0:01
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith.
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Talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack.
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Listen to find out how the best of the best achieves success with their team and CRM technology.
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And remember, unless you were the lead dog, the view never changes.
0:26
Welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
0:29
My guest today joining me on Sales Lead Dog is Sarah Rahal Lunsford.
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Sarah is the founder and owner of Centered Strategies Consulting.
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Sarah, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
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Thanks so much, Chris, for you to be here.
0:42
Yeah, I’m excited to have you as a guest and, and for our talk today.
0:46
Sarah, tell me a bit about Centered Strategies Consulting.
0:50
Yeah.
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So I founded Centered Strategies earlier this year to help companies grow.
0:56
Yeah.
0:56
I’ve spent more than 20 years selling products and services throughout the country, and I have yet to encounter a company or a team that doesn’t struggle with some element of the sales and marketing cycle.
1:09
And so I created this company to provide tailored consulting, training, coaching and support to companies of all sizes.
1:18
We focus on a a wide variety of areas, everything from general business development and sales and marketing, process development, pursuit capture, planning and pre selling strategies, proposal marketing, materials development, presentations, public speaking skills, and a little bit of mergers and acquisition strategies.
1:40
Most of my career has been spent in the professional services industry about the last 18 years.
1:45
So I work with a lot of engineers, architects, construction managers, planners, technology professionals, people who are really brilliant in their fields, are so good at what they do, passionate about what they do, but sometimes they struggle to translate that into sales and communicate that in effective marketing.
2:01
Yeah, I see that a lot with our customers when we engage, especially in professional services where hey, we’re really, really good at delivering the service, at delivering what we do.
2:12
They really don’t understand selling and marketing it.
2:16
It’s a big gap.
2:18
And I think, you know, my perception is that a lot of people think, well, I’m really good at this, They they’ll just buy from me, right?
2:24
Doesn’t really work right like that, right?
2:27
That’s absolutely right.
2:28
And there’s that kind of old school mentality that, well, the best way to get your next project is to deliver this one well.
2:34
And that’s pretty to some extent, product delivery is really important.
2:37
But that’s not how you grow.
2:39
That’s not how you innovate, even stay up with your competitors.
2:42
Yeah, that’s how you plateau.
2:43
And you just, you’re chunking along, you’re working really hard, but you’re not really moving in the direction you want to be moving.
2:51
So they reach out and they call Sarah.
2:53
That’s right.
2:54
Yeah.
2:55
So let’s go back to the beginning.
2:57
How did you get your start in sales?
3:00
Tell me that story.
3:01
Yeah.
3:02
Well, like a lot of your guests, this is not something that I envisioned doing when I grew up.
3:07
I wanted to be a journalist, wanted to travel the world writing articles.
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But then I fell in love with the communications field when I was a freshman at Butler University in Indianapolis, then went on to get my master’s degree in that field.
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And then it was time to get a job as I was finishing my thesis.
3:24
And I thought, well, marketing seems like a good Ave.
3:28
for me.
3:28
There are a lot of marketing jobs out there.
3:30
That sounds interesting.
3:32
Sounds like it could align really well with my communication skills, my grading skills.
3:37
So I got a job at a small home furnishings manufacturer in Los Angeles and I love marketing.
3:44
I love really getting into the insurance and outs of what we are selling and trying to get press coverage.
3:51
And I developed the company’s first ad campaign.
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It was just, it was so much fun.
3:55
And then about probably nine months into that first job out of grad school, the owner of the company said, Sarah, you’re doing a great job of marketing, but we would like you to be a little more out front.
4:05
We would like you to sell.
4:06
We have a trade show coming up in Vegas, and we need some additional sellers.
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And we think you’d be great.
4:12
And I said, no, no, no, no.
4:13
Like, I’m not a salesperson.
4:15
No, Nope.
4:16
I’m very comfortable being on this side, you know, being behind the scenes.
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And that owner said something to me that I’ll never forget.
4:23
He said, well, do you know our products?
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And I said, sure, of course.
4:27
I know them inside and out.
4:28
I said, well, and you can talk to people.
4:30
And I said, yeah, I’m pretty good at talking to people.
4:32
I said, OK, I want you to go to the St.
4:34
Joe.
4:35
I want you to talk to people, find out what they’re looking for and match what we offer to their.
4:40
That’s it.
4:41
And that really simple framing just kind of clicked for me.
4:46
And I went to the trade show, had a really successful time, and I’ve been in sales ever since.
4:50
So that’s really what did it for me.
4:53
I love how he boiled that down to the bare essence because that is it.
4:57
Find out what they need and then do we have a match to solve that, you know, request or issue or problem that they’re having exact.
5:05
And I still, you know, in my career now working with a lot of technical professionals that kind of think of sales as a four letter word.
5:13
We try to break it down that way.
5:15
Also, like, listen, this is really about serving your clients.
5:18
It’s taking all the great things that you’re doing, understanding how to best serve your clients and putting those together.
5:24
That’s it.
5:25
Yeah.
5:25
Yeah.
5:26
So your last role, you were senior VP of business development.
5:29
So you really had a lot of success in your career.
5:32
What do you think really drove that success for you?
5:37
I think there are a few things.
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I’ve always been someone who pushes to find improvements.
5:44
I I like kind of looking at how things are going, figuring out what went well and most importantly, what could be better.
5:52
So any role I’ve ever had, I saw the challenges that we are having with marketing or sales or whatever and tried to come forward with solutions to make that better for everyone, not just myself.
6:04
Working with a lot of technical professionals, they have a lot of responsibilities.
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They’re, you know, designing huge projects or leading big teams are responsible for top and bottom line of regions or whatever.
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And so it’s really important to make it be palatable to them and easier for them so that we’re being successful, but also just making them bind the process along the way.
6:27
So I think that’s been a big driver for how I’ve been able to advance in my career.
6:32
Yeah, that’s awesome.
6:34
So you’re now have your own business.
6:37
You had a great thing going.
6:39
What made you feel like, hey, I, I need to go down this path of, of having your, your, your, your firm now and trying to help people in a broader range?
6:51
Yeah, so I had a, you know, wonderful career.
6:54
My last company I was with them from was 18 years.
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Just wonderful.
6:59
People got to have a lot of roles starting on a statewide level and then regionally and nationally.
7:05
But for the last couple years, I just thought, you know, it might be the right time to move on and just try something different.
7:13
And so this is something working for myself is something I thought about.
7:16
I’m not an inherent risk taker at all.
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So that was a big hurdle to overcome.
7:22
But I just felt like I, I see all these companies out there in the industry that are struggling with some elements of sales and marketing.
7:30
They feel like there’s a lot that I can offer to those different companies and you know, with my previous role, I got to work with different teams and companies that we would acquire all the time.
7:40
And so it was always different and always new dynamics.
7:43
And I just felt instead of diving into another company, I would, you know, try it on my own and see what I can offer to a lot of different companies through center strategies.
7:53
Yeah.
7:54
Now it’s So what you know, my firm we implement CRM and so I get to see things from a a different perspective maybe than a lot of people that are engaging, you know, from the side of being in those roles.
8:10
I see a lot of the same patterns in the clients that we engage with when we’re going into either implement ACRM or do a rescue of CRM, we’re going to re implement a form.
8:20
What are the patterns you’re seeing with your, you know, the clients that are reaching out to you?
8:26
Yeah, So couple of things.
8:27
First of all, most of my clients are very constrained with their workforce right now.
8:34
There are not enough engineers graduating to replace those retiring aren’t enough mid level careers.
8:41
You know, we’re having, you know, so much work out there with infrastructure development for the last, you know, decade, and it’s just hard to keep up in terms of the workforce.
8:51
So every client I have is hiring and looking hard to hire and retain their staff and they don’t have enough people to do the work that they have, much less to sell and develop and, you know, deliver that future work.
9:05
So we work a lot on efficiency.
9:08
We don’t have more hours to give.
9:10
We don’t have more people to throw into sales necessarily.
9:14
So how can we really maximize that investment?
9:17
How can we figure out the best repeatable, consistent process that needs to happen?
9:23
How can we throw out the stuff that isn’t serving us?
9:26
But maybe we just always did things that way.
9:28
So, so that’s something I’m saying with every client.
9:33
Also, you’re dealing with technical professionals a lot.
9:38
They, they were driven to design things, build things, plan things, not to sell things necessarily.
9:46
So we spend a lot of time thinking through the sales process in a very palatable way to them and especially focusing on the people making the purchasing decisions.
9:57
You know, we are dealing with human beings who have biases and preferences, and we like to think that they make logical decisions, but that doesn’t always apply.
10:07
So with every client I’m working with, we’re really thinking about who are these clients?
10:12
How can we find out how to serve them best and then make sure we’re presenting ourselves, marketing ourselves in a way that’s going to really resonate with them.
10:20
So they want to choose us for that project.
10:22
Oh yeah, yeah, I, I see that a lot with, you know, we’re, we’re really with almost every professional services firm we make or we that we support that they have a really strong tendency to be product focused and, and feature focused rather than really understanding the customer and what’s motivating the customer and their purchasing decisions, you know, and, and that’s so critical.
10:52
Like most customers, like I don’t really give a RIP about the features.
10:56
I just want to know, will it help me achieve what I’m trying to do with my business?
11:00
Will it help me move the needle for my business?
11:03
That’s what I care about, right?
11:05
That’s absolutely right.
11:06
And what I see a lot with my clients is they’ll focus very much on the features and, oh, this is going to be the best way to design the bridge or to plan the transit system.
11:16
But at the end of the day, most clients think of, you know, these consulting firms that I’m helping as, you know, able to do the job.
11:24
It’s who do they want to work with these these projects last years, right?
11:29
And they’re stressful and they’re high profile.
11:31
And so at the end of the day, who do they want to work with?
11:34
How is that company going to help them get less angry phone calls when the projects going on?
11:39
So yeah, you really have to think like they, they believe that all of us can do the job.
11:44
So it’s who do they want to work with and how to understand that and, and make sure that your proposal and your interview and all the pieces that come with it mirror that.
11:54
Hey, we’re taking a quick break to thank you for listening to and supporting the Sales Lead Dog podcast.
12:00
I want to take a moment and tell you about my book.
12:03
CRM Shouldn’t Suck.
12:04
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12:13
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12:21
No fluff, just real strategies that work.
12:25
So go to crmshinsuck.com to order your free copy right now.
12:32
That’s right, we’re giving it away.
12:34
And while you’re there, take two minutes to check out the CRM Impact Score.
12:40
It’s a quick diagnostic that shows you how your CRM is really performing, where it’s helping you, and where it’s hurting you.
12:49
You’ll get a personalized report with clear, actionable next steps.
12:54
You can start right away to maximize your CRM investment.
12:58
We’ve also got blogs, videos, and a bunch of other resources to help you finally get the results you were promised when you bought your CRM.
13:07
And if you’re watching on YouTube, hit that like button and make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes of Sales Lead Dog.
13:17
OK, let’s get back to this episode of the Sales Lead Dog podcast.
13:22
Yeah, I think there’s a general or a misunderstanding as well.
13:26
In a lot of industries, they don’t understand that they’re a commodity in the eyes of the customer, you know, and and they really need to find a way to stand out in a whole lot of white noise in the marketplace.
13:42
How do you help your customers stand out and create that separation from the competition?
13:47
Yeah, great question.
13:49
So again, it starts with that client understanding.
13:52
So really thinking about the humans who are making those decisions, trying to get in touch with them, have direct conversations where we have.
14:02
So it all starts from that client understanding.
14:05
Sometimes we have easy access to those decision makers, sometimes we don’t, and we have to make educated guesses.
14:11
But my job is to help my clients really think about the other and sell what they want to buy, not just what we want to sell.
14:19
So that’s a really important thing.
14:21
The second is helping analyze what we offer, right?
14:25
So it’s not just about that technical solution, but what are the features that are going to resonate?
14:31
And then most importantly, what are those benefits that we’re going to bring to the client?
14:35
Most people I work with feel like it’s, you know, just marketing sloth if you’re explaining the benefits to the clients, but it’s not, it’s helping them understand what you offer, right?
14:47
Some of these projects we’re going after, they’ll have 30 to 40 different submittals and proposals.
14:52
And I guarantee you they’re not reading every one of them.
14:55
So we have to figure out how to get a heads or are you top of mind when we’re proposing on it and really make sure that we’re having clear differentiators as we go through.
15:06
So that’s something I really work on is just taking all that knowledge that they have and all the great skills and figuring out how to market it appropriately, which is just building their clients understand not smoking meters.
15:19
It’s building that understanding it.
15:21
It’s presenting yourself in a way that we get you, We know what your experience is going to be like and we’re doing everything we can to make it as wonderful as possible.
15:34
You know that that’s people buy from people, you know, And that’s, that’s what I think a lot of firms forget, which shocks me because you like, it seems so basic, like right.
15:47
But it when you actually look at their websites, you look at their marketing materials and the way that they’re trying to prospect and engage it, it’s completely misaligned.
15:58
Absolutely, absolutely.
16:01
I just finished up a a job helping a team with a shortlist interview.
16:05
So sometimes clients will review your proposals, they’ll get it down with the top three firms and they’ll not be coming and give a presentation or an interview.
16:13
Stuff helping this big team down in Louisville, huge infrastructure project, brought in people from all over the country.
16:21
And we spent so much time breaking down all the people who are going to be in the room, who’s going to drive the selection, who’s going to be part of the selection, who’s just there listening.
16:30
But we still needed to get on our side and really breaking down.
16:34
There’s the massive project.
16:36
We have 30 minutes to present on it.
16:37
So let’s be really strategic in how we structure this so that they do feel seen and heard and like we understand them so that we’re successful and can help them deliver a project and all the things that they’re passionate about.
16:50
Yeah, it is.
16:51
It’s about that and and establishing those connections and actually talking to those people.
16:58
I love the leverage stories as part when I sell.
17:02
I love to educate people.
17:03
I mean, it’s a big part of why I do the podcast.
17:05
The people listen.
17:06
No, I love to tell stories.
17:08
How do you leverage stories?
17:10
You try to get people to share stories as part of their selling process and their marketing process.
17:16
Absolutely.
17:17
Absolutely.
17:18
And even in terms of lessons learned on other projects, that can be really powerful.
17:25
So, you know, when you’re sharing a presentation or proposal and, you know, just list projects out, that’s not compelled.
17:33
Everybody has similar projects.
17:36
Everyone has relevant project experience.
17:38
But what is unique about that?
17:40
What did you learn on a similar project?
17:42
So yeah, that storytelling can be so powerful.
17:45
I do a lot of presentation skills coaching as well, so of course that’s as easier for us as human beings to do.
17:52
First of all, tell stories.
17:53
We’re not fully wired that way.
17:55
And yeah, it’s much more memorable way to get your point across than just, you know, facts and figures and approaches.
18:02
And yeah, it’s really helpful.
18:04
It gives the people something to hold on to, too, that they’ll remember the stories.
18:08
They rarely are going to remember specific facts and figures and stuff like that.
18:12
But you tell a story that’s engaging and, and, and connects, they’re going to remember that.
18:17
That’s a great way to stand out.
18:21
Let’s go back to the first one you talked about with efficiency.
18:25
It a lot of the marketing that I see it, it is focused on, hey, we can help you grow.
18:33
I’ve talked to a lot of people like Chris, I’m growing like crazy.
18:35
My problem is I can’t keep up with the growth.
18:38
I can’t find enough people.
18:40
I can’t, you know, we’re just trying to figure out how do I manage the growth when I have constraints that I have to deal with as part of that growth.
18:51
And so efficiency is huge, you know, that I, I can’t just go out and hire five more sales people or 20 more engineers or whatever.
18:58
It’s just, it’s going to take too long.
19:01
How do you work with your clients to help them to focus on the right business, the correct business, not just whatever comes walking through the door?
19:10
Yeah, so I spent a lot of time doing data analysis.
19:14
So and it’s pretty shocking to me, even some of my larger clients, how little they look at the data that they have.
19:22
So for one client I have right now, I did a really in depth wind analysis and competitive analysis.
19:28
So I looked at everything that they’ve pursued over the last few years, broke down their hit rate, their win rate, looked for trends.
19:36
And when they are winning in these days, the clients that weren’t serving them, the clients that were getting a greater return.
19:42
And, and I’ve done this for many clients before and it’s always news to them, you know, because they’re not, they just get so busy in other things or they’re not quite sure what to do with that data that they’re collecting.
19:55
So I spend a lot of time really looking at what are the trends that each company, each company is different.
19:59
So what, you know, unique trends do they see?
20:02
And then I show them their results and we talk about, you know, ways that what, what is this telling them?
20:08
This is telling me as an industry professional.
20:11
And then they kind of build some strategies from that, but it always starts with their own information.
20:17
And it’s interesting.
20:18
I have small clients that, you know, just keep track of things in Excel spreadsheets to larger clients that have pretty sophisticated CRM systems.
20:27
But the process is the same.
20:28
Really understand that data and what to do with it.
20:31
It really is.
20:32
And in the gap, the big gap that I see, and I’m wondering if it’s the same thing for you is they’re not they’re they are, they’ve got blinders on.
20:42
They’re focused on what’s in front of them and they’re not noticing the trends.
20:47
They’re not doing that stuff.
20:51
And so they they’re not thinking about the end in, you know, they’re not beginning with the end in mind.
20:56
You know, they’re just trying to deal with this with what they’ve got.
21:00
Do you think it’s a problem with them just being so you know, having the blinders on or do you think it’s the technology making it hard to do that?
21:12
Maybe the technology, the CRM is not set up the right way to where it’s easy to get at that information.
21:17
Or do you think it’s a combination of both?
21:19
I do think it’s a combination of both.
21:21
I think, you know, frankly, my clients are so busy delivering, you know, they’re working crazy hours, they’re delivering new projects, they’re winning new projects.
21:30
They’re, I mean, they’re just so busy that they’re trying to keep up, right?
21:35
And it’s been that way for a while.
21:36
So it’s not intentional or malicious because they don’t want to.
21:40
They’ve just had other priorities and one of the reasons is why I think I can be valuable as a third party is I am taking that time to step back while they keep advancing.
21:52
They don’t have to slow down and then we can kind of pause and take a look at how to move them forward.
21:58
So I think part of it is just the nature of the use and being in such a target rich, you know, the past couple of administrations to put such a focus on infrastructure investment.
22:09
So there’s a lot of work out there to deliver and the workforce was just not fully there, you know, so everyone’s hiring and it’s it’s a really tough thing.
22:18
So that’s just the nature of the news.
22:20
But I also think that sometimes the cross the CRM is not fulfilling what it needs to.
22:29
Sometimes it’s developed in a, in a vacuum or by people who maybe aren’t fully, you know, practitioners not fully understanding what the value could be.
22:41
Sometimes there’s not enough information to the system.
22:43
Sometimes there’s so much that it’s just impossible to keep up with, then you get garbage out of it.
22:50
So I do think that there’s just kind of a myriad of different reasons why that data isn’t regularly viewed and analyzed.
22:58
Yeah, I, I, that’s was, that’s my impression as well, is that it’s never just one thing.
23:03
It’s usually a combination.
23:06
And what they also see is when IT companies in that situation, they have a tendency to sink into the status quo of, hey, we’re just trying to survive.
23:18
We don’t really have the time to invest in optimization in Streamline, even though it’s definitely going to help them.
23:27
You know, they usually take some kind of external pressure to get them to reach out to Someone Like You or to me and say we need help, we need to make this better.
23:38
Do you is that what you’re seeing as well or what are your thoughts around that?
23:41
Yeah, absolutely.
23:43
And I think I’ve seen these corporate initiatives pushed through a lot where somebody says, well, we’ve got to keep track of all these things, but there isn’t that buy in from the people who are inputting the information.
23:59
I know with my previous company, I took over the CRM strategy for about a that time for about 1000 people or so and there was, you know, a negative connotation of that CRM.
24:13
People hated it.
24:15
It was a joke and some of my predecessors had placed high insists on making, putting so many details in about our clients that it became too much to no, it’s ridiculous to input.
24:29
And then no one was really doing anything with the information.
24:31
So of course people didn’t want to put information in the system.
24:36
So I spent a lot of time.
24:38
I’m looking around.
24:38
I’ll be right back.
24:42
I’m looking around my office.
24:43
I normally have a copy of my book.
24:45
That’s why I wrote the book.
24:46
CRM should suck it.
24:48
It’s I see that stuff all the time.
24:52
I mean, I can tell you horror stories of CRMS that we’ve come in and done rescues on.
24:56
We had the worst, one of the worst.
24:57
We saw they had 300 fields on their opportunity.
25:00
Oh yeah.
25:01
And and it was actually higher than, I forget the exact number, but it was over 300 fields.
25:06
Who in the heck is going to input even a fraction of that?
25:09
It’s insane.
25:11
And everyone’s got a brilliant idea.
25:13
We need this other field.
25:13
We need this field.
25:14
And it’s absolutely.
25:16
You’re all you’re doing is crushing the users when you do crazy stuff like that.
25:21
So how do you address that when you begin?
25:24
Or how do you recommend people begin addressing?
25:26
Like, I know I need to do this, where do I start?
25:30
Yeah, I think you have to make sure your system’s working for you and the other way around, as simple as that sounds.
25:37
So it’s always looking at what do I really need, like what’s the like the the strips down lowest version of what I need to understand the simplest things.
25:49
So in my industry, often that’s, you know, what opportunities are coming out.
25:55
Is the client gonna be?
25:56
When’s it coming out?
25:58
How large is it?
25:59
Right?
25:59
Like if you can keep those four things accurate and for opportunity Python, you’re doing a good job.
26:08
So really focusing on the central things.
26:10
And then why do I need to understand that?
26:13
What am I going to do?
26:14
Like how, how am I going to make that data actionable?
26:17
That’s the biggest thing.
26:18
Like if you start showing how this data can help you make better decisions, help you understand the past, learn from it so you can do better in the future, that’s really the secret sauce of CRM, I think.
26:30
So it’s really understanding what are the key things that you need to understand.
26:34
And then you mentioned the 300 Shields and the opportunity in the previous role, I was the bad guy who, you know, new practice leader would come in and I want to have check boxes for this.
26:45
And I’m like, I’m sorry, but no, because I’ve seen that you’re probably not going to do anything with that data.
26:50
And we need to be really vigilant about what the requiring of our users so that this doesn’t become so cumbersome that they just, you know, don’t want to do it at all.
27:01
Maybe any value will lead up.
27:03
Yeah, no, that’s it.
27:04
It’s, it always comes back to like, you know, how are you going to do this?
27:09
And I, I just spoke at a conference last week on Serum shouldn’t suck, you know, and how to unsuck your CRM.
27:15
And I just emphasize, look, it is all about the bare minimum to, to be functional.
27:23
Forget about the gold plating.
27:25
You know, I’ve, I’ve come across, we’ve come in and rescued projects that have been in, in implementation for over a year.
27:31
It’s ridiculous.
27:33
Some three years they’ve been trying to get CRM right.
27:36
I’m like, no, it’s 90 days, you have 90 days to go live.
27:41
Everything we’re going to do, it’s going to fit into this 90 day time box that strips away all the garbage and all the crap.
27:49
It’s CRM should not be that complicated.
27:51
If they’re trying to make it that complicated, you’ve got to say stop.
27:54
This is out of control, right?
27:57
It was one of my favorite things I did when I had my first national sales role.
28:04
I got to step in and work with the CSMO at the time to just strip everything out.
28:09
Like all these things that when I was in a regional role, I had to oversee and force, even though I knew that it was a waste of time and was just such a challenge for the people I was working with and mom and just didn’t, you know, have much result at the end of the day.
28:26
So it was so cathartic to go through and really strip it back and say, OK, these are the things.
28:32
And then doing that full education process.
28:35
That’s just always so important to motivating the people that you need the information from.
28:39
How is this going to benefit them?
28:41
What value can they have, you know, in getting this understanding and seeing these trends?
28:46
And so just a constant education set.
28:49
So it’s really important if you want good information because there’s still going to be a human element.
28:53
No matter how many AI advances there are, there’s going to be a human element to this for quite some time.
29:00
Yeah, I know what I’d love to talk about with data.
29:02
It’s, it literally is the foundation of your business, but that doesn’t mean it all has to be manually entered, you know, especially not by the sales team.
29:10
You do not want them to be data clerks.
29:12
How can I get this data into CRM from third parties or other sources, other systems you may have in your, in your business that’s available to you to make it available to the sales and marketing team so we can better engage with our customers.
29:26
The thing that always shocks me too is how poorly the customers represented in within CRM, you know, that it’s not set up to support success with the customer.
29:39
A lot of times it might be just hey, what do we need to sell?
29:42
But very little about how we’re going to deliver or support the transition into delivery.
29:48
You know, there’s a lot of gaps.
29:50
And so you end up finding all kinds of spreadsheets out in the business where people are like, hey, my serum’s not supporting us, so we created this whole other process in Excel.
30:00
Do you see that a lot?
30:02
I do and I got to send about a year recently working on ERP conversion.
30:09
So the company was going from multiple boutiques saying HR had said some like counting had said some operation sale, and then we were merging them all together.
30:19
And it was fascinating because I was used to my, you know, sales system that I knew inside and out.
30:25
And you know, everyone else in the same boat.
30:27
And then just learning about all the different systems we had going, all the IT support necessary to bridge and make all those things work together.
30:37
It was just fascinating to learn about and then to try to come up with, all right, this is a holistic start to finish way to put all of our, all of our processes in the one ERP.
30:48
That was really, really fun and fascinating.
30:51
I, I, we had a long term client, I don’t want to say their name, but a very, very large home builder, national home builder, very large.
31:02
And when we started working with them, they were literally running a huge portion of their business out of Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access databases that they had built just to be able to operate.
31:17
And so I went in and I looked at this and I’m like, this is nuts.
31:21
There’s so many risks to the business because of the way this thing is operating, how much data that was just wrong.
31:27
And just, you know, they brought brought us in, like, can you help us get control of this?
31:32
So I made a presentation to their IT leadership.
31:35
They had no idea that that was even going on.
31:39
They’re making strategic decisions about IT infrastructure.
31:42
They had absolutely no idea what was actually being used on the front lines to operate the business.
31:49
So my presentation was like a huge eye opener to them, you know, because my old thing is like this all needs to come into CRM because it’s largely about the customer and the operations and trying to implement and deliver and all that.
32:03
And they had all these data silos all throughout the business.
32:06
No clue.
32:07
There’s another huge area that I see is this disconnect within the leadership of the business, not really understanding the day-to-day of what’s actually happening.
32:18
Yeah, it’s remarkable.
32:19
When I work with many clients throughout my career and companies, they have a pretty good idea of the work that’s coming in the door.
32:31
You know, once they win something and they’re getting, they’re negotiating the contract and then of course delivering the project.
32:37
But the pipeline before that, there’s just, I mean, it’s, I don’t even have words for not having better visibility into all the work that’s out there.
32:49
Again, a lot of the work to be successful in the professional services industry, you have to do before that request for proposal, RFP is on the street.
32:57
Like you have to be doing your homework, putting their team together, understanding the planning.
33:02
So the fact that many companies don’t have good or any insight into those opportunities ahead, they’re not tracking them.
33:10
I mean, it’s just such a disservice.
33:12
And you’re already behind the 8 ball when you say it’s out.
33:15
So yeah, that’s something that I’m continuously flabbergasted by.
33:21
And that’s a great peek under the hood of some client.
33:24
Yeah.
33:24
And that’s a great opportunity to begin leveraging CRM to create that single source of truth, to create that insight and make it available to the downstream consumers of that, you know, that, hey, sales, you’re selling all this stuff, but I have to deliver it.
33:39
I have to build the teams, I have to be able to manage staff and all of this.
33:44
I need to see, you know, that’s something we see a lot where they, they, they’re literally not informing delivery until the deals just about to close.
33:56
And then it’s just fighting fires, trying like, Oh my God, how are we going to do this?
34:01
And so I’d love to work with our clients to like we had like how what’s the earliest possible time we can bring operations, delivery, customer success, whatever you call it, into the conversation because they can actually help you close deals too.
34:18
Absolutely, Yeah.
34:19
And that kind of when and where and how much, that’s a delicate balance too.
34:23
You know, I’ve worked with some operations teams that are like, OK, we want all of these information, all this information about how much staff you’re going to need and when way before were you even going after?
34:35
I was like, no, no, no, no, no.
34:37
Like, you know, that is not feasible.
34:39
But how do you kind of find that delicate balance between informing operation, getting them engaged, but also not and they’re spinning their wheels for things that might not ever come to fruition?
34:49
No, exactly.
34:50
There, there is like a balance.
34:52
There’s a, a right time for everything.
34:54
But in in my opinion, that has to live in CRM because it’s also giving you a lot of analytics that you can leverage later on.
35:02
You know, if you’re capturing that right data at the right time and measuring, you know, the process, you know, so you’re understanding, truly understanding what’s happening in the pipeline.
35:15
That’s other huge gap I see is people are not setting themselves up in a way to do the data analytics you talk about, you know, to understand, to truly be able to dive deep and understand what’s up, what’s happening, You know, with are we even going after the right customers?
35:30
Do we have the right customer mix?
35:33
Are certain types of customers just crushing our delivery staff even though we sold it, but they’re getting crushed?
35:41
Are there better customers that just make it better for everybody where we can still drive the same revenue whatever, but do make it easier on everybody.
35:49
Are you seeing that?
35:51
I am and I think like putting that together to use is just so important in any way.
35:56
One of my my favorite ways that I’ve ever been able to use CRM data was for a program that I built and oversaw for more than 10 years for large strategic pursuits nationwide.
36:09
So this was one of my kind of trademark things I did at my last company.
36:13
I loved kind of building this whole capture planning process and then educating people.
36:18
And then I would get engaged with some big pursuits and kind of evolve the program as we look forward and just such a blast.
36:27
But you know, we would always say get engaged early, work on the pursuit early and that’s really hard.
36:32
Like people have, you know, active proposals going on.
36:35
They have many active projects.
36:36
So they say, hey, we’re going to spend time this week on something that’s not coming out for six or 12 months.
36:42
That’s really hard to do.
36:44
So from CRM we’re able to pull data though on the pursuits where we were doing that early engagement versus not and how that.
36:54
So we were spending about the same amount of business development labor on pursuits that we were identifying early as well as kind of late in the game.
37:03
But the spread of how that labor played out was much different.
37:07
You know it was much more kind of consistent whereas with the ones that were identified later, you see this huge spike right before the proposal was you.
37:15
So we weren’t spending more, we were spending it better and over a longer period of time.
37:20
And then of course, the hit rate was so much better for those things that we were positioned.
37:24
So when we’re able to graph that and lay it out and show those trends, that’s when you start to see the light bulbs going off and people really buy in.
37:31
So I love when you can kind of marry that data to something actionable that supports the good practices that know are important to stay competitive and successful.
37:42
I talk about that all the time, the Y message.
37:45
This is why we needed to, to, to do it this way.
37:47
It’s also going to be better for you, you know that it’s, it’s it, we’re not trying to layer on more work.
37:53
It’s actually, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever that, that, that argument is, it’s hard to get by.
37:59
And if you just say I need you to start doing this, yes, oh, I years ago I had someone ask why did we need to do this?
38:07
And the sales leader of that organization at the time said, check your paycheck.
38:12
If it still says our company on the in the name, then that’s why you need to do it.
38:17
And I was like, what a horrible message just then.
38:21
And that’s just motivating.
38:25
And so, you know, you’re not helping your face there not to really show them the value and make sure there is value.
38:31
Yeah, exactly.
38:32
That’s to me.
38:33
When I hear that, it’s like, you don’t have a good answer for me.
38:36
You don’t know why I should be doing this.
38:38
So you’re just telling me because I said so, right.
38:41
OK, Dad, you know.
38:46
No, that’s crazy.
38:47
Yeah.
38:48
What advice do you have for people in or building their why message for their team?
38:56
What it’s you really want to drive this optimization and improvement in the organization?
39:01
Yeah.
39:01
So again, like we’ll get starts with that understanding, right?
39:04
You have to understand the people that you’re trying to motivate, to build relationships with them, hear them out, listen to them, find out where they’re struggling, find out where they can be more successful.
39:19
And then you start from that, like not the other way around, not trying to jam something down.
39:24
Some of the So we’re really trying to understand the people that we try to motivate and work with so that it does help them at the end of the day.
39:33
And you’re building it from the right place, not what you think is the right place, right.
39:37
And what advice do you have for people in terms of how they should be leveraging technology, not only CRM, but potentially AI in in giving?
39:46
Because adding more people is not always an option.
39:49
In fact, a lot of times it’s not an option.
39:52
I need to use the tools I have available to me in a, in a smarter way.
39:56
What advice do you have for people around trying to find a way to use their tools better?
40:01
Yeah, I think there’s, we’re just so fortunate we’re living in a time where there’s so much information and education sources out there about AI and other technology.
40:11
So I know in my industry, probably once a week I get invited to some, you know, seminar or conference or luncheon or whatever on technology.
40:20
So I think just that self education piece.
40:23
Is really important.
40:24
I know companies that I worked for and worked with are doing a good job also of educating their internal staff.
40:31
I think getting your hands dirty with it and experimenting with it, reason is really smart.
40:39
I think though I’ve seen some people go a little overboard.
40:43
And again, we are at the end of the day trying to influence human beings, not computers.
40:49
So it’s a like AI, for example, can be a wonderful tool to support and help kind of move things along, but it’s not the end all end all at all.
41:00
So I’m a big fan of, you know, starting with a draft or something and then maybe engaging AI to help improve it, where I use it a lot to understand clients at a base level.
41:13
It’s so cool.
41:14
Google Gemini has a feature where you can create a podcast if you feed it information.
41:20
So sometimes if I’m, I’m a visual learner, so that’s not great for me, but sometimes I’ll be in the car a lot and I don’t have time to read through a potential client’s website.
41:29
So I’ll kind of feed the information and and it’ll create the two person very real selling podcast about that company.
41:37
But yeah, so I think it’s kind of figuring out how it can support your business while not removing the essential elements of it, if that makes sense.
41:46
I it was great.
41:47
I got a great, I think it’s a great story about how I leverage AIB personally.
41:51
I presented at at this conference and I was just talking about how much I love copilot for sales.
41:57
It’s been a total game changer for me in terms of making me more productive.
42:02
And so someone emailed me, you know, Hey, Chris, loved your session at the conference.
42:07
You talked about how you’re leveraging copilot and how much you love it.
42:11
Can you give me some examples of how we could be using it in in our business?
42:17
I went to copilot and said, respond to this generate the response to this e-mail for me, you know, highlighting these things, blah, blah, blah.
42:25
OOP gave me this really long e-mail that looked like I typed.
42:28
I put it together over 30 minutes.
42:30
I spent like 3 minutes on it.
42:32
Once I got the output, I went and I put in there and said, oh, by the way, I generated this whole thing with copilot, you know, so here’s your use case.
42:40
I’m, I’m, you know, I didn’t write this.
42:42
I had copilot write it for me because I don’t have 30 minutes to write an e-mail like that to make it to where it’s actually useful.
42:51
And so to me, that’s all my meeting follow-ups, all my, you know, I’m leveraging AI as my virtual assistant.
43:00
So I’m doing a much better job with my follow up with my, my engagement after meetings and all that because Co pilot’s enabling me to do all that.
43:09
Now to me, it’s truly the with the, the AI that’s being baked in.
43:14
It’s allowing CRM to truly deliver on the promise that we’ve been getting for 20 years.
43:20
But it’s been hard to actually realize.
43:22
Yeah, no, that’s a great point.
43:24
I’ll leave, you know, half day growth workshops or people have the growth workshops in the client.
43:28
So I’ve been aging.
43:29
I’m, you know, facilitating conversations and it’s hard to keep track of everything.
43:34
So I have an AI note taking device that I’ll use and then it summarizes everything for me really clearly.
43:40
It shows, you know, the whole conversation.
43:42
So if I go back to, if I need to go back to something when I’m writing a summary report or whatever, it’s there.
43:48
Yeah, it’s so helpful.
43:49
I also recently used it.
43:50
I do a lot of surveys with my clients to understand, you know, where they’re coming from and certain topics and helping them with.
43:57
And I still will code the data myself first just to see the themes that I’m going through and the qualitative responses.
44:05
But I’ll use it to check for any biases.
44:07
So then I’ll have, you know, Gemini go through and give me themes and then I can make sure that there wasn’t something I missed or maybe I pulled out because I’m really passionate about that.
44:16
And then kind of that confirmation bias settlement.
44:19
So yeah, there’s some really fascinating ways that we’re starting to engage with it.
44:23
Yeah, that’s awesome.
44:24
Sarah.
44:24
We’re at our time here in sales lead.
44:26
I really, it’s been a great conversation, which we could get keep it going, but all good things have to come to an end at some point.
44:33
If people want to reach out and connect with you, if they want to learn more about Centered Strategies Consulting, what’s the best way for them to do that?
44:39
Oh yeah, thanks.
44:41
This has been so much fun.
44:43
They can visit my website, centeredstrategiesconsulting.com.
44:48
They can also e-mail me at [email protected] or reach out to me on LinkedIn, Sarah Rahal RAHALL- Lunsford.
45:01
Yeah, on LinkedIn Watts, so they can reach out there as well.
45:04
Awesome.
45:04
If you did catch that, don’t worry about it.
45:06
We have it in our show notes.
45:08
You can get those at impellercrm.com/sales.
45:11
Lead Dog really get not only this episode, but our now 160 plus episodes of Sales Lead Dog.
45:17
So be sure to check that out.
45:18
Be sure to subscribe so you get all our future episodes as well.
45:21
Sarah, thank you again for coming on Sales Lead Dog and welcome to the Sales Lead Dog pack.
45:26
Thanks so much, Chris.
45:30
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45:38
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45:50
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