Kristie Jones, Principal of Sales Acceleration Group is the go-to expert for privately owned, VC-backed or bootstrapped technology companies needing to build or improve their sales process, strategy, and people. She is passionate about helping companies select top talent and create a sales accountability culture to ensure revenue growth.
In today’s episode, Kristie sat down to discuss her approach in helping companies build their revenue whether it be improving their sales process, strategy, or hiring practices. A big part of being an outsider looking in is helping her client’s take off the rose-colored glasses so they can get to the heart of the issues that need fixing.
Tune in to learn about Kristie’s straight-forward, no-nonsense approach to helping businesses improve their process, strategy, and hiring practices.
Watch or listen to this episode:
Transcript:
Thu, 3/31 · 11:35:27 33:55
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sales people crm business quota problem expectations vc fields listen hygiene leaders helping founder privately owned company company data client process outbound prospecting
Speakers
Christopher Smith & Kristie Jones
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 a special guest, Kristie Jones, from Sales Acceleration Group. Kristie, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
Kristie Jones
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to have conversation today around all things good sales leaders should know.
Christopher Smith
There you go. I love it. And I’m excited to have you here. Kristie, tell me about Sales Acceleration Group.
Kristie Jones
Sure, Christopher, I started the company about five years ago, I have prior to that about 15 years of SAS sales leadership experience. And so I made a decision that I could help more than one company at a time and so I branched out. And really my main swim lane, as I say, is mostly helping privately owned companies, a lot of my companies are VC backed, a lot of them are in the software space. So, a lot of tech startups. So, I say I do zero and I do improvement. And so, a lot of times when a company gets funding for maybe a VC or a PE or just bootstrapping and are ready to kind of formalize and build out the sales process sales strategy tools, and people I come in to help do that. And then when things are maybe not going as well, I get that call to come, I call it, look under the hood. And I look around and the people process and tools again, to see what can be done most times I would say processes broken. So, I never, you know ever throw people under the bus until I’ve seen the process. Normally, we can fix a lot of the people problems if we fix the process. So, I really enjoy it. I say I’m a process strategist, obviously, I’m also a sales trainer by just organically needing to help people with the sales process and doing some improvement and sales, soft skills training there as well. But I love the area that I’m in. I love helping privately owned companies, you know take that million dollar idea and turn it into a $20 million, or a $200 million idea however far they can take it.
Christopher Smith
You know, I love that. And that’s one of the reasons I’m so excited to have you on the show. Because I’m a huge process guy. It’s all about process if you want to be successful. And so I want to go back and break those two segments down and dive a little bit deeper. So, for those companies that come to you that they’re VC backed, and they’re just getting started, what are those problems or issues or goals that they have for you to really get them going? Could you talk about that?
Kristie Jones
Yeah, I mean, there’s really no formality, right. So again, all good VC backed startups start with founder led sales, as I call it. So, and that’s always a little bit interesting, because a lot of founders don’t have a sales or marketing background. But they built the product, made the baby and then went out into the world and their passion really carried them through the sales process. Like, they know everything about their own product, because they built it. And the passion behind that and the reason why, my favorite founder’s story is I was working for the man. And I had a problem that I went out into the world to find a solution for and there wasn’t one and I thought if I have this problem that everybody has this problem in my position, and so they got some money, and they solved the problem, right? So, we love that. But they’re not sales or marketing leaders for the most part. So, I mean, everything from mis hiring, right? So, I walk into a lot of companies. So, one of the services that I offer is what I call hiring help. I’m not a recruiter, I don’t source but I project manage the hiring process, because I say sales reps are professional interviewees. And so, mistakes happen. So, you know, helping people guide through again, like, hunters are hard to hire, you know, they’re slippery. And so, you’ve got to make sure you find the right one. So, everything from like, they don’t necessarily have, you know, if they’ve tried to hire or replace themselves. If I say, sometimes they’ve made some mistakes around that. Chances are, they don’t have a formal prospecting process at all. Again, they’ve been, you know, calling on the friends and family card, if you will, and investors have helped out and throwing them some business, but they don’t have a formal outbound prospecting strategy. They don’t have a formal inbound strategy. And so really, I call it building top of the funnel, so I spent a ton of time helping them build the top of the funnel, and then building out the stages of the sales cycle. I put checklists together, right? It’s like, every stage has a checklist, what are the things that need to be accomplished in order to move to the next stage, like what’s the qualification for even getting in the pipeline? And then there’s a nurture perspective, I call it in our ends, not right now. The world is filled with not right now. And so apathy is the number one reason why deals don’t close, right. And so those are filled with not right now. So, do we have a not right now strategy? Most people call that a nurture strategy of some sort, but I don’t mean just kicking it back to marketing. I mean, what is it the sales rep better do to ensure that that deal will close at some point, because you’ve already put on, but you’ve already put in all the hard work. Yeah, no, no reason to quit now.
Christopher Smith
Yeah. So, you know, you talked about a lot there that I think applies to really just about any business, regardless of where you’re at in your life cycle fears. You talked about a lot of issues that I guarantee you, there’s people listening to go and get those three, I’ve got those three problems. What are some of the what’s the advice you have for, you know, if I have one of those problems, and I want to really begin addressing it, what advice do you have for those people how to get started?
Kristie Jones
Yeah, I say process before people. So, you know, bringing in people without processes really setting them up to fail. And that’s just frustrating for them and frustrating for you, right? And then, you know, I get I get a call from founders all the time saying, like, sales teams broken, like something’s wrong, and I go, Hmm, maybe I go, I don’t come in just to do a sales team evaluation, I said, I meant to look at the process to, you know, and for most of the time, that’s the reason, right? And so, you’ve got to have that formalized process. If you don’t put top of the funnel in, then, you know, most people again, remember, like, in my world only, I mean, a good day 20% are closing, right, that means 80% are not closing, that means we have to keep filling 80% the top, that’s hard. You know, outbound prospecting is hard. But without an in most of it’s just consistency. Right? What I find is, you know, we have tools out there now, right? HubSpot got sequences, sales, loft outreach, Apollo, like, you name it, we got prospecting automation tools, right? So, there’s no excuse anymore, for not being consistent about that. But that really is the problem. So, the founder will say, well, yeah, I made a bunch of calls last week, and I go- What have you done this week? Nothing, right, or the sales rep, you know, got, well, we had to then we had to stop doing that. So, we could do this. And so really helping them understand that like the only way to be successful building top of the funnel with an outbound prospecting strategy is consistency. Because you know, you just can’t start and stop. Like I always say at four days go by and the prospect doesn’t hear from you assume to start at zero again.
Christopher Smith
Right. And one of the things you said there, you mentioned a bunch of tools like Apollo and SalesLoft. And all that. One of the things I see is people will bring in technology thinking that’s gonna fix the problem. Yeah. What do you say about that?
Kristie Jones
It’s just a tool to execute. Right? Execution tool. That’s not the tool, right? That’s not the process. They don’t create the process. They just help execute.
Christopher Smith
Yeah, I was listening to you. And there’s a friend of mine, who’s an entrepreneur here in Denver that took his business from, you know, three, 4 million range to 12 million. And as he was going through that, he was churning through salespeople. And he was constantly saying, like, you know, my sit, I can’t find any good salespeople. I’m just, I’m, I’m, you know, just it’s a revolving door. And then it finally dawned on him. problems, not the salespeople that problems me, I had no process, I have no support. I’m thinking I’m hiring a Rolodex to solve this problem for me that they’re gonna come in and fix all my issues. Yes, that’s not how it works. Do you see that a lot in your world?
Kristie Jones
Um, I really don’t anymore. I used to see the Rolodex problem all the time. You know, they’re like, I have to hire someone in my industry, I have to hire someone in my industry. And I said, here’s the deal. Most people in your industry sold them the product, and they’re under contract. So, I mean, like, you know, I said, you need a good solution, salesperson. And again, I don’t like, I’ll be honest, I don’t really hire people who have sold a product. But if you’ve sold any kind of service, I can make that work, right? As long as you’re telling heavy equipment or you know, something like that piping or, you know, some sort of a product. And so I said, we just need a good solution seller, right? Who understands the concept of process, who understands the importance of discovery, who understands that discovery is not an event. So, a lot of people think discovery is just a call to understand that discovery, you know, is part of the process, and it’s not an event. And so, you know, I’m just pretty firm up front with people about what they should be looking for and expecting. And there are times that people have brought in, I have a client in Kansas City that is in the automotive industry, and they built their first sales team with people from the automotive industry. Now, nobody’s from the automotive industry. So, you’ve learned your lesson the hard way, and I just said, you need hunters, you need solution selling hunters. And we can teach them the industry. Right. But I mean, I’m always shocked at the number of candidates that I interview and then end up hiring that have had zero formal sales training at a prior job, like about 85%. Yeah, they’ve had industry training, they’ve had product training. They’ve been trained on the process, but they don’t have basic sales skills train, they don’t have soft skills training.
Christopher Smith
Right, right. So, we’ve talked a lot about the VC world. Let’s talk about the other component of your business, that the non VC customers. What are the problems they’re dealing with and your solutions they’re looking for when they engage with you?
Kristie Jones
Yeah. Some of my clients, I call like the 20-year startup, right. So, they’ve been around, they’ve been plugging along. It’s a lifestyle business. But it’s harder along the way, right. And a lot of those cases, sometimes the owner was playing sales leader, and everything seemed fine. But for some reason, like something changed, something got harder, you know, the industry changes the economic situation change globally, or something like that. And so, a lot of times, it’s a lot of the same problems, actually. It’s just there’s not the pressure of the board. Right, are the end the VC backed company, I mean, the thing that makes the startup so unique in the VC back situation is you go before the board every month, right? When the pressure that the pressure that the people have invested in want their money back, is super high, you know, in a privately owned company. And a lot of those, by the way, are family-owned companies, like I spent a lot of family-owned companies, right. And so, you know, the board happens at the kitchen table. And it can happen on any given night of the week. There may not be some formality around that. But I had a family owned, privately owned company, when I first started my business, who reached out and kind of said, can we have lunch and got to lunch, and there was some human heart. And I said, what am I doing here? And he’s like, we haven’t been profitable for the last three years. And I was like, wow, okay. Had we actually had a business relationship in a prior life, where he was a partner of a channel partner of a company I worked at previously. And I was like, oh, my gosh, and he said, can you take a look? And I said, sure, well, his compensation plan was just crazy. Like, he wasn’t competent, like it was evergreen, like any and he had reps that had been there 16 years. So, you know, you start to do the math on that. And I’m like, your payroll to revenue ratio is off the chart. Right? And then they don’t know what they don’t know, right. And I think a lot of times, in that situation, I get that type of call, because I’m not in the circle, right. Like, I’m not part of the golf foursome, I’m not having a cigar after work with bourbon. And like, they’re like a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, spend time with other entrepreneurs. But that’s an embarrassing conversation to bring up, right? Like, everybody’s sitting around looking successful. And all of a sudden, you haven’t been making any money for two to three years. And so, I get that call to where I’m a safe person to call, you know, I’m not gonna, I may run into you to the grocery store, but I’m not gonna run into you on the seventh hole. And so, you know, those are I get those calls to where, hey, listen, like, you know, I heard your name through somebody or, you know, and things just haven’t been going that well.
Christopher Smith
How do you engage with those customers? You know, is it different than the startups?
Kristie Jones
Um, it is a little bit because it’s, sometimes it’s undoing things, right? Whereas at least I love the startup world, because I get to come in there at almost zero, right? And so, we’re building it from we’re building it from zero, which means we get we can do it right the first time. In this case, I have to come in, you know, at that point, I say, I got to come in and do that evaluation, right. I got to know what we’re dealing with. And then things like this, like I just described pop up, like, oh, my gosh, you’re paying them what? Like no, no, that’s an industry standard, like, no wonder you’re broke. And so really getting in there and seeing like, what, you know, from a sales perspective, where are we at? You know, you’ve had the same manager for 20 years, hypothetically. Right. And so, you like unless that person is going out and getting additional training. So, a lot of times, we’re like, hey, like, techniques have changed. Technology is like, again, a lot of those companies are not up on a lot of the tech that we now have- new outbound prospecting, you know, techniques. I call it the dreaded threaded, you know, so remember when we all like every email started with our EA. And I saw people doing that they’re like, yep, and I’m like, oh, yeah, people are on to that now. We can’t do that anymore. Right. That only worked for like the first 18 months. And then people were wise to that. But you know, somebody read an article right? A few years ago, threading is the way to do yes, but thread these emails and they’re still doing that, right. So, a lot of times it’s coming in and saying, hey, listen, it’s time to drink different Kool Aid. And if they’ve had longtime employees, that’s a little bit of a challenge, right? Because that’s ingrained. It’s not just a sales problem. It’s a cultural issue.
Christopher Smith
Oh, yeah. And those are often the hardest to solve. What advice do you have for a sales leader that is listening and saying, hey, that’s me. That’s my business. Living, you know, that’s us. What’s your advice?
Kristie Jones
You know what, there’s so many great resources out there that never existed. So, there are fabulous books and fabulous authors out there, you know, because of the pandemic. I mean, there were never cheaper ways to get educated than there are right now. You know, you don’t have to go get on a plane and go to a two-day seminar anymore. You can take a two day seminar online for half the price or so. I mean, there’s so many, so I would say, I guess I get most frustrated with people who are not doing their own professional development or personal development. Like I’m on a lifelong learner campaign. It’s my obligation to my clients, you know, to read books to stay on top of things, to attend webinars to go to seminars, you know, go to conferences, so that I can bring that back. But I also expect you to do some of your own, you know, education as well. And again, like, we probably have more resources than we need right now. Right? It’s almost overwhelming. But I’m just surprised that people when I say like, you know, what, what’s the last leadership book you like? What’s the last business book you write? And I’m like, I’m an audible junkie. So now I just say, What’s the last business book you listen to? But there’s so that I mean, like, I’m always listening to something. And you know, and again, like, there are no new ideas. We’re just recycling old and like, customizing them or tailoring them to our situation.
Christopher Smith
Yep. Yep. So as part of our prep for the podcast, I always like to ask the guests, is there one topic you’re really passionate about that you want to talk about today? And you brought up accountability, which I love. Talk to me about accountability as a sales leader.
Kristie Jones
Yeah, I that’s kind of the other challenge I walk into for sure. Christopher is, is we may or we may or may not even have a quota when I walk in the door, by the way, but in the event, I have a quota. Well, we’re gonna we’re going to put one in place. I said, now we can do this. But what happens if they don’t hit quota? Or they’re off target? And I go, What do you mean? I said, Well, what are the consequences? Because it’s only fair that the sales rep knows what the expectations are? And what will happen if, right, and so that’s where it gets, it’s probably most tricky. As you pointed out, it’s probably most tricky in the, in the non VC companies and the privately held bootstrapped family owned, right, because the family work starts to creep in creeps a little bit on the VC side, too. But you know, they’re like, hey, like, well, we’re not gonna terminate anybody. And I said, Well, okay, but But you know, like, I call this addition by subtraction, right? And so, we have to hold if you’re not going to hold people accountable, and you’re not going to put them on a performance improvement plan or have a verbal conversation, or, you know, send them out for training, like, what are we going to do? And so but what happened, what I find is that people think so people think expectation setting is micromanaging, which is not. And then people think accountability is punishment, which it’s not. So it really is how I frame it. And I really, you know, and I really say to them, like, they’re, you know, there’s a reason why, you know, majority of sales reps are not at 70%, of quota. And I wonder how much of that is accountability? Now, is there a chance that the that the quota is inflated, particularly in a VC backed company? Sure, there is, but everybody should be getting 80%? Right. And so do we, you know, and having, like I say, to people go, you have to have it, you have to have the upfront January expectation conversation. And again, just like discovery is a process, not an event. That’s not an event, either, we need to do that quarterly. I mean, the business environment left last year, right. 2020 I mean, businesses were shifting on a 30 day mark, if not a three day mark. And so how on earth, you know, and even last year, I said to people, I go, have you sat down with every one of the sales reps and told them what your work from home expectation is, like, you know, they’ve got kids, right, you know, they’re doing homeschooling. So is it okay, if they get on at 6am? And take a break at 11? And don’t come back until two but work till seven? And do they know that that’s okay, or not? Okay. Right. And so it’s everything, like, I have communication expectations, discussions, like, you know, when I was in, when I was in the office, I told people, I’m like, Hey, listen, like, you can totally just come and sit stand in my doorway. That’s acceptable communication for me, right. Whereas other managers be like, don’t hover, I don’t like that. You know, so I don’t think people really understood leaders really necessarily understand all of the categories of expectations. It’s not just say, hey, here’s your half million dollar quota for 2021. Go get them Tiger.
Christopher Smith
Yeah, I just had a conversation today with an owner of a company who we were talking about accountability from a CRM perspective, owning the data in CRM. It’s an ongoing issue at his company. This is a new client of ours. And he said to me, I’ve had this discussion with my sales team so many times. Why are sales leader leaders having to repeat these discussions? What’s missing?
Kristie Jones
I think a upfront conversations and expectations. So I mean, I just came into a client recently. And it’s a it’s a mess, like they’ve got Salesforce. And it’s just like, I mean, you know, that’s a pound gorilla. And most people don’t even need that, you know, that kind of, you know, expansive CRM system. But I mean, it’s just a mess. And I and then I, you know, start to interview people as I do, and the Head of Customer successes. Yeah, like nobody’s like nobody’s filling out notes. I go, what duck? Well, if filling out the fields, because we made it mandatory, but they’re not actually like writing anything in you know, they’re not completing a call note. And I’m like, Huh. I’m like, Why do you think that is? She goes, because nobody’s made them. I’m like, really good. And I’m really militant about it. Like, you know, like, I have I CRM hygiene, I have no zero tolerance. And so I do think like, it’s setting the expectation, but it’s explaining the why. And I say to people, like listen Then we bought this as an employee benefits, like, like health care life Dental, like PTO, we gave you the most important tool that you’re ever going to have? How on earth are you expected to remember a conversation you had 30 days ago? If you do not complete your call notes in the CRM system? And how are you supposed to know how many calls you even need to make every day? If we don’t have the data to help you do your personal sales math? And so I say, I mean, it’s not negotiable. And I say to them, Listen, if you don’t want to do sales, hygiene, that’s cool. I’m gonna opt out of the base salary, too, but that’s okay.
Christopher Smith
Oh, yeah, that is, I cannot agree, I people that are listening, if you watch us on YouTube, you see me like going, you know, raise of arms go, yeah, because I could not agree more that that’s the part that’s missing is the why you have to explain why it’s important. It’s not enough to just say, do this, right, you have to get people to buy in. And unless you live in like, somewhere, we have absolute control, which doesn’t exist. You have to give them a why a meaningful, why? How it helps them. But it’s also how it helps the rest of the organization is making decisions based upon what’s in CRM, customer success is preparing for that handoff, you know, when that deal is closed by the notes, the information that’s in serum, if it’s not there, they can’t do their job. Yeah, that customers, that relationship is not going to be managed appropriately. You know, so
Kristie Jones
you’re the star consultant. Now at one of those plants I mentioned. And he says, I’m putting together literally, I’ve done this this week, this is where I spent a decent time, I put a Salesforce Expectations Document together, CRM Expectations Document together. And I said to him, like, and he’s been like, you know, the magic on the back end. And he’s been, you know, creating the reports and all of this, and, you know, doing all the integrations and those type of things. And I sent it to him, and I sent to this customer success director, and I said, what’s missing, like, I just I said, just the basics, but we’re gonna roll this out to the team next week, and it’s gonna be on again, like, it’s fine, I have to come in and reset expectations or set expectations that were never there. And at the bottom, he put, if it’s not in the CRM system, it never happened. I feel the exact same way. But he’s like you put into this into this funky font and put it in blue. And it was hilarious. And I was like, I’m like, it’s so true. But I said, you guys like this is not like a go, this is not punishment. And for every sales job, there is a percentage of administration that has to happen, right? Like, this is just part of the job. But most people don’t understand. I go into a lot of companies, Christopher, where they don’t understand that, like all personal sales math, right. And they like they don’t know what their close rate is, what their average sale is, what our sales cycle is. And so like, they just know that they’ve got the same half million dollar quotas, the three people sitting around them, but they have no idea that they can get they’re different, they’re gonna probably get there a different way than each of those three people that everybody’s going to get there a different way. Well, if I don’t have that data in the CRM system, how on earth am I going to help you figure that out?
Christopher Smith
That’s right. There’s no way like if you get into trouble, and you’re, you’re like, you had a great first quarter, but your second quarter sucks. How can you figure out why? If you can’t go back and look at CRM, and say, hey, you know, I see you doing this, have you thought about trying this?
Kristie Jones
Yes. Okay. Yeah. And it’s just and I think they get, you know, sales managers, like, they, you know, we get worn down just like anybody, right. So, and so, you’re like, you know, you get pushed back on that. And I just have just been real like, again, since I mean, I go all back, my first CRM system, I’ll date myself was goldmine. And going all the way back, back in the day, and, you know, I was I knew, like, I’m a data chick, right. And so I knew that there was liquid gold, and then there hills that no pun intended for gold mine. But there was, and so I was like, guys, like you like help me help you. Help you help yourself, you know, and then again, like you said, and then help, you know, help the customer service team and help the customer success team. You, like, help us figure all this out? Help marketing, like all of that data is so important. And it’s really like, Yeah, I think, you know, I think when you approach it as a punishment, that’s what it’s going to feel like, right? But if you approach it as this is like, like, assume I’m giving this to you, just as I gave you health insurance. It’s that important. And I think,
Christopher Smith
in my opinion, yeah. And it’s, it’s, I love what you said about this is not a punishment, this is you know, we’re giving you another tool for success. That’s what this is all about. It’s a tool to help us succeed for everyone to achieve their goals, your personal goals, you know, be a compensation or success or you know, the feeling you get when you hit quota. But it’s also for the whole organization, we’re all working towards the same thing. We all have to be, you know, pulling in the same direction. That’s right. So, if I’ve got that team, you know, if you were in that room with a business owner I was today, what would you say to to him?
Kristie Jones
Like, it really has to be a non negotiable. I mean, it really does. And they’re just some non negotiables. And the reason why we can have them is because we are paying you a salary. You know, I’m like, if you’re 100%, commission rep, I got a little less leverage, right. But I’m paying you a salary plus a variable compensation component for a nice, you know, total package, including the benefits and all the other things and stock options in a lot of my cases, right. And so like, I have a right, I take it to people, I pay you a salary, so I can tell you what to do. And one of the things I need you to do is, you know, like, again, it’s consistently prospect itself, source your own deals, if you’re an account executive, it’s Salesforce, hygiene, CRM hygiene, like it’s all of those things. And so, you know, they, you have to lay that out, and then, you know, there’s just, it really isn’t, you know, I mean, honestly, like, I would term somebody if it wasn’t a consistent problem over time. Because it just like, it’s just, you know, I mean, it’s not like I believe in a player privilege. But this is not one of the areas I believe in a player privilege, right? A play privileges, you don’t have to come to me for every little discount now. And then you’ve earned the right to know what the margin should look like, and those type of things. But this, like, this system is not negotiable. And so but really, it’s a bigger, like, going back to the accountability culture, it’s, that’s a piece of it, right? Like, getting people to fill out the CRM is a lot harder when you don’t have an accountability culture in general. And so
Christopher Smith
like, exactly, exactly. Now, I’ve had some sales leaders go so far as to say, hey, you know, when it comes to data hygiene, we’re looking at it all the time. If your data hygiene is not there, if it’s not at the minimum threshold, which I you’d like to say, set that really, really high, as close to 100% as you can. If your hygiene is not there, you’re not getting your commission check until it is, do you agree with that approach or disagree?
Kristie Jones
I do. I really do. Like, I’m just like, I just have no tolerance, I really don’t. And I just, there’s just no reason for it. And really, like, these are the same people that are gonna miss quota and wonder why, right? And I and I was like, listen, like, let’s take it like, you know, it’s just, I have a college age son. And I say, like, the half the battle in college is just getting out of bed. Right? So if you can get a bed, then you don’t even have to shower anymore, right? You’re just like, put on, like, just put on a clean shirt. You don’t even have to have pants and just get in front of the computer. Like you just have to get to class. Right? Like, like, if you get to class, I guarantee you, you can at least get a seat. Oh, yeah. Right. Just like just like these are minimum. These are minimum requirements. And I do you know, and I think that the flip side, by the way, talking about the client in Kansas City that I mentioned, you know, like that that CRM system is too complicated, right? There are too many fields. The UI looks scary, like it leaves your knee, like I pulled it up for the first time. I’m like, Oh, I go, where do we even start guys? There are so many fields, you just scroll and scroll and scroll. Oh,
Christopher Smith
yeah, that’s insane. And then also directly impacts, adoption and use and data hygiene. You’re creating this barriers for your team? That’s right. That shouldn’t be there.
Kristie Jones
No. And I and I have a one on one with a founder every week. And so we had our one on one yesterday. And he said what other you know, we talked about one particular issue I was having, and I would seem and I said he was what other issues are you having? And I said, Oh, the CRM system. I said the UI is is like at a place I have never seen like, I’ll be honest with you. I said I’ve never and what I got what I got in there. It’s one of the questions I don’t always ask. But for some reason, somebody had said something when I was doing my prospecting and my discovery call that got my attention. And I said, just like you’re asked me how many people have admin rights to the CRM. And they were like, Eric, I looked each other, I go more than 10. They were like, I go, everybody, they’re like, most people. And I was like, Are you gonna shut that down right now? You guys are going on right now. And I said, if you’ve never worked with a CRM system, like First off, most CRM systems out of the box have 80 85% of what you need, right? The amount of customization you need to do is not extensive. Like you don’t need a feel for everything. There’s there’s always some there’s something already there. Right. And so I just said, Please shut that down as soon as humanly possible. And even had a David had a CRM consultant that was there was already under contract. And I and he was in the room. I looked at him and he was titled, she said, like, sorry, I tried, like, I tried already. But I mean, like, every time somebody wanted a data point, they just added a field. And I was like, OMG. And so it’s funny, because he said, we’re having problems with CRM compliance right. Now, I’m wondering if it’s what you just said, like, they look, this looks so scary that they don’t want to do anything. Like it’s just overwhelming. And I said, yeah, the UI is frightening.
Christopher Smith
Yeah, you can train it. We once had a client, that kid you not. They had over 300 custom fields on their sales opportunity. Oh, absolutely nuts. And when you looked at the utilization of those features, It was a fraction of a percentage. So you’re, you’re, I mean, to scroll around and in, you know, they’re they’re scrolling and trying to pick the fields. It was nuts. And you know what? No one was using it. Oh, no, they’re just like, I don’t even know what these fields mean, we don’t know what I’m supposed to populate what I don’t need to populate. It weren’t training to that. There were just so many core issues, that, you know, that we just like, oh, my gosh, we’re starting over, we’re stripping all this crap out. And we’re starting over. And we’re gonna and then, you know, adoption goes up, you know, they’re getting good data, they’re able to make good decisions, right? transforms everything.
Kristie Jones
Yes, that’s right. Yeah. quantitative and qualitative. Right. You have to have both. But if the quantitative just isn’t there, or is it or you can’t trust it, right. I mean, it’s bad data and bad data out.
Christopher Smith
What am I think if I see golf handicap on CRM, I know like, Oh, my God, this is trouble. I’m like, Guys, have you seen that? Oh, yeah. That was one of the fields that golf handicap. I’m like, Are you kidding me? How was that helping your sales process, knowing golf handicap on the opportunity?
Kristie Jones
What? Oh, why? Oh,
Christopher Smith
I mean, it was just like, a runaway train. Right? You get when you have everyone go in this field, I want this field. They make the request, they do it. And two weeks later, they forget why they even
Kristie Jones
ask for it. Right? That’s right. Absolutely happens.
Christopher Smith
Yeah, all the time, all the time. This has been great having you on and listening to you. I could go on for hours right
Kristie Jones
now you and I can talk about this forever.
Christopher Smith
If people want to reach out and connect with you, they want to learn more about sales acceleration group, what’s the best way for that to happen?
Kristie Jones
Yeah, the the quick and dirty is LinkedIn. So I’m on LinkedIn, I’m out of St. Louis, Missouri. So that’s it. That’s a quick and dirty way. My website is sales acceleration group calm. And Christopher, as I mentioned to you, while we before we hit the record button, I’m going to put up a special page for your listeners. So sales acceleration, group.com, front slash sales lead dog, and I’ll have some resources up there about some of the things we talked about today. So I’ll have some information about how to like behavioral based interview questions to ask to ensure you’re getting a hunter. I’ll put up a sample checklists, you know, sales stages, checklist, those type I’ll put up some resources that they can grab, and that might be helpful to them. Because really, like, you know, like it nobody like this sales job is super hard sales leaders job is super hard. Like these are no these are high pressure positions. And you know, and I call them like I call attention filled sport. And so like, you know, any kind of resources that I can provide any kind of I’m happy to take you guys I have 30 minutes for everybody. So anybody’s got a burning issue that they want some quick hit advice on. I’ve always got free advice.
Christopher Smith
That’s great. I do the same thing on the CRM side. So anyone who’s listening, same thing, same offer applies all everything. She talked about the URL, it all be in our show notes. So if you didn’t happen to catch it, just go to the show notes. You’ll get everything you need to connect with Christie, thank you so much for coming on. This been great listening to you.
Kristie Jones
It was so much fun. Enjoy your weekend. Likewise.
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 impellor crm.com. Forward slash sales lead dog sales lead dog is supported by impellor CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed
Quotes
- “I started the company about five years ago, I have about 15 years of SAS sales leadership experience. I made a decision that I could help more than one company at a time.” (8:15-8:26)
- “Helping them understand that the only way to be successful building top of the funnel with an outbound prospecting strategy is consistency.” (14:15-14:20)
- “That’s an embarrassing conversation to bring up- everybody’s sitting around looking successful and all of a sudden you haven’t been making any money for two to three years.” (19:32-19:39)
Links
Kristie Jones LinkedIn
Sales Acceleration Group LinkedIn
Sales Acceleration Group Website
Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
