Resiliency in Sales - Erik Norman

“You have to own your own results,” says Erik Norman, Senior Vice President of Bolger Printing Minneapolis, MN. As the leader of an international printing company that works with major financial institutions, luxury retail and health care organizations, Erik has clearly seen a lot of success. But in this episode of Sales Lead Dog, he’s talking with Chris Smith about the other side of sales: failure, and the Resiliency.

When asked what he wished he had known about sales, Erik was frank. He wished he had known how much failure he’d have to face in those early days. So often, people want to get into sales because it seems glamorous, and lucrative. But to be successful in sales, you have to cope with a lot of rejection and failure. Erik talks with Chris about how he built up resilience, and how he learned to become “the president of Erik Norman Inc.” and take accountability for his own sales journey.

Listen this week to hear about resilience, and how Erik feels about his own “lukewarm” feelings about CRM in this episode of Sales Lead Dog.

Watch or listen to this episode

Transcript:

Wed, 3/10 1:58PM • 49:45

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales, crm, marketing, people, bolger, print, salespeople, organization, leverage, industry, leader, selling, structure, facsimile, journey, create, deal, digital, leads, success

Speakers

Erik Norman, Christopher Smith

Intro
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 are the lead dog, the view never changes.

Christopher Smith
Welcome to Sales Lead Dog. Today I have joining me Erik Norman of Bolger Printing. Erik, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.

Erik Norman
Hey, thank you, Chris. Good to be here. Good to spend time with you.

Christopher Smith
I’m excited to have you on the show. Erik, tell me a bit about your current role and your company.

Erik Norman
Sure, happy to do so, Chris. I’m currently the Senior Vice President for Bolger Printing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We’re a national print service provider, and we help clients communicate with their audience, both in a traditional printed format as well as helping them facilitate digital workflows, where they can bring together all of their various digital assets, bring that together into an elegant platform, and then facilitate multichannel or omnichannel marketing capabilities. Our company worked with some well known brand names, companies like David German jewelry for instance. We work with a number of well known financial institutions around the country, a lot of large healthcare providers, so we’re handling private, secure data. We deal with a lot of compliance and regulatory issues in the organization, across the organization. And then we do a lot of work in traditional corporate space. Med tech companies like Boston Scientific rely on us, for example, 3M Corporation, and the list goes on and on and on. I would say our, you know, the primary markets that we tend to support clients within would be healthcare, finance, luxury retail goods and brand names, and then your general kind of corporate, corporate America.

Christopher Smith
Right, right. I was really excited to have you on the show, because I actually, I back in my early days when I was doing the ERP implementations, I did an ERP implementation for a very large manufacturer of packaged, paperboard packaging. And the technology that goes into printing is unbelievable. It is really a tech-heavy industry, people may not think about that, but it really is. And on your website you have the tagline of, “Unifying the power of print and digital.” Can you talk about that from, you know, for if I’m on the sales side and I’m trying to solve that problem, how do you guys tackle that for your customers?

Erik Norman
It’s a great question and one that we get asked fairly frequently. So print, as you said, is a very technology driven industry, and many people look at print as a very traditional, roll up the sleeves, under the fingernails kind of an industry. It is all of that in many respects, but today, print, not only is it everywhere, but it’s intertwined in all aspects of communication. And so that unifying concept of bridging together, print and digital, we live in a digital first world. Our clients are doing digital first marketing. And the way we unify that is we can work with them to take the different data streams that they’ve created, it may be through CRM, through ERP systems, through point of sale systems, their various marketing asset libraries that are digitally, you know, held. We can bring those together into a unified storage platform and then allow the marketers who are working with that data to go to one source and to streamline, simplify, and make their workflow much more efficient, so it’s bringing in the digital to then create a printed piece. It’s also then using data and responding to data to create a printed piece, so the print is being used to, if you will, close the sale rather than open the sale. It’s being used to drive the brand engagement, you know, create a sense of connection where digital just doesn’t quite do that as well as print does because of the tangible nature of print.

Christopher Smith
Right. And that’s what, exactly why I wanted you on the show, because everyone is so focused on digital, digital, digital. And I think print gets overlooked. And I think that’s a mistake. So I’m really excited to have you on the show. First question I have for everybody is what are the three things that have really contributed to your success?

Erik Norman
You know, there’s, there’s so many, I think the one thing that just jumps out to me is that, looking at your early failures as opportunities to grow. You know, there’s the saying of you can fail forward. I think that’s an important concept, it’s one that I had to learn, you know, early on. And through that, then develop a strong adversity quotient, and certainly if you’re in sales and certainly if you’re in sales within the print industry, you need to learn about resiliency and how to move forward against all sorts of obstacles, because they’re always in our way.

Christopher Smith
Right.

Erik Norman
And that’s I’m sure true of any of any business, any industry. So I think that’s one. The other, probably the, one of the most profound let’s say words that was spoken into me early on by a wonderful manager was that I needed to be the president of Erik Norman Inc. And it was in the context of really two thought processes that he shared this with me, one was, “Hey, find your own voice, because you’re only, you’re going to be the best you can be when you’re using your own voice,” and the other aspect was, “Hey be accountable, because nobody is going to be accountable for you. You have to own your own results, you have to own your own accomplishments and learning, etc. Can’t rely just on the company or management to do that.”

Christopher Smith
Right.

Erik Norman
So I think failing forward, finding my own voice, and being accountable.

Christopher Smith
I love it. Thinking back to when you got your start in sales, what do you wish you were taught when you got that first job in sales?

Erik Norman
I think just how darn hard it is sometimes, you know, you know it’s, there’s not an easy, there’s no such thing as an easy path anyway, but you know, I remember the early days of difficulties of just rejection after rejection after rejection. And, you know, not knowing that or what that would feel like before going into that, and people talk about it, but it’s one of those things that until you experience it and feel it and hear it, it just, you know, it’s kind of, I’m intellectually aware that this is going to be hard but then you get into it, it’s, you know how hard it really can be.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, yeah, it is. And I think if we all knew that it’s one of those things like, man, if I knew it was gonna be like this I’m not sure I’d do it.

Erik Norman
Yeah, well you know I mean no, no, no regrets on it, but I think some people feel, I mean we see it all the time, so be ah, I just want to get into sales, I just want to get into sales, because they see the upside of the relationships and they maybe see the monetary aspect of it, they see the freedom aspect of it. And all those things are wonderful, but you know those things don’t come without a cost.

Christopher Smith
That’s right, that’s right. Thinking back to that period as a salesperson, what is your best story from that era?

Erik Norman
Well, I mean probably the one of the more remarkable ones for me, I guess was back in, I won’t even date it, but let’s say a long time ago. And this will give you a clue as to the era, I was, I was a salesman for an office products company. And I was selling a thermal transfer ribbon and plain paper facsimile machines. So my guess is there’s probably a lot of people in the audience that might not even know what a facsimile machine is any longer, but it was this magical new communication tool back in, in that timeframe.

Christopher Smith
Yeah.

Erik Norman
And, you know I was called, I was a cold calling salesperson and I within a territory and in the Twin Cities area. And it was shortly after having gone through. It was probably a Brian Tracy seminar, or, you know, one of the other sales leaders. And so I was feeling a little inspired and probably thought more thoughtful than than usual, but I was having a miserable day. I think, you know, my, I was getting, you know rejected at the door, had a lot of, you know, attempted closes with no results, and just, it was just a bad day. Well I’m getting toward the end of the day, I walked into a small two-person insurance company, independent insurance organization, and I’m thinking this is perfect, they, why would they not need a facsimile machine?

Christopher Smith
Right.

Erik Norman
So I did my best, I sold everything, talked about features and benefits and the whole deal, did the little demo. And I got rejected. And I kind of out of frustration, just rose up and said well I think clearly you’re not ready for this new technology so but that’s great because I’ve learned through the studies that my next call, I will close a deal, so you’ve just taken me one step closer to a yes. You remember those back in those days, you’re one step closer to a yes.

Christopher Smith
That close.

Erik Norman
Oh my gosh. So anyway, it just kind of came out. And I turned to walk out and the guy had second thoughts. He brought me back in, he bought a machine, and we did everything that we needed to do. And then it turned out a month later, he had a fire in the facility and ended up having to buy a second one often insurance claim, so it was, it was kind of a two for one deal, you know. But the lesson learned from that had nothing to do with, you know, did I did I do a good pitch did I have a good closing technique, etc. But I think it was confident I was willing, I was willing to walk away and I was willing to, in a sense, almost challenge. I was probably not done in any level of appropriateness or good technique but it happened to work in that moment.

Christopher Smith
That’s right. So who’s gonna judge right.

Erik Norman
Correct. Correct, correct the score at the scoreboard was plus one, you know,

Christopher Smith
it’s right, it’s right. So tell me about your transition to sales leadership. Was it an easy transition for you or was it difficult?

Erik Norman
It was, it was, I wouldn’t say it was difficult, I guess it was kind of in the middle. I had probably a more of a non-traditional path into, into sales leadership. You know I sold office equipment for a period of time and then I, I moved to organizations. And I was always been very sales-minded and an in kind of a selling capacity, but with more emphasis on product marketing and product development and leading a product range within a business unit. And in that capacity, we were always co-selling, and particularly on large corporate deals, or, you know, international distribution type deals. And, you know, through that course, or through that as a course of that of that career journey, I learned a lot of leadership skills, I learned a lot of sales management skills, but I wasn’t the sales manager. Not for a number of years and then eventually, again, moved into a different organization, all within the printer that common thread has been print related industries, all along. I moved into an organization that was based out of Toronto and there took on a VP of Sales role, and it was you know pure sales leadership, so I had a lot of background, but it was kind of a non-traditional approach into sales. So I always like to think of it as I brought more business leadership and just leadership to the equation than specifically sales leadership into that. But you know, it’s a different journey when you know you have a team of individuals that you’re walking alongside with, and they, and you you know have pay at risk, and to keep them motivated and encouraged and to make sure that they’re having the tools that they need. I always looked at my view as if I can keep the ground in front of them clear, I’m doing a pretty okay job.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. What were some of the big mistakes or were there any big mistakes you made early on?

Erik Norman
Yeah, I think underestimating the, let’s say the self accountability that good salespeople have when they’re not hitting their number. And I found that, you know, really strong sales people, they’re going to be harder on themselves than you can ever be as a sales leader, and for sure, based on the pressures that I was feeling, you know the responsibility that you have both up as well as down to your team, overplaying the hand, you know, putting putting undue pressure on people, and then realizing that that can actually lead to even worse results. Right, so I kind of had to, you know, I had to have a few gut check moments and quite frankly, you know, thankfully, most really good salespeople are not not shy about letting you know their thoughts, and and just being introspective and learning along the way. But I would say you know put it placing too much pressure on somebody who is already pressurizing themselves.

Christopher Smith
So you have both sales and marketing. Is that difficult to balance and maintain a balance between both sides?

Erik Norman
It is at Bolger, it’s how we market and how we sell is is now undergoing some significant shifts because the buyer journey has changed in it that that change was accelerated by this pandemic. And so what it’s doing is placing an increased emphasis on how we go to market and how we create awareness consideration and then purchase, you know, through those kind of campaign funnels. So, the prominence of marketing I would say is actually increasing. Traditionally in the print space, sales and marketing you would use almost interchangeably, you know, I mean the salesperson was your marketer. Many print organizations never even had a marketer. We’ve had a very small marketing staff, at the moment we use it. We have a fractional service that we’re using for that.

Christopher Smith
Right.

Erik Norman
so, I wouldn’t say that there hasn’t been a lot of difficulty in managing that, that tension, but there is shifting priority in terms of how do we how do we increasingly leverage marketing to drive leads, qualified leads for the sales organization, which are harder and harder for them to find on their own, because the buyer journey has changed so significantly.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I believe that. And the reason why I asked that question is, you know that I think it’s tempting for sales leaders if you’re having a lot of success, you’re thinking like where else can I impact the organization, you know what, I should own marketing. Do you think that’s a good choice for a sales leader to also try to manage the marketing side of the house, or should they resist that temptation?

Erik Norman
You know, they’re, they’re two different skill sets, but they complement each other really well. I think the answer is one of dependency. It depends on the leader and the leader’s background and experience. I also think it depends on the size and the reach of the organization. You know, we were a family-owned operation, we’re probably $35 million a year in sales, we have two locations and about 180 employees. We have 18 on our sales staff. So, we’re not so big that you can’t blend the two together. I think in larger organizations where you’re really now leveraging marketing and the analytics of marketing and more the science of marketing, then you probably want a different skill set than a pure sales leader, leading that, leading that charge.

Christopher Smith
Right. Talk to me about how you’ve constructed your sales team, what was your priority when you built your team?

Erik Norman
Well when I came to Bolger, and we’re still in the journey. I don’t, well, I don’t know if you ever ended the journey. To be fair, I sometimes I wish you could get to the destination, but you know the the print organization was one of the sales traditional sales structure here, and in many places is more of an island approach, you know the sales person does everything. They, they, they’re doing the outbound prospecting business development, they’re doing their own account-based marketing. You know, they’re project managing, they’re, you know they’re, it’s like a one-man band. And that’s difficult to perform. So what we’ve, the journey we’ve been on is shifting that from kind of an island structure more to a sales pod structure where we’re building teams around vertical markets, and our teams today look still like you know collection is a cooperative of individual sales people who have some common affinity and they’re able to share war stories, share success stories, work together on some of the business development aspects for the collective benefit of the of the pod. And then we’re building an account management structure with our client success team, so that when they land something, they have an ability to put it over the fence and then somebody can, if you will, keep it sold from a project management standpoint. So we’re still making our way through that through that journey but I really see in our company that will continue to be the destination we strive toward, and we’re flexible because it doesn’t always fit in every case, so I’m not one to ever think that you can have, here’s rigidly, here’s my structure. I think you got to work with the personalities that you have, the skill sets that you have, the tenure of the team to make different structures work, but we’re leaning in that direction.

Christopher Smith
Right. Do you have a definition of success or, you know, an idea of, you know, not an endpoint but really, that, that, what point you’re driving to where you know like okay, this part is done?

Erik Norman
In terms of the structure?

Christopher Smith
Yeah, or just the transitioning to pods?

Erik Norman
Yeah, I, it’s a great, it’s a great question. So, when we start seeing the more kind of natural cooperation and where they start doing some lead sharing or team-based selling, that will be a strong indicator for us, and we do have some of that. I will also I’m also looking for, you know, kind of indicators, excuse me indicators where we’ve been recognized as thought leaders within a key vertical. Right. And we have a couple of verticals where, where that structure has worked well for us historically, and then that’s in healthcare and in luxury, and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to model this team structure, because it worked in a couple of verticals already. And there when high-end brands have a need for, you know, certain particular work, they come to our sales leader in that, in that space, because she’s recognized as a thought leader in that industry and likewise we have that in healthcare, and I think to me that’s an indicator of success. The numbers follow that, the numbers are the lagging indicator though. I think the leading indicator is are people reaching out to us and wanting to have a dialogue because we’re delivering something of value to their business and in their industry.

Christopher Smith
Now that’s terrific. Were there any obstacles or hurdles you had to get over to get through this transition?

Erik Norman
Compensation structure. Established cultures. With tenured experienced salespeople, an industry that doesn’t approach it that way. So yeah, there were some long tail issues there. I, the analogy that I use, I don’t, if you’re a gardener you might understand this, but I had a house, one time, where my wife and I wanted to relandscape and we had all these Juniper bushes, these low growing Juniper bushes, you know, and the roots are literally everywhere. So you think I can just pull this little thing up you pull it up and what you realize is, you never get all the roots. So, and when you start tugging on something and it’s got these long roots, it’s difficult to move. And so, you know, that then kind of describes some of the challenges, you have to be then careful and methodical and respectful in how you’re going to drive change, while also balancing the urgency that the organization wants for it. So it’s, it can be a tricky situation. Our organization has responded well overall, you know there’s been a few bumps in the road. But I think people realize that now’s the time to move forward. We’ve got a team with, of people with great attitudes and experience. So, you know, I’m fortunate that the Bolger culture and the Bolger team is really one of collaboration and innovation and trying to think new, so that that has helped immensely.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. I think that having the right people, it, it’s everything. If you don’t have the right people, man that’s gonna make life hard.

Erik Norman
Yeah right people, right seats is something we talk about quite a bit.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, that’s awesome. When you talk with your team and talk about success habits, what’s that conversation like?

Erik Norman
Having a consistent playbook. And I think some of the particular habits may be different individual to individual, but you know, sales is a process. And it’s not this robotic you know manufacturing-oriented process, but there’s certain things you need to do and there’s certain things you need to do more often and certain numbers that you need to understand, because you know you only have so many leverage, I mean you can work a lot longer hours, but, you know, most aren’t. I can crank up my closing rate you know in some way, shape or form. You know, and I can add a lot more accounts, you know, so I mean there’s just only so many leverage, levers that we can, can play with but, you know, finding the right habits, you know, whether it’s my call cadence, or it’s how I’m going to prepare for, you know, account reviews, how I’m gonna prepare for initial introductory meetings that I get the, you know, maximum benefit in the shortest period of time, how I’m going to leverage now new technology, you know, Zoom and Mic-, we use Microsoft Teams a lot, that’s been a big, big shift-

Christopher Smith
Oh yeah.

Erik Norman
this, this year. So, but getting into that daily habit that you can start to, to, to measure and where you can look forward to effecting some change.

Christopher Smith
That’s terrific. We’re about that time in the podcast where we like to talk about one of my favorite topics, CRM. When it comes to CRM, do you love it, or do you hate it?

Erik Norman
I would say, I’m, I’m a little bit lukewarm on it, personally. Although, although, cuz here, here’s why. In my experiences with CRM, before being the sales leader, my early, early experiences were more of that, you know, big brother ish, you know, how many calls are you logging in, how many activities have you put in and I know that sometimes that just encourages the wrong behavior.

Christopher Smith
Yes.

Erik Norman
I love it from the standpoint that it’s really almost a business management organizing tool now, where I don’t have to remember so many things because the system will remember it. I don’t, I don’t have to manually segment my customers because I can create them in buckets. I can create campaigns around certain, you know, personalities of customers or segments of customers. So there’s skill sets there that I, that I love. But yet for me personally, sometimes they’re hampered by the, you know, the old experiences of that I felt you know as a CRM user. So, but now as a sales leader, we do have a CRM platform and, and we’ve got probably fairly low adoption, those that have adopted it tend to like it. Those that don’t you know they have their 50 other systems that they’re using. And we need to get them to realize that ultimately it’s a more efficient platform to use the CRM tool.

Christopher Smith
Right. So when you’re having a conversation with people that are resisting CRM, do you have a why that you use, like, why you should be using this? What’s your why?

Erik Norman
Yeah, for it for us it’s, for me, it’s mainly around give yourself some time back. Aside from the maybe initial customer inputting or the data load and you have to get it to a certain operating state.

Christopher Smith
Right.

Erik Norman
Once you do that, it’s really about leveraging your time. You have only so many hours in a day. And if you can, if you can give a lot of basic tasks and reminders and other things to the CRM tool, and you can then have if you’re gone or if you’re out or if you’re tied in a meeting and a customer’s got an issue, your account manager can access that and know right where you left off, to me that’s that’s it’s, it’s the value of time. I think that’s that’s number one. It buy in and of itself is not going to add any more dollars to your book of business, but time will. And if you leverage that time well, you can apply that to earning more money.

Christopher Smith
Right. I just had a conversation earlier today with VP of Sales at a organization where we were talking about what happens after that deal is closed and how they’re leveraging CRM to support that as you termed it with the customer success team. What role does your CRM play in managing that transition to customer success?

Erik Norman
Truth be told, none yet. We just, we’re just not on that journey. We, so we implement it, started implementing CRM with a pilot group of people, about 18 months ago. And so now just continuing to roll that out. I have a, I have two new sales hires that are starting later in this month who actually love CRM systems. So, I’m rather optimistic that that say just through some pure observation, and people coming in with a different mindset and experience set that will help us move forward more aggressively. Wait so but you know, we have not integrated deeply with our client success team so far.

Christopher Smith
When you think about CRM, I asked you this question about from the sales side, but do you have a definition of success of when you know with CRM we’re really getting that traction where we want to be? What’s that definition of success?

Erik Norman
Again when it, when it’s part of their daily habit. If I’m out on a call and I’m with somebody and I see him pull it up on their tablet or their phone because it’s got key information that helps them prep for a meeting, or when they’re using that to access key documents that they might need for a presentation or proof points, we’re going to pull up a case study that they’re going to the single source of truth, if you will, on a regular basis, then, then I think it’s working. Versus let me, you know, run to my car or run to Outlook or run to PowerPoint or run to wherever. So that’s that’s the indicator that I’m looking for.

Christopher Smith
That’s a great answer. I love that, because that is, that’s a very practical way to know we’re getting traction here and people are adopting they’re using it.

Erik Norman
Yeah.

Christopher Smith
When it comes to, you know, putting on your marketing hat, what impact are you looking for from the marketing team in terms of being able to fill that top of the funnel when it comes to CRM?

Erik Norman
So, all of the leads that will generate from our marketing campaigns, as they come in through, you know, different response calls to action or different lead magnets, those will get entered into CRM, so they’ll get captured in the CRM, and then those leads will get assigned out once they’re pre-qualified, if you will, they’ll get assigned out to certain salespeople, but there will be in terms of, you know, adoption, I mean there will be with the right leads some strong encouragement that you need to, you know, you have to play in order to you know to get the pay. If you want the leads, here’s where they are, and they’re going to be resident in this in this system, so let’s learn the tool, and I’m hoping that that becomes an additional carrot to get people encouraged to, to use it. Some will probably look at it as a penalty. Well, you know what do you mean I have to be in the system in order to get the lead? I mean, exactly what I mean.

Christopher Smith
Yeah! That’s where they’re at.

Erik Norman
That’s right.

Christopher Smith
If you want them, here they are. Go get them!

Erik Norman
Yes, that’s right, that’s right.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. Well we’re coming up on our time here on Sales Lead Dog, it has been great chatting with you, Erik. If people want to reach out and connect with you, find out more about you, they want to find out more about Bolger Printing, what’s the best way for them to reach and connect with you?

Erik Norman
They can email me directly at [email protected], or they could come to the website and, and reach the Contact Us page and reach out that way. We’ll, we’ll see those through our marketing capture as well.

Christopher Smith
LinkedIn, as well?

Erik Norman
And LinkedIn as well. Absolutely LinkedIn as well.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. Well thank you so much for coming on Sales Lead Dog. Again, it has been terrific talking with you, I really appreciate it.

Erik Norman
Thanks for having me, Chris, pleasure. Bye-bye.

Outro
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

“You need to learn resiliency and how to move forward against all sorts of obstacles.” (13:25-13:31)
“I had a house, one time, where my wife and I wanted to re landscape and we had all these Juniper bushes these low growing Juniper bushes, you know, and the roots are literally everywhere. So you think I can just pull this little thing up you pull it up and what you realize is, you never get all the roots. So, and when you start tugging on something and it’s got these long roots it’s difficult to move. And so, you know, that then kind of describes some of the challenges you have to be then careful and methodical and respectful in how you’re going to drive change, while also balancing the urgency that the organization wants…” (26:53-27:32)