Hiring Strategies - Success in Hiring - Matt Green

For Matt Green, Chief Revenue Officer at Sales Assembly, it’s all about the individual. Sales Assembly helps B2B technology organizations across the country “scale smarter,” with a people-focused approach. In this episode of Sales Lead Dog, Matt shares his philosophy of building the best sales team: Hiring Strategies and as a team across the organization.

For Matt, motivating your team means motivating the individual. He believes that taking the time to focus on individual needs can make all the difference in the success of your entire team – because as he says, in a team of four, “if three of them are a yes, and one of them is a no, then [the whole team is] a no.” And when it comes to motivating your team to use CRM… the key is to find both your carrot and your stick.

Listen this week to hear Matt’s insights on hiring strategies, and find out what the best salesperson he ever hired said in the interview that made all the difference.

Watch or listen to this episode:

Transcript:

Wed, 3/17 1:57PM • 48:10

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales, people, leader, crm, candidate, peers, organization, forecasting, salesperson, leadership, company, sales team, hiring strategies, role, built, revenue, working, b2b, thinking, person

Speakers Of the Discussion Hiring Strategies

Matt Green, 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 we have joining us Matt Green of Sales Assembly. Matt, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.

Matt Green
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Christopher Smith
It’s great to have you on, Matt. Matt, tell us a bit about your current role and your company, Sales Assembly.

Matt Green
Yeah so Sales Assembly, what we are in essence is a scale service platform built specifically for B2B technology companies. Today, we’re fortunate enough to work with a little bit over 150 B2B tech companies across the country. These include Series A, Adventure-backed tech companies, you know big publicly traded companies and everything in between. And essentially what we provide in our scale as a service model for all these B2B tech companies is ongoing continuing education and development for their revenue teams. Everything from, you know, training their BDRs on effective negotiation tactics to working with our VPs of Sales and CROs on emphatic listening or cross-functional collaboration. We provide access to talent, because we know that many of these companies are looking to add headcount to their revenue teams at a pretty rapid pace. And we provide a really cool peer community, where if you are a sales leader, marketing leader, customer success leader or practitioner, you have the opportunity on a consistent basis to connect with your peers from across the country, across the ecosystem and chat about what’s working, what’s not working, exchanging best practices, etc. And my role here is the the Chief Revenue Officer, so I’m responsible as you know the name implies for pretty much all things revenue within the organization.

Christopher Smith
And you guys really have a unique model, I think, and one thing that was really intriguing for me to have you on the show was really also that, that pure community component. There’s a lot of value there for your customers, wouldn’t you agree?

Matt Green
Yeah, I completely agree. In fact, you know, in large part, the, you know, the genesis of Sales Assembly, a big part of the motivating factor behind a lot of companies in the very early days getting involved with Sales Assembly was because we had built this really fantastic peer community of revenue leaders, specifically here in the city of Chicago before expanding nationally. And, you know, our thesis behind launching Sales Assembly was that whether you are in a small series a company and you’re a head of sales or you’re the head of sales at a company like LinkedIn or Outreach or Yelp or Glassdoor, you obviously all sell different products to different people but the fundamentals of how you do it, and how you build your revenue organization under the hood, pretty much the same from company to company. So as a result of that, all these sales leaders and all these sales people, they’re all dealing with pretty similar struggles, so providing a consistent forum where if you are a revenue leader at one of these companies, having the opportunity to connect with your peers who are all doing basically the exact same thing that you are, just at a different fast-growing B2B tech company. That in and of itself has proven to be extremely valuable.

Christopher Smith
Oh I believe it. I believe it. For yourself personally, what are the three things that you believe have really contributed to your success?

Matt Green
That’s a great question. I’d say, you know, I was fortunate to have, well, a couple things. Fortunate to have great leadership in many cases early on in my career, great leadership and I have to say great mentorship, you know, sort of going hand-in-hand. You know, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been provided with great opportunities at companies, you know, tying in with a leadership, leaders that, you know maybe despite a lack of experience in some way, shape, or form would provide me with the opportunity, because they saw opportunity for advancement, I should say, because they saw some other component of what I did or maybe just as importantly how I was doing business day-to-day, that they thought, you know, maybe in retrospect, maybe an error, that I have a lot of potential, but they were kind enough to afford me that those opportunities and, you know, third thing, you know, I think is something that a lot of people probably don’t give enough credit to is just pure dumb luck in a lot of situations, right. You know, happening to meet the right people at the right time, happen to start the right conversation with the right person. You know, in any other life on Earth 2.0, maybe those conversations don’t happen, those relationships don’t form, and I’m not where I am today. So I’d say those three theories, those three different components I think you know really have played a, you know, played a factor in the relative success that I’ve had today.

Christopher Smith
Right, right. You’re the first person that has mentioned luck as part of the contributor to success and I, I personally believe that we all have to have a certain amount of luck to really be successful, you know, and I think about that in my own career that I’m like wow, you know if I hadn’t gone there and met that person, things would be so different. So, yeah. I love that you included that. Tell me about getting your start in sales, how did that happen?

Matt Green
You know, started in large part I guess if you want to call it by accident, and I’m sure you’ve probably heard that before. So I, in college, I was studying criminal justice with, you know, clear, at the time, you know what I thought was a clear vision to work for the FBI upon graduating, as weird as that may sound. And then, like a lot of other people, I presume the day that I graduated, I woke up and I said, hey, I don’t really want to do this anymore. You know, but unfortunately I’ve spent four years, you know, studying something that would be really relevant to that particular job pursuit. So you know at the time and, you know, deciding really what I wanted to do, you know, thinking back to the fact that I’ve never had a job that either in some way shape or form wasn’t client-facing, or in any case, or in another case I should say it wasn’t my compensation was in some way shape or form tied to some sort of incentive, even going back to one of my first jobs you know parking cars, you know, working for tips for a living. So, the long story short is, you know, a relative at the time said, “Hey, you know you’re good with people. You know what, why don’t you start getting into sales and more specifically, you know, given your background, you know what you’re interested in and, you know, what you studied a little bit in school, why don’t you go into financial services.” So that really got my start in, in sales working for what was at the time American Express financial advisors, way back in 2004.

Christopher Smith
Wow. That’s wild. What do you wish you had been taught in that first job related to sales?

Matt Green
Um, I wish that, you know, that I’m of two minds of that. I wish that I would have been taught patience, which is something that naturally I’ll fully admit I don’t really have a whole ton of. I wish somebody had that either A) was built, maybe a slightly different way from birth and, you know, be a close second, that you know maybe leaders that I’ve surrounded myself with having still, you know, the importance of just patience in general in the, in me. Yeah, so I think that especially you know working in sales, obviously we all know patience is a virtue in, you know, for a variety of different reasons. And also in life and I think that, you know, if I’m being honest you know I’ve made some decisions in my life that maybe I wouldn’t have made if I was a slightly more patient individual.

Christopher Smith
Right, right. Tell me about your transition into sales leadership, what started that process for you?

Matt Green
Yeah, it came fortunately pretty quickly for me in my career working, you know, again in that first sales roles I mentioned before in American Express, I as an individual producer, and again this is an environment, just think the movie Boiler Room. My initial interview was a group interview with 25 other people, you know at the same time. So, yeah you know with, again, you know, very similar nomenclature about here’s how much money you’re gonna make and, you know, etc. So I, you know, I came out of the gate relatively strong, at least compared to a lot of my peers at the time and, you know, the old cliche and in sales you you see a producer that’s doing well, a lot of people have, you know, I think, in many cases the misguided notion of okay well that person is great at production, he or she is probably going to make for a great leader. I like to think that after about a year and a half in production, you know, my leaders at the time saw in me you know this, what I firmly believe it is is a genuine desire of wanting to see other people successful. So that’s really what attracted me to leadership and I think that that, that genuine desire in me, you know that again I believe was, was clearly visible combined with my individual success in production, those two things put together put me on the leadership track after about a year and a half of a an individual contributor role, not in some, I’ve been in some form of leadership ever since.

Christopher Smith
Was it, was that a difficult transition for you to go from sales to sales leader?

Matt Green
It, not necessarily at least, in, you know, if I’m looking at inward focus as far as my level of enjoyment, short answer is no. Whether or not I was as successful, especially in the early days as a leader, versus a contributor, entirely different story. I’d say probably not, you know like a lot of other leaders, you know, took me a little while to really get my bearings straight, and I’d say even still to this day, I have a lot to learn about being, you know, the fact of leader, a competent leader, which is something that, you know I’m continuously working on, which I hope all sales leaders are in their day to day.

Christopher Smith
Right. So let’s talk about that a little bit where, you know, I remember when I first got my first management position, I had this vision of what it meant to be a leader, and I look back now and I just laugh at myself. What do you know now about sales leadership that you thought you knew back then but you just realized now that, you know, you’re just flat out wrong, that whatever you were thinking you were just so far off base?

Matt Green
Yeah, it’s funny, going back to the environment that, that I was brought up in in air quotes in my first role, leadership there, what they spoke about was big paychecks, you know nice cars, again just think Boiler Room. So of course my anticipation and I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t maybe part of my motivation of wanting to move into leadership, quickly, and saying, Great. I’m gonna have the opportunity to get big paychecks, you know, nicer cars, etc., etc. Being young and dumb and you know early 20’s, I mean, you know, that’s what I focus on. You know obviously I think both you and I and any other leader out there knows today that what is leadership, it is more work, less recognition, less pay, more stress. So it’s the exact inverse of what, you know, of at least I was anticipating moving in to a leadership role.

Christopher Smith
Right, right. Oh yeah, that’s so true. It’s so true, especially like you just think like, oh it’s going to be so great, it usually ends up being so much more work.

Matt Green
Yeah.

Christopher Smith
One of the, I think the number one job of a sales leader is building a great sales team. What are your methods or beliefs when it comes to building a great sales team?

Matt Green
I think it all, I mean the critical point really starts at the beginning, you know, at the building, at the hiring, and, you know, taking the step you know even further back, the vetting of candidates that you’re looking to to add to your team. I think that is the single biggest mistake that leaders make, and the single biggest point of failure is not hiring the right people and lack of hiring strategies, and taking that a step further either not hiring the right people or not correcting the situation once the fact that it’s clear that these hires are not the right people, once that becomes apparent. So I’m a big believer in making sure that you are taking, you know, maybe more time than a lot of other leaders in your space to, to vet the candidates you’re looking at with your team, not only from a competency standpoint but, and I know that I’m, you know, speaking to a cliche here, but also from a culture, I would say not necessarily a culture fit. I’m a big believer in assessing candidates for culture at, you know, what is this person going to bring to the organization, how are they going to fit within the organization of course, but what else are they going to bring to the organization from a culture standpoint that maybe doesn’t already exist. That right there, in my opinion, leads to a healthy ecosystem, between leader and his or her team.

Christopher Smith
How do you measure that or assess that impact that person’s gonna have, you know, on culture?

Matt Green
Yeah you know it’s it’s it’s really tough, especially when you’re hiring salespeople because if there’s one thing about you know even not that great of a salesperson he or she is probably halfway decent at selling themselves. You know, the, the, taking more of a, of a group approach to interviewing and that making sure that essentially if you want to call it setting up a hiring strategies committee that you know consists of you as let’s say, you know, the leader consists of maybe a peer in a different department, consists of a peer that this person may not be working for but maybe working alongside, obviously just collect you know a good amount of folks that you trust that, that you believe have the, you know, the best goals for the organization in mind and have you know a good year or a good nose I should say for the right person that you might want to be, they might want to bring onto your team, you know, forming a sort of hiring committee of your peers across the organization and making sure that you set the standard from the outset that, you know, if you had an organ-, a hiring committee let’s say of four people, and if three of them are right yes and one of them’s a no, then it’s a no. Right, there’s no reason for something critical is making a hire for both the company’s benefit and let’s be honest, the potential, hiree, the candidate’s benefit.

Christopher Smith
Right.

Matt Green
You don’t want to put them in a situation where they’re not set up for success. You really have to make sure that everybody within the organization that’s part of this committee, as I mentioned before, might be able to identify blind spots that you might not be able to see, as somebody that gets really excited about a candidate, make sure that you’re all aligned as far as expectations, as far as how this hiring committee is going to work, and, you know, what the end result is going to be, you know, if, if a decision is a, is a thumbs down on a candidate.

Christopher Smith
Right. Besides hiring too quickly, are there other common mistakes that you’ve seen when it comes to building a sales team?

Matt Green
Yeah I fix that. And again, it’s, it’s probably a cliche right now, I think that leaders, especially young leaders, and, and I’ll admit that I was guilty of this in my time and you know might still to an extent in today is the desire to blur the lines between peer and leader. And I do believe that there that there does have to be a clear delineation between “Hey, we’re co-workers, great,” and, you know, especially if you’re in a position where maybe you were just, you know you’ve been part of the organization for two or three years like I was initially, then promoted to oversee a bunch of, you know your peers and friends, making sure that there is a clear delineation between, “Hey, that was you know, before you know my new role, and here is how I need to act and operate in my new role now, it’s not just it’s to be clear, it’s not an ego thing it is I have to have not only the best interests of myself in mind, I have to have the best interests of the organization and of every single other person within the company,” especially if you’re operating in an early stage environment which are a lot of the companies that that we work with. You know that’s a lot of responsibility, you know, not leading the revenue team in an appropriate manner, not, you know, holding them accountable to their fullest potential. And that right there is a good recipe for destroying a business pretty quickly.

Christopher Smith
If you have two candidates for position with very comparable resumes and experience, what becomes that deciding factor for you?

Matt Green
Yeah, I’m, that’s an interesting question. I’m a big believer in going with your gut. I think your gut is there for a reason, I think that more often than not it’s, it’s always right. So if you’re thinking about these, these two candidates and, you know, you wake up consistently morning after morning just knowing, you know, knowing in your gut like hey, you know I’m more excited about this candidate or this versus this other candidate. I think that’s usually, you know, an intuition, that, that you have to follow.

Christopher Smith
Right, right. What do you do to identify, identify and cultivate management candidates?

Matt Green
Yeah, it’s so identifying is, I mean of course looking for folks that, again, as I like to believe maybe I exuded in my early days, looking for folks that, that genuinely have an interest and have, and have a desire to see other people succeed. If you’re looking across your, your floor or now in these days you know your virtual floor, and you see some members of your team that are volunteering their time, that are extremely empathetic going around to their peers offering to help in any way shape or form, you know shadowing demo calls, or working on scripting, role-playing, whatever it is, you know that right there on their own free time, you know that’s indicative of, you know someone who I think would be promising as a, as a future leader. And how, you know once you identify somebody like that, how do you cultivate them? You know, it’s, I think first of all, being open and honest with them as far as, Hey, I see you doing this, we recognize it, I think it’s great. Here’s an opportunity that I, that I see for you as far as a career path, what do you think about that? And you know going back to the expectations versus reality, laying out clearly here’s what it means to be a leader, here’s what it means to continue in, you know a producer role, laying that out clearly and provided that he or she feels positively towards at least taking some steps or at least exploring that career path, then it is you know, essentially walking a fine line between making sure that they still continue their day to day production while also sporadically continuing to give them more and more opportunities for leadership, making sure that you’re surrounding them with mentors. And I don’t necessarily mean yourself as as their direct line leader, but bringing in other people that probably have different skills and abilities that are complimentary to what you bring as a leader and, you know, providing the candidate with a level of support and encouragement that they probably wouldn’t have received otherwise.

Christopher Smith
Right, right. Thinking about the most successful person you’ve ever hired, what was it about them that you think really made them so successful?

Matt Green
Um, it was, I have one person in mind specifically, it was just pure, raw initiative. Um, you know, and, and I understand of course that that’s not always going to be a silver bullet, but, you know, in this case in this particular candidate without going into too much detail, background was reasonable, competencies were reasonable, had a whole ton of potential, she had a whole ton of potential, which you know, which I saw her initiative not only helped her become extremely successful, one of the most successful people that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working alongside. But I actually helped her get the role with the aggressiveness of essentially, you know, pulling me aside and telling me it’s like you, you know, you really need to hire me and you know here’s why, and it’s not very, it’s not very often that you hear a candidate saying those exact words. Yeah, quoting her verbatim, “You really need to hire me,” you know, combine that with everything else yeah is that that just raw, pure initiative and energy of that, yeah, that really put her over the top in the long term.

Christopher Smith
I’ve never had anyone say that to me, all the people I’ve hired in my career. I’d love for someone to say that to me, you know, that it’s never happened, so I’m gonna keep hoping. The last part about that when it comes to sales team is, that I want to ask you about, is motivation. Do you have any tips or or advice for how to keep a team motivated?

Matt Green
I yeah I think that it’s important not to focus on motivating the team, I think it’s important to focus on how you motivate the individuals within the team. And, you know, when, when you take a look at what are the different types of, you know root motivation that you know that powers people, you know, whether it’s sales reps or anybody else it is, you know a lot, sometimes it can be money, sometimes it could be career advancement, sometimes it could be recognition, just, you know, kudos day to day. And when you really get a good understanding of what is going to motivate each of the individuals that make up your team, you could start tailoring your broad team communication if you know that, hey, what’s really going to get these two or three reps going and motivated is not a spiff, it’s not a bonus, it’s just me calling them out in a positive way in their team and the CEO, just saying like hey, by the way, you know Chris and Jake knew that you know that they, they both did a really fantastic job. Knowing that while also at the same time knowing that two other reps over there, you know, could care less about an email, call out, but it’s all about like no, I want to make sure that I’m top of the leaderboard, I want to make sure that I’m making more money than anybody else, getting a good understanding of that and tailoring your communication, both as a group and individually too that I think is critical.

Christopher Smith
You know I’ve read somewhere, number one reason people leave jobs is lack of recognition. So I, and I’ve remembered that, and I try to incorporate that into my interactions with my employees because I do believe that that thinking back to when I was on their side, it means a lot, you know, when you’re being recognized, you’re saying in front of your peers, in front of the CEO, that gives you always such a great feeling when you’re walking out the door, you know like, I had the best day. So that’s awesome. Let’s transition to talk about one of my favorite topics, CRM. When it comes to CRM, do you love it or do you hate it?

Matt Green
As a salesperson, I hate it, because it’s admin working on a salesperson, so no sales person that likes you know their CRM. As a sales leader, I love it and I can’t live without it, right. So it’s, you know, I hate the especially operating in the small company like we do right now where I’m, you know, living in the CRM day to day. Hate the inputs, love the outputs, and we’re gonna run the business. Love the outputs, so yeah, I’m sort of walking a fine line there.

Christopher Smith
Yeah. Why do you think so many sales people hate CRM, what is that the core of that feeling for them?

Matt Green
I think that if you are a good salesperson. And this, there’s always exceptions to the rules, so there’s by no mean broad and I don’t mean to generalize, but I think that salespeople by and large are built a very specific way and you know in being built, you know, from the ground up in that specific way, anything that has to do with you know small administrative tasks, when you take a look at personality assessments, you know, a lot of sales people, they you know they chose, they don’t enjoy doing them, right, you know, which is totally understandable. There’s also an egotisticle component to it as well where, especially if you’re a top performing sales rep, it’s like no I don’t need to waste my time doing this, you know, you don’t want me wasting my time in, you know, in the CRM doing data entry, my time is better spent on the phone, doing demos, closing deals, you know pre-COVID, playing golf and taking people out to steak dinners, yada yada yada. Yeah, so I bet it’s the combination of those two things, just sales people, many of them are built, a little bit of ego that that comes into play.

Christopher Smith
Yep, I believe that for those, those top producers that are just saying hey, I don’t have the time or you don’t want me doing that, what’s your response when you hear that?

Matt Green
Yeah, I’d say, well for, like with anything else in life, you could take a carrot and a stick approach. You know, the stick would be hey, don’t do that, you know, in its most simplistic form, you don’t do this, then you don’t get paid. You know, if it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen. Right? And I could go on and on about, you know, some, some stories that sales leaders you know some really strict requirements that they’ve built in where it even shows you know what may seem as menial notes even though someone like URI if those weren’t logged correctly in the CRM, compensation either was delayed or wasn’t delivered in, you know, at, at all. The carrot approach, and again, there’s especially more relevant and, you know, the smaller organization is empowering them to know like, hey, this organization, our survival, and our thriving depending on the stage that we’re at is entirely based on the numbers that are in here, right, it’s not only the deals that you close, but it’s also how you’re forecasting, right. You know, if you’re telling me that these deals are gonna close next quarter, I’m gonna make hiring strategies decisions based off what you’re telling me, you know, we’re gonna make investments and then new tools that are gonna make your job much more enjoyable, much more efficient. When we get back to the office you know I’m going to base you know how much money I spend on Lacroix and catering for the office off of what you tell me you’re going to close over the next few quarters. So really just giving them that sense of ownership as far as you know the organization as a whole is concerned, that would be my you know my one tip on the, on the carrot side of the equation.

Christopher Smith
I love that. I bring that up a lot when I talk to people that, when I ask that question. And I’m always puzzled as to why, when people are having that hard conversation or what usually is a hard conversation with their sales team where they’re pushing back on CRM, is educating them about guys, there’s a whole giant downstream effect of not having good data in CRM, you know, we’re using it like you’re saying for forecasting, we’re using it for the people that now have to onboard that customer. We want to know about them and we and we get that information from CRM and the notes you’re putting in. There’s so much thing that, so many things that happened downstream. Why do you think sales leaders are not talking about that? I mean, you, you nailed it with your approach. Why do you think people struggle with that?

Matt Green
And I know I’ve used this word a couple times, so I apologize for sounding like a broken record, but I think that ego comes into play. Sales leader it’s, you know, they, especially from all outward appearances, they may want it to seem as though everything’s in control behind the scenes, you know I’m moving chess pieces around on the chessboard and, you know, I, yeah, it’d be great if we had an accurate forecast but I mean, don’t, don’t worry about it because I you know, I have some magic that I’m doing here behind the scenes that you’re not privy to, because you’re not you know director or VP level like I am, but you’ll get there someday, so on and so forth. You know I think that it shows that that level of ego that leads to that lack of transparency, and you know, I’m a big believer in transparency. Look, I mean, regardless of the size of your organization, this is how all the way up to the CEO and the board, this is how decisions are made. So again, what when you empower them, you’re just completely honest with them in that regard, you know, it usually just motivates them to feel as though they’re a part of something, which is going to get them to be more inclined to actually take action.

Christopher Smith
Right, so you’ve mentioned forecasting, I know that is a difficult area for a lot of companies to get good accurate forecasts is out, forecasts out of CRM. Do you have any advice for people that are struggling with forecasting in CRM?

Matt Green
Yeah I would say, um, you know that there’s a couple of methodologies out there, you know, Im’ gonna pick what would be one example, it’s really just making sure that the entire sales organization adheres to some sort of checklist where it’s hey, before a deal moves from this stage into this stage, we have to all agree that here are the qualifiers, here all the boxes need to be checked in order to do so. And as long as we’re being truthful and honest in that in that, I mean of course forecasting is never going to be an exact science, we wish that it was I mean it’s always in some way shape or form that you know, a best guess. But as long as you’re building in as many of those qualifiers as possiblem, that is going to be a recipe for as strong of a for or as close of a forecast, it’s helped me have a forecast, I should say, as possible.

Christopher Smith
And I imagine having a structured sales process is gonna help a lot with that as well, would you agree with that?

Matt Green
Oh 100%, and making sure that everybody across the revenue organization again is completely aligned as to what the sales process is and again all those various boxes that need to be checked. That’s definitely going to be a huge boon.

Christopher Smith
Right now, I couldn’t agree more. I mean that’s usually when I, when we do a deep dive talking to companies that are struggling with forecasting, those are usually the root issues is they don’t have common definitions, they don’t have us really a true structured sales process, or one that everyone’s adhering to, there might have, you know, well I have my sales process and Tim has his sales process, but because you don’t have that commonality or that, that standard across the organization, it makes it impossible to forecast. What are your keys to success when it comes to CRM?

Matt Green
You know, it’s nothing too earth-shattering, it’s really focusing on data integrity, and you know, the hearings of the processes as we’ve been talking about, right. I mean making sure that that it can’t just be piecemeal, it can’t just be some people within the organization adhering to these processes and procedures and adhering to this checklist, you know, it has to be from the ground up. And I think that, you know, again going back to the entire concept of leadership and motivating people, empowering people to feel as though, hey this, you know, here’s a good reason why I need to, to adhere to these processes outside of the fact that Matt, my manager, is telling me to do so. And I’m afraid he’s going to crack the whip if I don’t do so. Again, it’s a couple different components that you have to piece together in order to have success.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, yeah. For those of you listening, he nailed it with his answer when it comes to success. It starts with your data. And then from there it’s process and it’s people. So, just a little, little tidbit of a quote there, he nailed, you know, some key advice for you, so I hope you hope you listen and take, you know, follow his, his approach, because it’s spot on. Matt, it has been great talking to you. We’re coming up here on our end time for this episode of Sales Lead Dog. If people want to reach out and connect with you or if they want to find out more about Sales Assembly, what’s the best way for that to happen?

Matt Green
Yeah, best thing to do is course go to SalesAssembly.com or if people are happy to reach out to me directly at [email protected]. Love connecting with anybody, especially anybody that’s, you know, in the, in the good old sales profession as we are. So yeah, I look forward to, to connecting with any of the listeners here today.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, and I, again, I had the privilege of listening to one of the peer group sessions, and for those of you listening, it really, I was incredibly impressed with the openness of all the participants and their willingness to engage and help each other. To me, that’s the key ingredient for a successful peer group and Sales Assembly has that, they have it nailed. It, it really is terrific. So, thanks again for coming on Sales Lead Dog, Matt.

Matt Green
Thank you for having me, this was fun.

Christopher Smith
Good deal.

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

“…it’s really tough, especially when you’re hiring salespeople because if there’s one thing about, you know, even not that great of a salesperson, he or she is probably halfway decent at selling themselves.” (22:31-22:43)
“…setting up a hiring committee that you know consists of you as … the leader, consists of maybe a peer in a different department, consists of a peer that this person may not be working for but maybe working alongside… let’s say of four people. And if three of them are, right, yes and one of them is a no, then it’s a no.” (22:54-23:46)
“It’s important not to focus on motivating the team I think it’s important to focus on how you motivate the individuals within the team.” (31:05-31:15)