In 1995, John Lund founded OFFWIRE Inc. Twice recognized as one of Omaha’s fastest-growing businesses and three times on the INC 5000 fastest-growing companies list. Recently, OFFWIRE completed a successful sale to a world-renowned distributor. John is also passionate about entrepreneurship and is heavily involved with the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), supporting over 10,000 members in 138 chapters worldwide. Join your host Chris Smith and guest, John Lund, Founder, and Executive Coach, as they discuss his sales coaching and training journey. Over his career, sales coach John Lund noticed a pattern of frustration between salespeople and business leadership, leading him to start MYB2BCOACH.
Through MYB2BCOACH, John and his team offer training and coaching to struggling salespeople, empowering them to work at a “confident and comfortable level.” John has a passion for helping small and mid-size firms grow by providing solutions that make his clients more profitable.
Watch or listen to this episode about Sales Coaching
Transcripts:
Tue, 11/17 3:09PM • 33:23
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales, people, crm, salespeople, leader, coach, called, listening, coaching, selling, winning, b2b, watch, goals, questions, company, week, team, close, clients
Speakers of discussion about Sales Coaching
John Lund, Intro/Outro, Christopher Smith
Intro/Outro 00:01
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog Podcast, hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith, talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Listen to find out how the best of the best achieve success with their team and CRM technology. And remember, unless you were the lead dog, the view never changes.
Christopher Smith 00:26
Welcome to Sales Lead Dog! Today on this episode, we are very pleased to have joining us John Lund of My B2B Coach. John, welcome to the show.
John Lund 00:39
Thank you. Excited to be on it.
Christopher Smith 00:42
John, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and about My B2B Coach.
John Lund 00:47
Sure, I’m a serial entrepreneur, I’ve had a few different companies in my life. And the ones, the first two I always say failed nicely because they didn’t bankrupt me. And then, but I learned a lot. In fact, the first one is my first time in sales. I was selling, for the younger people in the audience you won’t remember these, for the older people they will, vinyl telephone book covers. It protected your big yellow pages telephone book, and I had to sell ads to dentists and chiropractors. And I had to walk straight in while they were working on somebody and say, I need you to spend $500 with an ad and learn how to sell there. Right. I, my large company, though, is off wire mobile phone distribution compan. I had to learn how to sell and grow through that over 19 years and sold to a large distribution company about five years ago.
Christopher Smith 01:32
Yeah.
John Lund 01:33
And I got to take two years off of really learning more about myself really studying. I’m a huge fan of small business, medium business. I like working with small and mid mid-sized businesses. I’m an implementer of strategy planning. So I was handling 10 or 15 of my clients there. And just the common theme I saw of I had a frustration with salespeople by all my EO friends, and then the entrepreneurs organizations, I have hundreds of them, they’re frustrated with salespeople. When I started talking to salespeople, they’re frustrated with their owners, because they’re like, “Hey, I didn’t go to school for sales, I went to school for something else, or how many sales degrees.”
Christopher Smith 02:12
Right.
John Lund 02:13
And I ended up starting a company called My B2B Coach, because there’s a better way to onboard and ramp struggling salespeople and get them to a competent and comfortable level. So that’s how I started My B2B Coach two years ago, which has been an exciting journey since then to as we launched it. So that’s my brief history of business.
Christopher Smith 02:31
That’s great. Thinking back over your career, can you tell us about the person who’s had the most impact on your success?
John Lund 02:39
So that’s my wife, when she came in and became my integrator early on, it was a huge advantage. I’m a sales guy at heart. So don’t let salespeople run both the inventory and the accounting. It’s not a good thing. It’s not a good option. A couple other people, the entrepreneurs organization as a whole. Couple of great mentors, Dr. Bell was a very interesting one when it came to sales actually, out of UNC, and a gentleman named Terry Slattery was another great sales trainer and sales person and made a big difference when it comes to sales. When it came to just pure mentoring, I was lucky to be surrounded by really smart people in an accountability group for 10 years. That would hold me accountable that were entrepreneur friends of mine.
Christopher Smith 03:22
That’s great. Thinking back to your time and your start in sales you mentioned a little bit ago, what do you wish you were taught when you got that first job in sales?
John Lund 03:34
I wish I was taught to practice a little more. It really does make a difference. I wish I was taught to listen more. And to listen from nothing is one of my big things that I learned from Dr. Bell. It’s amazing if you just ask smart questions. And don’t worry whether or not you’re going to get the sale, just do the right thing. You will get more sales than you dreamed of.
Christopher Smith 04:00
Yeah. You have a blog post titled, “Power in Silence,” can you talk about that a little bit?
John Lund 04:06
Absolutely. The power of silence is incredible. When we move kind of pre-move to the other day, we use our AI software, and we record people often. You can tell that the wheels are turning all the time in our salespeople and mine too. So what was happening is that they’re not really listening from nothing or that power of silence, like it’s okay to be still in sales. It’s okay not to be speaking. And it’s really okay not to be thinking because you really just want to engage and listen. Young children do this really, really well when they’re watching their favorite show. They lean forward, they are engaged. Even if you like walk in front of them, they just slightly like go, like they don’t miss a beat. Unfortunately, we’ve all been trained to think about the next thing we’re going to say and that hurts us from listening. If the person says something, and then you’re thinking, “Okay, that’s go, I gotta sell him the blue one that’s going to solve that problem. I’m thinking about that.” Those next 10 to 15 words, you’re missing out on the really deep, meaning. He doesn’t want the blue one, he wants five dozen blue ones. And you missed out because you already were engaged in your next thought process. So it’s just really that power of silence and understanding that silence matters. We want people only talking 25 to 35% of the time, truly listening. The other one to build, ask great questions.
Christopher Smith 05:34
What does someone considering their first sales leadership position need to understand?
John Lund 05:43
Sales leadership and sales are very different games.
Christopher Smith 05:46
Yeah,
John Lund 05:46
I mean, exceptionally different games. We’ve all heard the adage don’t ever promote your best salesperson into a sales leader. Some people want promotions, because they think it’s the right thing to do in their life. Salespeople should make more than the sales manager, if they’re really good at sales. So if they’re thinking about sales, do you like coaching? Do you like listening? Do you like holding people accountable for goals? So first of all, do you like that? Are you a natural leader? Often you’ll see it in whether it’s in sports, or in some other thing growing up, they were the natural leader. And then once they they identify themselves as that, they wanted to call the place. Great. If they don’t, though, and they’re like “Hey, I just want to be the hero that catches the ball and spikes it in the end zone, be a salesperson.” That’s the role, right? The coach should be a little bit behind the scenes, they shouldn’t be the one spiking the ball in the end zone. So.
Christopher Smith 06:45
Right.
John Lund 06:45
And I’d also recommend any new sales leader, there’s a few books I would recommend right off the top.
Christopher Smith 06:50
What are those books?
John Lund 06:52
“The Coaching Habit” by a strange name, it’s called Box of Crayons is the company, so if you look it up on Amazon. But “The Coaching Habit” has some just really good smart, how to coach people to set their own goals, which is a lot easier to hold them accountable for their own goals. And then there’s a one by Bob Rosen called “Kiss Theory Goodbye.” He does a really nice job again, how to, we want to set it up so your job is to coach and develop people as a sales leader and hold them accountable. And it’s a lot easier if they’re setting their own goals to reach for their own goals than you micromanaging them down. I unfortunately did it early on, like you need to make 50 calls and we have to do this. I had one guy that could get 10 meetings and 5 calls. I mean, he got references to everything else. Right? He didn’t need to make 50 calls. And other people had to make 50 calls. So what was the outcome I was looking for? What are the goals? You know, and go from there.
Christopher Smith 07:47
What do you think the first thing a person stepping into a sales leadership role should do?
John Lund 07:54
I personally like if you can get, we call them AP cues, it’s a assessment tool to understand each person’s unique way that they probably should be managed, and not try to manage everyone similarly. People have different personality types, and we need to understand what those are. Then I would use our motivation checklist to make sure that people you know what motivates people, everyone says money it is rarely money, rarely money. Understanding what motivates that person. So you can paint the picture of what winning looks like. I am a big believer, there’s goals and metrics and KPIs and OKRs and rocks and all these terms out there. They’re all fantastic. And all those tools are great. If you can define what winning looks like for the team, and what winning looks like for an individual in their own words, they want to win. They want to win individually, and they want to win for the team. One of the one of the most unfair things that I see people do in sales, but also in leadership, and I use this analogy a lot when I do my facilitations is take a kid, eight years old, ten years old, bring them onto a field. Put a ball down of any kind, I don’t care. But it’s a field that doesn’t have any soccer nets. It doesn’t have any goalpost it doesn’t have any. It’s just a field. And just look at him say “Chris, I need you to win for me.” They look around and you’re like come on man win for me? And they’re like “What?” and you keep yelling at your eight year old because they’re not winning. You gave them no tools. They don’t know what the game plan is. They don’t know what winning looks like. And I see it so often in sales, that these people are like, well, they just need to go close sales. Well that doesn’t mean anything.
Christopher Smith 09:51
Right.
John Lund 09:52
We got to give them a game plan. With metrics and milestones of what winning looks like. “Hey, we want you to move past the 50 yard line this next week, we need you to do it by this method,” right? But here’s some leeway in there, we’re just the bumpers were keeping you on the field as leaders, so you can’t run off the field or get on the field. But we’re giving you a lot of leeway inside that field. But that’s that we want you to have 10 meetings, that’s what winning looks like this first 60 or 90 days of a new salesperson. Doesn’t, you don’t have to close a sale. We need you to work on getting meetings. Right? We can close them for you. And then so on down the football field as a football analogy. So what winning looks like.
Christopher Smith 10:34
And one of the questions I like to ask sales leaders, when they’re on the show, is how do you define success for yourself and your team beyond just sales? So when you’re coaching a sales leader, can you expand on that? I mean, you’ve kind of started down that path, but do you give them concrete examples around defining success? Because I think it is so important to get you get caught up in total sales or whatever, but there are other things that contribute to that. Do you agree with that or not?
John Lund 11:04
Well, yeah, there’s other things. I mean, watching people’s skill development can be a huge, a huge win. And it’s a nice stepping stone, whether that’s from the skills we work with on our AI software, to public speaking skills to have them go through like writing better proposals. We, unfortunately, people aren’t very good at it. So you can really work on some skill things. Winning for me is always watching a teammate win, right? I mean, there’s somebody I’m coaching, when, like, we had a great story of a gentleman, unfortunately, wife going through cancer, he was struggling in sales, and we got to help him go up. And he started making about another $700 a week on his commission over our 10 week program. And he wrote a sweet letter just on how much that changed his financial situation, because of the struggle with Europe and having with their family, that’s worth everything. You know, and it wasn’t it, this isn’t a sales guy that selling a million dollars a year, this is a guy selling $700 items, and selling was only selling five a week, and now he’s selling 15 a week, and making a nice little commission on it. I mean, that’s as good as it gets, for me is winning, when it comes down to it. So understand, I like the term winning for sales and what it means. But yeah, there’s more than watching growth of people, understanding, you’re going to have some super, if you’re running a team of 10, or 15, or 50, there’s gonna be 5 or 10 of those that have the, you know, 5 or 10% or 20%, that have the, they have the it factor they have that charisma and confidence. And they can sell anything, and they’re impressive at it. Those are few and far between. It’s when you work with the other people. So they build that competence and get that skill set, to me that is the best part and then the whole team wins. Because I have always, I always wanted to paint the picture either way, a lot of warehouse team. And I always wanted to paint the picture to my sales team or highly commissioned and could make some big money, “Hey, if we hit this level, everyone in the warehouse is going to get a $500 bonus, and they’re all making $12 an hour.”
Christopher Smith 13:04
Yeah.
John Lund 13:06
That was better.
Christopher Smith 13:08
Yeah.
John Lund 13:09
Alright, so.
Christopher Smith 13:11
Can you talk about your AI software? I’m sure when you guys sat down and designed this, you were targeting on specific areas to have an impact on. Can you talk about those areas? And and, and what advantages your customers get from working with this platform?
John Lund 13:31
Sure. So this all actually when I started researching, what’s the best way to learn, it all came down to this thing called deliberate practice. You can Google the book, there’s a great book on it and forgot the name of the book, Google deliberate practice. What’s the best way for people to develop a skill? So first of all, there’s a difference between knowledge and a skill, right? Like I technically have the knowledge to play piano, I know what the keys are, and I know kind of how they all work. And I know my different things. But I have zero skill in playing piano. Right? And same with like my golf game, and this is where the AI software came in, and I’m a golfer, went to place called Golf Tech. There’s any of these simulation places are like this now, where what they realized is if you get hooked up, you get you do your swing, you watch your swing on a video, then all this software kicks in and says, “Hey, by the way you’re playing is wrong. And you’re you know, swinging outside in.” I can adjust a lot quicker by just using that. And then when the coach says, “By the way, this is how you adjust, you need to think like this,” I can adjust even faster. And that’s called deliberate practice. You actually do the exercise, you watch yourself do the exercise, you get a support mechanism through AI software, or smart software and you have a professional coach Coach. So when I had the company, our AI software is all going to measure all these key things starting with the speed we talk, I speak at 247 words per minute, they have proven 110 to 150 is the best sales pace. And it’s not for the obvious reasons. But the real reason is, if I speak at that rate, it gives your brain time to think. And if you can think, you will ask better questions of me. Then, as long as I’m good at what I do, I’ll answer smart to your better questions. It’ll start creating a competence loop in both of us and we get it. So that’s one thing it measures, talk time versus listening time, quality of open ended switches, so not getting yes, no. Don’t tell me the score the game last night, tell me what happened in the game last night. So we get more deep. All the triggering for next steps or stall words like, “Well, yeah, go ahead, send me a proposal.” “We’ll work with that’s” a trigger, “Send me a proposal” is most often a stall. So Chris, where you said that to me and said, “Hey, send me a job. That sounds fantastic. Send me a proposal.” I go, “Great, I’ll get that to you. It will probably take 5 to 10 hours, our time to get it right for you based on our conversation.” Now, what’s going to happen when I get it, send it over to an email next? Because you heard a couple of things. One is, “Oh, wait a minute, I’m gonna put John through 5 to 10 hours of work. Well, I’m just trying to blow you off. I’m just trying to get you off the phone. I don’t want to put you through 5 to 10 hours of work.”
Christopher Smith 16:36
Right.
John Lund 16:37
Right. So most people aren’t going to put that. But we can catch all those little trigger key moments or I’m gonna have to go meet my team. “Oh, who else is on your team?” Now? You just started to network through? “Oh, Bob, Bob’s on your team? What’s Bob?” “Oh, he’s the CFO.” “Oh, I don’t never want to put you in a position Christopher type answer questions that we never spoke about. So what kind of questions does Bob normally ask?”
Christopher Smith 17:00
Yeah, that’s great.
John Lund 17:01
Yeah. And then a Bob’s like, well, maybe it’d be easier about it just at the meeting. So I can answer all the Bob and Mary and Sue’s questions for you. Do you want to be at that next meeting after the meeting?
Christopher Smith 17:10
Yes.
John Lund 17:11
So the AI lets us pick up on all these things. The other thing it picks up on is all of our filler words. And we have a lot of them. I would say it’s in the Midwest, but it’s all over the place. The word “just” as become very common to use, “I’m just going to get you promote proposal, I’m just going to follow up with you. I just want to see how things are going.” Right. That makes it less competent. So the difference between “Hey Chris, I’m just going to get you a proposal” versus “Chris, I’m going to get you a proposal.” Just that difference in language makes it go there. So we eliminate the words, as painful the first time you watch and you realize in a three minute thing you use the word “just” 17 times, you’re like “come on.” So AI works on those skill sets. We also can listen in and hear for some buying signals have been people tend to miss. it’ll pick up some of the key signals there. But taking people through from the prospecting to leaving a good voicemail, we start with that, to the scariest moment and cold call sales or Zoom is when somebody actually answers.
Christopher Smith 18:17
Yeah.
John Lund 18:19
We know we need to get down to three things we need everyone to get down is “What do you do? How much do you cost? And please have an answer to that isn’t it can be anything? And then how much? Or why you over the competition?”
Christopher Smith 18:34
Right.
John Lund 18:35
We hear people ramble and ramble and kind of get bent out. No, just give a really specific answer.
Christopher Smith 18:39
Yep. That’s great.
John Lund 18:41
Makes a lot of sense. So the AI software is a really huge tool as part of the coaching.
Christopher Smith 18:46
Oh, yeah, it’s critical. Your your golf tech analogy is spot on. I’m a customer at Golf Tech and being able to see and get that coaching at the same time, it has way more impact than somebody just talking at you.
John Lund 18:58
Yes!
Christopher Smith 18:59
It’s a totally different experience. What are some of the common mistakes you think people transitioning into a sales leadership role make?
John Lund 19:10
They still try to be a salesperson. They don’t understand the difference, right? They now they want to be the hero for all their salespeople. I’ve been I played that role for Bobby five years and my first sales leadership role in my own company salesperson wasn’t doing a good job on a close or listening or whatever. I’d be like, “Oh, well, I’m not gonna lose the sale on that,” jump in and be the hero, and still give them the commission that did not do anything to develop the develop my sales team, so
Christopher Smith 19:42
Right.
John Lund 19:43
Try try not to be the hero. Let people fail. Obviously give them a whole bunch of prospects that aren’t as important to fail on first. Don’t give them your top 10 accounts you want to land. Like, let’s not have them fail on those ones.
Christopher Smith 19:56
Right.
John Lund 19:57
Pick some small ones. By the way, for all new hires to please please, please the first two weeks they’re on board with you, they only can learn about your company all aspects of your company, whatever product or service you offer. Everyone’s like, “Oh, but I can go sell this to my uncle or somebody else from my old business,” and I, you know, day two they want to prove that they can sell. The problem is then you let them go after that, because I do actually close that one. And you’re super excited. And then that’s because it was their best buddy friend that they could just go close. Had nothing to do with your product or service and their knowledge base of it.
Christopher Smith 20:31
Right, right.
John Lund 20:32
Then they go fail the next 10 in a row the next three weeks, and now their competence dropped off a cliff.
Christopher Smith 20:39
Yeah. How do you combat that? How do you keep that, you know, pull the reins back, keep them under control to where they’re really ready.
John Lund 20:48
So we have a very detailed first 20 day onboarding plan that we recommend, I mean, to the not quite to the hour, but but four things a day that we expect. So day one is like getting the laptops and getting all that and meeting the whole team. Simple onboarding things, like if you’re coming into an office a little different now. But like, Where’s the toilet paper, where’s the supplies, where’s all the basic stuff, it is nice to know where it is. Sounds silly, but it’s nice to know. So but then every, we want them to meet accounting, expenses. I, when I went off wire, they would spend time in accounting and learn what frustrates the accounting department about what sales people do, they would talk to marketing for a day, they’d go hang out in their meetings, they would go back to the warehouse and actually pack for two days. And they’re like, “What, I’m gonna have to pack?” I go “Yeah, because whatever you do on the front end, they have to execute on the back end. So I want you to really understand what it feels like to pack orders.” You know, so I literally had him sit to every department, sometimes two hours, sometimes two days. For the first 10 days, they had a great understanding of the whole business, and much quicker, versus once you set them free on sales, they’re like, I don’t have time to go back or go to an accounting. So those first two weeks are really critical. The next two weeks is still a lot of training and onboarding.
Christopher Smith 22:13
Do you have any advice for someone who’s considering a sales leadership role, what they should look for, in terms of you know, does that decision process, should I take this? Or should I wait, maybe look for something else?
John Lund 22:26
You mean, to become a sales leader?
Christopher Smith 22:29
Yeah, to become a sales leader. If they’re, you know, they’ve never done it before. They’re they’re considering, you know, maybe switching to a new company where they can have that position. What are the things they should look for? Because it is so different from, as you’re saying, from being a salesperson and being a sales leaders totally different?
John Lund 22:47
Yeah, I would ask him, if I was going to another company, I’d ask versus my expectation to be a player coach, or just a coach, let’s make sure we get that expectation. So a very common people want player coaches, I would always ask that next boss, if that’s going to be a situation in there then. So if I’m really good at going and closing sales, how would you like me to divide up my time? If me just be being a player and going after sales, would double your income to go in the first six months? And we’ll, double we’ll just go double the income. Well, it sounds like you’re actually hiring me for sales then, not sales leader.
Christopher Smith 23:27
Right.
John Lund 23:28
Right? So I want I want them to understand what role they’re about to get into. Right? Or am I truly a coach of that 8 or 10 or 15 people where my job is to get them to be superstars, them to go out and close the business? Because that’s what I really like to see in pure sales coaches. It’s about the it’s about the people, not about them.
Christopher Smith 23:53
Right. They look for you know, I think one of the key aspects of being a leader is identifying those people within your team that also could advance into that aspect of a sales career. What, what should they be looking for? What should they be doing to cultivate talent? Leadership talent?
John Lund 24:12
Yeah. Waiting for the lead. So
Christopher Smith 24:26
John, I think we’re having some audio issues. Looks like some audio issues there. Do you mind repeating your, your answer there?
John Lund 24:35
Yeah, well, there’s all leaders just tend to lead. So just watch it whether you hire a 22 year old or if somebody new has come in, see who is naturally leading. I love if you can tell that they have curiosity. So then you start asking questions of like, why do we do it this way? Why haven’t we thought about it this way. They’re naturally inquisitive about the world around them. The leaders are like, “Oh, I’ve been paying attention to the competition. I’ve been paying attention to new product launches that are kind of close to us, our services.” They’re listening to their customers in a unique way and asking, that’s a leader. They’re not a tactical doer. So anytime you watch somebody there you want to cultivate them, I highly recommend giving them different books to read. I think that’s a very, see if they’re naturally engaged to learn, because a leader needs to continue to learn about the whole industry and the whole world and have to start to understand some psychology to be a leader, and identify them and let them move up and take some supervisory roles or give them one or two people under their wing. Just start moving them up, you want to get those. They’re a great leader, you want to harness them and run with them. I always say it’s easier to pull back the reins on somebody great than it is to, you know, whip on somebody who’s not so good.
Christopher Smith 25:51
That’s well said. Do you do you have just like a crazy story from your sales career? You know, the kind of story where you’re sitting around with all your friends and everyone’s swapping crazy stories about? Do you have a crazy story?
John Lund 26:07
Ah, I don’t know more crazy when I was going down to do a sales training in St. Louis, last flight out of Omaha. That evening, had my duffel bag, about 40 people come into the training at the Marriott St. Louis. They did not get my bag onto the plane. So when I landed in St. Louis, they’re like, “Don’t have it”. I’m like, “Seriously, it’s a direct flight. Like, you just left my bag. I was checked in an hour early.” They just they just they just left it. So I get there. I get to St. Louis. They tell me that they’re like, “How can we help?” I’m like, “Um, I’m wearing shorts and a T shirt.” It was summertime, flip flops. And my meeting started at 8am. I’m like, “Okay”, so the day went something like that. I woke up, went to the Marriott gift store. The St. Louis Cardinals were pretty popular. And they always are popular in St. Louis. But they had my size on big guy. They had a jersey I could buy. So I got myself a baseball jersey. Still had my shorts and my flip flops on.
Christopher Smith 27:16
But you’re playing to the audience know a little bit? Right? You’re playing to the audience a little bit, right?
John Lund 27:22
I did get to play to the audience, there. But I mean, I walk in, I got flip flops, shorts, a jersey on and I kept the hotel person up all night. They just had a basic copying machine. And I had like 40 page training guides, you know, times 40 people that have to make 1600 copies. I mean, I didn’t get to the hotel till 12 o’clock. Yeah. And I’m like, I need to use your copier. They’re like, well, let’s back in our office. I’m like, well, somebody has to start copying.
Christopher Smith 27:49
You’re gonna be up a little bit.
John Lund 27:53
Yeah, right. Yeah. So it was a great story of my story of getting through a situation that happens in sales, and sales, training and making the best of it. You know, what being human is really good, for sales.
Christopher Smith 28:09
Oh, yeah.
John Lund 28:10
Being authentically human. You know, stuff happens.
Christopher Smith 28:15
Yep.
John Lund 28:15
We went through the day, it was a great day, you know, I just made it through the day. And it was really a lot of fun. So I want people, the goal is not to know everything. The goal is not to show that you’re the smartest cat in the room. The goal is to ask really smart questions. Listen. And if there’s a good fit, your solution is a good fit. You know, say, “Hey, I think this might be a good fit, or here’s some next steps.” And if it’s not a good fit, go, you know what, “I don’t think our solution is a good fit for what’s going on.” I’m just, “Pleasure to meet you and talk with you.” Move on. Like, that’s all good.
Christopher Smith 28:51
Yep, that’s great. Let’s talk a little bit about CRM.
John Lund 28:56
Okay.
Christopher Smith 28:57
I ask this question of everybody, CRM? Do you love it? Or do you hate it?
John Lund 29:01
Personally, as a salesperson, I am not a big CRM fan.
Christopher Smith 29:05
I appreciate the honesty.
John Lund 29:07
Yeah, no problem. And I get your thing I about the power of it is amazing. I tend to go after more whale hunting in my world, luckily, and so I don’t need a crazy and I’ve never been in a marketing driven or a big lead generator business. Now, a lot of my clients have to be in the CRM world because yes, it’s absolutely critical. It’s the only way you can pay attention to so many leads. It’s the only way you can really go after what they are. So I am 100% believer in CRM is based on the business. You know, if it’s like we have an engineering firm that we work with, and I’ll just show that, and they do have a CRM, but really there arre only 10 clients they’re trying to go after total. Yeah, because they’re $5 to $20 million apiece. Like, we don’t need to know you’re in the CRM business. We don’t need a robust CRM to go after 10 clients.
Christopher Smith 30:01
How long is their sales cycle? Is it a long one?
John Lund 30:03
It’s months to two years?
Christopher Smith 30:04
Yeah. See, I think I would argue that if it’s that long of a sales cycle, it’s important to have a CRM to really manage the data communications going back and forth. Especially usually something like that your team selling team selling environments, it’s, it’s critical to have CRM to support those.
John Lund 30:25
Yes, maybe written that way. Yeah, I agree with you there too. My other, I mean, my other clients, you know, from a marketing clients to, you know, we’re we’re trying to land the, you know, 50 different clients a month or a week, depending on the size of the team, they have to have a CRM to pay attention to. It’s the best metric in the best way to manage up upstream. And what I mean by upstream is, again, for me, somebody, my goal is to have, you know, 10 closes a month, at this many dollars. If somebody’s hitting 15 or 20, I’m probably never gonna ask backwards what they were doing.
Christopher Smith 30:59
Right.
John Lund 31:00
Right, the person is only hitting 5? CRM, that doesn’t only help me, it protects them. Right? Because if they’re, if I can see that they’re doing the work, and I can see that they’re making the calls, then I can say, hey, let’s coach you to get better at these.
Christopher Smith 31:15
That’s right.
John Lund 31:16
Versus if you don’t have any of that data. When they say, yeah, we just assume. And we had a gentleman that we unfortunately did ended up exiting. And after 6 months, one of my clients because he wouldn’t put stuff in the CRM.
Christopher Smith 31:29
Right.
John Lund 31:30
Because he really wasn’t doing the work. Right. So it’s a powerful powerful, and by the way, they’re only getting better.
Christopher Smith 31:37
Oh, yeah.
John Lund 31:37
The CRMs.
Christopher Smith 31:38
Yeah, night and day from where it was when we started in this business back in ’07 to where they are today. It is it’s mind boggling that the pace of advancement, it’s especially in my last three years. It’s hard to keep up with.
John Lund 31:55
Yeah. Yeah. Really smart things you can do with them.
Christopher Smith 31:59
Yeah. So John, we’re right about at our time limit here. How can people, if they want to get in touch with you, connect with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out?
John Lund 32:11
Email, email or LinkedIn. So, [email protected] is my email or you can look at John W. Lund. on LinkedIn, a lot of people connect me through LinkedIn now for My B2B Coach. We also have a great subscription on YouTube for a whole bunch of little five tip videos from a bunch of my friends that share some great tips for anyone in the leadership role of any type of company, help people connect through that as well.
Christopher Smith 32:35
I can vouch for those. I’ve watched them. They’re terrific. Thank you very much for sharing your insight today. It’s been absolutely terrific having you on Sales Lead Dog.
John Lund 32:43
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Christopher Smith 32:46
You bet.
Intro/Outro 32:49
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 Empellorcrm.com/salesleaddog. Sales Lead Dog is supported by Empellor CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business, guaranteed.
Quotes:
- “[But if you want to] be the hero that catches the ball and spikes it in the end zone? Then be a salesperson.”
- “If you can define what winning looks like for the team, and what winning looks like for an individual in their own words, they want to win. […] give them a game plan with metrics and milestones with what winning looks like.”
- “The AI software is a really huge tool as part of the coaching.”
- “Being human is really good for sales.”
- “The goal is not to know everything and show that you’re the smartest cat in the room. The goal is to ask smart questions, listen, and if your solution is a good fit, then move forward with the next steps.”
Links:
John Lund: Power in Silence
The Coaching Habit – Box of Crayons
Kiss Theory Goodbye – Bob Prosen
[email protected]
John W Lund LinkedIn
MYB2BCOACH YouTube
Podcast production and show notes provided by FIRESIDE Marketing
