In this episode of the Revenue Builders podcast, John Kaplan and John McMahon talk to Anne Gary, Director at Force Management. With several sales management roles under her belt, Anne knows a thing or two about building and operating large complex sales organizations from scratch, resulting in closing multi-million dollar sales. Anne talks about her journey from engineer to sales leader, the value of understanding a company’s political landscape, and how to identify and cultivate potential in people.
Additional Resources:
HIGHLIGHTS
- From engineering to sales
- Always look for a problem to solve
- How to separate the great salespeople from the good ones
- Hiring for startups, then and now
- Go wide and deep on the buying organization's political landscape
- Look out for an organization's champions
- If you're not constantly training, you're stagnating
- How to spot a great leader
QUOTES
Anne: "So many people, they keep trying to change things up all the time instead of just staying the course for a while. Pick something that you know needs to be done, implement it, stay the course and see what happens. Because we know from engineering, you don't change 10 or 12 variables and try to figure out what's working because you won't know."
Anne: "Probably the biggest thing for me when I was interviewing was to ask a salesperson about a sale that they had been through recently, and I wanted to know about the political landscape. I would ask them to go up the board, draw the organization chart, and tell me who are the people that are the influencers in the situation and have them walk me through that."
Anne: "I find that the best champions are the ones that are not just about themselves and a personal win for themselves but also about the organization win as well."
McMahon: "I always say that you know you have a champion when the sales process has moved from unpredictable to predictable."
Check out John McMahon’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Qualified-Sales-Leader-Proven-Lessons/dp/0578895064
