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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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Today I have joining me Ray Rumley of Kudelski Security.
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Ray is the vice president of Sales Americas for Kudelski.
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Ray, welcome to sales lead Dog.
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Well, thank you, Chris.
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Looking forward to do the discussion today.
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Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of fun.
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So Ray, tell me a bit about Kudelski Security, what you guys do.
0:49
Sure.
0:50
Well, we’re part of the Kudelski Group.
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So the Kudelski Group has a long and rich heritage.
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We actually began about 80 years ago a founder named Kadelski interesting story Stefan Kadelski and his family they flee Poland during World War 2.
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That’s up in Switzerland while the at the Swiss Institute of Technology develops a portable tape recorder takes the tape recorder market becomes wildly successful.
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That’s the first commercially viable table portable tape recorder.
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Basically, I’m I’m out here in LA, folks know the Kadelski name matter because of change the way movies are made.
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All of a sudden they could make movies remotely right and have the sound instead of just dumping that in in the studio later.
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Well, if you go to our head course and she’s oh, you’ll see Oscars and Emmys for for movie sound under the old recording business.
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But you know, about 60 years ago, the folks in Hollywood said, hey, Stefan, we’ve got this new problem.
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We’ve got this thing called cable TV.
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We’re worried about our, you know, piracy of our signals and folks not paying for the service they should be.
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And I know you’ve got all the Swiss engineering talent down there.
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Can you do more for us?
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So they went to work in a bifurcated approach, a smart silicone encryption and a smash cut to today.
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We’re the global leader digital content protection.
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We protect $100 billion a year digital content and that’s our digital content protection business.
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I’m part of our cyber business, relatively new in Kadelski terms that we’ve been around since 2012.
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We came to US in 2016 and we are a a full range cybersecurity consulting bar premier services around that manage protection, response and any level of advisory services that our clients need to help them tour the security posture.
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We also have a physical security business called ski data.
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If you’re going in out of a parking garage with arms go up and down or turns out to a sporting stadium, next time you look, you might want to thank us as you’re paying that fee.
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That’s part of us too.
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That’s ski data.
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And then we’ve got an an IoT business, which is interesting.
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We’ve got a, a product called Recover, a lot of the auto dealers, rental car agencies use it to help track their inventory and be smarter and more efficient about how they go to market there.
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We also have a, a, a trust AK Trust product that is out for luxury goods.
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It helps you know, basically maintain the propriety and chain custody and originality of luxury goods folks are paying for.
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So a very diverse set of businesses, but the common thread is innovation proof point there.
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We spend about 20% of our revenues in R&D and we’ve got over 4000 patents.
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So a rich history of innovation.
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We bring that to the client, more importantly to mature clients in cyberspace and and give them great outcomes.
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That’s amazing.
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What an amazing story.
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That’s, that’s, that’s just wild.
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I can spend the whole episode just talking, asking questions about Kadelski.
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That’s not why we’re here.
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We’re here to talk about you, Ray.
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You bet if you look back over your career and you’ve had a, a really good career in sales and leadership, what are the three things that have really driven and LED to your success?
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Well, I, I think, you know, discipline and I learned discipline at IBM.
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It’s a great place, at least it was back in the early 80s to go and learn discipline and, and, and basically, you know, we’re all in the office then.
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So you’re, you’re with the senior sales reps and you know, I remember where I saw copiers and well, I wanted to learn about copiers.
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So I bought the repair guy around and learned the end sounds of copiers.
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So discipline and work in terms of knowing what you’re having a, a master level about what you’re selling, what the outcome is to the client based on what you’re selling.
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And I think from IBM, the other legacy there is, you know, respect the individual and treating folks as individuals.
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That’s really important, especially as a sales manager need to understand the individual to know what motivates them.
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And I’ll tell you that became bitter to me.
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It was my my first QBR in management.
4:36
There’s a gentleman, he’s retired now, Dave Boucher.
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Dave, if you’re listening, hello.
4:40
But I was talking about my, my set of employer employees, one of the sellers.
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And he said, So what, how many kids does Bill have again?
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And how are they married and what’s his wife’s name?
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And I didn’t know any of these things.
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I was a young manager, Mr.
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Brumley, his wife’s name is Barbara.
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He’s got three kids and you know this stuff and you want to be successful and understand what motivates Bill, you need to know Bill’s a person.
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And that was like, wow, Ever since then, I, I, I, you know that, that really, you know, I think there’s a level of hubris when you’re first an early manager and maybe didn’t have the humility or the, the lumps to go through and, and know what, how to approach that.
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And some of it’s just youthful ignorance I guess too.
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But that was a real eye opener for me in terms of the people again, so in respect for the individual, the discipline, and I think passion, I mean, end of the day, you know, I always tell my employees work is something you do 8 hours a day to finance the other 16.
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Simple math says the other 16 are twice as important.
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But maximize 8 hours a day.
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You have the biggest asset you have is your time and you better love what you do.
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And when I’m interviewing a new employee to come here, I don’t want a yes or want a hell yes on them, right?
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I, I want them to be as enthused as I am that they can succeed and we’ve got the right tools to make their clients successful and then they can have a good and long term career here.
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That’s awesome.
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I, I love those, those answers.
6:04
You, you, those are some very original answers that no one’s ever said on this show before.
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That’s great.
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I appreciate that.
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Right.
6:11
How’d you get your start in sales?
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Did you want to be in sales when you’re beginning your career?
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I got my start in sales as a, as an 8 year old playing Corey League Baseball.
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And we had to go door to door to sell our candy, right.
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And, and I was at pay.
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I mean, I always had sales jobs as a kid doing various things.
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You know, when I was in college, I, I worked at a bar and I figured as a managing the bar and I thought, you know, we could get a better discount from the distributors if we had more volume of kegs.
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Well, what can we do?
6:44
Well, so just pouring beer at the bar, let’s get a retail keg sales business.
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So I started selling kegs, attorneys and sororities out out of the out of the University of Illinois campus.
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So I guess I was entrepreneurial in that sense and always had a bent for sales.
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My dad was a, you know, son of a son of a salesman, right?
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So third generation salesman.
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So I, I think that’s somewhat in here, perhaps in, in my, in my jeans.
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And also, you know, I remember my dad taking me to, to lunch.
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I was six years old.
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He took me to to work with with him one day invested going to lunch.
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So this is pretty easy.
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I’ve seen guys speaking ditches and, you know, taking people to lunch and talking to them on the phone.
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That’s not a bad way to make a living.
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And he enjoyed it.
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And you know, I think he enjoyed the relationship aspect of selling that appreciation.
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I think rubbed off on me in terms of what that can do for a person and and just making them fulfilled in terms of what they’re doing.
7:34
That’s that’s awesome when you look, baby.
7:39
Yeah.
7:40
When you look back over your career, I think many people, you know, when you get to this point in your career, you look back, you realize you didn’t do it alone.
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You had a lot of help along the way.
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What role did mentorship play in your advancement to where you are now?
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Oh, huge.
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You know, sometimes a mentor.
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You know, I’m a big fan of Keith Ferrarzi, right?
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Who’s got your back?
8:02
That’s a great read.
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You talk about mentors and folks within your company having, you know, looking out for you and I’ll recall, you know, again, I’ll jump back to, you know, just knowing where all the levers are you can pull a mentor can help you with that, right?
8:18
I, I, I was IBM and one of the, the gentlemen who was one of my mentors said, hey, Ray, you know, IB, Ms.
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got this fine exec certification program through Harvard.
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You should get in on it.
8:27
Well, it wasn’t widely broadcast.
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I didn’t know it was out there as a resource, but my mentor brought that to me as a developmental opportunity.
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And you know, you can beat a horse to water.
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But I mean, I really enjoyed that.
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I thought I’d done that.
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I really got a lot out of it.
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And so I, I think having a mentor and making your intentions known to the mentor, echoing to everybody out there in terms of what you want to do for from a peer perspective, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody.
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You want that next job.
8:52
You need to be forecasting and telegraphing that in every conversation you had, every moment you have with an internal stakeholder.
8:58
Being a peer or up level from a management perspective is a moment of truth.
9:03
If you ever gone to a, you know, that’s a Marriott term, right?
9:06
I mean, as a salesman, we spent a lot of nights at Marriott’s.
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And if you ever gone in and out of a Marriott, go down the hall and the, the, the cleaning person may be in there with a, you know, cartoon and the elevator.
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They come out well, they say hello, how are you?
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It’s a moment of truth.
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They greet you.
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And that’s what you got to think about in terms of your career.
9:23
You’ve got to think about your brand, how you’re calibrating that internally.
9:26
You know, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got partners, you’ve got intro stakeholders, you’ve got clients.
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What’s that brand look like?
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Your mentor can help you key in on that and what your brand is, how you evangelize it, said brand.
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And I think just making you more acutely aware of the opportunities that are out there for you from a professional development within any organization you’re in.
9:46
They’re all out there.
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Just got to ask.
9:48
Yeah.
9:49
Now you mentioned some I want to hone in on.
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You can lead a horse to water.
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I think a lot of people, especially early in the curve, like, oh, I want to get a mentor, but they may not necessarily necessarily be open to what they hear.
10:01
What advice do you have for someone that’s, you know, seeking or maybe they’re in a current mentorship and maybe not getting out of it what they are expecting?
10:11
Well, I think you’ve got to have a mentor that’s right for you.
10:16
So as you’re looking at it, you know, I, I know, you know, my wife’s Acro, she’s she’s got women mentors in her network, in a company outside of a company.
10:26
I mean, when you think of mentors, everybody’s got this constructed that has to be in your company.
10:30
Oh, no, no, I mean, a mentor outside of your company is almost better.
10:34
Got a gentleman that I mentor and I’m part of his board of directors, right.
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So he’s got a cadre of folks.
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You’ve got somebody that’s a sales leader, he’s got somebody that’s in finance, He’s got somebody that’s, you know, in in security, in a, in a client location.
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He’s got this broad perspective on things within his board, his board of directors, his personal board of directors.
10:55
And I think having that and thinking about a little bit outside the box, everybody thinks of mentors, somebody in their company, but it’s really not.
11:01
And it can be formal or informal.
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And I will tell you, people are always receptive.
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Just ask.
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I mean, I, I mean, I’ve had folks hit me up on LinkedIn.
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Hey, listen, I want to learn more about cybersecurity.
11:13
I’m happy to take a call, give somebody 1520 minutes if they’re asking to try and get to a good place.
11:18
People are very receptive that I, I reached out to CEOs of companies and just made a request for 15 minutes.
11:24
You don’t ask for an hour, ask for 15 minutes.
11:27
People are very generous with their time, especially as you get hired in organizations.
11:30
They got there, they, they understand and appreciate that they need to, to pass that along.
11:34
And most of the folks that are up in the upper strata of organizations have been been helpful all the way, right.
11:40
Just to pay that back.
11:43
That’s, that’s I think the key thing on the mentor piece and, and just finding again, somebody that’s right for you and the way you receive the feedback and take the feedback.
11:52
You can’t take a person.
11:53
I mean, you got to step out of your body a little bit and think of this as a role you’re playing and how can I be a better whatever, right?
12:00
And, and just take that in, internalize it, recognize as coming from a good place and try and see through how you connect the dots to get there and drive that those behaviors that you’re being coached up on.
12:11
Yeah, I know my world as an entrepreneur, been an entrepreneur most of my career.
12:18
I’ve never had another entrepreneur say no to me when I reached out and said, hey, can I have 15 minutes or time or can I take you to lunch?
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I need to pick your brain about something.
12:27
People are more often than not so willing to help you.
12:30
You just have to the courage to ask, but you also have to come prepared.
12:35
And so can you talk about that When you you do get that meeting, what should they be doing to prepare for that, that 15 minutes?
12:42
Well, ideally before they’ve asked the meeting, they, they have a bit of a, of a context who they’re talking to and what they want to get out of it, right.
12:50
I mean, if it’s somebody from a finance perspective, hey, listen, I’ve got a, you know, maybe it’s, I’ve got this new product or solution.
12:58
I need to figure out how to position it to the C-Suite.
13:01
And are the financial levers I’m, I’m, I’m doing here, Are these appropriate for this industry?
13:06
I mean, it’s almost an industry level, by the way, often times selling, trying to figure out this, the, the soft spots.
13:13
So again, have a context what you’re trying to get out of it.
13:16
But you know, the other piece too is, you know, with gratitude, right?
13:21
You always want to be grateful and, and humble.
13:25
But also I think it’s, it’s interesting.
13:27
It’s also at the end of the call saying, I appreciate your time.
13:29
I appreciate you doing for me.
13:30
It’s anything I can do for you.
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Offer that back.
13:33
And you’d be surprised.
13:34
Sometimes they may come back.
13:35
I’ve had a few folks come back and they say, listen, you know what, I’ve got a nephew or a niece that needs to know about this or that or we need somebody.
13:42
I’m working with this nonprofit and I’d appreciate if you guys could come talk to him.
13:46
I mean, I’m be ready to give back.
13:48
Go there looking to receive, but be ready to give back.
13:51
This is a, you know, there’s karma and there’s balancing universe.
13:54
So just be ready to to to leverage both both ways.
13:58
What were some of the ways mentors have pushed you maybe that you weren’t expecting, but were was really helpful?
14:05
Yes.
14:06
Well, I think to get out of my comfort zone, folks have a tendency to, you know, run the same place they’ve run because they, they’ve worked for them, but in the past and got them where they were, but maybe not to the next level.
14:18
So be ready to push yourself and get out of your comfort zone.
14:22
You know, I, I, I had a decision point at one time in my career.
14:26
Well, I’ve got sales or want to take on operations as well.
14:30
And, and there’s some downside to that and a bit of a distraction also some synergies.
14:36
And so I had several conversations folks internally and externally, but my my personal board of directors and they say, Hey, listen, this will help you make, make you more well-rounded.
14:45
And why does it might seem out of the, the realm of what you want to get to having that in context and all your background is going to be helpful.
14:52
And also just working with a different set of people.
14:55
By the way, it was immensely helpful.
14:56
I mean, the, the more you can get, the better you understand the way an organization really works.
15:01
You know, an organization is really nothing more than the creative genius and collection that tells the team and what how will we monetize that and bring that to market in the context of value for our clients.
15:11
So understanding more of the team by taking on broader responsibilities.
15:14
Don’t shy away from it.
15:17
Use it as a learning opportunity.
15:19
What’s your strategy for building your team?
15:23
Well, you know, it’s, it’s a great question because over time it’s changed.
15:28
And I think that’s important.
15:31
One of the challenges or the opportunities with COVID is, you know, if my interview process, right, it’s all virtual now.
15:37
Used to all be on the phone and maybe a meeting person, but now it’s all virtual and we can have panels.
15:42
I mean, I was on an interview panel this week and it was like nine of us in this panel, which is interesting.
15:47
But one of the questions I asked folks is how has your sales approach changed since COVID?
15:51
And they say, oh, it’s the same, whoa, red flag, red flag.
15:55
The world’s changed.
15:56
Our, our clients are going for the best athlete available.
15:59
They’re decentralized, they’re all over the place.
16:01
Nobody’s going to an office anymore.
16:02
If you’re not, you know, how are you rehearsing?
16:05
How are you acting?
16:06
What, what, what discipline do you have around setting up a meeting that’s for people and impactful for each client to make them feel like it’s customized.
16:13
You know, the beauty of it is we have more time.
16:15
We’re not on the I’m out here in LA.
16:17
I’m not on the four O 5 or the one O 1.
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Let’s use that time and be very precise and prescriptive in what we’re doing.
16:23
Let’s have the client logos on the on the back of our our Zoom screen.
16:27
Let’s make sure that we have an internal meeting and determine what success looks like afterwards.
16:32
Let’s make sure that everybody on the call has a role.
16:35
If they’re on a call and they don’t have a role, there’s no, this is not a spectator sport, right?
16:40
You should everybody should be on on their brain value.
16:43
So tying those things together within the context of the interview process, having knowing folks understand that and then just from a sales discipline, I like to understand if they know Sandler what methodology they’re using.
16:54
We use Medpic now that’s more of a of AI think for us, Medpic is more of a deal framework versus a sales approach.
17:02
Most folks that Sandler the areas you know, challenger sales training, etcetera, But that’s always good.
17:07
Again, coming from IBM, I appreciate folks that have context of formalized sales training.
17:13
So they’ve got that skill also look for tenure, right?
17:16
I, it’s good.
17:18
I mean, I, I can appreciate that folks might move every couple of years for new opportunities, but they better should have some good reasons why.
17:25
So I want to make sure that I’m looking at tenure and making sure those transitions made sense or they’re at least, you know, on surface seeing that makes sense.
17:33
And he wants the same performance.
17:35
Somebody that’s delivered a number and forecast a number, you know, ask them about, you know, some of their, we always try to understand, you know, give me an example of the success.
17:44
Give an example of failure that you learned.
17:46
I mean, our HR team said a great job of codifying the experience from a an employee or potential employee coming on board for we almost our, our our team will give us a script.
17:59
Hey, you’re interview one, here’s what you’re digging in on.
18:01
Interview two, you’re digging in here and we coalesce around interview three and what the other points might be we want to dig in on so that we’re getting to the right right caliber person.
18:10
Then really once they’re on board, it’s our job to make them successful, right?
18:15
If, if, if somebody fails, it’s because we they didn’t choose the right person, choose the right market, didn’t give them the right tools to be successful.
18:22
So I take that as a personal failure where we have to transitioning one out.
18:27
And you know, so it’s really honing in on the selection process, making sure that folks have the relevant experience in context that they can bring to the client.
18:37
I mean, we’re very much a matrix sales organization folks who have had the experience of selling, you know, cosign with other folks, very important.
18:46
The other piece is I want somebody that’s really maniacally focused on client outcomes.
18:51
You know, how can you make, you know, coming to pass how you’ve made your clients successful?
18:56
It’s got to be from that that way in versus us out, right.
19:00
So to me that’s that’s an important parameter.
19:03
So we just try to be very prescriptive in the process, try and hire to a profile with success, tenure, relevant industry experience.
19:13
And we find that that’s the rest of people, you know, thus far has been at least very successful for us.
19:19
That’s awesome.
19:20
Now you said you asked about, you know, give me an example of success.
19:23
Give me an example of, of failure.
19:26
What are you looking for when they’re talking about those?
19:28
Because a lot of people, I think will have a tendency to get a little fluffy in in the answers there.
19:35
They have to be.
19:38
I, I like intellectually curious people.
19:41
There has to be a lesson learned in both instances, you know, and when they’re talking about their success, I better hear about the team and how they, it’s not all them.
19:52
I, I don’t need, you know, it’s a we, not an I.
19:54
And this is a team sport.
19:56
You know, we had the great solution for the client.
19:58
We prepared, we did, you know, that’s important.
20:01
And then in the failures, there should be more.
20:03
I, I mean, those should be more introspective and detail.
20:07
And by the way, what’s the lesson?
20:08
What’s the behavioral change post that?
20:11
How how has that driven your success beyond that, that failure you’re talking about?
20:16
Because we all have them, right?
20:18
How do you leverage failure within your organization as an opportunity?
20:23
Yeah.
20:24
I think that, you know, we we celebrate wins.
20:26
Everybody loves the wind wires.
20:28
But you know, a loss review to me is almost as more meaningful.
20:34
You know, where we find we have these as a matter of course.
20:38
Luckily, the good news is we get pretty far to sell cycle.
20:41
We have a pretty good win rate and that goes to party in your ICP and having the right value prop and etcetera.
20:48
But there are occasions when we don’t win and where we, you know, we need to understand why and when we find and we can find, hey, there was four instances where the price wasn’t right.
20:58
There was three instances where we came in too late.
21:00
There were two instances where this or that wasn’t covered and needed to be if we can identify trends, we can of course correct the trend.
21:06
So loss reviews we have is a matter of process.
21:10
And and that again the team sport, you know, we go through those, you know, we’ll, we’ll take a couple and we’ll highlight those on a sales call.
21:19
And folks, everybody gets their turn because nobody’s getting picked on and everybody understands why we’re doing it and it’s for the common good.
21:28
And so coming from that point of view, I think folks are very willing to share and looking to learn.
21:33
So for us, loss reviews have been something we socialize almost in balance with the with the winds.
21:39
That’s awesome.
21:41
That’s awesome.
21:42
Do you ever socialize or, or leverage stories from your past around failures you’ve had in terms of developing your team?
21:50
Oh yeah.
21:50
Well, I mean stories.
21:51
I mean, they say stories are two to 50 times more effective than just, you know, charts and graphs and whatnot, right.
21:56
Having a story and when you’ve been around as long as I have, I have a lot of stories so much I know my kids roll their eyes when I when I started out the story, but luckily my employees were a little bit more courteous.
22:09
But yeah, I think you can learn from stories.
22:12
Stories are a great way for folks to synthesize a message and and hear and you always.
22:17
And the good news too, is again, having a a vast set of experience.
22:21
You know, you have almost story for every every instance, right?
22:25
I mean, there’s a story about here’s how we turn this client around, here’s what we did to take somebody that was a detractor and turn them into a champion, right?
22:34
I mean, so and we try and frame those stories within the context of our met, pick our sales methodology so that we’re reinforcing their language too, because the common language is important when you’re trying to try behaviors as well.
22:47
Yeah.
22:49
When you are working on your overall strategy as a corporation, what is your role in aligning or your strategy role, whatever in aligning the efforts of your team to drive and support that strategy because that I mean that bottom line, that’s what everything’s coming down to.
23:08
But when the market everything is changing so fast, how do you manage that in your role?
23:14
Yeah.
23:14
Well, you know, from a, you know, essentially we just had a leadership meeting last few weeks and one of the one of the elements was looking at everybody, you know, game plans for the second-half, right.
23:24
It’s 1/2 time we do how we game plan.
23:27
And so our game plan for the second-half is taking a look at our our ICP and refining all of our metrics and messaging to focus on the ICP.
23:36
We’ve had a a couple of offerings we’ve introduced to the more broad based and appeal.
23:40
So it’s a different marketplace.
23:42
So how are we going to go to market?
23:43
How do we capitalize the opportunity of that market within and scale our sales.
23:47
So we’re looking at the, there’s a few things we’re doing there that are kind of interesting, but it was a basically is a whole group getting together and everybody sharing their ideas and then gaining agreement, you know what I mean?
23:59
And that this is the path forward.
24:01
And the good news is by bringing all the leaders in, they all had a seat at the table and technically to to have an input on the on the core structure we’re making for a second-half.
24:13
So that was important.
24:15
But you know, it’s not just the sellers, right?
24:19
It’s who’s, you know, the folks actually own the offerings were part of this discussion as well, because they’re the the subject matter experts get brought in often times to help us close things.
24:29
They’re the ones that are crafting the offers right from our cyber security suite of services to make sure that they’re on point with our with our client needs.
24:38
And so having an alignment there, you know, between, you know, be a technology, be a subject matter experts, whoever, but everybody’s got to be together and what the end goal is and what our priorities are for the second-half.
24:50
So, and we, you know, there’s a, an element of tweaking on commissions and things you can do from incentive to support that as well, quite obviously.
24:58
So we we, we pull those levers where we can as well.
25:01
I’d love that.
25:02
You talked about ICP.
25:03
I’m shocked, you know, I’ve been doing this a long time.
25:06
I’m shocked how many companies that we go into and we asked, you know, tell me about your ICP.
25:11
And I just get a blank stare back, you know, where they’re like, well, we’re going into this market or we’re going into this market and I’m like, yeah, we’re going to need more than that, you know.
25:21
And, and so, you know, how often do you guys revisit your ICP?
25:27
Is this something you do on a regular bad insurance cadence?
25:30
Well, we had this new offering with our managed Security Service that, you know, really we’ve been working on for a year.
25:37
We introduced about 6-9 months ago now and we’ve had great success with it.
25:42
But we recognize that the offering again was more broad based.
25:46
And so we had to come up with some ways we can address that within the market, right?
25:50
How we scale our sales force to get the message out.
25:53
You know, you know, there’s a few tactics that line up to that, but I, I won’t get into specifics, but that was the, the, the need to revisit the ICP, you know, so, and the whole ICP thing is interesting too in sales.
26:06
I mean, if you look at the traditional sales funnel, you know, it’s funnel like this, but really these days it almost is more like this.
26:14
And there’s a bow tie because you’re selling, you get there and once you got the client there, once you on board them, that’s the key thing, successful outcomes.
26:22
Once they’re onboarded and, and you’ve had a good outcome, they’ll reference you to, you know, you can have a reference business, you can sell wider and deeper within the set account, earn the right to compete for more business.
26:34
And so that exponentially grows the funnel.
26:37
I mean, so I, we look at clients onboarding clients success as a key component of our, of our go to market and our, our ICP.
26:46
You know, when you were working with these folks, sometimes they, you know, at an individual level, your champion, maybe somebody that’s looking to get promoted.
26:54
So how do we, how we make them successful, right?
26:58
You know, and so, you know, we make sure that we’re highlighting them on the project calls is, you know, is, is key to the success of what we’re doing together.
27:06
And we, we try and promote those folks internally, the folks that helped us well and the folks that we’re trying to turn into advocates for us very aggressively within the onboarding process, within the execution of our, of our, of our work.
27:20
And it works and it works out well for everybody.
27:22
Again, it’s keeping the right focus in the right place.
27:24
Yeah, exactly.
27:25
I, I talk about that all the time.
27:27
That’s a real passionate mind that, hey, the sale doesn’t end when it’s closed as one.
27:32
It’s just beginning because that’s like this much of this big of a relationship, you know that there’s a whole bunch of other opportunities and things that if you’re doing, if you’re delivering what you promised, you’re doing really good at that.
27:45
There should be a whole bunch of revenue following and that’s what you’re after.
27:49
That’s that’s the big dollars.
27:53
Yeah, yeah, those are the dollars.
27:54
Those are the profitable dollars.
27:55
That’s the scale dollars.
27:57
That’s the that’s we’re in the bill, the commissions for your reps I mean, it’s all good.
28:01
This comes out of that, but it starts with the client being successful.
28:04
Exactly.
28:05
It all begins there.
28:10
When you look back and your transition to leadership.
28:13
I’m kind of going back in time here.
28:16
What were some of those hard lessons that you learned early on that you’re still leveraging today?
28:22
Well, I, I think, you know, just making sure I mean it.
28:27
As a sales leader, you’re responsible for numbers and, you know, you want to be authentic in the numbers you’re representing.
28:34
And just because they want to hear a number doesn’t mean that’s number you put out there, right?
28:39
You got to, you know, Lou Gershaw used to saying that, you know, you, you don’t get points for predicting rain.
28:46
You get points for building a dock, right.
28:48
I was in the media.
28:49
I’m going to say that’s one of the SVPS.
28:51
I thought, oh, that’s a good one.
28:51
That’s a good one.
28:52
I’m going to use that one.
28:55
You you call the call back quarter early.
28:56
Great.
28:56
But what are you going to do to fix it?
28:59
There’s this, you know, component of that.
29:01
So I think being authentic with the numbers, heavy integrity of the numbers and making sure you’re coming from a place that’s, you know, the you can’t be lazy about it.
29:10
I mean, yeah, you know, you can’t, it’s not the just the output of the CRM.
29:14
You’re assuming the hygiene’s cream.
29:16
I mean, what’s what’s the downstream process?
29:18
How how up and in it are you to recognize that this deal is committed?
29:21
It’s really a commit.
29:23
So there’s a lot of homework to be done to make sure that you’re accurately representing what you think is a realistic outcome for your team.
29:29
That’s A and and I don’t know that I ever had a bad outcome there per SE, but I mean, there are times when things fall out.
29:36
It happens to everybody.
29:36
But I think there it was always governed from a place where it wasn’t, you know, a finger of the wind.
29:42
It was a quantified or qualified approach.
29:46
So that that’s a big one because end of the day, you don’t want, no one wants surprises.
29:51
And then I think you also get lesson learned.
29:53
I think early in my career, I probably, you know, so my hiring decisions could have been better.
29:58
You know, I think hiring to a profile and try to define what that we talked about that earlier, what success looks like is, is important because taking a fire on somebody because you like them never seems to work out.
30:10
So being disciplined in your hiring approach.
30:13
And then I think the other piece is just consistency.
30:17
You know, what’s the message?
30:20
How are we recognizing people?
30:21
How are we inspecting what they’re doing?
30:23
That you’ve got to be consistent and consistency through your messaging as a leader, your messaging to your clients is, is important.
30:32
And I’ve seen the great leaders.
30:35
I’ve, I’ve seen that experience, the pleasure to work with have all been very consistent over the years.
30:40
Yeah.
30:41
Now there’s quite a few things, I’m sorry, catch you out there.
30:43
What was that say?
30:44
Unapproachable.
30:44
You want to be approachable?
30:46
Yeah, big time.
30:48
Yeah.
30:48
You’ve mentioned several things that to really be successful, your technology has to be aligned with that outcome that you’re trying to drive.
30:59
And that requires a good CRM.
31:01
So when it comes to CRM in general, do you love it or do you hate it?
31:05
Well, I think it’s, I’ll put me on the love side and I think it’s, it’s all about preparation and execution.
31:14
You know, we, we’ve actually just went through ACRM transition and a lot of hard work, a lot of people in a very much of A team teaming fashion.
31:22
We, we came, came out of it pretty well and we’re making improvements every day.
31:27
That’s the thing about CRM, I mean, needs to business change, offerings change, there’s got to be tweaks.
31:33
There’s got to be a flexible system and you as a sales leader need to own it and you need to own the hygiene to make sure, again, you got to you got to inspect what you expect.
31:43
And, you know, having a good OPS person that understands the CRM on the sales side is imperative.
31:48
We we’re, we’re fortunate here.
31:50
We’ve got some, some great people.
31:52
And then, you know, the tools.
31:53
I mean, there are a lot of great tools out there from CRM perspective, but the intelligence you can glean from a well, Calvary tool, you know, is great from a hindsight, from a, you know, rearview meter, from a windshield perspective, right?
32:06
You, you can grab context where you’ve been, where you’ve been successful looking at trends of offerings, how they’re resonating, what the win rate is.
32:12
You can look at, you know, what you’ve got coming down the pipe and where you might be soft in certain areas and making sure your resource alignment.
32:20
I mean, that’s the big thing about CRM is just maintain the discipline because we’ve got, you know, you’ve got a bunch of backlog for giving service.
32:29
We have the delivery people on the bench to deliver and there’s a bandwidth there.
32:33
And what’s that look like, right?
32:35
And how do we turn that into from bookings to Reverend?
32:37
That’s the other element, right?
32:39
So you need to make sure you can execute against these things.
32:41
You’ve got a pipeline again, all, all conditional on a on, on CRM, but with hygiene, right, you have to have IG do Yeah.
32:52
How looking back every career, excuse me, I’ve seen a lot of companies struggle with CRM being aligned with their ICP and supporting their ICP.
33:06
What’s your strategy or recommendations that you have for listeners around what they should be doing to make sure their CRM is connected and supporting the sales team when it comes to the ICP?
33:20
You bet.
33:21
Well, I, I, I think again, just having AI mean every, behind every great sales leader is a great sales obstacle person, right.
33:29
I mean, so having the advocacy and the foresight within your, your operations team to understand and, and some of those sources and some of that’s, you know, the CRM may have some of you’re buying or you’re ordaining the tooling from the outside.
33:44
You know, there’s a lot of abject tooling that really facilitates that.
33:48
But end of the day is just the planning work, foresight and having the right people, the right roles.
33:53
What’s the biggest struggle you’ve had with CRM over the years and, and how have you addressed that?
33:59
Well, I, I think often times if there are enhancements or roll outs that aren’t well communicated or misaligned expectations in terms of, hey, there’s no approval process, but well, that’s great.
34:16
Why are we doing it?
34:17
Let’s make sure everybody understands why and then let’s make sure we’re all doing the how we understand how.
34:22
A lot of these can be mitigated right through, again, proactive communication, anticipation, and making sure that there’s a a context to the ask a sales team.
34:34
We’re asking you to do this so that we have line of sight to build the right bench for the advisory team so they can deliver.
34:40
We’re asking you to do this so we can make sure that we’ve got the right credit lines lined up with this part of that party to facilitate the technology reseller, whoever it might be.
34:49
You’ve got to be planning every step of the way to be proactive because the end of the day you want to make sure what you’re getting to your client is the best possible outcome.
35:02
Yeah, there’s so much.
35:03
I think a lot of times sales people don’t understand how much, how many decisions are made downstream from them and that are reliant upon the data that they’re, you know, managing within CRM.
35:14
You know, it’s just, it’s a ripple effect.
35:16
And so if you’re not managing that, if you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have structure in place to make sure that you’ve got quality data in your CRM, you’re starting from a serious disadvantage, right?
35:26
You’re in trouble.
35:26
Yeah, you’re in trouble.
35:28
You’re you’re behind the you’re buying the game before you.
35:30
It was so blowsy.
35:31
Yeah, it’s yeah, yeah.
35:33
Ray, we’re at our time here on sales lead Dog it, it always goes by so fast.
35:38
It has been awesome talking with you here today.
35:40
If people want to reach out and connect with you, if they want to learn more about Kodelski security, what’s the best way for them to do that?
35:48
Well, great.
35:48
Yeah, hopefully you will.
35:50
It’s a great place to work and we’re great with clients and our solutions are best of breed.
35:56
Just please hit me up on LinkedIn.
35:57
That’s fine.
35:59
That’s awesome.
35:59
So we will have raised his link to his his LinkedIn profile in our show notes.
36:06
Be sure to check that out.
36:07
You can get those at impellercrm.com/sales Lead Dog where you’ll get not only show notes for this episode, but all the 100 plus episodes of Sales Lead Dog.
36:17
So be sure to check that out and subscribe so you get all our future episodes.
36:21
Ray, thank you so much for coming on and welcome to the Sales Lead Dog Pack.
36:26
Thank you, Chris.
36:27
Great, great time.
36:27
Appreciate it.
36:31
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36:39
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36:51
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