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 achieved success with their team and CRM technology.
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And remember, unless you were the lead dog, the view never changes.
0:27
Welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
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Joining me today on Sales Lead Dog, I have Sill Jacobs.
0:32
Sill is the vice president of sales at Microserv.
0:36
Sill, welcome to Sales Lead dog.
0:39
Thank you, Chris.
0:40
Really appreciate it.
0:40
The, the reports that you need to be here and I, I, I looking forward to this conversation.
0:45
Yeah, me too.
0:47
Sill, tell me a little bit about Microserv.
0:50
Yeah, so Micro Service is an IT service provider and based in Western Canada.
0:55
We operate in British Columbia and in Alberta and now extending into Saskatchewan.
1:02
We have two 200 and 55160 employees in both provinces and the majority of them are field technical, technical services delivering solution every day to to our customers.
1:17
Our total revenue is roughly $250 million today and growing fast year over year.
1:25
My sales organization, our sales organization is roughly 40 people comprised of both inside sales team members and outbound sales team members serving customers every day.
1:37
Yeah, that’s pretty impressive.
1:38
For those of you that maybe don’t know much about the MSP space people, companies like Microserve, that’s pretty big sized company in this space, you guys that, that’s impressive.
1:50
Yeah.
1:50
Especially focused on only two provinces in, you know, 2 1/2 provinces essentially in the, in, in the, in the Canadian country.
1:56
It’s we’re pretty, pretty proud of our accomplishment over the past 37 years.
2:01
Yeah.
2:01
And you don’t get to be that big without being good at what you guys do, I imagine, right.
2:05
Yeah.
2:06
Yeah, exactly.
2:07
We, we, we were proud of our services.
2:09
We’re proud of, of, of everything we do for our customers every day.
2:12
That’s awesome.
2:14
So when you look back over your career, you’ve been doing this for a while now.
2:19
What are the three things that have really driven you and LED to your success?
2:25
I would say tenacity, perseverance and, and, and people skills.
2:32
Caring about the, the people, the organizations, both internally and externally.
2:37
We care about our customers, obviously we care about employees and, and also we have a huge partner relationships with our OEM community, you know, like like Lenovo and Dell and, and and HP and all the, you know, the community out there.
2:53
So there’s, there’s a big component of our engagement that connects with our OEM partners.
2:59
Yeah.
3:00
Is there any one of those, You know, when you say tenacity for you personally, where does that come from?
3:09
Yeah, that’s an interesting question.
3:13
You know, when we engage with client clients, you know, sales starts with a no, you know, when when you got got the rejection happening.
3:22
You know, it’s, it’s, it’s like, OK, how do I, you know, can find a pain point from a customer?
3:27
It’s, you know, one of the things that we do well here is that we have nothing to sell to begin with.
3:31
We, we try to focus on, you know, hey, let’s have a conversation like you and I having right now, now and let’s understand your priorities and challenges.
3:41
And it’s, it’s about having that conversation, you know, 95% of the time, you know, once we’re able to, to add the, to have that conversation with the customers, we’re able to find a pain point where we can help them.
3:54
You know, it’s not about replacing anybody you know in the marketplace, you know, when we start a new relationship with the customer.
4:01
The other, the other component of tenacity is as to make sure that our customers needs are are served every day.
4:08
You know, customers have pain point and we got to make sure we deliver on those on those pain points and we, we love the outcome when the customer says, hey guys, you know, good job and it give us a, you know, good tap on the back where they recognize one of our employees inside the organization.
4:22
It’s quite rewarding when you’re able to break that ice, you know, gradually and, and with the customer and, and be able to get there a positive outcome at the end of a of a project.
4:33
When you think back to your first job in sales, what did you love the most about that job and what did you like or dislike the most about that first job in sales?
4:44
Wow, that brings me back a few years.
4:46
Chris.
4:47
We’re going back in time.
4:48
I’ve been going back in time.
4:50
It was it was a paperboy.
4:54
You know, it was a lot of fun.
4:56
My first job, you know, I think I was 13 or 14 years old and I had a paper route of 20.
5:04
I started a paper route with 2525 customers, 25 doors to deliver.
5:10
And after three years of doing this, you know, I ended up with the 80 overtime, you know, asking customers if they wanted a paper delivered at their door every day.
5:22
And then, you know, so the the growth activity, you know, being able to successfully add new customers to my route along the way was I found it really rewarding.
5:32
And this is where I think I got the drug out of, you know, very young age about the world of sales.
5:38
And what I really didn’t like about the world sales that it was collecting the money.
5:45
You know, delivering the papers and adding new customers was one thing, but at the evening when customers were awake instead of in the morning, collecting the money during evening, you know, at dinner time, that was probably the portion that I didn’t like that the most.
5:59
But I needed the money to get paid.
6:01
So, you know, I needed to be done anyways.
6:03
So that was the portion that I didn’t like as much.
6:06
Yeah.
6:06
You know, it’s funny you say that.
6:08
I hate that part of my business as well.
6:11
I love delivering the service and doing all that.
6:14
I hate sending out invoices and all that, that whole process.
6:18
But it’s how I get paid.
6:19
You got to do it right.
6:20
Nothing’s free.
6:21
Yeah.
6:21
Thankfully today, you know, I don’t have to do this.
6:24
You know, as much as we have a great accounting team that does that, you know, it’s only when things get get gets out of the way that the sales team gets back involved.
6:33
Yeah.
6:33
Yeah, That’s funny.
6:37
When you were working through your early years in sales.
6:42
Yeah.
6:42
What are some of the key lessons you learned that you still utilize today?
6:48
Well, first, I was fortunate to have an abortion tee out of school to join a an IT reseller, you know, in my hometown.
6:58
And you know, we you know, I didn’t, I didn’t go to school to be in sales.
7:04
I didn’t that plan this.
7:06
I actually went to school to be an IT professional, like a CIO kind of role.
7:12
So I said, OK, well, you know, I don’t have a, an IT director job yet.
7:16
You know, I, so let’s start by going out that work at this local reseller that I got to know when I was in university and I got to like it.
7:25
I got to engage with customers, the social aspect of, of engaging with clients and, you know, finding new reports in the teas.
7:33
And I, I got to over the years, enjoyed it.
7:37
And then the money was better over time than having, you know, the, the, the job on the other side, on the customer side.
7:45
So I decided to make a career out of it.
7:48
And I’ve been, you know, doing this for 38 years.
7:52
Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.
7:55
It’s funny how many times I asked that question or question similar that people are like, I had no plan to get into sales, just kind of happened.
8:03
Yeah.
8:04
Today in in, I mentor a lot of students out in universities and there’s actually schools specifically for the world of sales.
8:12
There’s people actually go to school for this.
8:14
But at the time that I went to university that that thing did not happen.
8:17
That was not, it was not a trade.
8:19
No, I’m glad schools are doing that.
8:21
I’ve always thought that was a huge gap that they weren’t like, it’s fundamental to every business, right.
8:28
Why isn’t there a degree in sales?
8:30
Totally, Yeah.
8:33
So tell me about your path into leadership.
8:36
How did that path start?
8:38
Was that a conscious decision on your part that hey, I want to move into leadership or was that also something you fell into?
8:45
No, that was a conscious 1 after, you know, I would say just running the math here, roughly 20 years of being an individual contributor.
8:55
You know, I had developed this specialty area in one I particular IT domain that I, you know, I became the subject matter experts and and I, you know, got presidents club and high achievers program.
9:10
And I was, you know, put on the on a on a stadium kind of thing as as being a top performer in this space.
9:18
So I said, hey, you know, I, why not me helping others, you know, do the same role.
9:25
So I decided to get on that journey to become a leader of that group.
9:30
And interestingly enough, you know, that was, you know, in terms of milestone, you know, my first attempt to become a leader and says this organization, I didn’t get the job.
9:43
So I, well, I said why I’m, I’m the best at it.
9:46
You know, I’m the best salesperson, which is a big learning in this whole equation because not all the best sales people can become a good sales leader.
9:53
And at the time, the organization I was working with had a great mentorship program, which really changed my life.
10:00
I received excellent coaching on the reasons why I didn’t get the job and the things I have to work on to develop myself professionally to have, you know, the next time I go at it that I would have the a better chance of, of success.
10:17
So I worked on these four things, you know, line after line and you know, internalize them, worked, you know, towards improving on each one of those elements that were concerned for me to become a leader inside the organization.
10:32
And then four years later, 3 1/2 years later, you know, I finally went at it again in a different working capacity and I finally got my first leadership job in the organization.
10:42
So that was really conscious.
10:44
It was a 3 1/2 year kind of program development within the organization I was working with at the time.
10:51
So I was quite fortunate to have the support that I received during these years to access my my career path.
10:59
Was that hard for you to internalize?
11:01
You mentioned you had to internalize that was that difficult to further on?
11:04
Because I mentioned it was probably a bit of a shock to you hearing that feedback.
11:07
Oh, yeah.
11:08
I, I didn’t see that coming from the, from the left field.
11:11
So I was really a shock and I almost quit.
11:15
You know, I was, you didn’t sure I wasn’t, I didn’t know I should, should I belong there?
11:20
You know, that they really believe in me.
11:22
You know, it was a bit of a, you know, cultural, you know, challenge to, to deal with.
11:28
But after, you know, a few days digesting it and having a few conversations, you know, I, I internalized it and, you know, put a plan together and decided to, to trust the leader at the time, which I’m still in contact today with.
11:43
She’s a great friend of mine.
11:44
So, yeah, it was, it was a great journey.
11:47
They and they provided me external mentors inside the organization, in other business lines of business that were that I was able to ask some questions and have some guidance along the way.
11:57
And that really made the difference.
11:59
Yeah, I truly believe the best leaders are formed.
12:04
They’re not born that way, but they have to.
12:07
You have to learn it.
12:08
It’s a skill you have to develop.
12:10
There’s some leadership qualities.
12:12
I think some people, the successful leaders that are innate, but I think the truly best leaders really have to develop and that having mentors is a huge part in that.
12:24
Nobody does that on their own.
12:25
You have to have someone who’s coaching you that’s been there, done that.
12:29
Has that become a kind of a a key tenet of how you like to act in your leadership role?
12:36
Yeah, Internally and externally.
12:38
I now have 28 mentees in case secondary institutions that you know, so I’m doing this internally with our sales organization today, which I’m, I’m working for Microsoft now for just a little over 10 years.
12:53
And because we serve a lot of post secondary institutions in our customers, I’ve registered myself as one of their mentors.
13:00
And this is super rewarding, you know, in terms of coaching and leadership when, when you have a students that’s kind of an early grad and they finally got their first job after, you know, having done few sessions with you and dry run interviews and, you know, practice, you know, why this and why that and you know, have them dry run their answers.
13:21
And then some of these individuals 3-4 years down the road in their career are still reaching out to me and ask and asking for advice on their next step of their, of their careers.
13:32
I, I find it super rewarding in terms of personal growth and personal giving back to the community aspect of, of, of, of my job.
13:41
It’s, it’s part of us representing micro serve in the marketplace.
13:44
That’s awesome.
13:45
Do you cultivate that with people within your team as well?
13:48
So it’s like part of your culture at micro serve.
13:51
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s hit and miss.
13:54
We we can always do more, but and sometimes people don’t see the value.
13:58
I know they’ll they’ll try 1.
13:59
And so, yeah, it’s definitely, I strongly encourage to, to, to do that kind of stuff.
14:06
It’s, it’s part of getting back to part of our culture and giving back to community.
14:10
There’s multiple ways we can give back to community and that’s, that’s one of them.
14:13
So people choose which direction they want to, you know, go back to give back to community.
14:18
There’s, there’s multiple ways to make sure that we’re a good corporate citizens in the market.
14:24
Yeah, no, I love that because again, I, I, I know the roles mentors have played in my life and it, I think it’s a huge, huge way to impact other lives in really just amazing ways.
14:37
Because especially like when you’re saying like they’re four years down the road, Yeah.
14:42
I mean, and that those getting started, that to me is like one of the hardest times in most people’s lives is like just getting that first job, you know?
14:53
And so have helping them over that initial hump, that’s huge.
14:58
Absolutely, Yeah.
15:02
When you’re talking with these mentors or the mentees, are there certain areas you like to focus on in terms of how you like to guide them or the types of advice you like to give them?
15:16
Yeah.
15:17
The first advice I provide them is it’s not all about them.
15:21
It’s about the value that they provide to an organization.
15:25
So they need to shift their thought process most of the time.
15:30
You know, why do you want this job where I want this job?
15:33
Because I want to grow my career.
15:35
Well, yeah, everybody wants to grow their career, you know, so I, I, I coach a lot of people about turning those answers around and putting them more of a sales perspective from a sales perspective about, you know, them delivering value to the organization they’re applying a job for.
15:51
You know, that’s probably the biggest shift that that I, I have on, on, on mentees in, in those conversation.
16:00
The second element is educating them sometimes in, in the potential of the IT industry.
16:09
You know, sometimes they, they have a tunnel vision of primarily driven by the retail kind of motion, what’s going on in the retail space.
16:17
And their job perspective is very narrow compared to what’s available to the in to them in the marketplace that the IT industry is so wide.
16:28
You know, you’ve got ITV, you know, value added reseller like us, you got system integrators, you got OEM manufacturers, you got MSPs.
16:37
So you got a whole bunch of types of organizations and, and the students that in whether in marketing or in accounting or, or in sales jobs or careers don’t necessarily understand our industry.
16:53
So I, I, I really try hard to make sure I open, open their eyes to what’s available in the marketplace in terms of job opportunities.
17:02
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
17:03
It’s like, unless you have someone that’s really opening their eyes to that, you know, their, their perspective, they just don’t know exactly.
17:13
Yeah, What’s truly available to them and they miss out because of that.
17:16
Yeah.
17:17
And, and you’re looking for a job as a sales job.
17:19
Yeah, it is.
17:21
And some of the things you’re saying, too, about how you’re getting them to reframe their perspective and how they can help the organization.
17:28
I imagine once they get those sales jobs, that also applies to how they can help customers as well.
17:32
Correct?
17:33
Totally, totally.
17:34
Yeah.
17:35
It’s, it’s it’s win, win.
17:37
It’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s always about how you deliver value to you, the person that you’re interacting with and, and, and how you can help them be, be successful while driving success for yourself at the same time.
17:50
Yeah.
17:50
How do you cultivate leaders, future sales leaders in your role now as a, as a VPSL?
17:57
Oh, that’s amazing.
17:57
That’s a great question.
17:59
It’s live now.
18:00
It’s, it’s happening in the last year and a half.
18:03
So, you know, I now have 4 managers on my team and two outbound sales managers and one sales manager internally.
18:14
And in two cases I’ve promoted from within.
18:19
In one case I I hired externally or we as a company are hired externally.
18:26
And it’s interesting because you, you, you hire people with different backgrounds and different, you know, knowledge points, let’s call it that way.
18:36
So right now I’ve got a, you know, sales manager that come, that that’s coming in for with a ton of leadership skills.
18:42
He was AVP of sales before in a smaller organization and he’s coming into micro serve with very little IT background, but tons of leadership skills.
18:54
And then the other gentleman that’s on my team comes in with a strong IT background and he’s, you know, I believe in the individual.
19:06
I saw in the person the fundamental skills from a communication perspective and people skills that, you know, set him up for success already, you know, by default to be a good leader, but he’s learning everything about leadership and, and, and how to interact with with his team and how to interact with the other members of the leadership team.
19:26
So it’s really interesting to see these growth opportunities, you know, coming from very different perspective and how how they’re progressing, you know, in parallel with each other and helping each other, you know, you know, we, you know, in their different vantage points.
19:40
Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty cool.
19:42
I mean, especially I have like so together kind of balance each other really well totally and can really become like the foundation of a great team, you know, yeah, leadership team and I bounce myself off of them as well.
19:55
You know, I I’m part of their team essentially.
19:57
You know, I I’m not above them.
19:59
I just I’m just part of the part of the team and the other manager that’s, you know, that I’ve grown on the team was for the inside sales team.
20:08
You know, I grew in from within as well and you know, he’s doing really well.
20:11
It’s been six years in the making.
20:13
So I’m I’m really proud of of those team members.
20:16
That’s awesome.
20:17
What attributes are you looking for when you’re about to tap someone on their shoulder saying, hey, I want to talk to you about a leadership role?
20:28
I would say that they come to me with those ideas first.
20:31
They, they have to be winning and desiring that top process or that direction well before I tap them on the shoulder.
20:42
That, that, that’s my perspective on this.
20:44
They, they already have the willingness and the desire to move in that direction.
20:49
And, and then, you know, asking the right question, you know, why is, you know, just making sure it’s not about just the money and all that kind of stuff, right?
20:57
Because if you’re doing it just for the money, you know, you’re going to hate the job, you know, do it, do the do, do the, the move because you want to do it, you know, for the types of job and the types of activity and the types of reward that you’ll get out of this, not because of the money.
21:13
If you doing it for the money, you’re doing it for the wrong reason.
21:15
Yeah, yeah, no, it, yeah, ’cause it’s, you’re going to be disappointed.
21:20
Money’s rarely a long term motivator.
21:22
Exactly, Exactly.
21:24
Yeah, yeah.
21:24
You need to believe in people.
21:26
You need to, you know, understand that your success now becomes from the success of your people and that kind of thought process with them.
21:34
So that’s, that’s what, the way, the way I’ve been handling it over the years.
21:38
Yeah.
21:39
I remember when I started out in, in my early roles as a leader and even as a parent with my children, it’s hard to give them the space to fail.
21:52
Was that ever a struggle for you?
21:55
I like it.
21:57
I like it give, I give them the as much rope as they need kind of kind of thought process.
22:05
I, I, no, it hasn’t been a struggle.
22:07
I, I, maybe sometimes, you know, I trust too much and I, I, I let them go.
22:12
But come and ask me questions.
22:14
I’ve got other things to do right now.
22:16
And you know, you, we have a one-on-one once a month and you know, they come prepared with their questions and their ideas and their challenges.
22:24
But other than that, you come to me when you need me.
22:27
Other than that, you’re running your business.
22:28
You know, that’s essentially what it is.
22:30
It’s that they they own the business within the organization and they’re running with it.
22:37
And once a month, an hour, a month, we, we, we get together more formally.
22:42
The rest of the rest of the month, you know, you reach, you reach me when you need me.
22:45
Yeah.
22:46
Yeah.
22:46
Do you find that, because that’s a lot of rope for a lot of organizations, is that, do you find that that’s unique to your organization or is that a model do you think would work in most organizations?
23:01
It depends.
23:02
I mean, we culturally we have very much we, we over the last 10 years, you know, 10 years ago we were 96 employee, sorry, 250 employees and 560 today.
23:18
So we, we really coming in from a background of entrepreneurship and we can’t afford to be, you know, it’s high volume, low margin kind of business, you know, high velocity of transactions and in acceleration of our on our services play.
23:36
And we don’t have time to, you know, hand hold people, they, they need to hold their own.
23:43
And that’s culturally, you know, an entrepreneurship, our organization by design.
23:49
We don’t, we don’t tell people what to do daily and, you know, monitor them.
23:53
We have a few KPIs here and there to make sure performance is in the right direction and stuff.
23:57
But you know, we, we very much have an entrepreneurship culture inside the organization.
24:03
Same from me to my boss with the owner of, of Microserv.
24:07
So I, I, I think that makes the job fun.
24:11
People that are comfortable in, into this environment, they, they have fun doing it.
24:18
But if you want to be managed, if you want to be in the box, you know, from a role and responsibility and, you know, and work for a very large organization that’s got all these processes and, you know, job definition and push, you know, all this kind of stuff, you know, micro service might not be the right company for you.
24:37
Yeah.
24:37
You know, I, I wasn’t going to use this word.
24:39
I wanted to see where you went with your answer.
24:41
But when you described your model to me, I’m like, that’s incredibly entrepreneurship.
24:46
You know, it’s, it’s really an entrepreneur model where you’re saying, hey, here’s your chunk of the business, make it happen.
24:52
Yeah, it’s same thing with our sales team, right?
24:55
We got a, we got a portfolio of, of, of services offering, you know, that’s pretty wide.
25:02
We have a lot of components to, to serve customers.
25:05
This is why when we approach clients, we have nothing to sell.
25:08
It’s all about, you know, pain points.
25:10
You know, most of the time we get the customers and you know, it’s not about selling PCs or servicing PCs.
25:15
They talk about their staffing issues that they have a hard time finding people in the marketplace.
25:21
Well, you know, OK, well, we have a service for that.
25:23
Let’s, let’s talk about how we can help you finding the right people for the right seats in your inside the organization.
25:28
So sometimes customers don’t, you know, they, they, they, they don’t understand our, the scope of our organization.
25:35
It’s by just understanding their pain point that we’re able to hit hit the nail on the head.
25:39
Yeah.
25:39
You know, and that’s the thing too, where it’s like, hey, I’m not here to sell you something.
25:43
I’m here to become your trusted advisor.
25:45
You know, we’re going to become your partner in business.
25:48
That’s a long term relationship versus a transactional relationship.
25:52
Exactly.
25:54
Yeah.
25:55
And it makes the job fun.
25:56
It does.
25:57
And also that supports the kind of growth you guys have had.
26:00
You know, you’re not going to grow like you guys have if you’re turning customers all the time.
26:05
You get a customer, you want them long term.
26:07
Yeah.
26:07
Because the word gets around, right.
26:09
You know, it’s it’s we, we, we haven’t lost any customers in the past 10 years that I’ve been here.
26:13
So it’s been, it’s been a great experience.
26:15
That’s unreal.
26:16
That’s unheard of.
26:18
You know that that means you’re taking care of your customers.
26:21
So I imagine that is instilled throughout your organization as well as part of your culture.
26:25
Yeah.
26:26
This is why you know, the organization does not really have any quotas from a sales culture perspective.
26:31
We have, we have sales target incentive kind of thing, but you know, we don’t have this quarterly cadence and where, where from a customer experience, this drives a behavior that we we don’t want to to drive in front of our clients.
26:46
Hey, you know, give me that PO.
26:47
Well, I’m not really give, I’m not really to give you the POA.
26:50
It’s not I’m not ready yet.
26:52
Well, there’s still that pressure on quotas that, you know, drives a culture in, in the conversation with customers that we’re really trying not to instill inside our sales organization.
27:03
So the, the sales conversation model is, is very, you know, it’s geared towards the fact that we don’t want to drive the wrong behavior with our customers.
27:12
Yeah, that’s it exactly what I was thinking of because I think that that mentality of it’s all about the quota achieving those those short term goals.
27:20
That’s when people start cutting corners, start looking for how can I make this happen sort of benefits me versus how can I best help my customer.
27:30
Yeah.
27:30
And that’s the benefit for of working for and and dealing with an organization that is not on the stock market.
27:38
You know, we, we were probably owned.
27:42
So we have, it provides a lot of flexibility in, in our customer engagement in decision making process close to the customer.
27:50
So we, we, we, we don’t rely on the stock market for, for, for our KPIs.
27:56
You know, we have been a local ownership here that makes things a lot more fun.
28:00
Oh yeah, for sure.
28:02
Does that make it easier for you to hire when you’re building your sales team that your culture?
28:06
Do you find that that might scare people?
28:12
You know, the level of autonomy, autonomy you give your people that that comes with the 2 double edged, double edged sword.
28:19
You know, yes, you got to deliver.
28:21
Like we’re going to give you lots of rope, but you still got to deliver.
28:24
Yeah.
28:25
And you know, we have our own metrics on how to make sure we we take people from from the Ground Zero to to success.
28:36
But you know, we, when I, I, I call it kind of the good, the bad and ugly kind of conversation before we hire somebody, you know, I, I typically have a session with them to say, Hey, you know, ask me all the questions you want at this point in time.
28:54
We want this relationship to be a long term relationship, 10 to 15 years at least, you know, in terms of your career inside the organization.
29:03
And, and we try to be open and honest and transparent in the, in the, in that, you know, last session in the interview.
29:09
OK, you got the job, but you really want the job, right?
29:14
And we, we have these conversation with people on the team to make sure they that, you know, the culture fit, the entrepreneur culture culture, culture fit really is internalizing those conversation.
29:27
So we we pay particular attention in that in that stage to make sure that we have the right culture fit on the people we hireright.
29:38
I’m getting the impression from talking with you, Sal, that you guys really also have a culture about it’s about the team.
29:46
It’s about the organization, not the individual.
29:49
Yeah.
29:50
And it’s cross functional, You know, the the account managers, they need to collaborate, which is probably common in a lot of organization, but they they’re never alone.
30:01
They, they need to have, you know, the, the conversations about the size of our portfolio, you know, it creates benefits, but also creates a challenge to the fact that we can’t know it all.
30:15
You know, as a sales individual, you know, I, I, I, I need to know the needs of my customers and I need to know the pain points I need to, and then I need to turn around and bring the resources, you know, to this cause or to this project to deliver the right solution for the customer.
30:33
And you know, they’re, they, they, they’re collaborators that, that, you know, their success drive is driven by, by their ability to collaborate with a cross functional organization.
30:47
And that’s internally and externally.
30:49
Sometimes we’ll bring in the OEMs and sometimes we’re bringing some subject matter expert inside the organization.
30:54
Sometimes we’ll bring in an external consultant.
30:57
So, you know, they collaborate and they coordinate the, the, the, the SME conversation in front of the customers so that it’s really about, about the team and the cross functional collaboration.
31:10
That’s amazing cuz that cuz ultimate is, it’s about taking care of the customer.
31:15
And what do we, who do we need to get involved to help the customer.
31:19
That’s how you drive success.
31:22
You can’t do that alone.
31:24
Exactly.
31:25
Yeah.
31:25
And there are sales organization that, you know, the the lone wolf cell style will work.
31:33
Not here, right.
31:35
Yeah, no, especially when you’re selling.
31:37
I think selling technology a lot of times it’s very complex.
31:41
Yeah, you can’t, you can’t do it alone.
31:43
Yeah.
31:44
When you do from end user compute all the way to data center and storage and networking, you know, it’s like, no, there’s no way.
31:51
Yeah, there’s a, there’s a couple of areas that you can be, you know, better at than others, but you got to recognize that, you know, you, you got to reach out and know the people that I have the knowledge that you don’t have.
32:01
And, you know, it becomes a people relationship thing both internally and externally.
32:07
Yeah.
32:07
How do you guys leverage failure as a learning or teaching exercise within your organization?
32:16
Yeah, we, we debrief team and we share those wins and losses because there’s also the successes and how to learn from the successes and learn from the failures.
32:32
Luckily, we have more successes than we have failures.
32:34
But what, what we do when we have failures is that we, we debrief one with the customer and then we document what we learned from the customer and, and then share internally take actions on some of the course corrections that we sometimes have to meet have to do to, to improve as an organization.
32:53
We have a continuous improvement program inside the organization that allows us to take that feedback and, and and relate it inside the organization.
33:04
One of the key areas that you know, that we commonly see and we constantly need to reinforce this is getting in early in the sales cycle, right?
33:19
I mean, I’m probably not telling anybody anything that they don’t know already, but you know, when an RFP hits the street, you know, you haven’t been on it already.
33:31
And having build relationship with customers, It’s, it’s, it’s already too late.
33:36
It’s so tempting though.
33:38
It’s so tempting.
33:39
It’s right there, right?
33:41
And it’s right in our sweet spot.
33:42
And we do this stuff right.
33:44
We’ve done it somewhere, so many other places.
33:47
And it’s, it’s like sometimes we say, yes, you know, we, we support.
33:54
And the outcome is, you know, most of the time the, the expected outcome where you see a huge difference when, when the apportion team was already identified, you know, 6 to 8 months ago.
34:06
And you know, the pain points and you know the people and you know, then you pursue the RFP and you’re meaningful about it.
34:13
So we put a lot of focus on, on, on those situations so that each individual learns from, from these situations.
34:22
And when a new person comes on board, we give them a little bit more rope.
34:27
Yep.
34:28
And they learn from it.
34:29
Yes, yes.
34:30
So yeah.
34:31
And then we, we tie it back after, you know, six months to 8 months because you could be, you could be busy, you know, responding to RFP every day.
34:40
You stay busy every day responding to RFP’s, but you’re not going to be successful if you do that without, you know, proactively engaging.
34:47
Yeah, no, 100% like, oh, I’m so busy, so busy, so busy, but I’m not closing anything.
34:52
Yeah, exactly.
34:52
I’m responding to RFP all day.
34:54
Yeah.
34:55
So when it comes to CRM, do you love it or do you hate it?
35:00
It serves a great purpose inside the organization.
35:03
We have a lot of work to do as far as CRM governance is concerned.
35:07
Our current CRM is embedded inside our ERP.
35:14
So the reason so the answer the answer your question directly is I’m kind of in between because our CRM serves a great purpose.
35:24
It allows us to clearly assign account managers to given customers by territory and by customer names and stuff like that.
35:33
So I love it from the perspective of making sure that we have clarity at each one of our, you know, 1516 account executives on who’s assigned to which account.
35:46
Really easy.
35:47
There’s a territory field.
35:48
It’s a it’s a great tool for that.
35:50
It’s a great tool as well to make sure we keep a good records on who’s who in the zoo inside those customers.
35:57
So I love it for that.
35:58
Where we have areas of improvement is the whole funnel and forecasting kind of governance piece of that.
36:05
And that’s the area where I don’t love it as much and most sales people don’t love it either.
36:10
You know, it’s a little bit of admin work and and historically we haven’t been reinforcing that as the organization is growing now you know, it’s you know at at now quarter of a billion dollars, 250 million.
36:24
We, we got to be a little bit more mindful of those of those dynamics with the size of our organization, you know, that funnel and forecasting now becomes, you know, more important as as the company grows.
36:37
So we are working on fine tuning these processes internally right now.
36:42
And but that’s the pieces that I don’t love as much from the tool that we’re using today.
36:48
Yeah, that’s one of the areas that I find, you know, I’ve been doing this a long time and that’s a very common weakness that we see when we engage with the client, that, you know, they’re heavily dependent upon Excel spreadsheets or whatever work around they can put in place just to try to do the best they can.
37:10
And but that makes it hard because you’re making a lot of decisions.
37:14
The leadership team’s making a lot of decisions off that forecast.
37:18
And if you’re just throwing darts at a dart board, you know, trying to hope, like to come up with the best thing you can, but, you know, it makes it a lot harder to have confidence in those decisions, I’d imagine.
37:31
Yeah, it does does.
37:33
So it was not necessarily an issue in the past.
37:37
And it’s, it is becoming a priority for us to fine tune this over time.
37:41
Yeah, now for sure.
37:42
And it comes down to having a strong foundation of data.
37:47
You know, that often gets overlooked as well.
37:50
Like when we come in to to work with a client.
37:53
I see that a lot.
37:53
Where, you know, we’ll ask them, you know, just basic questions about their business and they’re like, hey, I’m going to have to get back to you.
38:02
But you know, CRM set up the right way you that should be at your fingertips, You know, you should be able to answer these questions right away.
38:09
And but it’s hard, especially when you’re growing as fast as you guys have been growing a lot of times like you’re thinking, hey, things are great.
38:18
Then, you know, three years goes by and you’re like, Oh my God.
38:21
You know, yeah, we, we’ve recognized that the current, the CRM that we’re using the embedded version inside of ERP as a module of is, is not the right solution for us going forward.
38:34
So we, we have a project on the plan of record to refresh ERP and subsequently, you know, bring in new CRM inside the organization.
38:43
Yeah, I think that’s wise.
38:45
So it’s been great talking to you here on sales Lead Dog.
38:48
I really appreciate you coming on the show.
38:50
It’s been a great conversation.
38:51
People want to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about Microserv, what’s the best way for them to do that?
39:00
So I’ll, I’ll spell my name.
39:03
I got an e-mail address, Sylvain.
39:07
So that’s SYLVAINJ as in [email protected].
39:15
So that’s my e-mail address and you can reach me on LinkedIn.
39:20
I should be easy to find on on LinkedIn.
39:24
I can.
39:25
We’ll have that.
39:25
We’ll have a link for that LinkedIn on my page.
39:29
You send it, send it, send the team my LinkedIn page and be more than happy to help out anyone that reach out.
39:35
Yeah, that’s awesome.
39:36
So if he didn’t catch any of that, his e-mail address, no worries.
39:39
You can catch that all in our show notes.
39:41
You can get that impellercrm.com/sales Lead Dog really get not only this episode, but all our hundred plus episodes of sales Lead Dog.
39:50
So be sure to check that out, subscribe so you can get our future episodes.
39:55
So it’s again, it’s been great talking to you.
39:57
I really appreciate, appreciate you coming on and welcome to the Sales Lead Dog pack.
40:02
Awesome.
40:04
Glad to be part of the pack.
40:07
Thanks, Chris.
40:08
You bet.
40:10
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 impellercrm.com/sales Lead Dog.
40:31
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