PODCAST

Why Use a CRM – William Standifird

SHARE

““I’m looking for courage, character, and compassion,” says William Standifird of AccessESP. In this episode of Sales Lead Dog, host Chris Smith talks with William about how he hires, how he uses data, why use a crm and how it all centers on the needs of his prospects.

 

AccessESP sells a green technology product to help extract gas and oil from wells — which means their sales cycle can be a few years long. Because of this, having a balanced team that is using CRM technology in a smart way is pivotal. William talks about the importance of forecasting, how he holds his sales team responsible for their own data, and how he tries to keep his team balanced by focusing on selling personas when he’s hiring.

 

This week, tune in for a great conversation about building a team and a selling framework that supports the needs of your prospects.

 

Watch or listen to this episode about why use a CRM



Listen on Apple Podcasts

 

Transcript:

Wed, 2/24 1:55PM • 46:54 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 
crm, people, sales, customer, product, company, forecasting, person, process, rep, team, understand, codify, system, sell, methodology, salespeople, attributes, sales manager, easy 

Speakers of discussion about why use a crm

William Standifird, 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, my guest has to be having a case of deja vu a little bit to full disclosure here. My guest today is William Standiford, of AccessESP. We had actually recorded this episode about a month ago, and I forgot to hit the record button. So he was gracious enough to come back to Sales Lead Dog and do it all over again so welcome to Sales Lead Dog, William.  

 William Standifird   
Yeah, thank you. Only guest ever to get a do-over. 

 Christopher Smith   
That’s right. You’re that special. So William, tell us a bit about your role and AccessESP. 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, so at AccessESP, I’m the Vice President of Sales and Marketing, might term that the Chief Revenue Officer, but basically the person that’s in charge of, you know, bringing sales into the company and recognizing revenue and income. We’re a private equity-backed, rapidly growing technology company that serves the industry, energy industry. 

 Christopher Smith   
And you are very technology-focused company. It’s very apparent from your website when I went out and checked it out before the episode. I’m not in that world so I’m not going to pretend I know what you do, it, but it is pretty amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about what your company does? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, so we make a product, primarily used in oil and gas wells. And basically, a lot of oil and gas wells when they’re drilled, the oil doesn’t just flow naturally out of the ground sort of like what you see on the Beverly Hillbillies. right and so customers will put an electric pump in there, sort of like a pump you have in your pool that helps pump the oil out. And when this pump fails after a few years because it’s in very hot and very corrosive environments, it can be really expensive to replace that part. And so, we make a technology system that is sort of like a docking station that allows customers to really quickly plug in, unplug and replace the electrical submersible pump that is pumping the oil up out of the ground. So, seems really easy to do. Not so easy to do to survive, you know, 300 degrees Fahrenheit, you know, and caustic or acidic environments for 20 years so that’s the high tech piece is is sort of bringing the idea to life.  

 Christopher Smith   
That’s pretty cool. 

 William Standifird   
Yes. 

 Christopher Smith   
Thinking back over your career, what are the three things that have really contributed to your success? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I think, first off, you know I, I started sort of my, you know post-high school journey in the military. I think that’s one thing I would attribute is to build some discipline, and then the first role I had sort of out of school was working as a field engineer for a very, very large company called Slumber J, which is very large oilfield services company. And I think being a field engineer, you know, had, that gave me an opportunity to get really, really close to the customer. And so that tremendously benefited my perception of, you know how customers sort of use something that is sold to them. Right, and particularly if something’s oversold or undersold, the person delivering it, the field engineer really is the one that feels that. So that’s sort of the second thing. I think the third thing that really helped shape my career was I’ve had some really good mentors along the way that have a lot more experience in sales and marketing than I do. So a colleague of mine, Bill Biggins at Credit Tech consulting. I’ve worked with Bill for over 20 years. And he’s been an excellent mentor, so having someone on the outside that, you know, can really coach you and you know provide some insight sometimes into your crazy ideas or reasons things didn’t go the way you want, I think, you know, discipline, gotta be close to the customer, and then, you know, always get some help from someone on the outside, I think really has helped move me along. 

 Christopher Smith   
That’s right. Mentoring is such a common theme when I asked that question. What was it about him that, you know those attributes that really made him such a special mentor to you? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I guess the first thing is, is he can sort of put up with me. I think a lot of us that, you know, are around sales and marketing can have strong personalities. And so, you know, really, I think, you know, it was somebody that was, you know, able to sort of take, you know, a very confident, perhaps even, you know, sort of narcissistic attitude, and you know able to mirror that and reflect that back to me and really helped me use my strengths and my weaknesses. I think a lot of times people think a mentor is about you know having someone criticize you all the time, but it’s really about having someone that can sort of understand where your strengths and weaknesses are and help you understand that you can better fit yourself to the challenges that are in front of you. And I didn’t really think his you know, is it his academic credentials or experience, those things are, you know, interesting attributes, but I think you sort of know when you meet someone that like that person knows a lot more than, than I do and I think they could really benefit me. 

 Christopher Smith   
That’s awesome. It’s great to have people like that in your life.  

 William Standifird   
Yeah. 

 Christopher Smith   
Thinking back to when you got your start in sales, you know a lot of people go in, deer in the headlights, scared out of their minds, or other people go in thinking they know way more than they really do. What do you wish you had been taught thinking back to that, that early version of you? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I think that it was definitely an epiphany for me to learn that sales was a professional discipline and not, you know, really solely based on your personal attributes and natural talent. You know, I wish earlier I had known that there are proven processes to unlock the psychology of your buyer to understand, you know, what market segments are a correct fit for your product. You know, in that that selling is a lot about getting the right solution to the person with the right need at the right time and not about how good you are at convincing someone to, you know, take something off your hands for money. 

 Christopher Smith   
Yeah, I think it’s so important in sales too, you know, as you said that to really understand the person you’re selling to and what their needs and, and helping them in from where they’re coming from and not just trying to cram a sale down their throat.  

 William Standifird   
Yeah, definitely the younger version of me was the latter. So it’s like okay here’s a product, I’ve been told to make you take it. All my tactics are based on you know how am I going to, you know, sell me this pen, I see that on YouTube a lot all the time. What I really want to do is find the person who needs a pen, because then they’re gonna buy a box of them, and it’s not going to be very hard work. 

 Christopher Smith   
That’s right. That’s right. Thinking begin back to your sales career, do you have a crazy story you can share with us 

 William Standifird   
Oh gosh I probably have a lot but I guess I’ll pick something more, you know, Back to my days as a field engineer, I know that so the end of the job, a field engineer’s job is to sort of execute a service, right. You think I’m a technical person, I’m here to deploy this product and service and deliver the customer value. But at the end of our, our projects, we actually had to get a job ticket signed, right. And so there would be a ticket with a list of the things that you had on it. And I think this was a great learning experience for me. And the office would frequently tell you you know, hey, you know try and here are some things, now I would know it’s an upsell but then I just thought these are things because what, they offer and see if they want XYZ when you’re doing it, you know, I, these were products, but it could be things like a warranty or something else and so. I go to get my job ticket signed and the customer first of all, you know, looks at the ticket and, “Oh my gosh, I had no idea was this much money.” And so then, I’m knowing these sort of piles on, “Oh, well since you’re really offended by how much this costs, let me try and sell you a few more things.” And so as the customer’s, anger, really grew, you know, it sort of became apparent to me that my, my tactics that imploded the customer, this is in an offshore location, so remote location where you only get to it from boats, actually ended up kicking me off the job site. We call that getting run off. We had the power cable to my to my work unit chopped with an umbilical to get me and my stuff thrown off the location. And I think at that point, I sort of really, you know, my first sort of harsh sales experience of the ultimate rejection, that you know there, there are some times it’s inappropriate to pile on, for sure. 

 Christopher Smith   
PG? Oh yeah, that, that response from your customer, okay, in case you’re not getting the message I’m gonna make it very clear to you. 

 William Standifird   
Get out of my house. 

 Christopher Smith   
Get off my yard. Oh my, that’s crazy. Um. When you think about the transition from salesperson to sales leadership, that’s a big jump for a lot of people, for I think just about everybody. Can you talk about your decision to make that transition into leadership? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a point in a lot of people’s career where you have to decide, you know, do I want to be a strong individual contributor, or do I want to be a leader in, in, in reality, the monetary benefits are not that dis, unequal right. In fact, a strong single sales contributor may, may be able to earn more than a sales leader. But I think if, if, if you like working with people. You like sharing what you know. And maybe you’re a little more inclined to learn a little bit more about marketing and the process and these kinds of things, you’re more inclined for sales leadership and that was really the decision that I made, I really enjoyed working with people, I like building people up. And so that’s really the reason to leave. If you don’t like helping other people, if it’s if it’s really, you know, all about sort of personal gratification and reward you know I think you should really take a hard look. The world needs good salespeople to just go out and sell, right, and not everybody needs to be a sales manager or a Sales VP or a marketing person, but for me it was the right choice. Again, because I think I’m very strong on the process side and I like working with people and building teams and trying to lead them to a successful outcome.  

 Christopher Smith   
Right. The, early on it’s, I think that’s when people make most their mistakes, were there any big mistakes you made early on in leadership? 

 William Standifird   
Oh gosh, I think, definitely, I think probably the most common that I’ve made and did I see get made is what I would call sort of oversteering. So I think, you know, a lot of new managers and leaders cannot resist the temptation to reach in and over control and and versus. You know the understanding their role is to, you know, build a system that enables their team to succeed autonomously. And so I think oversteering, you know, just not being able to, you know, your rep sends the customer an email and you on the carbon copy, they leave something out you would have said and you just can’t resist the temptation to reply back, “Oh by the way we could also do this.” You know, going on calls with reps that really would have been better off without me there. I think that’s the biggest thing that new managers and sales leaders, you know, need to avoid. So trust your people, you know, ask them what they need, and give them what they need. Be careful not to have your hands on the steering wheel when you don’t need to. Right. That’s important.  

 Christopher Smith   
Yeah, you mentioned earlier about having a good system that your people operate within. What do you go through to create that system? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I think that, that there are a couple pieces to the system, they’re sort of, you know, nowadays the digital framework, right, that we might you know companies have ERPs, which we use for accounting and other things and then on the sales side, we have CRM’s or relationship management tools that we use. These, these frameworks are really good at codifying your process but what you really need to have first is sort of you know your methodology for what kind of sales process you’re going to use, which I think is largely driven by the kinds of products that you’re selling and the type of sales cycle you have in these things from, you know, transactional or high volume sort of retail sales are very different than the very long lead time sales in B2B. So as an example, the current access ESP, our sales cycle can be a multi-year sales cycle for our product, which for some people here, is almost unnerving, right. My gosh what are you guys doing for two years? So the framework we have, the control points we have, how we manage forecasting is very different in that length of sales cycle, versus, you know, having a warehouse full of products where you’re moving inventory and flipping. So, you know, I think you need the right methodology, you can pick a system first, most of the systems nowaday are flexible enough. But you know you need to really have your methodology sort of set, you know, in terms of are you using strategic selling or using some other methodology to have at least a framework for your system that maybe they can customize. 

 Christopher Smith   
Right, right. How do you manage your team in that, you know you’ve got this structured process, you have a very long sales cycle. Some people are very compliant with that kind of stuff. Other people want to, you know, bump up against the guardrails and kind of push and test the limits. How do you manage those people that are the testers? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah. Well, I think it depends on the size of your team and the personality. So, my favorite tactic is really sort of, you know, public exposure or sort of co-optation of the team togethe. And so while we do private reviews and things like that as an example, our core report that we use to track the bulk of our business, we review publicly, or publicly inside the company with our executive leadership and our sales team. And so, you know, I frequently remind them that you know that their ability to serve those other stakeholders, you know, will dramatically influence their reputation, their career outcome. So, I won’t tell you that I never send an email that says, “Oh you haven’t updated this in 30 days and this should be 20% not 10%.” I do do some of that, but more often, I like to let them be accountable for what they should be accountable for in the system. The same way that like, I don’t normally update data for my reps. Right, it’s your opportunity, it’s your item in the CRM. I would prefer to hold you accountable for making that accurate and making sure you understand that it’s not just the sales manager that’s looking at that, there are lots of other stakeholders that need to know that data, you know whether you think it’s important or not. 

 Christopher Smith   
That’s incredible. I love that approach because I think it, people need to understand that this stuff is not just me and you looking at it this is the. Business is making decisions off of this information, that’s so important. 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, for us, I think, in, in, in businesses that have a lot of capital intensity which we make electromechanical equipment, that’s really one of the main reasons is, you know, the other leaders of the company are trying to look at ordering long lead items, ordering the high capital intensive items, you know, and they have to forecast that and produce a capital budget for whoever owns your company, whether you’re publicly trading or private, and be able to say look we need $10 million in capital, and the sales people sort of either need to trust you or understand that your forecast is what’s driving our request that is going to allow us to build the equipment you need to finish your sale, so please update your CR images. 

 Christopher Smith   
Oh yeah, yeah, forecasting can be so hard for so many companies. And my personal belief is it’s probably because of you look at your process, and the structure you’re creating around that, and is that driving your, your issues with forecasting. What are your thoughts around difficulties with forecasting? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I think that the main thing, and again I’ve worked at smaller firms and at big Fortune 500 firms, I think that sort of the route of forecasting is consistency around, you know, your your your nomenclature and your expectations and your definition. So, you know, for instance, in a CRM we often have a probability column. And, you know, the question is, is, is I’m constantly explaining to people that like in our system or the way I have the system set here, really it’s not probability, it’ss the sales stage. And so what that indicates is that the stage of the sales process we’re at, it actually doesn’t indicate in my opinion sort of the probabilistic, you know, response for how likely we are to close that deal. So 50% doesn’t mean it’s 50-50 whether we win it or not, 50% in my world means that we’ve completed the technical specifications for a product or a specific sale to a customer, and the customer has agreed that yes, that’s what the product would look like if I were to choose to buy it. And so if you, if you don’t have those expectations around sort of quality and probability defined in your organization, I think all forecasting falls apart. I’m not saying it’s perfect from there, but I think you at least have to have level setting in terms of, you know what, what probabilities are and mean, because I think we in sales, sort of misuse some of these probabilistic techniques. You know, take all the percents and multiply them by your revenue and that’s your expected, nah. I think most sales managers would tell you, “How many times has that worked out.”  

 Christopher Smith   
Right. Oh yeah. 

 William Standifird   
It doesn’t work like that. So we need to make sure that definitions are right. I actually think forecasting is one of the top sort of, you know, attributes that, that management teams want from their sales leaders. We own the crystal ball, that’s our job for the company is to forecast.  

 Christopher Smith   
Yep. That’s awesome. A big part of being a sales leader is building a good team. What’s your approach to building your team? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I wish I could tell you it was all very process-oriented. I was just discussing with one of the sales managers on my team today I mean, mine is, is, is very qualitative so I think I’ve just built a set of attributes of the kind of people that, you know, tend to work best together for the types of products that I sell, I think, as a sales person, whether you’re in leadership or selling a product, I sort of dispute the notion that we’re all good at selling anything. I think we sort of gravitate to a set of products that, that we can sell. It may cross industries, it may, that’s fine. But I mean, you know, in terms of like what they are, whether you sell software, this chemicals, or whatever. And so, for me, it’s the ability to sort of recognize what those people are and to figure out where they fit on the team and it’s not about people I like or people I work with, my job is actually to adapt myself to what that person is, ut how I mix a team together so that I’ve got a certain number of hunters, right, and I’ve got a certain number of farmers, and I’m careful not to put my hunters in my with my farmers, and some prospectors probably, too. Right. And you’re going to need that balance of people. If you end up with a team with all hunters, at least in my experience, you know, that may serve you very well in a startup company, it won’t serve you well as you build your client base. And so, you know, I’m constantly looking to balance my team, I’m looking to assess the qualities of people and figure out okay, where do they fit in the team not do they have the right college degree or school and, you know, do I like them, because those are actually probably the least important things in sales. 

 Christopher Smith   
Right, right. Yeah. What are the signs you’re looking for in your team to say hey, this person’s ready to take on a leadership role or at least start the discussion. 

 William Standifird   
Yeah. Oh, that’s a good question. I would say that I used to help with some leadership classes at one of the very large companies I work for, and I used to talk about three C’s, right. And I didn’t read these anywhere. These are actually mine the three C’s are courage, character, and compassion. So, one is I think you, you’re going to be in management. You need courage, and the reason you need courage is you have to be courageous enough to tell the people that work for you when they’re not doing well, and that is much harder than people think it is to do. It’s easy to criticize, it’s not easy to have conversation with someone about gaps in their skills, not easy to tell a salesperson after they just made a pitch when you sit down on the car after that lunch and go, “Oh my God, I think that was the worst meeting ever,” right and sort of go through how that happens. So I think you need courage. You also need courage to tell your management and other people when it’s not all good, because sales is not all good news. Here’s a newsflash for people in sales, no matter what you sold last year, the objective is 20% more this year. So, you need courage to be able to accept goals, but also to be realistic because again forecasting is our job. So the second thing I think you need is character. You need character because without character you will not be long term successful in sales, in management, or as as a team member, right. And so, in my mind, character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking beyond some simple education about what the rules or ethics are of business. Most of us know what’s right and what’s wrong. Right. And so I think you need the character to do the right thing when nobody’s looking. That means not taking your customer in a private meeting. That means when somebody gives you information that you’re not supposed to have, you don’t exploit that information. That means if you’re operating internationally, complying with policies like FCPA, it can be very difficult to comply with because others aren’t competing the same way that you do. So the last C, which I think is most important that I look for probably the first sign of somebody who’s going to be management is compassion. I think you need to have empathy. So it’s not about being a driver, you need to be able to have people that sense when someone’s having a bad day. If they can’t sense when another team member is having a bad day, how are they going to sense when a customer is having a bad day? And so, your ability to be compassionate and understand that as much as we want to win and being, you know, number one matters and all these things, we have to inject some compassion in this business and some tolerance or you’re not going to be successful. So I’m looking for courage, character, and compassion. 

 Christopher Smith   
That’s awesome. Let’s shift our discussion now to talk about my favorite topic, CRM. Do, when it comes to CRM, do you love it, or do you hate it? 

 William Standifird   
I love it. I was not as much of a fan prior to the digitalization of CRM tools. I had the opportunity to be exposed at a startup to salesforce.com at a very early in that development of that product. And so, again, historically when the systems were more manual, I thought they were taking too much time from us. And we could live by the rolodex. If you don’t know what a rolodex is, then Christopher, you have to do another podcast for the younger salespeople. 

 Christopher Smith   
I think that was the first thing I bought for my desk was a rolodex. 

 William Standifird   
Rolodex, that’s your work, right.  

 Christopher Smith   
Oh yeah.  

 William Standifird   
But CRMs have really, for me, I’m a huge fan. Not just because they’re a great place to store information but to me, they allow me to codify control points, and control points to me are essential to my sales process, because I believe in gated sales processes that have criteria, because the treatments that I want the reps to apply are different at each gate and the CRM allows me to prosecute that and also informs my, my confidence in the ability of the rep to close the deal, and therefore, it improves my ability to forecast as well as maintain control of my organization, Ima, you can put me in the fan column. 

 Christopher Smith   
I love that. And I love your approach with that structure and representing your process within the platform. You’d be amazed how many times we come into a company, and we talk about that you know, “What is your process?” “Oh, yeah we’ve got a great process.” I’m like, “Okay show it to me in your CRM,” and it gets quiet. And it’s like okay there’s, we have an issue there, we need to address that. What do you think has been your biggest struggle with CRM over your career? 

 William Standifird   

Yeah, I think the portability of the CRM is still a challenge. I think that, that it’s still a lot of data. And, at least for me, I find it difficult to manage. In a world that is increasingly mobile. I know this may seem trivial, but I think for me, the CRM is very easy to use and prosecuted by have two big monitors like I have in front of me today. And I can see a lot of things. I think it’s difficult when a rep for instance, makes a quote on the weekend and it shows up on my phone and trying to, you know, load. So I think mobility is still a challenge, it can still be a challenge to, as much as the world is connected, our business is international, they only recently started getting internet on planes and travel, and so again, if you codify your process in there and there are control points that you have to approve or move through, it implies a certain degree of perpetual connectivity. And we haven’t done as good a job as we need to and figuring out how to make CRM work better untethered or to decimate the information so it’s easier for us to use on our mobile platform. So when I’m connected and fully loaded, I don’t have a lot of challenges, because I’m an experienced CRM user, but mobile, I definitely feel like there’s some challenges there.  
 Christopher Smith   

Yeah, I can see that. With, for the people that are struggling with CRM, that, that are listening, what advice do you have for them to go, what’s the message they should convey to the technology team to say, you know, we need help and here’s what we need help with how, what advice do you have for them? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I think one thing is, I think if you acquired a CRM, with the expectation that you are going to self-configure, I think that is potentially problematic. So, in all cases over the last 40 years when I’ve been using computer based CRM, we’ve always invested in configuration. And this is not just configuring the code, it’s also social configuration. So that, you know, things as simple as, you know, what are people’s roles and permissions matter. And I think when people don’t have a properly configured CRM, you start seeing this issue of them losing confidence, the data going in becomes lower quality, the system loses utility overall. And so I will always advocate for bringing a professional in, even if I think I know what I’m doing, they probably know the ins and outs of that particular piece of technology better and can give me some of that social engineering advice, hey you know what’s working really good for a company your size that has about 100 people is they did this, this, and this. So we recently put out a price book module in our CRM and benefited greatly from the consulting we use with it, that actually gave us some advice on wow, you know, somebody else with a price book that looked kind of like this, here’s what they did. And we would have never thought of that, it was like wow, that’s actually a good idea. So we’ll just borrow that.  

Christopher Smith   
Oh yeah, yeah. 

William Standifird   
Definitely get the configuration with your with your product. Don’t blame the product.  

 Christopher Smith   
I think that is terrific advice and that’s something that I talk about with, with people. I frequently advise companies where, you know, just separate for, like, for free to just like hey, we’re thinking about this and, and I’ll just explain to them, “Look, we’ve seen this so many times, we’ve done this so many times,” there’s specific experience shares that we can bring to the table that like you said, otherwise, you would have no idea like that was even possible.  

 William Standifird   
Right.  

 Christopher Smith   
And, and that, you know while yeah, you can go through the self-implementation, I tell people look, you’re gonna be banging your head against the wall a lot unnecessarily. And usually when we’re coming in with a company that like our CRM’s not working for us, more times than not, that’s a lot of times the root issue is that well, we self-implemented, or we had someone that really didn’t understand our business, we didn’t really spend the time talking about people and process, we just focused on technology. And you mentioned that the people part, how do you motivate and get compliance with your users when it comes to CRM? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah, I mean, well, the motivation piece just because I think I’m evangelistic, about, you know, applying the process that we’ve agreed to implement. We’ve had a lot of professional support from a lot of experienced peoples and methods, and we do strategic selling at my shop. You know it’s gonna lead to more sale. And I think so I’m always with the carrot on that and kind of if you don’t fundamentally believe that, you just wouldn’t be successful on our team, because that’s what I believe and the people around me believe. So we believe in the process and, again, I think we use the CRM more as an accessory to help promote our processing goals, and not like something on the side. We used to have an expression at one of the companies I worked for, we would say something is sprinkled on instead of baked in. So for us, the CRM is more baked in, right, it’s sort of like, well, how would you do this without the CRM, because it’s not just a place to store contacts and make management reports like. That’s where we create our quotes, that’s where we do our technical designs. That’s how we communicate with each other, and so, not all communication but some kinds of communications are like, we don’t email things to people, we say this is, you know, this is go look at this opportunity in here. So I think trying to make it more baked in than sprinkled on. Again I would discourage as much as tempting as it is I’ve just never seen punitive measures or particularly punitive accountability measures work. For instance, if you don’t update XYZ reducing your commission on this op or something like that, that just never works. They have to believe in it. And the truth is, if you have a large percentage of your team not believing in your CRM, you have some work to do on your process because they fundamentally believe that is not helping them make sales, which means you need to have some introspection. 

 Christopher Smith   
Could not agree more. I absolutely love, you probably see my head bouncing up and down nodding as you’re talking. You know, I could not agree more with your approach, it’s spot on for successful CRM implementation. I love, I love what you said. Well we’re coming up on our end of this episode of Sales Lead Dog. I really appreciate you coming on. I do want to tell listenersm if you’re a tech geek at all like I am, check out their website just to see what they do it, it is really cool and impressive. So, William with that, if people want to reach out connect with you learn more about AccessESP and just connect with you, what’s the best way? 

 William Standifird   
Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn, so I accept almost all connections, so William Standifird. Come to our website, www.AccessESP.com. If you’re in oil and gas, we’d love to have you tour of our test facilities and other laboratories and things, so also available to answer all your, all your questions about why the price of gas is so high or so low or why we can’t run everything on solar panels, so feel free to contact me, I’ll be glad to talk to you. 

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

 William Standifird   
My pleasure. 

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

Quotes:

  • “Be careful not to have your hands on the steering wheel when you do not have to.” (5:41-5:49)
  • “I think that’s the biggest thing that new managers and sales leaders need to avoid.. so trust your people, ask them what they need, and give them what they need. Be careful not to have your hands on the steering wheel when you don’t need to.” (15:12-15:25)

Links:

AccessESP Website
William Standifird LinkedIn
AccessESP LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
If you have any question on how Empellor CRM can help you? Contact Christopher Smith

Podcast production and show notes provided by FIRESIDE Marketing

FIND OUT HOW EMPELLOR CRM CAN BE THE ENGINE TO PROPEL YOUR BUSINESS FORWARD

Let CRM become the lifeblood of your organization