Too Deep In It – David Schlosberg

Transcript:

Thu, Aug 11, 2022

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

sales , business , crm , sales team , clients , people , organization , develop , process , leader , struggle , salesperson , impeller , company , oftentimes , technology , support , areas , customers , david

SPEAKERS

David Schlosberg & 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 me David Schlosberg of Ferguson Alliance. David, welcome to sales lead dog.

David Schlosberg

Thanks, Chris. It’s I’m happy to be here.

Christopher Smith

David is a business adviser and sales consultant. David, tell me a little bit about what you’re doing in your current role.

David Schlosberg

So currently, I work with fame, primarily family-owned businesses that are in the ag and horticulture space, and help them develop their sales teams, their sales plans, do some coaching, and also strategic planning in those areas.

Christopher Smith

Now, that’s one of the reasons we reached out for you to come on the show, David is to really get your perspective on developing a sales leaders, especially in family owned businesses, I imagine it could be a bit of a struggle to develop as a sales leader within that environment, just because they’re starting in the family and kind of working their way up, I imagine that it’s a bit of a struggle, is that a correct assumption on my part?

David Schlosberg

Absolutely it tends to be become it becomes a struggle over time, especially if the business is successful, and begins to grow exponentially. And suddenly you know, the founder and the family are faced with having to scale their business. And you know, the typically a family business, the founder, and the owner is the sales guy. Right? And so having to take on a different role as your business grows, and you’re trying to scale it can be a challenge. If you’re not, you know, you haven’t had that experience in, in your past history about.

Christopher Smith

So, David, how did you get your start in sales?

David Schlosberg

Oh, yeah, I just kind of got thrown into it, you know, I, I studied agriculture and in college and went to work for went to work for a company and was in Texas at the time. And basically, it was a company that was installing golf courses around the southwest. And I thought I was I thought I was trying to be the, you know, the lead, like project manager. And basically, the owner of the company said, well, you know, I need you to, I need you to actually sell, and I was mortified. I had no, no, no, no aspirations to be in sales didn’t think I had, you know, just to have like, the last thing, I could think of that to be a salesperson. And so, you know, the first few times were, were a bit awkward, but, you know, over time, it kind of caught on, it’s sort of lit a fire in me and I became really passionate about selling and so my career beyond that first job, all my prior jobs were in sales or sales, management, sales, leadership throughout my career.

Christopher Smith

Now, so there’s nothing like there’s a deep and dive in step learned. What was that learning process? Like for you?

David Schlosberg

Yeah, yeah, there was completely, you know, unorthodox or back, basically, back then it was it was the norm, you know, there’s no, there was no sales 101 or, or training or development, it was just like, here’s the order pad go out, and, you know, book the order, and, you know, figure it out for yourself. So, it was it was learning as I went and, you know, I guess I guess I had you know, I have a high level of, you know, I guess you could say EQ or social awareness, and I’m a natural at reading people. So, I think I just use that skill to kind of read people and say, okay, am I doing, am I getting through to this person? Are they relating to me, or am I screwing up? So just kind of testing things as I developed in my sales career? But, you know, that’s not how we do it today, thankfully.

Christopher Smith

Or what are some of those key lessons you remember for those days?

David Schlosberg

Yeah, do more listening. Stop talking. Now ask questions and find areas where you have a common interest or common ground where you can actually connect with that person on a personal level beyond just selling your product or service.

Christopher Smith

How did you connect with Ferguson Alliance?

David Schlosberg

Oh, gosh, so the founder of Ferguson Alliance, has been a friend of mine and a colleague throughout my career. And so, we’ve kept in touch over the years, he actually worked for a nursery that was a competitor of the company I work for. So, we, we actually competed against each other in the in the business. And then he went out on his own and started his business advisory practice. So, some 10 years ago, and we reconnected as I was thinking about becoming an advisor, and he invited me to join his practice.

Christopher Smith

So, what are some of the struggles or common struggles you see, with, you know, because I think what you were saying earlier about this, like, all of a sudden, you’re, you’re dealt, you know, these, these businesses are facing big growth. And with that comes all kinds of challenges. What are some of those common challenges you’re seeing in these people that are now tasked with, hey, you need to be a sales leader, you know, start executing, what are some of those common challenges?

David Schlosberg

Well, first is, you know, they need to recognize that they’ve got to make some changes, and they’ve got to, usually that happens, typically happens when they’re not when they actually should be doing it. But that’s more often happens when they’re feeling a lot of pain from or being overwhelmed by not, you know, they’re, they’re the face of the business, they’re the sales guys. They’re completely consumed by the that part of the business and not able to focus on more strategic side of their business. And that’s planning and developing, you know, a strategic plan for growth. So, they recognize, okay, I’ve got to bring in someone from outside of the business or bring someone up from within my team, to develop as a as to become a sales leader to help build a sales organization, and start profession professionalizing, the sales part of the sales function about my business. So, it’s usually pain and realization or recognition that they’ve got too much on their plate, and they’re not able to step back and look at the business strategically, they’re just too deep in it. And sometimes they don’t even know that until they reach out to someone like me and say, hey, you know, I really struggling with my business? You know, we’re trying to grow, and I just can’t seem to, you know, can’t seem to get beyond that. Beyond this threshold that I’m at, I’m kind of stuck. You know, if I had had some help, I could think I could really scale my business.

Christopher Smith

Yeah. What are your when? Are there certain things that they’re doing in their business, you know, that are creating those plateaus? Well, yeah, maybe not doing in their business that are creating the plateaus?

David Schlosberg

Yeah, well, not being able to get out of the day to day, the weeds of, of running the business, especially on the sales side, you can only do so much in, you know, in 24 hours, or eight hours, or 10 hours or many hours working. And so, to be able to scale, you got to have more, you’ve got to have a sales team and a sales manager to be able to scale your business, one person can’t do it all. And I think that’s they get to the point where they’re able to manage it, and the business grows rapidly. And it gets to a point where they can’t go beyond that, because they’re limited in their ability to manage the business.

Christopher Smith

Right. Let’s talk about that. Let’s dive into that a little bit. That because I think as a sales leader, one of your primary functions as sales leaders to build out a team to do exactly what you’re saying you want to grow and get to scale. And so, you need a team. Right? What do you teach your clients on? You know, what’s the proper way to identify those candidates to come in behind them as the future sales leaders?

David Schlosberg

Well, you, you you’ve got to you’ve got to find someone that I would say and I heard one of your one of your speakers on a previous podcast status also you’ve got to find someone that is a good fit for your organization in terms of the you know, their personality and their style and also is a good fit for your customers and you know, they will, customers will be able to relate to this person and this person will be able to do I relate to them in terms of it. So, there’s, there’s two things a good fit for the organization, having the ability to fit the culture and also to be able to be aligned with the customers that you’re selling to.

Christopher Smith

One of the common mistakes that I see is people try to hire someone just like them. Is that what I should be doing as a sales leader? Or, you know, should I be able to differentiate a bit?

David Schlosberg

That’s a really good point. And actually, I think they, you could say, part of that answer is yes. Because you want someone that is aligned with your values and is able to, so if there’s not alignment and values, you’ve got an issue. So, in that, in that sense, you want someone that is like yourself, but in terms of the, you know, their view on how to build a sales team, and how to be effective in developing salespeople? That’s an area that, obviously, it’s a skill you probably don’t have. And that’s the skill you’re really looking for in a leader sales leader.

Christopher Smith

Yep. Yes. And that’s a thing that I think a lot of, you know about entrepreneur, and I know, a lot of entrepreneurs just because of, you know, we tend to flock together. That’s a real struggle for a lot of us to be able to step away and realize they need someone else to run this part of my business. And to really understand that, hey, maybe I don’t have the skill set or the knowledge to even identify who that is, I need to go get someone to help me. I think a lot of times, a common thing I see is that, you know, we keep trying to do everything ourselves instead, right? Oh, and getting help and saying do this for me find the right person or help me develop this this area that I’m deficient in? How do you help your clients through that process of realizing that, hey, I probably not the best person in this area, and I need help.

David Schlosberg

Yeah, that’s a that’s a bit of a challenge. Because, you know, oftentimes, an entrepreneur tends to really believe they can, you know, they, they can do this, they’ve been doing it, why do I need to pay somebody to help me figure out how to do this. And so, it’s a, you have to try to be try to be purposeful in your conversations where you’re, you’re painting a picture saying, Okay, what? Let help me understand, or let’s try to talk about where you want to, what’s your vision for this business? Where do you want to take it? And what are your goals? Okay, so you want to, you know, you want to you want to build a business 4x or 5x, in five years? And have you thought about how you’re going to accomplish that? And well, now, you know, I’m struggling with it. Okay, let’s break that down. You know, let’s talk about your business functions. And in particular, probably the most important, which is sales. So, you know, how do we, how do we go from where we are today, and what I like to call the current state, to the future state five years from now. And you know, have you thought about bringing somebody in, that might be able to help you build out a sales organization, because that’s typically how you grow a business exponentially is by growing your sales organization, and having a sales leader who can hire the best talent that’s out there for this for your particular business, and bring those people in, get them on board. And then you you’ve just magnified your coverage, and you’re able to expand your business. So that’s you sort of walk them through first ask them to share with you what’s their vision for growth, and then talk about how you know how you’re gonna get there, the roadmap.

Christopher Smith

I love that approach. I mean, that, to me, if you don’t have a clear, it’s easy, or say it’s easy. It’s actually hard to set your strategic goals and all that. But what’s even harder is to create that connection between those two setting those goals and actually have an execution plan or a roadmap of how we’re going to achieve it. Or what I’ve seen, that’s the big gap. And being able to help companies say, hey, here’s how we’re actually going to make this happen. Unless you’re doing that step. setting. The goal is you’re just setting a goal if you don’t have a plan to get there. Good luck.

David Schlosberg

Yeah, same thing with strategic plans. You know, you can go through all our work and hammering out this really impressive strategic plan and put it in a binder and it goes up on the shelf. Exactly. That’s it. It’s got to be a living, active breathing document that gets updated routinely and there’s an action plan that actually talks about how your organization is going to implement that strategic plan instead. by step.

Christopher Smith

So, when you’re working with a client and they have sales leadership, how do you like to engage your what do you recommend? To your sales leaders to say like, these are the areas. Where do you start with having them? Like strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, kind of analysis? Or how do you like your sales leaders to start this process of working with you?

David Schlosberg

Actually, you That’s exactly right, you, what I’d like to do is start with the sales leadership, and the sales team, and really identify what are the one of the gaps there do a SWOT analysis to see where everyone is in terms of how they perceive their sales organization, not just the sales leader, but the sales team is interested. So, you would include someone from the sales, sales, outside salesperson, if you have customer service, you would include somebody from customer service, so that you’re getting different perspectives from people that are working within your organization and dealing with your process. You know, what’s, what are their pain points?

Christopher Smith

Right, I love that. What are some of the common findings? You get out of that? Are there any surprises people, see? After that is done.

David Schlosberg

Oh, sure, you know, it’s oftentimes, well, I just, I know, the company that I worked with the last, my last job was, we did that. And, you know, they, we, you know, discovered that the process the, the sales ordering process was very cumbersome. And, and clunky. The reporting tool was a real nightmare. So, you just uncover things that people are really feeling pain with. And that’s, that’s where you kind of know, okay, we’re, here’s, here’s some things we got to work on. And what, what tools? And how do we approach that. So, for example, the sales process is clunky, well, then let’s talk about putting together a team to look at, again, what are we trying to achieve? Let’s, let’s break down our process step by step and see where there’s an opportunity to improve that. And then let’s look at what kind of what kind of tool we need in terms of CRM or sales, sales order, software that we need to implement to support that process.

Christopher Smith

One of the things that I see in my world implemented CRM is when I engage with the sales teams, a lot of times when we start working with them, they’re very focused inward on what their processes are. And they lack that perspective to look at themselves from the customer side of what’s the experience we’re creating for our customers? And what barriers are we putting up for them? To work with us? And, you know, how can we make it easier, that kind of thing? A lot of the companies I work with, we’ve started, you know, they’re totally looking inwards instead of looking from the perspective of the customer. Do you see that in your world?

David Schlosberg

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s a, that’s quite an eye opener for, for the team when you say, Okay, well, let’s, let’s take a step back here and think about the customer experience. And this, this process we’re developing it should be about the customer number one, what are their needs? And how do we discover what they what they need? And how do we how do we achieve that great level of customer intimacy? And let’s help that via first of all, that means that becomes a component of our processes, we develop it that we’re taking into consideration that customer experience so very important, and oftentimes overlooked.

Christopher Smith

Oh, yeah, I to me, and that’s it’s always shocking to me that its but I guess it’s natural, I shouldn’t be too shocked, but because it’s a lot easier to tack on sake, you know, to focus on what’s in front of you versus putting yourself in your customers shoes. That takes a lot more work, but it’s such important work. Absolutely. What about failure? Failure is just a huge part of sales. You can’t win them all. How do you leverage failure in working with your clients?

David Schlosberg

So, failure comes in all shapes and sizes and forms and fashions but it’s, you know, I like to think about the sales salesperson who’s into acting with the client. And you know, I can speak from personal experience where you basically screw up. And, you know the best the best way, the way I’ve always approached it is to be transparent. And, and, and communicate right away when we’re when you’ve made a mistake. And oftentimes the client will appreciate your honesty and your transparency. And oftentimes that becomes an actual opportunity to, too, for future business when you as you work through that, that, that problem there, if they are the, you know, the kind of customers that really are ethical and also appreciate someone else’s ethical and honest, they’ll work with you to come up with a solution that ends up being maybe not necessarily a win win. But definitely something that’s reasonable and really strengthens the relationship by really developing that level of trust. Because now they know you have integrity, and you’re not going to pass the buck or blame it on someone else or whatever they have an excuse. You just say, hey, look, you know, we screwed up, and here’s, here’s the deal, how can we work this out?

Christopher Smith

Do you have any failure stories from your career that you share with your clients?

David Schlosberg

So, the, the, I guess, what I like to share with clients is because it has to do with interpersonal relationships, and Manat managing management style and, and being able to develop a cohesive team that really learns how to work well together. And in my, in my, in my experience, and when I was just getting started in my first role as a sales leader, you know, I attended, I tended to be someone who demanded a lot from my team, because I had real high expectations for myself, you know, I tend to be very competitive, I don’t like to lose. And I like to respond quickly. So, when others around me may not have that same energy level or that same sense of urgency back in my earlier career, I would get very frustrated with those colleagues. And that would be received or interpreted as someone as my being abrupt and perhaps didn’t, didn’t relate to all that well, in the reaction I was getting from my sales team was pretty negative. So, it wasn’t until somebody pointed that out to me, that I realized, you know, hey, I’ve got to be able to be sensitive to and aware of the people that I work with. And so, what I think works really well is for a sales team that’s wanting to develop, one of the first things we like to do is an assessment of the behavior styles of everyone in that group. And because it’s a real eye-opening experience for people, when they understand more about themselves, and how they perceive the world around them and people around them. And what you know what, areas where they are really good in areas where they struggle and understanding of teammates the same way. So, there’s, you have an appreciation, when you are working with someone and they react a certain way, your kind of like, okay, well, I understand where they’re coming from. And, you know, that’s okay. It’s not It’s nothing personal. So, it really helps develop the interpersonal relationships within the team and helps them work together much in a much better way more effectively.

Christopher Smith

Is there any particular assessment you prefer over the others?

David Schlosberg

We would like to use the DISC assessment.

Christopher Smith

Right. Right. This was wondering, and I know you can use a lot of these assessments the right way, there’s also a wrong way to use this. Those assessments, what are some of the wrong ways to use an assessment that you advise your clients against?

David Schlosberg

really hadn’t given that much thought, as far as the wrong way to use them, I think. You know, it’s really, it’s really about taking the time to first of all, do the one-on-one review or debriefing and do it in a way that’s that person receiving the information feels comfortable and safe and knowing that there’s no judgment being made everything is basically just a score, and there’s no right or wrong answers. There’s no good or bad it’s just How we are how you are how we are. So being able to break, get them a comfortable with understanding, this is not a, this is not a test where you score an A or an F. This is just an assessment of your particular style and your behavior style. And everyone is unique. And we all have areas where we have that work really well that were really are strong for us. And we have areas that could certainly always use some work and some development, but it’s not saying you’re failing, or you’re doing great. It’s just it is what it is. So, getting beyond that hurdle. So, if I would imagine if someone that is, you know, giving those working with those clients, and they’re not taking the time to really set the climate or the tone for that discussion, that could be that could be an issue. So right, and then the next step is getting, getting the group together. And again, being able to set the tone for why we’re doing this and how it how it relates to the group can be transformational, if it’s done, done well and done. Right. Right.

Christopher Smith

I think you answered that question really well, just by saying what you should be doing, it’s really apparent what you should not be doing, right. Awesome. Let’s shift our discussion to technology. You mentioned this a bit before. A lot of the companies that we engage with in our world, they come into us because they realize, as part of, you know, maybe working with someone like you, they realize like, hey, we need help with our sales technology, CRM in particular. One of the common see things we see is that a lot of companies just aren’t investing in CRM, like they should, or they’ve invested in it, because they thought, well, if we get this, it’s going to solve all our problems with the sales team. How do you tackle introducing technology into your clients?

David Schlosberg

I start with, you know, they’re just kind of how you teed it up, there’s there are there, there are different ways you can approach this. And for, from my experience, what works is spending time with the team, and it can be I like to have a cross functional team, to, again, do us do a SWOT of all of the processes for each of the functional areas. And then from that, come up with a do a process improvement study or plan, where you bring in these someone, not just people from sales, but people from production or operations. And people from finance, that can because it’s all linked, right? It’s the enterprise solution. And so, we talk about what are this? What’s the process flow map, and we spend weeks, sometimes months, just mapping out from the minute you get a lead? So, the order has been shipped and follow up with the client? What are all the things that have to happen in that organization to support that sale? And who are you know, what are the functional areas that are involved? And let’s, let’s map all that out in a process map. And that really res seems to resonate with clients like okay, yeah, that is sounds like something worthwhile. And something that this that we have never done that before. So, once you get all that work done, and it usually it to the last company eyes with it took it probably took six, eight months to hammer that out with the organization. And then then we started shopping around for the CRM tool. And going to the different you know, the different options that are out there to see who had the best I guess proposal in terms of flexibility and the technology support to be able to customize whatever it was they were pitching to support our process, rather than the other way around. Where we were we were modifying process to fit the off the shelf CRM tool. Yeah.

Christopher Smith

So that’s the part that I struggle with is the lot of times the clients we get they’ve got a CRM already. And they were forced to do what you’re saying at the end. They’re there they have had to adapt their process. As to the limitations of the tool, so they end up doing a lot of stuff in Excel spreadsheets or whatever, just trying to make things work, as opposed to the tool adapting fully to their process. So that it everything flows from seamlessly and freely as it should.

David Schlosberg

Yeah, the other. The other thing that and I’ve experienced this, if you don’t do that, adoption becomes a nightmare. Oh, yes. Your salespeople are like, well, why am I doing it this way? This, this makes no sense at all. And they, you know, throw up their hands and, you know, go back to the order pad.

Christopher Smith

That’s right. Yeah. And that those are some of the common symptoms, like if you’re listening this podcast, and you’re hearing those things, that that that those are strong indicators, you’ve got the wrong technology in place, or it might be the right technology is not implemented the right way. Right. A lot of times, that’s the case, you know, that you don’t necessarily have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s just is this setup the right way? It’s hard to know that, you know, if you’re unless you’re an expert in that world, but right, those are some of the common symptoms we see. I mean, you nailed it. What advice do you have for sales leadership, when it comes to technology? Beyond what you already said? Is there anything else you would like to add to that?

David Schlosberg

Yeah, I would add that you’ve got to, you’ve got to have the support of senior management, or the executives, or if it’s a family business, the shareholders they have, you absolutely need to show them the value that this will bring to the company. And they have to embrace that. And, and support that it become cheerleaders as well, so that everyone in the organization sees that this is this is an initiative that’s important to the whole organization, including the owners, or the shareholders. So important.

Christopher Smith

Yeah, absolutely critical. I was on a call last week, in person would call me like, Chris, when we implement CRM, who should own CRM. And my response was, who’s the top person in your organization? Right, they own CRM. And that doesn’t mean they’re involved in the weeds in the day-to-day decisions around CRM. But they’re the ones sending the message. The why, why we’re doing this as a company that has to come from the top. And so, I always ask that, like, people say, we need a CRM, why, what’s your why? What is it you’re trying to do with this tool? And that why changes based upon where you’re at in the organization? You have to have a way for your sales team? What’s this going to do for them? Right? For me, right? Yeah, what’s in it for me? And how’s this going to help me you need to have a why for customer service, for operations, all those different elements of your organization, you have to understand what the benefits are going to be to them. And if you can’t answer that question, you have more work to do to figure it out. Right.

David Schlosberg

Right. Exactly.

Christopher Smith

David, I really appreciate you coming on sales lead dog has been very interest interesting discussion with you. If people want to reach out and connect with you if they want to learn more about Ferguson Alliance, what’s the best way for them to do that?

David Schlosberg

Really, is to go to our website. And just click on you know, connect and or schedule a call. We’re more than happy myself or one of my colleagues to reach out to you and have a conversation at no cost for an initial consult initial consultation.

Christopher Smith

That’s awesome. And we’ll have all that contact information on the show notes, so be sure to check out the show notes at impellers crm.com. Forward slash sales lead dog, you’ll get access to David’s episode as well as all our other episodes of sales lead dog, be sure to check those out and subscribe. David, thanks for coming on sales lead dog and welcome to the pack.

David Schlosberg

Well, thank you so much for having me, Chris. I really enjoyed our time together. Awesome.

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

• “The owner of the company said, I need you to actually sell and I was mortified. I had no aspirations to be in sales.” (2:57-3:07)
• “Do more listening, stop talking, and ask questions and find areas where you have a common interest or common ground where you can actually connect with that person on a personal level” (4:56-5:12)
• “It’s usually pain and realization or recognition that they’ve got too much on their plate, and they’re not able to step back and look at the business strategically- they’re just too deep in it.” (7:30-7:40)

 

Links

David Schlosberg LinkedIn
Ferguson Alliance LinkedIn
Ferguson Alliance Website

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter