:30
How do you get your arms around that?
35:33
Yeah, happily for me, it’s not my problem currently, but with the various companies I worked at previously, I did have to kind of make recommendations and and be responsible for outcomes.
35:44
So I, I think backing up the step, I think alignment between marketing and sales is huge here, right, ’cause often times marketing owns that CRM, in the case of the one we happen to use, which sadly isn’t yours.
36:01
Had the conversation with you yet.
36:03
Essentially you, you can, you can have a tool presented to your team.
36:08
And then even things like lead definition, like what is a good lead?
36:13
You need like a very strong relationship between the CMO and the CRO or the VPN sales, VPN marketing to really agree on definitions.
36:21
Then you have to enforce them.
36:23
So I think that can be a problem.
36:25
And the larger the company is, the more matrix the company is, the more difficult that’s going to be.
36:31
So I think that that is probably the biggest.
36:33
So This is why we have consultants like you come in, because I think that a company on its own is not going to be well equipped to make those kind of objective decisions because everyone’s got their own kind of stakes and point of view.
36:44
Oh, yeah.
36:45
And I’ve just found a lot of times you just have to strip the emotion away.
36:48
Yeah.
36:49
And if you’re able to do that, you’re able to make progress and start creating that alignment between those different groups that you talked about.
36:57
I’ve talked about this many times on the podcast.
36:59
And as I talk to people in the industry, the term used to behave, we need to align sales and marketing.
37:07
I truly think it’s evolved from there to you need to unify sales and marketing.
37:12
It needs to be.
37:13
They need to be thoroughly connected.
37:15
It can’t be over the fence in any form or fashion.
37:18
Yeah, have to have that unification between those groups to truly be effective these days.
37:24
There’s a term I heard a couple years back called marketing, sales and marketing, which I kind of like.
37:30
And I think a lot of companies that are larger, more matrix, maybe they have like acro that’s sort of above both CM OS aren’t fond of that.
37:40
But I think having someone ultimately went throat to choke for like the success of the sales and marketing function does make sense.
37:47
And for smaller companies like ours, that’s just not that realistic.
37:50
Yeah, no, I get it.
37:52
Kirk, appreciate your time here on Sales Lead Dog.
37:55
This is always a gift to me.
37:56
When people come on and share their expertise with me, it leaves me very energized.
38:00
So I really appreciate you coming on.
38:03
If people want to connect with you, if they want to learn more about I core technology, what’s the best way for them to do that?
38:10
OK, either one works.
38:11
So LinkedIn my it’s my last name, which is tricky.
38:15
It’s basically linkedin.com/F ACKRE.
38:20
I look at that daily.
38:23
In terms of icore technologies, I better spell it ICORP.
38:27
s.com would be the best way to kind of hook up with us there and happy to talk to anybody about anything, whether it’s business or not.
38:37
Yeah, that’s awesome.
38:38
If you didn’t catch any of that, that’s OK.
38:40
You can get it in our show notes at impellercrm.com/sales Lead Dog, where you’ll get not only this episode, be sure to check that out, get the show notes, but you’ll get all our hundred plus episodes of Sales Lead Dog.
38:52
You also have the ability to subscribe so you get all the future episodes wherever you get your your podcasts.
38:59
So we really appreciate you doing that.
39:00
Kirk, thank you again for coming on Sales Lead Dog and welcome to the Sales Lead Dog pack.
39:06
Thank you, Christopher.
39:07
It’s been a pleasure.
39:11
As we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog.
39:13
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39:21
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39:31
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