This week, we are privileged to welcome Kristie Jones, a distinguished expert in sales leadership, to share her remarkable journey from a career in retail to becoming an authority in sales leadership. We will explore Kristie's transition from a traditional corporate setting to a dynamic startup environment, highlighting her experiences in evolving from physical media distribution to digital e-learning platforms, and her progression from standard sales procedures to fostering meaningful client relationships.
Our discussion will encompass the evolving dynamics of the SaaS industry and social media, focusing on Kristie's successful strategies in building a vibrant social community and the critical importance of incorporating a personal approach in sales. Kristie will provide valuable insights into the synergistic relationship between marketing and sales, and discuss the vital role of artificial intelligence in enhancing both personal and professional efficiency.
Additionally, we will delve into the crucial aspect of establishing genuine connections with clients. Kristie will share her perspective on the effectiveness of tailored sales strategies, and the importance of data-driven decision-making, emphasizing the necessity of transcending mediocrity to achieve excellence. We conclude with Kristie's enlightening views on career transitions and the importance of self-awareness in realizing one's fullest potential. Join us for a thought-provoking and informative session that is set to significantly elevate your approach to sales.
This week, we are privileged to welcome Kristie Jones, a distinguished expert in sales leadership, to share her remarkable journey from a career in retail to becoming an authority in sales leadership. We will explore Kristie's transition from a traditional corporate setting to a dynamic startup environment, highlighting her experiences in evolving from physical media distribution to digital e-learning platforms, and her progression from standard sales procedures to fostering meaningful client relationships.
Our discussion will encompass the evolving dynamics of the SaaS industry and social media, focusing on Kristie's successful strategies in building a vibrant social community and the critical importance of incorporating a personal approach in sales. Kristie will provide valuable insights into the synergistic relationship between marketing and sales, and discuss the vital role of artificial intelligence in enhancing both personal and professional efficiency.
Additionally, we will delve into the crucial aspect of establishing genuine connections with clients. Kristie will share her perspective on the effectiveness of tailored sales strategies, and the importance of data-driven decision-making, emphasizing the necessity of transcending mediocrity to achieve excellence. We conclude with Kristie's enlightening views on career transitions and the importance of self-awareness in realizing one's fullest potential. Join us for a thought-provoking and informative session that is set to significantly elevate your approach to sales.
Everybody, welcome to episode number 57 of socialselling2.0. I'm Tom Burton with Carson Hetty, who we can see today. You're so crystal clear.
Speaker 2:Also representing. We've got a St Louis episode here today with my friend, christy Jones Nice.
Speaker 1:We have Brandon Lee and, yes, our special guest Christy Jones from St Louis, so welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:No, carson, I was Brandon. Doesn't he look super clear now?
Speaker 2:And we can see him.
Speaker 1:And he got rid of his dial up and he put in high speed internet.
Speaker 2:He said the new laptop? Yeah, why.
Speaker 4:Oh, christy's got the cool backdrop light, the purple light and it. Yeah, I mean that looks good.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Yeah, I again pandemic. Again the pandemic studio happened, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right Well we can do a video like comparing and contrasting what our home office is the pre-oh. Pre-pandemic to now. But no, my laptop looks so much clearer. My old one had no bandwidth because it was so full of social selling leads.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was stuffed, it was overdone with that, all right. Well, if you're online listening, butch, welcome from Atlanta. Jump in, let us know where you're from. So we've got two St Louis, one Atlanta and one California Santa Barbara.
Speaker 2:So all right, well, the dodge and this is we get two weeks in a row. So next week we've got Mike Weinberg also. So same old first day episode. So we're excited. Nice, yeah, you guys are going to love that. He's the best, he's awesome.
Speaker 3:He is the best.
Speaker 1:Well, christy, tell us a little bit about you, your background, and then we're going to jump in and talk some of. I know you have a new book coming out next year, but kind of talking about some of the things about you know the playbooks for creating your own income goals and kind of being in that top 10%.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I kind of got started out of school in retail. So I have a retail sales background of eight years as well. I was a buyer for Macy's, worked in the stores and for a couple of years and then went into the buying offices and then got a little discontented with corporate America. That fortune 500 thing looks good on your resume but it's not as fun as it looks on the resume. So left that and really like kind of took a leaf of faith. I made a decision that I needed to leave and decided I was going to look for a company and not a job. I kind of knew what I wanted from a value system standpoint, perhaps things that were missing in my last role. And so I actually joined a company, a local company, a bootstrap company here in St Louis called biz librarycom, and I cut my teeth I'm so old, gentlemen, that we called it subscription model. Back then we didn't have this cutesy little SAS acronym that we now that we now use. So I go back that far. But I spent 10 years really figuring out the sales leadership piece of that. So I came in, I took a leap of faith on the owner. And I say I took a leap of faith. But now I know that he took the leap of faith in me and I think we had I don't know, we may have had 10 or 11 employees at that point and about a million dollars in revenue, and I spent the next 10 years helping him build out his company. So I I cut my teeth the hard way figuring out. I had no idea, I didn't. I didn't know about sales, leadership and SAS. I didn't know about customer success Back again, I'm so old we didn't call it that, we called it account management, you know. So I spent 10 years figuring all that out and I I took on a bunch of different hats, as you do in a small company. So I said if we were, if we were out of post-its, that was me. If the copier again look that up on Google copiers jammed, that's me. And if the server needed rebooted, no problem, because it was just down the hall in the coat closet at the time, so I could reboot the server too. They didn't let me code, but I could definitely like unplug and replug in the server. So I learned a lot. That was a. That was really the best experience I ever could have had because it was small.
Speaker 3:And then we grew up. We got it to 50 by the time I left, but the the owner, was great and we did a lot of collaborating together. I knew at that point that I was an executor of other people's ideas. So we're going to talk a little bit deeper about what it means to you know, set your income and own your life, and part of that is knowing yourself. And so I knew that I was not the entrepreneurial spirit, idea person, but I was the. I can take that. I'm very organized, I'm a process driven person. I can execute your idea.
Speaker 3:So we did everything from building LMS from scratch because we were in the e-learning business, and so we built LMSs and we resold other people's content. Initially again, I'm so old that we shipped VHS tapes, training tapes, around the country. The UPS man came in the morning to drop off packages. He came in the afternoon to pick up packages. It was still subscription model, because you paid for the number of training VHS tapes you wanted to have out at any given time. So it was truly a lending library, if you will. Then we went to DVD and then we went to streaming, we went to e-learning. So I learned everything. That was when I first, when I first came in, the sales reps were keeping what they caught and then all of a sudden we realized that we weren't getting any new customers because they were fat and happy Just doing howdy duty calls, as I affectionately call them the check-in call, just calling a check-in. So pretty early on in my sales leadership career there we separated that out and grew an account management team which became a customer success team, and then after that the next company, after that, which you now know as webcom.
Speaker 3:I've been in a lot of companies that got acquired. By the way, there's a pattern here, and so I went from that situation to running a $28 million department. I went to a $28 million department in two different states Granton, pennsylvania, and across the river in Illinois, vc. So that's when I got the VC backed. Bug, they were VC backed and I was like, ooh, this sounds fun and it was fun until they get bought by webcom and all executives are required to live in Florida. So I was employee number one let go. So that was my first being let go situation. I say, unfortunately it gets easier because I've had it happen twice now. I started my own business eight years ago. Chances are slim that I'm going to fire myself. But that was amazing because that was inbound and outbound and it was transactional and it was land and expand and it was all of the. I mean it was crazy busy. Everything again from selling a URL to building a website, to SEO, ppc, hosting, all kinds of fun things Again. Once you get VC backed thing, the pace picks up to some ridiculous level.
Speaker 3:And I took the job because I wanted to work for the boss. I reported directly to the COO and for some reason during the interview process, I knew he would make me better. The day I realized that that was the case was the day he showed up in my doorway. I was only two doors up from him in executive row and he said amazing day yesterday. And I'm like, I know right, like I'm a badass yes, it was, and he goes. So how come? I was like what he's like, how come it was such a great day? I was like. He just looked at me goes, I'll be back, I go, okay, see you soon. And that's when I realized that that's what it's like to work for somebody like that, that you have to justify your good days and your bad days, not just postmortem and justify your bad days. So.
Speaker 3:So I stayed in the VC backed kind of SAS world for a while and then I got an opportunity. My last real job, as I say, was building out the first SDR team for Gainsight, and so that was an amazing opportunity. You don't get an opportunity to do that very often, right as a sales leader. Coming in at zero and building something from scratch and hand picking every single person on your team is just as cool as it sounds. It really was a great experience. And then that company became that, became the first unicorn in their space. So I got to check that off my resume as well.
Speaker 3:But eight years ago I thought you know what? I definitely understand this world, the startup world, the SaaS world, building things out Again. Like I said, it was process driven. So I decided that I could do this for lots of people, and so I started my own consultancy and now I help early stage companies VC backed mostly, but not always build out their processes, strategies.
Speaker 3:I say I'm a consultant, it gets our hands dirty, so I go in and you know I bake everything out in your playbook, but then I also customize and build out your CRM system. I do the training. I spend a lot of time helping people hire. That's one of the things that that stage you know, early stage tech startups and tech founders are mostly the tech side. They don't have a lot of sales and marketing experience.
Speaker 3:So I got tired of walking into companies and saying, yeah, you mis-hired. And so finally somebody said to me like, well, if you think you can do it better and I'm like I totally can do this better, I've been doing this forever. So now I have a hiring help side of my business where I'm not a it's not a recruiting or a staffing agency I basically project manage the hiring process. So I hand, hold and walk my clients through that, I lead the interviews, I vet the resumes, my team and I do all of that.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, so I've just had again I lead a blessed life, just so you know, cause there'll be things I say that you're like really, but I really just like. My motto is I have 30 minutes for everyone, motto number one. And motto number two is do the right things and the right things will happen. And when I decided to start my own business, like I cashed in some chips, in fairness, but the universe also conspired to put me in the right position and really supported me, and so I've just had the most amazing time of the last eight years helping companies you know get out of that million dollar market and on their way, Chris, fascinating story and thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 2:And I think what's interesting too is, like you know, when we came on, even before the show we were talking a little bit about like I feel like every day when I pull up my social, there you are and I've seen your social presence really evolve over the last, you know, a couple of years since we met. Talk to us about that. How are you leveraging some of the new tools? Would have been some of your learnings and how you were able to engage with your audience now thanks to digital selling tools.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think for a long time I was trying to figure out how to do what I call one to many, so I felt like I've got important things to say and I can help. You know, sales reps make more money and be more successful, but I'm only one human and you know I mostly say you know, we've been working in the startup space, so I'm not working with teams of 200, I'm working with teams of two, and so social is absolutely a strategy for that, because I can touch a lot of people. I'm working hard to build out my social community and you know, I like to your point, like I didn't have a YouTube channel this time last year. My link, my Instagram, was private, I was just basically playing on LinkedIn and so. But I've realized that you know people there are consumers of my content and they people who think along the same way that I do or who are trying to figure it out, and so I have spent some time and energy trying to build out my social and really try to be I'm trying to be kind of human about it in a way where I wanna make sure we're not really using like I'm not really using AI tools.
Speaker 3:I am using a third party company who, like I, send the content and they make it pretty. So all the prettiness, the pretty factor, I don't do they do all the pretty factor, but I write. I mean all of that content I wrote. I'm not outsourcing that at all, that's all me. I have a journalism degree, surprisingly, so I actually love writing. But it really like how else would I connect? I can't figure out another way to really connect with the people that I'm trying to help other than through social yeah, and I think that's the cool thing is, you know, follow Christie, that's your first homework.
Speaker 2:Everyone, thank you. I think the key element is, you know, I've seen her dabble in some of the ways that she's leveraged video and she's a great storyteller. You know, those experiences that you have in even the one and two people organizations, those are things that can be extrapolated when you speak to the masses.
Speaker 1:So I love that, yeah thank you and I have a question related to you know we don't tend to talk a lot about just SaaS oriented businesses on the show, where I think a bit broader, but what are you seeing in the SaaS world? You know SaaS historically VC backed SaaS has been, you know, kind of the churn and burn SDR. I think you mentioned earlier quantity over quality. Yeah, are you seeing that there is more and more of an awareness within these companies that social and using social needs to be part of the playbook? And are you seeing that the companies are recognizing that maybe the way that they've always differentiated sales and marketing, that they need to be a bit more working or hand in hand, is more of a revenue organization, leveraging social and building more human relationships rather than just trying to get through the numbers?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's interesting. I read something yesterday and I wish I could remember where, because I read a lot of things, but they were talking about the SKO, because sales kickoffs again. This is our little this is me living in the SaaS world but SKOs are gonna be happening in Q1 of next year. But they said you know what, we need to stop calling it an SKO and start calling it an RKO a revenue kickoff and it needs to involve everyone, including marketing, and I love, love, love that.
Speaker 3:I stole that right away. I was like, oh yeah, that's what we're gonna call it going forward, because there isn't like. I've never had an adversarial relationship with marketing. In fact, I love the marketing department. We worked in tandem and they should be again, like I would say is ideally, because I'm a little selfish for my sales background, my sales leadership background, but I would love for marketing to warm up something before I go into it. So, but I think that marketing message and sales and I don't think marketing message and sales messaging are different and everybody needs to stay in their swim lane, but they can support each other. We all need to be in the same boat rowing together, but maybe we're in a different swim lane, and so I think it's a combination of everything.
Speaker 3:I love that marketing has gotten into things like podcasting.
Speaker 3:I love that marketing has gotten webinars.
Speaker 3:We were a little zoomed out there for a while, but I think webinars are coming back in person events and if you read the stuff that Gartner's putting out in person events, so all of that, what does that all say to you?
Speaker 3:That that's the human piece, that the automation is missing Is that people are craving. They want, like. They want to hear people being real on podcasts, they want to hear advice on webinars, they want to meet people in person at networking events and at trade shows and conferences. So I think you're going to see a switch. I even talked to a client yesterday and mentioned the word postcard out loud and said have you thought about sending a postcard or a big red envelope? And again, that's personalized, that needs to be customized, and I think that as we spend more time talking about AI because everybody's trying to wrap their head around that you're going to see that the people who are again, there's definitely a place for AI in sales and in business, but I think you're going to find that the people who are doing things a little bit differently are going to come out ahead.
Speaker 2:If you can use AI to secure more time to spend authentically connecting with people Gold that's what that's where AI helps sales.
Speaker 3:Yep efficiencies, for sure and research. I think one of the things I'm still frustrated about is the lack of what I'll call pre-call planning, and I say to anybody who will listen, like it's rude and disrespectful to ask a question that Google can tell you Right or the chat GPT can tell you. So why are we not using the tools available, including AI, to do our pre-call planning, so that we can just confirm what we learned and and then? But we, but we have then that you know, big critical thinking question that we should be asking, but we shouldn't be asking anything that we can find on the internet.
Speaker 4:Chris Christie, practically you said it. You said a lot of great things about where things you believe they're moving, even to postcards, and I I've seen that I've got a background in print and direct mail and friends in that are talking about you know it's. It's starting to pick up again. People are looking for ways. What are some of the more practical ways that you see, as we focus on revenue kickoffs and revenue teams and sales and marketing, there are some of those tangible ways that you see teams are Starting to try and be different and be more human.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think I do think it goes back to research. So, and I say to you know kind of two ways like we are using automation, right, the clients that I, that I'm working with, we are using sequences and hub spotter, we're using sales loft or outreach, but I'm not automating everything anymore. So I'm doing man, I'm putting manual steps in there. So, as an example, I mean again, I have a decent amount of followers on LinkedIn. I still probably only get one or two Mess like messages, not just even in mail, to people who may be our first connection with me, and I read every one of those, right, and so because I read every one of those, I think that I'm probably not the only one, and so we're doing a lot of trying to connect with people in a personal way through LinkedIn, through social.
Speaker 3:I tell a story back in the day I was trying, I was a prospect here in st Louis and I just knew that he should be my customer. I had loved everything about what his product and service were doing and who and who he was, and we had a great Discovery call and then he ghosted me. He like disappeared, but I was not deterred because I was like definitely gonna get this guy. And so I happened to start doing my research and stumbled across his Twitter page and I noticed that he was a Belgian beer lover, and so the next email I sent out was subject line by you a fly, you a blue moon. And he said yes, and we had lunch and I brought him a six pack, and so those are the kind of things that can happen. And then, on the email side, I, I want my, I want my SDRs or my aes or my prospectors going out to the company website. How many website is chock full of good things and you know right now, a lot of my clients like turnovers a huge problem, right. And so the first page I take people to do some research as the careers page. You know what job openings do they have? How could that be impacting the company? When you see, you know 50 job openings or 75 job openings, and then you start seeing a trend of who are they looking to hire.
Speaker 3:There's a problem there, right, like already, you already know what some of the problems are. You may think you're selling accounting software, but if we're looking for people in accounting, then you know that perhaps the software can replace maybe a human or part of a human, or let that human do other more important things. So I just don't think this goes back to my pre-call planning. I just don't think we are digging deep enough and I mean, I feel like back in the day and get them old back in the day, like you know, we, I would literally like back when I was, you know, and I still do this, because again, somebody was teasing me that I have my Tom and you were teasing me that I have my paper here, my notes for you guys.
Speaker 3:But, like, if I know I'm gonna be in the room with I don't whoever it's gonna be and there's sometimes two or three people when I'm Prospecting and talking and doing discovery calls, I print off their LinkedIn profile. Yeah, I have my questions in front of me. I've been to their company website. I, you know, I've done my homework and I just don't think. I just don't think we're doing enough homework. Which means, if we're not doing enough homework, how can we do the human to human connection? I?
Speaker 2:Could not agree more with that, christie, and I think it's almost, it's almost irresponsible If, to your point, we fail to use some of these tools to plan, but also even using them in the meeting, like I've got a full screen set up, you know again kind of comparing and contrasting the pre-covid home office to now now got a couple of screen set up, I've got my notes and every customer conversation I go into, you know we're meeting with these executives.
Speaker 2:I usually have a few of my really smart people on with me and I set up these back channel chats and it's like I the fact that I can in essence read my Sales colleagues minds while we're in a meeting by in essence sending a message to them saying, hey, this is the desired outcome, this is what we want to do. How about we ask about this? I mean, you can quarterback your team Behind the scenes and it's meeting. It's unbelievable but the fact that all of these things are at their disposal. But the big takeaway, what you said earlier Don't ever ask something in one of these discovery meetings that you can easily look up and find like it's just, it's irresponsible Not to use the tools in order to uncover and unpack those things.
Speaker 4:Agreed, those are. Those are two big things. That I heard you say is I love that, don't don't ask a question if you can get it on Google. But I want to highlight too we we've talked about this on the show. I mean, our show is social selling to do and a lot of times when we we talked to customers, they're very centric on LinkedIn. Like LinkedIn, yeah, we're business. I mean, we've had conversations over the last few weeks when we were doing some Video work for customers and we're saying, hey, we're gonna use this, we're gonna put it in Facebook, we're go to Instagram, we're gonna go to TikTok and it was like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, our customers are On LinkedIn. Like, no, your customers are everywhere.
Speaker 4:And I love how you said you went to his. I think you said you went to his Twitter profile and found out that he was a Belgian beer lover and did your research from there. So, even if we're not necessarily communicating with people on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or wherever, especially, I think, instagram, tiktok and Twitter, where it's public or more often public, I mean just a wealth of knowledge right there to be able to connect Human to human with people. Right and I talked about, like when we're on a zoom or you're on a teams meeting, you can look in the background and find out information about people. You can do that even more just by going to look for them up on Twitter. Go and look them up on Instagram, find out what their hobbies are, what they do for volunteer work, whatever it may be. Man, that's such a great way to connect with people. I'm so grateful that you shared that example With us and with our audience today.
Speaker 2:I had a procurement guy few years back that was just Beating me to a pulp right and I went out and I actually is. Some of his Facebook profile was Public and I found out his favorite sports team. So guess what just happened to come up in our next conversation. Right, dynamic of the relationship from there, yeah.
Speaker 1:Was it st Louis we?
Speaker 3:can't talk about it, but I'm talking about it.
Speaker 1:So Dave is doing his homework and he says, christie, that you know you're a Jayhawk. I am.
Speaker 3:I am a proud Jayhawk.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna need all.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna need all of your good thoughts and prayers this weekend as I head to Lawrence Kansas To take on the OU football team. So I'm gonna need everyone's support.
Speaker 2:He goes long. As you're not playing against Mizzou, a lot of us can root, I know.
Speaker 3:I honestly, I missed the rivalry. I really do.
Speaker 2:I know it's coming back though basketball.
Speaker 3:We're coming back this year, that's true.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you'd be. You're becoming a two-sport school there.
Speaker 3:I know, isn't it? I used to be. I used to say like I used to fly my flag with pride, but just not during football season.
Speaker 2:Suspect years there too, but they look good this year in the football and the gridiron.
Speaker 3:Yeah again like yeah, you guys, yeah, you guys made your way into the top 25. Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Finally, you know I think we should do is I think we should turn this into a sports podcast. I can only talk about football and basketball.
Speaker 2:I'm tennis, I can talk about season three social selling in sports three.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3:I like I want to come back for one of those, please.
Speaker 2:You're in here's.
Speaker 4:here's what I want to Highlight for everybody to notice that when, when Dave brought up Jay Hawk, that she Christie's went to Kansas, his wife went to Kansas, did you notice how our conversation lightened up?
Speaker 1:Very much.
Speaker 4:We started talking about sports. We start, and one of the things that we've talked about is we don't separate our human heart Ever from who we are, even though we tend to lead with our title. We're on a zoom, we're on a team and we're having a serious conversation. When we bring up those personal Anything, the conversation changes, walls drop, we connect better with people and as long as we're doing things like doing our homework, we're prepared, we're offering great value and everything it differentiates us from the others. And remember when Anthony and arena was on and he talked about, two different companies, came in and did their presentation and then they sat down with the team, said okay, well, what was the difference? And he was like One was taller and had blonde hair, like there was no Differentiation between them. But you do one or two little things personally like this. You stand out, you remembered and you connect better, human to human, and it's a huge, huge difference.
Speaker 2:I had a quick story and then I want to tee up some more questions for Christie. Just in line with that, I had a CISO a few years back. Security is often very challenging to crack into that line of business just because they have their own uniform way of doing things. Often they get hired on specifically for the strategy that they're going to bring to bear and implement. It's obviously very important to those organizations. I had a CISO.
Speaker 2:That would not give me the time of day. I went out, started doing some research on them, found some blogs, found some podcasts that this person had been on, and took a totally different approach. I reached out and I offered to. I said, first off, I'm very impressed with what you've built from a thought leadership perspective. I would love to get you introduced to some of the thought leaders in my organization so that we can learn from each other. That was what did it. That's what got the response. Not coincidentally, six months later we signed a $70 million deal together. Those are the things, the normal blockers, that you run into. There is a way around or over them. We just have to find them. I think that's what the top sales people do. Christy, I really want to dive into that, because I know that's one of our questions for today is how do you build that predictability to your income, but also what are the best of the best doing today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for teeing me up for that. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and working with top 10%ers, which led me to writing the book Selling your Way. In Tom, you mentioned setting your income and owning your life the playbook for that. I think a couple of things. One, people who are the difference between a job and a career. The top 10%ers understand that they're building a career, and they're building a sustainable career. I have a term for this. I call it making the right step change at the right time. This all starts, though, with knowing yourself.
Speaker 3:One of the chapters in the book says you have to know yourself before you can know the prospect. I really think that people don't understand one. I don't think they understand at all how many different sales roles there are out in the world. They're picking the wrong one. We talk a lot about Hunter Farmer, but no one talks about onboarding and implementation specialists. Very few people talk about Sales Engineer or Solution Consultant. Very few people talk about Customer Trainer. There are so many sales roles out there. If you want to be in sales, or you are in sales but you're not hitting that top 10%, it's perhaps that you have picked the wrong role in the wrong company, selling the wrong product or service and working for the wrong leader. The book is not a how-to sales book. It's a how-to know yourself well enough.
Speaker 3:In the first section I teach you about do you know what your sales secret weapon is? What's your sales superpower? What swim lane should you stand? I have a very specific swim lane. I work with companies that are 0 to 5 million SaaS companies, early-stage startups, mostly BC-backed. That's my niche. I know everything about that world.
Speaker 3:I think that people are not taking enough time to really think about how do I like to be rewarded financially? What's my risk tolerance? Again, you have to have a pretty high risk tolerance to be in a startup, but not as much in a mature company. Do I need SOPs? Are operating processes and procedures, or do I like the fly by the seat of my pants? Do I like the excitement of coming in every day not knowing what's going to happen? Do I need that predictability?
Speaker 3:I think, first off, the top 10%ers have figured that out. They know when to leave. I'm not encouraging people to quit their job, but I am saying that once you've gotten as much as you need out of this job and you're set up for the next job, and that means things like my average sale today I'm selling is 10,000, that next job it should be 50, maybe the sale cycle is now 30 days, but it needs to be three months. They're taking that next challenge, but they're being very strategic. It's the chess match. They're looking two steps ahead and they go. If I want to be here, I may need to take this job as my interim to get to that next level.
Speaker 3:The other thing that top 10%ers are doing that nobody that other 90 haven't figured out yet is this is the Christeism for this. The work to get to the top doesn't actually happen at work. It happens outside of work. What I mean by that is the top 10%ers are investing in their own personal and professional development. I ask an interview question that is the following Tell me three things that you do consistently, regardless of the company you're working for or the job role that you're in, that you believe if you do these things, you're going to be successful here.
Speaker 3:Top 10%ers tell me the following I'm at the gym at 6 am every morning.
Speaker 3:I have a spiritual practice I listen to a sales or business podcast every week. I read a business or sales book every quarter. I put my phone down for two hours a day so I can be present with my family. Those are the type of things that top 10%ers understand. Because I'm a former athlete I guess I'm still a current athlete, but I was a bigger athlete in college I know the mind body combination and connection. The people that are taking care of their mind are taking care of their body or taking care of themselves spiritually, religiously, whatever it would be. Those people are going to be. They're just putting themselves in a better place to perform at a different level. I think the other 90s confused when they sit next to Carson and they hear what Carson is saying on the phone and they're like saying everything that Carson is saying. They don't have any clue what Carson is doing outside of those four walls in 8 to 5. Those are the things that are setting Carson up for success in the future.
Speaker 2:Love that you know, chrissy. Here's a couple of things, too, that I think are really in line. I mentor a lot of folks and I had a conversation very similarly earlier today. We were talking about career and building that body of work. Somebody, a mentor, told me years ago, especially in sales follow the zeros, go over the checks that are being written, have the most zeros behind them, because guess what? That's where you're going to maximize your payout. Master your craft, which happens in and out of the workplace, but it's studying what gets me paid, what doesn't. What are those low revenue generating opportunity things that I need to jettison? What are the things that I need to gravitate toward? Who are the people that I need to gravitate toward and the opportunities, like reading and podcasts, that are going to make me better. Then, lastly, what you said finding that superpower. But explore every way that you can elevate everyone around you. If you elevate everyone around you, guess what? That's what raises your shift.
Speaker 1:I think, there's another really really good point you brought up, Christy, and it ties into the RKO we were talking about a minute ago. There's a lot of ways you can participate in a revenue organization. Not everybody should be an account executive, not everybody should be a BDR, not everybody should be a marketer or whatever. I think if you look at again that holistic revenue organization and you look at how I can and client success is a great example and client success is integral to certainly expansion that revenue retention, all the things that are a SaaS metric, those are really important. If you look at it from that perspective, where can I best maybe even start? Maybe I want to become an AE, but I'm not ready for that.
Speaker 1:I've known a lot of good AE's that came from SES, that came from system engineers or software engineers and then graduated up into that AE sort of role. They're the best because they're not salespeople, they're consultants, they're guides along the way. So I think that's a huge point as we look at that holistic revenue point of thing. The other thing too is I wanted that there was a question here from Annapum, here about Annapom, about saying hey, it's really good to talk about big ideas, right, but there's a big chasm between ideas and actual execution and revenue. Obviously, that's a big question, but is there anything that jumps out to you, christy, that says, hey, if there's a couple of things that I would focus on to go from idea to execution and talk about the VC world, right, they all start with ideas and they have to execute. What would you touch on?
Speaker 3:I would say formalization. And I say I'm a pretty flexible leader and consultant. If somebody wants to try something, I'm all for it. But I say to them are you committed enough to your idea to do it for 30 straight days? Because I think the other thing that happens is the squirrel concept, right Like squirrel squirrel here and again. We do it a lot in the VC world, we really do In the SAS world. We are all over the place. And so I say, if you're committed enough to do it for 30 days, then I'm going to probably say yes to that and let you do it for 30 days. And so I do think there should be. I get a little frustrated. I'll get on my soapbox just a little bit With sales leaders. A lot of times I walk into companies, particularly at that SDRBDR level, and they have a call script and they're being asked to read their call script and it's affectionately called Pimp the Demo. So I get very frustrated. I don't like Pimp the Demo at all and that's what I call it.
Speaker 3:I'm just like oh you've been asked to Pimp the Demo Nice.
Speaker 2:We need to use that. We're going to use that on future episodes. Yeah, hashtag.
Speaker 3:Pimp the Demo right Hashtag Pimp the Demo and the Christeism for this is it has to be all about them before it can be all about you, before it can be all about us. And if you're constantly putting the prospect in the customer first, and I get tired of again pitching, pimping the demo, all of these things. And so I think that making sure that there's formal processes for people to follow, I believe in that, with flexibility, I can't and, let's be honest, I cannot put a new SDR on the phone if they don't have a piece of paper in front of them, right Like they will freak out on me. So again in, you know, my theory is when I'm training new SDRs, I get them on the phone on day seven. That's my goal is they're on the phone by day seven. And I said to them I know you're freaked out because you don't know everything, but if I waited till you knew everything, I'd never get you on the phone. So we're going to have to do some OJT right On the job.
Speaker 3:Training is real, but I think, like, as far as specific techniques, you need to have a formalization and we need to know what that is, how does it work, and then does it work and then then you got to have the metrics behind it. You need to have the data, so do you have your? The other thing I walk into companies all the time. Sorry, my soapbox again. I walk into companies all the time and individual sales reps do not have individual dashboards in their C-arm system. I'm done like as a sales leader. I'm not. I mean, yes, I have metrics that I'm reporting to to the executive team and the VC about the team as a whole and their metrics, but this is all about personal sales math, right. And again, this goes back to my. You know, I wrote the book because I want people to know what their swim lane and their secret weapons are and their superpowers. And so if I'm a good, if my close rate is at 30% and the person sitting next to me is at 17,.
Speaker 3:We should not have the same strategy. We should have a formula, we should have a process of formalization, something written down. But I, as the sales leader, need to say to this person hey, listen, like you don't need to have as many discovery calls because your quality is better than your. You know, this is a quality game over quantity for you If your average sale is higher, right, I mean the sales levers. I'm just like these are all levers, right, we just need to push them full, the levers.
Speaker 3:But if you're, if you're listening to me and you don't have your own dashboard in the CRM system and you don't know what your close rate and your average sale and your time to close is, your sales cycle link, then shame on your sales leader. But also now I've told you so now shame on you, because now you need to go figure that out and you need to know where you play best and play to your strengths. Why do we want to do as sales leaders, why do I want everybody to do the same thing when not everybody performs at the same level or the same way?
Speaker 2:The reason why a lot of people don't reach that top 10% is because they are either unable or unwilling or afraid to jettison what I like to call comfortable ways of failing or comfortable ways of mediocrity. And, Chrissy, I love what you just said about committing to something. For 30 days, you sit in a one-on-one with somebody and you agree like, hey, this is a great way of doing it different. And then they go out. They try it five times. It's kind of awkward because it's an uncomfortable muscle, and then they say, heck with it, I'm going to go back to my comfortable way of mediocrity or failing. That's why they never cracked the top 10%. But we also we've got to be careful in how we greenlight people, because I believe too, like, look, everybody's earned the right to be in the role that they're in. And as a sales leader though sales leaders, I'm looking at you we've got to set the tone. We've got to create the culture that empowers these people to do their best work. I don't need or want to come in and start telling them how to do their job just because I was successful at their job. That's not how, that why I exist. It's how do I help them uncover what gaps might exist and how they can get better and better and have higher impact.
Speaker 2:I actually got written up in my first sales job because I wouldn't read off the script directly. I was selling what I knew they would buy, based on listening to the customer and my team my manager at the time didn't like that. So I got written up. So I started doing it their way. My sales plummeted and by the end of the week they took me off the plane and I went back to number one in the entire office. We can't greenlight all of these reps but at the same time we also can't put the same script in front of them.
Speaker 2:Last analogy I always had the top team in my call center, so that means I always get to draft last whenever they came out with the training classes. So I got this guy that nobody wanted on their team, even though he was actually recruited by one of the other sales managers who I was competing with. Anyway, I get this guy on my team and he met. Well, love the guy. But we wrote a script that was in his voice. We wrote it together and we hit all of the boxes. He won Fortune 500, his first quarter on the phones, and it was because we did it together and we did it in his voice and he had a part, he had a hand in it, so it de-risked it for him, and that's what it was all about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I never put. I have a script and then I say to them I need you to rewrite it in your voice because I wrote it in words that I would use and I would be comfortable with, but that's not the case for everybody. And going back to your the 30 day rule, the reason I put the 30 day rule in place is because you're going to suck in the first five and then you're going to abort because you haven't perfected it. It's not smooth, it's not comfortable, you haven't heard the objections yet, and so that's why people abort and I'm like. That's why I'm like no, you have to do it for 30 days because you're going to suck the first five days and you're going to think the strategy sucks, when really you suck.
Speaker 2:Brandon, what are your?
Speaker 4:thoughts. We should have named this show the soapbox episode.
Speaker 2:Because we need an image of like Kristi on a soapbox with this episode.
Speaker 1:That'll be on the YouTube thumbnail. It'll be.
Speaker 4:But what I liked about it is, then, carson, to put you on your soapbox too. You know when what you were talking about and and I mean this is partly my soapbox Like, if we don't know ourselves, we can't lead ourselves, period. And if we talk about personalization and everything, you started talking earlier about personalized postcards and all these things, personalization for our customers is great and I fully agree. But if it's not personalized for us like going back to Simon Sink's book of knowing your why if we individually don't know why we do what we do and we don't know where we're best at, we are going to suck. And it doesn't mean we're going to have bad results. We're going to suck life from people around us because we're not full. These vessels were not meant to be empty, but we try to shove so much wrong stuff in these vessels and we are empty and we're trying to suck life somewhere. We just know ourselves and put ourselves in that right path. As Kristi says, get in your swim lane. And doing things your way Doesn't mean throw the paper away. It means take the paper, edit it and own it.
Speaker 4:Dave said something here that was interesting and unfortunate. Dave, I appreciate you saying it. As he said he has not done the inner work to know who he is or what lights his fire. Kristi, what would you say to Dave? Where does Dave start now? Because he's a successful sales guy, he's friends of ours. He's on the show. Where do you think he's going to tell? Where do you direct Dave? What does Dave do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I talk about it in the book. So the first thing is like what comes easy to you, right? So we call them strengths, but not really like, but what really comes easy to you, what do you like to do? Like again, you mentioned the J-Hawks and my eyes light up and I can't. I'm so excited about this weekend's game, it's all I want to talk about. But, like, so, what lights you up? What do you love to do? What do people come and ask you advice about?
Speaker 3:Right, sometimes you're not always self-aware about your superpowers, but if you thought back and thought about it and like, well, what do? What do my other colleagues come to me and ask me advice about or want to bounce something off about, that's, you're starting to then identify your superpower in that way and I think, like we talk about this as anybody who's been in therapy that includes, that's me I was, like we talk about doing your work right, and so you have to do your. Thank you, gentlemen, for making me not stay out there on the boat by myself. I mean again, like I'm, you know, here I'll go, I'll go all in. I don't just have a regular therapist, I also have a hypnotherapist and I pay for her out of my business account and I do her and I do her, she does me and she and I meet quarterly and you know what she does. She fills my head with positivity, you know. She tells me that I'm going to be a great author. She tells me that I'm going to be able to handle the business that comes my way, that I'll figure out the marketing plan for my new book. Like I tell her what I want to be told unconsciously, but I've also, I guess I would say today, like build your team, like your circle matters, right, you know the people. And, by the way, like I'll flip that and people don't want to hear this, and I say this openly, you need to weed your garden as well.
Speaker 3:There are people in your life that are not suiting you anymore, who are not on the journey with you, who are not making you a better person or salesperson. So, again, it's not always about the sales, like the sales side. Do you have people in your life that are making you a better person? Do you have people in life that are holding you accountable? Do you have accountability partners? And so you know I mean so my work includes a lot of different things, like I know that I need to get five plus days of cardio in a week or I become a not so nice person.
Speaker 3:I've always required eight hours of sleep, so I'm in bed by 1030 and I'm asleep soon after that every night, and I haven't set an alarm in about 20 years. I only set an alarm when I'm going to a tropical location and I want to be there by noon on the beach with my cocktail. Then I will be willing to set the alarm for the 430 flight or whatever. I don't need to do that, right, because I take care of my body and I put myself first. And so, like, I think you can figure you know.
Speaker 3:And then, where have you been most successful, dave, within your career, right? Which type of sales jobs, what type of products and services, what type of industries, what type of bosses, what type of companies, what type of compensation plans? You know, I think like and I make this very bold statement, but I think the average sales rep I don't just the average, I'm talking about the person like the C to B player is leaving five to $10 million of total lifetime earnings on the table because they're not willing to do their work. That happens outside of work in order to make sure that they're putting themselves and setting themselves up in the best position possible to be the most successful and earn the most income.
Speaker 1:What was that number?
Speaker 3:again, I'm saying five to 10. And I did the math on this in my book I actually outlined, because A players get a higher base salary. So right there, if you get yourself to A player status, you're going to be getting $10 to $20,000 more just in base salary alone over the X amount of years. And then if you're getting to 90% or up to 110 or 20% of quota versus, again, the average sales rep is hitting what we say 62, 64, whatever. The new disgusting D number is F is that FD? Like if you're making, I mean if you take that, if you take the fact that you may be making $50,000 more than the B player on your team and you take that over X number of years or even more than that. So I mean it's not about job jumping. By the way, I want to throw that in because people are like oh, the fastest way to get a raise is to quit that job and get the next one.
Speaker 3:And I think it's hilarious because I do live in this VC backstaff world and people always want like well, are there stock options? I'm like I don't, what does it matter? You're not going to be here for four years. Like you're not going to get best. I mean seriously. I say to them I go, are you planning on staying four years? Because that would be lovely and refreshing. And they're like, what do you mean? I go, well, that's the best thing time period, and sometimes it's five, but now, like, trend is four. But I was like if you're not going to be here for four years, then your stock options just don't matter and so like.
Speaker 3:But all but over time, I truly think that, people, if you got to a player status in your thirties and you worked till you were 60, you don't even have to work to 65 at that point, right? Or you worked to 58, there's a, there's a lot of money to be made and you're leaving a lot of money on the table by not taking the right roles. Knowing, knowing yourself well enough to put yourself in the best position. Like, why wouldn't you want to? You know, like I said, like instead of reading the bachelor, would you be willing, you know, instead of watching the bachelor, would you be reading a book instead? Would you be willing to give up? I mean seriously. I think I'm talking about like two to five hours a week of doing something differently than you're doing today to make so much more money than you're making today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just being intentional about what fuels you, what you're great at and that you can use to go to that next level. You know, I was mentoring somebody earlier today I mentioned, and that was one of the things we we uncovered. They said I'm fueled by money. Great, there's a lot of ways to make more money. There's a lot of different roles. It doesn't necessarily have to be AE that you make the move to, but being intentional about what you're building out and also how you have impact.
Speaker 2:And I'm like what do you want to be known for? It's like well, I'm the guy that everybody goes to for XYZ. Perfect, who knows that? Who knows that? And how are you putting that out into the world? Well, my team knows it, my boss knows it. Great, I want all of the teams and all of the bosses to know about that. You know, could you be blogging? Could you be doing an open office hours where colleagues can come to you and ask questions like think big picture about how you can break down barriers to amplify what you're doing? And if you have high impact, you automatically become the obvious choice for whatever you want to do next. Now, just because they're the obvious choice doesn't mean you're going to get it, but if you're the obvious choice for a lot of different things, you're going to write your own ticket and you're going to make all the money you could ever fathom.
Speaker 1:Brandon, I know you wanted to add something on that as well.
Speaker 4:I want to apologize today, because Dave came back on later and he said I did a title typo. I have done the work. I have not done the work.
Speaker 3:But for advice for somebody else.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the information was still great, and I learned from a therapist a long time ago that you always have to assess what are your energy gainers and what are your energy drainers. I love that, and if you don't know the difference, you're screwed.
Speaker 1:Well, and I want to kind of wrap this up with an area that we were going to spend some time on today.
Speaker 4:I want to see a stand raise.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say and Daniel.
Speaker 2:Yes, I will leverage chat GPT to get all the takeaways after the episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, it's funny, you say that.
Speaker 3:Nice, I like it.
Speaker 1:What I think and Brandon, we've seen this what I think is kind of ironic is, you know, we talk about getting to know yourself better, your style, your voice. Yeah, AI is a great tool for that we're finding. Yeah, it kind of allows you to mirror yourself a bit and work through and go God, is that really my voice? That how I really want to sound is, you know, we have that comment assessment tool, Brandon, where we look at you, know your different things. But I'm really seeing over and over as people start to use AI. It can be a way to get to know themselves, Even though, ironically, you say it's what's kind of dehumanizing things or it's taking the personal part out of it.
Speaker 1:But it can really help you the other way and I do think that you're right, Christie is that most people don't understand where they can have the biggest impact and that biggest impact will result in the biggest outcome for them in their career. And we kind of get into places because that's, we stumble into places, right, and then we end up trying to tread water maybe, if you want to call it that, in that place, versus really by design putting it in there. So I think there's a really lot of great, great points there.
Speaker 2:And let's see there was a ton of comments in the chat about your book, people that want to know where it is when and where they can get it. Can you, can you, tell us more?
Speaker 3:Yes, so you can go to sellingyourwayincom and there's a form that you can fill out right there on the homepage that will give you as every. I'm going to inform you every step of the way. So when the book design comes out in fact, the people who sign up for that I'm going to involve you in the book design. So I'm going to give you all of the options and let you vote. So, yeah, sellingyourwayincom, and then we'll get on the book list and then, for sure, you'll know about everything that's happening all along the way.
Speaker 4:Can we ask, just because I don't have a Dave or Daniel or somebody that's in there, would you write that in the comments so everybody else can see it? That would be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can't put it.
Speaker 4:We can't comment on our own stuff, so Well, we'd have to go open up another tab. I feel rude, like I'm not being personal with everybody.
Speaker 3:There it is, it's in there, thank you guys. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't know who that was LinkedIn user but thank you so.
Speaker 1:so, guys, I think that next time we need to find a guest that's a bit more passionate about their topic and that care a bit more.
Speaker 2:But besides from there, we're going to keep the good times rolling. There we go. Yeah, trust me.
Speaker 3:Trust me, your next guest is also going to be passion filled.
Speaker 4:Mr Cander, michael Weinberg, yeah, by the way, Christy, I like Belgian beer too.
Speaker 3:Okay, brandon, good to know, Good to know.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I love, I love a good Belgian beer myself.
Speaker 2:Yes, what in orange with what kind.
Speaker 3:Do you do fruit? Brandon? Do you do fruit? I need to know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's funny is I don't like any fruit flavored beers at all, but I do like an orange in my Belgian. You know, wheat ale or whatever.
Speaker 3:Right there with you, orange, it is Yep.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, Christy. Definitely go to the website, sign up for the book. We'll have you back after the book is out to get some feedback or what you've learned, if you'll put up with us again. And yeah, so, mike Weinberg. Next week, the St Louis.
Speaker 2:Yay Journey continues, yeah.
Speaker 1:Nice, and it's also.
Speaker 2:Carson's birthday next next.
Speaker 1:Wednesday oh, it is, that's true, I turned 29 again. I know.
Speaker 3:Instead of J-Hawk football and basketball, you can talk Purdue with Mike and golf Mike and I constantly on Instagram or back and forth during basketball season. So, yes, he had children that went to some of the schools and, unfortunately, he had a daughter who went to K state. So that was an unfortunate mistake that he and his family made. But it you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 4:I love it.
Speaker 2:We will not bring that up probably.
Speaker 4:We just need a trash talking episode as well. We'll have our soapbox episode. We'll have our trash talking episode.
Speaker 3:We got this Social selling and sports. I'm in for that one.
Speaker 2:We should have one where we get back all the previous guests and we do like this. We are the world type thing.
Speaker 1:Oh brother, hey Carson, yeah Thomas is not down for that, it's almost like that's a lot of work.
Speaker 4:Carson, I'm going to put the pressure on you. What's the movie reference today? I don't think I heard one.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. What would the movie reference be? We talked about controlling income and owning your life. Top gun perhaps. Oh, that's the best of the best.
Speaker 3:Best of the best. Best of the best. Yeah, top gun. I think that's a great way to that's our sign off.
Speaker 2:music for today, nice.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you again, christy Carson. Take us home on our end here. We missed you the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:Thank you everyone for being on today. Christy, Thank you Always, good to see you and until next time for our audience. Happy social selling. Thanks everyone. Thank you for all having joined us.