Hire the Right People – Tony DeSpirito

Watch or listen to this episode about Hire the Right People

 

Quotes

• “So I was brought on to really professionalize and modernize our sales effort. And in fact, I’m actively hiring now across the United States.”
• “Those are my three, my three keys, self-discipline, relentless focus on client or customer success, and follow up, follow up, follow up.”
• “You provide a vision, you set goals and objectives, you equip the team to achieve those goals and objectives. And then you step out of their way, and you let them achieve and you’re always there for them.”
• “It is the most important thing you could do is hire the right people, because ultimately your success will depend on their success as a sales leader.”

Links

Tony DeSpirito LinkedIn
Cenergistic LinkedIn
Cenergistic Website
Tony DeSpirito Twitter

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter

Transcript

Fri, 4/22 · 11:32:04 47:22

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 
crm sales hire company sales team people customer team client months discipline day success years lead military role call metric enable

Speakers
Tony DeSpirito and Christopher Smith

Intro
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith, talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Listen to find out how the best of the best achieve success with their team and CRM technology. And remember, unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes.

Christopher Smith
Welcome to Sales Lead Dog. Today we have joining us Tony DeSpirito of Cenergistic. Tony, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.

Tony DeSpirito
Chris, thank you very much for having me on the program. Appreciate it.

Christopher Smith
I’m excited to have you on Tony. Tony, tell me a bit about your current role in Cenergistic.

Tony DeSpirito
You bet. So, I’m the Chief Revenue Officer of a company called Cenergistic. Cenergistic is a Dallas based company that focuses on energy and sustainability, specifically energy reduction, as measured by reduction in energy bills, literally reducing costs for our customers company has been around about 35 years with over 1500 clients, primarily in K-12 schools, higher education, and municipalities. We’ve saved our customers in the last 35 years, we’ve saved over $6 billion in measured recorded sales of sorry, measured and recorded energy reduction as measured in real dollar savings. So, I’ve only been in the role a couple of months now. So, I was brought on to really professionalize and modernize our sales effort. And in fact, I’m actually I’m actively hiring now across the United States. If you search the job boards out there, there are these regional vice president roles that I have their territory-based roles with somebody that would own client acquisition, client retention, partner relationships within a specific geographical region in the US, I’m actively hiring. And matter of fact, I’ve spent the morning interviewing via video, several candidates- so actively hiring.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that. That’s great to hear about I love it when I hear my guests talking about they’re trying to hire, because that’s always a great topic. Tony, how did you get your start in versus me looking back up? Before I jump into your career? What are the three things that have really truly contributed and driven your success?

Tony DeSpirito
I think the first one is, is a personal discipline. Okay, so I did spend some time in the military in my 20s, about 10 years or so, as an Air Force Officer. And that personal discipline to be able to get up every day, run your calendar, you know, do everything you need to do and really be a self-starter, that personal discipline, it has to start with you. It’s often been said that, you know, nobody can put pressure on yourself, like you put pressure on yourself. So that personal discipline, to do it over and over again. And yes, the things you’ll do during the day change, however, the discipline to look at your calendar to have a to-do list. In fact, I actually do a to-do list every Monday morning, I do it in Excel, right? It’s no big deal. Very, very basic thing. But I have every Excel to-do lists going back to 2006. By the week, everything I’m supposed to do. And while most of it is professional, there is a certain group that are personal things, pick up the dry cleaning, pick up the kids from school, because as people you have to you’ve got a whole life you need to balance that’s thing, one personal discipline. Secondly, is a relentless, I think is a relentless focus on customer or client success. What is it that we can do to enable our clients to be successful, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling, it doesn’t matter what industry, you’re in that relentless focus on making those customers or clients successful, whatever you need to do. And the third thing and this I joke with my children, I’ve got three kids, I joke with them all the time. It’s follow up, follow up, follow up, okay. You can follow up without being a pest. You can be professionally persistent, but you’d be amazed at just making that third call or that fourth call, or that fifth call, and you finally get them to respond on the fifth call. So, it’s follow up, follow up, follow up. Those are my three keys, self-discipline, relentless focus on client or customer success, and follow up, follow up, follow up.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. I love that especially I like all three of them. But that the follow up one I think is great, because I think there’s you know, for probably people more else outside of sales, there’s a reluctance or fear of like, oh, I don’t want to tick anybody off by, you know, being I think I don’t want them to be think I’m a pest. You know, it’s just, it’s all in how you do it.

Tony DeSpirito
Right. That’s correct. You can be professionally persistent. And these days there are many ways to reach out to a customer. It could be an email; it could be a phone call. It could be a video call. It could be a face-to-face. I’m not beyond sending him written thank you notes. I’m a little bit old school, okay? Everybody loves to receive mail, especially these days when everything is over email, you receive a handwritten thank you note or a handwritten note asking for some of their time. It sounds a little bit old school, but it is very, very effective.

Christopher Smith
It’s all about standing out. And you think about how many people that you know, nobody does that anymore. So, you’re doing it, you’re standing out,

Tony DeSpirito
Standing out, you absolutely are. You know, the other thing I do is more of-  it’s a silly little anecdote, but and I learned this almost 30 years ago. So, when I travel and somebody helps with my my bag or opens a door, it’s just something some type of service they’re providing for me as the business traveler. I tip with a $2 bill. Because when somebody receives a $2 bill, the first thing they do is look at it and go, Wow, that I haven’t seen a $2 bill, and they’ll probably go home and give it to their kids. But the next time you come to the door or need their help, they’re going to remember you because you have stood out from this sea of business travelers. So I call the bank on occasion, I get $100 worth of $2 bills, I keep it in my backpack. And I actually tip with it sometimes- $2 bills, right? Because I know things are more expensive. But it makes you stand out as a person as a professional. And that person will always remember you the next time you come down to breakfast. As an example, though, Mr. DeSpirito. Nice to see you again. And it sounds silly, and it sounds a little old school. It’s very effective.

Christopher Smith
It’s amazing. I love that. It’s anything you can do to stand out in a crowd? That’s correct. That’s correct. How did you get your start in sales?

Tony DeSpirito
Oh, that’s a great question. So, I mentioned previously, I spent my 20s in the military- seven years active duty in the Air Force, and then another three years in the National Guard. And I got kind of recruited out of the military to come work for a local company here in Rhode Island called APC American Power Conversion, power backups for computers and data centers. Very young company at the time, early 90s. And the company had this knack for hiring these oddball engineers folks with an engineering degree but they could actually speak eloquently about the technology and work with customers. So, I left the military and went to this this kind of small company that got very big very, very quickly. And there were a lot of guys like me running around, we had some technical undergrad degrees, picked up a master’s along the way, but I was really thrust into customer relationships and kind of thrust into sales now. That was almost, I’m dating myself, that’s almost 30 years ago. So I’ve gone through so many different sales trainings, you know, selling to veto, getting to yes, Miller, Heiman, Dale Carnegie, you name it, I’ve been through all the sales training. And what I find is that if that sales DNA is inside of you, okay, and good salespeople, it’s there. If you have that DNA, the sales trainings tend to bring nuggets to you, okay, you’ll pick up a nugget here and nugget there, even if you’ve been in sales for 30 years, you’ll pick up a nugget that you can use, but I was kind of thrust into it. And what I found out relatively quickly, within a year or two, hey, I’m actually pretty good at this. And coming out of the military, I was only 30 or 31 years old, but I kind of stood out from my age peers, because I had had a lot of accountability and responsibility at a very, very young age. And I developed this kind of knack for sales, I was becoming successful, I started to make some good money at the time. In sales, I was asked to take on a sales leadership role, which is different than being a salesperson, okay. And I said, yes, I would like to do that. And then it just kind of launched this career of large companies, small companies direct selling, indirect selling, carrying a bag leading those who are I think it’s ultimately led me to this role right here as the CRO of this relatively small but growing company.

Christopher Smith
Yeah. What was it about, you know, that offered to be sales leader that pulled you into that world?

Tony DeSpirito
I think I gotta go back to my time in the military, right, having a lot of accountability at a very, very young age. I enjoyed the personal leadership, right, having people on your team, you know, setting goals and directions for that team and then enabling them to succeed. I had that in the military, you know, it was a little bit different, but I had it there. And when I was offered the chance to step into a sales leadership role, I didn’t even think twice I’m like, okay, well, leadership is leadership, whether you’re, you know, leading people into combat or you’re leading a sales team or a marketing team or any team. Leadership is leadership, right? You provide a vision, you set goals and objectives. You equip the team to achieve those goals and objectives, and then you step out of their way. And you let them achieve and you’re always there for them. I joke with my sales team right now, I will try to answer the phone. And now granted, it’s not a huge team, but I will try to answer the phone anytime you call. And if I can’t answer, I will text you when I can answer your call, I want to be very available to them. But that chance to lead people to lead the team to set that direction and enable others to succeed. That’s what originally drove me to jump at the sales leadership role.

Christopher Smith
Initial what was your biggest surprise, either positive or negative about sales leadership?

Tony DeSpirito
I think that’s a good question. I think I surprised myself. I thought that I was a pretty decent leader in the military, I was trained well, but I really had a knack for it. Right. And I had a good friend of mine, when I took this job about two months ago. So about three months ago, I told him I was going to leave what I was doing and go do something else. And he paid me one of the biggest compliments that I think I’ve ever been paid. He said, you know what you’re going to do well, because success seems to follow you. He said you have a way with people, you have a way with teams, you have a way with setting a vision. That is, you know, it’s not common, and success follows you. So, the biggest thing that surprised me was, hey, I’m actually pretty good at this. This is like leading people into combat, only the targets are a little different. Target is a closed piece of business, a closed contract, a big sale, and yeah, nobody’s shooting at us. Technically, they kind of are right, somebody’s trying to shoot objections across the windscreen kind of thing. But I surprised myself that a lot of the skills translated into the civilian world. And after doing it for a few years, you can make some money doing this too. I mean, I quickly eclipsed my military salary, I would say, less than three years after being out, I was already making more money. And of course, everybody looks at sales as a glamorous profession, and you know, the sales guys make a lot of money, etc. that all may be true. What people fail to see is the hard work and the discipline that go behind all of that success. It doesn’t just happen overnight.

Christopher Smith
Right. It’s the same as anything, you got to put in the effort, right? Thinking back over those years in sales, what’s your craziest story you could share with us?

Tony DeSpirito
Well, over the 27 or 28 years, I’ve had a few a few crazy stories, one that comes to mind… Alright, so I won’t mention the name of the company, but it was about 10 years ago, it was the 2012 London Olympics, alright, the company I was at, had just paid big dollars to sponsor kind of an executive visit a customer visit house at the Olympic Village. Very exciting. And when I say a lot of money, you know, it had seven digits in it- a lot of money. I was responsible for our partners. So, we were doing this with a partner. So, we said, okay, we are allowed to have an executive in residence physically in the village for the entirety of the Olympics. And I said, okay, great. You know, I’m the guy running the partnership here. But you know, I went to the CEO of the company, he declined. He had travel planned- vacation planned. I went down four levels in this company, and it’s pretty big company. And I got no, no, no, I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. I can’t do it. And I finally said, I will do it. So, I went and spent almost a full month it was like 26 days at the London Olympics at the Olympic Village. I got to meet CEOs, I got to meet royalty, I got to meet the Olympic athletes. I went to a dozen Olympic events with customers. Greatest business trip of my life craziest trip, because I literally asked for other executives in my chain of command at the time. I asked them to do it. And they all said no. And I said, I’ll do it. I will step forward, I will take responsibility for this. We generated about $150 million dollars of opportunities from my 26th day stay at the London Olympics. And oh, by the way, I have memories that literally will last a lifetime. I got to meet living legends. I met everybody including royalty. While I was there, I met the prime minister at the time of the UK. And it was crazy. It was crazy that it was just me. You know, at the time, this is you know, 10 years ago. I’m the only guy I’m representing the entirety of our company at the Olympics. And now I’m watching Usain Bolt break the win the gold medal in the 100 meters and I was three rows off the field. Crazy.

Christopher Smith
You know, as you’re talking, I’m sitting thinking I’m like- What a life? Memories. Holy cow.

Tony DeSpirito
It’s like I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve got great, great business trip stories. That one is like three levels above even the best story and yeah, what a memory.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, that’s incredible. And the fact that also wasn’t just a trip, you’re able to generate significant business opportunities out of it.

Tony DeSpirito
Absolutely. I was doing my diligence sales thing. I would meet somebody, I would get their information, get a card, and I followed up with them after where I did everything you’re supposed to do. And honestly, it didn’t feel like work to me. I was staying in central London. And of course, the Olympics were out to the east of London in Westfields. And I would get on the tube every day like a Londoner, I had my Oyster card on the tube and I went to work. It never felt like work to me. Literally for almost four weeks. What an experience.

Christopher Smith
That’s incredible. I love that. That’s an amazing story. And once you can have, you know, what can happen with a great career in sales? That’s terrific.

Tony DeSpirito
Absolutely. And that’s probably the craziest story. But I mean, I have been all over the world, I have been to all types of sporting events with customers. And I’ve also been in the trenches with them when things weren’t going well and had to have the hard conversations. So, it’s not all a life of glitz and glamour. When it does happen. It’s pretty good, though, for sure.

Christopher Smith
You mentioned in the intro, you’re hiring. How much of success of sales leaders success comes from their team?

Tony DeSpirito
Well, let’s touch on hiring first. Alright, so as a sales leader, I think hiring is probably the most important thing you can do. Right? I’ve talked about finding the right people, setting them up for success, and then enabling them and then getting out of their way. I think hiring is literally the most important thing that a sales leader could do. Whether you’re hiring one to 10, 20, 100 people, it doesn’t matter. It’s the most important thing you can do. It’s where you should put your effort. Because if you find the right people in the right set of circumstances, with the right background, they will perform for you. So as a sales leader of my team, my success is the team’s success, okay, and I’m there to enable them to be successful. The more successful they are, the more successful I will be as the leader. So hire correctly spend the time and I know it’s tedious sometimes, and yesterday I sifted through 80 resumes, I found 12 that I really liked, I reached out to all 12. And I have nine interviews scheduled over the next two business days. And these are just short Teams or resume based 30 minute videos just to see if there’s a little bit of a connection. If we like it, then I’ll take it to the next step. I know it’s tedious. It is the most important thing you could do is hire the right people because ultimately your success will depend on their success as a sales leader.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more that it’s all about the team. And I think I think some of the best advice I ever got when it came to hiring was hire slow. Yeah,

Tony DeSpirito
I agree, take the time. I agree, because 100%. Because a bad hire, or I’m sorry, the wrong hire- They’re not bad people they just might have the right whatever the wrong hire is going to set you back months and months, if not years. I mean, I’ve seen some incorrect hires at larger companies where it literally took two years to work itself through the system. And that’s a problem. Try to avoid that mistake. It’s just going to cost you in the long run, it might cost you sales, it’s certainly going to cost you your mental health and the stress. And the time you have to put in with somebody who, you know, if you just made the wrong hire, that’s all they’re not bad people. They’re just the wrong hire.

Christopher Smith
Do you have a personal philosophy or your professional philosophy about how you’d like to structure your team?

Tony DeSpirito
I would say I’m looking, I’m thinking about the team right now- the current team, and I’ve only been in this role a couple of months here. I have varied backgrounds on the team. I have some folks that are classically trained sales professionals. I have some folks that have come from other professions, but somehow landed at this company here. And the philosophy that I’ve given them and I’ve seen they needed some discipline and structure. So, the first thing I did was give quotas to the team. They’ve never had quotas. I set everybody up on a weekly one-on-one. This goes back to my discipline comment from the beginning of the show. Everybody has a as at least 30 minutes one-on-one with me. I talked to them three or four times a week, but there’s a 30 minute slot every Friday, where we get to spend one-on-one time we can talk about anything. I ask that you come prepared with an agenda. Okay, I prefer to see an agenda in email, but you know, it can be a verbal agenda. And then I set up an all sales monthly call and on the last all sales monthly call- I said guys, as Regional Vice Presidents in our company, you own the territory. I want you to think of yourself as the CEO of the territory. You’re responsible for client acquisition. You’re responsible for client retention. You’re responsible for working with our partners that enable- allow us to sell into the territory, you are the CEO of that territory. Now we’re going to work together. And I’m going to set a goal for you for your specific territory. And we’re going to measure the correct things on progress toward that goal. But I need you to feel like you are empowered to succeed in your territory, my job, in addition to, you know, setting the vision, helping you set the targets, helping you craft the strategy in the plan, my job is to make sure you have everything you need to be successful. And that may include keeping people out of your way. Now we’re a relatively small company, I’m thinking more of the bigger company experience where there’s always a sales Prevention Team somewhere in a big company, my job is to keep the runway clear for you to be successful. Now, I expect results, I expect, you’re going to hit the target, I expect that you’re going to have a plan that will help you craft to hit that target. Now, if we’re not going to hit that target, that’s a different discussion. And we’re going to talk about different things. But I want to make sure you feel empowered and enabled to make your territory as successful as it can be. And it’s amazing what people do when they feel empowered. And I’ve had this only, oh, two or three times in my career. So, where I have felt completely empowered to make change, make a sale, lead a team. And I can tell you those feelings, that feeling of empowerment is no pun intended, but it’s very powerful, because it motivates people to perform at their best.

Christopher Smith
What’s the conversation like when things aren’t going well, everybody hits a slump at some point in their career. What’s your approach? When somebody is in heading in that downward trajectory? How do you engage with that individual?

Tony DeSpirito
That’s a great question. Because it happens. It happens to all of us. We all have bad days- I’ve had bad years, okay? As sales professionals, this happens for a variety of reasons could be personal, it could be professional could be market driven, could be COVID, I don’t know. It always happens, what I like to do is I’ve already established some level of personal relationship with my sales team, right? I’m a very outgoing person. And I like to be friends with the people that I work with. We don’t have to be Facebook friends, but I’m saying there’s a relationship here. So, I like to try to get ahead of things. If I see things slowing down, or activity slowing down or bookings slowing down, I like to try to get ahead of it and say, I mean very, very openly, hey, what’s going on? How are you doing? Because maybe there’s a problem that I can’t see. It could be a personal or a family issue. It could be a market issue. It could be, Hey, I can’t get this guy’s attention. And I’m trying. So, I try to hit it off before it happens, right? I’m a big believer that, you know, the top metric is whatever the top metric is. So, in this case, let’s say it’s bookings, right, closed contracts, bookings. That’s the top metric. And that’s what’s really, really important to everybody. There are all these sub metrics underneath that deal with activity, right? Are you making the right number of calls? Are you getting the right number of meetings? Are you know, are you getting proposals delivered? All those sub metrics? I’m the type of guy that tends to look at the top metric. How are you doing on closed business? If I see a slump, a slowdown a weakness, then I will go down to level 1, 2, 3 metrics and say, Okay, let’s work on this together. Are you delivering enough proposals? Yes, no, maybe? Are you having enough? Pre-proposal delivery meetings or discovery meetings, even generated proposal? Yes, no, maybe. And I believe there’s an equation. And this equation is different for every company in every market. But there’s an equation that says, if you do so many discovery meetings, X number of discovery meetings that will lead to y number of proposals, you work through all the objections, and you’re going to get Z closure, there’s an equation for every company, I don’t know what mine is for this company, once in my career, and it was, like 2003, I was running sales operations for a medium sized company. And I came up with the equation with a lot of empirical data that says, you need to do X amount of meetings deliver this many proposals, and it’ll produce Z dollars or Z close contracts. We use that equation to sell the company for seven times revenue back in the.com days, that equation exists for every company. So, your question of what do you do when you start to see things? You look at the top metric, they look for weakness or softness there, then you start to go into the activity metric. Are we doing enough? And you may find that the answer is no, you’re not doing enough. You’re not making enough calls. So, let’s look at your day. Go even more granular are you running your day? Remember that the beginning of the show, we talked about that personal discipline? Do you bring that personal discipline to your day? And are you? Are you calendaring tomorrow and next week? And next month? Are you doing those? That minutia, those little details that make things flow? So, I look at the top metric, I look for any kinds of weakness, I’ve got this personal relationship where I can call you up and say, Hey, Chris, last month wasn’t very good, man, what’s happening? What’s going on? Well, this, this, this, and then we start delving into the metrics of activity. And I’ll get to the root cause eventually, and then we can work on it together, you’re not alone, in your slump, I am right there with you. My success is your success, we are united by a common goal. And I’m going to help you solve this issue. And I take a very, very personal approach, even when I had teams of, you know, 20, 30, 40 people, the personal attention, especially in times of crisis, or in times of a slump, that’s so important that’s so important to people’s morale, and to their psyche, into their motivation, to work on the problem with them, and show them how to try to- how to get better.

Christopher Smith
What’s it like hiring over zoom? Or teams?

Tony DeSpirito
So, I’ve had to make a living on teams and zoom, you know, since March of 2020. Now, I’ve started traveling again for this role, which traveling during COVID. Okay, well, it sucks, alright, it just plain sucks. But and it’s not just a mask, because it’s everything. I found that the more you do it, the more you do interact like this, the better you get at it, okay, if you treat, you know, I’m looking right now I’m looking at the camera on my laptop. But it’s as if I’m looking you right in the eye, and we’re sitting across the table from each other. So, you get good at it, do I like it, I like it as a free screen. Because in the first 10 minutes of talking to somebody, I can immediately tell if they’re going to be a cultural fit, I can feel it- and again, call it intuition, call it 30 years of experience, call it looking at 1000s of resumes, I can tell if they’re going to fit, which means the next 20 or 30 minutes are going to be more about the job itself. I would say any chance I get to go face-to-face with somebody I’ll take. It’s just not practical. Sometimes, especially now during COVID. It’s just not practical. So, you have to use it. And you can get good at it. There are tips and techniques and lighting and all of the stuff we were talking about prior, you get good at it. And it’s not a replacement for face-to-face. But it certainly can digitally enable your sales process. Maybe there are things that we can do quicker on Teams or Zoom. Here’s a specific example. If I call you up and say, ‘Hey, Chris, my name is Tony and I would like to meet with you on Thursday for an hour at your location’. And you’re gonna be like, okay, yeah, I’ll meet with this guy. But, I gotta take an hour out of the day to meet with this guy. As opposed to me saying, Hey, Chris, my name is Tony, would you have 15 or 20 minutes to get on a video call with me, I just want to introduce something to you to get your impressions. And if it’s not something you’re interested in, all of them will just move on, I’ve just asked you for 15 or 20 minutes of your day sitting at your desk, all you have to do is hit a couple of keystrokes, listen to the guy and maybe take some action if and only if you’re interested versus asking you for an hour of your time at the Starbucks kind of thing. It’s almost like you’re more respectful of somebody’s time. When you say look, how about a zoom call, how about a team’s call, or you know, whatever your favorite platform is, I feel like you’re more respectful of their time. And I think that goes a long way. Versus saying I need an hour of your time and take time out of your day and get in your car and drive to that- seems like a lot these days. And you know COVID has not helped anything. COVID has changed a lot. COVID caused me to change jobs- change careers. Because it was time to go do something else. I was not pleased with kind of where we were and how things were going. And that’s what actually caused me to proactively look for the role that I landed here a couple of months ago. So, the things we learned during COVID are not going away, we’re still going to do this, there’s still going to be some level of video interaction. I will use it as a pre- screening tool going forward for people because it’s really easy to get 30 minutes of your time versus saying okay, take a full hour and meet me here and okay, we might get to that, and that will be part of the process. I’m not gonna hire you, unless I’ve actually met you face-to-face. And you know, that might be a little bit old school but look, you got to like I said before you gotta hire right? You gotta hire the right people hire slowly as you said, and get it right and part of that is the presence that you bring to are in front of me are in front of a prospective client.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, you know, my team is virtual we’ve been for since 2007. And I have the craziest stories of, you know, before COVID of doing, I would do all like video calls to, you know, interview people across the country. I had one person who was a hoarder who was sitting in a room with just crap everywhere in the background. I’m like, do you not know what’s behind you? This is a job interview.

Tony DeSpirito
And I had a guy at my previous company doing a video interview like this. He was in his car. And I’m like- Are you in your car? Yes, I’m in my car. Mike… can you get to like, you know, an office, a desk, a table, the kitchen table? I can’t do that right now. I’m like, I’ll tell you what. Thanks very much for your interest. And yeah, it was a sixty second interview.

Christopher Smith
I had the absolute craziest one was it was a guy in like a metal folding chair, in an empty room with a bear light bulb over his head. I wanted to ask are you in a warehouse, I wanted to ask him- Are you being held hostage?

Tony DeSpirito
Do I need to call the authorities?

Christopher Smith
So crazy? Gosh, oh, that’s one thing that with COVID everybody’s now on video, they’ve gotten a lot better about like having a good background, good lighting, you know, present yourself like in person.

Tony DeSpirito
It’s funny. What I do now during the COVID days, and I have started traveling again for this job, but even say today’s an office day, okay, so I’m here in my home office. I get up this morning, like every day like I do. Every day I had breakfast, I took a shower, I shaved I got dressed like I was going to meet a client only I’m sitting in my basement office here doing you know, a lot of video work. So, it’s like a normal workday to me, I approach it with the same discipline, as I would if I were at the Hilton in Dallas getting ready to go see a customer in the morning type of thing, same discipline, same approach. I don’t get lazy. I don’t let the beard growth. I look terrible with a beard, by the way, or a mustache. Just I look awful. It’s embarrassing. And I don’t let it go for three or four days. I shave every single day. That’s just the way it is. And again, sometimes I hear myself talk and I’m like, wow, you have become old school. But then I disagree. I’m like, no, no, this is this is the way a professional presents themselves day in and day out.

Christopher Smith
Exactly. I tell my staff the same thing that hey, expect to be on camera. So, dress like you’re going to work. You know, don’t show up in your pajamas. Would you go into a client in your pajamas? No, then why are you on video in your pajamas?

Tony DeSpirito
Correct. 100% agree. And boy, you know, I hope people who are listening to this, I hope you really listen because especially as I’m trying to hire doing these video pre-screens, I would say so far and we just started here this week. So far, everybody has come just like this, you know, they’re there either in a nice part of their house or in their office and in a very professional work setting. Please take the time to make sure you’re presentable. Your workspace is presentable. And always, always be ready to be on video.

Christopher Smith
That’s right. That’s right. Let’s transition to talking CRM. Do you love it? Or do you hate it?

Tony DeSpirito
Okay. I’m going to say, I love it with a few caveats. Okay, as a sales person, I found it to be somewhat of a pain in the butt, you know, I gotta fill out the CRM, I gotta put all my notes in there. But you know what, it’s a great record, a great client record of everything I’ve done, everything is in the system. As a sales manager or a sales leader, great source of information at my fingertips. I have information about every client we’ve ever had every sales opportunity we’re engaged in. So, these days, I’m falling onto the I love it stage, because it is you know, it’s supposed to be one version of the truth. Excuse me, the full client record and, you know, an up-to-the minute report of what’s happening with the sales team and who’s talking to whom and where things are. So that the CEO calls me and asked me about a specific account, you know, give me 30 seconds or so and I can get you to the dollar answer and tell you exactly where we are. So, I’m going to fall on the I LOVE IT side.

Christopher Smith
When it comes to the sales team, the frontline guys using CRM, What’s your philosophy around CRM, making sure it’s actually a tool that benefits them?

Tony DeSpirito
It’s good question because we are now and again, I have a relatively small team at this company. We’re going to double the size of this team. So right now, we’re not using the web-based platform of the CRM that we have. We are just starting next week. We’re starting our beta trial of the web-based platform that allows them to do it from their phone or their iPad, you know, in the car, in the home office, whatever. So, I don’t want it to be a burden. But it is a necessary part of the job, right? You’ve got to record, you know, what we’re doing, not only for a current status, but we’re looking for patterns in what’s working, and I’m looking at sales cycle time between stages, is there anything we can do to shorten that? And I’m looking at your notes and your comments and your time and date stamp on things, not to find fault with you, but to find patterns in the data that are going to make the entire team more successful going forward.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I love that. It’s also I talk about this a lot. We talked about the slumps that people get into, do you use it as a tool for you know, let’s dig into the data when you’re in a slump? Let’s see what’s happening. What are you logged in CRM?

Tony DeSpirito
Yeah, so I do. That’s one of like, the second or third level metrics. Alright, let’s take a look at, you know, how many proposals have you delivered, you know, year-to-date, month-to-date, quarter day, whatever the metric is? Let’s go ahead and take a look at that. Wow. You know, it’s only for a while, you know, we know we should be delivering six to eight, you know, what’s happening there, why, and then kind of talk me through. And it’s like peeling back an onion, right? When a salesperson is slumping, it’s not just one thing, you got to really peel back to find that, you know, if they’ve got a personal issue going on with the family right now. And it’s taking their focus and attention away from the job, okay, I understand that I’m a father and my husband, all of that. But you got to peel back that onion. And sometimes you use the CRM, to use the data to say, look, you know, I wanted you to do X, but you’re only doing Y. So, let’s talk about the data here. So yeah, I use the CRM for that specific data.

Christopher Smith
For the user adoption is always a big issue with CRM. When you’re talking to the team members that are resistant to technology, what’s the why that you give to your team?

Tony DeSpirito
So I go into the discussion of not only is it our single source of truth for all of our customer work, but we talked about the sales cycle in the sales process, and how we’re always looking for efficiencies in that process. And one of the ways we do that is look at time and sales stages for a specific opportunity. The way I do that is I looked at your entries in the CRM and say, well, this opportunity spent, you know, three months between preproposal delivery. And when we actually delivered a proposal, well, if I look across the entire customer base, you know, the average time is 47 days, why are yours taking 90, and then use that as a source to kind of dig into. So, I tried to explain to them that the CRM is our one version of the truth. It’s how we track our activities. It’s what we can point back to if there are any questions, and we use it as a tool to potentially predict future success in our sales process. And when you explain it like that, and you make it easy for them to adopt, like, we’re gonna go to the web-based platform, you make it easy for them to adopt, you got to get them over some of the adoption fears. Once you do that, with a good explanation of why we’re doing it. People generally get on board.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I agree. I mean, do you have to have a compelling why that benefits the team? It can’t just be in for management or you know, or the feeling of Big Brother, but it’s got to be a benefit. Yep. Great. Do you have a horror stories related to CRM, from your career? Where it just was not done the right way.

Tony DeSpirito
Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a horror story, I would just call it this was not working. So, this is many, many years ago, you know, before the big CRMs. Where there were a bunch of little CRMs out there for using one of the little ones. And it just wasn’t extensible. It wasn’t very flexible. We had data input issues, which of course, led to terrible output. And we were making decisions based on terrible output. And we tracked it back to the fact that we weren’t using the system correctly. This was many, many, many years ago. And I would say, today’s modern CRMs, you know, they’re all cloud enabled web-based type of thing. Some of them are relatively idiot proof. Okay, if you want to use the basic functionality of any of the big CRMs, it’s pretty easy to use right out of the box. You know, with one level more of instruction, you can be customizing reports and things like that. And, you know, maybe with two levels of instruction, you can become a super user with relative ease 20 years ago, oh, no, that was hard. We use a couple of platforms that they’ve been absorbed by the current large CRM providers, but 20 years ago, they were independent platforms. And it was kind of a nightmare. And we had input issues which led to output issues which led to terrible decisions. based upon bad data, yeah, no, I never want to do that again.

Christopher Smith
What about what happens after the deal is one? Are you using CRM to manage the customer relationship?

Tony DeSpirito
Yeah, we actually do. I mean, we are using our CRM as a true customer relationship mechanism, if you will, all of our operations team is they go in and they start performing our services for our clients. They’re logging all of their work in the same CRM. So, I can literally pull up a client record. And I can look at everything, you know, basically back to the beginning of time and how we are performing. Like right now, that’s at my fingertips right now. So, I don’t know. I don’t know about other companies. But I can tell you that the company that I’m at now, as small as we are, we do a very, very good job of both sales and operations using the same CRM. So, we’re all looking at the same data there. It’s one of the it’s one of the biggest upside surprises of coming to this company, the way we the discipline we have with our CRM.

Christopher Smith
That’s great. It warms my heart, because a lot of companies struggle with that part where its CRM, so focused on the sales team, they forget that, hey, that’s really like this much of the client relationship, there’s a much bigger, hopefully years of relationship that you want to manage, and cultivate. And if you have your CRM set up correctly, you can do that.

Tony DeSpirito
Absolutely. 100% agree 100%.

Christopher Smith
What advice do you have for someone that maybe is coming into a new CRO role, and their CRM technology really is not aligned with supporting the sales team and the operations team?

Tony DeSpirito
I think as a brand new CRO, you really have to understand know, the guiding principles of the business, right? What are we really trying to do? What do our customers or clients, what do they look like? What’s important to them? What are the goals that we’ve set as a team, as a leadership team, as a sales team, understand the environment, when it comes to the CRM, if you’re using an underperforming system, or a system that just doesn’t meet your needs, you do well to invest in something that does, especially if you are building relationships for the long term, or, in my case, a relatively small company, we’re trying to build some structure to enable, you know, exponential growth of the company, you need a system that’s going to document everything, and I’m telling you, it will pay dividends 125 10 years from now, if you select the right system, and you use it appropriately, it will pay dividends at some of the smaller companies I’ve been at, you know, we kind of made use of the CRM and kind of didn’t. And there were times we look back, we’re like why I wish we had known you know what happened there three years ago. And if it was in the CRM, it would have been in everybody’s fingertips, take the time and invest the appropriate amount of money to make sure you have a scalable CRM, it’ll pay dividends over the next one to 10 plus years.

Christopher Smith
That’s great. I want to take a few moments to talk about the volunteer work that you do. Can you tell our audience about the work that you’re doing?

Tony DeSpirito
So, during COVID, as my schedule would kind of ebb and flow in with customer meetings, I got involved with some mentorship, right. So, there’s an organization here in Rhode Island called Rai hub. And what they do is they look for mentors that mentor young entrepreneurs as they’re either starting or trying to grow a business. So, I got in touch with the organization through some mutual friends that have been doing it for years. And now I sit on a couple of basically mentoring boards, not boards of directors, but a mentoring board, or I’m brought in as like a sales and marketing mentor to a very young entrepreneur. And I’ll tell you I have met some I mean, I brilliant may or may not be strong enough, but I’ve met some very, very smart young folks. 20s, early 30s kind of thing, trying to get some ventures off the ground. And it’s amazing. I didn’t even realize that after 30 years in sales, I’ve learned quite a bit and I’m able to pass on some basic nuggets to this team, but it’s all volunteer work. It might be you know, a few hours a month here and there. And I’m always available on the phone if the CEO the entrepreneur wants to go a little bit deeper. But it started during COVID because I said alright, I’m doing my job. I’m getting things done. I do have a little bit of extra time. Is there something I can do here? What can I do? I’m not going to go consult, you know, for money because I have a full-time job and that wouldn’t be ethical. And I found this organization called RHIhub. And it’s part of what’s called VMAs Vin, Vin venture of mentoring services. There are a few of them around the US. It’s been a fascinating six months or so as a mentor, formal mentoring coach.

Christopher Smith
I love that you’re doing that. Imean as an entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur, having resources such as yourself are invaluable? I think it’s tremendous that you’re given away that time and the experience that that’s tremendous.

Tony DeSpirito
And that’s exactly what it’s just a little bit of my time. And I’ll give you as much experience as you can digest, you know, in an hour, hour and a half or a couple of sessions. It’s like something you have to give back. Okay, this profession, in the last 27-28, 29-30 years has given me so much, okay, it’s given me so much personally, financially, professionally. I do have to give back and this is just part of the giving back is spreading the experience and the knowledge and passing that on to the next generation. I think that it’s hugely important. It’s our responsibility as leaders.

Christopher Smith
No, I love it. Well, Tony, it has been great having you here on Sales Lead Dog. If people want to reach out connect, if they want to apply to your job openings, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Tony DeSpirito
Well, okay, there’s a couple of different ways, right? So, you know, via email, Tdspirit@ synergistic.com. I don’t know if you want to give my mobile number out. But I’ll take a mobile call

Christopher Smith
And we can put it on the call notes. The show notes.

Tony DeSpirito
That’s fine. So mobile email. I respond. The positions we have posted are currently posted on zip recruiter and indeed.com. Under the title, regional vice president, don’t pay attention to the location, we just had to use a specific location. I’m hiring across the US from Maine to Washington right now. And we are in the active recruiting and hiring phase.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. Tony, thanks again for coming on Sales Lead Dog.

Tony DeSpirito
I appreciate it. Thank you very much for the 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 Empeller CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed.