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.
0:29
For this episode of Sales Lead Dog, I have joined in me Laura K Sheely.
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Laura is the senior vice president, national sales manager for Watermark TPO.
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Laura K, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
0:43
Thank you so much for having me.
0:45
Laura.
0:45
Tell me a little bit about Watermark TPO.
0:49
Well, Watermark TPO is a mortgage correspondent and wholesale business.
0:55
What that basically means is we buy mortgages from banks, credit unions and independent mortgage brokers, and we help salespeople and mortgage production teams understand how they can do it more efficiently and with expanding their resources and products.
1:13
I imagine this is a pretty interesting time for your industry.
1:18
It is a very interesting time.
1:20
There’s a lot of transition happening with technology and AI and a lot of questions about what’s the future of mortgage origination going to look like.
1:30
And so it’s a really fun time to be in conversations as businesses changing and to understand what the needs are of the clients that we’re working with.
1:39
Yeah, it’s a whole new era now that, well, maybe not.
1:43
Some people may look and say, well, now it’s like it was 20 years ago before interest rates really dropped and, and the craziness ensued.
1:52
But as you mentioned, technology is going to play a big role in the future around this.
1:57
Yeah, yes.
1:59
The way that we interact to get a mortgage, the way that a mortgage is going to be processed, and ultimately my role in this space is the way mortgages are transferred from institution to institution is going to look really different really quickly.
2:13
And so at Watermark TPO, we’re really trying to be on the leading edge of that and understanding how to do it well with the right people in place.
2:21
That’s amazing.
2:23
Laura Kay, when you look back over your career and if you could boil it down to three things, what would be the three things that have really driven and LED to your success?
2:34
Well, first of all, I would have to say that growing up, my mom required that I be in 4H, which in the Midwest is a, a very important organization that you could start out with when you’re 9 years old as a young girl in your small town.
2:50
And that organization gave me a, an incredible foundation of organization and public speaking.
3:00
And so early on, I became very comfortable speaking in front of groups, teaching others, and also putting projects together that you’d ultimately have to deliver at the County Fair and then the State Fair.
3:13
And so that was a really critical part to my upbringing and I think contributed to my confidence now in speaking to people and teaching others.
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The second thing that I think was probably as much of A contributor was the idea of grit.
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Many times in my career someone has told me that I could not or would not be able to do something, and there has been no greater motivator than someone telling me no.
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Each time someone gave me the idea that maybe I couldn’t have a job or I couldn’t get a thing accomplished, that became my fuel to figure out how to get it done.
3:50
Didn’t necessarily mean that I always got it right, but I always had a desire to learn how to do that thing.
3:58
And then finally, I would say when I adopted my weekly mindset, I call it the 52 mindset, I actually wrote a book about it, which is.
4:07
That was my next question.
4:08
Yeah.
4:08
Tell us about the 52 mindset.
4:11
Yeah.
4:11
So it’s the idea that you drop the daily pressures of an endless To Do List and all the things that you have to get done in that simple 24 hours and start moving yourself to one big goal a week or one major thing that you can lay down with and say, I really did well at that.
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And so as I like to say, I’ve got 52 of them each year.
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Look out for what I can do.
4:37
I love that that makes it achievable, right?
4:40
That we’re not overwhelming ourselves with this endless list of to do’s.
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Let’s focus on the most important thing I need to get done in this given time frame.
4:49
Absolutely.
4:50
And I think as a leader in sales, that also contributes to the way that you can run your team.
4:55
Because, you know, if you sit down at with one good weekly huddle and set everybody on the pace for what you need to accomplish this week in your organization and then let them go work autonomously and figure out all of the little things that contribute to that bigger goal themselves, I think you move things along a lot faster.
5:15
Oh, yeah, Yeah.
5:17
When you were starting on your career, did you have any clue the journey that you were about to embark on?
5:24
Would you’d end up where you’re at now?
5:27
Well, you know, it’s interesting that you say that because my son recently asked me if what I’m living today was what I envisioned.
5:34
And the simple answer is no.
5:36
I’m a second generation mortgage professional.
5:39
I like to say I’m the keeper of the flame, but the truth is this was the job that I was never gonna take.
5:46
I grew up watching my mother and others around me in my life doing this job nights, weekends, chasing different clients, real estate agents and so on and didn’t think that that was the thing for me.
6:02
But I quickly learned when I needed to get a job that all of those skill sets that I had watched growing up were really ingrained in me, and especially the idea that I could teach, speak, and connect with others.
6:16
And so by becoming a salesperson first in my career, it really launched me into a lot of opportunities well beyond what I could have ever dreamed of.
6:26
And, you know, in the beginning, I just wanted to be the person that was most recognized in my town, and then it became my state.
6:34
And now I live a life that I’m recognized on a national level and that I’m so grateful for.
6:40
That’s amazing.
6:41
Yeah, that’s great.
6:42
I love that.
6:44
Thinking back to your, your early years in sales, what were the lessons learned that you still leverage today?
6:58
I would say, first of all, the power of building a database.
7:02
If somebody could have told me in the very beginning what it would mean later for me to write down every person that I was meeting and every way to connect with them.
7:12
Oh man, the audience that I could have today.
7:15
And so early on, I did learn that by really making sure that you record those connections with people, even if they’re the simple ones that you have just in your daily life or tasks, the audience that you can build with.
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That is huge.
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And so as I learned more and more about building those connections and making sure that they were meaningful and circling back with them, that became a really important part of ultimately building the amount of people that I can connect with later.
7:47
Yeah, Yeah, ’cause it is.
7:49
It’s our network.
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I talked about that with my nieces and nephews, you know, as they’re launching out of college into their careers.
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I told them, look, you want to find a job later on.
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It’s all about your network.
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You know that.
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That’s what you’re going to leverage.
8:06
That’s what you’re going to lean on throughout your career as your network.
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So build it, nurture it.
8:14
You know, it’s like anything else.
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It’s a living Organism.
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You’ve got to take care of it well.
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And I think the thing that I’ve learned too is how fun it can be to help others with those connections.
8:25
You know, even a simple thing of you’re at the community barbecue and somebody needs a name for some problem that they have to be the person that can make that connection between a need and the delivery is just, it’s so powerful and it really ultimately gives you that satisfaction of helping others.
8:44
Oh, yeah, yeah, I think that’s huge, that it’s like a bottom line.
8:48
That’s really what we’re all about.
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If you do it in sales, your goal is to help people.
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At least it should be.
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And if you’re doing it right, that’s what you’re doing.
8:58
Hey, we’re taking a quick break to thank you for listening to and supporting the Sales Lead Dog podcast.
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I want to take a moment and tell you about my book, CRM Shouldn’t Suck.
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9:18
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9:26
No fluff, just real strategies that work.
9:30
So go to crmshouldntsuck.com to order your free copy right now.
9:37
That’s right, we’re giving it away.
9:39
And while you’re there, take two minutes to check out the CRM Impact Score.
9:45
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9:54
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9:59
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10:03
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10:12
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10:22
OK, let’s get back to this episode of the Sales Lead Dog podcast.
10:27
So tell me about your transition into leadership.
10:29
Was that a natural transition for you or is that something you really had to figure out?
10:35
Well, First off, you need to know that in my early days, I did not do it well.
10:40
I was someone who really thought I was going to be a leader, probably from a very early age, thought I was going to be the boss of someone, and it took me a lot of trial and error to figure out what leadership really meant for me.
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In the beginning, I wanted to be leading A-Team.
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I wanted to be a decision maker.
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I wanted to be in a position of power.
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Ultimately, I thought leading A-Team meant that I was in charge, But as I got my hands dirty and burned several bridges, I quickly learned that leadership needed to be about helping other people and not just about helping myself.
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And so early on, as I was given the opportunity, whether it be to just lead small projects or to lead small teams of people and things that we needed to do to move the business along, I tried to educate myself along the way about how I could be a better leader.
11:45
And then ultimately decided to go all in and finish out my bachelor’s and my master’s degree in organizational leadership so that I could find my passion in connecting with people.
11:57
Leadership for me wasn’t necessarily any more about being in charge.
12:00
It was more about figuring out how I could advance the skill sets for everyone else.
12:05
Yeah, that is the, I think the transformation every leader has to go through, especially if you get, if you’re in a leadership position when you’re early in your career, before your brain is really developed, the business brain, so to speak.
12:18
That’s what I went through.
12:19
I was in the leadership role very young.
12:21
I made every mistake you could make.
12:23
I fell on my face so hard so many times, you know, But you remember those lessons, you know, and they’re like, I don’t want to go through that pain again.
12:32
Yeah.
12:33
Well, and I think that when you look back on that time, you realize that that’s the type of person that ultimately you never want to follow, but somehow that doesn’t connect in the beginning.
12:46
Leadership, often times when you first start at it comes with a lot of ego.
12:51
And so you really have to tame that and refocus yourself in understanding what are the people around me really needing from me as a leader, not necessarily matching up to some picture of myself as a leader that I designed.
13:06
Oh yeah, yeah.
13:07
And I love that.
13:10
What’s your philosophy around building your team and then creating the culture you want within your team?
13:19
Well, first of all, when I build teams, I don’t always build them specifically on skill set.
13:25
It’s really important when you’re putting A-Team together that you focus more on the diverse skills that they’re going to bring and also the personality styles that are going to come to that mix.
13:38
So especially in leading a sales team, you know, we deal with a lot of people with high energy, high expectations for success, But if you put all of those same personality types on a team, you’re going to have a lot of conflict.
13:53
And so it’s important to look for people that really mix things up on a simple approach.
14:01
You can think about.
14:02
If you’ve got a guy who loves to be on the phone, you’re going to need a gal who loves to send e-mail.
14:07
You’re going to need a lot of ways to mix up communication types.
14:11
Also, you’re going to need the people who love to be in the front of the stage and those who love to be in the back pulling the curtain and putting all of the props together.
14:20
And so when I put a team together, often times I’m looking to fill the gaps of the personality styles or the skill sets that I don’t already have.
14:32
And I also think about it like, can we all hang out together?
14:36
Because in sales, what you learn quickly, especially if you’re on a national level, is you do a lot of travel together, you spend a lot of time together, you eat a lot of meals together.
14:46
And so you’ve ultimately got a team of people that really like to be around each other.
14:53
It becomes your second family.
14:54
And so I look for people that are going to fit that role.
14:58
Can you talk about culture?
15:01
What were some of the lessons learned early in your career around the importance of culture and how you go about building the appropriate culture within a team?
15:12
Well, first of all, I think culture really is rooted in the idea of what do people want to show up to work for, right?
15:19
So if people are looking to just put up big numbers and make a lot of money, that’s going to feed into your culture.
15:27
I’ve taken a lot of meetings, consulting relationships, been asked to come lead teams.
15:34
We’re right out of the gate.
15:36
That first conversation, I can tell their culture is just to make money.
15:41
And in that culture, that’s also the type of personalities that you’re going to drive in that way, which can be very egocentric or single man focused, if you will.
15:54
The culture that I try to build is more around connection.
15:57
So it’s what if what makes you want to come to work today is the idea that you really like what you do.
16:02
You get energized by the tasks themselves, but also feel really good about connecting with your team members and helping others.
16:12
Then I think you find more success that way.
16:15
When times are tough, people will lean in in those periods when they really feel connected to their team members versus just driving for their own individual results.
16:26
The other thing that I really want in culture is the idea that people feel well taken care of.
16:33
We are humans first, and so we’ve got to make sure that we take care of each individual, whatever life circumstance that they’re in.
16:43
We build a company around that understanding, whether it be our benefits or our processes and procedures, all have to revolve around the fact that life events happen beyond our business.
16:54
And if we take care of people really well, they will stick with us for the long term and ultimately do really good work.
17:02
And so ultimately, culture for me is about taking care of those people.
17:07
Yeah.
17:08
How do you develop within that culture of future leaders or your team?
17:15
When it comes to future leaders, I would say that I look to those who want to connect with others and also diversify their skills.
17:25
If it’s somebody on my team that’s constantly stepping up and taking the lead on a project or looking to help someone else, that maybe we were just on a Zoom meeting and they could tell that the other person wasn’t quite engaged as much or was asking a lot of questions, they’ll take them offline and help to bring them up to speed.
17:45
But future leaders to me come down to, are you actively engaging to educate yourself 1st and then ultimately bring everyone on the team with you?
17:58
It’s important to to see that you have the opportunity to be a leader well before you have a title that says that you’re a leader.
18:08
And so when those skill sets are shown to me or I see a willingness to learn more about those skill sets, then I will definitely mentor and spend more time with that individual to see how they will come along.
18:24
What role has mentorship played in your career development?
18:28
Well, I would say I’ve had two types of mentors.
18:31
I’ve had the type that are willing to roll up their sleeves and really show me how to do things, the technical side of things.
18:37
And then I’ve had those mentors that really were guiding me more from a cultural or a social aspect.
18:46
The feedback that I valued the most through the years from leaders has been those that have been willing to pull me aside and say, I think you thought you presented a certain way you were actually received like this.
18:58
And that helps me to understand the difference between the message that I want to give versus how it’s being received by the audience.
19:08
And so mentors to me are those that are willing to be bold.
19:12
They’re willing to stop you in your tracks and give you that feedback, good or bad, in a time when they know that you’re in a position of development and you have to be able to receive that well.
19:25
People that just want to kind of give you bad advice or tell you things that just ultimately advance themselves aren’t mentors to me.
19:35
Yeah, yeah.
19:36
There was a previous podcast guest that we had on Sales Lead Dog, where they wrote a book where they went in and did a study where they followed salespeople around, watch them do their sales pitch, do their whole thing afterwards, got their perception of how did it go, and then they interviewed the audience to see how did it go.
20:00
The differences in perspectives were vast.
20:05
Salespeople super optimistic oh, I think it went great.
20:07
I think they were super excited went awesome audiences like that sucked didn’t go well at all What if there’s a huge disconnect there and that’s something that I think is it’s I fight with myself.
20:24
I refuse now to say when I come out of meeting, oh, we had just had a great meeting.
20:28
I cannot say that anymore.
20:30
It’s just because it’s like, I don’t know if we had a great meeting or not.
20:34
What’s going to happen next is going to tell me if you had a great meeting or not, right?
20:39
Well, it’s so important too when you’re in those meetings, especially if you have someone who’s kind of a mentor in that space.
20:46
Everybody has a different perspective of what they saw in that meeting.
20:51
I remember years ago, I was meeting with a client and my boss was there and then another person that was kind of learning sales was with us.
21:01
So three people in the room and we had the meeting with the client and we did the pitch and we were all walking out and I asked the question, what did you see?
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And my boss saw everything about I, how I performed.
21:16
I saw everything that the client was giving us for a response because I was actively taking notes and making sure that I didn’t miss a detail.
21:24
And the person that was observing us learning sales noticed everything about the client’s office to the point of noticing A competitor’s trophy on his bookshelf.
21:40
The other two of us never saw that, but because they were observing the environment differently, they picked up on a really critical piece of information.
21:50
And that is that they had such a strong relationship with A as a competitor that they were getting trophies for it, right?
21:57
And that was an element that had never come up in the meeting and hadn’t been seen by us.
22:00
And had we not known, it would have been really critical if we missed it.
22:05
And so I found that very moving to understand that everybody sees these engagements differently and the things that they pick up on are valuable in the conversation.
22:17
Whether it be, you know, a a very small detail like the trophy on the bookshelf or a big detail that the leader heard about how the salesperson was delivering the pitch.
22:30
All of it is critical to understanding how we do it.
22:33
Well, you mentioned earlier that, you know, using the 52 mindset can help you as a sales leader.
22:41
Can you go deeper into that about how you leverage this within your team and the teams in in the past?
22:47
Yeah.
22:48
So I’ll give you a little background on the 52 mindset.
22:50
It when I was a very active loan originator salesperson early in my career, I was, I’ll call it the sales education junkie like most, right where I’m listening to tapes, I’m going to conferences, I’m reading books.
23:06
We didn’t have podcasts at that time.
23:08
But, you know, you were trying to find every bit of information about how to be a better salesperson.
23:13
And I found that that created a tremendous amount of pressure on me.
23:19
Not only was I top performing at the time and you know, really being seen as somebody that was coming along in sales growth, I was also really overwhelming myself with a lot of different ways to do it and trying to implement all these different tips and tricks into my business all the time.
23:38
And I found that it was like chasing squirrels.
23:40
Last week I’d be working on something that was super exciting, thought it was going to change the world.
23:44
Next week it was a new thing.
23:46
Tomorrow somebody could drop a tape on me and then it would be something else I was listening to.
23:51
And so at a certain point I decided this was probably too much and I needed to just slow the whole thing down.
24:00
And so I started just saying what if I do one thing a week to advance my business and advancing my business didn’t necessarily mean that I was going to do more units.
24:12
It meant advancing the audience or making the audience that I deliver my marketing messaging to bigger all the time.
24:20
And so I first started by writing a white paper and it was just one thing a week for 52 weeks.
24:28
And I followed that strategy for a year.
24:32
I did one new thing every week in terms of adding different names to my database.
24:39
And then after that year I reflected and realized that that once a week approach really settled my mind down and advanced me much faster than trying to think about it on the daily.
24:52
And so from there, I started to use it in all parts of my life, whether it be my relationships at home and my community, the things that I commit to with volunteering, and also in how I connect with people.
25:09
Just in my day-to-day walk.
25:12
Every week I pick up new contacts, new ways to connect myself to different things, but also to connect other people.
25:20
And so at the end of each week, if I reflect on where those successes were and then make a plan for where I want to find success the next week, I find that it really puts me in a good position to feel like I’m winning.
25:35
But I’m not overwhelmed with everything it took me to get there.
25:40
So in 2020, while we were all down for COVID, I decided that I’d always wanted to write a book.
25:48
It was one of those things that someone once told me I couldn’t do, and so it became a a new passion.
25:55
And so I wrote The 52 Mindset to tie all of those things that you can do week by week to have extraordinary results in increasing the network that you’re creating.
26:06
How long did it take to write the book?
26:08
So I went on my first book retreat, where I basically means that I locked myself in and in in New Hampshire, me and my laptop, for about a week in September.
26:18
And I handed off the very first draft of that book to the editor at the end of October.
26:24
Yeah.
26:25
So a month and 1/2.
26:26
It was really just sitting down, locking in, and the ideas poured out.
26:33
Yep, Yep.
26:33
That’s really good.
26:34
It took me 3 years to write my book.
26:36
And because it, my struggle was I didn’t really, it wasn’t clear to me what my voice was, what my message was.
26:44
I mean, I, I, I, I had a general idea, but not enough to really pull it into a buck.
26:50
And so it took quite a while, a lot of iterations to really get it dialed in.
26:54
But then once I got it dialed in, I had a similar time frame where I just over, you know, the December and through the Christmas holidays.
27:04
I just crushed it.
27:05
I set that goal every day, 20 pages a day, let’s just go.
27:09
And pretty soon I was going well past the 20 pages a day, you know.
27:14
So I wrote the core of the book really in about a week and a half to two weeks.
27:17
I got the bulk of it done.
27:18
Then it was going back and fine tuning and where’s the gaps and that kind of thing.
27:22
Yeah, it’s, it’s an endeavor.
27:24
But man, it feels so good when you’re done.
27:26
Oh, yeah.
27:27
I recently just finished actually my second book draft, handed it off to the editor a few weeks ago.
27:33
And when I wrote the first one, she had made the comment to me.
27:38
It’ll probably take another five years to get in the space where you can write another one.
27:41
And I laughed it off.
27:43
I was like, what, five years?
27:45
What are you talking about?
27:46
Sure enough, she was right in the sense that you have to get in the right creative mindset and really lock yourself in.
27:52
And when you’re in those periods of lock in like you described, you can crank out extraordinary results.
27:59
But to really be in that mindset takes a different level of focus.
28:04
And so it took me about four months to write this last one, but I did it by taking a little bit of a sabbatical from everything else in my life to do it.
28:12
But that’s what you have to do.
28:14
The guy literally, I’m like shutting.
28:15
I blocked my calendar.
28:17
Yeah.
28:18
When you’re doing a big lift like that, you have to have that level of, of focus.
28:22
And.
28:23
Yeah.
28:23
And some goals and some.
28:24
Yeah, it’s.
28:26
Yeah.
28:28
What’s been the best thing or most unexpected thing that’s come out for you since you’ve written the book?
28:35
I think what’s really been unexpected is the groups and the opportunities that I’ve had to speak or to engage that I never would have thought of.
28:47
I recently got to speak at an event which was a group of writers that had written a book about their immigrant experience.
28:56
And after I walked away from that event, I realized that that that was such an honor to be asked to be in that group of people that who were extraordinary writers and had extraordinary stories, but also that I would have never connected with that group.
29:14
Those connections would have never been made had I not been diligent about making the follow-ups and the connections the very first time that we met.
29:24
And so, you know, going back to this kind of what we talked about in the beginning, I am living well beyond what I ever envisioned.
29:31
And the book, it has just opened so many more doors.
29:33
And this second book is about unexpected career transition.
29:37
And so the stories that I’ve been able to hear from others about the transitions that they’ve been working through and the common themes in our experience as we make those career changes has just been so wonderful for my experience and has really helped me to understand we’re not alone out here.
29:57
We all, whether we’re competitive salespeople or people that are navigating our career paths, we all need the connection we do.
30:06
And, and I think the important thing when you make those connections, at least for me, what I’ve learned over the years as I’ve gotten older is I’m not alone.
30:13
There’s so many people have been on the same journey that I’m on that are just a little bit ahead of me and are perfectly willing to offer or to provide help if you ask for it, you know, and that that’s, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, most of my career, I had a friend who was like, go, go ask that person, you know, for taking them a coffee or whatever.
30:38
They’ll talk to you and like, really.
30:41
Well, yeah.
30:41
And I’ve never had somebody say, no, Chris, I’m not going to talk to you.
30:46
I’ve never had that happen.
30:48
People want to help other people, you know, and, and tap into that.
30:52
It’s an incredible resource.
30:53
They’ll save you a lot of pain.
30:54
That’s how we started my podcast.
30:56
You know, a friend of mine came to me and said, Hey, you need to start a podcast.
31:01
I’m like, I don’t want to start a podcast.
31:02
I don’t know anything about podcasting, you know, and he and but I’m like, you know, let me see in my network who’s got a podcast.
31:10
And I started talking to all of them and I got educated and understood really what I was getting into.
31:15
And it’s been the most incredible experience, you know, and it’s just been incredible, you know, so that that’s where it’s like, you know, be open, you know, educate.
31:29
I mean it, that’s when things get exciting.
31:31
That’s right.
31:32
Well, and you learn things you never expected.
31:36
I mean, if you would have told me several years ago, oh, you’re going to learn the process of book editing or publishing or what does it mean to be an Amazon distributor, I wouldn’t have cared about any of that.
31:47
I wouldn’t have thought that it was relevant to anything I was going to do in my life.
31:51
But now being able to meet other authors and other people that have been on this journey outside of sales or the mortgage industry has just been so fulfilling.
32:04
Yeah, no, it really is.
32:05
It’s, you know, for me, this podcast, what completely surprised me was how much energy each one of these recording each episode gives me.
32:17
I get so amped up doing an episode that if I meet with my team right afterwards, they know I just finished recording a podcast just because of the energy level I come into that meeting with, you know, and, and every one of these is a master class for me in leadership and being a human being.
32:37
You know, I’ve been so blessed to have so many amazing people like yourself on here that otherwise I would never have the opportunity to talk to.
32:46
Yes, to me, it’s and it’s just because I asked invited like, hey, you want to come on my podcast?
32:52
That’s the type of energy that I feel when I do speaking events when I’m teaching others.
32:58
It was the most recent event that I just talked about where it was the group of immigrants.
33:03
It was because the lead author in that group was in my audience five years ago.
33:08
And that was so meaningful to me that it was memorable enough for him that when he then went to go organize his book, he thought of me to come ask.
33:18
And so those are the gifts of this experience and the connections that we make that you can never predict but are just worth so much in your life.
33:28
Yeah.
33:29
Changing topics here real quick.
33:31
CRM, do you love it or do you hate it?
33:34
I love it.
33:35
So I come from a background of, you know, like I said, building connections early in my career.
33:42
You know, you started with your basic Excel spreadsheet and you just advanced it from there.
33:48
I have worked with a lot of different CRMS, but I will say that it is really, to me, a critical part of running a sales organization.
33:58
It’s the place in which you can keep your primary client record.
34:02
I think of it as the large filing cabinet of the relationship that you have with them, whether it be all of the pieces of information that you need or the documents that you need to keep on them, but also the activity around how you’re interacting with them and how your whole team is interacting with them.
34:20
If you are or operating without a CRMI, think you are operating without connection, you need to have a really good viewpoint of the whole relationship from the start.
34:32
And that way you can ultimately figure out all the different ways that you can increase connection or increase communication with that client.
34:40
Yeah.
34:40
And what I see a lot in my world is a lot of people, they have CRM, but it’s really just glorified Contact Manager, you know, where they just have the basics in there that they forget that the R in CRM is relationship.
34:52
And you know, that’s, that was the whole vision behind it when it started is I want a place that goes beyond the basics that really enables me as a salesperson to succeed in my role.
35:04
Yes, I, I’ve worked with many people who do not like ACRM that look at it as a negative, whether they think it’s just a way for their company to monitor them or something that’s busy work.
35:18
And every time I am in that conversation, I just see them ultimately not really understanding the value of the tool that they have in their hands.
35:28
I mean, if you have your CRM organized, well, it cuts down on a significant amount of time in the day necessary to do your sales activity.
35:39
And if like me, I’m, I got it down into tags and categories and you know, I just wake up in the morning and I pull the list of what I need to do that day based on those categories.
35:50
And I can get things done so much more efficiently.
35:54
But it takes a little bit of time to get yourself organized in that way.
35:57
And I find that that’s ultimate definitely what people fight is if they’re fighting a CRM, it’s because they’re fighting that level of organization required to be successful.
36:06
Yep.
36:06
No, I agree.
36:07
I agree.
36:08
Laura Kay, I really appreciate you coming on Sales Lead Dog.
36:11
It’s been great talking with you and hearing about the book and just your experiences of your career.
36:15
If people want to reach out and connect with you, if they want to learn more about your business, what’s the best way for them to do that?
36:23
Well, if you’re interested in learning more about Watermark TPO and how you can ultimately work with us as a wholesale or a correspondent partner, you can reach out to me at Laura K dot Sheely at Watermark TPO.
36:35
But if you’d ultimately like to connect more about how you can talk about the 52 mindset or book me for a speaking event, head on over to 52 academy.com and we can connect there.
36:47
Awesome.
36:48
So if you didn’t catch that, no worries.
36:50
You can get it in our show notes at impellercrm.com/sales.
36:55
Lead Dog really get not only this episode of Sales Lead Dog, but all our 150 plus episodes.
37:01
Be sure to check that out.
37:02
Be sure to connect with Laura Kay and subscribe to the podcast so you get all our future episodes.
37:08
We really appreciate that.
37:10
Laura Kay, thank you again for coming on Sales Lead Dog and welcome to the Sales Lead Dog back.
37:15
Thanks, Chris.
37:16
It’s been wonderful.
37:19
As we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog, be sure to subscribe to catch all our episodes on social media, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, watch the videos on YouTube, and you can also find our episodes on our website at impellercrm.com/sales Lead Dog.
37:40
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