Devin Corn, Chief Revenue Officer for Nautilus Integrated Solutions, attributes his aptitude for leading a team to success to the 9 years he spent serving in the military. His newly formed company is on a mission to strengthen the military industrial base by taking companies that would benefit from having a professional management structure put in place.
On today’s episode Devin breaks down his career journey post military, as well as the positive impact the military had on his rode to success in leadership and innovation in sales.
Devin’s episode is full of great advice and insight from someone whose organizational skills, hard work and humility has got him to where he is today!
Watch or listen to this episode:
Transcript:
Fri, 5/7 11:25AM • 56:44
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales team, sales, customers, salesperson, crm, business, company, people, deals, micromanage, worked, tool, support, empower, crm tool, manager, devin, objectives, nautilus, lose
SPEAKERS
Devin Corn, 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 on the podcast, we have joining us, Devin Corn. Devin, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
Devin Corn
Rich, thanks for having me today. I appreciate it.
Christopher Smith
It’s great to have you here. Devin tell us a bit about your current role and your company.
Devin Corn
Sure. So currently I am the Chief Revenue Officer for a company called Nautilus Integrated Solutions. And what we are is a company designed around supporting the military industrial base, specifically the Navy industrial base. So we specialize in component manufacturing for nuclear submarines and nuclear aircraft carriers, and we currently have two sub companies, one in Connecticut called Microprecision Group and another one in Pennsylvania called PRL. The Microprecision Group is a machine shop and assembly, and the PRL is everything from a foundry to machining, all the way to non-destructive testing.
Christopher Smith
I love having manufacturing companies on the podcast. That, manufacturing companies, people that really make things for living, It’s very dear to my heart, from my days doing ERP and working with people that build stuff or make stuff. So I’m super excited to have you here on on the podcast. Devin, when you think back over your career, what are the three things that have contributed the most to your success?
Devin Corn
Great question. You know, I started out prior to being in sales and everything, I spent about nine years and just over nine years in the military, and I think the one thing that that, that has really done to help carry me throughout the career. My career is one, not getting overly over, easily overwhelmed by situations, not getting too high, not getting too low and something. And also looking at any situation from both sides you know not only what my objectives are, but analyzing that from the customer’s objective. So, you know, to kind of be able to plan ahead of time of what, what’s going to be that mutually agreed-upon decision in the end. And then the other thing is just, you know, I think being able to work with others and build others up and build a team around me, that can allow me to succeed, because I never would tell you that I’m the smartest guy in the room, and I don’t think any one person has the right answer, and the more people you’re able to bring in to a decision, the better that decision is going to be.
Christopher Smith
That’s great. Thinking back to your sales days, do you remember that first big, first big deal you ever closed?
Devin Corn
Yeah I do. Been several I guess so, trying to really narrow it down to one, but probably the the one I remember the most was when I was doing sales in oil and gas, and gas stations and I had a, I came across a distributor that didn’t quite meet the requirements that we have for size and everything, but you just saw the business that he had and what he had already created, where he came from, where he was projected out to go, and you could see it was just plain as day. But nobody else was really giving him the time of day, so I was able to put the business case together. Get him brought on board, was able to help him at the company I was working for at the time. And within just a few years, he was one of our best customers, he had the best stations. He really was kind of that beacon customer and really, you know, always can look back and I still stay in touch with him to this day because he was a success story for both of us. One, me being able to support him but it really was the launching point for his company as well, so.
Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. Was there something that you learned early in your career or or sales train you had or whatever that made you look at him a little differently than others were?
Devin Corn
Yeah, you know, you asked me earlier on the keys to my success. And I saw a lot of those same things in him actually, you know, the attention to detail, you know he, the way he not only the way he operated the size, or the way, the employees that he had the, it didn’t filter down to because all his sites were in urban sites in the city of Detroit, so it’s a lot of the sites were, were really the, the nicest thing for blocks within the areas that they are around. And you could tell that this community supported him, and he supported the community, and it was, it was refreshing to see that. And he, you know he’s become well known in the city, you can drive by the site, you may not know what’s his, but if you looked at then you’d say, “That’s got to be one of his sites, because he’s got rose bushes out front. The lots are clean, it’s well-staffed, well-lit,” and so he really embodied a lot of those things like I said that I, that I see this made me a success.
Christopher Smith
Thinking back to when you get your start in sales, was there something that you just thought, like you just believed in your heart this is what it’s gonna be like to be in sales and turned out that you were flat out wrong?
Devin Corn
Yeah I think so. There’s I kind of think about that, because I’ve kind of done, I did a little bit of sales right after I got out of the military. I was building houses. So I was the construction manager, but the construction manager really does play a vital role in the sales part, so I was constantly dealing with the customers, both through the sales process but even post-sale. And that was very interesting of just some of the customers that I would interact with and some of the personalities and things and some of them was like man, is this really what sales is? You know, some, there’s some some unique people out here in the world, and it carried over into oil and gas sales as well. But I think the more you get used to the customers and you start to understand what they’re viewing, you start to go okay, this is, this is more like what I anticipated it being, that I had, you know, early on when you get those first few customers that light into you a phone call or something and you’re kind of like, I don’t know if I want to do this if everybody’s gonna be mad at me all the time.
Christopher Smith
I bet, I bet. What’s the craziest story you have from those days doing sales?
Devin Corn
Yeah, perfect question. I was thinking about this just the other day and every time I do, I laugh about it. You know, I just had gotten hired by sicko petroleum so um, maybe two, three years out of, out of military at this point. I’ve gone through about six, eight months of sales training with them, learning about the company, and they said, “Okay, we’re going to take you up, introduce you to your new customers, we have a vacant territory in Michigan, and we’re going to take you up in introduce you to your customer,” so. You know, brand new, the company. They load us all up on the corporate jet with several of the VPs and general managers. We all get on the plane, we fly up to Detroit BTW airport, we go into the hotel there on the airport and all the customers are lined up in a line on one side of the room on their tables and we’re on the other side. And before the meeting had even started they said, you know, we, we would like to say something. “Sure, go ahead.” And they started at one end of the room and went all the way the other everyone was pointing at me and telling me how bad I was, they didn’t want me. They thought I was gonna fail from day one. They were insulted that the company was even put me in the place, and the whole time I’m just sitting there going, I’ve never met anybody here, nobody barely didn’t even know my name yet. How’s everybody still against me that, that this is going on. And so we, to the credit of my general manager, he said, “Hey you know first off, you don’t even know this guy. You don’t tell me who to hire. I guarantee you within a few months, you’re gonna love this guy.” And so we ended the meeting and we jump back on the corporate jet, and we’re flying back and, and one of the vice presidents of the company goes, “Man, that was a pretty rough meeting, huh?” And without thinking I just looked at him, you know, again, a couple years out of military, “I’ve been in worse. Nobody shot us so it was good.” From then on it was, “You’re perfect for this job, you’re gonna do really well,” so yeah. And it did you know in hindsight too, within a matter of months, almost every single customer did apologize for their behavior in the initial meeting. And, you know, when I left, six years later, every single one of them said that was the best territory sales manager they’d ever dealt with, so.
Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. That’s really a testament, that’s terrific. Tell me about your transition to sales leadership, what was behind that decision for you?
Devin Corn
Yeah, you know, I think especially coming out of the military where, I was enlisted and officer both. And as an officer, even enlisted in the Marines anyway you are, you’re always a leader of somebody. So I had a lot of leadership experience, and was really looking for the opportunity to kind of showcase that. And, you know, being a territory sales manager was great, it did offer me the limited ability to train new territory self managers, they came in and kind of mentor and everything. And now being in my newest role where I have formed a sales team or in the process of forming a sales team, and really now transitioning from just mentoring type roles and training type roles to now I have a sales team, I’ve got to set sales objectives and stuff. It’s a, it’s, it’s tough. I mean, if you are looking at things from a different point of view, so all the things I used to you know get upset with my regional managers or anything for you know, dictating down, you see it from the other point of view and you kind of understand it a little more. But it it’s, uh, you know, again, those things that I have missed that allowed me to be successful, that’s the same things I’m trying to instill and getting into my sales teams and just give them the support, being able to empower them to do the job that they do, they need to give them the tools and you know the worst thing that I can do in my mind is micromanage them, because if I’m micromanaging the sales team, then they’re not going to be effective. I’ve seen it too many times, I’ve worked, been in too many situations where I was micromanaged. And, you know, if you’re gonna micromanage me, then you can hire anybody to do the job, but if you want a true salesperson to do the job, then you need to empower them and let them do the job that you hired them to do.
Christopher Smith
You mentioned the word Empower multiple times in that response. I think that’s a key part or key element to being a great leader, especially a great sales leader. Can you talk more about empowering or how you empower your team?
Devin Corn
Yeah, the, you know, I think the biggest thing is being clear with what the objectives are. You know, setting clear, concise objectives one and saying, “Here’s what I need from you, here’s what I need you to do.” And also taking feedback in them and saying, “Hey, you know, here’s the sales goals that I think you’re going to hit.” And having that discussion, you know, you still have objectives you need to hit, but getting feedback from them of what support they need in order to hit those objectives and not just, “Here’s, here’s where your goal is, go do it and I don’t want to hear from you until it’s done.” I think being able to give them the tools and the support, whether it be marketing materials, budgets, or connections that I may have that they don’t or additional sales training, things of that nature. And I think being open and communicating as well and not, you know, giving them the goals, giving somebody their sales goals and everything to begin the year, and then coming back towards the end of the year and saying, “Why didn’t you hit them?” That’s not effective, you’ve got to have that, you know, constant check-ins, constant updates. Again, not pushing them, but making sure you’re supporting them in the way that they need to be supported and answering those questions that they may have. I, you know, fairly recently, when I worked at Exxon Mobil, I worked in two different regions and we had a region that our region manager was very empowering for everybody so morale is high, productivity was high. Everybody loved working, and it showed in our results. I worked for another manager that was 180 degrees out from that, very dictated, you couldn’t make a decision on your own. It had to be ran, everything had to be ran through him. And consequently, poor performance form around, and constantly missing our numbers. And, you know, if you can’t, if you don’t allow your sales team to have that freedom to go out and in a meeting with a customer to be able to make a decision right then and there, within bounds, you’re, you’re really, you don’t really have a salesperson. You got a gopher. And I think that that’s, you know, how you empower them is giving them those, set those guidelines but just supporting within those boundaries.
Christopher Smith
Thinking about those two managers that you mentioned, what do you think it was about the one that you said was empowering his team, what was it about him that allowed him to do that? And what was it about the other manager where he wasn’t able to do that? Do you have any thoughts about that?
Devin Corn
You know, I kind of wonder that quite often of what makes one person a micromanager and one person not, because both people came from different backgrounds. Matter of fact, the one that was the most empowering oddly enough had the least experience in that area of sales that we were doing. The one that had the most experience was the most micromanaging. In that case, I think it was kind of, that was the reason. Cause one knew that I don’t have the knowledge to micromanage you I need you. I’m not going to get down to details, I need you to do that and have faith and have trust that you’re gonna do it. The other one I think kind of felt that it was a little bit threatening that their sales team knew more than them so they kind of didn’t, they wanted to squash that down and you’re just the minions that work for them, and then they just use you, like I said it’s kind of a gopher between, “Hey, just give me the information I need. Let me make the decision.” And it’s just, again, you’ve got, as I’m finding out every day, and you don’t have the time as a manager to get, if you’re getting into all the minutiae, the smallest details and not empowering and trusting that your sales team doing that for you, you’re just going to drown and never get get to where you need to be.
Christopher Smith
And you can never scale. You’re, you’re just a huge bottleneck, it’s like you’re hitting a wall and that’s it.
Devin Corn
Yeah, you really are. And you know and you can see it again, you know, you would on approvals that were needed by the one manager micromanager that was, they were always like, it was always repeated, “Hey I need this, I need this, I need this,” where the other one was you send it off, I need this support, boom you get, you get the approvals back. “Is there anything else you need? You know, let me know how I can help.” It was just night and day differences.
Christopher Smith
What was the biggest mistake you think you made in your first sales leadership role?
Devin Corn
I think I’m probably gonna contradict myself a little bit of not managing enough, so giving too much freedom to work I guess would be the way to put it. And I know that sounds like you’re saying you want to be a micromanager. I think you just, it took me a little while to really get what, what level of detail I do need to provide so that people will at least have a direction that they’re going in, and they’re not just kind of going in all these different directions wasting time. I just I didn’t give enough of that detail of, “Here’s who you report to, here’s the chain of command,” so to speak. “Here’s, here’s the businesses that I want you going after,” and once everybody gets established or specifically with a new sales team, as I have now. If you, if you don’t kind of at least get that out early, people just kind of scatter and go every which way and they’re spending a lot of time maybe in areas that I didn’t intend on spending and that. So I’m finding that, you know, hey, I need to give a little more clear guidelines and kind of real some of this back in so that we’re all going in the same direction and going the same way. Yeah, what’s your strategy for building a great sales team? Well again, I think it’s good, clear concise directions and goals and attainable goals, you know. I always laughed when you know you get your goals at the beginning of the year and say okay here and you got to do, you got X amount of gallons or X amount of dollars or new, new, the numbers of new customers, this that and the other. And you look at your territory and you say, “There’s not that many people in this, the revenue that can come out of this in total, provided everything in this area doesn’t add up that.” So you have to set realistic goals realistic measures. And you have to, to support, whether it’s especially in a manufacturing role, you know, hey, if I’m not producing things on time, and fast enough, I can go out and oversell my plan. And then I’m gonna end up losing business long term because I’ve got dissatisfied customers that are like “Hey, you know, I’ve been waiting on this part you promised me for a year now and it’s still not here. I want I want everything back, I’m gonna take it somebody else.”
Christopher Smith
What about in terms of how you structure your team?
Devin Corn
So, what, what, so I’ll use kind of the the structure that we had when I got to this company, and what I’ve kind of changed it to is again, in a manufacturing company and it was understandable why the sales organization for either of the company was the way they were, because they were independent companies. They didn’t really go out and look for business, it was just whenever somebody called them, they managed it so their salespeople also were their estimators. So the salesperson took the phone call, they did up the quote, and they sent it back. Now that we are growing as portfolio companies, I’ve separated the estimating from the sales team so the estimators are dedicated to their respective companies, and the sales teams are as well. I like the lead dog party you’re your podcast and because they’re kind of, for a term, they’re the hunters and killers, they’re going out and they’re looking for that business now. So they’re going to go out and they’re going out and actively calling to customers and saying, “Hey, I’m already doing this amount of business with you, what other business can I do? I’ve got another company now with additional capabilities. But you know, let’s open things up and have those dialogues.” And a lot of too, because the companies are a little behind on some of their production everything’s we would go through this transition, and they’re tasked with that communication too, making sure that the customers know what’s going on. You know, one of the big things that, that I heard when I first got here and took over the group was some of the sales managers saying, “You know, I knew we couldn’t meet the delivery deadline, but in order to get the business I gave him, gave him an unattainable date anyway.” Well, I said, “You will never ever, ever, ever do that again.” I said, you know, “I’ve always lived by the bad news doesn’t get better with age montra, and you may not like the data I’m going to give you, I’m going to give you a delivery date, and I’m going to stick to that new every date. And again, you may not like it, but that’s a realistic date I’m going to stick to. I’m not going to give you a date and then constantly change it every, every couple of months.” So we kind of reorganized into this new organization and we’ll see, time will tell, but from the customers that I’ve talked to that we’ve been dealing with, it’s helped a lot, the communication’s better, the on-time delivery is starting to improve, and we got additional business as well. That’s awesome.
Christopher Smith
Change is hard, especially when you’re new and, and you’re entering into a role like at a new company. What advice do you have for people that are stepping into a new, you know, a role in a new company, a new organization for them on, you know, what should they, what should their focus be that first 90 days?
Devin Corn
I think that first 90 days is really seeing what you have. You know, and it’s not just seeing what you have internally, you know, understand your customer base, talking with your customers, and not just doing the “Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Devin” kind of deal, but asking those tough questions of how how’s our, how are we doing as a company? How, how is our service level, too? Are the sales people giving you what you need? Are you getting those answers from them? And you need to very quickly I think analyze that, and you need to decide do I have the right salespeople to do what I need to do? Do I need to make structural changes, personnel changes. I’ll be honest, I had to do, very early on, I had to do one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and that was the let an employee go because they were hurting the customer relationship far more than they were ever helping, and you know and you know I had that was one of my early deals after that was having to kind of repair some of those relationships, those are the point that the customer one of the customers even came to us after the fact and said thank you. So, you know it, that’s obviously not something you want to have to do, but you sometimes you have to analyze it and say, This is the change that has to be made. The best course is that you don’t have to let anybody go, and you’re able to train people up and get them on board with what you want to do. And that’s the ideal situation, and for the most part, that’s kind of what, what I have been able to have. But really just analyzing both sides of things and making sure you have the right structure instead you know, well, I’m overloading my sales guys, they don’t have time to go out and call anybody because they’re doing estimate estimating all the time. So you’re either going to estimater or you’re going to be a salesperson, you can’t do both.
Christopher Smith
Dealing with rejection or losing a deal is just part of the job in sales. What is your strategy for leveraging those situations as learning opportunities for your sales team?
Devin Corn
Yeah, you know, really, whether win or lose, one thing I’ve always done is again, a military term, but do a, some people call it a post mortem but an after action review. And I do, I try and do that after every meeting, every sales that I win or lose, and to break it down and look at the numbers of why, why did I win it, or why did I lose it. And really when I go into any negotiation, it’s not just about winning this bid today, I’m always thinking about, I’m gonna, I’m gonna win this one, but what, how’s it gonna affect the next one. You know, if it’s a contract, it’s a seven- or a ten-year contract, even though it’s you think, oh it’s ten years away, I don’t need to worry about it. You do, you know, the price that you set today, they’re gonna want a little better price ten years from now. And so, you know, if I go in too aggressive up front, the guy may get the business but it’s, it’s not sustainable, because I’m not going to be able to renew the business in ten years, or it’s not a profitable business for me. So sometimes you walk away from some of those deals too, right, and you you’ve determined upfront like this feels too rich for me, my economics don’t work. And they are tough, but you look at it and in the oil and gas business, I kind of looked at as if somebody else has to outbid, they outbid me, and when that business that’s also less money they have to beat me on the next bill, but not to pat myself on the back, I didn’t lose too many deals either, so at least not ones that I wanted, didn’t care about losing. But you know, and you sometimes you can’t help it lose them, you know. Company reputation goes a long way and some, some deals you know when I was in oil and gas stuff, I lost a lot of, you know, opportunities, not necessaily deals, but you lost a lot of opportunities because of the name of the company. You know just had a negative stigma, Exxon Mobil was exactly the opposite. You got a lot of those opportunities because of the name on it and you maybe got the advantage of paying less than the competition because you have a stronger brand. But regardless, it goes back to you have to actually be looking at, he said why did we lose it, and use that competitive, competitive intelligence for the next room that you go and then also knowing what your people you’re bidding against are, are doing. In the manufacturing realm you know, maybe it’s because our cost structure, you know too high, or, you know, is our, you know, how is somebody out that if all things being equal, did somebody take a little margin on the item to get it, or are they more efficient in other ways and so you’re constantly going back and re-evaluating other ways to make yourself more efficient so that you have a better, better opportunity next time.
Christopher Smith
So we’re going to transition the discussion from leadership to one of my favorite topics, CRM. Do you love it, or do you hate it?
Devin Corn
I would say I have a love-hate relationship with CRM tools. And from two sides, I would say that a correctly utilized CRM is a very beneficial CRM tool. It helps the team. It helps management, it keeps everyone on the same page. More often than not though, poorly implemented or poorly utilized CRMs, become a burden on everybody, so they’re not a helpful, helpful tool, they’re simply a item that I have to suffer through and use. You know, most recently, the last company I worked, worked at at Exxon Mobil we use Salesforce, and no one used it. It was, it was a tool that was there, and it was once a month or once a quarter, you get an email saying management’s going to be going in and pulling reports out of Salesforce that you, that was the only time you went in and actually entered anything in, but it was because it was nothing more than a data entry point, there was no there was no return or benefit that I, as a salesman, got out of it. It didn’t give me any metrics or anything. I mean, you can look at a win-loss ratio if you really wanted to, but it was not, it was not anything that was put on the dashboard or anything. It was strictly so management can look at numbers. And all in reality, the way they had it formatted was the numbers weren’t accurate to begin with anyway. They rated everything on a percentage scale through that, thrrough that tool and everything else. But you flip that into a tool that’s utilized correctly, and now it is a, it’s a true tracking metric. It is something that, yeah, I’m entering it in, but I’m getting something out of it as a salesperson. So I’m able to put it in, and customer service is able to add their notes to it or if I’m getting ready to go into a customer I can pull up their account and say, “Oh, I see that, you know, I’ve talked to him about this, this, and this, and they called customer service about this issue or that issue, and this is where their products are at an assembly.” That’s a useful tool. And that’s how it should be utilized and it’s an it’s of, it’s of value add too for management obviously, because then as a manager, I can look down and I can see my sales forces actually doing things, I don’t have to now require the writing monthly or weekly report to tell me what they did, because it’s in the CRM tool. And honestly, over the years, I’ve kind of had to, you know, back in the envelope, if you will, my own internal CRM tools because the ones that have been provided by the company were never sufficient. I’ve kind of used OneNote for for many years as a stopgap to be able to track what I’m doing as well as when it inevitably comes time to do a job handover or customer handover, I can use those files and transfer over and that’s what again see a good CRM tool allows you to do that, hey, I’m handing off a customer to somebody else. You can do that knowledge transfer through the CRM tool, where otherwise you have to come up with a different way.
Christopher Smith
Yeah. You, you had one of the common issues that we see, you know, when we engage with a client that or a company that’s like, “Hey, we’re not getting the ROI out of our CRM like we were expecting. Can you help us?” And we start peeling back those layers of the onion and seeing those core issues. And it’s so often about that misalignment between, you know, the management team like, hey I need good sales numbers, let’s build it so I get my good sales numbers, but they leave out that whole thing of like hey we need something that’s actually going to help our sales team that’s going to become an engine, you know, where they’re going to be enthusiastic about using the tool, because it’s helping them, it’s helping them win more deals, make more money. You know, and so they’re gonna, you know, be enthusiastic about it and, and really start leveraging that tool. When you start talking CRM with your sales team, what is your strategy, or how do you go about that conversation, you know, assuming you’ve got a good tool, what is your conversation with your sales team to really get them enthusiastic about using the tool?
Devin Corn
Well yeah, I think the biggest thing is that it’s going to be, it’s going to be something that’s going to make their job a little easier or at the very least not hinder their, their job. You just hit on one thing, I remember working with some guys that, that they would get, they would hang up the phone from a sales call, and then they’d spend the next 10 minutes typing into their phone, you know, notes from the deal. Like, I spend more time on this phone typing in notes for my meeting than I do making the calls that I’m supposed to be making all day. And it went just like what you’re saying, their productivity crashed because of it. So if it’s in the way, then it’s not a benefit. So, you know, when I’m talking to people about CRM tool, I’m saying, “Hey I want, I want some it’s gonna make your life easier.” You, there’s a level of okay, you’ve got to do reports and stuff like that. But if you’re doing things the right way, you’re entering it somewhere anyway, you’re keeping a notebook, or you’re keeping hard paper files, or you’re keeping a spreadsheet or something like that, so you’re, it’s just making it a consolidated way for them to keep their notes and also allowing them to understand, oh wow, I don’t have to call customer service or somebody else before I go into to get an update, I can get it all right here. And so again, it’s correctly executed and being able to explain to them, and allowing them to be part of the process in picking the CRM in my case that, because we don’t have one so we’re going through this exact process of analyzing what CRM tools, what tool we want to use. So, I’m allowing them to kind of be in on that process and say, “Okay, hey, is this something that you guys would use, or no? And this is how I envision it being used.” And quite honestly thinking back to how would that have have affected me as a salesperson and what’s, what tools did I need to support what I needed to get to management. And so far people have been receptive. Now the other side of that too is the technical aspect of you got, you know, I’ve got a sales force that spans in age from upper 50s, lower 60s to, you know, an early 30. So you have, there’s also that barrier that you have to overcome. You know some somebody that’s a little farther along in their career is going to be less in tune to make a change, they’ve got the way that they, they’ve always done it. And you’ve got to hold their hand a little more through the process and do a little more convincing them. The younger generation that’s already kind of IT savvy and likes interacting with the technology that, that some of the year older, more seasoned veterans, maybe don’t like them.
Christopher Smith
Yeah, but you know my, our advice for those scenarios, which is a very common one, is for that older crowd that aren’t maybe as comfortable using that technology, you just give them extra love, extra attention, extra hand-holding. And they’ll be fine. You know, that it just, they just need a little bit more, and that’s okay. It’s all about just getting them where they need to be. And, and so if you start with that in mind, it works out fine. So, well we are at our end time here on Sales Lead Dog. Devin, I really appreciate you coming on the show. If people want to reach out and connect with you, if they want to learn more about Nautilus, or your, your portfolio companies, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Devin Corn
Yeah, one or two ways. Nautilus has a LinkedIn page and you can reach me or for the company through that page, or you can go to https://nautilusintegratedsolutions.com, which is our web page and there’s a link on there to email me as well.
Christopher Smith
Yeah, that’s great and all this will be in the show notes as well. So Devin, again thank you so much for coming on Sales Lead Dog. It’s been great sitting here listening to you, I appreciate it.
Devin Corn
Thank you Chris, I appreciate the opportunity.
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
- “I think the biggest thing is being clear with what the objectives are, you know, setting clear, concise objectives and saying here’s what I need from you, here’s what I need you to do.”
(18:46-19:01)
- “Some people call it a post mortem but an after action review, and I do I try and do that after every meeting, every sales that I win or lose, and break it down and look at the numbers of why, why did I win it, or why did I lose it?” (31:00-31:14)
- “I think being able to work with others and build others up and build a team around me, that can allow me to succeed, because I never would tell you that I’m the smartest guy in the room, and I don’t think any one person has the right answer and the more people you’re able to bring in to a decision, the better that decision is going to be.” (9:41-10:00)
Links
Devin Corn: LinkedIn
Nautilus Integrated Solutions: LinkedIn
Nautilus Integrated Solutions: Website
