The Curbside Plan: Show Up with a Plan – James Koenig

 

Transcript:

Thu, Jun 30, 2022

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 
people , sales , crm , customer , business , company , salespeople , automation , jim , question , organization , team , lead , drives , role , product , day , career , selling , speak

SPEAKERS
James Koenig & 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 I have joining us Jim Koenig of RTI Control. Jim, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.

James Koenig
Thanks, Chris. Pleasure to be here.

Christopher Smith
Jim, tell us about your current role at RTI Control in the company.

James Koenig
Sure, I work for RTI Control, we’re based out of Shakopee, Minnesota, and I’m responsible for more than I guess, sales, and then some for the Americas. So, kind of the North Pole to the South Pole. But I lead our tech support department. I also work with our dealer Experience Team, which is really focused on you know, sales, engineering, customer service, those types of things, and our newly formed inside sales team for customer service as well. But that’s kind of encompassing, you know, product wise, this is the best part I love talking about what I do, because I sell toys for a living their adult toys, so to speak with people like you sell a doit adult toys for a living. And I usually say well, we manufacture your automation control systems for home and business. And we all know that you don’t have to have automation your home, you know, it’s a luxury item, so to speak. Right? So but you know, the Internet of Things has really driven price points down. It’s something people can really enjoy at any price point these days. But our focus is really on luxury automation for homes, let’s say got a 10,000 square foot house on the beach in Maui, you want to check on it from the state, you can do that. You want to automate a sports bar, you go into a great sports bar, and you’re like, hey, I’ve got this TV right here, I want to watch that game on this TV. We make all that switching equipment, the automation behind the scenes, the software, the touchscreens themselves, but we do everything all the way down to something as simple as you’ve got a game room and you want to put a home theater in it. And you need a basic, you know, all in one learning remote. So, we do everything from remote controls up to the automation equipment. But the majority of our business is selling whole home automation, and business automation.

Christopher Smith
This is very cool. I am a total tech geek as you can probably imagine. And I love that kind of stuff. It always fascinates me, especially how it’s evolved over the last 10 to 20 years. It’s just amazing what that technology can do to fund business. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Thinking back over your career. Jim, what are the three things that have really driven your success?

James Koenig
That’s a great question. I guess you eliminate to three, right? There’s a lot of things that that make you successful. But when I think back, what are the core moments, and I had a great mentor kind of midpoint of my career. And the one thing he really taught me was the value of what he would call the curbside prep. And it’s you know, showing up with a plan. It’s amazing how many salespeople go to the street today, they don’t have a plan, they haven’t researched the customer. They don’t know anything about them, they’re not preparing correctly, they get very inefficient. That was something that I definitely focused a lot on my career. You know, I get solicited every day like everybody else does. People try to sell me something. They don’t know who I am, what I do what my company does, and they expect 15 minutes of my life, to give him a meeting. And I look at these people and think like they’re either starving from no commission checks, or they love the brutality of just being ignored or hung up on it. Because if you’re not prepared for these meetings, how do you expect to get the meeting to begin with? So that was ingrained in me very early on the career, no matter who it is, if you think it’s a layup, still spend the five minutes do your research, you just may learn something that can actually help you in that sales transaction. And if you’re assuming it’s gonna go, well, sometimes it doesn’t. So, the more information you have, the better prepared you are for that meeting. The other big one is my boss taught me is he said, Jimmy, how big is the rearview mirror in your car versus the windshield? He said, don’t dwell on the past. Because there are things that are very fundamental. You need to look back upon and learn from right but don’t dwell on that history, the windshield, so much bigger, because you should be looking forward, not backwards. And that’s really one of the things I think that really helps my career is you’re looking out past the horizon. Where am I today? Where am I tomorrow are the things that I’m doing today, building my pipeline for the future. You everyone’s sales cycles, vary whether they’re short or long, whatever ours are very long. Ours have a lot to do with your getting customers on board training. And then you start selling doing those things. But I can have a six-to-18-month pipeline in my business. And if I’m not doing things today, and my numbers are softening 1618 months, I can literally look back pretty far and see what I didn’t do. So, part of this is really you’re setting yourself up for success in the future by making sure you’re executing on the things you need to do today. So, looking forward is definitely a big one. And I’m afraid to even say this last one because it seems so obvious but follow up. Just I want to bang my had some days with my current sales team some days like, did you follow up that customer? And it’s something as simple as you get a text on a Saturday. And it’s like, hey, I’m having a problem having an issue. Can you check in on this for me? And it’s just a simple reply, like, yes, I’ll get to it first thing Monday, and then setting that outlook reminder remind you because we all get busy, frankly, right? And then Monday morning pops up. There you are, I get on the phone tech support, hey, I’ve got a customer has an issue. Can you follow up with them, I send them a quick text back to text messages can save hundreds of 1000s of dollars. But just even from basic sales meetings to weaken issues, there’s so many people that just don’t follow up. And but those have been the linchpins, of what I’ve built my career pawn. And my customers I wouldn’t say would follow me everywhere, but you build relationships that are lifelong. I think that’s one of the big differences in sales is not everyone can say that about their Rolodex. And that’s I think what truly sets people apart and sales is, you know, how strong is that Rolodex, you know, when you get hired? That’s part of why people are hiring you.

Christopher Smith
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And why that’s great. I love I love those answers. Those are fantastic. And as always, it doesn’t surprise me. But it’s, it’s reinforces for me the importance of mentorship, because a lot of my guests talk about that, and the impact it’s had on their lives. And so that’s something that I agree is so valuable. If are you doing anything to mentor on your side?

James Koenig
Unilaterally? Yeah, I prescribe, I won’t say a lot of books. But there are some very core books that I think are very important. And it’s a mix, because part of like, when I look at my team, I look at what their skill sets are. And I think one of the most important things is, when someone’s really good at what they do, I found some great articles on negativity. And when someone comes to you, and you really own your business unit, or what you do, and someone comes in, starts poking around and making suggestions, you know, they’re instantly in defense mode, like you can’t do this can’t do that, it’ll affect this that. So, I’ve worked with them on things that they might be perceived as negative on, on, it’s actually something different. It’s about teams, skill sets, psychology, those types of things I work with my team on, but most importantly, it’s raise your hand. And something so simple, that you know, people get so busy. And I’ve actually, you know, after exit interviews of seeing other people leave organizations, usually that kind of guy calls and talks to him. And I’ll ask them to say, can you give me one bit of advice? What we have done differently, you as an outsider now looking back on this organization, what would you have done differently? And everyone was people said, I would have asked for help. Because I got so bogged down in the day to day, I became ineffective in my role. So, I go to my team and say when you have a question, you feel like you’re overwhelmed. Raise your hand. And it’s the one simple thing that it is, it’s not a call for help. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s, hey, I’ve got a question, or I need some help with this situation. And then all of a sudden, you start peeling back the problems, what are the layers, like, let me help you prioritize what you need to do. But something as simple as raising your hand and asking for help is something I drill into my teams today.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I’m a big believer in that with my team up, I call this spinning my wheels, spinning your wheels. And like as soon as you start to center wheels are spinning, raise your hand, ask for some help. And let’s see what we can do to start getting that traction again, because it’s I can’t stand to hear like, oh, I’ve been working on this problem for three days on their own. Or if they would have asked for help, like we probably could have got it solved in a couple of hours, you know, so I’m a big believer in that, how’d you get your start in sales.

James Koenig
I grew up in a family security business. And ironically, I was just like, introverted kid. And I was just afraid of people, we didn’t really travel outside of the Ohio area. And I think as I started growing up in the career and started looking at, you know, just getting out and started broadening my horizons and my dad and I kind of parted ways back that he wanted to stay in security. And I wanted to go down this path of audio, video and automation. And we kind of went our separate ways. And as I had escalating roles, and I was a manufacturer’s rep, I worked for a dealer, and the more I got out and saw people and talked to people I really started to enjoy it. And that’s actually what started driving me in there when I was a manufacturer’s rep seeing people buy my product and then watching them enjoy that you know there are good products and bad products of course but you look at the overall win. And you see companies become successful selling your products I enjoyed that. And that drove me further and further and further and then it became you know deal with people teams Oh, you kind of think back to college that got me these group exercises are gonna kill me. And then you start to figure out like I can actually affect this if I’m in the right position. I know how to work with people, bring people around, get the get the thinking change, those things drove me so getting into sales was really just kind of sitting back watching and learning and then saw really I think it was kind of rebellion maybe from not traveling or not doing certain things as a kid but just kind of become an extrovert in the process of you know, growing up as an introvert. It’s kind of weird.

Christopher Smith
It is it is. It’s funny how many salespeople I’ve talked to that describes themselves as introverts. I think most people expect them to be extroverts. But I think, you know, that’s not the case. Always.

James Koenig
Right. Well, for Friday 5pm I turned into an introvert because you’ve made decisions all week, right? You’ve got all those things are probably. Okay. I could just enjoy a bourbon and be an introvert for a little bit right about that sounds good.

Christopher Smith
What would you have been a you know, if you could go back in time, and talk to young Jim, just getting started in sales? What would you tell young Jim?

James Koenig
Study up on people? I mean, everything surrounds people, right? But it seems kind of counterintuitive. But I think about psychology of people. I’ve read some great books recently that have been out. And just understanding how people think is really one of the big ones. You know, there’s different personality types. What gets somebody engaged, right? What are the questions I should have been asking? In my early days, of course, I started out doing the whole pitch thing, right? Like I’m pitching I’m telling, not selling, you’re the classic analogies you hear in the sales side of world, but I really wish I could have gone back and said study more of, so you see when the sales guys here. He’s high fluid and just seems like he’s always loose running off the rails and talking to customers buying them ballgame tickets. And when I started to learn is people buy from people. And had I learned that early on, but how to read people understand people, and then figure out like, if they’re throwing trail signs off, like, okay, don’t go down this path, right. And their other people that you love numbers, like, you know, seven out of 10 dentists recommend or something, there’s people love statistics, other people hate statistics, all those kinds of people element things, I really wish I would have fast track through those, because a lot of sales were trial and error. And I was always good at kind of doing that postmortem, assess it, you know, regroup, revisit, try it again. But you need a lot of sales and a lot of years to figure out what’s working, what’s not to really kind of focus on. And I really wish I would have taught myself that early on or had a mentor in my early years, that would have turned me down that path. And kind of you know, how to find the person’s why by moment, I think, you know, today, there’s obviously great ways right? Audiobooks are here, podcasts like this, right? There’s so much more content these days than there were 20 some years ago, I think a little bit easier today to understand it. There’re great books out there. But at the end of the day, if you really, truly don’t understand people, it’s really tough to be in sales, unless you just have this killer product that, you know, people are lining up to buy every single day.

Christopher Smith
I completely agree. What drives you crazy when someone is selling to you?

James Koenig
I’ve got someone I’m like, this is great. I have someone on LinkedIn. And I appreciate her, her persistence. She must have sent me 30 messages. And I’m actually trying to coach her on my replies back. But it’s Would you give me 15 minutes of your time, so I can pitch you on, you know, XYZ software for your company. So, I started with the typical pushback, right? Where do you have its covered? We’re doing it, you don’t understand my sales cycle, which I’m sure they probably drive people nuts, too. But it’s my persistence and pushback. But I’m looking at this saying, I’m giving you the information you need. And they’re probably looked at me like I’m a jerk or something. But I’m also trying to mentor this younger salesperson is based on the photo I’m seeing. And it’s like, read what I’m saying. It’s done some research on my company spent you want me to give you 15 minutes, how about trade, you spend 15 minutes learning about me, my company, and what potentially my pain points are in my industry, and then give me a call. And guess what? I’ll give you 15 minutes first thing in the morning, right? I will give you that time and make sure you have it. So that’s what drives me nuts is they just expect you to give them 15 minutes, and just based on the number of pings I get off every day. It’s like I would get nothing done because that’s been my entire day. Just dealing with people. When it comes down to it just Yeah, but that that drives me nuts. They do no research and expect me all 15 minutes is no big deal. It’s like you want to bet

Christopher Smith
Oh yeah, I had a call today that blew my mind. I’m in a meeting my cell phone rings, and I answer it if even if I don’t recognize the number, in case it is a customer or you know someone at one of my clients I want to be responsive. And it’s this guy’s like Hey Chris, how you doing this? You know, I’m Jim and bah bah bah and then he’s like you know you don’t know me but let me tell you what I do and immediately didn’t ask me any questions and ask hey dip time is now a good time to talk nothing just immediately launched into his pitch. And you are so out of touch Dude, you’re so out of touch. I gotta go we’ll see you know and it’s crazy what’s the craziest thing from your thinking back to those days and in early days in sales craziest story you can share with us

James Koenig
Wow I’ve met some great people and sales amazing people and you look at them and say you know this is the I guess the old like I could person could sell ketchup popsicles to an Eskimo type thing like a year and in Tommy Boy, but actually came across someone who was so good at sales that they kind of reinvented themselves into If I instead of channeling the sales energy going out mastering the customer side of, of what their role was, they looked at their comp plan and said, You know what, there’s more money to be made in sales than just selling the product. And instead of kind of following that path, you know, the the kind of crossed the line where it was, I want to make money on this transaction everywhere I possibly could. And once I heard the full story and saw why this person was no longer with the company, I was just blown away it was it was things that you wouldn’t even fathom and think about. But sales, there’s a lot of power, you’re in control of a lot of things, you can influence a lot of people in an organization, and I was just blown away of the things I would never even a million years think about doing. You know, it’s like how do we make my numbers end of the month? Well, it’s like, let’s just ship this person when they call, like, I didn’t order this, it’s like, oh, I have a call Tag issue, then you move to someone else. And it became such a spiderweb. It’s crazy to think that people go through so much effort, right to cover the trail cover all those things, as opposed to let’s go find another customer to sell to instead of trying to take advantage of a situation you’re put in place. And even to this day, it’s It still blows me away, like the creativity, like how can someone be so creative and so skilled? But yeah, look at that, and not take it and do it to the top level, right? Like start a business, become a sales trainer, like take that energy, and channel that into something positive versus making it selfish and kind of you know all about me.

Christopher Smith
That’s well, that’s really well, making the leap to sales leadership from salesperson can be a big one for a lot of people. What was behind your decision to make that leap?

James Koenig
It’s a great question. I had a buddy, tell me, he’s just like, you know, Jim, you don’t know how to be a Sales Director until you’re a sales director, you don’t know how to be a VP until you are a VP. So that there’s a scary factor, right? It’s that first day of high school, that your parents warned you all these different things that would happen, they never came true. But you’re like, okay, all these things are coming at you. And it was scary. And one of the things that I watched over a couple years, and I passed on opportunities, because I was afraid. But when I started to do was watch wire people failing, that make the transition. And that was something I was like, Alright, I don’t want to fail. I’ll watch other people do this first, and then I’ll kind of figure it out. But one of the things that that I kind of saw a lot of people is top performers, right? Like a lot of companies, you you’ve been in the business for many years, they look at their top performer and say, hey, it’s your turn, we’re tapping on the shoulder, you’re the best performer we have, we’re gonna put you into sales management, they fail. And it’s not because they’re bad salespeople. It’s just what I learned over that is, when I was in sales by myself and uncharged of a region, it was all about working on myself. It was about my skills, my career, developing myself. And the transition to sales management is it’s not that you don’t keep working on your skills, is you have to work with everybody else’s skills, you’re developing your sales team, you have to turn into the leader, that takes you know, if you have 10 people, you have 100 personalities, right? It’s getting those people to understand the pathway leading them, getting them to understand but also respecting that, you can hand somebody a script in certain parts, and it just might not work for him. It’s not their natural tone. And it’s understanding how many different personalities you have making that transition. It was something I watched from the outside for a couple of years, before I actually had the opportunity to cross over again. And that was the one thing that gave me the confidence when I did transition was like, okay, I know how not to mess this up, so to speak, right? I had a lot of pride in my work and things that I did. But knowing this going in, that’s what I really did. So, I studied up read books got educated, and those types of things. When the opportunity came across, I jumped at it wholeheartedly, I felt confident that I could go in and help people in it. You know, that may sound easy, but there’s still challenges, you know, as you go through that sales leadership process. But that was kind of one of the big things that helped me with that transition and why I made that jump.

Christopher Smith
What were some of those challenges that you encountered?

James Koenig
Challenge, boy, but there’s a whole list of those things. You know, the people element, just organization, I think the biggest challenge I have in working with people is organization. No two people organize themselves the same. You know, some people you see him going to a meeting, pen, paper analog, right, which I don’t fault him for, but like you’re going to put that in the CRM later this afternoon, right kind of thing. Other people it’s like, well, I use Outlook, you know, my inbox for all my information when it’s clear, I’m done for the day, right. And one thing I’ve come to understand about people is everyone has different styles. And my job isn’t to tell them what their style should be. It my job is really my role is to make sure that they’re the way they need to organize matches the way I’m leading and what the company’s goals are. So, some people it’s set them outlook reminders that pop up all the time to remind them what they’re doing, right. Some people hate meetings, some hate emails. So, it’s finding that middle ground for organization that really gets people kind of interacting and doing things It’s also the you know, there is a little ego and sales go figure, right? And it’s how do you battle when you have competing regions or competing salespeople? It’s how do you address the situation? Because you’ll have flare ups on team calls, right? How do you tamp those down without damaging egos and saving face, but, you know, getting people organize? And then just managing the sales, ego is probably the two biggest challenges that I face in sales leadership, because they’re just, there’s just a lot of like, we’re all we’re all striving to be the best. There’s a lot of attitudes in there as well. And it’s how do you channel the energy instead of at each other and forward? And those are two things that just really, I think, are the probably the biggest battles that I face on a daily basis.

Christopher Smith
What’s the first thing a person stepping into a sales leadership role at a new company? Do

James Koenig
I know the first thing that I did was read like the first 120 days, so great reading of great a lot of great books out there. And, you know, for me was, don’t get too technical, right? Like, don’t go in and learn the products right away. It’s like, don’t go in there just, you know, open every product, man, you think like, hey, the people won’t respect me. If I don’t know, the products, you know, if you’re hired in a leadership type of capacity, you’re responsible for a much bigger picture. And part of is how do you become effective in that role? Right. And some of that is really looking at every organization will probably have some differences in there. But coming in, it’s understanding the people what their needs are hearing the people, right, what are the challenges in front of people? What can you affect in your new role, and for me, I always talk about like, first downs, like moving the goalposts in the markers down the field is how do I get quick wins with everyone to build their confidence in me and what I’m capable of doing within the organization? But you know, as we all know, there’s culture, you fight there, silos within organizations, all those things. So part of is really coming in, you educate yourself, keep a log every day, write down your notes, you know, set a schedule, don’t let you know kind of the company rule you in different directions, you do have missions that you have to accomplish in your first 3060 90 days. And you have to stick to that plan, no matter what it’s gonna be long, brutal hours, you have a lot to learn within the organization, and you need to set a plan and execute. But it’s, you know, it’s winning the people over because ultimately, your success or failure depends on whether or not really those people are for you or against you really. And I’ve seen both sides of that flip coin, where if you get promoted and your buddy didn’t, that is gonna be one of the toughest relationships to work with on the side by side is, you know, now you’re leading that person. And you know, he’s probably seen me at the bar, do something stupid, the end of the day, and now he has to respect you as the sales leader, but winning the people and getting them to understand what the mission is. I think it’s critical.

Christopher Smith
I think you’re only good as a team as a leader. And building that successful team is probably your number one responsibility. What is your strategy for building your team?

James Koenig
It’s getting them to understand the end goal, right? And part of it? Well, I say it starts with the end goal. But it has to be your people want to be part of something. Right. So ultimately, well, you’ve obviously there’s different people in an organization. But if you’re looking at the sales side of that organization, there’s an innate human nature that people want to be associated with something right. And usually, my first story I started out with my teams is, I usually put two pictures on the screen. And it’s probably like that for about an hour. And it’s a picture of Little League Soccer kids. And they’re all surrounding a soccer ball. And there’s a picture of a World Cup team. And I said, there’s two ways to go to business, we can all chase the ball, kick each other in the shin, or we can be strategic and play position. And you know, the forward kicks the ball correctly, right, and you don’t kick it to where the person is, you kick it to where they’re going to be. I said the same can be said about any professional sports that achieves World Cup, Super Bowl, whatever it is, they’re firing on all cylinders. And I look at the team say our job really, overall is to fire on all cylinders. So, let’s develop a plan that gets us firing on all those cylinders. So, we can get this thing down the street down the field, you know when to win the big game, because the people want to be part of something they want to have buy in, right? They want to feel like my contributions matter. No one likes to be told, just go do it. Because I said so. I mean, this, this starts in kindergarten right with human nature. So, it’s also treating the adults like they should be making sure they understand clearly what the plan is, what the goals are, what is my role, right? And what’s in it for me, so to speak. And I think a lot of leaders are blind is looking at that and saying, well, you know, that may sound selfish in sales, but salespeople want commission dollars. So, I always strive to make sure my teams are well paid. We address our commission concerns because at the end of the day, these people are in sales to make money. And they’re really you know that that’s, that’s a reward for doing everything correctly. But you’ve got to check all the boxes with them and make sure they’re part of something. If you treat them like they’re on an island here your results will match that.

Christopher Smith
What do you look for, for the people you’re cultivating for leaders?

James Koenig
Good talent. It’s like that interview question is talent born or bred? Right? And I love this question when you get that in an interview, because people obviously have different paths, but you need some diversity. Today in management, you’re going to deal with a wide variety Gen Z, millennials, baby boomers potentially, you’re gonna, I think we’re in the greatest generation mix right now in terms of cultures, attitudes, beliefs. It’s a challenge. And I think, again, the people element comes back full circle for me, if I have someone who’s really struggling and working with people, I think their management path is really going to be challenged. It’s an HR world, as we all know, it’s a politically correct world, as we all know. And if you’re going to be in a professional type of position, and do these types of things, it’s really, really important that people have strong people skills, and a very diverse set of skills, because I guess they don’t have to be global world travelers. But if you don’t even understand basic religions, and philosophies and things like that, it’s really easy to faux pas, in this day and age, as we’ve recently seen on the news. So, I think that’s one of the first skill sets I look at is how diverse is their horizon? What’s their experience look like? What are their skills? Do they match up with that type of thing? To kind of look at them. From a management perspective? That’s what they need? And then how do they interact with customers? Right? Are they abrupt? You know, if you’re, I guess, you know, in the New England region, you probably need a little more backbone than somebody probably in you know, San Diego, California, different culture. So how flexible are they? Can they adapt to their surroundings? Based on the customer type? Can they wear flip flops in San Diego? And can they put their boots on and in New York, so to speak? So those are things that that I look at as a fundamental part of their skill set that they really need to take? And then it’s about I think, for management risk, what’s your tolerance for risk? Are they willing to push the envelope if I come to him and say, hey, your quote is x this year, and you thought it was going to be y? All right, we’re going to find those extra dollars if you know, one of the questions I asked in my interviews is, name a customer that you’ve been asked to leave not hung up on, like physically face to face, you’ve been asked to leave. And if I ever get somebody who says I’ve never had that happen, my first comment back to him, as I say, you’re probably not gonna be the right guy for this job or gal for this job, because you haven’t found the edge. Right? I was telling my guys; you have a bowling lane. Think about bumper bowling. Um, the bumpers, you’ve got the whole Lane left, right, you’ll move around, go do things. I’ve given you a tool bag, your hip pockets full of good items, go find business, right? Go, go be creative. And if you’re not pushing the envelope, or getting tossed out at some point, because I promise you, anyone that’s been thrown out of a customer meeting it, they’ll tell you the date, the time, the temperature, what they’re wearing, who they are, it’s ingrained. It’s tattooed in their head, right. And guess what they do? Nothing succeeds like failure. And they take that moment a good salesperson takes that moment channels, it refocuses it, and it drives their career. And Allah said, a lot of people when I’m, when I’m interviewing, I tell them flat out, you probably won’t get this position at this point, just simply because of that, and then explain it to him. And I tell him you need if you’re going to be in sales, and you don’t wanna be an account manager, you want to be in sales. That’s the difference between an account manager and a salesperson. So, I was like, you have to define that for people too. But yeah, that’s really, that’s the big one. For me, when I look for people going in either sales and or management is, you have to have those skill sets behind you. Because if you don’t, then you really can’t relate to the next person they’re gonna hire.

Christopher Smith
Oh, yeah, that’s great. CRM, do you love it? Or do you hate it?

James Koenig
I love a customized CRM, I think about you, I walk into the clothing store, I’m gonna buy a suit, right? Like who buys an off the rack suit and walks out the door, right? You know, I want to place as a good tailor, like I look at a suit shop is only as good as the tailor at the end of the day. So, if you’re gonna have a CRM, and you’re not spending the money to have somebody come in and customize it for your organization, it’s like wearing an off the rack suit, it will work, you will look sloppy, but it will work. So, CRM is something that, especially now let’s talk you know, decentralized offices, right, you know, even before COVID So many companies were siloed, right? You know, they had all these channels, they were in the office, and they still won’t walk by somebody that will have a conversation. They’ll send him an email. So, the silos existed. And there’s so many people now that are responsible for the customer, customer service, right, all the aspects of the customer. And whether you’re in product or service type industries, there’s so many people, and now that we’re remote, the CRM is absolute. It’s like how do you not have one, so to speak, right? You can’t be in a customer facing business today, with decentralized offices without a solid CRM, and you have to invest in it. You have to bring someone in you’ve got to customize your software, and it needs to work for you. If you make it confusing, you don’t invest the time and money. The satisfaction in the use case just obviously goes goes net negative. I was on a call last night late with my boss and we’re going over ours last So we’re making changes to fields within it that are now pertinent, slight change in business model the way we work with our customers, but we’re sitting there making customizations within. And these are things that businesses do you know, most people approach their IT department or like, oh, you want a feature change, it’s going to be 1214 months, it should be 12 or 14 minutes like this should be your priority. This is where your sales pipeline comes from. This is how you interact. This is where everything about a customer is located. And if somebody calls up with an RMA question, issue, product replacement, that thing is now the Bible, it is where you go to get your information. And it should be top priority, and the companies that struggle with it, and anyone I talked to, that hates your CRM, it’s the last thing on the list, not the first thing on the list that gets worked on in the company. And that’s really what it is. So, it’s spend the money, invest the time customize it. But if you take one step further, I usually tell people or ask questions about process, you a lot of people are really not good at process. If you have bad processes, odds are your CRM is probably gonna look like your processes, kind of like that suit, kind of sloppy, right, the tie is not going to match, you need to have good process first, in order to create a good CRM. And companies that don’t focus on the process side, they’ll struggle with their CRM. But if you nail those two things, people’s hearts, it’s too much effort to take my pen and paper and convert it into electronics, all this kind of stuff. And I challenge them all and say, if it’s done, right, you will absolutely love your life, it will it’ll actually set you free. It’s like you want that beach vacation, where someone’s calling you going, hey, where did you leave this with Mr. Smith last week? It’s like it’s in the CRM, right? That’s what allows people is I want this work life balance. Well, good. Get a great CRM, put your notes in, and guess what, go have your work life balance at the end of the day, quit fighting it, right. But I think too many companies miss the fact that they need to spend the money and prioritize their CRM to make it work for them. Right,

Christopher Smith
Right. Oh, man, I just nod my head. For those of you watching. Listening, you’re probably can’t see that. But everything you said is just spot on. I couldn’t agree more. Jim. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to companies where they’re like, hey, we, we need you to we need a new CRM. And I started asking why What are you using today? Like, oh, we have it. It just It sucks. It doesn’t work. And when you find out why it’s because like you said, they don’t have a good process. And they think, oh, we’ll get new technology, because that will fix all our problems. No. There’s not a technology platform out there that can fix bad process. You have to nail down your process first. And then how can we leverage this tool to best support our process? That’s what it’s about. So simple things.

James Koenig
Yeah, it really is. Yeah. When I look at companies who hire people put them into roles, right, those people tend to dogpile pick up more responsibilities. And this is some John Maxwell readings. But it’s basically you create positions and put people in them. So, if you don’t even document from an HR level, what a person’s responsibility is, that’s going to lead right back to bad serum also, because who’s responsible for what you know who’s on first, second, third, that’s why get my team to kind of the World Cup analogy. It’s you want to be strategic you play position; you play what your role is in the company. So, it even starts with job descriptions at an HR level, if you can’t do that, you can’t define a process. Like I said, your CRM just gonna look just like that.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, it totally is. And your data is going to be deficient. Your data is not supporting the process. CRM is not supporting the process. People aren’t using CRM, it’s not really driving anything. Frustration. What’s your biggest struggle with serum?

James Koenig
Ah, biggest struggle was CRM, I want more in it at the end of the day, and like we just ran a report looking back at Legacy customers who, you know, kind of moved on, right, some of that attrition. And it’s, I wish all that data was in there. So, some of the stuff that we’re doing today is New versus old. So migration is probably the biggest frustration I’ve dealt with over the years with CRM is, you know, most people have graduated some type of system, it’s how do I get the old information into the new system and update it, because it’s gold, you know, you’re sitting on a goldmine of information, it’s getting the Old to New, and that tends, that can fall on the list sometimes as well. And that’s why we put an inside sales team in places we’ve empowered them to basically take our old information, bring it to the new system, update the information along the way, that’s another missing facet. A lot of companies won’t invest in, I’ve been there before, where companies like we’re not going to invest in that, figure a way to get it. And I can tell you, at the end of a long day for your salespeople, the last thing you’re doing is like, well, I’m not going to work on the dead leads. So, they think, right, they’re gone. Those are just customers that left us for whatever reason, I’m not even gonna go there. And instead, it’s, well, your products have changed, your company has changed, everything evolves, their needs probably change, they probably need your product again, but the fact they haven’t heard from you in two years, because you’re not in your CRM. There it is, right. So that whole transition from one to another. There’s such a gap there. And I’ve dealt with that far too many times, it is a challenge. But thankfully, you know, I’m working with a great boss now who sees that has invested in the business. And we’ve brought people on board to bridge those two gaps. And it literally my call this morning was working with the guys to say, hey, you know, here’s 1500 Customers we’d like to reach out to and have a conversation with, and that’s just money waiting to come back.

Christopher Smith
Exactly. And that’s one of the things I use to, to gauge the state of a CRM is Ls click Can you provide a list of who are your current customers? Who are your customers that, you know, previous prior companies that left in the last 12 months? Or left two years ago? Put some time constraints on that? If they can’t answer those questions that tells me a lot about the state of their CRM that it does. Well, we are at our time here on sales lead dog jam. It’s been great talking to you. If people want to reach out and connect with you. Maybe learn more about you learn more about RTI, what’s the best way for that to happen?

James Koenig
Sure. It’s been a great time, Chris, appreciate it for sure. Reach out to me at Jim K at RTI corp.com Is my email, you can check out RTI, corp.com or RTI control.com. Either one of those we’re actually doing a rebranding there as we’re speaking. So either place they can reach out personally you can find me on LinkedIn linkedin.com forward slash, I go by James officially it’s my mother’s given name, but everyone calls me Jim on the street but James hyphen Koenig. On LinkedIn, you’ll find me there and happy to link up and happy to share I actually have a moment called WW JD what would Jim do? And a lot of people I’ve worked with in the past will come and go I have a WWJD moment. I’d love to run by you. So always happy to help mentor others and bring them into sales and help make them successful.

Christopher Smith
That’s great. That’s great. And that we’ll have all that in our show notes if you didn’t capture that, so be sure to check that out online. And again, Jim, thanks for coming on Sales Lead Dog.

James Koenig
Appreciate it. Chris, thanks for your time.

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 empellercrm.com/salesleaddog. Sales Lead Dog is supported by Empellor CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed.

 

Quotes

• “We do everything from remote controls up to the automation equipment. But majority of our business is selling whole home automation and business automation.” (2:06-2:15)
• “The one thing he taught me was the value of what he would call the curbside prep and it means showing up with a plan.” (2:50-2:56)
• “When you have a question, you feel like you’re overwhelmed- Raise your hand and it’s the one simple thing that it’s not a call for help. It’s not a sign of weakness.” (7:42-7:51)
• “There’s two ways to go to business, we can all chase the ball, kick each other in the shin, or we can be strategic and play position.” (22:30-22:37)

Links

James Koenig LinkedIn
RTI Control LinkedIn
RTI Control Website

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter