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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, we have joining us Larry Gordon.
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Larry is the managing director of M Tech.
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Larry, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
0:37
Hey, thanks for having me, Chris, And it’s good to be here and speak with you today.
0:42
Yeah, I’m excited to talk with you.
0:43
Larry, tell me a little bit about your current role and and M Tech.
0:47
Sure.
0:48
So M Tech builds digital product.
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We’re software engineers, about 2000 people worldwide.
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And if you’re using Zillow, you’re using something we built.
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If you’re in the logistics business or healthcare business or financial services business, you’re probably on an application that we worked on along with our clients.
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And we, we love to build stuff.
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We’re engineers and we use the latest and greatest technologies, including AI these days to build applications that our customers use to create revenue and help their customers.
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I’ve had a little bit of name dropping on this show, but you just dropped a big one, Zillow.
1:29
That’s really cool.
1:30
We’ve worked for Zillow for many, many years.
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We’ve built Zillow and keep building.
1:33
Now they have a great team, great leadership.
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You know, it’s them, but we got our engineers cobbling away.
1:40
Oh, that’s awesome.
1:40
That and that’s a terrific, A terrific sight and you guys did an amazing job.
1:44
That’s really, really cool.
1:45
Thanks.
1:47
Yeah.
1:48
So Larry, when you look back over your career and if you get a chance, be sure to checked out Larry’s profile, LinkedIn, so you can see what I’m talking about here.
1:58
What are the three things that have really driven and LED to your success?
2:03
So I love identifying good opportunities, a good product or a service at an inflection point in the technology industry.
2:14
I I like that it makes things a lot easier.
2:16
It makes it easier to recruit salespeople.
2:18
It makes it a lot easier to market it, it makes it easier to deal with customers and it’s exciting to me.
2:24
It’s why I’m in the tech business.
2:28
I’ve had great CE OS.
2:31
I’ve had Kumar Mahadeva at Cognizant, founder and CEO of Cognizant.
2:38
I’ve had Raymond Spencer at Kanbay and CAF Gemini.
2:41
I’ve had Jerry Cohen at information builders and and several more, but you know, in terms of founders and CE OS and chairmans, I’ve had really close relationships with them and loved working with them and kind of, you know, learned a lot and model want to model myself after them.
2:59
I’ll never have the careers they had, but I like to do the kind of things they do and they teach a lot about leadership and leadership comes down to doing leadership things as opposed to being a leader is one of my themes.
3:15
Awesome.
3:17
How do you you know when you have ACEO like that or someone that’s really standing out, that truly is a level, you know of that level above what I would call a typical CEO.
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What advice do you have for someone to say like, how do I cultivate a relationship with that individual so I can have those learning opportunities, offering them thing, offering to do things for them that are really useful?
3:46
And in my case, it’s about driving revenue.
3:49
I became the CEO myself later on because I like doing startups and I, I do two things.
3:55
I do kind of the cold start.
3:56
It’s a new company and we need our first customers and then scale it and a restart a company that hasn’t maybe sold to a new customer in four or five years and needs to figure out how to do that again.
4:08
So I, I love doing that and how I’ve been useful to them is I, I generally say I, I can do this and, you know, be accountable for it and get it done and spend the money the right way.
4:22
And I’ve noticed, you know, CE OS that are super successful aren’t highfalutin.
4:29
You know, you might see them on MSNBC and CNN and the cover of Forbes or whatever, but mostly they’re really down to earth.
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It’s like I need more sales and I need more profitability and we’re spending too much money.
4:46
And is the customer happy with that?
4:48
Is it doing what it’s supposed to do?
4:50
I mean, it’s really basic questions of why and how and can you so get the answers to those And, and, and I found I’ve been able to be successful.
5:01
That’s awesome.
5:03
Did you want to be in sales at the beginning of your career or, you know, what was your path into sales?
5:11
Yeah, I did.
5:12
I always wanted to sell things and market things.
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And I wish I could build things.
5:20
And I, I, I built companies and I built sales models and marketing models and I built things that involves a lot of moving parts with complexity around process and product.
5:34
But I’m, I’m not much of an engineer.
5:37
And at the beginning you kind of see, am I good at engineering?
5:43
And there’s a lot of people who are a lot better.
5:45
But but I was OK at sales and marketing and I like doing that.
5:48
So I, I’d say yeah.
5:50
And from the very beginning, you know, it was, it was a little heat.
5:53
What you kill, it’s like, well, we have a company here, we better sell something, you know, ’cause that’s where the money comes from.
5:59
I, I had AI, had a great CEO, Marty Lepsalter in the tech business.
6:05
And he said, you know, there’s only a few ways to get money.
6:07
You know, you can, you can sell something or you could get investors or the government could give it to you.
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You’re like, so let’s go get some money.
6:14
It’s really basic, but it’s that easy.
6:20
Just let’s go get some money.
6:21
Right?
6:22
Find some money, Larry.
6:24
Yeah.
6:26
Yeah.
6:26
I just got in my closet over here.
6:28
Let me go get it.
6:28
Yeah, Not a problem.
6:31
What was that first job in sales like for you?
6:34
Was it what you expected or were you surprised by?
6:38
You know, your expectations were very different from what you thought they would be.
6:43
My expectations actually, it was just like I thought it would be in terms of selling things like if we had a digital agency at the very beginning and selling customers on that.
6:55
I mean, I loved it.
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It’s fun.
6:56
I love working with my customers.
6:58
They’re my favorite ones, people to work with.
7:02
So selling that pretty much met my expectations and I was dealing with people I liked.
7:08
You know, not everyone bought, not everyone was a good guy or gal, but you know, I, I got that when it scaled up huge at cognizant.
7:19
That was different than originally I thought it would be.
7:23
It was much more complex and people’s motivations and people, you, what people want out of you and want out of things and how they behave.
7:32
And, you know, much more complex than I thought it was going to be.
7:36
I, I, you know, it’s pretty obvious to me, as I’ve kind of indicated, let, let’s go sell something, keep the customer happy and you know, they give us money.
7:44
It, it became not that which if you go back to kind of lean training, it should be that, But you know, you get into some of these big organizations.
7:53
I I mean it’s, it’s, it can be very different and takes a lot of different skills and a lot of different people to sell something and, and manage a customer in the process.
8:02
And the tools got much more, you know, you had to have a tool capability.
8:07
Not, not that the tools answer much.
8:09
And I think we get into tools a little later.
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But, you know, adding the tool layer on top of that adds as much complexity as it does solve problems.
8:18
Right.
8:19
Would you consider yourself to be naive in your early, you know, the early years of your career?
8:28
A little, yeah.
8:29
I mean, I, I just didn’t know the lengths people would go to stuff.
8:35
Yeah.
8:35
I, I can relate to that.
8:37
I, I always thought like, hey, I’m going to treat people the way I want to be treated and don’t do the same thing for me.
8:43
That’s a hard lesson to learn when you know, like you realize, you know, a lot of people are just in it for themselves and, and you learn that lesson and then if, if you’re pretty good, you can figure out which is which because there are people who are like that and believe me, they’re lifelong friends.
9:01
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:04
It’s that’s, that could be a hard lesson.
9:06
Yeah.
9:07
But if you find those people that truly are, that have shared values like you, it it’s a game changer, you know, because now you’ve got that alignment of values and it I think it just puts the relationship on a different level.
9:21
Yeah, it’s a yeah, It’s a really nice way to say it.
9:24
Yeah.
9:26
So let’s talk about your shift into sales leadership.
9:29
Was that a deliberate choice by you to to go into sales leadership or where someone tap you on the shoulder and say, Larry, we want you to do this.
9:37
Someone tapped me on the shoulder.
9:39
What was that?
9:39
Like they said, someone has to train and manage the sales force because now we got a lot of sales guys and it’s getting too big too fast.
9:54
You go do this part.
9:56
And, and so I did and I bought a sales management tool and you trained them and pipeline calls and I always was on pipeline calls and I just, I, I kind of loved it, you know, the guys reporting in.
10:10
But when you got to manage him, it’s like, Oh my God, you know, you deserve every penny you’re making.
10:18
Why did they choose you?
10:21
I think, ’cause I was available and I, I was kind of, you know, in the senior leadership cadre, you know, what do we call it nowadays?
10:30
Level 2, like the one down from the CEO and you know, marketing, sales, you know, everybody else is kind of tech and OPS for finance.
10:41
So with you functioning as a leader at high level, what are you looking for and what attributes are you looking for?
10:50
You know, for those people that you want to cultivate into leadership path?
10:55
There’s it, it kind of depends.
10:59
And you know, if I, if I’m recruiting out for sales people or if I have a group I’m working with, but there’s the people at the beginning of their careers, bright motivated, you know, I, I really like forthright and, you know, kind of straight up and pretty honest.
11:13
I mean, I think sales people do crazy stuff like disappear for weeks with the company credit card and you know, it was drugs, you know, that’s weird.
11:22
Or, you know, guys, you know, they’re really just playing golf or, you know, whatever it is, right?
11:26
Or, or, or they’re, or they’re crooks.
11:28
They’re cheating on their expense reports.
11:30
So if you take, you know, that part away.
11:33
So you know, a pretty high level of integrity and then you got to know our business or be really bright and want to learn ’cause I’m in IT services and every and every business is the same in some ways and different.
11:46
We’re very relationship driven, very long term deals take a long time.
11:52
Customers count on us.
11:54
Sometimes their careers are at stake or getting further in their career, their jobs.
12:00
It’s not transactional, but you know, you got to get the right price and you got to deliver on a consistent basis.
12:06
So a lot about consistency, understanding the quirks of our business because it makes it a lot easier.
12:15
Bright and hard working or good, but you know, it’s not about out working everybody else.
12:26
You, you have to be smart and knowledgeable and, you know, getting the customer what they need.
12:30
It’s it’s good to work hard, but you’re not going to get to where you need to go if you don’t have the rest that you just work hard, right.
12:40
You know, as a leader, you have to have accountability also have to hold people accountable.
12:46
How do you, you know, help people through that transition, you know, going from being, you know, that person that the only thing they’re accountable for is their quota to now they have to be, you know, accountable for a team and the results of that team.
13:03
We we have to look at, we have to not get too distracted by a lot of things by doing more training or recruiting more salespeople or are they making presentations the right way, all of which are really important, but don’t get too distracted by that as your goals instead of are we engaging with customers and what are they saying and how can I be sure that’s what they’re saying?
13:34
And are we making sales?
13:36
You got it right.
13:37
We need the money.
13:38
Are we making sales?
13:39
And if not, why not?
13:40
Is it not?
13:41
Is it what we called it secular or macro?
13:45
You know, is it something bigger than us?
13:48
You know, economic trends are one of them?
13:50
Is it our product?
13:51
Is we were pitching the product?
13:52
Is it is it that we’re not working hard enough or not doing the right things or selling the right thing?
13:57
So kind of knowing what our roadblock is, you know, of course setting goals and working towards them are all important.
14:04
But mostly it comes down to having quality meetings with customers and knowing pretty quickly, you know, are they serious or are they just playing this because it’s costly to respond to an RFP or a proposal in my business, It’s it’s not important, but it’s it’s custom.
14:21
Yeah, yeah.
14:23
So when you’re building out your team of leaders, do you like to have everyone kind of be similar or do you try to have a mix of personalities among your team to create some kind of balancer?
14:36
What’s your strategy around that, How you build your team?
14:38
I like similar.
14:39
I like my type of person, which I don’t think is invoked these days.
14:43
It’s like team, what’s that Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln book, you know, team of Oh yeah, team of rivals, Team of rivals.
14:50
It’s a good book.
14:51
I’m like big into alignment.
14:52
I’m like, here’s where we want to get to.
14:55
Here’s what we need to do.
14:57
Tell me the right story.
14:59
Let’s get, you know, if you have a blocker, you know, Raymond, Raymond Spencer at Capgemini was big into this.
15:05
He’s like, if you have a problem, raise your hand.
15:08
We got a lot of really good guys here.
15:10
We’re going to help you solve the problem.
15:11
I love that.
15:12
I like collaboration.
15:14
I like to be, you know, kind of there’s a pleasurableness to working and making money.
15:20
Let’s go with that as opposed to, you know, not that.
15:23
So I, I kind of like to surround myself with those people.
15:27
Probably not fashionable, you know, everyone’s got their own skills.
15:30
There’s the finance people, the tech people, which makes them different with different points of view.
15:35
But I hopefully there’s a lot of common ground where you can get like the CF OS worried about money or the, you know, tech guys worried about bugs or whatever.
15:45
Right, right.
15:46
How do you create alignment around the core values of the organization within your team?
15:51
Have you ever struggled with that?
15:53
And if so, how’d you handle that?
15:57
You know, there’s an old saying it’s easier to change people than change people.
16:02
It, it, you know, you can accept people for what they do and who they are.
16:05
And as long as they’re, you know, good enough, it’s probably OK.
16:09
But they kind of get capped then.
16:11
And, and maybe they’re OK with that.
16:12
Or, you know, if they have these huge ambitions and you know, you’re just going to tear us all apart, it’s not going to work.
16:19
You know, performance matters.
16:21
But let’s be honest, you know, you, you give a person a quota, Here’s your quota, 100%.
16:27
If you make 91, we’re OK.
16:30
Really, we’re OK.
16:32
We sold something, we made money, you know, so performance matters.
16:37
But you know, an A and you know, an A is an A.
16:44
That’s right, That’s right.
16:48
When do you ever leverage failure in terms of how you manage your team?
16:57
Because we can’t do every deal right.
16:58
We we got to fix mistakes.
17:01
We got to fix mistakes.
17:03
You know, if they’re fixable quickly, fix them quickly.
17:06
Don’t keep falling into the same hole.
17:09
But I’ve always been like, I don’t want to learn from my mistakes.
17:14
I want to learn from the other guys mistakes.
17:16
It’s like, let’s see what mistakes that guy’s making and like, try not to make them.
17:20
And because we’ll make enough on our own.
17:24
No, it’s better not to fail, believe me.
17:26
Yeah, but but fix it.
17:29
It’s part of the deal, right?
17:30
When, you know, even you think you’ve done everything right, you still lose deals.
17:36
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:38
You know, and the there’s various reasons, but you know, this is a tech industry in in the 2000 twenties, right?
17:46
There is a lot of smart, ambitious people on this.
17:49
It’s super competitive and people are filling niches and specific needs and they’re quick to see that it’s it’s not, it’s not easy.
17:58
So you’re not going to roll people like in the 80s, right, Right, right, right.
18:08
How do you establish goals within your sales team and then hold them accountable towards achieving those goals?
18:21
This might also be a little out of favor these days.
18:25
We kind of start back from what do you think we can do?
18:29
Because I work, you know, for a lot of companies that seek to go public or want to go public, it’s like you can’t make up your goals and tell the investors it like, what do we think we can do?
18:38
Right?
18:39
And you know, as as a salesperson or a sales team, like, Dang, how much money you need to make?
18:45
All right, let’s start with that.
18:46
Let’s let’s be realistic and then let’s start from what does the company need?
18:53
You know, and, and hopefully we haven’t promised someone something unattainable, but you want to stretch a little bit.
19:00
So let’s start with what’s real.
19:02
And then how do we get there?
19:05
Do we need 3 big deals?
19:07
Do we need 8 small deals?
19:08
You know, do we need, we used to call them bread and butter deals.
19:11
It’s like five small deals and then you get the one big one and everyone makes a lot of money that year, which is or or you get a customer that grows over a number of years and you know, you grow with them and they’re the boss and they get more than you.
19:25
But it’s like it’s great and it’s an exciting product.
19:30
So I usually say, what do you think we could do?
19:34
What’s realistic?
19:35
Let’s maybe see how it goes in the first quarter, if we’re on track, ’cause if you get in a hold of the first quarter, it’s tough and you know, all right.
19:44
And then I always view it as these are, these are good people.
19:49
You know, what’s, what are the blockers?
19:51
What are the roadblocks?
19:52
Let’s get those going.
19:56
It, it’s not about bullet, it’s not about screaming louder.
20:00
I mean, if you’re looking for a scream loud guy, it’s it’s not me, but it’s about let’s put things in place.
20:06
Let’s build things.
20:08
You know, let’s shape things a different way and let’s help you now.
20:13
It could be spending more money on marketing.
20:15
It could be doing marketing differently.
20:17
It could be doing marketing better.
20:18
What’s working in marketing, what’s not ’cause you get leads in that’s good.
20:23
And I love a lot of the sales processes and the the tools And it’s like it all starts with, oh, you have a customer or you have a prospect.
20:33
It’s like, that’s the easy part.
20:36
Like I said, I’m a cold start guy.
20:38
It’s like, let’s find someone who wants to be a customer is willing to talk to us.
20:42
That’s that’s not easy.
20:43
And but you can do things if you’re running the business the right way to go get those.
20:48
And I, I focus a lot on that.
20:50
I focus, you know, everyone focuses on the funnel and what the metrics look like and what’s converting.
20:56
And it’s good if you have a funnel and don’t waste your time kind of building a bad funnel.
21:01
But managing the funnel is after getting people who want to spend money with you.
21:08
Let’s let’s start with that.
21:10
Yeah, that’s.
21:11
So let’s dive into that a little bit from a marketing perspective because I think that’s a lot of sales leaders I talked to also have responsibility over the marketing teams.
21:22
I’ve seen that more and more that unification between sales and marketing in your roles that you’ve had, what advice do you have or what if lessons have you learned to better align and truly unify marketing and sales so they’re not just throwing stuff over the wall.
21:41
The fingers aren’t going back and forth.
21:44
You know, how do how do you approach that?
21:47
I think let me start with the solution to that one is you have to get your customers working for you.
21:55
That means customer testimonials, customers naming their name, being upfront, you know, saying I’m so and so at such and such a corporation.
22:04
This is how these guys help me.
22:05
This is the problem they solve for me and they do, they do good work for me and I trust them.
22:10
So get your customers helping you.
22:12
If you can’t get your customers helping you, now, you got a really long road to hoe.
22:17
So there is a tendency with marketing organizations to do what works.
22:25
It sounds pretty smart.
22:26
It works.
22:27
Let’s do it.
22:28
Except one key part of marketing is doing things differently.
22:33
Like I think there’s even a company who use that in their marketing.
22:37
Do things differently, think a little bit differently about it and and different things come back in vogue at different times.
22:46
So you could go to something that’s been done before, but bring it back in vogue.
22:50
So do some different things, try some different things.
22:53
Keep doing your bread and butter and what you’re supposed to be doing, but try something new.
23:00
Feel compelled to do something new because it’s it’s advertising, right?
23:05
You know, if you see the same old ad, right?
23:07
Those guys figured it out pretty early.
23:11
Do that.
23:12
Think about what it is you’re actually doing.
23:16
So in my business, very relationship intensive, long term deals, long term relationships, what you want to do is speed up the process of getting to know one another.
23:30
What are your needs?
23:31
What is it that I’m selling?
23:34
Do you trust me?
23:35
Here’s why you can trust me.
23:36
You you want to speed that up?
23:38
You don’t want to cut that out and say, here’s an e-mail, buy my stuff.
23:42
You want to say here’s why I’m worthwhile.
23:45
I’m doing content and I’m doing events and I’m providing.
23:49
I’m building a community of like minded people who you can tap into.
23:53
And if you can start doing that, I think about it as accelerating and, and these are kind of high value, complex sales relationships, accelerating the intimacy of that business relationship as opposed to, you know, getting more and doing it faster.
24:15
Do, you know, people buy, you know, ’cause they, they want what you’re selling and they, they trust you to deliver it and have them come to that belief a little quicker.
24:28
So marketing organizations should do things like that.
24:31
You know, in my business, Gartner and Forrester help a lot that way.
24:35
They’re third parties.
24:36
Other customers have having still the press and podcasts and bloggers talk about what you do, you know, reviewing what you’re doing.
24:47
If your public Wall Street helps a lot.
24:51
So and face to face, you know, don’t, don’t think that people don’t still value that.
24:58
You know, you know, if I, if I could come to your studio, great.
25:01
I mean, we can we get it.
25:02
But yeah, now it’s that’s the thing that I’ve had clients recently say like, you know, you’re the first partner that’s actually come visit us.
25:13
You know, that, like, everybody’s shifting to purely digital engagement, you know, over Zoom or Teams, whatever.
25:20
There’s value in sitting in a room across the table from someone where you can get out the markers and start, you know, conceptualizing on a white board.
25:30
Like, like you’re saying, go back to the way it used to be to stand out.
25:35
Yeah, it’s stand out.
25:36
And, you know, there’s plenty of big time tech executives who are facilitating the digital transformation of communications when they have a problem with you.
25:44
Get to my office.
25:46
We’re going to talk.
25:48
It’s not over Zoom.
25:49
No, it’s not over Zoom.
25:51
They want you.
25:52
They want to see you sweat.
25:53
Yeah.
25:54
Or smile.
25:55
Yeah.
25:57
So you talked about speeding up the relationship with the customers.
26:03
You can’t really control that, can you?
26:05
Because customers are going to engage with you how they won’t engage with you.
26:08
So how do you truly try, you know, accomplish that speeding them up, you know, that engagement with the customer or prospect?
26:17
Well, it’s not about kind of having them sign a contract faster or getting them materials faster.
26:24
It’s about ultimately when it comes time to sign a contract and kick off the business engagement, in our case, the software engineering engagement that you’ve ticked off all the boxes of.
26:43
These guys are really confident, competent.
26:46
I’m confident it’ll be successful.
26:48
If there are mistakes, they’re going to swarm it.
26:50
They understand me and my business and my needs and my goals.
26:55
I understand Larry’s needs and goals and what he has to offer.
27:00
So it’s about speeding up the pre sales process of, oh, I’ve just met you.
27:08
Oh, this is a great event you’ve put on for me or a great webinar or a great piece of content or oh, I’ve talked to someone in your community.
27:17
You’re, you know, a customer and you speed up the point from I don’t know you to, you know what, if I have this problem, I’m really happy to call you and engage with you to, you know, negotiating.
27:33
You know, clearly they’re going to bring in other people too.
27:37
But, you know, if you could reduce that from, you know, five years to a year by providing more value along the way, Hey, did you know Google is doing this?
27:48
You know, with artificial intelligence, you could save money and get your product to market faster with less work, which means less, less of my engineers willing to do it.
27:59
But I’m good with that ’cause you get a successful product and you like what I’m giving you, Let’s go.
28:04
If you could shrink it from five years to a year, that’s, that’s huge value.
28:09
You know, you’re not gonna like I say, you know, these are grown men and women we’re dealing with who are successful.
28:15
You’re not going to, like, browbeat them.
28:18
It’s a doing business with you.
28:20
You’re not going to.
28:20
They’re not going to forget to call you back if they want something.
28:24
You know?
28:25
Yeah.
28:26
Now I love it when I get the emails.
28:28
Like, hey, just moving this to the top of your inbox to me, that’s like, you know, you’re just helping me identify what I need to delete out of my inbox when you do that.
28:37
Because if I didn’t respond to the first time, sure as hell I’m not going to do it the second time.
28:40
Right.
28:41
You’re spot on.
28:42
Yeah, no, I love that.
28:45
Let’s shift the conversation a little bit to CRM.
28:48
Do you love it or do you heat it?
28:50
Oh, I gotta punt a little bit and say it’s mixed, but I’ll be very specific.
28:56
Right.
28:59
So I hate the part about I’m working for the tool.
29:03
The tool’s not working for me.
29:05
Amen.
29:06
Right.
29:07
Yeah, that’s not, that’s 1000 LB anchor you’re dragging behind you trying to do your job.
29:12
It’s just slowing you down.
29:13
And and and this is how the CRM says we should handle leads and opportunities and, you know, moving it along and, you know, in some made-up vernacular, right.
29:25
And maybe, maybe a backwards way of the process.
29:29
I want to do it.
29:31
So if I feel I’m working for the tool, I know I got to put some work into it.
29:35
But if I’m working for the tool, the tool’s not working for me.
29:39
That’s really bad now.
29:41
Is it better than kind of the old days of where we’d go over accounts on a spreadsheet and put in the values and everyone had us?
29:47
Definitely.
29:48
Is it great to have all the information there in one place?
29:53
Mostly it’s the key information, right?
29:59
What set of engineering skills are we selling them and what are we building and what are the deadlines?
30:04
There’s something interesting about I put the proposal into into ACRM and the lawyers then look at it.
30:13
But you know what?
30:14
It’s also easy to talk to the lawyer on the phone and say to look at it, you know, but OK, getting your reality check pipeline information off of a jockey who’s juggling data in in.
30:38
I don’t trust it for a second.
30:40
I talked to the sales guys, what’s what’s really happening and some probing questions.
30:44
So you know, I, I hate it if you’re going to actually make real insights and decisions on it, but it it is fairly good at keeping track of things.
30:54
They can be very expensive for what they’re providing.
30:58
Don’t fall in love with having a tool stack there for you’ve completed the people process technology, you know, culture part of what we’re supposed to do.
31:10
I’ve bought CRMS five times, I think.
31:16
And you know, sometimes it’s a top down decision.
31:20
It’s like, come on, I I know what you’re doing this.
31:23
Sometimes it’s like we need to be a little more organized, and this is pretty good.
31:28
Sometimes people struggle with the technology and it becomes an excuse.
31:31
Then you have to hire administrators to run the technology, and that becomes pricey and kludgy.
31:37
So, yeah.
31:40
So sounds like more negatives and positives there, Larry.
31:43
Well, yeah, I was letting you do that.
31:45
I was letting you do the counting.
31:48
That’s all right.
31:50
You know, that’s the world of CRM.
31:51
It it’s it, it’s it still amazes me in this day and age.
31:57
How, how many companies struggle with CRM, especially when it’s a top down, you know, hey, we need this and this is what we’re going to use.
32:05
And I need these numbers.
32:07
I need these reports, these dashboards, whatever.
32:10
And then it just becomes about like every Friday, Hey, I need you to get your numbers in.
32:14
So the dashboards, you know, updated for, you know, so and so because they want to see their numbers.
32:20
And but how is that enabling this?
32:22
The frontline salespeople to me it, you know, if you’re doing it right, it’s, it’s like their virtual assistant, it’s helping them be a more efficient to, to talk to more people, which, you know, to be in front of more people ’cause that’s ultimately how you’re gonna drive more revenue, right.
32:38
It’s, it’s like, it should be able to communicate with them pretty easy.
32:42
Yeah, yeah.
32:45
And you know, in my business, you do 10, you do a deal a month.
32:50
I don’t that’s a lot.
32:51
I mean, 6 deals a year is like, we’re really happy.
32:55
Yeah, I I get it.
32:56
If you have 10,000 deals you’re doing, you know, you’re, you know, it’s a, it’s a lot different business.
33:02
Yeah, well, team selling too.
33:04
I think CRM is really important when you’re selling big deals with long sales cycles.
33:09
CRM can be a real help there.
33:11
But again, it’s got to be a tool enabling the sales team and truly helping them, not slowing them down.
33:19
To me, that’s the part where if you got the tail wagging the dog and it’s like, that’s just insanity of my mind It it’s like, how are we enabling or helping the business here?
33:30
We’re not.
33:31
Yeah, yeah.
33:33
What advice do you have for someone that they’re listening to this and they’re going, heck, that’s me.
33:37
Our CRM sucks.
33:39
It’s not aligned with the business.
33:40
It’s really not helping us drive the business forward.
33:43
What advice do you have for them?
33:46
Well, in in lean training, which is, you know, manufacturing, industrial engineering training, you got to walk the gamba.
33:53
Let’s talk to sales people and see what they need and let’s maybe slim it down because there’s, there’s a lot of good stuff in there.
33:59
The collaborative aspects of it.
34:01
I don’t just mean teams, I mean people being able to see documents and share things along the deal cycle.
34:07
Walk the gamba, talk to the sales people.
34:08
It’s like, what do you hate?
34:10
You know, what do I as ACEO or leader, what do I need?
34:15
What do I really trust?
34:18
You know, we, we do at Mtech, we do reengineering of CRMS.
34:24
So it’s a, it’s a good business for us and you know, make it lighter.
34:33
You know, I’ve, I’ve used some that are lighter and it’s like, I get it and it’s not very expensive.
34:37
And you know, it’s, it’s helping me with what I need help with.
34:41
Yeah, Now I love that making a lighter part too, because that’s, we see that a lot too, Where?
34:46
I mean, I’ve seen CRMS, I’m not kidding.
34:47
You had 300 fields on their opportunity.
34:51
Like what in the world are you going to do with 300 data fields?
34:54
Who even knows what’s supposed to go in each of those fields?
34:57
And nothing, the reality is nothing goes in those fields because it’s like who’s got the time, right?
35:04
And so it’s like we’re stripping all that away.
35:08
We’re going to keep it focused on what’s the most important stuff that’s going to help move the deal forward, that’s going to enable the sales.
35:13
Everything else we’re getting rid of, it’s garbage.
35:15
We don’t need it.
35:16
And man, how do things change when you do that?
35:19
You know it, It’s like, think about like you’re climbing a mountain.
35:24
You don’t want to be carrying 100 LB pack on your back if you’re climbing a mountain, right?
35:28
You want to be nimble.
35:30
You want to have the most important stuff like a nice canteen of water, maybe some rain gear or some things like that.
35:36
But you sure still don’t want to be carrying 100 LB pack.
35:38
Well, that was the revolution in mountaineering, right?
35:41
Yeah, to do it that oxygen and all alone or just a couple of them.
35:46
You know, as opposed to hiring half a village.
35:48
Yeah, exactly.
35:50
Larry, we’re here on our we’re we’ve met our time here on this episode for sales lead dog.
35:54
I really appreciate you coming on.
35:56
It’s been great listening to you.
35:58
If people want to reach out and connect with you, they want to learn more about M Tech, what’s the best way for them to do that?
36:04
So you could go to my LinkedIn profile, Larry Gordon.
36:08
I look just like this and all my contact info is there and M tech.com, good website, EMTEC, excellent.
36:20
So if you didn’t catch that, don’t worry, we’ve got it in our show notes.
36:23
You can get that at Impeller CRM dot com/ sales lead dog where you’ll get not only this episode, but all our hundred plus episodes of sales lead dog.
36:32
So be sure to check that out.
36:34
Subscribe so you get all our future episodes.
36:36
Larry, thanks again for coming on and welcome to the sales lead dog pack.
36:42
You betcha, Chris, I’m I’m happy to become a member.
36:45
A pleasure as we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog.
36:54
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37:12
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