Sales Talk for CEOs

This episode dives into how large organizations scale their sales teams. But do these approaches work for smaller organizations? Absolutely! Radhika Shukla has worked in a sales leadership role at some of the largest tech giants including Microsoft and IBM. She takes us through the entire gamut of building high performance sales teams.From an ‘Always be learning’ mindset to customer focus, hiring, execution and motivation she lays out the entire playbook. Every sentence could be its own chapter.Chapters:00:00 Radhika’s Background - Always Be Learning 06:53 Sales Growth Strategies 10:33 Five Pronged Approach to Customer Focus 13:14 Three Part Execution Plan 19:29 Five Rules For Hiring the Right Sales People 27:19 Hiring Mishaps 34:09 Intentional Diversity 40:00 Advice for CEOsAbout Our Guest:Radhika is a Senior Sales Executive/Leader with 21 years of extensive experience in strategic sales leadership and business management serving customers across diverse industries in Auto, Manufacturing, Retail/CPG, Financial Services, SLG and Healthcare. Having worked at tech giants like, IBM and Microsoft, she has extensive experience in mentoring and leading high performing teams across North America and Asia providing strategic guidance/coaching to craft cost-effective solutions addressing critical business needs and accelerating customer digital transformations. She has an MBA in Strategy from the prestigious University of Michigan-Ross School and is a renowned Community leader serving on the Boards of 4 nonprofits: MAI Family Services, Michigan Crisis Services, Pioneer Medical Research, and Interfaith Leadership Council of Metro Detroit. She was recently named No 1 In the Top 10 Women in Manufacturing by the UK publication Manufacturing Global. A strong believer in being a "learn-it-all", she has 14 technical cloud and industry certifications under her belt with a deep appreciation for leading teams in solving a customer's technical challenge through the lens of the economy and business benefits. She is a 4-time National Pageant winner and has been crowned:Mrs. India 2018Mrs. Entrepreneur International 2019Mrs. Michigan North America 2020Top 5 Mrs. North America 2020Mrs. Congeniality North America and People's Choice North America 2020Mrs. Michigan USA 2021Mrs. USA 2nd Runner Up 2021Besides being a well-respected Industry thought leader, keynote speaker, career coach, she is passionate about giving back and is an active ambassador/advocate for DEI, women empowerment, and STEM education. A dynamic, results-driven, passionate Sales Leader with a proven track record of successfully driving up cloud solution sales, substantial ROI and profitability, delivering remarkable results for Fortune 500 companies and creating growth strategies eliciting best from contributors, she has been featured on several podcasts for her leadership principles/mantra: “Inspire, Empower, Appreciate”Accomplishments: Recognized No 1 in Top 10 Women in Manufacturing; Microsoft Hero Empathy in Action award recipient; Microsoft US National Gold Standard Excellence for Customer Obsession; Microsoft Worldwide Community Award FY22; FY22 Microsoft Top Sales Manager (sole US recipient to receive Technology Solutions Excellence Diamond Award); IBM's Manager's Choice and Voice of the Customer AwardsMrs USA 2nd Runner Up, Mrs Michigan USA 2021, Mrs Michigan North America 2020, Top 5 Mrs North America 2020, Mrs India Michigan 2018.Social Media link:LinkedIn:  Radhika Shukla | LinkedIn ​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comCon

Leading indicators, lagging indicators, qualitative data, and quantitative data might sound like boring topics for your sales meetings. Quite the contrary, Michael Ingram of SalesOps.io explains the role that each one plays in achieving predictable revenue growth.Sales revenue is a lagging indicator of success. By the time you know it, it’s too late. You need data daily and weekly that tells you what to do before it’s too late. Leading indicators give you a chance to fix problems before you miss the quarter.Chapters:00:00 What Is SalesOps? 08:27 Moving On From Anecdotal To Leading Indicator Data 14:04 Qualitative Customer Data Capture at the Front Line 20:20 Activity-Driven Approach to Sales Metrics Worked 10 Years Ago 24:26 It's All About the Conversation 30:15 Scaling SalesOps GracefullyAbout Our Guest:Michael is the Founder and CEO of SalesOps.io (rev ops talent marketplace), as well as the Co-Founder of Productal (product talent marketplace). He has helped build marketing, sales, and customer success operations for hundreds of organizations over the last 10 years, with a focus on high-growth B2B technology companies. He previously led sales operations, business development, and sales development teams at Axial, an online network connecting the lower middle market of private equity. Prior to Axial, Michael led enterprise sales operations and strategy at Zocdoc, helping structure the systems and processes to scale the sales and success organization to over 250 team members. Before recognizing his passion for startups, he spent 4 years in management consulting for biotech and pharma companies with ZS Associates. Michael graduated from the University of Alabama (Roll Tide) with a Masters in Applied Economics and a BS in Operations Management.Company Overview SalesOps.io is a revenue operations talent marketplace. We have a network of over 500 rev ops experts that we place into fractional and full-time engagements with tech companies and other organizations that have a gap in operational resources. Our work largely falls into the buckets of commercial process, tools, and analytics across the customer journey. Productal is a similar talent marketplace focused on the Product side of the house - staffing product managers, designers, advisors, and analysts into orgs that need product-related experts.Social links:Michael Ingram’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsalesops/SalesOps LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/salesops.io/Productal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/productal/about/​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

It's not surprising that Bronwyn Spira, after trying many different sales strategies, landed back on the founder-led model. In mission-driven companies, founders often deliver the most compelling pitch.She then set about recruiting a sales and marketing team to support the sales process across the entire customer journey.Stick with us to the end where Bronwyn leaves us with her three growth tips for every CEO.Chapters:00:00 A platform for patients and practitioners04:20 Getting Sales Started08:32 Back to Co-founder Led Sales12:25 The Importance of Strong Marketing16:56 Finding the Right Sellers - Hungry and Driven24:15 Building Relationships and Trust Over Time30:42 Customer Success at Scale33:40 The Future of Force 38:25 Executive Sponsors 42:53 Three Tips for CEOsAbout Our Guest:Bronwyn Spira is a physical therapist and the founder and chief executive officer of Force Therapeutics, a provider-prescribed digital care management platform that empowers patients throughout an episode of care. Bronwyn is passionate about improving patient engagement and satisfaction with rehab and recovery by delivering high-quality, clinically validated remote care to patients, regardless of access challenges.Social links:https://www.linkedin.com/company/force-therapeutics/https://twitter.com/FORCETherExhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/bronwyn-spira-40578815/ You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn 

LeanData’s sales organization’s head count might seem too costly to some. It was derived out of a constant quest to map internal resources to support customer success - not revenue, yet it is highly profitable.  One example, split the customer success manager role into two positions. One checking in to monitor the account health and ensure renewal. The other, a coach to provide ongoing best practice advice to customers.Join us to learn the customer-centric sales enablement process that makes LeanData recession-proof.Chapters:00:00 LeanData - Revenue Orchestration 04:08 Pitching the Problem Not the Solution 06:17 Scaling the Sales Team 08:10 Hiring a VP Sales 11:51 Letting Sellers Sell: 1 to 1 ratio of SDR to AE 16:41 Adding Enablement & Customer Virality 18:57 Revisiting The Customer Journey - Adding Coaches 23:09 Certified Users Have Higher Renewal Rate 27:40 What’s Next for LeanDataAbout Our Guest:Evan Liang is the Co-founder and CEO of LeanData. Prior to launching LeanData in 2012, Evan worked in product, strategy, and business development roles at Microsoft, Ebay, Caring.com and Smart Modular Technologies as well as associate positions with venture capital firms Shasta Ventures and Battery Ventures.About LeanData:LeanData is an essential element of the modern revenue tech stack. The LeanData Revenue Orchestration Platform simplifies buyer journeys while accelerating time to revenue through no-code, drag-and-drop lead routing, lead-to-account matching, automated meeting scheduling, engagement analytics, and strategic integrations.Social links:https://www.linkedin.com/company/leandata/https://twitter.com/LeanDatahttps://www.facebook.com/LeanDatahttps://www.youtube.com/@leandatainc​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

Is your sales team struggling to have conversations with the right buyers? Better prospecting is the most direct path to increase sales conversations. Wendy Weiss takes us through the four steps to improve your sales team's ability to schedule sales calls.Her four steps are 1. The right list, 2. Great skills, 3. Strong process and 3. The right software. What can your team add to improve their prospecting?Chapters:00:00 Chapter 1: How do we get more conversations with buyers 01:50 Chapter 2: 4 things to move the needle 06:31 Chapter 3: The List 11:27 Chapter 4: The Skills - Prospecting versus Selling 17:19 Chapter 5: Skills - Researching the Buyer Need 22:15 Chapter 6: Skills - Leaving Voicemail 30:19 Chapter 7: Skills - Diagnosing Buyer Responses 37:16 Chapter 8: The Process 40:16 Chapter 9: The Software - Making Prospecting EasierAbout Our Guest:Wendy Weiss is the founder of the Salesology® Prospecting Method that generates predictable sales revenue results. Wendy has helped 775 businesses increase qualified appointments and sales faster, more easily, and more profitably. She is the author of The Sales Winner’s Handbook Essential Strategies to Skyrocket Sales Performance and Cold Calling for Women Opening Doors & Closing Sales. A former ballet dancer, Wendy believes everything she knows in life and business she learned in ballet class. From warmups to rehearsals, she shows her clients how to perform at their best and close all the sales they need.Company InfoSalesology® is a sales training and coaching consultancy, with expertise and solutions for developing new businesses. As a pioneer and leader in the crowded new business development space, Salesology® sets the standard for sales training. Owned and operated by Wendy Weiss, she and her team help sales leaders and individual contributors speed up their sales cycle, reach more prospects directly, and generate more sales revenue. Clients like Avon Products, ADP, New York Life, and thousands of entrepreneurs throughout the country have used and benefited from these time-tested techniques to amazing results.Social links:Twitter - https://twitter.com/wendyweissLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyweiss/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/gosalesology/Facebook -

How do you balance growth with quality service delivery? With no background in sales, Kevin Warner, Co-founder, and CEO, originally decided to hire someone who knew sales and put his focus on delivery. He realized quickly it wasn’t working and took the lead sales role. Once sales picked up, he built a sales team and grew exponentially but he watched  the quality of service delivery suffer, and client churn increased. What was the right size for the company where they could serve the clients with excellence, reduce churn and increase profitability? They had some tough decisions to make. They reduced the team and focused on the success of the customer. He went back to a founder-led sales approach with a sales team to back him. Under his renewed guidance healthy growth returned. Now at 10 years in, they have achieved low churn, high profitability and now have the valuation that creates the exit options every founder dreams of. You’re going to want to hear his story.Chapters:00:00 Introduction to Leadium 05:47 How to talk to humans 09:31 Start with proper segmentation 11:25 The McDonald’s Conveyor Belt of Outbound Sales 12:54 Founder led Sales 16:32 Sales is Not a Magic Bullet 19:51 Back to Founder Led Sale 24:07 Removing the Roadblocks 27:35 The Role of the CEO 29:54 Reducing Churn 32:34 The End of SDRsAbout Our Guest:Kevin Warner, the Founder, and CEO of Leadium an award-winning B2B lead generation agency.Kevin is a core visionary behind the rapid growth of the outsourced sales development industry. He has proven that top-of-funnel sales can be scaled through an agency model, by creating over $1 billion in revenue pipeline across 1200 organizations, playing a part in 76 acquisitions, and seeing clients receive $6.5 billion in funding and 5 IPOs. He has experience managing a global team of 600 sales reps, data researchers, content creators, and sales strategists.​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

Most CEOs have a hard time running one successful company. Veronica Buitron runs two!Her secrets boil down to simple, hard won lessons. First, you need a process for everything to be successful and to scale. Second, you need to trust and empower your teams.Every CEO can learn from her episode.Chapters:00:00  - Introduction2:26 - Tango Code: Redefining Software Development 003:53 - Automating Process for Scalability 10:02 - Engineering and Sales Are Both Just Solving Problems14:50 - Building Visions Together 16:30 - Shared Success 18:36 - Understanding the Sales Process at An Early Stage21:02 - Building a Sales Team Starts With A Defined Process28:11 - The CEO Sales Role32:39 - How Veronica Runs Two Companies35:12 - Implementing Agile Across the Entire Company36:20 - Trust and EmpowermentAbout Our Guest:Veronica Buitron is the Co-Founder and CEO of TangoCode a software development company and Chassis, the leading platform enabling digital marketers to automate & accelerate search and social campaigns. As a female entrepreneur, Veronica considers it essential to not only create a diverse and progressive culture within her own company but also to promote it within the tech community. These values have enabled Chassis to create the industry’s most innovative digital marketing solution automating and accelerating ROI for its clients.Chassis enables businesses to use first-party data to create a more effective marketing offering, achieving results 4X faster than using Google or Facebook. The platform promotes automation as a catalyst for marketers to be more productive and efficient in serving their clients and achieving scale.Veronica is an avid reader and enjoys speaking on diversity, innovation, and their interrelated relationship. She is a passionate business leader, a lifelong learner, a mentor to other women in technology, and a devoted role model for her three children.Social links:Veronica's LinkedInVeronica's Twitter ​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn

Ariel came from engineering, he had been a product leader for quite a few years and then made the transition into sales. Initially when he moved into sales, he was running product marketing. And he thought sales was so easy, you just get all of the factsheets and  battle cards and the information on the features and capabilities and share that with the prospects that they will buy it. Of course, he learned quickly he was wrong. Running a sales team taught him that sales was so much more and luckily he learned before he started his company. That mindset shift is what prepared him to at first do the sales himself and then build a sales organization at Second Nature AI. He learned two very important things as he moved from founder led sales to hiring a team. First, in an early stage company you have to hire a different type of seller. They have to have passion for the product and they have to know how to do full cycle selling without all the resources of a big company.  He told me, you have to hire full cycle sellers - salespeople who don’t need the support of a large marketing and sales team.  They need to be able to adapt on the fly. So that is what he did and then he learned the second thing, you have to have inbound leads. Even with the right salespeople, if there are no leads sales don’t happen. Listen to hear the lessons that helped him grow sales. Chapters:00:00 - Artificial Intelligence That Trains Your Salesforce? 07:48 - The Genesis of Jenny AI 10:53 - The First Customers Input 15:19 - Scaling Sales and the Team 26:32 - Using Second Nature to Train and Assess Sellers 28:15 - Marketing Ahead of Sales Hires to Increase Inbound 32:55 - The Sales Feedback Loop 36:15 - The Next ChapterAbout Our Guest:Ariel Hitron is the CEO and co-founder of Second Nature. He has held various executive positions including VP of New Markets and VP of Sales and Customer Success at Kaltura. He ran global sales teams with dozens of reps, built playbooks and training sessions, and earlier in his career, developed and brought to market multiple software products, generating tens of millions of recurring revenue and used by millions of consumers.As the CEO of Second Nature, Ariel is able to merge his passion for sales, tech, and product development, by applying AI to enable large B2B sales organizations to scale up and get systematic about their sales coaching.About Second Nature:Second Nature helps salespeople have better conversations.Using AI-driven role play, sales professionals can practice in a safe space, and improve their performance and confidence by gaining real-time, personalized feedback.Social links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielhitron/https://www.linkedin.com/company/second-nature-ai/ ​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.com

Samantha McKenna, a former employee of On24, was recruited by LinkedIn for her mastery of building a powerful brand on the platform. She started posting on LinkedIn in 2011, leading to recognition and a promotion. After two years, she broke her 13th record and decided to pursue her passion for making a positive impact. She left LinkedIn to start her own company, #SamSales, initially intending to work part-time, but quickly realized that wasn't feasible.She is one of the rare founders who was in sales prior to starting her company but she never planned to go into sales, she thought she was going to be in finance. Starting her own business, well that might have been inevitable because both of her parents are entrepreneurs. For many who start a company sales come slowly but for Samantha sales were easy because she had already built an audience on LinkedIn. She had been providing useful content for years so once she posted that she  was now in business, the sales flooded in. (Don’t we all wish for that.)Samantha's all-women team of 11, , now does a full range of sales related advisory and services. To grow into that, she learned to delegate and rely on proactive referrals and relationship-building for long-term success. Even though she has a great sales team, Samantha is still involved in selling and managing sales.Her team does sales the easy way, they rely on proactive referrals from existing customers and partners. She taught her team to track job changes on LinkedIn and stay in touch. This usually leads to more business. They focus on building relationships for the long term.Chapters:00:00 - Intro 02:54 - Quality Over Quantity 05:15 - Samantha’s Start In Sales 10:10 - LinkedIn 1%er 16:51 - My Large Networks Gave #samsales A Running Start 20:43 - The ever evolving CEO sales role 24:01 - Referral selling 25:55 - Working in your genius zone 30:59 - What’s next?About Our Guest:Samantha McKenna, CEO of #samsales Consulting, is an award-winning sales leader, brand ambassador for LinkedIn, angel investor, board member, and highly sought-after speaker. She has broken nearly 15 sales records, believes great sales are rooted in exceptional manners, and consistently looks for opportunities to continue growing the company’s philanthropic efforts. Since 2008, Sam has worked for some of the most notable names in the Bay Area, including ON24 and LinkedIn. While with these organizations, Sam spent her time as an individual contributor in Enterprise sales before moving to scaling teams and revenue as an executive Leader.With more than 30,000 LinkedIn followers, Sam has inspired sales professionals with her tangible sales tips and actionable advice used daily by executives and teams alike. Sam has been named a Top 50 Women in Revenue and Top 20 Women in Sales Leadership, appears as one of the faces of LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s marketing campaigns, and has been named a Top Ten LinkedIn Sales Star several times over. She has a deep commitment to helping women succeed - particularly those who are military spouses - as well as individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Sam is dedicated to shining a light on her trademark Show Me You Know Me and #givefirst mantras - and together with her team, raised over $50,000 for charity in 2021 alone with the innovative #samsales ‘Show Me You Know Me’ Charity Event. In its first 24 months, #samsales Consulting has scaled to multi-million dollar revenue and added 17 talented team members. The #samsales team serves over 100 clients, achieved312% of their first annual revenue goal, and surpassed all reason with 233% YoY growth in its second year!Connect with Samantha McKenna on LinkedInFollow Samantha McKenna on Twitter​​You can

Sean Doyle applies behavioral science to marketing and the sales funnel. His model is called Centricity and he shares important lessons about alignment between sales, marketing and customer success to move deals through the funnel. Sean says, “Deals stall in the middle of the funnel because we aren’t giving the buyer what they need to make a decision.If you are still feeding them information about your product features and benefits, they are 80% likely to decide to stick with the old, lower risk, status quo.”On the other hand, we know that if you help them make sense of the information, you are heading in the right direction together. Sometimes this takes sales, customer success and marketing together and at different points in the customer journey. This lively interview will help every CEO with strategies to help their team move more deals through the middle of the funnel to close.Chapters00:00 Strategic Versus Creative Marketing06:17 Behavioral Science: The Centricity Model13:22 Your Buyer’s Problem18:36 Marketing and Customer Success at the Closing Table24:08 Making it Easier for Customers to Buy31:00 6 Step Pipeline: Tracking Steps Versus Activity38:00 Emotional and Rational Content: Marketing and Sales balance43:40 Selling is Helping About Our Guest:Sean M. Doyle is principal at FitzMartin Inc, a leading consultancy focused on optimizing sales and marketing investments of emerging middle- market, B2B businesses. FitzMartin’s clients earn on average an ROI of $287 per $1 invested. Through a 30+ year career with over 5,500 client engagements, Sean saw the need for a repeatable, systematic, objective go-to-market model. The model, Centricity, informs sales, marketing, technology and creative decisions. His niche is helping executives identify opportunities to achieve their strategic, personal and financial objectives. Connect with Sean on LinkedInFollow Sean on TwitterResource Links:Changing for Good  ​​You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below.Website: https://AliceHeiman.comConnect with Alice on LinkedIn